Jazz is my anchor to sanity this month.

This morning, while the kids were doing school, coloring, playing video games (and Ben was home), I realized it was the perfect storm:  the waters were still as a quiet morning and it would be the best time to hit Costco before noon.  Everyone was occupied with their own projects for another 2 hours, and plus we wouldn’t have to waste an evening grocery shopping.  I hate wasting a whole evening just going to the store.  I don’t always have the opportunity to leave the house during the day, so I was quick to take this open occasion.  This was a good plan.

 

Now, I will tell you this very clearly: I hate shopping.

 

I hate shopping for clothes, I hate shopping for food, I hate going to stores.

All of my Christmas shopping is done online, and it has been this way for years.  You could not pay me enough to deal with stores during the holidays.

It might be the social anxiety…which I am quite comfortable with and have no intention of curing.  It could be that I am lazy.  It could be germs. (it’s not germs)

It’s probably the social anxiety.

I just don’t like stores.

What I see is not a building that sells food.  What I see is a gigantic box with one, maybe two, little exits.  A gigantic box with forced air and unnatural white lights that flood the color of death onto your skin.  The interior of this gigantic box is constructed into a rat race maze, where you have right angles leading you to the edges of the box, hiding items of which you seek in corners and behind cardboard cut-outs in the shape of delighted spice containers or animated cracker boxes.  Cheese can be found in straight-left-left-straight.  Olives are straight-left-right-left-straight-left.  Except they rearranged the store again, so you go back-right-straight-right-left-straight to the beginning tile in order to find the canned vegetable section all over again.

I love people. In theory, I am afraid.  The overwhelming wave of anxiety of the being around “people” is mentally paralyzing, which I HATE.  Yet, that is the reality of the gigantic box, and clearly part of the territory of entering the gigantic box.

 

There are methods, though, that can be taken in which people like us can survive entering gigantic boxes.

Headphones.

I spent the whole Costco shopping experience with headphones shoved into my ears, and I listened to Miles Davis until I got to my very safe, and very private car.

 

This is the last month I will be living in California.  This week I will begin packing our belongings into boxes.  And we will leave this state of being.  All the while continuing to do school, grocery shopping, showers and meals; as if nothing dramatic is looming on the horizon.

 

In between the moments of panic, I am filling my soul with jazz.

Jazz will be my auditory anchor for the month.

 

 

Thelonius is such an awesome name.  

If we get pregnant again (we have never ruled it out…just put in some obstacles to make it more difficult), I am totally naming our next child Thelonius Rockwood.  How epic would that be? Theloniously epic.

I would also like to thank Heretic Brewing  for supporting this blog post, albeit unintentionally, by allowing bloggers such as myself to find their wonderful Evil Twin in local stores.