damn spot

well, after the third night in a row of a very hot little boy, very hot very hot, i am now clinically insane. i write this to you while the mickey mouse clubhouse takes care of my kid in a vaguely irritating colorful way. i am so tired that the soles of my feet are aching. ache.
fuck the whole plan for intentional parenting, thats what i say. its too hot, the kid is worrying me and i woke my husband at 5:30 this morning because i couldn't take it anymore and now we have amox. in the house, hopefully it will address whatever the hell gave him a fever for three nights. i hate antibiotics, except that they are like some weird sugar-induced hallucination that feels so damn good. i think this is the second time he's had them this year and so i'm a bit disappointed that i couldn't hang in there but my god, how can i let my kid keep whimpering when there is something out there that kills whatever is going wrong in there? how?
blagh.
the tv has been enrapturing the older one while i've been tending with washcloths and orange juices fortified with motrin. . .
its so bloody hot, you cannot even get relief with a thunderstorm, just wet.
and cellphones are bad for you. stop using them. good god, we've been told forever that we have to have them in case we break down next to the state penitentiary so we can save ourselves and now evidently they are causing war and rape in the congo and have levels of radiation that the govt. deems acceptable.
okay. the govt. is nothing if not a living breathing example of responsibility to the health of the american people ... just look at our clean water, our health system, our economy based on the wellbeing of all of us, not just a few.
wait, i am goddamned crazy. right.

i begin to explain the rabbit . . .

On Thursday night we had a really great time at Josh's (of bathroom re-do fame) with his wife Sarah and the kids and a very oldie but goodie from high school and florida, jenny jen jen.

It was wonderful. the kids played, the darkness fell, the fireflies entertained us all. Their place is 'way out in the country' by southern new england standards, and the ride home was at midnight, by the ocean . it was astonishing and I almost had to stop the car and run wildly into the surf to keep myself from crying.

(i'm really digging adding 'wildly' to everything these days... also the verb 'to dig' used in a non-dirt-involved sense)

beat the blackness of the ocean glistening in the moonlight at midnight. beat it, i say to you.

try.

we'll only all be improved and more and more thrilled by something greater. try.

the point?

okay. the ride home was long, i am not a big fan of nighttime driving as I just don't trust my eyes overmuch and i'm tired and blahblah. but i was driving to carry home the kids and the somewhat (ehem) sopping husband in peace and safety.

so off we go onto the explanation of the rabbit. the kids were almost asleep, the roads were long, the streetlights were few and far between, only at the crossroads. . . we were zooming.

a bunny hopped out of the bushes and made its way directly into the path of this giant metal box that i was causing to careen down the road. I have no idea if the bunny made it, but did not feel a bump and so am very hopeful that the bunny and i did not actually meet. but everyone in the car was awakened by the sudden slowdown and the gasping/swearing. at midnight on a country road. i was too far away to even look back to see if the bunny were wounded. I felt baaad, very responsible in a very personal way. I wanted very much to cry, but was worried about the underlying mess of beginning to tap that well.

Its been a long long few weeks, I've been low, It has been a long time, I have been lonely, sad and my eyes have been glazing over at the most inopportune times. We all know the sensation of driving from point to point and not remembering the intervening miles, yes ? this has been my last few months. and its a great metaphor, but it is also literal. I've been highway driving and gone into the slowlanes because i'm not seeing well, not able to drive with intensity and caution and defensiveness ...

woke up on birthday friday with a seriously heavy bone to pick with the dazedness. hubby didn't remember it was my birthday for at least 6 minutes and he is lucky to still be alive.

and then.

Carol spent two hours with me. TWO. And everything now is clear. (ha. no, doesn't work that way, really, i have so many more questions it is just sick. but. )

My eyes are finally open again. It sounds trite but really, I can see all the cars on the road. I'm standing up taller. I drove home from carol's and was actually awake. Driving was easy, I felt confident and aware and part of a flow of traffic. It is an amazing thing - sort of scary to recognize that all those other days were something Other than Awake.

