Tangentially, any time you are reduced to using a Shop Vac to clean the floors inside, it means that you have a lot of mess on your hands.

It seems like I’m reaching inertia on the cleaning, though. And it’s not the living room and bedroom demo, or the dry walling, or the painting, or the other activities that produce mountains of dust and ruble at B’s. It’s the living out of bags. My mother would probably call it the wages of sin or something. I got to my house every week or so, or as often as needed to collect my mail and grab a few more clothing articles. It’s moving out by attrition, or moving in by increments, like the proverbial camel who edges into the tent.

I’ve been pretty happy playing house over here, and certainly am happy with B. Fantastically happy. But it really is a disaster zone, albeit a constantly improving disaster zone. Even B feels like he has no space in his house, as it’s overrun with tools and construction stuff. I have even less space.

I’m reminded of my loner tendencies, too. I have been less active by necessity, and this has resulted in a total loss of my *by myself* wanderings around. It’s just too hard to do any more driving and walking than is absolutely required by my work. The days I can actually drive to the office, I come home to whimper and elevate my foot.

The little bursts of spring we are having make me want to be out and about and active and organizing and sprucing. Sprucing is a wonderful word. But, it looks like my spring cleaning might be relegated to just hanging out and making sure a cleaning service does an acceptable job of returning the place to normalcy.

And we did pick out a great paint color for the dining room last night, so there’s that. That and my idea for an iPhone app that lets you store room dimensions and enter furniture sizes on the fly (read: while at West Elm) to see how they will work in the space. Ohhhh Jesus. If there already is one, I’m giving my BlackBerry to my sister and switching phone carriers.

That’s when I noticed that I could see real, spring-like sunlight streaming from the east and reflecting off of the fog that’s covering the Willamette River a few streets south of us. This is a time of year that (some) Portlanders seem to take a return to clouds as a personal insult, so while I last saw sunlight yesterday afternoon, I had already plummeted back to despair over when spring might really arrive.

But today, at least, the sun seems to be struggling through the Oregonian clouds, and I might go outside and watch the raised beds for sign of any of the seeds we planted last weekend poking up through the dirt.

I spent this great holiday working from home, which of course involved breaking into the microbrew around 3 pm. The hatred I have been feeling toward certain players at work has escalated to contempt, and being powerless to change things, I have resolved to stop worrying about them.

My heart briefly stopped today when I read Food Dude’s farewell to the Portland foodie scene. At least this year I read his prank on April Fool’s Day, rather than days later in Google Reader and thus removed from its context.

We have been gardening lately in an excess of “there’s visible sunlight” exuberance. It’s likely that most of the seeds we have planted will rot in the ground, but I hear rumors of rows of carrots pushing their ways up in the raised beds. This is very exciting to me, as carrots are my most favoritest vegetable to grow, and I hope the claim is not another April 1 prank.

In my defense, I haven’t used my house keys in two months, since I’m not there very often anymore. When I am, the door is always unlocked because we have, hello, two apparently ferocious dogs who love nothing more than lounging by the door and barking at people.

B’s place, which is where I spend most of my time when I’m not limping in to the office, is in full remodel mode. This week, we won’t even have heat due to drywalling in progress.

It’s fantastic!

Fortunately, these days, I can respond, “Um, not driving? My foot it be broken?” But I couldn’t say no any longer, so I agreed to a happy hour. I suggested one place, and she was “sick of it,” so she suggested another place, a restaurant that might as well be a Catholic grotto and object of pilgrimage, given its perch on a hillside and uncountable number of stairs leading to the front door. Feeling terse, I responded “Too many stairs. Let’s go to McCormick”s.”

So, I went there. And the fucking old people had all of the handicapped spaces, as I actually suspected on the way. So, I went somewhere else. Unfortunately, by that time my foot was so tired that I was considering running into people in front of me to avoid needing to put in the clutch.

It’s still on the tip of my tongue to tell the next old person I see, “You may be fucking old, but I’m fucking broken, so get out of my parking space!”

While leaving for work the next morning, I fell down his stairs, breaking my foot. That fifth date lasted days and days, and he took care of me, carried me around, brought me coffee, food, my laptop for work, took me to urgent care for x-rays, and generally behaved in the way straight women like me wish every straight guy would. My roommate V stopped by one day to bring me more clothes and met him. As soon as she left, she called me to say “Oh my god! Love him! I’m so happy for you!”

