god damn your confusion.

One of the things I was doing on my scheduled-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life week was to take my neighbor out running errands yesterday. I don't know if I've mentioned this neighbor before? She's single, in her seventies, can no longer drive, has lots of trouble walking because she broke her hip and leg last year. Gets around mostly in one of those scooter chairs, and you can see her most days puttering down our street to the grocery or some such thing. She sometimes corrals me for a nice long chat as I'm getting in or out of my car; she displays a decided knack for catching me as I'm on my way for something I oughtn't be late for, or else when I've got a carload of groceries to unload, and that right quick.

She's nice, though, and keeps me well-stocked in Virginia Henley and Eugenia Price novels, and last week her scooter broke down, and she's having trouble getting repairs scheduled, so I've been fielding twenty-minute conversations with repair crews and in the meantime of course she's got the shopping to do, and so I took her out yesterday to Wal-Mart, the bank, her landlord's office, etc.

I mentioned that her health, it is not so great? In addition to the hip+leg issue, she has trouble with inner ear+equilibrium, and apparently some nebulous quasi-diabetic blood sugar problems as well. And that brings me to the reason I've mentioned her in the first place: that yesterday we bought food on our trip, and here is what we bought, in toto:

(1) loaf white bread
(1) gallon milk
(1) loaf raisin bread
(2) quarts peach sherbet
(2) packs of 18-count twin banana-favored popsicles
(10) cups of fruit custard yogurt
(1) six-pack of sweet rolls
(1) gallon sweet tea
(1) 6-pack of mini-shortcakes
(1) packet frozen strawberries
(1) cantaloupe
(1) honeydew melon


And I don't know her nearly, nearly well enough to comment on this, but oh my gosh, how many times did I have to force myself from asking her if this was really such a hot idea, all this sugar, not to mention having to force myself not to sneak some vegetables into her cart or something. All morning at the Super-Wal-Mart, I kept reminding myself that Miss B's nutrition was none of my business, and yet. This cannot possibly be good for her, can it? And yet again, she's got a perfect right to go to hell her own damn way.

Would you say something, if it were you?

:::

My life has been in flux for going on three years now. New cities, new jobs, new people, lost people, new pets, lost pets, disrupted schedules, new experiences. Some welcome, some unwelcome, some both at once. And I'm not much for change, me, not much for uncertainty, and now that my life has settled into something like a regular (and ongoing) routine in a city in which I'm comfortable, I'm more content than I can remember having been for several years--certainly much longer than three.

So explain to me why all my dreams lately have been about change? Last night's dream was this: littlemissloony and I were brand-new housemates, and we found the perfect house to rent--perfect except that there were no bedrooms. littlemissloony was okay with this, and said that we could just put our beds out in the back yard, and I had misgivings but we did this and it was actually quite nice. And that was last night's, but they're all like this, all about new things and loss and flux, and I'm wondering why they're coming now, just when I'm finally, really getting settled.