My hands smell of thyme and garlic.  I came home today, after work and then running errands, in a content mood.  Content enough at least that I was able to settle in to the kitchen and cook.  Where cooking last night gave me a surge of anxiety and made me cry and probably caused my blood pressure to rocket.  I don't actually know what high blood pressure feels like but Mom mentioned that it might be happening to me and it made a lot of sense.  Tense, like my pulse is racing even when it isn't.

My grocery list this evening: fresh baby spinach, bananas, whole wheat wraps, vitamins, and 3 quarts of ice cream (coffee and mint chocolate chip).  I looked through Redbox movies but decided to just watch what I have access to at home.

Work for most of the day was emotionally turbulent but the last hour flew by, which was really uplifting, and then I guess it was nice to drive around town without the feeling that he'd start wondering if I wasn't home soon to have quality time.  Post office, AT&T, grocery store.  Heavy traffic in the narrow pedestrian-crusted streets of historic downtown.  I got home later than I would have guessed but the sun was still up (setting earlier these days, dark by 8:00ish; not looking forward to constant cold and long dark of winter).  Out of hunger I gathered yesterday's easy leftovers from the fridge and ate without sadness (earlier than I would have with him, because I always felt like I needed to put the time in to cooking a balanced meal for the both of us) and then set to work changing an entire fridge shelf's worth of tomatoes into more spaghetti sauce.  I didn't visit the garden, and I haven't done other chores.  I got enough done just picking up mail and settling our cell phone accounts.  Now I am tired, the sauce is going to simmer for a few hours, I am texting with Chris, and it is time to get on the sofa with the ice cream.  And maybe TV, or a movie, or this book.  It will be very nice to read again.  I haven't let myself give time or attention to a book in a long time.  Why?  I worked hard on my heart and mind and learned a lot about partnership in our living together but in this upcoming long-distance I will learn how to be myself again.  And hopefully, if when he returns we are madly in love and going to give it another go, I will have learned how to merge the homemaker me and the remembers-herself me.  I think he will love me more that way.  I hope.