Tag: books

Humanity

sitting in the kitchen, blizzard edition

Lovelovemotherexpletive

There are over three feet of snow in my yard. specifically, in the driveway. the kids have shoveled but we have not left the driveway, for any reason. I shoveled out the dryer vent and tried to relieve the ice dam that is sending water into the living room. (unsuccessful).

Water is in my living room. There are buckets and towels and there really is nothing to be done except make plans for later.

Almost out of wood. Was planning to go out today to the wood guy, but then it started snowing. I have heat, but the woodstove makes a very big difference.

That is my car out there. for real, for real.

Those are the fingers on one hand. The other hand? I have not lost power once, even a little, so there has been heat and ovens to cook the nuggets. There is plenty of food, and enough even if the power does go, to cook on the stovetop.

I have a job now which pays me all year, even if there is a snow day making it impossible to get to work. Not having that would make me insane and fearful right now. It is critically different to not have that.

I’ve read some. finished a re-read of a Louise Penney book, The Cruelest Month. I do love how much I grow to love a town, a detective and feel the press of a dark winter in her books. Hidden, hissing emotions and a detective who can speak of them. (this was the third in the series, but I have read the previous ones already, plus some later, I think you could read it without knowing the series.) I saw Louise Penny once down at a book talk on the cape, and man, she was relateable and charming, and just an ordinary smart woman. It was lovely.

I am eating snacks that I got while I was in Mexico. Did I tell you I went to Mexico? Of course not, I know. I was in Mexico, at the end of the baja peninsula in Cabo san Lucas. I was not at a resort, but had the most wonderful time feeling the sun on my skin and being warm. We (anita and my sister and I) watched the sunset every night, and ate beautifully in our own kitchen. Anita lives there and is miraculously fluent, working her way to being a local, she is.

They call them Japanese peanuts, but if you go to Japan, they call them Mexican peanuts. So, a cultural exchange.

The book in my lap is Wally Lamb, The River is Waiting and I am sure I have not read anything by Wally before. and it is so good ad well-written, but I am afraid of the heaviness. Oprah, why? Why? Am I just being emotionally tossed around like a ragdoll? Will I recover? Can I bear it in this time of sequester?

Its all giving me vibes of Covid, and its a little disconcerting. I still can’t even believe that happened. Can you?

There is nothing super funny in today’s episode of Kate Writes. I’m sorry if I’ve let you down. IF you are local, I wish you lots of ice melt, and someone else to do the shoveling/plowing/blowing. (also i have heat and you are welcome here if you can get here. plenty of room) If you are not, please send your love to the sun, because she needs to remember her power.

wink.

love,

kate

Toes in the Pacific. First time ever. Also, for real.
Humanity

New Year, now 2026

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I did finish Cannery Row. I loved it, the detached but clear, the emotions laid out, no therapy needed.. the gathering of characters, the drinking without emotional recoil, the raucous life. and honestly, the history, the ways in which a cannery town feels like a mining town, a logging camp, and oilman’s camp. All the characters in a mix with the greatest emotional turmoil being loneliness. Ah. Somehow all so lovely, ending up lovely with a sweet bit of poetry included:

Even now,
I know that I have savored the hot taste of life
Lifting green cups and gold at the great feast.
Just for a small and a forgotten time
I have had full in my eyes from off my girl
The whitest pouring of eternal light-

-on the last page of Cannery Row, lest you think I wrote it myself, because no.

I went to the first hockey game of my life and loved it. It was a regional high school team which includes friends of my kids, and siblings etc. AND they won dramatically and fantastically in an amazing match up. And because I am a goalie mom I watched and whispered strength to the goalie who had an astonishing number of saves. What more is there than that? That the percentage of saves is what really matters in life, and we all tend to forget that in our rush for ambitions and progress and ‘wins’.

My percentage of saves is high, my friends. and I’m really damn lucky. and hallelujah, January is here, and my body feels better and its over, for another year, this holiday fuckery. Made it through. I guess we all did, who are reading here. So there is that. And I love you, and I’ll see you.

_kate

My final slip of paper, my duty for the year is to make this true:

I can do it. I’m halfway there already.

Humanity

limbolimbolimbo

Lovelovemotherexpletive

its the week between Christmas and New Years. I’m not getting out of my pajamas very often and I am on my second book. The house is still a mess but there are no big meals for me to do anymore, and for New Year’s I am eating a lot of cheese, so there is that joy. (and make no mistake, that is JOY.) The kids are here all week and that is also a deeply deeply felt joy, and my fridge and freezer are overflowing.

First book was The Seamstress of New Orleans by Diane C. McPhail. I’m on the fence about it. It was definitely strongly feminist, and if that scares you, I don’t know what to tell you. Its always refreshing to read, I say, although not particularly resonant with today’s current scene. I am ‘too much’ with all the depression around women who voted for trump and the ‘tradwife’ bullshit. I just can’t conceive of how that exists. but anyhow, the book was just okay. felt light to me. a somewhat strange mix of point of view, then a merging of it, then an everything-solved ending. I’d still recommend it though, if you are in love with beautiful fabric details, and women making it work on their own, and definitively scoundrel-type men who are proven irrelevant.

So I’m here in this inbetwixt time. This is probably the first time ever I’ve not worked shifts here and there during this time, so I’m in full withdrawal, full-on sofa life. My next book is going to be Cannery Row by Steinbeck. I gave it to a kid who looked unbelievably unenthused to receive it, so fuck that, you know? Now its mine.

