Ugh. I'm starting a blog.

Why? My husband asked. 

I think I need to give my Facebook friends a break, I replied.  I think I post too often and too long. But do I want to be a blogger? Aren't they mostly narcissistic d-bags? Better not. Idea discarded.

Then, a friend complained about having to wade through my thousands of shitty posts to find ones with real news. 

So, here it is. This is happening. 

An informal survey of the aforementioned friends highlighted the following preoccupations in my posts: food, busters (my children), students, drinking, ambivalence. 

But what's the theme? Don't all good blogs have a theme? A thing? What's my thing? 

Ambivalence. Anxiety. Need for nourishment.

So, what's with the title? 

I stole it from Virginia Woolf. Here's a crude paraphrase of the allusion: most of our lives are mediated through a sort of cotton wool, which stifles much but occasionally lifts, giving us moments of being. Moments of clarity. Moments of joy. Moments of being wholly feeling and present. Or at least, this is how I understand it. 

And eddying is what I feel myself doing. A lot. Or at least that's the metaphor I've come up with to describe the whirl/reel/loop that is my cotton wool. 

Family and friends pull me out of the swirl and pull me along the current. 

This is a record of the eddies and the moments.