01.19.04 - 9:45 p.m.

I'm still feeling panicked, some faint, sure current of nervous energy underwrites every move. Potential nervous energy, rather than kinetic: it exists only as a possibility. After a few rounds of phone tag, I still haven't spoken with the realtor about the stupid freakin' aborted inspection, and since we're going on two weeks and the loan people are getting all weird-o and antsy and ordering up the appraisal and opening a title search before the INSPECTION has happened. Well. Grump.

There's a certain sourness to this anticipation: if something can go wrong, it will. And, thus far, has. Yeezus, and then let us add my mom's story about their south side house and how all these old houses have gas leaks unless you put in a whole new gas line (eh what? WHAT? I really don't want to blow up or be blown up, thank you) as a nice topping to the day. Actually, despite this dubious encouragement (they paid the plumber at least $100/month because the plumbing was always breaking), etc. she doesn't seem to enthused about my current back-up plan: to find a new apartment AND QUICKLY if the house falls through. Of course, I'm not going to find one with sliding glass doors looking out onto a mini woodland garden where I can plant perennial geraniums - the pretty little blue-purple ones that look like a mirage of color in the shade, so dark and cool even on a hot day, but I've only found one house like that that wasn't freakin' overwhelming and outside my price range, and that one has major issues.

Everytime I see the "sale pending" placard on the sign in the front yard, I have to swallow my gorge, innure myself to the vague sourness (and not good tart-sour, but rather sad, damp, sour-stomach-sour) that stings my tongue.

Sale pending. Fuck.

Forgive me for being a drama queen about the whole situation, but this is freakin' dramatic for me, so I suppose it is to be expected, the drama-queening. I'm sort of marooned until this is resolved.

And I want to paint! I want to paint walls. I want a great empty room and great cans of ridiculous color and I want to put it on the freakin walls and then roll around in plastic wrap to make it look like fake leather. And not just walls: I want to refinish my desk and paint my flowerpots and search online for obscure varieties of tea roses that flourish in the shade and devote a whole corner of my attic to shelves with little baby plants I'm growing from seed for my garden, and I want great stabbing wands of flagrant foxglove shooting up all phallic from the surrounding foliage and most of all, most of all, I want space to walk and think and read and write that isn't owned by someone else, that's mine and cannot be intruded upon unless I invite such intrusion.

It's just necessary. I need it now. Damnit! I'm soooooooo frustrated. I'm so completely frustrated as much by the ineviteble delay as by anything. I want something to happen soon, but I'm half-dreading it. I can't make up my mind.