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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Nowhere to run to, babay...

nowhere to hiiii-iiide...

tuney, but in its truth, currently,  a foggy bog of soulsucking fantasty-novel terror.  thats right.
my mom's doing okay, but only in comparison to the above-mentioned reality.  its not that good.

we are so frequently swept away, into grief, into memory, into 'other'ness ... there is no sure footing and what there is... the color/texture/smell of grey,sick-baby poo.

the boys got a video game system for Christmas, and so i haven't seen them for two full days. we are sort of hoping that immersion will enable them to stop of their own volition, but so far they are not really eating well, and last night the newly-6 was complaining of what will become carpal tunnel if they are not turned from their fate.

so fucking what.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

Days clicking along

i'm completely in an apathetic grief-crisis.  i have about no- things that i care very much about... and that is how i am handling grief over here.  i did manage to send the kids in with cards for their classmates and presents for their teachers.  i yelled to my husband to give the bus driver something. he did.
i am getting dressed, but often i am wearing what i slept in, which is clothing. sometimes i change my underwear or brush my hair. 
this behavior is not enjoyed or encouraged by my family.  i am not encouraging family visits and i do not want to socialize.  this is how i swing.
the kids are keeping me off the closet floor and that probably has benefits.
christmas vacation started last night and i am glad to skip routine entirely. i am .   let us be .

around 5:00 i cannot stop myself from yelling myself hoarse. i have to swallow to breathe.  this is not enjoyable.


i'm pretty sure everyone has a gift. pretty much. if not, i apologize and i am sure i will feel bad when i discover this, but today? right now?  its completely irrelevant and meaningless. so there.

i have waves of panic for my kids, my family, hubsJ, myself... when you are smacked with the suddenness of loss, you realize how tentative life as you know it is... the lie is 'as you know it'.... i try to seek out the apathy, what some might mistakenly call acceptance, to let the panic subside.  maybe its a form of meditation.  maybe its just a big 'fuckyou' to everything.  i can't tell.

i don't feel crazy or 'wrong'... i just feel magnified, in an unpleasant fashion. everything is bigger. and yet, less clear. very large fuzzy.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

learning curves

in the wake of a wake. and a funeral.  big wakes, fishing boat wakes, the kind that send little boats all akimbo, all awash in worry and plunge.

at the wake you see that there are many many (all) who know exactly what it is you are feeling, and while you laugh and smile because there is literally no sustainable way to express grief at all times, the body has the pressure-relieving chuckle, or real social smile to keep you alive. . . and the community of humanity which has loss as one of its characteristics is surprising in its lack of discrimination.
and then you are at the funeral, and remember bits and pieces and incredulity at what is going on and then, realizations and sinking ins and then, back out again to the distant shore.  i remember so little of what went on there. and more greetings and sadnesses and recognitions and remembrances and so much.  while i had been dreading and gearing up for and staking my claim on survival, it went fast and now is over. and what is left is the un-nameable ...
and i'm having struggles with my children, and i am having trouble cooking dinners, and blankness is pervasive and from afar, i am confused and overwhelmed by it all. i am waiting to regain my footing, trying and failing to have patience with myself, with hubsJ who is also grieving, my kids who are also greiving whilst whipping into a 'get stuff' frenzy which will go wildly different this time around, but only for me.. packages bought, delivered... whatever. santa santa shithead.
i thought i wouldn't have anger because of my belief in the way things are.  but that is a crock. for me, and for now.  i am angry at the world for rolling on and on. for the demands of my days, for the inability to lie down on the floor in the closet and stay there. for having to get dressed, for having to feed other people, to be kind to them.  for wanting something totally different. so totally different.
and i'm mad by how humiliated i feel by my ignorance of what is something that every person will go through, this loss. this death. the suddenness of change. something so large? that i thought i recognized? what an ass. a complete ass and fool. i am in awestruck mode, and angry, and full of spit and vinegar, as my dad would say.  i am not angry at god, or at my dad.  they get a pass.

Friday, December 6, 2013

today

this morning i am up early, knowing somehow that the light coming into the world is more than my wristwatch is acknowledging.  my clock had stopped, the dawn was arrived.  this afternoon begin the services for my dad. the 'visiting hours' which seem so short, but are so unbelievably costly.  did you know? do you really know, for one set of visiting hours, retrieval of the body from the hospital and cremation, we're talking almost 8 thousand dollars? THOUSAND. and we are doing one, three hour visiting thing plus a funeral tomorrow.  and you are supposed to pay before the service happens.
hustle hustle. die on the inside some more. die to be writing checks . i'm not funny.

while i know that what you expect is grief and while i can tell you that i have more than enough to satisfy your pining for grief, i want to also tell you to go buy some insurance. i really do.  my parents must have been planning since they were in their 20s.  it is absolutely unreal how well and seriously they planned for this kind of occaasion.  my mom is fine, will be fine, and will be self-suficient.  it is miraculous, and a testament to my dad and his need to get things taken care of.  .  . but, the whole idea that planning for something like this is a bad idea, or somehow tells the universe to make it come faster is a crock.  please go get some burial insurance or something because your kids or your spouse cannot handle economic destitution on top of all this grief.  take care of your people.

and while i lecture you on something you really need to do, my whole life is an unpleasant spin. nauseating, and so damn sad...
crying on the tilt-o-whirl.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Wind whistles right through me.


i wrote out his obituary with a thick kindergartner's pencil, on the back of the factsheet that my sister gave me, under orders to make it good.  he was 68 years old, we have the priviledge to keep writing and writing and still, while it goes to the papers today, long and taking up lots of space... still it feels like nothing, so flimsy, so lightweight and flapping listlessly from the line... my dad was not that kind of man, that easy to sum-up kind of person. none of us are, not even that guy over there that we think we know.
i know all about the stages of grief, and sudden loss, i have seen them written and now i get to watch myself and all those nearby me go through them too. we are bereft. and we keen. and we fear the suddenness of this change, the things imagined which we won't see. the loss is great, and i don't know how to keep feeding my kids and yet i will.
i've gotten deliveries of warm bread, and soups and stews and i've seen my brother sister and mother near collapse and spill over into it. and i've been there, i was right there. and i've seen it and know it to be real, so real. and while i pine away for the man i must internalize, i am so glad that i had my forty years with him, and so grateful that I have a part of his measure. and yes, i can make the hookshot he taught me so many years ago. (most of the time)

i love you, world. and forgive me if i drop off the end of you again and again. i have lost my middle.

Monday, November 18, 2013

day three and a half

my dad had a heart attack in the backyard on friday. and he survived the cpr my husband gave him, and he survived the ride in the ambulance, and he has survived three nights in the critical care unit.
and that is what i know. today is the monday .

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Does BatMan really exist?

my boys are aging out of superheroes.  the eldest, that is, because the younger has bypassed them entirely in favor of skylanders and their nothingness.  why worry about gameplayingvideoboys?



although we don't even have video nintendified junkies, we let them play on the laptop for 30 minutes on the weekend days and that is all... evidently, there is something in a skylander. we have the figures but not the 'portal'.  and there must be something there... its become as powerful as anything else we've got going.

i wish they would let me loose imaginatively on what a 'sky lander' could be... just think on it for a minute. sky lander. say it.  sky Land er. 

but.

losing the superheroes came on me out of the blue.  i bought fingerless gloves with a batman insignia on them, actually the most-plain choice i had in the marketing of our childhoods, and the boy turned them inside-out so that noone would see.
gosh.
bother.
fug.

how in the world do you help him figure out the world without the help of super powers and magic? this is the same kid who is asking very very pointed questions about Santa, which I duck and weave like a golden gloved boy.
although i don't find the Santa one too hard to handle.  its always been a tag team effort, he and we, so I don't mind saying so. possibility is always open, its part of the definition, yes?
and then we have G-d, of course. easy peasy.
eight. he is eight. 

the stretch and loss of him is tangible, sometimes.  Chakra Carol says I am unhinged in time, though those are my words, and I am trying to touch as much wood as possible, to get myself back to the ground...back to being in the 'right now' and not so much the backwards and forwards of mothering, the seeing of the babes they were, the men they will be, and the boys they will be next week.  the little one has thus far escaped my timewarping, mayhap her feminity allows the mystery to stand, something i am intimately familiar with, and that is that.

the weather has turned, and i layer the clothing the same way i am walking in time, multiply and animally fibered.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Poking



deep sigh. long and slow. looong. slooow.

with the removal of the halloween candies, my mood seems to have levelled out a bit.  i no longer want to bite strangers, and the fools who post hundreds of pictures of themselves can rest easy that i know they're just doing the best that they can, however lame that best may be.
i may have some sugar issues.
heh. really, i was all supernaturally predatory for about a week.  damn the milkyways...

thinking about weaning the little one is enough to make me cry and feel monstrously defensive, and want to dig through the last trashbag for the candies. oh god.

i've still got that mood with me... its been quite a month, waves of 'feeling' come upon me and i'm beached for a while. 
its not even menstruation, i tell you.
i am wickedly judgemental but believe me, no one is as judged as i judge myself. 
well, probably lots of people judge themselves as harshly as i've been doing. it ain't right, i tell you. it aint.

hubsJ and i have instituted Wednesday as a 'date' day, a time to sit or sex it up or watch a movie, or whatever. so don't call.  its an attempt at making time for ourselves amongst the grid of grind. we must poke through this  momdad popstand of policing that we've/ I've made for myself. its probably good, makes me feel like poking holes in the hood i've pulled over my head.  'poking' overuse intended.

