Yesterday, I did what I always do before something big and inconvenient:
I cleaned.
Not deep-cleaned. Not “let me reorganize my entire life and finally deal with the closet” cleaned.
Just… functional cleaned.
The bathrooms.
The kitchen counters (mostly).
The floors that actually get walked on.
The kind of cleaning that says, I will not be able to do much for a while, and I would like my future self to suffer less.
Apparently this is called nesting, and yes—it’s a real thing before surgery. You prepare your environment the way your brain knows how, because your body is about to be temporarily off-duty. It’s not anxiety, exactly. It’s logistics with feelings.
I did not, for the record, touch my closet.
That would have been a bridge too far.
The closet is a different emotional project.
By late afternoon, I was sweaty, proud, and completely done. And then—because the universe loves timing—I stopped moving and immediately became freezing.
Our windows are original to our 1996 house, which somehow makes them old now.
Not old old. Just… vintage.
In the same way Green Day is now considered classic rock, which I still refuse to process.
The gas fireplace was on, looking beautiful and doing absolutely nothing useful, because gas fireplaces are more about vibes than heat. The thermostat was set to 70, but my body cycled between I am overheating and I have entered the Ice Age every five minutes.
Which honestly feels like a metaphor for my entire existence lately.
Today, I’m having surgery.
They’re amputating my second toe and shortening the one next to it.
This is not news, exactly—the decision has been made—but I don’t think decision is the same thing as readiness.
I am not ready.
I know it’s “just a toe.”
I know I’ve had far bigger things happen to my body.
I know all the rational arguments.
But this particular toe has been with me for nearly 49 years.
It has survived childhood, adulthood, bad shoes, worse shoes, pregnancies, cancer, surgery, and a truly impressive five-year era of post-surgical freelancing where it stuck straight up like it was trying to get better reception.
It has history.
It has personality.
It has, frankly, overstayed its lease—but still.
You don’t spend almost five decades with a body part and feel nothing when it’s time to say goodbye.
People keep reminding me how well I handle things. How I always find the humor. How resilient I am. Which is kind—and also a little misleading.
Humor isn’t bravery.
It’s a coping mechanism.
It’s how I hold two things at once:
This is absurd and this is hard.
I can joke about pickling a toe, cremating it and turning it into a diamond, mummifying it and having my husband wear it to work on a lanyard (office dress codes permitting), or selling it on eBay. I can laugh about how my friends have collectively decided this toe deserves more afterlife options than most people.
And I can still be quietly sad about letting it go.
Both things are true.
The nesting, the cleaning, the worrying about towels being clean and whether or not I can apply lotion before surgery (I can’t) and whether my veins will cooperate—it’s all part of the same instinct. It’s my nervous system saying, If I can’t control what’s about to happen, I can at least make the landing softer.
So the house is “good enough.”
The closet remains untouched.
The windows are still vintage.
Green Day is still apparently classic rock, which I will never accept.
And now, I’m about to hand myself over to people who know what they’re doing and trust that my body—which has been through a lot—knows how to do this too.
I’m not ready.
But I’m prepared.
And sometimes, that’s the best we can do.
Absurdities and Fires 