Two [moods] have I, of comfort and despair

I’ve got yin and yang tangled up together at the moment. This is the week in which the axe is falling at work; each email announcing “appointments” has with it the shadow of those whose names aren’t there. It’s not yet my turn–there are more reports to come and decisions to be made before I find out if my patch is to be scorched–but in the last two or three days I’ve woken up feeling as if there’s a flat stone lying on my chest. Ich habe angst.

Yesterday morning I spent at the house of my friend whose funeral I attended in August, looking through terrier memorabilia that her daughter had sorted for me. There is enough to start a library of Norwich treasures, which is, in effect, what I intend to do. A general audience may not infer the value of a club catalogue from 1969, but between Deena and Ashburton Jay and I, we will appreciate such a text to the full extent of its yellowing pages.

It was bittersweet to be given such a motherlode, when the area in which Betty’s dogs used to be kennelled is now completely empty (to the extent that there was a deadrat in one of the cages), to see the photos, from the early 80s, of dogs who will now be dead, and of people who are the same. Betty’s husband and their remaining dog Buck–Arthur’s father–are moving up north; there was time for a final pic of the latter before saying goodbye.

At home, the younger of the ladies trouble progresses in literal leaps and bounds, going straight from being just able to walk to capering at speed (though with varying degrees of directness) across the room. And for new teeth, learning to be deployed, we have this (though the older dogs are applying the “what’s yours is mine” pack rule):

The ghost of my former supervisor drifted by as I was out walking this evening. An unreconstructed Freudian, he saw psychological significance in puns and resemblances of all kinds. It was probably a conversation with someone at work that summoned the ghost: hearing there were now three dogs at home, she said, innocently enough, “no room for a man, then?” I haven’t got a husband, I thought tonight, but I’ve got good husbandry. I’d have laughed more at the thought except for the knowledge that the ghost would take such a match-up seriously.

These last few days of stopping overeating and starting walking have been interesting, not least the thought that there’s a lot I’ve been anaesthetising with food and booze. No traumas, more the full banal range of everyday negative emotions: loneliness, frustration with others, boredom, restlessness. I can walk for an hour and just be starting to feel calm, a cheaper and less damaging route than eating a whole pizza and drinking half a bottle of wine. The flipside is I’m getting a lot less writing done, but overall I’m feeling better and hoping for some physical as well as mental returns. Now I feel the troubling emotions but seem to be withstanding them.

And there is much to look forward to: Manon and Jean de Florette’s post-Christmas wedding, for one. I’ve got an outfit sorted from the fragments in my wardrobe, all except the shoes, which today yielded up. The saleswoman at Kumfs told me this was the design used for the female characters’ shoes on King Kong. I love the colour, which is a slightly lighter shade than in this flash-assisted image.

Now there is the decision of whether not to drink on the day, the better to make the late-night longish drive home, or to look for somewhere to stay nearby. The spouses-to-be have provided a handy list of places-to-stay, but I haven’t yet made a decision about whether to make a decision.

And, thanks to following the link from yami, I cannot stop playing Cities, except when my action points run out, which they continually do.