Humanity

New Year, now 2026

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I did finish Cannery Row. I loved it, the detached but clear, the emotions laid out, no therapy needed.. the gathering of characters, the drinking without emotional recoil, the raucous life. and honestly, the history, the ways in which a cannery town feels like a mining town, a logging camp, and oilman’s camp. All the characters in a mix with the greatest emotional turmoil being loneliness. Ah. Somehow all so lovely, ending up lovely with a sweet bit of poetry included:

Even now,
I know that I have savored the hot taste of life
Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and a forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light-

-on the last page of Cannery Row, lest you think I wrote it myself, because no.

I went to the first hockey game of my life and loved it. It was a regional high school team which includes friends of my kids, and siblings etc. AND they won dramatically and fantastically in an amazing match up. And because I am a goalie mom I watched and whispered strength to the goalie who had an astonishing number of saves. What more is there than that? That the percentage of saves is what really matters in life, and we all tend to forget that in our rush for ambitions and progress and ‘wins’.

My percentage of saves is high, my friends. and I’m really damn lucky. and hallelujah, January is here, and my body feels better and its over, for another year, this holiday fuckery. Made it through. I guess we all did, who are reading here. So there is that. And I love you, and I’ll see you.

_kate

My final slip of paper, my duty for the year is to make this true:

I can do it. I’m halfway there already.

Humanity

limbolimbolimbo

Lovelovemotherexpletive

its the week between Christmas and New Years. I’m not getting out of my pajamas very often and I am on my second book. The house is still a mess but there are no big meals for me to do anymore, and for New Year’s I am eating a lot of cheese, so there is that joy. (and make no mistake, that is JOY.) The kids are here all week and that is also a deeply deeply felt joy, and my fridge and freezer are overflowing.

First book was The Seamstress of New Orleans by Diane C. McPhail. I’m on the fence about it. It was definitely strongly feminist, and if that scares you, I don’t know what to tell you. Its always refreshing to read, I say, although not particularly resonant with today’s current scene. I am ‘too much’ with all the depression around women who voted for trump and the ‘tradwife’ bullshit. I just can’t conceive of how that exists. but anyhow, the book was just okay. felt light to me. a somewhat strange mix of point of view, then a merging of it, then an everything-solved ending. I’d still recommend it though, if you are in love with beautiful fabric details, and women making it work on their own, and definitively scoundrel-type men who are proven irrelevant.

So I’m here in this inbetwixt time. This is probably the first time ever I’ve not worked shifts here and there during this time, so I’m in full withdrawal, full-on sofa life. My next book is going to be Cannery Row by Steinbeck. I gave it to a kid who looked unbelievably unenthused to receive it, so fuck that, you know? Now its mine.

I made a bunch of plans on the solstice, on paper, and i cut them up and i burn one each night. I’ve forgotten some nights but on the Day of New Year’s day there will be one left and THAT one will be my responsibility for the year. I like the randomness and if my response is immediately ‘ugh’ then I throw up my hands and pick something else. I am in charge. (without even ever having been a seamstress in New Orleans, I am in goddamned charge.)

person holding burning paper in dark room
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I like the rule that says to burn it without looking. Maybe that is as close to rebel as I get these days.

BURN IT WITHOUT LOOKING BACK.

What explosion am I walking away from this week? Am I wearing good jeans? I can see it, man, I can see it.

AND I FEEL THE HEAT, and I’m still walking away.

to my sofa. and my book.

  • kate
Humanity

Ramble on Christmas Eve

Lovelovemotherexpletive

One thing I’m learning about work: I need to keep busy. If I feel like I’m useless or that I’m standing around and doing a lot of waiting then I get into trouble with needing to escape and run and that’s just nobody’s good news.

Another thing is that there are way more people like me than I think there are. I am more kooky maybe, but we’re good! and we try our best to treat people well.

(Fuck the president. He is not good.)

It’s Christmas Eve.

I’ve wrapped the things, I’ve made more cookies, I’ve surrendered to who and how much I have. This year, as last, I’m afraid that my ex and his wife will show up at ‘church’ despite my asking them not to. Last year they didn’t. But the dread was mine, and real, and time-consuming. We’re beginning the same pattern this year, again.

It’s been the tradition since separation that the kids come back from Christmas with their dad to meet me at ‘church’ /Quaker Meeting. He used to drop them now they drive themselves. The meetinghouse is filled with old friends and I want it to continue to sparkle in my eyes and theirs.

I do not want to share it with their dad and his wife. Can I maintain this boundary? I should be able to. It makes sense to me. But then,

Why do I feel so guilty?

