It’s been one of those. Long, frustrating, not particularly frustrating. Full of scary things and big things and things that throw big shadows.
A real estate agent came through the house today do give me opinions of whether I could rent it out furnished or partially furnished or unfurnished. She left me handfuls of paper explaining this, and encouraging that, and mentioned that I would need to outlay rather more money than I want on some repairs and possibly some modifications. I will have to engage with the opaque mortgage documentation, and front up to the bank, and squeeze it all into the middles of working days.
Meanwhile I still have a ridiculous amount of packing and purging to do, a mountain of day-to-day housework, a garden which has gone completely feral.
My new work computer is very fast, but the missing instructions for installing all the working environment meant that I spent the whole day repeatedly finding out that it was still stuffed up, vey quickly. The urgent issues may or may not have been urgent, and were political, and messy, and people are flailing and everything has to be done right now.
But here at the end of an overlong day I’m sitting on a train, and the middle-aged hippy across from me has taken out her guitar and is quietly noodling away. It’s an old guitar with a great wide strap made of dark brown crocodile skin. Her fingernails are short, and her fingers calloused from playing, and I can barely hear the guitar over the train noise even though we are sitting knee-to-knee. And that’s what I need right at this moment, and it makes the day ok.