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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. . .