What? I'm not asleep yet?

I've done a lot of puttering today. Two boxes in the breakfast nook emptied before church, and the dishwasher run, because one of the boxes was full of dishes that I'd been wondering about. The second box was full of not-my-dishes, and I found a home for the eight bowls and dinner plates whose rim is exactly the wrong shade of blue (a darker tone of the blue walls in my bedroom in the house I owned with the children's father, a house in which I was so unhappy for so long that for the better part of two decades, just the sight of that family of blues made me anxious and crabby). Turquoise and green and aqua and teal have been my gateway back into the world of blue, gently washing out the last (I think) of any remaining toxicity. I drive a blue truck, for heaven's sake. The seven blue-bordered Corelle plates and the random flatware are sloshing about in the dishwasher as we speak and will go to work with me in the morning.

Middlest and I had words today. Nothing really ugly, but frustrating for both of us. My kid wanted me to move an item to a different temporary spot or a new permanent location, and I was not in the mood to comply. We had a similar incident a couple of months ago, when Middlest wanted a doorknob on that bedroom door, and I was disinclined to dig through various piles to find the new doorknob because I didn't (and still don't) want to install the new doorknob until the inside of the bedroom door has been repainted.

I will cheerfully concede that both of Middlest's requests were completely reasonable on the face of them. I will also concede that I can be as stubborn and irrational as any other human being. When my kid started the new medication about ten days ago, increased reactivity was a distinct possibility. There have only been a couple of episodes, one at IKEA when I backed the Tardis into a parking spot that was not the one that Middlest had located for me, and another this afternoon.

I make a lot of concessions, willingly, because Middlest is bipolar. In general, we manage to communicate very well. Middlest works around my quirks. I work around Middlest's. Neither of us is willing to walk on eggshells. So sometimes my answer is Nope. Today my answer was, I don't want to discuss this now. Your request is reasonable, and it's not something I'm willing to act on now. Maybe in five minutes. Maybe in fifteen minutes. Maybe in a week. Not. Now.

Middlest did the sane, reasonable thing and went quietly down the hall to the middle bedroom and even more quietly closed the door.

And when I was darn good and ready, I spent a couple of hours sorting through my weird books that might be useful someday bookcase (largely filled with books belonging to my late mother-in-love), finding treasures, and filling three bags to take to Half Price Books one day later this week. I've got half a shelf of conservative biographies that I want to read (someday), and the discord-provoking items have a new, presumably permanent home on one of the shelves.

As Old Blue Eyes sang, I did it my way. And now it's after midnight, and I have a funeral later today, so I'd better go to bed while my knees and hips will lift me out of this chair.