Notes From The Bathroom Floor

My surge protector died last night. I don't think it fell in the line of duty. I think it just got tired and gave up. I'm trying not to read too much into that thought, or see it as a metaphor for where my life is right now - tired.

Tired and on the bathroom floor.

I'm sitting on my bathroom floor to write this, because it is the only room with a spare plug I can use for my laptop right now. Katarina keeps bringing me little gifts to cheer up the bathroom - a note, a blanket, a purple bead necklace.

We have been reading the Hobbit together. It started out on Christmas evening as something Thomas and Katarina would do (neither of them having read it before, and both of them being excited about the movie coming out next year), but by the second chapter I was involved. Mostly to do the reading so Thomas wouldn't have to pause and grumble about words that aren't really words and sentences starting with conjunctions.

Last night I came to the first sentence of chapter 9, "The day after the battle with the spiders Bilbo and the dwarves made one last despairing effort to find a way out before they died of hunger and thirst." In a flash I could see Tolkien taking every bout of depression, every moment of fear, and hunger, and despair he had ever experienced - and pouring it into that one sentence. And I laughed. I laughed and laughed, because I could feel it. I could relate to it.

I laughed, because sometimes when life reaches the point of no return, when things are so horrible, and you decide to make one more effort (even though you hardly believe it will work) and there are no tears left - laughter is all there is.

Sitting here on my bathroom floor, I am not about to die of hunger or thirst, and thankfully there has been no battle with spiders (although the floor really should be attacked by a mop). But I do feel the overwhelming tiredness of life pressing in on me. And I'm choosing to laugh - mostly at the absurdity of where I am sitting right now.

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