Humanity

I love us.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Its spring and I’ve started to want to rake things. I just volunteered to clean the duck pen out on a day that I don’t usually work because the weather has changed and I am in love with everything. Try and stop me.

(my farmer will pay me, don’t worry.)

I love the smell of too cold dirt, getting muddy at its edges, as it, too, feels itself.

I love the people doing the jobs, the cashiers, the bus drivers, the people who’s real lives are outside of the work they do, but they’re showing up. showing up and showing up. keeping the world on its feet.

I love the people who say what they do as their identity. How incredible. God bless ’em, showing up and showing up. artists, farmers, healers, plumbers, keeping the world in water and wisdom, maybe even beauty if we get lucky. we so often do.

I love that so many humans have pets. come on and love a strange little beastie, come on. I love Bella the cat and Eddie the dog and the ten little wee dinosaur birds that are chirping in the next room. I also love the nearly 1500 big dinosaur birds that I get to feed each week. Them’s a lotta bird.

I love all the kids, all of them, with all of the learning they still have to do, and all they have to teach us as they do. (especial love today to trans kids and the kids without a box. holding them to the deepest depth of my ability. how incredibly brave they are to make something new.)

I love watching kids grow. I love watching spring hit this part of the earth. Yellow has begun to arrive and I am captured.

I love the candy, oh man, I do. too much. I could fill notebooks on the days when candy has gotten me through. My teeth are sad, sometimes, and probably my internal organs, but my god, I love it, and the relationship we have.

I love good parents and the ones who love their kids. I love all of us. the hard work we do for them. the way we love them long after they leave the house we first met them in. forever and a day.

I love the weirdos. I do. The truth is, everyone is a little bit weird. so, guess what?

I LOVE US!!

(This message brought to you by the sun, and the dirt and the outside.)

Humanity

so many things.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I just finished a therapy session, and haven’t had one in quite a while, so there was a lot to go through and I did all the talking, believe you me.

  1. my kid is a senior, and there is slow and steady shift in dynamics, beginning deep in my insides, about how to let go of control of the lives of my children. and clearly, there are still two that i will devastatingly control, but having a kid lean into adulthood is really something.
  2. I have this before-school school job that is really pushing me in terms of my hearing. I’ve gone and had an appointment with a doctor in boston who does cochlear implants to see if i can improve my hearing, because it sucks to miss so much when its kids. With adults I can get things repeated but kids often think they’ve done something wrong if you ask them to repeat themselves and the original impulse is lost. (Sidebar, today boy B was upset because his boogers were wet. I caught that one.) Generally though, I feel upset a little most days. I also have to be there at 7. Have I mentioned that? So early. So early. I do not enjoy.
  3. music is back and around again. I’m talking Wil Varley, Alexi Murdoch, the Cure. You dig? I’m enjoying.

4. I’m still outside and at work, and I still love it. Its hard and fairly gross at times but when I think about the most beautiful place in the world, it involves me standing empty-handed outside the coop, looking up at the sky. I wonder if my farmer knows that? I bet she does.
5. I’m still at a loss how to handle the many changes that are settling in on me here, changing familes, changing realities of finances, ears maybe, and love and tidbits of change in all the ways. the one thing i’ve let go of for these next few months is planning. I’m just going to ride the waters, whether it be wavy or calm, I’m just along for the float. Will see which shore we wash up on, I guess.
6. I’m not writing nearly enough. Not here, not anywhere. And I feel it. But today I have lunch with Robert, my writing partner, and that’ll be cool. He’s moving in May to be with a long-distance love affair. Can you believe things like that still happen? I am astonished. Perhaps I am too careful, practical. Someone make those into romantic things… Hmm.

Thats it, just checking in here.

Love you guys,

Kate

Humanity

Saturday, at the end of vacation week.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

The times they are a’changing.

In years past, I would be almost truly dead at this point, just scraping my way along to the dream of Monday morning when routine returns, and the kids climb on a bus.

This year, I’ve got an entirely different feeling, and there is a very real and visceral awareness of the end of things. one child will be exploring the world next year, however that looks. the dynamics of the home front will change radically and become something new.

they’ve all been so busy this week that my rushing to get home for them was moot. I’ve barely seen them, any of them, and they’re all okay with that, and so am I, mostly. It feels like an adult household somehow, even though the youngest is still just ten. We’re morphing before my eyes.

we will re-form. and celebrate the reformation.

Beauty bits.

