What's in a number?

This will be my 700th blog post.  Not really.  Well, kinda.  Blogger says it's number 700, but that includes drafts, so it probably more like number 678.  Details.

It's going to be 87 degrees today, according to the robot that lives in my phone.  It's March 20th.  I live in Kentucky, not Argentina.  My legs are shamefully not shaven, my summer clothes are clean but full of wrinkles from where they've been folded and piled in a corner for 5 months.  And our dryer is broken - I think it's the heater coil again.  Oh, how will I ever get the wrinkles out of my clothes without a dryer?

I cleaned the long wall in the shower this morning.  I've never cleaned a part of the bathroom before work.  That feels like weekend sort of work, so doing it before work, before 7 a.m., that was a little different.  Maybe tomorrow I'll do the two short walls.  Gettin' crazy up in here, yo.

We've rearranged the living room again; added a table, subtracted a table, moved in a chair from upstairs.  Steve says our living room is different every time he comes over.  I tell him, obviously, that means he should come over more often.  I do like rearranging furniture, though.  I get all stuffy and uncomfortable when things are in one place too long.  I've always been like this - I should ask my Momma how many times she remembers coming into my room in the middle of the night, in just her sleepshirt and panties, blinking in the bright light, her short blonde hair sticking straight up on her head, "What in the hell are you doing, Natalie?  It's 2 A. M.," in a hushed angry whisper, trying to show her displeasure, but not loudly enough to wake up Dad or Brother.  "Did I wake you, Momma?  I'm sorry, I'm trying to be quiet."  My desk with its huge book hutch would be in the middle of the room, cutting off my full view of her and throwing odd shadows across the walls; my bed at an angle, the contents of my dresser drawers piled up on it.  You have to make a mess to clean a mess, I always say.  Momma would always tell me that no, I hadn't woken her, she was getting up to pee and saw the light under my door.  "Don't stay up too late," and then, eyeing my bed, "Where are you going to sleep?"  "Oh, I'll get it all cleaned up before I go to bed.  It's cool, I'm almost done."  Sometimes you just need a change, you know?  And if you can't afford to throw out what you've got and start all over, you've got to find new ways to jazz up what you have.  Rearranging is much easier that reupholstering.  Anyhow, yeah, I like the living room's new look.  

People ask me what's new, and I tell them, "Oh, nothing, same stuff, different day."  It feels like that a lot of the time.  Mostly, though, even if there is something, I find I don't want to talk about it, so I say my line and let them tell me about their lives and the cool things going on within.  I feel awkward trying to make conversation.  Stacy was over last week, and as we sat here together, she who is my first and oldest friend, she told me all sorts of wonderful stories about her new life as a Mommy and I thought, "She's so good at making conversation."  She's that way on the phone too.  I feel sometimes like I don't know how to say words anymore, not even to someone who knows and loves me so well and doesn't care if the words I say are dumb. 

That pretty much explains my silence around here.  I'm trying to find my voice again.  I don't know where or why I lost it.  Maybe it's another temporary casualty of the crazyblahsads.  I imagine that's it, and as such, I expect a full return any day now.