 I've gotten lots and lots of books lately and I'm slogging my way through some enjoyable things, some less so but I feel compelled to slog.  these are the authors, of spiritual matters, of good things, and of ridiculous science fiction and fantasy.  i can't find the titles all at once. but, i mean, i still tire of the laze of linking. i do. i know it stymies us, this whole 'look it up' thing. but geez. GEEZ.

hello brother lawrence, mary rose o'reilly, jim butcher, robin hobb...and there is one on parenting that i want to read but can't seem to pick up.  i think its because it wants me to stop yelling and if i could do that work, i believe i would already have done it.  good god. 

so there it is.

for my 40th birthday, i want to go spend a week at a nunnery. do you think that is plausible? with three young kids and a nice but not saintly husband?  man, i pine away for church 5 times a day. pining. 

allright, okay. done.

Monday, November 4, 2013

Annoyed and Judgemental

i'm in a terrible terrible mood and if I see one more self-portrait masking itself as self-exploratory self-love, i am going to kick the wall.  really, i am.  and i just said 'wall' because my other choices are a baby and a cat, and i'm trying to go the way of peace, all judgemental bile aside.  

i am writing a blog, in which, one could argue, I talk about myself ad-nauseum.  okay, i do, okay.  and i use it to propel my thinking sometimes, i do. i DO.

but what is propelling about face shots? what is this all about? WHAT?!! over and over and over goddamned again and again. 

geez, i am sick to death of people showing me their 'concerned' looks, their 'i'm serious' faces, their crinkled brows, their sparkly eyeshadow, whatever.
i just do not care.
shut your self-obsession up, already.

terrible mood.

social media gone awry, we can't go back to before. people are sharing so damn much, its disgusting. how're we modeling for our kids, healthy interactions, maybe even real-live conversations.  i am no model, i am the freak hiding under the table in the kitchen. (not literally, but internally.)

don't show your face again, you naval gazing goons.  you're missing a whole lot of everything else. like me, like my mood.
HOW DARE YOU WANT TO MISS THIS GLORIOUS MOOD!!!! HOW DARE YOU?.

ugh. frucks.

i'm shutting it off right now.  no more today. 

(did you cut your hair? oh god, so cute.... show me more shots of it... c'mon, do it.... )

Friday, November 1, 2013

Five Minute Friday: Grace

FIve Minutes to Write:  So come and write with us. Together. On one word for five minutes. And then link up your post or leave it in the comments. But remember, the one must rule here is that you visit the person who linked up before you and encourage them in their writing. That’s it. The gift of encouragement – pass it on. All the back story and details for how to play along are over here. - See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2013/11/five-minute-friday-grace/?

Grace:

huh, wasn't feeling the writing vibe today, was feeling all sorts of out-of-sorts, maybe too much sugar, the nuts this morning in trying to get all the kids filled with food before the bus arrived, the arguing about not taking candy in a lunchbox, i get all high-horse about healthy stuff going to school, and what the hell for when they pump it out while they are there... i donno.
but . wednesday night i made it out to Seekers group at Quaker Meeting, something i rarely do because it is at 7 and you know that is hard for bedtimes and such.  but we talked about Grace. so here i am.
reminded. stoked.
(not in a california way, but in a new england fireplace way, stoked. )
what is it? what are we hoping for when we seek it?  are we listening for it? is it those moments when we forget our cynicisms, try to save everything? read a tiny bit of mary rose o'reilly.  it might be good to try and save everything, to value everything a little bit more, to stretch our goal posts wider.  to let go the beleagured pessimisms and just swing the bat, hope for the best, wait for the Light to come again... it does, it ALWAYS does. every single morning, every. single. one.


done.


geezlouise. why can't i seek this out more often? so much clutter in my interiors these days... keeping my fingers crossed seems like the best i can do lately.  here's to small and tiny Graces....

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

flail, flail, Thundress.

this child in my lap has finally found a moments rest. not asleep, but still, nursing with one hand tucked over my collar and down to my skin. she's not even technically nursing, but drifting one hand along my waistlined flesh, back and forth, eyes open to the world. 
just moments ago she, who nursed last maybe 8 minutes ago, was distraught.  kicking, screaming, wounded by the universe, she would not be tamed. i always think she is going to hurt herself inadvertently, giving us an actual ACTUAL, identifiable problem.  seems it might be a relief, to know what is going on.  she is a dream, these are but fleeting moments, really. and i am so glad that i have been able to nurse these babes, to have the flesh-contact be the answer sometimes.

yes, she has been trying to eat the jade plant. yes, it probably is not that good to eat.


now the eyes are closed. her own thumb has replace my skin, and we wait while i gird my loins for an attempt at laying her down. i can never make the decision quickly. it is a much larger philosophical problem, really. after all, do i rest as i am? do i change the scenario and get all my 'tasks' accomplished.  do i write the rest of this thing, end it quickly?
heh.
i have decided NOT to the the NONOMOPO writing challenges that belong in November. I look forward to reading what people write, as they get to it... but I am trying to be somewhat realistic with my time and abilities... Its too bad really, because I love getting feedback, and i even like the actual writing... but there it is.  first, i have to get over the all-day field trip coming up on the 1st ... talking with strangers all freaking day.  its going to kill me, possibly.  if i drank, i would command a bottle at the end of it all.  but. no.
i hope some of my friends of the ethers will be writing. please do. its good for us all.  c'mon...

allright. i'm making the move to put her down.  keep your fingers crossed. 
(just realized i don't know how to spell sayonara? )
sticking with italian,
ciao!!




 

Thursday, October 24, 2013

hurricane?or swamplife? you decide.

i'm just about to begin menstruation, i believe, and so you decide how to weigh the hysteria of my past weeks. 

saw an old man walking down a grocery aisle pushing a cart, wrists a-wobbly and not much bigger than me, but plugging along, completely unaware that I could see his shoulder blades through his ironed polo shirt, and was slowly losing my mind about how we are all going to get old, and decrepit and fall down in complete and utter lack-of-control because our bodies are completely going to fail us.  and this? this is if we are lucky enough to make it to that. lucky.
i was crying in the Goya.

next friday my oldest starts basketball for the first time, every friday evening for two hours for an indeterminate number of weeks, drills, skills and blahblah.  i love basketball, it is definitely my sport and i love it pretty unabashedly, even if I don't stay awake to watch it....  but i am completely bereft that i am losing an entire weekend night in which my family and i can hang out together, as. a. family. a unit, a pivotal unit in the universe.  what, do we have to give up going to Meeting in order to have hangout time? give up God for Basketball? I'm not sure I want my kid to be that kid, and I am getting the glimmers of 'drive them everywhere' momm-ing that people have been talking about.  do i need to buy a minivan? so i can drive packs of children to different sporting events and drink giant plastic cups of something? with a straw?

