Empty or Preparing

McBeth.

It occurred to me this morning that I need to do some thinking about what feels like emptiness.

I aimlessly scratched non-itches as I sleepily walked into the kitchen to do what I do every time it is breakfast time. At breakfast time I clean out yesterday's grinds from inside the press pot, I load in two fresh measures of coffee grounds, I fill the electric kettle with fresh water and set that to boil. I poke around in the pantry or the refrigerator to decide what food item I will eat. Once I pick that thing, whatever it is, I prepare it (toast it or add milk or scramble mix cut bake it) while the coffee making runs tandem over there.

The schedule has been bungled recently and I am angry and frightened about that. The refrigerator is nearly empty, the pantry filled with rice - and pastas covering about every bendability need: elbows, corkscrews, straight thin spaghetti, it's all there. The local food pantry seems to have a lot of rice and pasta, and while I'm grateful that they're willing to share it with me, I'm not quite sure how many consecutive days of rice and pasta I'll be facing until I can sing praises to the boring bland chicken breasts I hadn't even realized I'd taken for granted until they didn't exist in the fridge anymore.

The coffee doesn't exist either. How can that be possible? NO COFFEE?? It's wrong, it's ridiculous and unjust and wrong wrong wrong.

I caught myself shrieking at one of the Stooges (poor puppy, she only wanted a quick cheek rub and an ear scratch), frustrated with the situation and even more frustrated with me. How the fuck did I get here? Two years ago I was working full-time, single parenting, owning this house and being a regular person like every other regular person. These days I feel very regularly breakable, receiving government benefits while I am unemployed. I'm far from a shrinking violet, but I have to think longer and harder about the choices I make before they can get made. I am not who I was. But I suppose that's true of each of us.

What I did wonder was how I could take this crappy cruddy noxious alone-on-an-island desperation, spin it just right and somehow make it less crappy cruddy noxious alone-on-an-island desperate. And as I moved a Tupperware container of rice from fridge to microwave I had to laugh at how pathetic my worries must seem like to someone facing bigger uglier shit. The empty fridge? Perfect. I have been putting off cleaning that muthah off for MONTHS because, well, fill in the blank with any number of ridiculous reasons that all meandered their way back to my own sheer laziness. I was too busy, I was too tired. There were too many things in there and it would have been a hassle to unshelve it all just to swipe a steaming dishcloth across. Who is really looking at the crumbs and sticky spots anyway?

Coffee? Hmm... okay. There really isn't a way to talk myself out of the joy of a good cup of coffee, just no way that's gonna happen. But - but wait! There are pouches of green tea (yum, minty even!) that I've been ignoring since last spring's last big tea buying bonanza. Today can be a most excellent green tea party. It will be fine.

Rice and pasta, pasta and rice. Sick.To.Pieces.Of.Rice. I can't help it, that's just the way it is. But it is also true that J, who refused to eat cinnamon/sugared rice the last time (a year? two years ago?) that I made it for us, is now finding it a treat. His big growing self is easily capable of sucking down 2/3 an 18 oz. box of cereal in one sitting but one sturdy bowl of rice sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon has his belly warm, full, and ready to power the rest of him for a few hours. What isn't good about that?

Perhaps my difficulty in accepting the situation where I find myself is my reluctance to give up my preconceived notions of who I am or what I am supposed to be based on the pattern of who and what I have been before now. Maybe I am not as empty as I think I am; maybe I'm just in the preparatory stages of readying for refill.