My house is my favourite place. I’m currently entertaining bids to put in a basement suite: I don’t love the process of rejecting people. I don’t love the thought of debt. But it makes sense in terms of the space and future plans.

It’s a family-sized house, and the kids are now out. I don’t need all this space. I don’t want to clean all this space. Maybe. People geographically here all the time would be a mental adjustment: it’s been a long time since I’ve lived so close to others.

I spend most of my life in my house. Too much, in all likelihood, but all my stuff is there, and I like my stuff. I get lonely occasionally. I need to get out and get involved in things, to volunteer in some capacity to increase my circle of interaction, but I’m also dealing with ill and dying parents – one of each – and that takes some energy.

My house has issues. It’s old. Not Europe-old, but it turned thirty last year and what’s left of the original fittings needs to be replaced.

That’s a lot of words to say I need kitchen repairs and new floors. And for “need” we can read “want.” Most of it is still functional, albeit dated, save for the drawers in the kitchen that have lost the wheels on their slides. So far, we’ve been unable to figure out a fix. They do kitchen drawers differently now.

I do love the redundancy of consumer capitalism.

I wish I had oodles of disposable income to toss at my house, but like most of us, I don’t. I content myself with surface-level modifications instead. Like paint and organized cupboards.

Happiness is bins, after all. I’ve even started using them in the fridge. One for dipping sauces – tzatziki, humus, sour cream; one for fruit cups – don’t judge; one for beverages – Diet Coke looks prettier in a bin; and one for bread. I even put one in the produce drawer for supreme redundancy.

I did draw the line at eggs.

I enjoy puttering in my house. It helps shut off my brain; organizing soothes my anxious PTSD. Cleaning doesn’t do the same thing, oddly enough. But I can’t seem to organize enough to shut up my brain of late. I keep thinking about this one thing:

I found a lump in my left breast. I had one there four years ago, and that one turned out to be cancer. Radiation follows the lumpectomy, and then you start the clock. Five years and you’re home free. Your odds of cancer go back to what they were before you had it. Or so they say.

The lump’s been bothering me for about six weeks. Some pain, and this annoying lump. It’s like a paper cut – once you find it, you remain aware. Pain is actually a good sign; it’s less likely to be cancer, and cancer likely isn’t likely at all, but knowing things isn’t always helpful. I tend to overreaction and dramatization even in the face of facts. I definitely stewed before going to the doctor last Thursday.

My brain loves a good disaster daydream. I enjoy being imaginarily valiant.

In a perfect world, the doctor would’ve found nothing and brushed me off. I knew that was unlikely given my history, just as I know that statistically, it’s still likely to be nothing. But I’m not given to optimism much these days anymore. It’s been a hard run of one thing after another since October 2019.

But he found the lump too, so it’s a diagnostic mammogram this Friday.

And it’s nothing, and I know it’s nothing – it’ll be a cyst, or maybe a problem with the excision site. But it’s on my mind, and I find I’m a little bit obsessed.

I also haven’t shared. This is also likely why it’s looming large. I told my counsellor, but we don’t talk daily. My friends and I are more friendly acquaintances these days, and my family is under enough strain with my mother’s terminal lung cancer. So silent and stewing. It’s not as fun as it sounds.

As it turns out, we do need others some of the time. Even if it’s just for a smack upside the head and an admonishment to stop being a drama queen. Though I’m in my fifties now; it’s probable that my tendency to melodrama is well-set.

Thanks for the ear. Fingers crossed.

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