Humanity

I do not know

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Second birthday is done now. Onto the Christmas thing.

Just made three different kinds of cookies to give as gifts. It was hours in the kitchen and I gave up on holding onto my sanity and it went right out the front door. I watched it go, that skanky bitch. She had a fucking swagger, she did.

My eyes are dry and I’m slightly sticky from all the sugar. I don’t know, man. Its a chance to say thank you to people, to show them a little generosity: of time, of thought, sometimes of money. I like it, actually, but not the wild stampede of my guilt and overwhelm as I try to fit in all the things and the planning and the grocery. Its all the steps that get me, the ways in which I am overwhelmed three weeks before the thing, the way my brain carves a groove in the ‘is this worth it’ platter holding the cheeses we’ll eat on the Eve.

My kids have Christmas with their dad the day before they have it with me. Mine is smaller this year than it ever has been and I’m just so done with all the things I think about that. Man, I need a good therapist, and I’m just so damn mad at myself that I am still falling into old patterns, ones which I’ve already tired out a few therapists with. OOOOLD news. so fucking old.

I don’t even care about them anymore, those old pieces of shit, to tell you the truth. But they come up AGAIN with the overwhelm and the fear that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not appreciated, that maybe I’m still invisible, like I was then.

so shit. i do not know. and here i am, all cookie-d out. and i look forward to giving them out tomorrow. I have to be in early, and its cozy day, so i’m just wearing a gigantic sweatshirt that almost comes to my ankles. I may not ‘rally’ and ‘be lively’. I predict a sort-of dazed experience of the day.

Love you guys. Be merry if you want to. 🙂

Cookies! So many goddamned cookies.

Humanity

sick days-time limit

Lovelovemotherexpletive

i’m haunted by food that is in the fridge. that chicken, could you cook it for me so it doesn’t go bad? i just cannot move. My nose is Gerard Depardieu.

I watched Last Holiday last night. Bob is a good egg to do it with me. (secretly he appreciated it tons. LL COOL J AND QUEEN LATIFAH? joy and extravagance? COME ON.)

there’s a timeline. this all has to go away in the next twelve hours because i haven’t been there long enough to have a sick day.

my middle child is the one of them who is not a good patient. tending him last night was one of those bitter moments when you realize your humanity is overriding the mother-bit. Being sick myself made it a hard one. but his fever broke sometime in the night and he was sweetly sweaty this morning and he will be 18 tomorrow and well. He was my easiest birth, and it was 18 years ago. dang.

Its been a doozy so far this year. I thought I’d gotten so much better with the divorce/shared parenting thing but this year has definitely shown me my flaws. Bitter bleeding pain moments at the kids being absent from me are occurring. I mean… ouch stuff. the right word is PIERCING.

the holidays and birthdays are always a ‘too much’ time for me, but this year I have wept, and I don’t recover as quickly as I’d like. My monkey mind is full of competitions and loss, and ‘well, fine, I’m wrapping the socks, we’re just going to have popcorn and I’ll leave all the presents to the rich dad and stepmom. Because I cannot win.’

And I still spend too much, and wrestle with my savings account. And it uncovers the part of me that really does watch the competition and try to participate. And believe it or not, as un-American as it is, I am aware that competition is out of place, and a full-on negative for me. but there it is. it appears anyhow.

I’ve done christmas by myself for my whole life with my kids. (like most moms) Do they know that? No. It is not just the two houses that makes it tough. Its a much bigger issue of feeling unseen and unappreciated. I was asked to move ‘things’ because of the stress the stepmom was feeling. So now there is a second woman overwhelmed and stressed by the season. (and yes, i wept, because goddamnit, this is my role, not anyone else’s and how dare their dad allow it to happen to someone else. isn’t one enough? ((and what the fuck does he DO?)) )

and then we go back to the chicken in the fridge and the need to cook for all the people. and the one home from college who fell asleep at 7 am.

Its a cheap, falling-apart wicker basket of emotions over here. And it better be all done in the next 12 hours. Thats it.

time limit.

person holding white tissue paper
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Humanity

Leaving the farm.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Is it on? Is this thing on?

I sat down to write about how it felt to climb down off the tractor and to know I won’t be climbing back up. There is so much in this for me. I tried paper and pen but couldn’t bear it. The beauty the beauty. Unbearable.

It was heavy. My whole chest was physically constricted. And I know it has to be done, is being done, but I still have not come to grips. I cannot believe it.

I’ve gotten a job, a grown up job that has benefits and the same hours every day and a salary, and possibly sick days and things like that that i haven’t even considered.

And I’m starting tomorrow. And it precludes/excludes the ‘squeezing in of hours’ that my life before allowed.

And I’m in mourning. For the woman who started there, as a way to fill in the times when the kids were with their dad. It was really like that. They were young, i was always there. Always.

Seeds

I started there probably seven years ago, my eldest would have been 13, and the youngest just six. It felt like a lot of money because it was farmwork and when i did it in high school, i was just paid $7 an hour, under the table. So it was way way more than that, and I would start having references again. It was a step, a little one, an it got me talking to people in the world again.

And I helped people pick out the good veggies and the farmers washed and harvested and put everything out at the beginning and away at the end of every night.

Now i harvest (only a little bit but i do.) and wash, and set up, and break down, and make the board and think about next week’s setup and keep it all stocked and i know so many of the customers intimately. And I seed the baby plants and run the plant sale and I take care of thousands of eggs and chickens per week and I drive the goddamned tractor. I’ve watched the farmer’s kid grow into a really cool girl, and i love my farmers isn’t just a bumper sticker over here.

Sigh. Sky.