I spent at least five hours on separate days freaking out about having signed up to go on a day-long fieldtrip with my oldest.  This, because I might have to carpool with women I do not know.  and in carpooling, i have to give up my illusion of anonymity and isolation born of choice. I'm terrified to be in an enclosed socially awkward space for the length of time that we have.  If I expose my stupid awkward no-hear-you self to C's friend's moms, I will actually BE the pariah that I fear. no more wishful thinking, but reality. Honestly, it makes me feel all nauseated, just to think about.  and I guess that I fear not having the experience with my boy and his friends more than I fear the other moms. so there is that.
maybe i won't get picked. then i'll miss out on a hundred things, all at once.

hubsJ also signed me up to coach a 'destination imagination' thing afterschools.  between the fieldtrip forms glowing on the table and hubsJ's announcement last night, it was not that good for me... no.

seriously. i am going to throw up, or pee on myself. i can't tell.
i do really well with surprises.  seriously.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

warmth and loss of it. . .

stepping outside, my cheeks immediately prickle with chill. chilled. flushed.  the toes of my boys, still bare, get cold as they run to the trampoline in the sun.  cold, and they still refuse shoes and socks, and i can't be plunged into the debate any more. when it is cold enough? then a shoe will be found. . .
the sun is still the big housewarming ball in the sky... and the chickens are still laying their bounty - almost at my doorstep, even. 
we've got the wood for a sauna in a big big pile in the driveway, reclaimed even.  call me soule . heh.
the air smells of rancid cat litter and tonight's ballgame will be chased by another egg frittata.  so there.
i have been remiss in writing. i can't find my way to the dilly these days. i'm slowing and storing fat. last winter's blizzard put the fear of the cold into me like nothing else could, and i am a bear gorging on the last of the salmon. far too late in the season, i believe.
the colors are wild here. feeling truly wild, with crimson being something once dreamed, now leafed. even the shadows are green, later tonight blacked.
i am thankful for electricity. i am... i love saying 'icebox'... but the illusory nature of our 'nightlife' does not escape me. how much trouble we cause by staying up past dark.
i think i've got to start taking photos again, but i want my eyes to ache with the color saturation of reality instead. the actual experience, as happening. i know you know.
make friendly with the black and the white of text. or orange and red if we acknowledge the design of a designer unnamed.
see you in the manana.
wmx

Thursday, October 3, 2013

flightless bird, here.

i've been wrastling with my own ego a lot these days, lack of it in fact showcasing how much of it is still there.... grammatically challenging sentence there.  i say there is little, but drown in my own self-obsession and naval-gaze, which means there is much. better? ego. what a bitch.

as pertains to the bikeride and my lack of audience and therefore, lack of self-esteem? i've been wondering how much i've really bought into the belief that i am somehow part of the great unwashed multitudes demanding fame and great accolades.  we all believe that we are the center of it all. 
do we?
are there people out there who, in real opposition to the self-centeredness of me and you, feel that they are PART of it all, rather than CENTRAL to it all?  catch my drift. 
nothing new here, but where are those people? how do i get them closer to me so that i can learn from them? or me, closer to them? 

can i stop being scared of strangers long enough to realize there is more shared between us than not? i'm getting notions of that more and more lately. maybe because i've realized i might never move again, and it changes how you look at things, to realize you might get to see the saplings change, the barn fall, your kids' friends grow, the crocus proliferate. . . croci.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
i'm reading this whacked out mystery in which the main detective is a Quaker and I'm learning all this stuff about Friends and whatnot. its good, and illuminating, to learn so much about what I'm taking part in on Sundays, and what I've brought my kids into. - called Quaker Silence. can't remember the author.

i'm listening to Karen Armstrong?'s 12 Steps to Compassionate Life in the car as I spend much time every morning doing errands and its also illuminating, and I've only just listened to the preface. shoot.

You?

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Weak-kneed

I rode on a bike for twenty-five miles this weekend, as part of a fundraising effort for a group which mentors foster kids and adoptees.  I did the whole thing, without vomit, without a quitdownsitdown.  I kept on keeping on whilst the going was good.  and all that. 
I should be very proud of my self.  part of a larger good, proof of a working body after so many years of inaction.
and then there was the avoidance of the ruts by the side of the road, the cars whizzing by my calves by inches. hello deafie on the road.  next year, i am going to make a sign.

and now i have to deal with the repercussive problems that I've had all along.  Due to a mistake of planning, and an overly excited biking speed, I was finished before my audience arrived to cheer me on.  They were there internally, as the end of the race was one long, slow hill, and I did not want them to see me walking ! and that was powerful for me, the thought of my boys seeing me ride  and that is the only thing that kept my legs circling. the only thing.  who knew i wanted them to see me in a very different light? who knew?

without the external accolades, i am a shambles.  what the hell?! c'mon. am i really still internally 15 years old? i mean, i like to think even my 15 year old self had more bones than that.  does my action really not have wild validation because i don't get pat on the back? shoot.
maybe if i were crippled by pain, and needed lots of backrubs and one of those silver shiny blankets at the end i'd feel more valid.

what.
i am obviously stupid, and i find that slightly offensive.

PLUS, my sister was with me and she does so many of these races that there are many times that her audience is simply her fellow riders and she hasn't spent three days bitching about what it means to her.  she's proud, and moves on. it sucks to have a mentor like that.  SUCKS.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

SLOW GOINGS

someone deleted the beginnings of this posting.  don't know who it was, perhaps i inadvertently left this machine open, perhaps a kid trying to sneak 'game minutes' got carried away and took his life into his own hands, unwittingly.  wait 'til he gets home.  (yeah, right, like i'll remember to enforce something i completely have no evidence about... and won't even remember by the time 3:30 rolls around.)

Today is my first day. 
I like the sentence, but meant it as part of a longer story, though perhaps all my kvetching is unneccessary.  Rode my bike this morning, for ten miles on a beautifully clear autumn day, near the ocean, where the blue hits you right in the sternum and you can't fake it. rode slowly, and quickly, and was passed twice by the same group of people who looked older than me, but probably aren't, they just didn't have kids, or pendulous nursing breasts, or mismatched biking outfits cobbled together with yogatypestretchable clothing. 
My dad watched the babe, which used to be a questionable practice, because he wants so much to be doing other things.  But my mother goes for surgery tomorrow to remove her gall bladder and is succumbing to mind-numbing fear about the whole process. We are in heavy prayer rotation here, real moments of goosebump focus.
On Saturday I ride in a 25 mile fundraising thing called the Rodman Ride for Kids.  Once my mom is done, I'll turn some of the prayers towards myself, I think.  I'm just hoping to not throw up, and to not have to have an emergency vehicle get involved with my bad self.   My sister made me do it, and I am trying not to think about how the ride is essentially twice.five what i did this morning.  shitfuckhead.
the middle boy, freshfaced kindergartener extraordinaire, was home two days this week recovering from uncontrollable bowel incidents and puke. supah. but secret?  i loved having him home. i got almost nothing done, because i was watching him play with the babe, draw pictures of monsters and cool ass hands... giggling with a little girlbaby as he pushes her in a wagon. the idea that this experience is limited in time and space hurts my heart but i am feeling downright miraculous in being aware of it. a bittersweet vine.

i've now polished off a coffeeroll and am working my way through some overlarge gumdrops. they are almost too much.
evidently this bike riding thing will not result in weight loss.

poooof. 

Friday, September 20, 2013

Five Minute Friday: She

I wasn't going to write about it, didn't know how, but then the prompt was She... so here it is.

A woman I only vaguely know jumped off a bridge.  She jumped, she fought her rescuers. She fought against what some might call salvation.  Her decision had been made.  She did not find relief.

She is alive, she is being cared for, as best the world knows how.

I am wordless, almost. struggling with what must be horror, for her, for her kids and husband.  what makes it not enough?  what makes the light break through for some of us and not for some of us?
these are big eggs, in these baskets we weave. and in which we are carried. 

I am filled with thought, and can't bear some of what passes through, and if I have hope and trepidation for her, I have as much for me. 

There isn't any easy path, is there? and the shuffle of the rocks on the way to the path/in the path is both ominous and confirming. and I guess its what you choose to focus on, if you can tear your gaze from what hurts and what does not glimmer.

Please let us all hold her in the Light today. 


link to Five Minute Friday.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Don't Know Much...

aw, aaron neville with his creepy ass voice and his wacked out style choices. . . aw...

i'm old dudes. old. i'm trying to stay away from the computer in order to better fill my days this week, and last... and i'm feeling sort of awash in insecurity and repetitions, nauseating repetitions.
shocking, but i haven't figured out what to do with all my spare time yet.
went curtain shopping with my mother. hmph. she's really weak, exhausted by the walk to the ridiculously misnamed 'hardware' store... makes me feel old and weak myself, to do readjustings like this... makes me feel so damn old and weary.
and lonesome.
i've been told my ego is involved in my exhaustion, my hurt. is there any other way? do we have anything to 'hurt' but sense of ego? is very consciousness a form of ego? is it?
are we giant puffs of air, white dandelion floats in the air, unless we have thought, reaction, ego?

blagh.

Today,
Don't Know Much...

creepy ass aaron neville, man.

