Now, if I could just magically be retired…

I have turned into that domestic goddess I always thought I ought to be.

Remember that second wind I was blathering on about last week? It’s still going. I’m still moving art around my house and painting the frames to a uniform color and finally getting the stuff together to create the little collage frame ratty memorials I keep saying I’m going to make and gluing wood bits together to make a necklace display with some old cabinet knobs I had my parents salvage from The Great Santa Barbara House Do-Over and painting that stupid-but-useful Mrs. Fields tin to a less eye-shattering color and, and, and…

I cleaned, re-planted, and re-stocked the fish tank. (My new betta is a beaut, by the way. And he’s angry as fuck. And I love him.)

I just made enchiladas. And I wore an apron while I did it.

I made a vat of curtido to go with them, too, which has been pickling since yesterday. And I made a sort of cinnamon/chocolate pastry roll thing with the last half-sheet of puff pastry I had left in the freezer from Christmas.

My house has flowers in it, my dishes are done, my laundry is put away, my desk is, if not perfect, far, far tidier than it has been in eons, and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT IN THE BUGGERING FUCK TO DO WITH MYSELF. I haven’t felt this productive in ever. I’m starting to find it worrying, frankly. Is this some sort of manifestation of a deep-rooted anxiety resulting from the situation in which we currently find ourselves? Am I headed for some sort of life-shattering breakdown? Is the loneliness literally going to kill me?!

I’m writing this on a Sunday. I haven’t had the oomph behind me to be this far ahead of the game in months.

WHAT IS HAPPENING.

I don’t have that much of a mind knocking around to be losing, thanks very much. The little bit I have is barely enough to keep me marginally functional. I can’t be lending it to some sort of Betty Crocker mental episode! I need it!

Because it’s not some kind of intellectual energy, really. It’s not like this is prompting me to do anything about my ‘to-read’ pile or revamp my entire personal financial system or pen The Next Great American Novel--no, I’m just getting shit done that’s been sitting around here needing to be done for however-the-fuck-long and making casseroles.

I DON’T GET IT.

I mean, yeah, okay, I do get it in the sense of the fact that--independent of the current global nonsense--I’m in a better place emotionally than I have been since the Jurassic Period, and that can lead to things like increased energy and just an overall feeling of “yeah, okay, I actually feel like doing stuff,” but it’s still a very strange feeling. I don’t know what to do with myself, so I do things I ought to have done ages ago. It’s this strange and sudden flurry of ‘life catch-up’. The cynic in me (which, let’s be real, is more of me than anything else) is waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m waiting to go completely loopy and start capturing and painting the squirrels in the courtyard or something and consequently getting chucked in the loony bin, or burning the house down trying to deep-fry something that really doesn’t need to be deep-fried.

What if I accidentally invent some kind of murder cocktail?

These enchiladas, though? They’re pretty bomb.