I feel like my eyes are peeled open more, and keep touching them to see if they feel better. really. Both Carol and J say I look different .

really.

this is part one of many many more. and don't expect me to enumerate the next posts because i will forget. it may be boring, but i need to get out the 'facts' so i can process da 'feelings' that are here and will be coming. i feel great though, just great, awake. and not some new age cruddy crud Awake, but a real one, a fresh morning alertness that everyone should have all the time. fresh morning alertness, cool breeze on a hot day type thing.

stream in the woods.

midnight on the ocean.

yesterday i almost hit a rabbit, today i was awake. . .

at the very tail end of my birth day, i say these things:
1. i am going to keep writing here, but I am going to stop saying 'blog' because it feels all whacked out and pretentious and maybe if I just call it 'writing' i'll stop one of the many self-conscious ticks in my life from developing fully. I think it might be important for me to keep writing, for myself and for my expressive ability and for the growth of my own .
2. I am working out some serious glitches in my self-esteem. what is true is that I'm probably not all bad. (working on it. slow and steady wins the race.)
3. I must make a concerted effort to say things in my head like: she's doing the best she can. he's doing the best he can. no matter how shitty a job i think their best may be, it is their best, at this moment, this very one.
and I must apply that same phrase to my own self. often.
4. My throat chakra is all hopped up on goofballs.
5. I've forgotten how much I like outlines. and numbered lists.
6. there are people who love me.
7. If I got to know more people, I would probably love them. this is not neccessarily supposed to be a problem, but I am still working on that one too.

i have a lot more to write but man, it was a humdinger this morning with Chakra Chakra Chakra C and I am completely thrilled . AND its my birthday , so go shake your booty on the dance floor somewhere.
*my kids are sleeping at my mother's tonight, so i just watched four episodes of Battlestar Galactica with J and now I'm off to a homegrown dancefloor.
hasta manana.

k

countdown to carol... ehhehaha.

hello it is too hot and i am surrounded by wild inanity and i just cannot take it anymore. one of the great weaknesses of my mother is her neverending politeness.( it is also her great strength. )

however, for me, with my ridiculousness frequently on display (i cannot understand why i haven't been barred from public endeavor, but hello, at least i have something to write about), my own politeness is also frequently called into being. and by polite i mean, quietly thinking 'why don't you shut the hell up about your goddamned terrible life and just let me watch the kids in peace?' and saying. 'wow, that is something to have lived through....'

seriously? this is a conversation about money, weather, diapers, OMY. yeah, yeah, you've suffered. yeah. rock me, baby.

is politeness of that sort anything but a lie? why do people keep telling me things ?! i understand this sounds really jerky, but i am just on overload... am i the freaking ghost whisperer of the stay at home mommy crowd? and i am talking park-talk, playdate talk, etc.- nothing to do with friends or blogs or comments or anysuch, just INANE!! talk of the chatchat chat type. how am i drawing this attention? do i look inviting to you? COME ON.

i am yelling. i am.

hear me yell, while one kid sweats to the oldies downstairs and one drowses in his rocking chair and i am too freaking hot. too.

everysingle word has a full stop after it but i can't be bothered with all the searching blindly for the period right now.

my sister and my brother both told me that they've been reading here and been frequently 'scared for you' (sister) and 'emotional' (brother)

.

tell me what that means? am i bitter? do you read this and feel scared for me? do you?

two more days to go til birthday therapy. wa. hoo.

it may be that i need it. hnmoph.

My birthday is coming. . .

my birthday is coming. its like the 'goose is getting hot, please put a penny in the old man's hat'....

thats what i'm humming, its better than muttering 'red rum' all day. Its Friday, my birthday, it used to be such a big thing for me, bigger than thanksgiving feasting even, a glorious week of special events leading up to, surrounding... I had friends making up songs for me, delivering gifts, buying drinks, making cards, and now I just say 'eh' to the whole thing. It doesn't so much have to do with age for me, its more like my kid turns five less than a week after my day, its wicked hot, i've got all this crud to do all the time, and i have just lost the feeling for celebrating myself.

It has been occurring to me lately, to wonder where exactly my opinion of myself is bubbling up from. I surely do not believe in my own worth. When someone compliments me, for instance, I think they want something. or are lying for their own betterment, or are 'just THAT type'...

sweet.

J has been getting exasperated with me, when I turn down dinner invitations because they must want something... or for the difficulty it makes in my ruttish routine with the kids. . .

so. this year, my own bad self gets to go see Chakra Carol on her very bad self's birthday... so keep your fingers crossed, your breath held... what have you. we will see what is coming down the pike, we will, we will.

stones

I've had the great pleasure this week of finding out that some of Chakra Carol has actually sunken below my skin. Yes, i acknowledge my wicked wisdoms, is what i am saying.

sure.