Friday, September 13, 2013

Five Minute Friday: Mercy

Fridays a bunch of brave writers gather here to all spend 5 collective minutes writing on a single prompt.
Here’s how it all got started, back story, details and all. The short version is:

1. Write for 5 minutes flat for pure unedited love of the written word. (On your blog or in the comments).
It’s a great way to catch your breath at the end of a long week.
- See more at: http://lisajobaker.com/2013/09/five-minute-friday-mercy/


Mercy:

besides the inevitable tune that runs through my mind, mercy, mercy, me.... buhbumbuhbum...
what do i have to offer? to whom do i offer mercy?  i stutter on the thinking, the word seems both too weighty and too weak for me to use with fluency.  my children get my forgiveness, my attempts at humor when i am furious or frustrated, but is that mercy? it feels like we've been given a respite from war, on the international stage, and that is a godgiven mercy, perhaps.  i'm hoping.  what is mercy? really.... it reaches out beyond my family unit, i wonder if it is something i've been utilizing in any way... connections to respite, rest...time outs... maybe that is where it lies? my second youngest has started kindergarten and i have entered the realm of 'almost 40 searching for oneself woman who has finished all the laundry and does not know what to do with herself'... and so maybe this timeout is a mercy, a space granted wherein i can figure it out, or, if i listen hard enough, i can hear my path sorting itself out, the rock and stones crumbling their ways, readying a space for my feet to trod.  may be a mercy. 

hmm.  done with my five.  hmm..

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Falling off a cliff.

thud.

bus door closes, more with a clankclunk than a thud, but my heart has dropped out of my body onto the road and i just stand there as it sweeps past me and away...

ah, the transition into another phase of life just arrived.  and whilst i have a babe in arms, i am right in the dank thick of it, this realization that my time with young children is finished. Numbers one and two are now in school fulldays, full weeks... (oye, the babe in arms is certainly young, but time is marching marching)  Now is the summer of my discontent? no.
Maybe i will spend this time finding out where all of the quotes that dance through my mind's eye have their births... because it is here, the big 'what do i do now' time. 

As Chakra Carol agreed with me yesterday after a desparate last minute appointment was garnered, I am 'one of those women' who're about to hit their 40s and have to 'find themselves'.  I am.  DAMNIT. 

i'm going to make a macrame owl and howl at the mooon... dye my hair and do some more yoga. dress the baby in ridiculous little girl clothing, with bows in her hair and tights that droop at her ankles. I'm going to wear the same four outfits until spring, alternating my eighteen sweaters, or even wearing doubles.
i'm going to miss my kids a lot. i don't want to have all the laundry done at once, i want something to stay dirty because i can't handle the sight of all the counters in this house, and knowing that there is no excuse for their clutter,  their clutter is my clutter and right now i want to cling to it, in denial of what clutter there is in my heart. my heart walnut is comfortable, after all. i know its dimensions, its crannies.

dig?

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Listen.

When I began, I'd just come from Quaker Meeting wherein politics and violence meet their end.  unless they don't, because we live in these United States, and people Will insist on their individuality, and all...

in the hearts and minds of many, in and beyond our Meeting, there is much confusion, much 'don't know what to do!' about Syria, about war in general, about how to go about our daily lives without fear and trembling about the state of the world.  

I think many many people have transformed their fears into angers. and I think it started back in 2001, September... we all lost our minds, our security, our faith in the mundane...  and never got any of them entirely back. we pine for what we have lost, our innocence, our common faith in goodness, whatever it is we have lost track of... and not knowing how to handle such longing, we get mad.  I know I do, personally, and I think it explains the world, to see all these men and women 'outraged' all the time, and to translate it as a deep and abiding fear. . . why should any of us know how to assimilate this kind of fear?  we 'first worlders' know too much and too little, about places far far from us, the earth is being polluted, the waters are rising, the storms are increasing in intensity... its all our fault, the crazies are being led by crazies, breezes now carry toxins, the militance is leading to violence and threat, and assault.  it doesn't seem like anyone is a force for de-escalation, it all seems inevitable.  and to top it off, what once was an effective govt, or so we had believed, is now swamped in incompetence, vitriol and all of the violence and threat and fear and anger that we are all feeling, and so..even the government can't help us see our way free.  (if anything, they are a harbinger of all of our negative feelings about the world.)

In my prayers lately, when I can find the space to focus, I've been trying to quiet myself and my body in order to listen.. for a response, for direction.  I spend an awful lot of time in a litany of requests, a 'seeking' of the Light, a 'how would this look as a post?' or 'in conversation'... drivel which certainly distracts from the arrow direct to the center that I am really looking for.  So I've been really trying it, putting myself into a cyclone of quiet, brushing off the chatter of my mind, and opening up to listen...

and its been good. 
capital G.
There is a lot out there to balance the fear.  It is more than being 'mindful', it is more than focusing on the flowers or the individuals, or even our individual innerworlds. . . but they are within it, yes? the balance? within the maelstrom, the bits of glitter floating or whirling by... the moments our kids are happy and we catch them at it...
I'm not ending this on a positive note, not suggesting that you write down your gratitudes and Syria won't be in turmoil anymore or that thousands of people aren't starving to death as i type. they are, right now.  it isn't fair, it isn't someone else's responsibility either.

God hasn't whispered in my ear, that I know about, he/she does know I'm mostly deaf, i assume. . .  but I am listening, making my ground more fertile for what may come.  and I'm turning away from fear and anger, maybe not dealing with all my feelings of 'resignation' for what is happening, but doing what I can to make my world, and that of my children and my community, more ready for peace. . . blahg.
is this true? sounds good, yes, but so lame, and not big enough to leverage against all that is its opposite. . .  but i feel like i am tucking in, watching my kids ready themselves for their small first days, dealing with my slow transition away from babies and young children into middle childhood and my own middle-age.  mind you, i still have a bonified baby in the house, but i see its end almost as clearly as i see its present moment. 
what to do..when there is nothing to be done? when is there nothing to be done, exactly?

boy, a long one.

(winded.)




Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Blues, and Greens...

in this last week before two of my three hop on a yellow school bus for what is the 'entire day' of moans and groans and incredulous mom dreams... we have rain...
growth and preparation for a cuddledown of a fall, hotsweatcurls whilst searching for sweatshirts for the inevitable chill of evening. 




 
it is easier to keep the five year old dressed these days.  underwear and all.
school supplies are sitting in their bright primary colors, in bags, in the middle of everything, waiting.


the produce is already turning to its yellow cousins, waiting for a ripening too. we have pumpkin blossoms and small green fruit, and a few cherry tomatoes still to come.

It still remains to be seen how many barefeet we can squeeze into these days...the greens and blues surround, but it seems the sharpest colors are the golds, the reds, the spots where the sun won't quit, its warmth lasting far beyond the pale.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Cord now firmly attached.



the sunny side of the street...

Thursday, August 22, 2013

So whatcha whatcha whatcha

want?

things settling, burbling quietly on the back of the stove.  a heats coming.  toes cold and damp now from the morning walk to the coop, trails of greenblue grass pushed aside where my path was so clearly walked just minutes before. tangible past, the only one, i suppose i use my children the same way.  ozymandius. how do you spell that one?  you know of what i speak. 
book finished with coffee this morning, evidence of bravery, literary and personal. and so it is, every day.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Deer Isle, Maine.

if you get a chance to go... sit on a rock in maine and watch fog roll in, and out, and in... tucking trees taller than your history into shrouds...albeit temporary ones. daily, thricely. tides are serious business, the reminders of boats floating off, kids stranded on perches, Lo-ong anchor lines... all there.
sand is all just crushed shell, after all.
mosquitos loom larger here, but no human is more than a foot from an orange or green spray to deprogram the hunter.
just sit. ignore the children at this time, even the nurser at your breast.  It will be her first official sunburn but it will fade.  and you can tell her later about her skin's lust for the sun between the clouds, the run for the silver lining.
pictures taken of lichen do not translate well, their blues falling to shadows on film, or what passes for film these days.
wet in and out of place, the damp, the slick, you name it, it is here that wet is dominant, and we submit. we walk, someone jumps, we float, we ride.

