i can write still, though. just take naps and sit quietly at the table in between ehem..
i have a teapot sticker on my computer. don’t remember where it came from but i love it. maybe i think it represents a person i am not, but i don’t care. its black with mustard yellow flowers and i think of a girl typing in a small cafe in a romantic movie. messy bun and glasses. so maybe i’m in there a little bit. i certainly have the glasses.
my college kid and i don’t talk on the phone and i’m not writing letters right now so i am feeling disassociated and i am panicking on the inside.
who am i? what do i have if i’m not the mother anymore? Moving into my sea hag era? woman whose kids are out in the world. yes, there is still a 13-year-old at home but last one, big house with just the two of us knocking around in it. things are different now. decidedly so.
so much of what i worry about will only have relevance if i die, (how will they remember me? it haunts me. the relevance, the invisible, the wealth disparity, where will they bring their kids) and so i want to weep a little for my inner turmoil because none of it is happening now, and when it does, i can always move further inward.
i have no retirement plan. i am 51. so there is that. see previous sentences about weeping and living in the present only.
there is a lot more on my list of things to do while i am homebound today, but i think i might take a nap. because sleep fixes a lot of things. sometimes.
There are over three feet of snow in my yard. specifically, in the driveway. the kids have shoveled but we have not left the driveway, for any reason. I shoveled out the dryer vent and tried to relieve the ice dam that is sending water into the living room. (unsuccessful).
Water is in my living room. There are buckets and towels and there really is nothing to be done except make plans for later.
Almost out of wood. Was planning to go out today to the wood guy, but then it started snowing. I have heat, but the woodstove makes a very big difference.
That is my car out there. for real, for real.
Those are the fingers on one hand. The other hand? I have not lost power once, even a little, so there has been heat and ovens to cook the nuggets. There is plenty of food, and enough even if the power does go, to cook on the stovetop.
I have a job now which pays me all year, even if there is a snow day making it impossible to get to work. Not having that would make me insane and fearful right now. It is critically different to not have that.
I’ve read some. finished a re-read of a Louise Penney book, The Cruelest Month. I do love how much I grow to love a town, a detective and feel the press of a dark winter in her books. Hidden, hissing emotions and a detective who can speak of them. (this was the third in the series, but I have read the previous ones already, plus some later, I think you could read it without knowing the series.) I saw Louise Penny once down at a book talk on the cape, and man, she was relateable and charming, and just an ordinary smart woman. It was lovely.
I am eating snacks that I got while I was in Mexico. Did I tell you I went to Mexico? Of course not, I know. I was in Mexico, at the end of the baja peninsula in Cabo san Lucas. I was not at a resort, but had the most wonderful time feeling the sun on my skin and being warm. We (anita and my sister and I) watched the sunset every night, and ate beautifully in our own kitchen. Anita lives there and is miraculously fluent, working her way to being a local, she is.
They call them Japanese peanuts, but if you go to Japan, they call them Mexican peanuts. So, a cultural exchange.
The book in my lap is Wally Lamb, The River is Waiting and I am sure I have not read anything by Wally before. and it is so good ad well-written, but I am afraid of the heaviness. Oprah, why? Why? Am I just being emotionally tossed around like a ragdoll? Will I recover? Can I bear it in this time of sequester?
Its all giving me vibes of Covid, and its a little disconcerting. I still can’t even believe that happened. Can you?
There is nothing super funny in today’s episode of Kate Writes. I’m sorry if I’ve let you down. IF you are local, I wish you lots of ice melt, and someone else to do the shoveling/plowing/blowing. (also i have heat and you are welcome here if you can get here. plenty of room) If you are not, please send your love to the sun, because she needs to remember her power.
wink.
love,
kate
Toes in the Pacific. First time ever. Also, for real.
What happens to me if I can’t get good sleep? For a week or so? Never twice in a row even!? (i have since gotten a couple good nights in..hence, ability to write somewhat coherently.
I cry before work and don’t know why
I change my clothes more than once in the mornings and look like a homeless person who wandered into a school- no one has said anything yet. I’m just not coherent, and my ‘I don’t care’ is high. Just put on another sweater, it’ll all work out.
I dread bed, no matter how tired I am or if the honey man is up there.
My patience… oh wherefor art thou?
My eyes get smaller and smaller and I squint at the world.
I fake it and fake it and fake it and start looking for a therapist with more determination because those who love me are commenting on my rawness. they are not buying into the fakery.
Thin skin means issues rise to the surface. No longer contained.
Good goddamned. I’m calling it boredom, but I think it’s the distractability of the sleep deprived. I’m getting bored with things that are different every single day, and it doesn’t make any sense. Boredom is a little dangerous for me. things will start to happen.
I lie in bed, exhausted, and just lie there. eyes closed, brain clicking along like a train on a track, nothing to resolve, nothing resolved, just click after click after click.
I definitely know that there are people with SERIOUS sleep issues, and I think mine is temporary, and so there, it is said. But good goddamn. I am so tired. Is this just the fifties for women? Really? Maybe. the ‘fucks to be given’ are leaving, if not gone entirely, and I’m relying on the world around me to adjust. Good idea? mm.
with slight concern, but only slight because i mean, who cares about my goddamned sleep, really? I mean, not even me.
I’ll get it done anyways. this is a clear ‘whatever’ situation and mood.
love love,
kate
ps. Maybe sleep is affecting my positivity? How you like me now?! Huh? Huh?
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:
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.)
