amelia's plum

The kids went to Toby's parents (for the week!) on Sunday morning. And since their car left the block I've been tackling my living room; attempting to make the built in book case and mantle look nicer and repaint the walls before the guy comes to refinish my floors. I painted the room what I thought was a warm grey but once up on the the walls there's too much red and not enough yellow in the grey. Yeah, I didn't realize this until I painted the entire room. I'm very picky about my paint colors, so I got yet another gallon of grey paint (sandpiper, how I love the names for paint) that I'm hoping will look better. My current state of mind is a bit altered, which I'm going to blame on huffing miniwax wood stain fumes yesterday afternoon whilst doing my many layered distressed paint look on the bookcase. I should add frustrated on top of the altered mental status because I think I might need to put another layer of pain over the barn owl, grey sky & jacobean stain I've got on the built in so far. I had to sand the bookcases a lot, to the point I had phantom vibrations in my arm an hour or two after I'd stopped sanding, before starting the paint work. Toby built the bookcase and mantle shortly after we moved into this house seven years ago and I couldn't help but draw comparisons between it and our ill-fated marriage. Of course, it was easy to compare when that is sort of forced into my consciousness because of the complaint of divorce I received in the mail. Toby had called to let me know I'd be getting it and I don't blame him for my dark mood. I just blame the whole fucking process, the harsh wording of the complaint 'You are being sued' which caused me to panic momentarily, because when you don't have a lot of money financial stuff, specifically mention of being sued, can feel like a punch to the gut. I guess lawyers aren't emotionally ruffled by this legalease but it makes me bawl. The being sued, the 'you will no longer have health insurance once the decree is filed' the myriad personal stressors that have made the stress of nursing school that much harder to bear and the worry worry worry my mind the eternal problem solver keeping me up throughout the night on Monday trying to troubleshoot how to go about passing the boards, finding a job and getting health insurance in the sixty days between graduating from school and my divorce being finalized. Oh and botox! I must get botox so the abject desperation will not be quite so easy to read on my face. Too many stressors. It would be one thing if it was just one thing, the divorce, the need to find employment, the imminent threat of no health insurance, or if it was all of them, but I had someone super supportive to lose my shit to in private. Someone who could hug away the fears or be a sounding board or just make me laugh and forget all this shit for a heartbeat. But I don't have that, which is why I air my dirty laundry here. Well I'm off to sandpiper the walls.