Less Than Two Weeks Before They Come Back, Which Means They're Already Here

In a sense, having this week and next week to get my affairs in order (or to hide them) in anticipation of my parents coming back home is a relief because it gives me time.  Then again, they've been gone for more than six weeks and there are a lot of things I could have done and didn't, such as seal up my Entertainment Weeklys or going through my papers.  At least I got my folks' stock purchase records complete; I'll have to devote some time on going to the library and completely typing those out.

It'll get done, somehow, because it has to.  But in worrying for, oh, the past week-and-a-half about them coming home and ruining all I got going on at the house makes me realize that, in a sense, they're already here, you know?  When I'm worried about what they'll think of all their mail on the table, or how I got this new stepladder I was given, or how clean my room should be, I'm not enjoying my time at home with them gone.  And if I'm so preoccupied with getting the house ready to make them happy -- well, really, how different is my life than what it is when they are actually back at home making my life miserable because of all my stuff around my room?  Does that make any sense?

It's kind of like (and I may totally get in trouble with this) a woman with a family history of breast cancer.  I have heard women who have undergone mastectomies preemptively because all the women in her family received and died from a very aggressive and malignant form of it.  I feel as though those women have been burdened by the fear of breast cancer, that they're afraid of getting it even though they may not even have it.  And this fear dominates their thoughts so much that, essentially, they already have breast cancer, you know?  They could not live their lives freely until they had an operation they felt totally unburdened them from this fear.  So long as one is living under this fear of getting cancer, how different is your life than if you actually did have cancer?

I'm seriously about this analogy.  And so me running around worried about what my parents think for the past ten days or so means that, heck, they're already home.  And that may be why I lollygagged so much as soon as my parents left on their trip.  It was only then, during those weeks, where I knew they wouldn't be home any time soon.  I believed then I was without fear, and therefore I was free from worry.

Those days are over now.