Monday, August 12, 2013

STrrrressssss...

okay, so you know how the wise people are always making these wonderfully quotable sayings about relieving stress, much of which includes not keeping stressful people around, or focusing your energies on wonderful things and gratitudes and etc.... i can't remember specifics but you know these things, right?  right.
so what then of real life, unavoidable stresses?  people in your family who attack? long rides on three good tires? babies sick and you aren't at home? i'm not even talking about traumas, just the small but real stresses of life when you interact with other people and objects? anxieties? what then?  how're you supposed to 'wisdom' your way through these things? how do you salve your heart and your racing adrenalin kits?
if you don't have stress in your life, are you doing something right? or wrong?  are you interacting with the world? and i'm talking of both 'in the minute' and 'afterwards', the two sides of a coin dropped in the well, you get what you get and you don't get upset ... these life things...

yesterday we put our new little row/sailboat in the water, and took a row with all three kids, well-suited up in various life jackets and such.  it was very difficult getting the boat into the water and out of the water and people were watching. yep.  rising embarassment, the sort where i throw people under the bus in my need to look like i am not the one causing this... if my kids hadn't been there, i'm sure i would have yelled, or 'made light' of my husband with observers.  this is my shadow side, i am not glorifying. . . plus, once we were in the water, my stress level went into the mountains, and that is good for no one. and the baby, who needs to move and nurse every 13 seconds, did NOT enjoy her lifejacket situation.  THEN, upon trying to get the boat back out of the water, which took a long, long time, (again, people watching, AND WAITING!... oh my dear GOD. . . ) we broke the boat trailer and had to ride home with the boat tenuously tied to the trailer and all tippylike. like, as in, drive around a corner and the boat tips to the side. HubsJ drove under 20 . . . uhuh uhuh.

by the time we got home, i was a hot mess. taught the kids the Lords Prayer on the way home. i did.  seriously. (Quakers don't really do liturgical things, so my Protestantism/ritualism has to squeak its way in otherwise) - was surrounding the car and boat with a bubble of good energy and trying to regain my humility in thinking i could even possibly be responsible for saving this situation- hence the Lord's Prayer rising...

we got home fine, the boat off the car and babysleeping and mama cigaretted.
if we hadn't had kids around us, i would have 'relief sex'ed my husband right on the driveway.  yes, i would have.

i think i'm still recovering. i know i am.  this is a mild thing, my recovery. i dig it.  perhaps this is because i have so little stress in my life? am i under interacting with the objects and people in my life? wah? what? wha? am i an overly pampered, but truly enlightened buddha? (do you get that joke? heh. joke. )

of course, there is other stuff too. slightly bigger than the material world of the boat. and how to deal with people stress seems to be beyond me.  when is it exactly (or is there ever a time?) when you cut someone out? when their presence is so far outside what is good and kind that every experience becomes one of eggshells and shitsmears? if mental illness is involved? what then? and what if it isn't EVERY experience but EVERY third experience? what then? is everything so fluid? is it all grey?

man.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Sweetness gone sour, and then reversing. people are strange.

back and forth, and back and forth.

I had two boys at camp yesterday. wild freedom, indeed.  Little babe and I tried to watch some tv and some 'freemovies' and then some netflix specials and each time, every time, saw about 10 minutes of some sweetly wistful romantic movie and had to turn it off.  what time does to the romantic soul? the romantic soul requires reality as it ages, the movies and their pretend games, (their bits left out, the 'after' the big dramatic finish? ) don't cut it, make me curious about who the actors are dating in real life, how many marriages they have been through in their tenderness...

I keep thinking about smoking, found myself last night, trudging up the stairs for 'bedtime' full of resentment for everything, *just* wanting a cigarette and i realized that i was all full of struggle for something that *just* wasn't.  i wasn't at all focused on where i was, what i was doing, who i was with, at all.  so i gave up the ghost, and put the kids to bed in a much better frame of mind.  this was a wonderful happening, and i hope to get myself to do it more often.

Yesterday was my first of three days with both boys at camp... I had a hard time filling the space, couldn't watch movies and ended up taking down one string of christmas lights (out of many) that did not work, used another to help prop up a giant tomato plant, and hung more laundry on the line.  I didn't feel overly freed, but i was certainly able to get out of the house more readily, more simply, which has whatever value you give it, i suppose.

In the evening, we had another family supper, extendeds along.  I am so overwhelmingly overwhelmed at this point, need a nice consolidated break from extensions. boy, cigarettes are fantastic after things like that. and boy, not having one was good too.

Today things are quiet, I visited my mom and dad with the wee one, my mom has been in and out of the hospital all summer and has now been home for almost two weeks.  she has a surgery and starts radiation next week, which'll go for three weeks before a reassessment.   It is wildly strange, all this change outside myself. 

Last time I went to Chakra Carol, there had been a mixup of times and I was on the 'can't do it' end of things.  I was so sad, but resigned, and ended up at the grocery store for a slow browse.  Took my big kid for the next time with her and have now been without therapy almost all summer.  I am doing pretty well, considering, although the romantic in me would like to be seeing more in the world, more of the small bits, the cups of coffee made just right, the evenings slow, the evenings with live music and kids dancing and bobbing. what makes the world go round seems to be all those little bits, and it doesn't seem that we share the good as quickly as we share the aggression and the petulance.  meh.

i think i should get a swing and put it in my living room.  its gigantic, so there is room.  yes?

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Everything I left out...


a truthfully, but not for better, formatted ode , to the HubsJ

inexplicably passionate guy, (i don't understand his energy levels, can't believe, after 12 years, can't believe it... )  ... right down to calling the grassgreen color a hallucinagenic, his wife a rare beauty (he does, all the time) ...

has he NEVER seen me yelling at the kids about crap? that cannot be a moment of beauty.  has he NOT noticed the belly which divides and conquers and makes all my teeshirts call me 'preggers' in some wierd bifurcated alien way?...
and going into raptures over cloud formations and forgetabout the swallows, forgetaboutit. (they are pretty damn cool in their numbers and swoops)

Energy spills into painting rearranging, refrigerator cleansings, shutter hangings and the everpresent book sortings. Sometimes I feel like I should get up and help but then I remember I'm in the middle of nursing, laundering, washing, staring, etc.

Dinnertimes are rich, varied, and above all... fabulously tasty. He shows his love in his kettles, the clangs of pots and pans and the slice and dice of vegetable. It is how we continue to grow. (yesterday for lunch, i had tomatoes drizzled in oil and balsamic, with mozzarella and fresh basil. )
I feel terribly guilty that I'm not a cooking-lover.  I do.  What I make is basic and sometimes I don't even have anything started when he gets home from work and I feel like its so SO unfair to him and then I try to remember how much I dislike cooking and am trying to get more comfortable with everyone eating hotdogs. or eggs. I can make eggs.
When we are in the depths of despair and struggle, it is hard for me to eat any food that he makes.  symbol made solid.

He dances like a wild giraffe, and we love him for it. all of us. (although we chose to emulate slightly different styles... ) His joy is wilderness in action. classic rock or jazz, reggae or choral beatitudes, he will rock it.

Sex? good lord. if you knew, you'd be jealous. yes, you would. take me at my word.
True. and i'm responsible for 50% of that. -although not the instigation part, which is critical. critical.

He is very masculine without being an asshole, full of sporty competitiveness whilst still being a teacher of beginning boys. watch him play catch with my 8 for hours, and encourage the jumps of the five as he works on knowing his body and how it works. I don't really understand competition, as a healthy thing.  I know it can be, but my nature is to have everyone feel very good about themselves and their playful abilities and I don't equate that with 'winner/loser' games. Obviously, I have not ever been a competitive athlete. I KNOW that changes things.  I am hoping to learn.

He loves his work, mixing up duties with desires and doing his best for so many who give him (sometimes) so little. He will quibble with my saying they give him little. He is generous. He loves to be generous, he seems pretty good at it. . . .
So many people he works with are super-needy, and it is hard for me to not resent their neediness.  they just keep on NEEDING, and i sometimes hate that.  This is my neediness. (it doesn't help that many of them are women. no, it really doesn't. )

He is part of his history, and working his way forward to a new understanding of where he is now.
He is trying, falling down and getting back up over and over again. always getting back up.
always getting back up.
go for it, hubsJ.

thanks for putting up with me, while I put up with you.

k

Monday, August 5, 2013

Ode to HubsJ

because he really needs one, and because it is overdue.  (although my style is somewhat missing today, and i am relying on bullets to make points)


a poorly formatted ode

inexplicably passionate guy, right down to calling the grassgreen color a hallucinagenic, his wife a rare beauty (he does, all the time) ... and going into raptures over cloud formations and forgetabout the swallows, forgetaboutit.
Energy spills into painting rearranging, refrigerator cleansings, shutter hangings and the everpresent book sortings. 
Dinnertimes are rich, varied, and above all... fabulously tasty.  He shows his love in his kettles, the clangs of pots and pans and the slice and dice of vegetable.  It is how we continue to grow. (yesterday for lunch, i had tomatoes drizzled in oil and balsamic, with mozzarella and fresh basil. 
He dances like a wild giraffe, and we love him for it.  all of us.  (although we chose to emulate slightly different styles... ) His joy is wilderness in action.  classic rock or jazz, reggae or choral beatitudes, he will rock it.
Sex? good lord. if you knew, you'd be jealous. yes, you would. take me at my word.
He is very masculine without being an asshole, full of sporty competitiveness whilst still being a teacher of beginning boys.  watch him play catch with my 8 for hours, and encourage the jumps of the five as he works on knowing his body and how it works.
He loves his work, mixing up duties with desires and doing his best for so many who give him (sometimes) so little.  He will quibble with my saying they give him little.  He is generous. He loves to be generous, he seems pretty good at it. . . .
He is part of his history, and working his way forward to a new understanding of where he is now. 
He is trying, falling down and getting back up over and over again. always getting back up.
always getting back up.
go for it, hubsJ.

