1 - nothing throws you off kilter like sitting down with your coffee and browsing facebook on a Saturday morning and seeing a post that a friend of yours has been missing for a week. My heart and stomach dropped so fast, I think they went through the floor to the basement. I spent that weekend glued to my phone and laptop. I scoured google for more information, updates, ANYTHING that I could find that would tell me what was going on. Something that would say this was all a mistake. But it wasn't. By the Monday it was announced that my friend's body was found. One week after that, I found myself at the funeral home, surrounded by people I still consider family even though I no longer work with them. All of us in a state of shock that we were even there. August was a write-off for me. Almost a month later, I am still trying to find the words to write a blog post about this. It is insanely difficult to write about something you don't understand.2 - I get overwhelmed by possibilities. I want to do ALL OF THE THINGS at the same time. I get so overwhelmed, I shut down and do NONE OF THE THINGS. But then I am so restless, and agitated inside my body that I can't sleep, or focus, or sit still. I want to read (sooooo many books!), I want to craft (sooooo many crafts!), I want to rest, I want to garden, I want to sing, I want an electric keyboard, or I want a ukulele, or I want to run, or skate - no! Clean! Clean rooms! Purge extra junk we don't need! No! BAKE! I want to bake pies, and muffins-- no! Cook! I want to cook things! Instead, I just sit here on the couch and stare blankly at my computer screen as I scroll through funny images. I want to do so much at once that it breaks me.3 - sometimes I worry that if I figure too many things out, about how to live a happy life, and learn all the lessons I need to learn, that my life will be over soon. That sounds a lot more morbid than I intend it to be. You know how there's always that thought that you're forever striving for enlightenment, and to serve a purpose, yadda yadda? Well sometimes I feel like I have figured so much out, with all my struggles and life lessons, that what if that's it? What if I have accomplished what I was put on earth to achieve? When I offer advice to people now I feel like I'm my own motivational quote poster. I am not saying I'm perfect. Not at all. I do feel like I have reached a higher point of enlightenment than I have ever felt I have had. Surviving trauma and a bunch of other stuff will do that to you I guess.  It's a very weird, and highly irrational, concern. But, hey. That's who I am. (SEE how enlightened that is!?!)4 - why is it that when I nap, I need to wear a tank-top, yet when I sleep, I can't wear anything or I get too warm and feel trapped? I don't understand that. (Suppose this is what's keeping me from being TOO enlightened right now. Saved by mysterious sleeping habits.)5 - I like that my husband knows me well enough that even though I am in another room, and adamant that I am not hungry, he will cut one extra slice of summer sausage than he needs for his sandwich because I will inevitably show up at the last second and steal a piece from the cutting board. And then, despite my total assurance that I do not want a sandwich, he knows that I will say "Hmm, maybe a sandwich sounds good" after he's made one - and the one he had made was for ME. The way I like it. Knowing that would happen. And he was starting on his own sandwich making after that.6 - it has been a year since I made the decision to leave my old job. I find this crazy. That I changed my life so much in the past year. But this also shined a light on the regular mid-August-to-September pain flare up that I tend to have. Always thought it was due to stress at work, but that's not a factor anymore. But the giant sections of ragweed in a neighbour's hard right now has helped me realize that this time of year's flare-up is likely allergy related. And with pain flares come stupid lows, where I need to remind myself that I will not be sad and depressed forever. This too shall pass, as they say.7 - I do not like frozen pizza, but I like to eat the crusts from it when my husband has one. He saves them for me. It's a weird sort of habit, but it makes me happy.