HOWEVER, self deprecation aside, I have been facing many people with the ability of a rock when it comes to listening or to facing adversity with a 'looking forward' mentality. For example, when one is actively seeking resolution of estrangement, one cannot continually bring up examples from 5 years ago pertaining to one's own correctness. One cannot have a host of expectations for what the 'other' will say to acknowledge and validate oneself. It is not the spirit of the thing. IT is not the spirit of the thing. and that fucking matters. it matters.

I can feel my hackles rising as I attempt to type the scenarios and the ridiculousness of the bad juju that I've been handling this week. I'm nobody's guru, and I wouldn't be if I could stomach my own hypocrisy long enough to don the robes. but I did get a chance to say some things that I thought were a relatively new truth for me, I did.

I said things like.... 'you cannot do anything to MAKE someone see your pain. You have to lay it down, give it to god, do whatever the hell you need to do to give yourself your own peace, and then move ON, move away, move FORWARD. LET IT GO.

Lay down your burden, its not hurting anyone but You. LET IT GO. '

Ah, carol... pat me on the back and massage my chakras all you will because it was so totally nice for the 13 seconds of peace that it let me see..

and then someone threw the stone back at me, over and over, and my 'detachment' was shattered . . . boy, what a chump. .. self-deprecation agogo.

but then. my next two days have been filled with the opposites of the energy spectrum and I delivered a babyquilt to the babyand her mother, D, who's first birthday is next weekend. hoo brother. but it is beautiful and I am proud and grateful for a different sort of rock, stone of the smoother sort.

and then Russell and Annie were here. and they are oldies but greatest friends ..and I feel filled up and amazed and proud to know them and love them. . (Not all men are bad, I just like it a whole lot when they are married/inlove/committed to someone else and have no expectations of me except humor. . .ya dig? )

ah.

I gave love. I got love.

good digs.

and so.

Dear Mr. President

I'm sorry to begin like that, but I do feel that all the focus these days, on the office of the president, is just ludicrous. We are not children of the fifties anymore! We do not think he is a Superman, just a man, and a crazy/self-important one at that, probably, to want to hold this office of leader in chief, to be held responsible for the actions that take place in and because of our gigantic country. And while the oil company is literally destroying the world, the press is digging their nails into the skin of the President? because the rules were too lax? because he is not fixing it fast enough?!
It is a sad waste of our time. It is all a waste of our time, because the oil is still spilling.

I fear that the press corp are showing their age. They are clearly not my generation, not my countrymen in the sense of shared patriotisms. I do not expect the President to fix the world. I don't, nor do I think there is a vast conspiracy to oust/support the blackman in the oval office. Its not the Jews doing it, either, not in Hollywood, New York or Israel. They've got enough problems. I voted for him because he would change politics as usual, and he did. we are in a different direction pointed, for better or worse, and meanwhile, the oceans are literally being destroyed. literally.
And maybe, it will prove that I am hysterical, completely wrong about next year's swimmability. Hallelujah if I am. We should all be sobbing for what is lost. all of us.
This post is lameduck, lacking wit, free of intellect and spot on. I am so sorry.



EDIT: RACHEL MADDOW SAID IT ALL BETTER>>>>

achooo, rhymes with askew

i have lots and lots of hankies. i don't see any reason to keep it hidden any longer. i also have very frequent sneeze attacks and use 3 or 4 hankies a day. how the hell am i going to clean up this kind of clutter for a stranger, i ask you. HANKIES?


and look. i must be a shitty mother. i keep trying to entertain myself by hitting the 'next blog' button at the top of the blogscreen up there and I keep getting into these spaces wherein the entire blog is about some little kid. WHAT?. !...i say with great scorn. I don't even know what grammatical endpoint to add in because i just can't understand how anyone could spend all day with the kids and then think of nothing else to write about but that selfsame day.
my kids are cute. even if they weren't, i would think they were. . . they are, you love them, i love them, and i just don't want to relate all the things that they do, the love that they give or that they withold because really, spidey is their favorite today or just because they're ornery pigs.

the other spaces are taken up by 'polynesian or malaysian' teens. and i have nil to say about that.
i guess i may need to be more purposeful, even here.
i am trying so hard these days of hysteria to hold on to chakra carol's wisdom about how careless we are with the things we allow to take up residence in our brains. i know i am not a shitty mother most of the time. and when i am, i am sure there is some sort of rational path behind me that led me to it. i keep moving forward.

