Out of Sorts

Today I photographed three deer carcasses. It was awesome. Not.

I'm a little bit bad and sad right now. I don't know. I spent four days with five of my favorite people (photos on their way, I promise) and it was cold and good and honest and fun and loud.

We were supposed to stay in my dream house- which is a charming little cottage on my sister's in-laws' property in NH that is the perfect fit for my life right now. They have a little attic, a little basement, a decent sized bedroom, a tub you can soak in, a working fireplace, a full kitchen and satellite TV and a DVD player and a stereo and a one-car garage and frankly, I want to pack up my dog and my cat and my job and my life as it is and plunk it right down in a house just like this.

But we didn't end up staying in the cottage. When Alissa and I arrived, it was rather windy. We ran the doorbell at the big house, and we could see my sister's in-laws through the window. They were reading the newspaper, illuminated by reading lamps. They didn't move when we rang the doorbell. Not an inch. Oh-kay.

We decided to just walk down to the cottage, and as we crossed over the driveway, a sizeable branch fell behind us. It definitely felt like we had entered the Twilight Zone, where no one could see you or hear you or the sense of impending doom crescendos... and THEN! The lights in the cottage didn't work.

Alissa: Does the cottage need to be activated from a remote location?
Angie: Not that I know of, but maybe when I was here before it had already been activated...The hell?
(Both scream bloody murder as man in ski mask enters the cottage revving his chainsaw. Blood arcs across tastefully decorated mantel. Fade to black.)

Kidding! I called Amanda and she placed a conference call to her father-in-law and patched me in. Turns out the electricity was out due to the windstorm, but the big house has a generator that powers every third room, including the room where we could see them reading, but not the foyer with the doorbell.

Then, an even more unusual thing happened. I got... shy. I haven't been shy since the first day of kindergarten, or maybe this one time at Girl Scout Camp the summer after second grade where I was the designated "table hopper" and I couldn't understand a word the German counselor said (not even "Good job") and I got yelled at for using more milk than I needed and I cried and got to sit with my sister at every meal for the rest of the week.

But this weekend, I felt shy. My sister's in-laws are intimidating. They are Oh So Very Tasteful. We stayed in the big house for the next three days until the power came on, and it was really, really fun.

Now that I'm back, I feel so lonely for my sister/friends. Amanda and I talked, like, four times yesterday coping with the withdrawal. I came back down from the floatiness of vacation and cleaned the apartment and ran a lot of errands and paid bills. Mmmm.. sucky! I've been spilling things right and left and my best good work friend left today for nsmbc.com. And the deer carcasses? Not. Awesome.

I feel disconnected and disjointed. Nothing fits. It's like my life is a pair of jeans that shrunk in the dryer. I have to lay on the bed to zip my life up, but I'll walk around in it and do some deep knee bends and it will all feel familiar and good again soon. But for now, I'm kind of holding my breath.

That is all.