Humanity

Where is my hedonistic self?

Lovelovemotherexpletive

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.

pink tulips on a kitchen table in an aqua kitchen

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.

Humanity

List 1,2,3 (all things plumbing)

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Sigh.

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?

also, send love and money to gaza.

-love, me.

Humanity

Trust yourself.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

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?

  • me.
Humanity

Memey, farmer type.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

It may well be that i should be a meme. in entirety. A human, walking meme.

i try to make funny out of everything, but now, all i think about is death, beauty, children, feeling, money, dirt, taxes and now the fafsa, and what it means for the future, or not, or if there is one. Will we ever have a full day snowfall again? and trying to make funny out of all that is played out all over the place, in memes. so maybe i’m trite. is that it?

(and honestly, when i look back at what i think about… is there anything else?have i EVER thought about other things? i mean, i’m sure many folks have better perspectives and less anxiety about taxes, and zero to do with fafsa, but…) and then there is Palestine.

its an enormous shift from joy bubble or ‘look how pretty it all is’, to a soul crushing devastation. deflated and lying on the dirt.

how dare i?

i feel the whiplash of my personality as this personal season of ‘figure it out’ has arrived. I’m so lucky, unbelievably, to have had a tough marriage to a wealthy person, so that now, for every bad memory I still need therapy for, I get a check. It’s not erasing his debt to me, but it does enable this house and a job at a farm.

There’s a lot there though. i love that work, so much. the air, the green, the breathing involved. dirty hands, calloused and rough. i am not a vacationer in the land of blue collars. i’m shy too, my hearing keeps me there, as casual chatter is not really something i can do. Like, imagine, not being certain of the person next to you in line at the grocery store, will you be able to make it out, what they say? It sometimes can be a weight.

But farming? Farming is just good. like, selling books. Its good for the world, unbeknownst to most of the world. And man, is it hard work for little praise and much less money. To have it be something that i will have to leave in order to make more money and more stability for myself and my future, feels very raw to me. Raw because I rub up against the practical and recognize it will be necessary. How long can I hold on? Am I destroying myself? GAAAAAh. ANd what about the everyone else without the profitable divorce? Where will we get our carrots in the future?

Am I a kitty hanging off a shelf? Am I the prancing lady with clever sayings overlaid? What’s my story? Where am I going?

goddamnit.

today i just don’t know.

love you anyways,

kate

Humanity

Don’t forget.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m dropping services like flies. just ask my landline. gone baby gone. things gone.

lighten up. brighten up. if i could sell all the words I’ve got, i’d do it. let ’em loose.

set a fire, let it burn. but. . .

I’ve got a list going of things not to forget, not to forget. what’s important to remember, forever.

baby feet.

the smell of breastfed baby poo.

the ways my boys try to get in my lap still, rolling over the backs of sofas, sprawling half in and half out of wherever i am.

laughing until i choke with my daughter on one of her last nights sleeping in my bed. I don’t know when it’ll end, I just know its on a countdown.

righteous anger.

the floorboards in the pawtucket house. little hands crawling. children falling asleep against my body.

roxanne, the best beagle. her ears.

each of my many painting phases. that time i made angels of fabric. and quilts.

conscious communicating. working at it. being curious about origins of feeling. uncovering. always trying. remember.

my dad’s hands.

the rings on Kate’s hands.

the joy of turning a phrase.

Love love,

Me.

Don’t forget.