Category: Humanity

Humanity

summer lists and tips

Lovelovemotherexpletive

like the boat my father-in-law lost in the harbor, she tips, and leans, and slowly sinks. the heat, my friends, the heat, and she’s only half way done.

In my fiftieth year, I set myself some goals, which is a thing I am wishy washy about, being as they are, something of a new year’s resolution, bound for sinking.

but with the joy of a number like fifty, there is something so satisfying in the attempt. I would like to have fifty beach visits this year, and fifty books. I am small-wishing, a possibly achievable goal, and one which I will really enjoy attempting.

books, as you know, are harder to read when your mind has shifted to the quick and tempestuous nature of the phone. the ability to pay attention has weakened, and i want it back. At work at the farm, I have to listen while I seed, or drive, so there is that change to my life of reading.

I am currently listening to Jane Eyre. and c’mon. there is so much that I have forgotten and my relationship with Mr. Rochester is so deeply changed. What a goddamned scoundrel. I want to rush to grab Jane and take her away from the living RedFlag.

And I listened to the Grass Harp last month, and man, I was surprised by moments of deep love for some of those characters. And the treehouse and the desire to escape to one. and love, what does it mean to love, and to love hard, the tiniest of things. Oh my laws.

I’ve been to the beach seven times this month, and that is seven times more than I went last summer, which is part of my deeply needed change taking place. There is, there, a way to grab back your own soul from what buildings your body builds around it. I’ve lost track of how many staircases there are in my way these days, and I need to get back to the simple shoreline of my self.

Town beach, Westport,MA.

I’m here. There are a few things I am failing at, and I’ve got no choice but to look at them. And that is tough and very unliked. But there are so many more things that I am swinging right through. And today I will cut some flowers from my garden. I’m taking my dirty feet out there as soon as I’m done here, and I will be astonished, and so will my kitchen table.

i love you guys out there in the world, because you read my words, and i feel in company, and thats pretty damn valuable to me.

and while the boat may drift, she is not counted out just yet.

  • me.
Humanity

A doozy. And a birthday. And heat.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

1. I was outside watering my garden and a young buck came strolling through. I called out to him as he came close, asking if he saw me, checking in to see if he was alright, thinking, I think, that I’d go get him a carrot. He was close enough that i could see the fuzz on his antlers and count the elk spots on his flank. When I called to him, he just looked at me for a minute and then moved along. No beef.w

He came through near to the chickens, and then my dog noticed him and lunged towards him and he ran off through the bushes. There was no real emergency, my dog is a member of the cowardly lion crew.

2. I turned fifty. My lovely man got me the gift of my best friend for the week, and i took all those days off. It was a real joy bomb and I’ll take it, again and again.

3. I’m wearing booty shorts, at my daughter’s painfully awful softball game because it is in the 90s and humid and if I could lie down until the fall, I would. Welcome to my booty.

4. i will write more. I got myself a little bitty keyboard that sits on my lap so i can type onto my phone. I’m using it now. I’m a tech-genius and now I can write anywhere I want to, pen or no pen.

See my cute keyboard? And my barely theres?

5. 50. It might be time to get a job that can sustain me and the kids. I’m going to have to sell the house, and the more I say it, and share it aloud, the more okay I’m going to be with it. There is time still to get along with it. But it must and will be done.

6. I’m very stubborn. Very. Very. Very. It is very hard for me to handle number 5 and I rail against it. So small and demeaning, and it activates my stubborn nature, and none of this is helpful or practical or rational. Digging in for the sake of digging in is idiotic.

7. I’m 50 now. I should grow the fuck up. And write more. I hate feeling sheepish about coming here. That’s utterly ridiculous.

Love you though. Do.

-me.

Humanity

Not sure at all. a list of course.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m about three skin layers away from hysteria. And they are transparently thin sometimes.

And I’m back to smoking, and there is, in the addiction, the belief that if I could just go outside and have a minute to myself, everything would re-set itself, and I’d be fine, it would ease my mind somehow. and it’s a lie, every time, it’s a lie. I’m sitting here with minutes to myself right now, inside, and at the typer, and I am not escaped, and I am not even needing escape. It’s a trick of the mind, and I resent the bastards who’ve encouraged the ‘on the road’ shit that tells me I need to wander in order to find. Without and within, you know what I’m saying? I’m not a badass because I smoke, I am a craven addict.

My boys are both teaching themselves to play guitar. There is much to say about that. pride and cringes and whatnot.

Tissue paper thin. My eleven year old daughter suddenly resents me. It is a hard change to swallow, no matter how well I can identify and depersonalize.

I just planted the last of the dahlias. Saving something over the winter to plant again and have hopes for, is possibly my pride moment of the year, aside from the guitar thing and the fact that my daughter is a flaming badass.

I’m trying to get my ducks all lined up to lower some of my expenses this year. Everything takes time, especially when you add in my fearful procrastination. I had to make two cold calls to gather appointments this morning, and it made me unable to go in to my most part time job. Too many things.