Saturday, July 27, 2013

the car is packed. i'm ready to go.

albeit, a different car from the car that was packed last night. yes, there is suddenness of kaput engines, and a dropping of a sailboat, and other things less fun.

but, we are packed, for the second adventure of the summer, a camp trip that rests itself eight hours from here. yes, eight. . . (and my husband did the shopping for the car ride... do you hear the panic?).  and because it has only been one week since the last adventure, i am in a full spin and spilling out gasoline all around me.  this is not quite what starts us off strong, in case you wondered. not quite. the bags were hardly unpacked, some not unpacked, and i was packing anew, on top of what was left unpacked. who knows what lies beneath? i do have diapers and wipes and babyfood, i do know that. and sleeping bags.  the rest will have to sort itself out.
sometimes i have to remind myself that every day, every experience is 'real life'.  this is it.  families are whacked, things do not go as planned but what happens is what happens, and there isn't a 'dream circumstance' in which what happened, really doesn't.  dig?  grammar gets tricky with my radically unclear sentence structure.  yes, yes it does. 
so here, while i am in this lull before they all awaken, i am drinking leftover coffee so that i can clean the coffee press and bring it with me.  in this lull, i am recovering. i am insistent upon my own recovery. i will aggressively pursue my own recovery, because this whole 'being the linchpin' thing is for real.
what is a lynchpin? does it have something to do with lynching? shoot. the bastards of language.

but i am ready, and i just want to get out of here, and i am caught by 'lull' and the usage of quotation marks is not giving me a verifiable clarity .   shoot. bastards.

BASTARDS.


(in pursuit but not arrived.)

Monday, July 22, 2013

Captivated

i've been checking and checking to see if there is news on the royal baby.  gotta say, this is not quite my typical approach to media-anything... but there it is, labor. LABOR.  there isn't any easy way through it, and it is the most self-intensive process that there is, and it is for the sake of emerging life.  how can anything even keep our attention?

and then there was this great article in the huffington post, about our popular fixation with post-baby bods... and how little it says about anything remotely involved with having babies or becoming mothers or raising children, or holding babies or ANYTHING at all, and why we place any attention on the media about all that desire to be skinny ... even in typing, its absurdity grows.
why is it so easy to talk about change and its everpresence and yet spend so much of our desire on remaining the same?

and then there is this. i smoked cigarettes on my vacation, with grownups.  had conversations, actual conversations after children were abed. actual conversations. had beer too. man, if i could wipe out all the complications beer makes in my family, it would be something that i would talk about in a paragraph or two.  beer and a cigarette make me feel more like myself, and it has been a long time. 

took my eldest to see shockmeshockme chakra carol today ... and i fell in love with him.  what a rambling chatter of substance and matter he went on with her... but i got to hear more of him than i have in ages.  he talked of god, horoscopes?, soccer, acronyms, the old homestead of three years ago, all of his memories from when he was two... it was astonishing. astonishing.

i returned home to a five year old who does not nap, in the midst of a nap.

the world still turns. babies are had, love is misplaced and found... right where it was lay down.

Friday, July 12, 2013

back to the beach

hi

  this boy was three, now he is eight. the shorts have passed to his brother now, and are almost ready for another passing on...

for a week, we go in the next hours... the place of many years of vacations, this time for just one week. it may be the last time for a while and it'll be the first for the babe. the chickens and cat will be fed, the house will maintain while we are away.  it'll be very nice to be away. the packing might be as done as it'll get. tomorrow is the best book fair any Quaker ever met, so hubsJ and I will be working the fair, selling selling and raising what keeps the Meeting in the red, or black, whichever one is good these days. tables and tables of books, all the colors of the universe, spines up. . . it smells good, and they sell hotdogs and taboulli, so all the family can eat. 
vacation and all the books one can shake a leg at?
something something.
see you in a week. 

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

swelter, then deluge. . . maybe another flood? where's Noah?

the world is too much with me. i am watching self-sabotage and am searching for my compassion.  while easy to find, it is nearly impossible to hold on to in the midst of the heat and wetness.  i can't watch the news, i can't listen to the radio, i can barely read the online newspaper. . . i lose track, from minute to minute of the things i find glorious in the world. sometimes, writing them down captures them in a way which gives them their own body, a form corporeal from which they grow and change from the reality into something of their own. 
if i tell you about the fort that my middle has built in the living room, the musty smell of the blankets that were used near the bonfire, but now are slightly damp with the humidity and odorous definitely-highlighting their 'natural' fibers...the browns of the stripes, the yellows of the old chevroned crocheted throw, the blues of the toybins, patterns and designs of family life. . . if i tell you about this, eight feet across, every cushion in its place, again and again, with leanings... footstools from toyboxes, shadows from drapings, if i tell you about this? it becomes permanent in a way i can't even capture with a photo. once it has entered your labryinthian imaginations, it is real a maze of crawlspace, elbows with carpet burn...
amazing.

Monday, July 8, 2013

Tricksty...

i'm not very sweet.  sometimes i'm not affectionate towards my husband.  i accept this as a result of this season of my life, with kids under 8 and all. . . he does not, well, not really, though he tries.  i do resent the hell out of the differences in our lives sometimes. mostly, i mean adult foods for lunches and times alone.
 i know the kids 78% better than he does, and that is so very strange, and just the result of time, and breasts. breasts? friends? or tools?  hmm? 
occasionally i don't apologize to my kids when i snap at them.  this makes me feel worse than you can imagine, and i try not to hold on to that bad feeling beyond an hour, and i try to breathe myself to apologizing... and sometimes i suck at that in a big way. 
i expect people to help me. is this victimhood? really? well, it maybe that i expect them to offer so that i can turn them down. i am tired, dudes, help me.
i get really down 'for' other people, sometimes it gets confusing that my 'down' is not even mine. when i say 'i'm tired', i mean a very wide range of things and possibly, you should step back slightly. some of the things that i mean?  i'm lonely, i'm overwhelmed, i'm so sad, i'm avoiding something, i think that subject is dangerous, i am emotionally unstable. . . round, and plain. step back slightly.
sometimes the 22% he gets is way more fun than my 78. 
i am in desparate need of time alone each week. i'd love to have pointless time to meander somewhere but i'd take time doing chores too, if necessary. and in order to do that, currently, i have to give the strain and stress over to someone else. that seems to suck.  am i becoming a martyr to my own cause?
i am developing weakness, how does one grow something which lacks? shoot.
i go see chakra carol, reiki therapist with the mostest, tomorrow. i mix it up with another visit to my mother in the hospital, which is a mix of depression and obligation that is coloring these long hot summer days, i am willing myself to optimism and it hurts my ribcage.  my walnut heart knocks around in there, bruising the tender bits.

i'm looking around for the hope i usually handle. i'm sure its there, and by surety, i find it. right?

Thursday, July 4, 2013

swelter...

independence day here.  its just rolled over to 7 am and i've already received an emergency weather email telling me the heat indices will be over 100 for most of the day.  hm. climate change? summertime fluctuations? time for the beach? time to watch old people faint in a parade with free (albeit melty) candy? evidently independence is celebrated with routine and history and repetitions... huh.

my boy seems to be recovering from his birthday party fiasco, much more quickly than i... although he has been in 'moods' more frequently, he has been in the thrall of summercamp this week, so busy-ness wins out and only the mother eats and watches television like a teenager.  unable to keep busy with the house empty of boys and nothing but a sweaty baby to keep me company. this is going to be a weird year.

couldn't make my appt to go see chakra carol because of babysitting conflicts and so am feeling overly wound, springy internals do not make for a peaceful rider, i'll tell you what. 
my sister and i are going to do a 'ride' this fall, 25 miles.  i have bought a helmet but have yet to get my bike out of the shed.  i think there maybe fallout.

my mother is back in the hospital.  i feel sort of completely off my game.  i don't know how to 'scratch out' words in type, but feel the need to... i guess i'll have to stick with my overuse of ellipses. ...

so, is this it? are we dealing with the eventual collapse of my mother?
is this it? how i deal with heat? television and candy and things that i enjoyed when i was a teenager but basically do nothing for me now? i mean, if it isn't a movie, i cannot actually watch television anymore. it is full of crap, and violence masked as 'drama'... how many cop shows do you watch before you lose a braincell in acceptance of 'kill' mentality? why aren't they classified 'horror'?  or those shows of 'reality' wherein the people are so despicable, so sheltered and feel so little shame in exposing themselves.  are there too many reality shows to claim an audience?  i would think so, but i guess i don't know the masses of americans out there watching tv like me... are we all so miserable and stuck? waves of heat rising from our 'so-called' living ?  is this why pajamas are clothes now?

we can't even get out of bed all the way.  is this it?
i'm going to fill the kiddie pool before it hits 7:18 and the swelter really
sets in . . .

