It’s been a frustrating few months. Frustrating is the only word that seems to describe everything. I’ve been working on getting the wedding together – I think the period of time starting 5 months before the wedding service is the busiest part of the whole planning. It’s frustrating to have something I want so much take up so much time from everything else I’d like to do. Oh, it’s not constant, but there’s always something that needs to be done, whether it’s picking up the shoes I special ordered to match my dress or putting together the invitations, or chasing down the florist who was supposed to call me today and didn’t. I’ve spent a few hours already just picking the music and selecting portions and editing the mp3 files to the length I need.

I’ve had various medical appointments, trying to become healthier. That’s also tiresome, mostly in the “taking time off of paid work” job for it sense. I’m at a high risk of all sorts of heart problems, diabetes, etc, both genetically and lifestyle-wise. I’ve got one doctor for that. I have problems with my ankle and lower leg, which make it difficult to walk or run – I have a doctor I’m supposed to be calling for that. I need to finish the work on my teeth – it would be nice to have clean and healthy teeth for wedding photos, but all in all, it’s just not as important as it was a couple of months ago. Not with a bill pending over my head for the dental work that the insurance didn’t cover. Although they covered most of the work, there’s just enough left over that there’s no hope I’d ever be able to pay it all off in one paycheck, which annoys me. And frustrates me.

Right at the moment, I’m sitting at my job with a colleague near me updating the world at large every time something else happens. Even that frustrates me right now. I’m listening to an audiobook on my new-to-me iPod (bought from another colleague last week) I’ve never been much for audiobooks before, but I’m enjoying being able to put my book on pause even more than I’m enjoying having it read to me. However, as a classic introvert, I don’t cope with distractions very well…. it’s stretching my ability to write this and listen to Elizabeth Gilbert read Eat, Pray, Love at the same time. I simply can’t listen to multiple inputs at the same time, and I’m constantly rewinding the book because I’ve been interrupted by a colleague who thinks we all should know that she is having a hard time opening a bag of chips.

I haven’t done much IO-related art lately. It’s on my to-do list somewhere. I have barely even looked at the questions once a week for the past couple of months. Warm weather brings more activities, and more people wanting a chunk of my time. My only “me” day this week so far, yesterday, I spent gathering berries at my mother’s house, picking up groceries for the week, and then cleaning the berries (gooseberries are tiny and cleaning and de-stemming enough berries for a pie is an afternoon process). Not a bad way to spend the day, true, but not the balance and calm that I really crave right now.

And I do crave it. I’m realizing that what I really want most right now is a vacation – I’d like to take a week, spend the first part of it getting my “to-do” list straightened out enough to not worry about, and then spend the rest of it in a woodland cabin, writing a masterpiece or sorting and categorizing my photos into groups and pondering whether I should get my own domain, whether it’s time for that or not. Thinking about, or rather feeling about, what the next steps are going to be for me.