living together

Lessons from the first week:
1. Survival demands a lot, including: buying food, cooking food, cleaning up food, dirtying what you've just cleaned to clean it again.
2. Learning how to cope with the work week monotony, after two weeks of sleeping in, can lead to tears and irrational thoughts of: what am I doing with my life?
3. Morning light can save you. Making coffee, making the bed, making up from last night's frustrations, it all feels better with snow white sunshine pouring in.
4. This place remembers a lot. I uncovered the grandparents' wedding album from 1960 and was uplifted by the simple black and white portraits of the small, conventional ceremony. This morning we watched his parents' 15 minute wedding video, recorded on VHS.
5. I need more hobbies. I've pledged not to reach for my phone while I'm not at work. Therefore: more photos, more working out, more cooking, more cleaning, and knitting.
6. Yoga is saving me from otherwise impenetrable blue moods. My teacher-- the leotard-clad fifty year old on the "Yoga For Beginners" DVD-- is convincing me that "connecting with my body" and finding "inner peace" may not be mumbo-jumbo after all. All day long my brain runs wild but for twenty minutes I can feel at ease.
7. Ups and downs, ups and downs. We are never in one place, not living in the highs or lows forever. We are just living and trying to stay sane. Good talks this week about indifference, that gray area of not feeling much, and how that is a more than okay place to be. Passion all the time is impossible to sustain.  Pleasure feels good but joy lingers everywhere, even in the dark places. Just waiting.