Eureka!–Slice of Life Challenge Day 16

Aha!

I closed my eyes against the dark in the room. Rolling to my side, I pulled the covers up under my chin. Stillness.

I breathed evenly, deeply.

My feet flexed and stretched. Shifted places. Something was wiggling around the edges of my brain.

I resettled myself in a more comfortable position, stretching against the cool sheets.

I breathed deeply.

Puzzle pieces began shifting in my mind. Slowly at first. Tentatively. Set three pieces, take one out. Replace one of the pieces. Spin it sideways. The dimmer switch spun and the lights came on in my head. Fully on. I found the corner piece to the puzzle and the edges were coming into focus.

I peeked at the clock.

Nearly midnight. Everyone else is sleeping. I can’t move things now.

Fidget. Try to hold still so I don’t wake anyone. That just makes me more fidgety.

Think about something else.

Lightning flash (in my head again).

No amount of stretching or breathing was going to solve this. The only way to turn the mental lights out again was to spill these fledgling plans onto a page.

I softly spilled myself over the edge of the bed into the dark and tiptoed from the room. As I passed I collected what I’d need to spew my ideas, then blur the edges from whence they came with someone else’s words.

…

It seems to be the soft, fuzzy moments around the edges of my consciousness when ideas fold into and around one another and spring to life. This time the puzzle pieces were pieces of furniture finding new, better homes in my new house. I’ve been living with it for months, and struggling around it the past several days. I think I was able to discover the corner piece through persistence, and a wider lens. Thanks to the fellow slicer whose waterfall expedition put that refrain into my mind this morning.

My hutch was too wide along one wall in the other room, and too tall for the adjacent one. It must not fit in that space. Unless…That hutch is actually two pieces a top and bottom. I’d been thinking about moving my son’s desk (with a hutch top that has been off-the-wagon for years now). Eureka! If the hutch can go there…

Quickly the other pieces tumbled into their new places. And after drafting a plan of attack, which needs to move where first before the others can trickle into their new locations, which pieces I can move alone and which will require an extra set of hands, I am ready to transform three (and a half) different spaces in my house before school  tomorrow–and bake brownies to boot.

So cheers to that fuzzy half-aware place before sleep. Thanks to the ideas sparked by fellow slicers every day as I read your posts. Thanks–in advance–to my boys who I’ll wake up a little earlier than they were anticipating tomorrow (well, a bit later today) to help move the tall things. It will smell like warm brownies when you wake up. And hooray for great books to soothe me back toward sleep.

It’s a good thing there’s a delay tomorrow. Goodnight.