Settling And Unsettling

I sit by the window, tapping out words on the laptop, a cup of Lady Grey tea steaming beside me. I look across to the Christmas tree, the lights glowing brighter as the daylight starts to fade. To my right, on the high bookshelf, cards from friends and family tucked in between the books. Over the mantelpiece, more Christmas lights. I look out of the window, to my left, and see that fine snow is falling once again. A woman in a black woolly hat and deep pink waterproof walks up the hill, the awkward, effortful walk necessitated by the combination of the steepness of the hill and the quantity of snow on the pavement. On top of our wall and our green gate perhaps four inches of snow, the car barely visible beneath its white coat. Bus A goes down the hill, filthy from snow-melt and road dirt, empty. That will be the bus we take down to town and bus B back home when we move to the top o'th'hill. Soon now. And sometimes of course, we will walk - 25 minutes up, 15 down... Tomorrow I'll walk up to meet the man who does floor-sanding, so he can look at our three bedroom floors and give us a quote for sanding and varnishing. Up at the house today are the builder and the plumber, struggling with our leaky boiler. We want to get the heating on to avoid the risk of burst pipes, and to warm the place up a bit so the decorator can start whenever he's ready.

And soon it will be Christmas and we shall have (a few) presents and a feast, and celebrate warmth and light and plenty in the midst of the cold, dark time of the year. L is languishing in bed with painful sinuses, periodically descending to eat soup, breathe steam, check emails... We are confident she will be well by Friday. I wish I could do something for my mother, currently feeling stranded in her flat, the paths outside too icy to manage. I am not sure why the retirement village doesn't take better care of that. Maybe I should get on the phone, speak sternly to them...

I feel my recovery from recent events well under way now. My spirit is reviving, my sense of humour and creativity awakening. And I begin to taste the freedom of having escaped the tyranny of the job. I feel my life become my own again, and am grateful to have this unstructured holiday time to feel my way back into it, and to discover what I want to do next. Though of course, in between the unstructured time, we will be busy sorting and packing and planning, and there are still a few decisions to make about the house, a few things to organise and buy (lighting, curtains, washing machine, marmoleum floor tiles). But we have about four weeks and no other real demands, so it will all be ok, though I guess there is no house move that is not stressful.