ch-ch-ch-changes

wow! what is going on here? my body is rejecting me like a bad virus - i won't bore you with the ongoing saga of the root canal, but dentist #2 just did the most medieval & complete root canal (the 3rd on same tooth) and since tuesday, i've been in p-a-i-n and unable to open my mouth. (please - save the remarks!). the poison ivy continues to torment me. i feel like Job from the Bible....no job, skin afflictions....AND a flying ant hatch in our kitchen. i give! Uncle! and....AND...as if this isn't enough - i've started cooking. yes, as in cooking....kitchen...food to eat from an oven, not a waxed container with duck sauce on the side and a fortune cookie. real food - asian brisket in a slow cooker, stuffed shells, stuffed pork chops. becky home ec-y stuff. with talk of (gasp) a christmas cookie party. i am becoming my mother. well, not MY mother, but SOMEONE'S. i got my homemaker skills from my mother....takeout, housekeeper doing the cleaning, etc. my dad refused to let her work. so, although the circumstances are a bit different, they are starting to look suspiciously similar. scary stuff so close to Halloween. i actually got all my laundry done, folded and put away this week. and felt proud, rather than pissed off that i had to do it in the first place. my husband checks the medicine cabinet to see what may have caused this change, and proceeds cautiously & hopefully. i wish it did come in a bottle...then i could flush it. but no. not only has my body turned against me, but now my entire persona....that "tough biatch, suck it up, i'll do whatever i want and make no excuses" person started to mellow a bit somewhere around the end of the millenium. she became a kinder, smarter, gentler person....certain of who she was and comfortable with it, a little more earth mother, still not quite ready for the donna reed award by any stretch. things should have stopped there, but noooo. like a train with no brakes, i'm speeding past middle age and heading right to some nether-age. i guess it's not about stuffed pork chops or laundry. it's more like, i'm the one with time to do it. although i could work on my rusty metal sculptures 24/7, i don't have a "job." i'm not bringing in an income right now. i am doing something during the day which, when push comes to shove, is expendable. so i think the cooking, homemaking is like an instinctual survival move. sort of like a subconcious move to prove i'm not obsolete, that there's still a need for me here. and i say "subconcious" because i've never really thought about it. and probably wouldn't now, except for the cooking & cleaning thing. maybe i'm just bored. unlikely. maybe this is what i was supposed to be like 20-some years ago before things got hectic and i just rolled with it from day-to-day with no time to think, plan, be. scary scary. it's interesting to look back on the changes and evolution of yourself. remember what was important to you at 12, 13 years old? then at 16? 18? 21, 25, 30 and all those landmark years? what were you like? what were your fears and challenges? have you met and overcome them? if not, what keeps them chained to your ankle this many years later? is it time to just say "let it go" even if there's no answer through it? what things made you happy at those ages? do you remember your goals? have you accomplished them? changed/revised them? who were the important people in your life? why? are they still? why or why not? do you see a clear path to where you are today? or did you take a zig-zag route to today? i still have no explanation for the pot roasts gracing my table at dinner, but it has brought up some interesting thoughts about how i got to where i am - wherever that may be! and i guess, all-in-all, i am comfortable with it - despite the cooking and cleaning, and i guess incorporating a little "housewife" into the rest of the stewpot of personality and "being" isn't such a bad thing. as long as i can still keep the parts i like about myself right now. cookies anyone? L.