Nanopatience

A new word coined just for today! Nanopatience: (n.) the smallest measureable amount of patience, about the size of a few electron shavings.

I am a sweating, headachey powderkeg because I am grieving the loss of my grandmother and packing the entire household to move to a tiny, tiny town, one whose hot spot is the Super Walmart and where most people recognize each other, if not by name then by lines of kinship (i.e. "that's old Winston's daughter, the one who married the Bailey kid and lives over on the other side of the tracks"). Bustling anonymity is much more my speed-- my college was two and a half times the size of this entire town, which is a snooty-sounding fact I will have to do my best not to share.

All around me are islands of piled junk (which is what all of your stuff becomes, even the stuff you like, when you are required to pack it up and move it) strewn across the floor awaiting some kind of order and assembly. The urge to abandon it all and disappear is startingly strong. The house is quiet except for the sounds of the washer and dryer and the cat occasionally nudging something off a table. The terrain of his world just got infinitely more interesting and he's been alpine climbing towers of junk all morning.

I'm packing in disordered, profanity-laden spurts because I can-- the husband got another golden ticket from the military requiring him to be out of town for the whole packing process doing some obscure training exercise in a spring break vacation town. I calmly articulated my vein-searing jealousy last night, but it didn't make me feel any better. Here is where logic and communication are overrated, and a good five-year-old temper tantrum might have felt a lot better.

Recent bright spots: we found a nice, funky old house to rent in the new town, and it has a spare room with lots of sunlight where I can write; my husband's family is coming to visit in the beginning of next month and they're bringing the little two-year-old nephew who likes to be swung around upside down by his ankles; I got to have an exciting, challenging, four-star interesting conversation with a really smart girl I met about a week ago and who I hope will be coming to visit the tiny, tiny town often; and finally, the tiny, tiny town is a major migratory route for all kinds of crazy species of South American birds and butterflies, which really excites the Marty Stouffard in me.

I'm going to think of this instead of my solitude among the Junk Himalayas and see if it helps.