Monday, July 1, 2013

Morose and Mother

My boy turned eight on Sunday and invited all the boys from his class to the house.  We got three negative rsvps and no others. in joking with him, i said if noone came, we'd take him to gocarts.  NOBODY SHOWED UP.
nobody.

he got to go to gocarts.
it doesn't make things better.

now, my boy is wonderful, doesn't seem to have more than the normal social brouhahas, relatively at ease with friends and strangers. but NOBODY SHOWED UP.  school ended last week, many people set out for vacation mindsets with a vengeance, it was a sunday, we had only invited nine boys to begin with... his boy cousins were out of town and and and and and...  and so it went.

 he cried a few times upon realizing that the time to 'arrive' was far past and that, in fact, noone had come.  not as many times as i would have, but a few.  today he started a week of full day summer camp and so will be surrounded by kids and action.  he mentioned it again at breakfast this morning...nobody came to my birthday.  i think we're all freaking incredulous.
but i am flipping beside myself.  nobody came to my kids birthday party.  he had a cousin and his younger brother had a friend and then the grandparents.  i am devastated for him.

there isn't anyone to blame. (although i could bear some responsibility for not tracking down at least some definite rsvps, shitface.)

i could hardly sleep last night, i'm convinced this never happens to other people and that he may now have his pivotal moment when his life went to shit. my stomach hurts. 

i don't know what the hell to do.  he's too old to have this 'glossed' over.  it happened, for real.
what the hell.

how do i make him feel better? holy shit.

i think we'll have another party in august, before school starts and invite the whole fucking town of kids.  maybe we'll get some. . .

Thursday, June 27, 2013

America, America. ..

God shed his grace on thee.
i cry when my kids sing patriotic songs... i do... they are so utterly innocent and beautiful, those songs...
purple mountains Majesty...amber waves of grain...
this place is so wild and wonderful... and so utterly chaotic and misguided.  and i don't even mean to suggest that i should be the guide to realign what has gone awry but, really? this place?
full of people who call themselves pro-life but spew hatred, or seem to find glee in a celebrity who turns out to be a murderer, politicians who sell their votes for money, judges who turn aside from justice.
people who seem to be able to type 'murder' without a sense of the deep, deep, universal wrong that exists there. we should stutter.

but if we are all perfect, designed by God? what then? the haters have a place?  the killers?  it hurts my heart a little bit to try to stretch to have compassion for spewers of spite, hypocrisy, oppression....
and yet what else is there?  by giving up the fight, i become the other side.. i stop seeing humanity in the mass, i lose something of my own...

i feel a bereavement, it is an overcast summer day... and so the morning goes.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Today, and Rumford

its my birthday today, i'm 39.  the baby with her one tooth is asleep on my lap.  i'm concerned about the life quality of the caterpillar that the kids have 'rescued' and want it to be released.  i'm afraid to interupt my sister-in-law and the kid's exploration time.  it may be that i want nature in 'nature's place'... or that five year old fingers are a danger to us all. . .
tired of badguy mothering.
there are many towns called Rumford around here, in a four or five state range, and i'm not sure why, but do like the sound of it. sounds bucolic, like a cheery town of white paint and picket fences, cute coffee shops and friendly old folk.  the truth is that, of course, the bucolic has an underbelly, always does, its the poop smell from the pastured beef. . . the flies on the strange white bush by the back door... its worth it just to say it a few times.  its a good word.
its my birthday. i'm sort of hungry. since its my birthday, i am free of guilt and will eat a pint of blueberries for my snack.  can share, or not, as i am free of guilt and mothering as sacrifice ideology. would that i could wrap my mind about that one not needing to be a birthday wish.  would.  word.
39.  hum.

today is the last day of school.  we celebrate with dinners with pink lemonade and straws, kids menus, no reading required... backpack retirements... splashes in a wading pool that do the trick, thankfully. 

my oldest turns eight in a week.  eight.  somehow the momentum of that one feels as grand as the 39. and i do feel grand, its an almost impossible feat to truly make my birthday irrelevant, regardless of the wildly changing experience of it, the kid-centeredness of its activity...  sometimes the day, it is enough to bring me back to myself, that recognizable person who makes decisions for my own wishes, my own breath, for reasons of my own, whether i can verbalize/make them conscious or not.
i do feel solitary, but i remember that the world is mine, my solitude being given to me on this day, as i, as well all, crown... one way or another.

kingdom calling, and that sort of thing. 

happy birthday, you.  

Monday, June 17, 2013

Count 'em. do it. i did.

it has been ten days since the first vomit. and all but the Father joined in. 
i say, happy father's day!

the middle had it almost the entirety of five days and even now is napping to recover from our first venture out.
thank you target, for your bottles of gatorade and your party pack of birthday invitations.  we applaud your stockage.

i'm exhausted. my mother is STILL in the hospital and i haven't been to see her because of the risk of passing what we have to someone already compromised and to her spouse. . . . . she gets out tomorrow by golly and i might just wait til she's at home. if there is a full 24 hour period without vomit i can not promise but at least be hopeful that it is done.

sheesh.

i'm going to go drink some red gatorade now.  doing my own restockage.  whatever happened to jake ryan anyhow?  man, he was good. he was a boy who could rock the levi's.
:)

Friday, June 14, 2013

lint

ball of lint, sitting on the dryer.  that is me, formless, bits of flotsam and jetsam ravelled and whurled.
all three of the kids has had a stomach virus this week, still happening, in fact. though i have two asleep on separate sofas while the dryer cranks out a dry, if not clean, towel.  dryness seems to be a matter of importance. 
the midnight dance between sides of the bed was impressive, and i am now dropped into a remembrance of the first four months of my firstborns life, and the truth of 'no-sleep' and whatever sort of deprivation that caused in me. depravity, perhaps. some relationship therein.

i smell like pee and vomit, and i don't know if the pee is mine or not.  it is allergy season after all.  i have had three children and while incontinence is not really my problem, it is hard to battle a marathon of sneezing.
my mother is heavily sedated and so i don't visit her at my leisure, though my stomach has its own rumblings and my spirit is just lying out on the back deck waiting for my attentions.  i can't decide if i want to go out there or not.

i worry for my dad, i worry for a shift in my psyche about aging andparents and children and my spot in the universe. i am beyond annoyed that i am almost forty and i'm one of those women who feels 'lost' a great deal.  beyond.

i suppose there is some use to be found in that dryer lint.  one can compost it, you know. 

i'm going to watch the end of sixteen candles. yes i am.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

nursery rhymes, throw up and warriors go to the hospital.

the baby's throwing up, the baby's throwing up, hi. ho. the dairy, oh. the baby's throwing up.

this might keep me from visiting my mother in the hospital today, and i am sort of distraught.  can i call my mother-in-law to watch the tiny throw up? how can i leave her in her first time of need?

but my mother is in the hospital again, second time in as many weeks.  and i am sort of distraught.
scratch the sort of.

last time i was more cool and calm and centered in the 'just get better' and not worry-d.  this time i am finding it harder to gather my cool and calm and my self-counsel is falling on deaf ears, as luck would have it...

this is the second stomach to explode from the 'nursery' and i'm running all cylinders on fumes.  i told my mother yesterday, as i prepared her to go to the ER and she was so upset... ' remember how true it rang for C? when i told him he was safe, because he was a child of God?.... so are you. '   and i felt like a warrior when i said it.  i could almost feel my body swelling up. 

i wish i could carry that certainty with me every minute, but evidently, no.  in order to swell up and be uber powerful, once must understand intimately  deflation.

so be it.

- someone tell me how to stop spending so much time wishing things were different, aye?

