The Baboon Congress

Give it Time

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Today’s post comes from Barbara in River Town.

I woke up feeling out of sorts, basically missing The Familiar.

We’ve been here in our new home (Winona, MN) for a total of three weeks, and I still haven’t found places to plug in all the lamps (I dislike overhead lights) or put the contents of all the boxes. I sometimes stand in the kitchen and rotate 360˚ while I try to remember where an item is located.

To top it off, this morning the freezer door was standing open when I got up. I’d forgotten that we have to check on the refrig doors, since they don’t “close by themselves” as they did in the old place.

We are still getting used to the idiosyncrasies of this new house.  I am, in a word, unmoored.

Except for visiting my mom, I am currently without direction (now that most of the unpacking is done). In my old life, I had several commitments a week that had me busy and involved – with people I like and projects I felt were worthy of my time. I remember this period from the last time we changed city, so I know it gives way to something better, and I will find my people and projects here. But I’m in that awkward stage of BEFORE, and need to give it some time.

Don’t get me wrong – the house is delightful in many ways, and this town has ‘way more going for it than I even remember. I just need to start connecting.

When was the last time you felt “unmoored”?

59 thoughts on “Give it Time”

  2. Last time I felt unmoored? Oh… a couple weeks ago. And give me a couple days and I may well be there again. I think it comes of putting too much pressure on myself leading up to one of those “birthdays with a zero” milestones in a couple months. That paired with a “well, I’m figuring out I need to do X to get Y, but haven’t figured out X yet” conundrum and it occasionally leaves me feeling unmoored. Going up to Gull Lake for a few days last week helped recalibrate a bit. We’ll see how long it lasts…

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  3. Oh, how I envy you. I feel moored to my life with “grappling hooks of steel” (I read that somewhere but I don’t rememberwhere). Enjoy your drifting while it lasts.

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  4. Unmoored last was probably when we lived in Chicagoland. After about a year, we both sensed that we wouldn’t want to settle there, so we treated our stay more like a nearly-six-year “vacation.” We saw all the main sights, tried many of the better restaurants, enjoyed plays, concerts, museums, riding the Metra, walking downtown along the Lake, etc. But we didn’t do the things that people do who intend to stay in a place–become active in local groups, charities, politics, churches, or neighborhoods.

    Might have been the fact we were out of Minnesota, or that Chicago is way too large and crowded for our taste, or that the people, although wonderful as a rule, weren’t our homies.

    Our feelings were confirmed when we came to Owatonna and felt like we had finally found a place to put down roots. 16 years later, we definitely feel moored.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    2. three fourths a joke. Year I started school, where I felt unmoored. I am a rolling cannon ball in a loose cannon on an unmoored ship drifting with the tide.

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  6. When I saw the photo at the top of the blog, and before I saw it was written by BiW, I thought it was going to be Steve’s blog on his food museum.

    Today’s my Wednesday with Ken. Back later.

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        4. It’s really more of a clown college, but that name didn’t distinguish it sufficiently from the other colleges.

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  8. I was feeling unmoored yesterday because my 21-year old grandson moved into the cottage. He’s a great kid – clean, respectful, goal-driven starting his own business. Still, my years of near-total solitude have tilted my equilibrium. And so, I wrote about it:

    I’m sitting on the lake swing looking over Crystal Bay and thinking about how complicated we’ve made our lives. I’m looking at a loon carefully cleaning each feather, wetting himself, then waving his wings to dry off. Each feather, one at a time. This particular loon is the only one on the bay. Year after year for more than a decade, he graces this bay with no mate. Night after night, his calls haunt the summer air. I wonder if he’s calling for a mate or is this just a loon’s way of shouting to the world; “I am here and I matter”. At times, I feel like I am this loon.

    I don’t need meditation or yoga or a self help book on how to find inner peace. All I need is this lonely, beautiful loon to understand how precious and fleeting my existence on this earth is. I’m humbled and peaceful for the moment.

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  9. Hey all! I’ve been trying to think of a time I felt unmoored and either I have never really felt unmoored, I didn’t recognize the feeling when I had it or I’ve just forgotten. Pick one!

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    1. I’m not even sure if being unmoored is a good thing or a bad thing and if it’s something that happens to you or if it’s something you do.

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  10. Hi-

    I have a dark spot in my past where I was unmoored.
    The head knew it wasn’t so and I could explain why I knew that. But the heart didn’t believe it.
    It was ugly and painful and I don’t wish to go there again.
    And it was late winter so that didn’t help.

    It was spring that got me out of it. I got busy and had things to do, so therefore I didn’t have time to wallow in it anymore.

