everything changes. everything hurts.

[dancing_crow]

delivered Alice yesterday - ten whole miles away and a whole new chapter.

Aerin took Eileen, and her stuff, and made it to their room before we did

Alice is on the same side of Dickinson, down a floor, in the other wing - it was a tiny bit surreal delivering her and trying to do it the way they'd had us do it for Aerin and having it not work. But that was ok too, in the long run. I didn't stash tiny dinosaurs in Alice's boxes because she had pre-stashed tiny stuffies and friends - travelling Puppy, and the Purple Panda cathy made for her, and the ladybug and she also had three huge stuffies - the Panda, the Mammoth and Emma's squishy white hover bear. Alice shows so little of what is in her head. Aerin doesn't either, but they do it in different ways. Alice seemed fine, Eileen seemed fine - both a little nervous, both cheerful, both getting stuff out and away and making a cement block room into a space they can do the things that will support life.

Neither one had things on the wall yet. Eileen had a handful of small Chinese friends and good luck charms she was finding places for. Alice is neatly packed into boxes inside boxes inside further boxes, so she had four bins, the giant Target bag of stuffies and her wizard lamp and backpack (new, and thus unrecognizable).

I was tired and migraining and Al was nervous and telling me to do things that were either obvious or incorrect, and when we left and had food it got better and when we went home and I had drugs it got better still. I feel off balance, and also like I am going to be off balance until people settle in their next places. It is an article of faith for me that everything happens at once. Aerin is looking at apartments in Boston, and trying to decide how to decide. Sally is just --going. It feels like I have been preparing to lift a heavy load and she has removed all the substance from it, and I am flailing, trying to get my balance and decide how much I am needed at all, and how to respond to her express wish that I, basically, not be involved. Except to help pack. Or do computer stuff. Or maybe to visit. But not to do anything, really. Except help, somehow, in some unspecified way.

Aerin pointed out that our household runs a lot of what people say, and what they say they want. So I have been practicing for years, and they ahve been trained from early on, to talk about what you want and need and want to have happen. Sally hasn't, and probably has had some training in NOT saying what she wants, so I/we/you have to read her emotions rahter than her words. Aerin seems to be better at that than i am, and was trying t help me see how to hear what she is feeling rather than what she is saying. There is very little I can do to retrain her, although she is better at either calling or reverting to plan A if she can't contact anyone, but she is still such a freaking mad loose cannon, and she tries so ahrd to make everything BETTER when I just want to plow ahead and make it fucking be OVER,

I dunno. I took the logbooks, with her blessing, and will look over them with JT at the next lunch maybe. I should find some charts of Marblehead, the Cape and Maine. I'll ask Mat about those, it would take a couple or four, to cover the area in question. And then he/we could look over the log books and see what kinds of stories are in them, and what thigns we did. Where did we go.

I took some pictures of my mother and father getting married, impossibly long ago, and of me being tiny, and of me with yards of braided string around myself in the west Indies in 3rd grade. I can post them, for some throw back thursday kind of thing, because they are quite lovely and are emblematic of other times.

She also let me take my lunch box, the VW bus lunch box, that I remember with SUCH affection. She kind of wanted to keep it, for no reason I could think of unless she wanted to sell them or something, but she decided I could have one after all. It is not the one withth ematching thermos, which is fine - I will probably put something else in it instead, like buttons or thread or beads or something important.