Category: Humanity

Humanity

Skip this one. No, really.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I kind of feel like whining today. I’m not sure what it is, things are mostly going fine. I’m waiting for a phone call about a job, and I’m home and mostly cozy and I did my chicken chores this morning with very minimal heavy breathing or grotesquerie. So, what is my complaint?

My kids are good, I’m good. So what is up with the desire to whine and criticize? I’m giving snark to what I read, giving snark to what I see…

I’ve been missing my old instagram which used to just have pretty pictures that made me happy, and now it’s all ads and I want to spend money but don’t have those extras, so there and bite me, marketers.

I have to shut it off and put the phone down when I get like that. It does me no good to be snarky at the algorithm. Do they hear me somehow? Yes, they do. They’ve even robbed me of my belief in freakish coincidences. Yes, they have.

I’ve already taken all the games off the phone. I find myself picking it up and just staring at it, willing the game to appear, so i can fill my empty void up. So whats that about?! What empty void? Seriously? I find that incredible.

What empty void?

I’m pretty damn busy and content with many things, so what’s the ceaseless motion needed for? the ceaseless motion of a swappit game or a glass pickup? (not me but some people)…

I used to smoke so maybe its that same urge, to blank out, to sit alone and just stare out at stuff while breathing deeply and making other people leave you alone.

whine whine nudge. My dissatisfaction is high. and yet, isn’t. gah. I’m feeling antsy. The little red ones.

what about if I’m just bored with the life right now? Am I secretly a drama queen, underneath all this practicality? I cannot believe it to be so. I cannot.

I do love to skip contractions sometimes, I do.

How can a dork like me ever be bored? I like to talk about contractions, for chrissakes.

The fire is crackling and snapping. Loud enough that even I can hear. This is pretty wonderful.

Generally, I think that my periods of frustration, exasperation, antsyness, are followed by a period of gloom and then of action. Maybe I’m just following the seasons, I don’t know. I used to love my season of hibernation. Maybe now that the kids are all gone all day, my role shift has me feeling like i have too much time? and yet.

I’m a person who deeply needs my alone time. and while i wish it were more lucrative, my ghostwriting and editing provide me with pay and the alone time that i crave. They’ve also been fantastic practice at recognizing the beats of a good story. I would say also that they’ve allowed me to say that I have written books. And I have. And people buy them. I cannot tell you who, or what the author’s name is who sells my writing, but people buy them!

So wah, wah. Sisboombah.

I don’t know what to tell you. I bet you wish you’d listened, when I told you to skip this one.

love you, do.

-me.

Humanity

Silver or gold. A prompt.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I wrote this in twelve minutes, you try.

Silver or gold? Is it a question, or a statement?

What do you think? Is it the wealth of the boat ladies down by the shore, you’d expect gold but it’s the class, the class of the plain silver, the ‘I’m so wealthy and have been for so long, that I don’t need to do anything ornate. I’m a New England Smith for goodness sakes.’ the gold is for the Italians, the Jews, the flash.

Silver or gold? The friendships, the new ones, the old ones? I don’t know which is which, I think I probably have some of the new England boat lady in me, although I’m sure they’d dispute me, but heavily mixed with the chicken shit and mud of the maine dairy farmer, and my friendships range but none are pure. None.

Silver or gold? On the tree, a mix of both. It’s the sparkle for me, the way in which the light catches and is reflected and yet also stays in place, static and kinetic.

My kids sparkle.the dog does not. He’s a solid peace of lead. Lovely for what you need, but leaden. Don’t put your tongue on him.

Silver or gold? Both. A slurry, that molten mercurial slither. Harry potter on audio. A night alone to make a fire and look at a tree and watch truly terrible but pretty movies.

Silver or gold? snowflakes hang around the kitchen . I think they are the evergreens, despite their whiteness. Did she just call snowflakes the evergreens, despite all evidence to the absolute contrariness of that sentence? Absolutely. (third person self-referencing just temporary, i swear)

Silver or gold? The singing snowman puts them together, no ‘or’, but an ‘and’. Both, inclusive.

Silver or gold? Maude is in here somewhere? The slurry perhaps. The mixing of metals and the melt into a new form.

The visiting room at the facility, the ways in which the lovers of the newcomers cling to their patients, not knowing anything but relief that the crisis is past, that they have survived it, unlike all the people who were not here. Who didn’t make it, who didn’t get found in time.

Silver and gold? The earrings that dangle in the ears of women, the bells, the come see me, the decoration at the heart of womanhood. What is it to refuse them? to not have silver or gold, anywhere, just flesh and fabric covering bones and blood. Nothing more.

Silver or gold? Working? Plaid shirts and Vermont in mind. Mountains and old guys in pickup trucks. Which one is that?

Hey there. Do a prompt. See what you get.

love you, do.

-kate

person holding gold and silver round coins
Photo by RODNAE Productions on Pexels.com
Humanity

ITs the 21st, of December.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

It’s the winter solstice, yes, but. . .

It’s in my mind, every waking moment. Did I get equal amounts? Did I forget someone? is there a huge hole in one of the lists? When do i decorate the kitchen? How’m I going to get the freaking yard candycanes out? I do not know, man. I really do not know. Certainly not this morning. The coffee was heated up from yesterday. I need more but I’m still recovering from last night’s frigid farmstand and my body is a goddamned pain wheelbarrow. I’m a sick sad fool and I’m trying to save money over Christmas so there is no coffee bought on the road, and no donuts purchased. What kind of sick bastard does that to herself at this time of year?