It’s interesting to me to be in a totally dependent situation in which I have to rely on others for anything. That’s generally hard for me, and especially in romantic relationships. Somehow, circumstances have made it so I had to get over that with him, fast.

I’m smitten with him, and my siblings are calling him Mr. Bingley due to the health-related forced stay at his house. But I was secretly wishing that morning that I didn’t have to leave, so the moral, I guess, is be very careful what you wish for, or some such cliche.

Anyhow, that’s what I’ve been up to recently. That and major atrophy.

I regret all the circumstances, economic, cultural, interpersonal, and familial, that led me to choose to end a pregnancy, but I am grateful I had the right to make that decision, and grateful to have a president who supports that right in office.

Currently, I also have his dog, who thinks I am Gawd. Visits to my house send her little heart racing and leave her sulky for a day or two after she returns home.

I have the spare key to his place.

I have rich memories of conversations, walks, movie-watchings, wine drinking, cooking experiments,  shopping trips, and photos and souvenirs from his trips abroad.

And Friday, out of nowhere, he asked what I thought of buying a house together.

I’m turning this one over in my mind, frankly. I feel a need for my “own” place, a bit more space so I can put away my linens together rather than stashing them here and there where there’s space, get out my food processor, maybe even have a closet in my own bedroom.

On the other hand, there are some big opens. What if one of us moves away, or finds someone we want to be with? Obviously, for me, there are a billion intellectual and emotional reasons I want to be with F and only F, but there’s also no chemistry. And I like sex!

Anyhow, I’m open to thoughts/advice on the advisability of buying a house with a friend.

For starters, celebrating the Season of Eating in both Mexican and American style doubles the food and fun. Then there’s the last-minute visit from the Mexican brother and his family, which rearranged schedules and plans. Then, the Great Snow Storm of 2008! A weekend trip away saw me unable to return to Portland, which led to a week of telecommuting that culminated in an early Thursday afternoon drive to Portland, on conference calls most of the way. Then, ice and lack of chains led to the abandonment of my car at a light rail station the weekend before Christmas; it took a dad, a brother, a 4X4, and chains from 130 miles away to return the poor jettisoned vehicle to its regular parking space. And there it stays, while I carouse in other parts of the state.

There are two great things to be shared from this holiday; both are recipes. The first: a recipe for a cookie we are calling, as a placeholder, Mexi-snaps. These are basically gingersnaps, but with very high-end Mexican chocolate instead of  the molasses and the spices typically associated with gingersnaps. The second: the best way you will ever find to get rid of leftover prime rib, gravy, mashed potatoes, and other sundry holiday leftovers.

I have knitted vast swaths, and even completed a project.

I have taken time off of work, and plan to work two days this week.

I have watched F’s dog; been drunk once; played a lot of mancala, Monopoly, and poker with my 6-year-old niece; despised Garrison Keillor; avoided men from match.com; added up the weight I’ve gained since last Christmas (20 pounds! Gulp!); shopped for very expensive suits for Dr M to have knocked off in China while she travels for the holidays; been asked why I wasn’t a chef; listened to my niece since a two-line solo on a Christmas CD; been sucked into Battlestar Galactica; considered quitting my job due to political problems; eaten chocolate for breakfast and waffles for dinner; felt worthless and weak; and been overall panicked about the economy.

It hit home, or rather, my sister’s home, last week. She has been out of work for a couple of months; her husband, over a year and a half. They had a year’s worth of mortgage payments saved, and they stretched it out for a long time. But his unemployment benefits ended a couple months back around the same time my sister lost her job, and now their home is in foreclosure. Now, where did all that bail out money go? Now the bank gets the money and my sister’s house? I took all my money from savings and tried to get them to take it; after all, I have no assets since I am not a real grown-up, and have little to lose if my job is gone besides my mind. But they refused to accept it, likely due to some reasonable expectations that the economy will be tanked for a long time, making losing their house inevitable.

Another sister’s husband was notified the day after Christmas that New Year’s Eve would be his last day. Lovely. Merry Christmas!

At my work, I am caught between fear of being in a division that could be layed off and inability to tolerate further insanity from certain parties with whom I work. This makes me think that I should be doing…something…to change things. But I seem to be out of energy at present.

Good night. Happy holidays.