The nerves and anxieties of having to ask a stranger for help? An appointment? When that is literally their job, to field these calls? And still, I am crippled? Why am I still 11 years old and of the middle school innards?

These steps. Get the trampoline listed on the giveaway page. Wait for someone to come and get it. They cancel. List it again. Finally goes, to become a chicken run for someone else. Heavens to Betsy.

Find policy. Wait three weeks to gather the nerves to call what I actually know will be a good resource. Wtf.

I had to wait for my tax return to fix the leaking upstairs bathtub. So, had to first do taxes, then get quote, then bleed from the eyes in horror and refuse to use said bathroom until I got another quote. Got refund. Then called friend of friend, young young young and he did it for 150. All done. No ceiling teardown, no mold remediation and suddenly I am at two working bathrooms and I didn’t even have to do my damn taxes for anything afterall. Which of course, is a lie. Hello school systems! Hello working highway departments! Hello bridge repair! I love you, of course you can have my taxes! Thank you for your service!!

Call the garage that will handle the car once its towed. Mother of god, I am ridiculous. Does anyone specifically pray to mary? I always found that easier, but felt like I was sneaking around or being a cheat somehow or that maybe she wasn’t a real choice, and that, in the face of my wavering beliefs in anything other than the big dad figure in the sky. and my less wavery belief that we all get what we dream of in the end anyhow, as long as we try not to do harm. I’m extremely lucky to have had the dad I did. Even with his questionable rage practices. As a parent now, I am less confused by fits of rage.

All these multiple step processes and they’ve been with me for weeks or months and yes, I know the ‘break it into baby step’ methods but hell gods, that only works if you can take steps at all. I’ve got to go register my kid for a soccer camp in the summer. This, she will resent me for also, but at least i will cut down on her screen time for one whole week while i am incessantly working. sigh. all hail summer.

love you guys. hope to get out the writing bugs more often…

me.

*The fact that now I have to wait for a call back is breaking me. I’ll have a whole ‘nother breakdown when it arrives. This is probably unsupportable materials.

Putting the treasure back in the pizza. Yes.
Humanity

questions… 5 am.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Being almost 50.

  • how do i let go if i keep remembering?
  • no really, if I’m still stuck on how a landline works, how’m I supposed to get satellite signals equaling real and true sounding voices?
  • is this it then, the culmination of my life, that i work all the time and worry about the kids?
  • How do i get my fucking jade plant to thrive? i think about it way too much.
  • why are accidents so much more poignant for me now? because i feel my own mortality so much? the ways in which small things can be enormous in a life?
  • Can i work forever? when the kids are gone and i’ve moved into a tiny house with my man somewhere, can i just wake up and go to work, forever? there is always so much to be done. everywhere. all I i want to do is plant stuff.
  • do you know i have to change clothes two or three times a day just to be clean and non-contaminated, depending on what i am doing at the farm, or at the school? the car is a jumbled up closet of farmshoes, and school clothes. the back seat is unusable. yesterday i laid all the seats down to deliver eggs to a store 45 minutes away. then, i played playdough. outfit changes. Is this adulthood?
  • Want some eggs? I have a lot. Finally got rid of a bunch of roosters, and now they are much happier ladies out there. Nobody needs or wants that much cock. No question.
  • I need to go away for a week by myself. Think that will ever happen? No, me neither. And I would miss everyone so much, and I can’t afford to miss a week of work anyways. But I’m pining for it. Ever heard of Woolman Hill? (this is not an invitation for my sister or boyfriend or brother to buy something. got it? don’t piss me off.)
  • Self hair cuts? Yes? or no?
  • I think i’m done here, I’m losing my juju.
  • Love to you,
  • me.

Some of these babies have already been planted in the field now, that’s how quickly things grow these days. and they’re off!!

Humanity

Make ’em laugh.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

We wrote about singing today in my writing group. I found myself lost in my dad’s choral career. usually the deepest voice in the group but for the lovely Lauren next to him. Church. His growing up Baptist with so many cousins, and hymns that focused on somber joy, was a way of being which I think he did pretty well. When I imagine him squeezing his elbows against his belly in laughter, his hands in balls (think manly t-rex) there is nothing better. He was a mixed bag, for sure, but he did find joy pretty often.

Between he and my grammie harriet, they were my true goals. To make them laugh meant I’d made it. I was a heroine amongst heroines. I didn’t know funny jokes or anything, it was perspective, or whimsy, or somesuch. My favorite motherinlaw said I had edge, and I suppose that too, is true. Took me a long time to appreciate that it was something different in me, not just weirdness.

I had an unfortunate marriage, and spent a lot of time sad, fearful and angry. I was still funny though, but threaded through with those emotions, and it felt like grit sometimes.

Now my days are filled with plants and little kids, and my own kids, bigger but still kids, all of them, even the one away in school. And there are few adults in my circles. And I’m a shoe-in to make a preschooler laugh. Absolutely. They are my spirit animals, so tangibly connected to joy.

there is nothing better.

What a terrifically unfunny post. Irony.

ha. LOVE YOU MOST.

-me.