Monday, December 28, 2009

The Mighty Explosion of Tangerine Chaos!! With a matching area rug!!


Calm.

This is how my boss views me.

“You keep me focused and you don’t feed into the chaos. How do you stay so calm?”

I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. Hell, I even quit smoking eighteen months ago. Yet I told her something like, “Well, if nobody’s bleeding profusely or dying because something has gone wrong, why worry?”

That’s pretty awesome advice, isn’t it? Too bad I can’t follow it. Although my years on Wellbutrin following my yet-to-be-shared-with-the-general-public battle with post-partum depression are far behind me, I still can’t forget how unbelievably and undeniably terrified I was of being uncomfortable.

Yep. I said uncomfortable.

Just yesterday, I removed my writing desk from my bedroom and put it in my daughter’s room. It will become her homework station/art project table/writing desk. That is our intention, at least. But if she’s anything like me, it will become another flat surface on which to throw and stack useless crap. I have to monitor this very carefully. As a result of losing a piece of furniture, I have gained an extra three feet of wall space and rearranged my own bedroom furniture to give myself even more floor space, you know, so I can do my yoga (that I’ve been talking about doing for over two months now).

The bed is now against the wall, on my left side. Positioning the bed against this wall totally opens my window and I love that! But, like I said, the bed is against the wall on my left side. This is a problem. I am left-handed and I feel absolutely crippled by the fact that everything within reach of the bed is also what is in reach of my right hand. I’m so out of whack right now. My world is jerky, uneven, severely unbalanced, and right-handed.

How freakin’ lame is that?!

As if that wasn’t neurotic enough, wait’ll I tell you about my nervous stomach, my rapid/non-existent breathing patterns, the lightheadedness, the tingly sensation in my extremities, the dry mouth that I’m convinced will make me swallow my own tongue before the week is over. There, I guess I just told you about it.

And how freakin’ lame is it that right now, at this very moment, I’m having one of the most intense anxiety attacks I’ve had all year…over a new comforter.

This new comforter, which I will refer to from now on as The Mighty Explosion of Tangerine Chaos, is on my bed. I am also on my bed, trying to absorb the good vibes that everyone else has been able to pick up from The Mighty Explosion of Tangerine Chaos’ feel-good aura. If comforters could have auras.

I am all about color, don’t get me wrong. I even had to be the one to convince my mother to paint the living room in a terracotta shade. I am the one who chose to cover my own bedroom walls in a deep, dark purple and then, just last year, turn it around into a cake-batter yellow – the current wall color. It’s gray and cold and miserably wintery outside and I need, desperately need, warm colors. The cranberry reds, the chocolate browns, the cozy caramels – the tangerines?

It’s a beautiful color and The Mighty Explosion of Tangerine Chaos is a lovely comforter. Really, it is. Did I mention that it is striped? Yes, it does somewhat remind me of those ten cent candy sticks in the general store section of a Cracker Barrel and I feel like I’m living in Lollipop Land.

My parents like it, my daughter likes it, my cat likes it, the mother/daughter duo from Target liked it, and even the lady at Sears who sold it to me liked it. I like it, too. I think. No, no…I do. The Mighty Explosion of Tangerine Chaos is the warm, summery color I needed in this bedroom to get me through the next few months. Is it the color? Would I not be so screwed up if I was right-handed? Is that what’s causing this feeling of being so uprooted and unsettled?

Why, oh why, can’t I just be $%^#^!@ normal?

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