I think I’m done. I’m not sure I’m done. There is food here, and that’s 60% of saving Christmas. Yes, it is. (Say anything different and I’ll do the whole screaming thing again. Don’t do it.)

i love the sparkle, i love the preparation for winter. I loved the grocery shop i did yesterday because I could feel the depression-era part of me just thrilling at the pantry staples I was buying, the extra bag of kindling guaranteed to help us be toasty and together in the kitchen. I started a cookie dough that has to chill for a bit so I’ve got an after-school project. I took on an extra eight hour shift this week so not working next week much will be more okay. These are the things I can do.

O I like the sparkle. I like the three recognizable songs we’ll sing at Quaker Meeting on Christmas Eve. Quakers are lovely but they do not understand the awesome power of a song everyone knows being sung together, and they regularly introduce us all to very very old hymns on Christmas eve. Yes. Sigh. I roll, the kids roll.

I’m trying to talk to myself a little bit about some of the things I do not like, besides the obvious financial strain and pressure to ‘make it’ something… Christmas prep, decorating and wrapping solo really does suck. I’m not quite able to festive my way through it, and it bothers me, both the alone part and the inability to control my mindset. I’m just bothered and I get a little unhappy. This year I am going to have Thursday night and Friday night (after basketball games) to get it done, and I’ve got to make a plan to assuage my monsterous mood. I’m hoping to put on a favorite movie and eat some of the cookies I’ve made. Maybe I’ll turn the heat way up for a little toasty nest feeling. I don’t really drink but maybe I’ll set some mulled cider to cook, or one of those random scent pots that people do- cinnamon and oranges and stuff. ?

what am i, a pilgrim?

Anyhow. Happy Solstice to you all. The longest night. Rest up, set your intentions. Be good to each other. Love you much. Always very thrilled to hear from you, so bring it.

The New Year is coming! The New Year is coming!

-love love,

me.

anise aroma aromatic blur
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Humanity

dear god, it’s me, incapable.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’d love to tell you the website was down. it may have been. but I’ve been unable to open the page which enables me to write a new post on my laptop. on my phone? why yes. But here, with space to type with two hands and a screen as big as I want? no, no, no. (if you tell me it’s my laptop and that I need a new one, I’m just going to start screaming nonstop for the next hour. people will be upset. don’t do it.)

clearly, i AM capable.

I’ve swamped the google with my questions and i’m clear of a cache and really, that’s just how simple it was. sluggish thy name is…

if none of that makes sense, you are probably my people. you are also my people if you’re laughing at how simple a fix that was.

Basically everyone is my people. except the hate mongers. but really, even them, if i could just get them to come and stay with me and my kids for a few weeks. There are other ways to be in the world, and I’ve got one of those ways.

I’m coming off of a birthday dinner with my middle, a brand new fifteen-year-old. He is very funny, and very charming, and so smart. Sitting at the dinner table with my kids and my mom last night, I just fell in love with them all. in all of their cantankerous, funny, teen and pre-teen ways, these kids are just fucking incredible. it’s one of the great bittersweets that having one who is a senior and will leave the nest soon, has made everything so sweet, so watchable, so sentimental. It’s a great gift to have this time to watch them and see them together. these moments are really affecting their entire lives, these sibling relationships. I dream that they’ll be able to support each other as they go forward in their lives.

Meanwhile, they’ll have to deal with the fact that they are getting a lot of socks for Christmas. As a team, they’ll start the support system sooner than they’d rather. I’m very much the hopeful mom on that one. I’m just going to make sure breakfast is good, that’s all there is to it.

Happy Winter Holidays to you, whatever you celebrate, however you live. . .

love love,

kate

Cosmic Fairy Lights
Cosmic Fairy Lights by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Cosmic fairy lights? Seriously? C’mon NASA, its like you are in my brain. Wait. ARE YOU in my brain?

Humanity

Yesterday I wrote. . .

Lovelovemotherexpletive

This: The constancy with which my brain flits around?, when I want to staple it to one particular subject? damnit.

I don’t have adhd or anything even close. But man, the way my brain skitters from the things I must think, or do. Reptilian, arachnid. Disgusting and in my own flipping head. The car certainly took over great swathes of field for the past few weeks, but I’ve got work to do, and tv to avoid.

also this:

I really want to be away, in isolation someplace, and I even want it to be something I have to stretch through, struggle with. I think I need to face myself. Label the parts of me that flit and merge and morph. I think the slips of paper will coalesce into something I can understand more.

me. yesterday, 12/6/22

I’m grateful for woodstoves. Coffee. Soft clothing.

I’m grateful that I’ve started to hold real boundaries. That I can see that they are good for me, that they hold me to the standard of protecting myself, in a healthy way. I’m grateful that I can rely on my sense of humor, even when I don’t know how I can possibly be accessing it. I’m just glad that I can walk through the world like I can.

I’m grateful for the time and the space I’ve had these last 7 years. This ability to ‘not work’, pay my bills and watch the kids grow, all because I married someone who now makes a lot of money. How ’bout that. I suppose I am supposed to stretch and say I’m glad I married him. Sigh. Working on it.

So glad of them, though, so unblemished a gratitude… so grateful that they exist, so proud that I find them so interesting and funny and full of heart.

pile of covered books
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

All in one day, folks. All in one day. It’s astonishing I’ve not won the Pulitzer, isn’t it?