KEEP MOVING FORWARD.

speaking of moving, the decision is made, the emails have been sent and we are actually going to begin this whole process of switching houses. dear god.
plus, because timing is everything, there is a mysteriously large amount of water in the basement. hasn't rained today, have a new washer and the kids took a bath, so one of those things is responsible but it certainly isn't clear. just in time for a move, but not helpful for a sale. where the hell is the water coming from? where. the. hell.

keep on keepin' on.

Piracy and privacy

I'm all into the pirates lately, not knowing if they are good or bad and the ambiguity of the robbers of the high seas, makes me feel better about my off-kilter-ness lately.
Ohso. I do not make friends on facebook anymore. there is something just insane about all the connectivity. Its a separate world, that one of my highschool life and family life and it just doesn't seem like a cherry should be in a chocolate chip cookie, does it? AND I cannot be friends with males at all, because they are male and i am nothing, if not full of passion about lots of things and also, married. passion and non-husbands don't mesh. . . holes in the net and so forth. so the whole men and just friends thing is a wash. In truth, it has long been this way for me, it is just in marriage that I have respected it more.
what of it? i am not sure. does this mean i have declared an end to friendship-making in my life? It cannot be. Is this the boat I really want to be on? (yes, analogy drag-along day has fully erupted) I really like people, for real. (oh brother) While I do not think I lose anything in my shiftless arrowshooting from the bow (!), I wonder how to explain that there is also some illusion of anonymity here for me, that I like. Something irresponsible. I am free to be callous, even heartless here- for which I am sure that I will berate myself for again and again as I really hate to let loose my shittier self. But i can, if i want to , and I don't have to worry about the sobbing masses becasue I convince myself that there aren't any.
(fuck this: have i been mean? i don't think so, i am plagued with self-recrimination. not much pirate in me, i guess)
I like the feeling of being in solitude with my flickering fingers on the pad, and the way the screen doesn't always talk back, if at all, and always responds with the letterforms of my dreams. There are so few moments of this sort of privacy for me in this phase of life. And I do recognize the wierdness of calling this public forum private. but i like my illusions and i am comforted by my own duplicity.
how does this fit in with chakra c's admonition to take more care with what is allowed into my head? I look away from it for the moment, while I type.

askew

Edit: I've actually gone back in to this to try and make myself seem less nuts. tell me if it worked...

somewhere out there in the blogdom i made a comment to someone about how natural it was to let children go out into the school world, that they were reaching their potentials-exploring new friendships-growing into their independence...

and so, i am so, so, sorry, because I just didn't know. I didn't have any idea what I was talking about, and I made it trite and stupid and so geez, I am sorry. I feel completely swept away by my 'feelings' as this preschool year ends and we as a family enter a whole new ballgame in which my control is completely nil...

(I understand that I do not have control NOW, but its more about not knowing what is going on, not knowing the lunch lady or the kid sitting next to him, or the blaghblah)

holy fuck, i am upset.

really, i HAVE to think its all about this large scale change harbinged (new word?) by a small scale child. No more schedule-less days in which the outside painting waste is the blip on the screen, no more children in their jams til right before dinner, when they put on their rainboots for dramatic naked play.

and I am going to be 36 in about 2 weeks. and child will be 5.

(and I STILL don't know if I am going to have some other baby anytime. I hate that I can't make up my mind and I hate that I might be running out of time to make the choice and that might be making a choice right there and I just hate that )

and we are in the midst of my life-crisis in a rather large way. we will move the whole family sometime in the next year, destination unknown and lifestyle to be decided by said family. (I'm okay with the kid going to kindergarten in a lackluster place, but not first grade. thats where the magic happens, and I need him to be in heaven, school-wise... so we hunt. we hunt. )

all i can do is talk/think about my anxiety, which makes me a rockstar of a wife and friend. yet again.