I made a bunch of plans on the solstice, on paper, and i cut them up and i burn one each night. I’ve forgotten some nights but on the Day of New Year’s day there will be one left and THAT one will be my responsibility for the year. I like the randomness and if my response is immediately ‘ugh’ then I throw up my hands and pick something else. I am in charge. (without even ever having been a seamstress in New Orleans, I am in goddamned charge.)

person holding burning paper in dark room
Photo by Eugene Shelestov on Pexels.com

I like the rule that says to burn it without looking. Maybe that is as close to rebel as I get these days.

BURN IT WITHOUT LOOKING BACK.

What explosion am I walking away from this week? Am I wearing good jeans? I can see it, man, I can see it.

AND I FEEL THE HEAT, and I’m still walking away.

to my sofa. and my book.

  • kate
Humanity

well hello there, back from retreat.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I went on a four-day retreat by myself to a cabin in the woods with no running water or indoor plumbing. I kept myself warm with a woodstove, and at night it was five degrees. I hauled water from the house up the road to make my tea and coffee. I read at least four entire books. I did use my phone, no lie, but not really, at the same time. And I brought a puzzle, and worked on it. There was a sofa and a bed in a loft, and I snuggled right down into what in fact is one of my dreams, unhurried silence. I confess I didn’t wear my hearing aid all the time. The resulting pressure-free life was pretty good. By day four I was well and done with outhouse-life, but until then I could really do it just fine. The cold was invigorating, and felt friendly. The view from the outhouse seat was uninterrupted trees. (no door) And it was a retreat cabin owned by a Quaker organization so it was CHEAP. It is not everyone’s idea of retreat, but it hit all my spots.

There’s a lot to say about it. and someday I will. but I started writing morning pages while I was there, three pages every day, emptying out the vessel onto paper, and i’ve kept it up. today my head is full of cotton balls and so i’m having a hard time finishing, so i decided to come over here instead and it is counting, it is. It has been two full weeks. Fourteen days of writing daily. and I’m really proud of that. And it has been writing for myself, unchecked, uncensored and I’ve come to think its really healthy for my mental health, to get some of this cotton candy out of my head. I am an enormous daydreamer, absolutely swooning in the past or in a story about the trees when I should be doing taxes or writing a simple sentence. The number of times I catch myself staring off into space when I’m in the middle of writing is astonishing. ACTUALLY ASTONISHING. like, unbelievable to me, how much my brain runs off and jumps the fence.

Big revelations of the retreat:

  1. My anxiety can really ruin my life experience. And it has no bearing on actual life, unless it involves freezing to death because the fire goes out, but even then… it still needs to be addressed. I need to get a therapist.
  2. I really do think I should be reading more, and wish I could figure out how to get paid for it. Editing is a good step but so few and far between and I don’t have the time or energy to hustle for it. Plus, I barely have the time, and I need an empty house and I refuse to ask for that, as the universe will provide that soon enough.
  3. I am a part of the magic of nature, as much as a cardinal. May I do as little harm and bring as much joy. (this is my heart tattoo now.)
  4. I want to go back to school, but not an educator’s classroom, I want more training in situ for kids with special needs, which guess what? is every single one of them, some more complicated than others.

So there. I am off to see a wicked important basketball game today, at which i will shout and hoot and holler, because I’m actually crazy for basketball. Sigh. The complications of us all.

love you guys,

kate

photo of northern cardinal perched on brown tree branch
Photo by Tina Nord on Pexels.com
Humanity

Sunday, I slept til 8:30 am, a miracle.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Sleep.

a miracle. my head is a little foggy, but there is coffee nearby, and a kid with a tiny tv in her lap. the table is cluttered again, as is regular, and there is a christmas tree bowling set-up, an empty water bottle on its side and an unattached cord, a wide fat white candle, two empty glasses and a box of magic cards. every chair has something on it. a scarf, a stolen coat, a gifted denim shirt, and a pretty brown bag that used to have dumplings in it. it is quite lovely really, that bag, especially for a bag that is explicitly for ‘take away’. i love it when the mundane are treated with craft and meaning.

i’m not sure what i came here to write about today, just know that i needed to. i’ve finished a book lately, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and it was wildly familiar, while being utterly separate from any experience I’ve ever had. Maybe as a former sidecar to an alcoholic, I recognize it? Maybe its my dream of escape returning, that young mother’s delusional dream? The main character willfully and determinedly tries to drug herself into sleep for a year, in the sincere hopes that when the sleep is done, there will be clarity, blueberries at the end of the rainbow and such. The names of the pills were mostly foreign to me, but I sure do know that my alarm bells will ring if anyone ever mentions any of them to me. but the dream of somehow waking up? a true deep waking up? oh yes. I feel that dream, have lived that one.

maybe that’s what sleeping is all about, for me. the hope for the waking up well-rested, the clarity of mind and purpose. the appreciation of the coffee and the clutter with an uncluttered mind.

and then again, maybe sleeping is just about sleeping. resting. breaking the mind from its yoke.

I guess thats what i came here for, to talk miracles, and waking up, and sleeping. I’m not going to lie, I’m not sure what you’ll make of it. but i’m here for it, still a little bit groggy, because the wakeup was unclear. Definitely cluttered. Its a beginning, and there is alot more. Dare I mention the yoke of ‘woke’? HAAAAA. i dared, and it felt awful, and I’m sorry. But my grimace is heading towards light-hearted on that one, sort of. ugh. sorry.

what’re your daily miracles? How do you wake up in the morning? What is your sleep like? what are the waking dreams?