the fury of finances is settling down. Have started being paid for the new hours, have asked the farm boss to pay me asap, and she’s happy willing and understanding. the credit card carried the day, which bites it but got me gas in the car and the kids got their juice. mofo.
in my adult life i have never had it be such a goddamned lightening strike as that was and I’d be very happy never to repeat it.
And spring has mostly exploded, so at the climax of it all are daffodils, and wild expanses of seedlings in a greenhouse and little baby grape hyacinths everywhere. So i am content.
Grape hyacinth in the front yard
I am sitting on my porch and I feel like I’m on a softly rocking boat, watching a sunset. One of those life altering appreciations, the wild privilege of a beautiful life.
So it swings, this pendulum, between sense and sensibility. today is all the senses.
and its kim smith’s birthday. holy shit. we be 50 this year.
today is another day to miss and mourn my lively senses and their formerly rich role in my life. perhaps.
I’ll still wave my hope flag in the world despite all that is happening and the ways in which the bad guys seem to win all the time. bigger guns, fat wallets, less compassion and zero empathy. fuck ’em all and dig your little garden. or bunker, what have you.
why haven’t the mega-rich all been set on fire?
It is not my hope that they get set on fire, but that I regain my sense of wonder, my ability to find the sparkles amongst the drudgery.
I’ve got these free hours and i’m trying to take care of all the little buggers, the paperwork the health insurance people want, the bill from the eye appointment, the slowdown on paying off the credit card, these small little important things. but i have the time and finally, the will, to pigeonhole the papers. i’m hoping to be able to clean off my kitchen table entirely sometime this week, and the paper piles may be the end of me.
its too soon to garden and i’m craving it. i just keep telling myself its too soon, and i’m spitting at myself. at the farm i am seeding hundreds upon hundreds of babies. kale and choy and many many rainbow chard. it is beautiful in there. but at home? i must wait. sigh.
this is just me, trying to write more, and not all drama-like. the mundane probably has beauty in it too, right?
right?
the beauty of the paper pile? the majesty of the bills?
I’m a pleasure seeker. For reals and at all the levels. The beauty, the words, the touch, the smell, all of it. My senses explode minute to minute, most of the time.
In my head.
Because when I get bored at work, and sometimes when I parent, and when I worry, I lose this wild appreciation for the senses. And I am working and parenting and worrying all the time right now.
My finances were fucked up these last three weeks. I had a couple surprising plumbing problems, and a refund that has not yet arrived, and a payment that was made before the refund was not arriving that threw everything off, and the chaos made the bank fee kings very happy, and if I can’t be proud of my credit score anymore than I just do not know what to do.
I’ve started a new job at a new salary and its another 15 hours a week and I’m thrilled, it will satisfy my need for little people and simple things but I have yet to be paid there too, and its just a flat pile of cards right now, when there is meant to be a house.
so what do i do with this hedonism, this lust, when it’s a boring office building of a life? when my teenaged boys don’t share with me because they idolize their father? what a waste of all this work I’ve done, is what runs through my brain. a flat white wall of a house showing.
The daffodils have arrived, and the grocery store flowers, so maybe the spring of spring will help.
but where am i? Dunder Mifflin?
(yes, a loving boyfriend with a high libido is helpful, so there is at least one outlet. don’t tell my kids.)
I just feel like I’m not making it, you know? Like, I’m losing my appreciation for the beauty and can only see the clutter. That is no good. I’m going to go now and do some more laundry, visit the basement again and move the everlasting sumppump, and maybe make some more coffee. I used to paint. I used to stare out the window.
I’m fine. Don’t worry. I do enough of that already. Today I’ve got a few hours between works, and I’m wearing slippers, so there is a touch of luxury to the day. Things will be fine. I’ve got a ‘read it already’ bookpile, so there is hope.
1.i’ve got a colonoscopy tomorrow morning. I overreacted in planning, because it is my first one, and i took two days off, and now i have nothing to do except think about how hungry i am, and how much pooping I am going to do this afternoon. I’ve already cleaned out the fridge and wiped down the baseboards in the bathroom. These are the things I am doing to avoid stuffing my face with sweet bread. If you know any portuguese people, you know this bread is the most ridiculously fantastic thing to be offered to the world. But I’m avoiding food, and the basement today. So, avoidance leads me to very weird and intense spot-cleaning.
2.my basement flooded this past week, along with everyone else’s, (so much rain, in a wet winter) but because my floor is partially dirt, the wetness of the world is continuing to enter in. upwards seepage, i say, against all odds. it has knocked out my water heater for almost a week, which is just fantastic. there are two fans down there, and two pumps (thank you neighbor) and if i can get it dry enough to relight, then perhaps i will not have to buy a new one. thoughts and prayers. otherwise… tears, so many tears.
3. there was a leak in the supply hose to my toilet. a tiny, pinhole prick of a thing, which did not make enough noise for me to hear, and all that water went under the wall and was only noticed when the floor buckled up under the rug on the other side of that wall. so that is a thing. and now i wait for insurance people to tell me they’ll give me back some of the money i’ve paid them over the past decade to get it fixed. i can’t tell you how awful it feels to have my ability to fix a problem in someone else’s hands. i can’t tell you, because i am sure you know the feeling.
when it rains, it pours. (into my basement) 🙂
love you guys, hope i don’t have to add a donate button to my blog. lets all spend time hoping that, okay?
I’ve heard that a lot in the self-help world, ‘trust yourself’ and in the feminism world and… to the extent that I follow my own instincts when I’m out in the wild or faced with strangerdanger, I do. I do not walk down dark alleyways, or explore basements (not even my own. ask the plumber.) and I make a lot of noise as I walk through woods so that I do not surprise bears or hunters. Sometimes I even sing. I trust my survival instincts.
Chickens, at Flying Carrot Farm, on a 20 degree day.
And in almost every other case? no, not really, I don’t trust myself. I’m certain about almost nothing. And I wonder if there is a root that I can follow down into this one somewhere. Do other people have this problem? Did something make me find an alcoholic marriage? What was that? Do I still have that? When you look back and see such an enormous fiasco of instinct in your past, how do you trust yourself?
And for all the majority of people who don’t have an issue like that in their past, is it something you can do? Trust yourself? I’m asking this in all seriousness. If you are a businessperson, you better damn trust your decisions, right? Is that why I have never gone that route? Is it really as simple as self-confidence?
I don’t believe I don’t have self-confidence. I know I do. In many ways. not all, but many.
So what then? Tell me about you and your process. Privately or not, I’d really like to know. Do you trust yourself?