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Summerstock

wherein we take stock of the beginning of the summer. ..

our summer guests have arrived, for the unknown number of days and the unknown number of nights.  a sister-in-law and a neice/twin (miss f.) to my own very five year old boy. . . my seven flits and floats and gets more and more himself every day, but frequently feels the lack of singular playmate while his brother is off with miss f.   He recovers slowly from more vomit than a girl can shake a fist at...
and the baby rolls along, her own song getting stronger too. . .

today they go next door with my hubsJ to ransack the neighbors pool, if that is a proper use of ransack... i sat the hell down to write, because i find it very necessary right now to plan something each day that is mine, that can't be erased by an overly late dinner and drunken people. my sense of humor goes out the window when there is wine on the table and i am working on how to be more evenly calibrated but i feel desperately far from calibrated sometimes.  i have to counsel myself to breathe deeply and keep my mouth from opening. . .
nobody wants to hear what i have to say.
i don't want to hear what anyone has to say.

i spent an hour or two with my mother this afternoon, swinging on the hammock, eating watermelon,
delivering the soup -not to the hammock- and talking about what health could entail.  she goes along with a 'procedure' on tuesday to determine if the mystery of her belly can be solved. 

i have been spending a lot of time with mysteries lately, those things which, in truth, will not be solved. . . and how to make space for this gapping in the logic line. . . and the boys are fixated on what will be when they die. will they need brains? are their souls in the brains? makes sense, right?

so we twit from 'shut the mind' to 'heed the mind' and race ourselves sick.

we have two weeks left of school and a dazed approach to finishing them while the tides rise and fall.
ah. shoosh.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

grapes. say it with me, slowly.. grapes.

What I have learned. . . in all the mysteries that still exist, that fill our days with wonder and incredulity...:
I'm a good nurse. I'm gentle, and patient and it is nice that other people can see that too. It gives me hope and curiousity about what i will do when my kids don't need me to (oh, moan) be there every second.  I don't need her to be there every second, but My mom doesn't have cancer, its as definite as a thing can be. and i'm very glad i get more seconds.  grapes are an excellent snack if you don't know what is going on in your stomach's arena. gladiators? animal sacrifices? stretching and moaning? grapes.

nurses are more comforting than doctors, but doctors have more information about the long hauls. i wish those two would get together more, they both lack something in the end.

having a very intense focus for a week is good, but i'm spinning around now, that she doesn't need me as much and my intensity is dissipating like her weakness... slow and steady.

i've tried to give my kids chicken pox this month, last month whatever, and i don't think it worked but am still waiting... they haven't been vaccinated because i think getting the actual virus is better than a shot and a manufactured substance getting shot into their veins at such a tender age.  if they don't get it by 10, i'll shoot them up before puberty.  i was sort of torn about trying to infect them on purpose, it seems to be counter to all the mothering i've done so far, it sort of hurt... but, ah. it is done. 

the school just notified me they are spraying for mosquitos on the 7th, before school.. when you read the information on what they are spraying, they say it is safe because the sprayers have liscenses from the state.  that is what they say.  well, huh.  if i keep him home that day, am i a hysteric?

i should probably go get some grapes.  i now have a whole lot of time to spend in the frittering.

grapes.

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Meditating when you can't breathe.

might be one of the most important times to do it, reminding myself to breathe over here.
my mom's in the hospital. they're having a hard time getting her meds straightened out. it'll be fine once that is done. (well, thats what we thought, turns out not to be exactly right. not that fine. we're waiting. )
hubs and i are not very good. struggle struggle sisboom bah. i still want him around when the shit he doesn't cause hits the fan. i do.
it is very hot here. like a swelter.  a shit flinging swelter.

sitting in meditation with a sweaty sleeping baby laid across my legs did not prove very fruitful for me, but did remind me to chuck out the mind which carries on conversations again and again with nobody but my mind, tricky thing.
so the overripe is still a sticky, tricky fruit. a fruit.

a tricky one.
very.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

keep the space.

rock it, mother of gooses. you hit the nail on its noggin and i appreciate it a whole lot.

keep the space.


back when i was more lallyfroofrouo...people used to talk a bout 'holding space' for others, for life, for understanding and whatnot, and i still hear, feel the need to do that sometimes, but now i call it something to do with Light.  holding someone in the Light. a form of envisioning Prayer, involving the straight-up GOD.  oh, the fickleness of language and time.
ha. ah.

this babykid is crawling.  her perserverance and determination are astonishing.  good lord, the effort taken in movement is overwhelming and heartbreaking at once... frustrated cries and all, notwithstanding.

notwithstanding.  ah.

makes me wonder where she gets it from.  where it has gone in all of us who walk...
makes me feel a little bit proud, actually, as part of her root system. 

i'm constantly blown away these days, by what i've forgotten, by what i'm watching, by what gets done and left undone... blown right away to somewhere else. finding myself resting on the roof of the coop, blown to lie beneath the largest of the shady trees, blown rag-doll to the branches of the climber... limbs askew and limp.

ah.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

jerk (i, me)

my god, it is so easy to write about other people's problems.  i mean, i like it... the distance from the matter of the situation that lets me see them so 'clearly'.... their garish taste. their monotonous drivel, unrelenting gossip... their unexamined lies to themselves. i seem to spend an awful lot of time thinking about other people and their stupid stupid selves, and, amazingly, how little they and i value each other.
but i've been trying so hard in these last weeks to cut it out of myself, this judgement of others, my own lie to myself, when its not really about 'them' at all, but just a disjointment somewhere in my own self.  and really, i find its only possible to shut my stupid stupid lying to myself brain down when i am alone.  alone.  otherwise i have to sit quietly in a corner, focusing on the grey in my hair.
does this bode well for my sanity and the sanity of the family which coalesces around me every day? no. no it does not.

(of course, this does not mean that the lies other people tell themselves don't still exist, or that there aren't idiots out there. of course there are, its the natural thing, right? all sorts, all fiddles, etc. )

Sunday School singin':
all god's creatures got a place in the choir. some sing low, some sing higher, some sing out loud on the telephone wire..
some just clap their hands, or paws, or anything they got ..now...

plus, the baby is in an incredibly cute phase, on all fours, pre-crawling, full of vim and vigor, but not moving unless she uses her belly as a fulcrum.  it is completely astonishing, heartbreaking and amazing to realize i am going to forget this . . . as i have with the other two.  amazing.  memory is so malleable.  would that i were as well.

so there it is.

man, its occurred tome like ten times in the past week to quit this blog. i am fishing. tell me not to so i have an outer impulse. yes?

Friday, May 10, 2013

Five Minute Friday: COMFORT

Gypsy Mama does Five minute friday again: stop, drop and write on a topic given.  'Sposed to be unedited, and that is how i roll...


COMFORT:

homemade Macaroni and Cheese, alarm clocks keeping us in line... mind you, the one we have is too high-pitched for me to actually hear, so i suppose i should mention the quilts on my bed and the luxury of staying in them without alarm clocks...
baby cribs, baby blankets, baby heads... cat rubs on my legs, arriving in the Light of Meeting, the purity of the whiteness in there, the tall windows allowing the meditation of worship to wax and wane with the positioning of the clouds, the five year old yelling to hear the echoes- and then stopping, the quiet is never so great as when he stops...
finding the phone. crossing off the last item on the list, folding laundry, emptying baskets, where i find my comfort these days, making bags for goodwill, hearing the stories of who gets all this babyclothing, my god, the need is great...
reading, watching the baby smile when she makes it up to all four, rockin' the almost-crawl. pineapple. husband skin. rumbling voices, chest carrying sound.
dirt. growing things.  with all we've done to the world, growing things still work.  astonishing. just stick it in the dirt, and tend, and wait. 
chickens and eggs.  how is that even possible?

there is so much astonishment in the world and i am part of it... while i forget this regularly, it is a fantastic comfort when i remember.  i told my 7 year old boy in trouble that we are all children of god, and so 'safe' last week, and he smiled and dropped off the face of the earth into sleep... and thats the comfort we're all looking for, i think.

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Blissful Parenting. . .


the only blissful parenting is the willfully ignorant kind, (is that true?!) and i'm all in favor of the ignorance, and the happily delerious smile of the toy giraffe, inexplicably stiffened internally... 
Last friday, my kid socked another in the stomach, because he wouldn't return the pilfered DS when asked.
in a stroke of wonderfully appropriate teaching, my kid was not suspended, but simply told his mother would be notified after the teacher sorted it out between the two kids with remorse, apologies and so on and so forth.
i say 'wonderfully appropriate' because my kid is seven. and because we've spent the weekend as parents fighting about zero tolerance policies and what punishments are appropriate and what it means about our kid, if anything, and what impulse control in a seven year old actually IS.
and still I am unresolved. 
He got his punishment, which felt severe to him but not to me... losing all video games for the weekend, which is the only time he gets it all week anyhow.  but it was a big deal to him.
meh.
He is a good boy, I do not think he is an aggressive one.  He and his brother play together like hellions, and they often get violent, can boys be aggressive with siblings and know that it is not to be spread outside the sibling relationship?

Are we doing enough? How can we claim pacifism if we beat each other up? hm? how do we impress the seriousness of the mistake? How do we instill the idea that a mistake is not lifelong agony but might be a weekend-long agony? How do I get a grip on my own parenting self-esteem to allow him his own mistakes without sending myself down a river of blame? embarassment is here, and it shouldn't be. i get that, but still deal with myself.   shoot.