Crazy Stable

My third-floor study has been my obsession over the past few weeks...reconfiguring it, painting it, and before painting, spackling. I have huge issues about spackling, mostly related to my dad, the Michelangelo of spackling.  Then there is my decision to embark on a radical new color scheme,chalky white with a sort of Adirondack spruce trim around the windows and baseboard...why green? why do I always gravitate to the treacherous shoals of greenness? [In a startling insight, the Spouse pointed out that I detest being trapped in an office and am usually yearning to be out in the natural world, and that this might represent an effort to create some sort of psychic gateway. This has bought him about 250 'clueless points' to cash in the next few times he, like, totally doesn't get something.]

And what this is really all about is TOTAL SCREAMING FEAR OF CAREER EVOLUTION...because while I will be keeping my 'day job' of medical writing/editing, the next phase is book arts...if I can ever get over PARALYZING FEAR OF CHANGE, ahem.  My deceased mother has been visiting, speaking of parental issues, pointing out the imprudent fiscal angle; she is not too crazy about the spruce trim, either. She beams in on me like the English guy and the little girl on John Nash in A Beautiful Mind; like Nash, I have learned to studiously ignore her and then she quiets down, but at critical junctures this becomes more difficult. The spackling has also intersected with the upcoming 20th anniversary of my father's death and all this Joan Didion mourning stuff. Which is why I bought No Man is an Island for $7 at Barnes & Noble yesterday and then got rollers and more spruce paint today. I may weave all these things together masterfully in my next post, or I may post more pictures of Bagel the squirrel, or I may just curl up in a fetal position with spruce paint under my fingernails, crooning and rocking. Since we are going to have houseguests this weekend, and the guestroom adjoins this angst-ridden study, the last choice would be most inconsiderate.