Two years ago

A tale from September 10, 2010

As she scraped up the cork effect vinyl flooring which had rested there for 25 years, she knew she was causing RSI in her piano playing wrists. Alternating hands scraped to lever linoleum to reduce strain.  She knew that soon she would have to stop and change activity. Her mind pondered on a muddle of matters. The brain-voice chattered, on and on and on, about all sorts of things.  She began to wonder if other brains do this.

Thoughts are like people boarding a train at a station.  The train draws up to the platform and stops. People get off.  People get on. Thoughts arrive into and depart out of the brain.  In the mind they chatter on unless interrupted. The train continues its journey, just as the mid does. She tries to train the thoughts to go another journey and not to board the train and to board her mind!

She began to hear her inner voice talking incessantly about everything, except the about-to-happen priorities.  She was certain that emotion and mind got in the way of the NOW, the PRESENT, the CURRENT.  However, these thinkings or thoughts WERE her own needs and therefore Priorities to her,  even though not related to the task in hand or what was going on in other parts of her house.  Sometimes those happenings in another room blurted into her brain and caused her to respond with action.  Someone was asking for attention, for assistance, or whatever!  The voice would intrude into her mind and not actually say “Jump”, but SHE would have to say to herself "JUMP" because the other voice, the not-her-own-voice was demanding HER.  She needed to wake from her reverie, from her reflections, from her thoughts, those which pulled towards attempting to heal her inner soul.
Those which conundrums existing in her head were perhaps not part of the real reality. She tried to resolve the difficulties.
But how could she? In reality. Tread on eggshells. Jump hurdles. Meet the needs.

If there were to be music maybe any internal chatter would stop.

The room in which she was working and the whole house exude quietness and peacefulness, except for the clink of the scraping tools and an electrical sander in another room. Yes, it was as if this house needs her to be calm..... CALM...........

She is tired, very tired WITH renovating and OF renovating.
How did she arrive here?

On a different day or a different moment she will be excited.
She will be glad to have her house finished and habitable or even one step nearer towards that day! She will be happy to fight against what apparently seems to be the impossible and achieve Paradise even within this Hell that abounds.

Hence a muddle… a confusion - not knowing what she wants or how to solve dilemmas.

It’s hard work.  Relentless.  Restless in France.

She looks at the two seas of flooring lifted and flooring glued to the ground and desperately finds reasons to raise herself, up from her knees on concrete, to every now and then do something different.
To sweep, or gather the floored shapes and bin them, to look at the clock, to take a tea break, tp remember something to make a note of, in order to create sense out of chaos.

Eventually after several days, nay weeks, trying to develop a technique to rid the house of  flooring material strongly glued to  house floor, now crumbled like flour in places, only paper and glue are left.

He intends to grind it off with the ‘ponceuse’... the electrical grinder!
It is heavy and a beast to back injuries. She feels for him.
Garbed with ear defenders, mouth masks, woolly hats and work gear, he and she.
Noise, dust and an acrid smell of metal on concrete, paper and glue exude to fill the room as the grinder deafeningly screams at the floor and a huge waft of a cloud of dust fills the air, even though the doors are wide open.

Hee hee,  maybe, in another 25 years, someone will be cursing her for the floor that she will glue down!   (Post script: Excepting that the oak floor was secret-screwed and never glued.)

Whoopee!  Removed!  Celebrate? Oh no!  Continue to Clear is the next process.  Then to level the concrete floor with 'ragreage' or levelling compound. 
She should be joyous but depression leaves her flat.
She tries try to rise above the darkness, the depth and tiredness, taking vitamins B and B6, Co-enzyme Q10, Rhodiola (Arctic Root) and also she knows the anti-depressants are raging, adding ti the depressional vaguaries.
Struggling above a surface of support, she lifts herself to an upright position off the floor, to tell herself to get on with it!   IT being the next task.
She should feel glad that she will be able to do something different on the next of these renovation days.
Were those days any better than the days of anxiety when she could justabout search for a house to buy? All the days when she knew something was desperately wrong  not knowing how to solve the bizarre oppositional dilemma without losing her dream.

Restless in France wanted to be free from muddled anxiety and free to live. But her work in life was to become what she is doing. There is and was no escape.  She has responsibilities.  She is the caretaker of a French maison.

Back to thoughts to make her cry, to make her laugh, to make her ponder as she struggles to let them pass.  For thoughts make the anxiety and if she could let t go she would have nothing to worry about!!!!!!!

This tale is the end of those few hours on that day two years ago!