Facing the Void...

Our friend Sally, over at RevGalBlogPals, offers us this, today:

I have been pondering this Friday Five over and over in my mind, but I am coming up with nothing, so I am wondering; what do you do when you feel empty of all creativity and unable to make/do anything? This is a completely open question, the only rule is name 5 things that fill/ inspire you:

so here goes...

1. Extra sleep -- to a point -- often in the last 20 years the problem has been simple, brute fatigue.

2. Physical exercise, of which walking is probably prime favorite.

3. Fiction, especially classic children's fiction; or mystery series; or people like Nevil Shute (although there's nobody like Nevil Shute); or Dickens, or Austen.

4. Something mindless and minor, like ironing, or polishing silver (Memo to self: tomorrow, take down and wash all the 'copper' moulds and pans on the kitchen grid)

5. (and this is the prime remedy) -- Go see a movie...it never seems to fail, I come out just snapping and crackling with ideas and imagination.

It has been Some Kind of Day here at Tether's End...a nice peaceable, doable schedule and nothing too alarming--and then the phone rang--and it was the Daughter Unit, who had just been tentatively diagnosed with pre-eclampsia and was awaiting further tests. And all the internal sirens start up...

Warmest thanks to all of you who sent such Sustaining and Comforting e-mails. I am happy to say that by late afternoon she was safe at home and everything that could have been, and had been, measured was now just where it should be. But in view of the scare -- a spike in blood pressure and protein detected where no protein should be -- she'll be closely monitored at home for the duration of the pregnancy. Such relief...

And somewhere in the midst of the panic and its aftermath, I absorbed the message that Beloved Milkman, the very last one in Prairie Metropolis, will make his final delivery next Friday. And I spent a very productive couple of hours with Gratifying Theological Student, mapping out a paper on the Anglican theology of Christian Initiation...our targeted lunch place was mysteriously closed so we went elsewhere, and in the Sturm und Drang over Chorus's diagnosis, I wolfed down a whole steak sandwich before even remembering that it IS Lent, after all. Miserere me, Domine.

After coming home, made 1-800 phone calls and sorted out a credit card tangle; and betook myself to the bank, early evening, and did things with retirement-money.

Tomorrow, which is also a day, heavy-duty house-cleaning.