WHY DO I FEEL GUILTY at all?!

Why guilt? Anger, paranoia, fear… ok? But guilt? Having my own ritual and tradition with the kids isn’t something I should have to feel ashamed about, right? Wanting sole ownership of the time?

Later: it was fine. I asked if he would honor that boundary. He said yes. Enough.

The presents were good . I made them open socks first so I could get that over with.

It was good,

Now I wait for turkey. May it be good as well. I’m overly lucky.

May you be as well.

All hail January! She comes!!!

Humanity

I do not know

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Second birthday is done now. Onto the Christmas thing.

Just made three different kinds of cookies to give as gifts. It was hours in the kitchen and I gave up on holding onto my sanity and it went right out the front door. I watched it go, that skanky bitch. She had a fucking swagger, she did.

My eyes are dry and I’m slightly sticky from all the sugar. I don’t know, man. Its a chance to say thank you to people, to show them a little generosity: of time, of thought, sometimes of money. I like it, actually, but not the wild stampede of my guilt and overwhelm as I try to fit in all the things and the planning and the grocery. Its all the steps that get me, the ways in which I am overwhelmed three weeks before the thing, the way my brain carves a groove in the ‘is this worth it’ platter holding the cheeses we’ll eat on the Eve.

My kids have Christmas with their dad the day before they have it with me. Mine is smaller this year than it ever has been and I’m just so done with all the things I think about that. Man, I need a good therapist, and I’m just so damn mad at myself that I am still falling into old patterns, ones which I’ve already tired out a few therapists with. OOOOLD news. so fucking old.

I don’t even care about them anymore, those old pieces of shit, to tell you the truth. But they come up AGAIN with the overwhelm and the fear that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not appreciated, that maybe I’m still invisible, like I was then.

so shit. i do not know. and here i am, all cookie-d out. and i look forward to giving them out tomorrow. I have to be in early, and its cozy day, so i’m just wearing a gigantic sweatshirt that almost comes to my ankles. I may not ‘rally’ and ‘be lively’. I predict a sort-of dazed experience of the day.

Love you guys. Be merry if you want to. 🙂

Cookies! So many goddamned cookies.

Humanity

sick days-time limit

Lovelovemotherexpletive

i’m haunted by food that is in the fridge. that chicken, could you cook it for me so it doesn’t go bad? i just cannot move. My nose is Gerard Depardieu.

I watched Last Holiday last night. Bob is a good egg to do it with me. (secretly he appreciated it tons. LL COOL J AND QUEEN LATIFAH? joy and extravagance? COME ON.)

there’s a timeline. this all has to go away in the next twelve hours because i haven’t been there long enough to have a sick day.

my middle child is the one of them who is not a good patient. tending him last night was one of those bitter moments when you realize your humanity is overriding the mother-bit. Being sick myself made it a hard one. but his fever broke sometime in the night and he was sweetly sweaty this morning and he will be 18 tomorrow and well. He was my easiest birth, and it was 18 years ago. dang.

Its been a doozy so far this year. I thought I’d gotten so much better with the divorce/shared parenting thing but this year has definitely shown me my flaws. Bitter bleeding pain moments at the kids being absent from me are occurring. I mean… ouch stuff. the right word is PIERCING.

the holidays and birthdays are always a ‘too much’ time for me, but this year I have wept, and I don’t recover as quickly as I’d like. My monkey mind is full of competitions and loss, and ‘well, fine, I’m wrapping the socks, we’re just going to have popcorn and I’ll leave all the presents to the rich dad and stepmom. Because I cannot win.’

And I still spend too much, and wrestle with my savings account. And it uncovers the part of me that really does watch the competition and try to participate. And believe it or not, as un-American as it is, I am aware that competition is out of place, and a full-on negative for me. but there it is. it appears anyhow.

I’ve done christmas by myself for my whole life with my kids. (like most moms) Do they know that? No. It is not just the two houses that makes it tough. Its a much bigger issue of feeling unseen and unappreciated. I was asked to move ‘things’ because of the stress the stepmom was feeling. So now there is a second woman overwhelmed and stressed by the season. (and yes, i wept, because goddamnit, this is my role, not anyone else’s and how dare their dad allow it to happen to someone else. isn’t one enough? ((and what the fuck does he DO?)) )

and then we go back to the chicken in the fridge and the need to cook for all the people. and the one home from college who fell asleep at 7 am.

Its a cheap, falling-apart wicker basket of emotions over here. And it better be all done in the next 12 hours. Thats it.

time limit.

person holding white tissue paper
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