And I worry that I’ll lose my connection to the work and the joy and pain of being outside year round. And what if my dad stops being proud of me? Or Grammie, or Joel, or Kate Crowley? Or the goddamned farmer? What if they move on like i was never there? I WAS THERE. (From heaven, three of them, because i have issues and need therapy. Always.)

And then, there is the beauty. I don’t think you know how beautiful it is out there. The dirt in a tractor tire, the lean of a fence post, the water sluicing the dirt off the carrots, the shocking color of the Swiss chard. I don’t think you know the wild variety of egg. Shells and breakage and boxes and delivering the food to people, feeding, knowing that what is happening, the exchange of energy is pure goodness. Pure.

Dirt is the way. The beginning and the end. And I WAS THERE.

What? I was.

Humanity

Life on the farm

Lovelovemotherexpletive

This week at my farm, the farmers were on vacation.

So a few of us farmer-adjacent people were in cahoots with nature and the forces of water, and were responsible for the keeping of the land and fowl while they were away. Myself, a chicken wrangler, and a niece and sister to the farmer took over. Ten days they’ve been gone. Said niece went off to college. Three markets I’ve handled, the irrigation of the carrots, a few very long days, and this week? -the covering of the chicken wrangler’s days off. Chicken chores do knock a person off her pedestal, I tell you. A farmfriend (actually, really) named Honey did harvest over the weekend in the middle and I’ve been washing as I find the time. Her name makes me feel like I’ve got on a good robe and Everything is going to work out fine. Zucchini still being the god of all things farm, there have been tractor trips out to the birds to feed them the spoils.

They are lucky birds, except for whatever is getting them in the night. I have walked the fences, not knowing where or how the creature higher-on-the-ladder is getting in. Motherfucker. Did I mention it has been quite warm? I think my sweat levels have been flat-out atrocious. And, this was my celebratory week, now that my school job has come to an end. It’s all just been so much harder than I expected. I can do it all, I can, but hard. its been hard.

I come to realize that I like work for work’s sake, but while it is good to know I can handle big things, I do like to turn it off, walk out and be free of it. I’ve got life at home, and I like to be part of it. This week I’ve had worry of the sorts that have kept me from sleeping well.

What if someone steals the truck? I don’t even know what kind of truck it is. What am I going to tell the cop, its a black truck. black. ? its a chevy. I got at least that far when i got to work the next day. black chevy pickup. Probably from after 2010.

What if I forgot to turn the water off at the house? Will the fucking coop float? Will the whole town run out of water?

How do I stop coyotes and fishers? Literally thought about owning a pistol today. I would have definitely shot, if i had been so armed. But no worries, its not guns that kill animals. Right? (ugh. fuck the gun rights people. keep your damn guns, just get rid of the fucking assault rifles, you dicks.)

sorry. okay. back to farm worries.

Can plants be hurt by too much water in the summer heat? Can i drown a swiss chard plant? What about the tomatoes? Will I know if they start exploding? Should I go in early again? Should I go now?

Sigh. My friends. I just want to sleep when I lie down. Just sleep. That’s it. I have napped this week and raised my children from the sofa in a stupor. That’s all I got this week. Maybe if i just keep saying Honey, and feel the nod to real, hopeful hippies everywhere, everything will work out. Maybe.

O, let us keep the faith, chickens. Let us keep the faith. Everything will work out okay.

Honey Honey Honey.

Love,

me.

young white chick on grass
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Humanity

Hello Zucchini. POW! BANG!!

Lovelovemotherexpletive

HELLO…

Adele and Lionel Ritchie. PeW! PeW! I feel them both, simultaneously.

Me, straddling the eras. eras, eons, you pick. I have been quiet. The house is currently in a lull, a small space in the summer speedby, I am feeling like a hello again is in order. Here are some things:

GEEWHIZ! I feel so young on the inside. Very young, so much younger than the young ones around me. Maybe it’s the humility I carry, or the sparks of joy that I seek and find that I juggle in my heart. So young. 51 years I’ve lived. There’s much more certainty than there used to be, and much more shrug.

DANGIT! I’m doing two jobs this summer, and one of them is in a class of kids that need one-on-one attention from an adult in order to ‘assimiliate’. They are straight up otherworldly, in some cases, and there is so much to say about this, and I’m not done yet, one week left, and I need time to process. BUT BOY, let me tell you, I know a lot more about what my boundaries are in terms of what sorts of classrooms I want to work in. It’s good to know your boundaries, without trauma forcing you into them. so says I. (Although, truth be told, our first day together was a little traumatizing for all of us. An extra adult was sent in for day two, let it suffice to say.)

GOLLY! I feel healthy and strong and most of this is because today the heat has retreated a little bit, and I can breathe and there is life in my limbs. And because I’ve got a whole afternoon and evening off from working anywhere. Six days a week is too much, it does not allow for thinking or writing and even the reading that i can squeeze is just an excuse to dull my brain and strain my eyes into prep for sleep.

FUCKSAKE! My own garden is a disaster, but the work farm is an explosion of produce and there is a lot of juggling going on with the zucchini over there. Cabbages, zucchini and the summer squash. good god. oh my god the eggs. so many thousands of eggs. please let us pray to the gods of quiche for release. temporary though it may be, let the frittatas be done.

i’m listening to the audiobook of 1961’s Stranger in a Strange Land. I think audio is best for this one, the reader has such a lovely monotone for the Man from Mars. Its a science fiction, about a human raised on Mars, who returns to Earth, upsetting many of the norms of the time. quite anti-church, quite free lovin’. I’m enjoying. We’ll see where it ends up.

I’d love to start writing again. Oh boy, would I. I’d also love to see my words above my head, like POW! SHAZAM!! FUCKYOU! but only because my current classroom is too young to read.

you know?

lovelove,

me.

zucchini
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