Uh .. I .. Wait a Minute

Not only am I unable to think of a word to describe to you how I'm feeling, I can't even think of a word to describe my degree of .. vocabulary .. ineptitude. Okay, that sounds like a start. Maybe by the time I'm done, I'll have a word for my condition of the moment. I'm sure it will be in Yiddish.

There is just stuff everywhere. Everywhere I look. My desk has random papers and bank cards and flash drives and cleaner's tickets all over it. The shelf that sticks out of my desk -- I don't know what that's called, either, but it's where I live my life -- has four Kurt Vonnegut novels, a copy of my teaching contract, a stack of bills that need to be paid, my keys, my Palm, my iPod shuffle and its huge headphones, and ... my wallet, I think, all on it, on a shelf that measures about 12 by 15 inches. So it's all piled high.

My laundry basket in the bedroom is so full that stuff is piled about two feet over the top of it. Q's carrying basket is still sitting in the living room, even though she went to the vet for claw clipping on Tuesday. There is a pile of about six pairs of shoes -- all K's -- sitting on the family room floor in front of the television. And the piece of furniture that we call a coffee table -- it's really more like a trunk, or a cabinet -- is just too much to be described. Magazines. Dish towels. More magazines. I see a rolled up sock. K's work schedules for the last few weeks.

Oy.

It's not unusual for me to let things go a bit before vacation, because I know that on the first day, I'll get everything squared away. But I don't feel that way at the moment. There is just too much to put away, and not enough places to put it in.

I know what's causing all this: the basement anxiety. I need that space down there to work with, but I don't have it now, and I have to work on that space as well. I don't wanna go down there, not even to do laundry. I want to wake up tomorrow morning and have everything cleaned up and put away. All I want to do now is read.

I told you: if I start a book, I won't want to do anything until I finish it. And I started it. Go me.

I still don't have my word. The only one that keeps popping into my head is farblunget, which really just means lost, confused. I am mixed up, but that's not the essence of what this is. Neither is farkokte, which actually means full of shit. But it's a good word. (Neither of the "r" sounds in these words is actually heard, but they're there, for some reason. Just thought I'd mention it. Or maybe my mother just didn't say it because she was from New Yawk.) But it's got to be one of those far words. Far is the Yiddish prefix for full of. Full of confusion. Full of shit. Farbissener, which means embittered, or, full of bitterness. (Someone with a twisted up, sour look, is described as a farbissener punim, a bitter face.) There's farmisht, emphasis on the -misht, which means more lost in an emotional sense, bewildered. Now I'm getting closer.

But I looked through the Yiddish dictionary, and couldn't find anything else. I miss my grandmother. Not only would she have known the word, she would have my basement sorted out in an hour and a half, everything re-packed and dry, and it would have been like Christmas morning to her. She loved doing that kind of thing, and having been raised in relative poverty on, as they used to say, The Other Side, she wasn't afraid of working like a dog; she was used to it and expected it and was good at it. Unlike her faigeleh granddaughter.

Oy.


watching nothing :: entry #1438