nighttime yard-wander

[felicula]

The sky tonight is that same dull reflected shade of salmon that always reminds me of snow. I know it is really just the same orange of nighttime light pollution reflected off of clouds and diffused through the soft flakes. Still, it is bright compared with the ordinary rust color of a rainy night sky in the city. I remember looking outside one night as a child and knowing that it would snow. The only difference I'd seen was the color of the clouds.

I actually spent some time outside tonight. As a full-time parent, there are too many days when I don't bother going outside at all during colder weather. Errands don't quite count except to get a sense of the temperature outdoors. It is nice to just go outside at night and feel the silence. The snow has a comforting quiet to it when the neighborhood is asleep. I can just inhabit the yard, feeling the chill normalizing my body temperature and let my mind absorb the previous day.

Admittedly, I miss being a social person as I'd been in college. It stuns me somewhat when I realize that it has been over four years since then. So much has changed yet I still seem to think of myself as who I was then. I am a parent now. I am a spouse. I've moved away from the home in which I grew up, and the friends I had there. So much of my time is spent in this apartment's microcosm with only my child and the pets, while mechanchaos is at work.

Since then I have spent a lot of time learning how to create a home, rather than sinking into the maelstrom that used to be my way of organizing. "It *is* clean mom. Everything is in its place!" Scowl from mom,"Everything is all over the floor." "I know that mom." ***matter of factly*** "That is where it is supposed to be." ***giggles, remembering*** I think the only thing that helped me in that department was FLYlady.

I think I've come to a point where I need to rediscover who I am. I know who I was. I know what I have done. I just need to bring things into the present, to find out whether what I knew was still applicable.

Perhaps that is why I don't have much to bring up in general conversation. The only parts of my life that are present tense are housework, my child, my spouse, Minerva and her kittens, and the people we've started getting to know.

I get self-conscious when I light up during social situations. It is like I don't realize how much I miss having friends around until I am practically radiating from the feel of interaction. That, or I catch myself hyper-focusing on one detail or motion in the room only to totally miss what someone was saying to me. Now that is a disjointed feeling. It is like my hearing ceases to function when I drift into hyper-focus. I know that on some level I must have taken it in, but the words just aren't processed as they ought to be.

I'm hoping that I can bounce back. With more opportunities to be social, perhaps practice will snap me out of my slowdown.