(and I do a hell of a lot more thinking than talking in general and so my silence has actually been a rather large oppressive force in the house - for me, at least. I'm not sure how noticeable it was)

Do we buy a little house with lots of land and get a sheep and a chicken? do we buy a large house where i can lose my kids in the echoes and a small fenced in pen? Do we move far away from where we are and hope there are good folks nearby that I can spend five years hiding from? WE are in this crazy position of our family salary having gone up by a multiple of three in the past year. THREE.

crazy.

and i still get all my kids' stuff at salvation army because i am related to Grammie, the depression era goddess. I'm afraid to get the oven fixed because it might be too much money, and we have the grill... its a bit stressful and I might ruin C's chances of making it in Kindergarten because he doesn't have the right shoes and has hair like a rockstar, that his pathetic mother is sort of afraid to cut. will he be knifed on the playground for his platinum curls?

(um, he is NOT going to be knifed on the elementary school playground for his curls. pretty sure of it. )

I'm psychotic. but there it is.

(i'm not really.)

Nobody's writing these days, the blogworld has gone eerily quiet and I am so glad that everyone has wonderful children and lives that they want to focus on . good for you.

I, however, am swamped by emotion and the desire to burn the house down so noone will buy it, ever, ever again.

it is MINE.

MIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNE.

(did I mention that I am a Cancer, homebody extraordinaire?) yeah. (also, how does one clean a house up? i mean, really? for good, like as in no clutter and strangers want to look at it? COME ON?! shit. fuck. )

the thing

thats the thing: it makes me happy when my kids are happy, surely. glow-y.

but it isn't enough. as thrilling as it is when they are giggling and running wildly through the house, it isn't enough.

where is the more?

when I was working for head start, we took the kids to the beach and one of them got cold and i wrapped him in a towel and got him all warm and snuggly. and that stands out as one of my most favorite moments of parenting adulthood... the knowledge that I had become the towel-wrapper-warmth-bringer.

And I am that sometimes for my own kids. On this rainy cold summer day my kids, right now, are reading in their destroyed bedroom. The blankets are all on the floor, all of them, even the ones from the closet and the sheets from the box, all of them. . . its a 'pool'. They are reading, and that brings me satisfaction and joy, and I know that my allowing the mess will bring its own warmth in the long run. . . but it is still not enough.

there was an article in the Times today about the distraction of parents who are 'linkedin' while parenting, and I am glad I am old-school and can only get online in one spot in my life, (yes, its sort of a joke, old-school, linked in, online, etc) but I still recognize the distraction component, although I must say, even washing dishes is distracting if you are really supposed to be looking and listening to them all the time. . . *

I like writing here but I recognize that I 'could be doing other things'. finishing a big gift project, doing the laundry, washing the freaking walls, getting the house that I love ready to be looked at by people who want to buy it for a steal. . .

I'm looking for what will be enough, sad that nobody can just give it to me, wistful for the naivete that still glimmers with the hope that somehow it is still out there somewhere, and not just hiding near my elbow, that close -but undiscovered.

* the tv changes are still in effect but i haven't cancelled cable and have used it when I needed to... there IS a very big change in their play, more dramatic, more creative, more self-sustaining. . .yep.

just simply this

i'm just lonely, man.

tell me if its like this for you: before thinking of it, it came out of my mouth.

lets paint outside.

for the 4 minutes of prepping, i got about 5 minutes of interest. i took a lot of pictures.

aren't you very impressed?

will they remember?

where is my time actually going?

the ants are lost, i think

in every room of my house, there is at least one big black carpenter ant trying to find its way. i don't understand it, there isn't even any food upstairs, i don't think. (i hope) they just keep milling about, up and down and around, and really, not in great numbers so i'm even able to believe that it might all be the same ant, or that maybe we have a very small family of them, all lost and split up from each other somehow. or maybe they are just on daytrips. boy, they move fast. they are somewhat startling in their blackness and their bugness.

but so it goes.

yesterday was a big day and i'm doing the self-pat on the back for surviving it with my humor intact and my desire to be present fairly much fulfilled. (remind me sometime to talk about trying to meditate with two boys in the same room. )
sometimes being present is just not enough, there should be reach.

I let my two boys go on a sailboat. i let them, and we did it and in the spaces between grabbing them and holding them and restraining them, i got to feel the wind in my hair and feel the ultimate rock of the cradle of the universe.
we put the boat in the water...with me, their dad and their grandfather. pretty wonderful. i wish i could remember myself at that age with any accuracy, I'd really like to compare myself to C and find out how much of his whine is in me, and how much is just the whine of the almost 5.

