on waiting

... and impatience, and a total lack of distractions, and the strange, unnerving mental state that's plaguing me this summer

Lately: Lately is the subject of today’s newsletter, which was more like a therapy substitute. Lately, I’ve been waiting for a million things and feeling like I’m existing in a state of suspended animation.

A non-exhaustive list of things I’m waiting for …

• … two nice men to finish painting my house, so that half its rooms are no longer charcoal gray and deep navy blue, evoking immediate depression upon entry.

• … the figs on my outdoor fig tree, which I relocated from D.C., to ripen. The St. Louis squirrels seem to be less enterprising as their Capitol Hill counterparts, so I’m a little less neurotic about grabbing each fig the second it shades purple, but that hasn’t cured my impatience.

• … a trip to New Orleans in September.

• … the red spot on the left side of my chin to turn into a zit.

• … my contractor to tell me when he can renovate my kitchen, which was last updated in the ’90s. It’s not my style, but it’s exceptionally charming — except when all the drawers fall off their tracks, which is every time I cook.

• … cooler weather.

• … college football season. I’m not sure football should be legal. And I think our country’s obsession with it, and the culture around it, are unhealthy and riddled with misogyny. But I still watch, still get excited for a good upset. I’m part of the problem, I guess.

• … people I work with to send me things to edit.

• … someone to fix the broken roof tile on my garage.

• … my next meal.

While we were engaged, in the middle of planning our wedding reception (which really, mind you, involved very little planning), my husband said something that’s stuck with me ever since: I’m excited to get to a point where we’re just living, not waiting for the next thing to happen. And instead of being charmed — look, this nice man wants to live a happy life with me! — I was struck with fear. Isn’t life, especially life in your 30s, just a series of waiting and preparing for milestones? The next logistic to be sorted, the next moment to celebrate, the next, the next, the next the next thenextthenextthenextthenext.

Buy a house, get engaged, get married, get a new job, get another new job, get promoted, buy another new house, sell the old one, move, renovate, when’s the couch going to come, when’s the next vacation, when is enough enough?

Last week, St. Louis set records for humidity. Ninety-seven degrees, feels like 114. There was no point even stepping outside; the 20-foot walk from my back door to my garage left sweat beading down my backbone, and the garage itself felt like a sauna, and then, on Tuesday night, condensation rained from the air conditioning vent in the bathroom ceiling. Enough Googling, and I became satisfied this was an isolated catastrophe, a perfect storm. My attic isn’t insulated (I’m waiting to have a vent installed, and then I’ll wait for the insulation guys), and between the heat and heavy air and my little dehumidifier filling up and shutting off, the condensation in that cold vent was just too much. But on Wednesday, not quite satisfied with that explanation, I skipped a day trip I’d been looking forward to and sat at home, within earshot of the bathroom, waiting (waiting, waiting, waiting) to hear another drip into the old pink bucket I’d placed below.

Sometimes you’re waiting for things you don’t want to happen, and they never do. And sometimes you’re waiting for a piece of antique furniture you ordered on eBay 2.5 months ago, and some other times you just feel like your whole life’s on hold while you’re waiting for all these pieces and parts and fears and joys to come together. And that’s been my summer.

It’s why I haven’t had much to say here, haven’t cooked much worth writing about, haven’t tried many restaurants worth sharing, haven’t gone anywhere that warranted an essay. And it’s what finally made me start to come around to my husband’s line of thinking: I’ve got to stop all this waiting, all this sitting on my hands, all this staring at the one last quivering droplet of condensation stuck to that ceiling vent, wondering if it’ll fall, wondering when, wondering what I’ll do if there is, after all, a massive leak somewhere in the walls of this old house, molding and festering and preparing to ruin God knows how many of my days.

So I’m getting up and going for a walk, which is a start. I’m reading over that list up at the top of the page and willing myself to think differently: Look at everything there is to look forward to.