An *interesting* experience.

Work went well. Life? a little more difficult. I got distinctly teary-eyed during my morning-commute prayer. (What? you don’t pray when you’re driving to work? Then you obviously don’t live and drive in North Texas!)

The teary-eyed bit is not a new thing. It has happened frequently over the years, and it doesn’t necessarily signify sadness. It happened when I was serving as Relief Society president in my old ward. It happened when one or another of the kids was plowing through a major struggle. And sometimes it happens because of a breathtakingly beautiful sunrise.

After cycling in and out of depression for eight years while married to the childrens father, I keep a very close watch on my mental health dipstick. I will not claim that all is [root] beer and skittles in the Ravelled household; Monday’s bad news is a lot to process. But really, for the moment, I am OK. And Beloved is perking right up after yesterday’s transfusion. His color is good, and his twinkle is back, and his voice sounds way more like him than recently.

The last two days I have taken my lunch at 2:00 rather than the usual 1:00 or thereabouts. I have just gotten into a flow and waited for a natural break. Made for much shorter afternoons, let me tell you! Yesterday the only other co-worker in the break room when I finally broke for lunch, was there with her copy of That Book. (She is the latest of a bunch of my co-workers to be reading Fifty Shades of Ick. And cheerfully acknowledges that it is smut. Just in case I was in any doubt.) I sat at her table, because the one where I usually sit was greasy from other people’s lunches, and I was not in the mood to wipe it down so that I could knit unscathed.

As I sat on the other end of her table, I got progressively more cranky and verklempt. It was really weird. I didn’t say anything to her, I was not thinking condemnatory thoughts about her, but I could feel myself feeling more and more sad and frustrated about Beloved’s health issues and the prognosis. Ten minutes after she finished her lunch and went back to her desk, I felt like me again.

As I pondered it on the drive home, what I came up with is this: reading the kind of stuff she was reading, does not attract angelic attention, but the opposite. I think if I had had eyes to see, there was all sorts of dark stuff swirling around her end of the table. And, because the Adversary and his minions do not have a veil of forgetfulness over them, as we mortals do, they know exactly what Beloved and I are facing, where our vulnerabilities are, and are eager to play upon them. I think some of that dark stuff swirled over to my end of the table.

I love her dearly, and I will be finding someplace else to sit at lunch today. Maybe down in the atrium amongst the trees, with sunlight trickling down from the skylights through the leaves. I played the Primary music tape (for our Primary program next month) one and a half times on the drive home, and sang along, and when I got home I only needed a bear hug from Beloved to finish putting my day aright.

 The knitting is going well. I am about halfway through the first set of stripes. Jury is out on whether there will be enough of the contrast yarn to make it through to the end. I might end up frogging back and turning this into a large-ish scarf rather than a shawlette. We shall see.

Friday. We are encouraged to wear pink, and our tennis shoes and jeans, today. The latter I can manage. I did not get out to Wally World yesterday to pick up a new pair of jeans, but if I scoot I can do that and maybe score a non-boring pink shirt to go with, inexpensively. No idea what I want for breakfast, except a whole lot of something, but I have leftover smothered steak and mashed potatoes to take for lunch. And tonight we are having salmon and steamed carrots; anything else is just the cherry on top of the sundae as far as I am concerned.