Character development

There's a fifty-two year old woman who lives in a house with two children, two dogs, a husband and a cat. She usually wakes up when her nine-year-old son wakes up, because he crawls into bed with her, around 6:30 am. Other days, the dogs, who sleep in the master's bedroom wake her up earlier, because her daughter or some other wildlife are roaming around. Lately, she doesn't want to get out of bed. She's been blaming it on the oral surgery (gum sliced open, skin pulled back, roots and bones scraped) she had earlier in the week, but somehow it seems that it's more than that. Her brain is tired. She's edgy. She's angry about something, but not sure what.

Her husband thinks that it's her normal cycle. Ten years ago, that would have meant her menstrual cycle, but those days are gone, and with no productive outcome. These days, it's the cycle of working and not working. She worked part-time last year, for a few hectic months. She seems to be happy when work ends, because she can regroup and try to get the house and kids in order, but after six months or so, she's done all the jobs she wants to do and the jobs that are left are jobs she hopes to avoid. She starts to feel lost, wandering the world, looking for a place to anchor, a bite worth taking, a purpose worth pursuing. Worth, that's the problem. SO little is worth it.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. She gets out of bed, puts on a fleece over here pajamas, lets the dogs out. She grabs a cup of coffee, helps by buttering bagels, feeds the dogs, starts to make lunches. Within thirty minutes, they're headed to the bus stop, the bus comes and she's back home. The dogs howl as she drives up to the house. You'd think she'd been gone a year. She grabs another cup o' joe, looks at the mess in the kitchen and wonders what to do. Usually, she'd switch into shorts and a sports bra to do aerobics for a half hour, but she's tired and the post-operative instructions say no exertion, which is just fine with her.

She could do some laundry, but she doesn't want to. She decides that mowing the lawn takes very little energy and will make her feel productive. She goes outside to check the grass. It's wet and won't be dry until after noon. She checks the mower, because it hasn't been used since last fall. It starts, but is almost out of gas. The gas cans are empty.

She puts the gas cans in the car and drives to the gas station. The activity is raising her spirits a bit, but not much. She manages to fill the cans without getting gas all over everything, drives home, puts them in the garage and goes into the house feeling a little bit better. She decides to clean up the kitchen and take out the compost while the sun dries the grass. As she's walking to the compost pile, it starts to rain. Perfect.

She finishes up in the kitchen and sits down in her reading spot. It's in the living room. There's a little area in front of the fireplace where she's positioned a love seat, chair and ottoman. The chair is her husband's spot. The love seat is hers. Half of the love seat is covered with books, magazines and her laptop. This is where she sits every evening. Usually during the day, she's busy with chores, but today, she's going to sit and read and wait for the rain to stop, the grass to dry and her mouth to heal.

She grabs a book that a friend loaned her. It starts out resembling her life, sort of. The writing is OK, but not great. It's a lot like her writing. Nothing astounding, proper grammar and sentence structure. She thinks about abandoning it. She usually tries to read books that are more noteworthy, the prize winners, literature. This one doesn't seem to be worth the time it takes to read it, but she doesn't want to have to tell her friend that she didn't finish it. It's entertaining, but she's not learning anything new.

Maybe that's what's eating her. She makes herself some lunch: soft food that she can chew on one side. She takes small bites, concentrating to keep them on one side of her mouth and thinks about her mood, tries to dissect it. She's been a perpetual student. She loves to learn. When she isn't working, she isn't learning. She's been toying with writing, but there's not really much learning. She's known how to string together words since high school. She is guided by her writing book to think about her motivation, delve into her spirit, dig deeper, but these are things she has always done. As an old grad school colleague used to say, she has always "studied her navel". Grumpier and grumpier.

She wants to take a nap, but the grass is probably dry. The wind is howling. Her eyes are heavy. The kids will be home from school in two hours. Maybe she can mow after she picks them up. Right now, the most worthwhile activity seems to be napping.