-i’m sitting in an empty house, listening to laundry and dishes being washed by machines. the spin and whirl of both machines meaning I have almost completed my job for the day. Tonight is bolognese, and I’m thrilled just thinking about it. These are the things in my mind. The cleaning, the food.

First time I had bolognese was in a student flat in Glasgow, Scotland. How’s that for an interesting tidbit? My flatmate was an excellent cook. Rachael Rose. I’ve lost touch with her but she was a lovely lovely one. And such an English beauty, cheeks flushed with pink all the time.

The no-winter season is winding down, I’m worrying less about the early crocii. they never do learn, do they? Or maybe I’m the stubborn one, insisting on worry in the face of their resilience.

I’m gearing up for the summer, trying to figure out how to strengthen up for the planting and the harvesting to come. My sister brought me some ranunculus and my love of flower is unabated.

UN-ABATED.

what a delerious thing language is.

Sigh. My goodness peoples, what a post. Would love to apologize, but know you’ll make the best of it. Much love,

-me.

Ranunculus in all it’s layered incredible-ness.
Humanity

it has happened, to me, finally. (fake drama)

Lovelovemotherexpletive
  1. there are no empty counterstops in this house. it is possible there are no empty surfaces at all. i need outside intervention that does not judge, in look, word, or attitude.
  2. two of my kids are away skiing with their dad. i’m spending a very long weekend with my eldest and we are going to eat out at almost every meal. this seriously may be the best weekend of my life.
  3. yesterday was my first fully-off day in a bit. well, i worked for an hour and a half with kids and was home by 8:30 am, but i’m not counting that. I made coffee, had a bowl of cereal and was on the phone most of the day until a kid came home. a FULL DAY OF NOTHINGNESS AND DECREPITUDE. i am not happy. the loss of a day. I mean, i took a nap, but it wasn’t even a particularly good day, just boring, and there were a million things I could have done and i’m pretty bummed at my blahghaness.
  4. Before the decrepitude, i had a six year old climb into my lap to snuggle. she lay her head under my chin and just sat. it is possibly the best thing to have happened in many weeks. we should all have such simple pleasures.
  5. A woman who is funny told me she liked my blog. In person. I’m still blushing and my ears are burning with flush and now i have to hide all the posts in which I whine. (no, i won’t, because it would be too much work, but oh god, it was cool and cool. )
  6. Okay, now that is the end of what has happened this week. Happy Friday loves!

-love love,

me.

have a great day sticker on brown surface
Photo by Cori Emmalea Rodriguez on Pexels.com
Humanity

sugar (love it too much, so much.)

Lovelovemotherexpletive

it was just valentine’s day and this single woman is here to make you a love list.

  1. i’m working with kids again and the swell of love that i feel when i see these kids is just incredible. An actual swell of love. Saying good morning to them and legitimately wanting to know how they are and how the time has passed since we last spoke? JOY BUBBLES. this is what is behind teachers and why they will die for your kids, and why they have not demanded the 100K they deserve for doing those things. An ACTUAL SWELL OF LOVE. (go find that, by the way, if you don’t know what I am talking about, make it your mission.)
  2. growing things are happening, even without the presence of a good deep quiet snow. I’ve missed winter, and I know that is a little unpopular, but i think it is a necessary break in the year, and I wonder what will happen without it. AND things are growing, I am trying eucalyptus seeds this year, and the curiousity and possibility is just a thrill to my system. They are percolating in the next room as I speak. Anyone want some for your shower?
  3. Seeds, Learning, all the metaphors. I’m taking a course in seed production, which means my farmer is loaning me some land and I can try out a particular herb or flower and then harvest the seeds. which i may be able to then sell. “MIGHT I HAVE A BIT OF EARTH?” (The Secret Garden. as it turns out, might be my metaphor.) I am wildly excited, and entirely unsure when I am going to see my kids this summer. I look around frequently to see if anyone can solve this for me. So far, no.
  4. I learned my belief of the afterlife from C.S. Lewis and his The Last Battle, and I’m sticking to it. If you believe in something good, that is what you get. If you believe the afterlife is full of tall trees made of marshmallows? You get it. And so, I’m here to tell you this glorious fact. My life looks like the afterlife already. (minus the money, minus the money, and the tiredness, and the no best sexy friend momoa.) HOW FUCKING AMAZING.

I love you guys. Go search for more things to add to your love list. Its the only thing that matters, that love list. Really.

pink petaled flowers close up photography
Photo by Juan Sauras on Pexels.com