AND last night i went out for dinner and drinks with five old high school women friends. I have not done such a thing for at least 5 years, and it may even stretch to my entire married life, excluding trips to the fabulous wisconsin appletonia... I was completely nauseous with nerves, not because i didn't want to see anyone or because i can't handle it, but because of what i was going to miss. these are sharp, wisecrackers. and i was going to miss the jokes, the ribbing, the backandforth. Several of the women I haven't seen for almost twenty years and that is some sort of trip of the memorial sort. Parents and siblings have died, manias persist and we are not sneaking drinks at the beach any longer. It certainly does change things, twenty years. I feel like I should go watch 'Stand by me.' or some big chill type movie. already saw 'breakfast club' this week, thats more than enough to live on, i guess.
I am comfortable in my skin, is what I got from that. I'm wierd maybe, but I was glad to meet these women, curious about them, and content with the blank spaces. There is so much more, though, I guess its that same blank space that I don't know what to do with. . . how to leave it unsaid and yet give it color and shape. I'm thinking in type today, and I'm not sure i'm the better for it. off to the newest thunderstorms,
wifemother

ramble on, woman...

its a neighborhood, womanhood, a tv neighborhood, where we all know whats going on, we make wild and wooly judgements that sound wickedly funny as long as we keep pulling our shades down. We all have touched the fears or realities of being female... in college i remember the woman's center putting up posters all over campus that said one in four women would suffer abuse in their lifetime and there was a big hullabaloo because 'everyone' thought it was inflamatory and inflated. boy, was there a point missed or what. right? thats some of all of the people you know, none of us are untouched. none.

i find it amazing that any of us make it to whatever we choose to call adulthood without cracking up and leaving the building entirely. most of us don't kill our children, or our mates, we survive our families sometimes. we make families sometimes, we join families, make mates, leave mates, love children, hate them, lose them, never even get to meet them... and still manage somehow to walk around the neighborhood and be completely unrecognizable to each other . how is this possible? how is it possible that a man (lets assume hetero for ease of storyline) can ever say, 'gee, i didn't know you had so much baggage.'

do you know anyone who doesn't? literally?

it seems like we should assume women to be the bearers of the stories.

who are these fantasy women without baggage?

-

how can we escape becoming bad copies of our mother's worst character traits? our father's temper-bearing offspring?

off. spring.

what if our mothers actually were doing their best and somehow the best just contained what we couldn't tolerate? and now, in our lust for repair or revenge, we are turning somehow into that which they feared ? what if it is impossible to do anything else? what about making situations in which our offspring must grow and change and challenge, as part of the 'of course' way it must be, to ensure growth?

we insist on keeping our past static, when it is plastic. what of that? we freeze things which are in motion, still.

Fear, enclosures and the beach...bullets because i am distracted by life...

*we went down to the beach where J spent his summers as a child- this weekend of memorials.

apt?

*I can't get through a parade anymore without crying and raising up the peace sign in my heart. My dad was in the Navy during Vietnam, and I can't actually raise the peace sign for fear of anything that could be interpreted as 'nonsupport' for the people who do that job. BUT IT IS UP, UP

UP.

(for all of us)

*I am using a thimble. how damn cool is that? I'm actually using it. and it was in my closet, and it was grammie's thimble. did you know that fingers sweat in thimbles, did you know that fingers can sweat? i, for one, did not.

i'm not even sure there are sweat glands there.

nonetheless.

*i want to be famous. i do not want to be famous.

*my boys are both asleep in the bed while a spider is keeping me from doing laundry with my new dryer. a spider is making me crazy and making a mockery of technological advance.

damn arachnids...

*the roses are still going strong. they make me want to shout.

*yesterday i screamed, "i am not yelling" . made me feel very good about myself, really.... shrug and wince.

distress

we find ourselves stuck, in a rut, and now there is someone telling us we cannot get out. so- what to do?
when one wants to quit something, does the deed, and then is pulled back down into the muck, what then?
hubby tendered his resignation, two months ahead of time, and was told this morning that because he didn't do it SIX months ahead of time, he is automatically renewed for another year.
my god.
we are both distraught.
let us go.

let us go.