Cranky reflections

Yesterday I dropped off my work for the Lawn Chairs exhibit. They didn't take the mannequin -- didn't even need to see her to make that decision (which didn't surprise me; that's not the sort of gallery they are) -- but they seem to have accepted everything else; my inventory came back to me in an email with a sweet note from my friend Anne about the mix of "lovely, classic, and outlandish" I'd submitted.

So all that's left is the opening, and then I can begin to concentrate on my schooling in earnest: first class is a week from this Saturday. Which means it's definitely time to shift gears -- I have a lot of reading to do before that first class -- but I can feel myself struggling.

Meanwhile my husband, who has been working pretty much full time for the last few weeks gathering signatures for a petition to get the legalization of marijuana on an upcoming ballot (no, he doesn't smoke; none of us do) will be handing in those signatures this afternoon, so he, too, will be in transition mode. What will he do next? Will he start to look for work? Or, having discovered how much fun volunteering can be, will he look for more volunteer opportunities?

Add to this mix our dog, lost in the throes of his annual summer allergies. We finally got him to the groomer yesterday, so his hair is short and all the matted clumps have been removed, but we still have to keep the cone on his head and socks on his back feet to keep him from endlessly scratching and licking his sensitive skin. He woke us around 1:30 with his relentless scratching (thump, thump, thump on the bedroom floor) so we gave him a benadryl and put the socks back on him, but as soon as light began to rise (around 4:15; dawn comes early when you live this far north) he was at it again. So I'm sleep deprived as well; finally gave up tossing and turning and brought him downstairs for breakfast and another benadryl a little after 5.

So it's predictable, really -- "an act of foolish optimism to have posed the question in the first place", I hear John Cleese saying again in that Monty Python Cheese Shop sketch -- that given all the shifts and lack of sleep I woke up pretty cranky. So reading about TRUTH in Soul Without Shame this morning wasn't all that much fun. What is the truth, anyway? Is it what's going on around you? Or how you're feeling in the moment? Does it matter, what and why you're feeling? Or does it only matter how you act on your awareness?

It's kind of amusing, at some level, that the sorts of questions I like to explore here will be questions I'll need to be addressing with classmates on a pretty personal level in these first two courses I'm taking. Because while I'm happy to monologue about them here, I've been sensing a rising resistance to the necessity of learning to dialogue about them with complete strangers. Which may be why I wanted this image for today.

Because one of the truths I'm being faced with this morning is that though I love mirrors, love reflections, love opportunities to mull things over, and love reflective surfaces like the back of this truck, I'm not at all sure I ever really want to see myself reflected back. Some parts of me -- like the cranky grumpy person who woke up this morning annoyed with both her husband and her dog -- would definitely prefer not to be seen. But perhaps instead of being embarrassed or annoyed or frustrated or guilty about this shadowy side of me I should just take pity on her and send her back to bed...