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  11. I’m in sort of the same situation. I’m retired from teaching and suddenly my house looks like i just moved in. I brought home a lot of really nice stuff of mine that lived and worked in my music room at school and I have no idea what to do with it all. It’s hard to find a place to sit down and make music with all the music books and instruments piled everywhere. I do have a music room at home, but it was already nicely organized and pretty full.
    I have so much music and I can’t think of a song. Oh wait… I Ended Up with Too Much Stuff. How ’bout that one?

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    1. Yes, we sometimes freeze cheese, but it is more crumbly when you do that. We’ve tried cottage cheese too, but I don’t like the texture after freezing. (What looks like cottage cheese in the photo is actually pear butter from 2015.)

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  13. unmoored r us

    thanks for rubbing it in..

    hey ben i got a note from daughters theater thing

    An exciting favor to ask you all: Do you have technical theatre friends? We are looking for two spot light operators. They need to be available August 3-7 to help us for tech and performances. Reach out to those friends and let me know ASAP if you receive any interest!

    wanna coach me or should i leave it alone.

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    2. tim– you should do it; running a spotlight is lots of fun! And you get to see the show every day and watch it grow and change. And– depending on which theater, you get to go up in catwalks to the spots or up in a platform or something.
      I would recommend it.

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  14. I always feel unmoored when I lose a pet. That has happened to me three times so far. When I have settled into a routine with a certain set of cats in the house, it creates such an imbalance when one is suddenly gone. It’s inevitable, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier.

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    1. think how theyll feel when youre gone.

      debbie used to tell me how y dogs would go into depression when i traveled a lot

      she and the kids kind of liked it but the dogs got skiddish then depressed

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      1. We have three dogs now. Put one in a kennel when we were gone last month. Another one has separation issues from when we got her as a stray. Soon as we start packing she starts trembling. And when we got got home, she had dragged clothes out of the closet and off the cedar chest. She was PO’d at us.
        And the third, she doesn’t care. Long as someone feeds her she’s fine.

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    2. I’m not sure I want to know. I hate seeing all that stuff I forgot was in there and now it’s either unrecognizable or so old that I don’t dare eat it.

      If, however, I thought there might be cash in there, like Bill has in his freezer, I would definitely be inspired to clean out, defrost, and organize!

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  16. Not much. Small apartment fridge. Rather dull stuff, about what you expect: some meats, veggies, lean quisines for Sandy’s lunches, ice cubes. Dull list.

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  17. Back to first topic. My 73 year old sister and her 80 year old husband are about to up sticks. Sold their house in Brookings. Building a new one in Yankton. Have to vacate on 7?29 but new house–yes they are building a new house at their age–will not be ready for a week or more after that. They will visit us for a day or two. We will not see them much any more, not that we have lately. But they are not over four hours away instead of two. She is feeling unmoored. Got to give them credit for doing this.

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  18. I have 2 freezers; the small chest freezer in the basement was acquired during my insane community share produce summer. I kept it when we ended up getting a new fridge w/ a little bit less freezer space than our old fridge. So we have strawberries (from our picking last month), 3 kinds of freezer jam, waffles, ice pops, coffee and of course, the freezer containers for both our ice cream makers. Right now, no ice cream – but I can fix that easily!!

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  19. I nearly always have some ice cream in my freezer. I think right now I have both chocolate and espresso chip. I also have a couple of large freezer bags of pulled pork left over from a friend’s retirement party. There were a few bags of baked beans and sloppy joe filling as well, but I think I am down to just the pork now. Also some salmon fillets, squash, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, lots of bread to make bread pudding with when I have the time. Probably also many items that I should have labeled but didn’t, thinking I would remember, that now need to be thawed so I can identify them.

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  20. Also on the first topic: I’ve only recently stopped feeling unmoored. In 2014, I became alienated from some people I’d known for many, many years and thought were close friends; I also stopped feeling at home in my subculture, science fiction fandom, and my religious tradition, both of which I’d been involved with since my late teens, AND I was going through a creative dry spell (I was also moving from peri- to menopause, though I didn’t know that then–probably the cause of it all). It was a very uncomfortable period of questioning most of my personal relationships, while at the same time trying to figure out which direction to take my spirituality and what I could keep from the previous iteration and what might have to be left at the wayside.

    The religious questions, thanks to some helpful proddings by my Matrons, resolved themselves earlier this year, and on Lughnasad I will be dedicating to the Ancient Order of Druids in America–lots to do, lots to learn! I’ve started a short story for submission to an upcoming anthology project, so my creativity is finally flaring up again, in a different form than I’m used to. I’m still not sure what my relationship with fandom is going to be, but I’m planning to drop in on the next convention and see how it goes.

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  21. Well, we have one small stand alone chest freezer and two big upright freezers. We have three lambs, jars of home rendered lard, raspberries from our garden, garden veggies, bread, naan, Hatch chilis my secretary brought back to ND from NM, flour, baking supplies, steaks, fish. I am happy to say there are no more leftover soups strew, or unident

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