We’re finally completely moved out of the old place and into the new, recording studio and all. (Well, okay, so the recording studio space is not ready yet, so the entire studio’s worth of stuff is filling the spare bedroom and most of the living room, stacked in gigantic wobbly piles like a bizarre Tetris game. But at least it’s all in the house somewhere.)

I am still feeling stressed out and overwhelmed with work and new house stuff, but it’s a huge relief to at least finally have the old place completely off my mental list of stuff to worry about. At least until the landlord gets pissy about our security deposit once he’s inspected this weekend. Which he no doubt will, because he has gotten pissy about every damn thing we ever had to talk to him about.

Maybe now with one more thing off the mental checklist, I can get back to writing here. Although right now all there really is to talk about is house/studio stuff. There’s some potentially big work changes on the horizon, but prudence suggests I keep them to myself for now. And I took a few months off from the needle exchange to get settled in at the house, so I would have no good “here’s my wacky heroin-related anecdote of the week” stories even if there weren’t a confidentiality issue there too. I am starting up at the exchange again this month, so there should be wacky drug anecdotes in my future, at least. Or possibly just bitchy “Jesus Christ, could the damn Board of Health tie us up in any more red tape?” rants. One or the other.

When I was something like thirteen years old, I got a phone call from a little girl. I didn’t recognize the voice and I had to ask her to repeat her name before I realized it was the half-sister I hadn’t seen in about six years. I was stunned and awkward and didn’t know what to say, so it was a very short conversation.

We wrote letters and emails over the years, a lot more often in the past few years since we’ve both become adults and no longer had to worry about upsetting our parents by keeping in touch or trying to see each other. But that was the first time I’d heard her voice in years. And it was the last time for over a decade after that, until last night when we had dinner together.

It was a fairly awkward and dull dinner, as all my semi-annual dinners with my father and stepmother are. My half-brother is a nice kid, but we don’t have a lot to talk about, and I’ve gotten used to seeing him a couple of times a year so it was no big deal. But it was surreal to have Brooke there. Surreal in a really nice way - I kept wanting to hug her just to make sure she was really there. I wanted her to stay after the others went away, so we could have a real conversation. But this morning she’s off to school again, and who knows when or if we’ll see each other.

I find myself much more thrown for an emotional loop than I thought I’d be. I’m a lot happier and a lot sadder all at once, to have finally spent time with her again. I hope it’s not going to be another twenty years before it happens again.

Of course, all of this emotional dithering is being cut short by an onslaught of anxiety about this afternoon, when all my wisdom teeth will be unceremoniously yanked out of my head. Once the cats stop sleeping on my feet, I am off to the grocery store to stock up on all the soft foods I can find. Maybe I will sign up with the video rental place at the grocery store and rent a bunch of DVDs too, so I can spend my recuperative weekend eating mashed potatoes in bed and catching up on Weeds, or some such thing.

Breakfast this morning was chocolate milk and Percocet. Sometimes I am so classy I can hardly stand it.

Overall, having all my wisdom teeth out at once has not been as bad as I feared it might be. My jaw is sore, but it’s not too bad, and I am not too puffy. And I have lots of ice cream, a bottle of Percocet, and a bunch of movies queued up on the TiVo. It could definitely be worse.

However, I have an urge to garden today, and I’m not sure whether one should operate pruning shears while taking Percoset. I feel reasonably under control, if a bit dizzy. But my mother told me a story last night about having once attempted to move a fire from one fireplace to another while on Percocet, and now I am a bit wary of my own judgment. At least Len has removed all the fireplaces from the house as part of the studio remodel, so I am unlikely to burn anything down.