Humanity

December Tchotchkes.

Remember how I don’t know Yiddish? I still don’t.

Things that seem small but are not.

  1. Getting dressed, like, fully. even put on a necklace and dug around in my drawers til i found comfy pants that I haven’t worn since the summer. I always get dressed, mostly, but I wear the same five things all the time, and its not necessarily representative of anything connected to me, the actual me under all this skin.
  2. Deciding not to date because we don’t want the same thing. I want the whole shebang including crazy love and hope for the future. His intelligence meant he had words for what I was feeling. Isn’t that fantastic? and sad, a little, yes.
  3. Incredibly grateful that my instincts are good and I’ve been surrounded by good men for a long time now.
  4. Got home from the grocery store and my kid came around the corner and into the kitchen and said ‘I’m in class but I can help’. I leaned into his chest and hugged him and let him help. My kid is five inches taller than I am, at least. I know he was skipping class but man, that’s the rightest reason ever.
  5. Spent time thinking about what I really want, and if settling into companionship would feel good or feel like death. These are pretty different things, and I’m in mid-life pretty certainly, and on any given day, the answer is different. but today? i think death.

Today is just five, because there is no rule and no expectation. These are small, big things and I’m tired out, kind of. I’ve got big plans to get all the gardenware put away into the shed today, or at least this weekend. and i’ve already taken out the compost. so there. Its not even noon and the wildness is out of control.

I’ve gotten two jobs/projects with high school friends this week. How crazy is that? It IS crazy.

Tell me your small bigs. Do it.

Humanity

Body Love

I’m in ache. I’m in spiral. I’ve got an ear infection that has knocked my hearing down to need-to-lipread levels. Not hearing makes me quake and quiver with fear and rage. But. the infection has been keeping me up at night so exhaustion is throwing a blanket over everything. I’m on meds now, thank you ex, and …

and I’m so thankful for this body that I have.  The legs which kick and stride. The mouth that yells and loves in lockstep with the hands that gesture and hold.

and when I have a lover, I love my curves and sways and folds. nakedness is the most beautiful thing. and oh my goodness, it is appreciated. and that is GLORIOUS.

and when I am in mothermode, I love what this body has made, what these folds and wings have grown.

and i’m still going to the gym, because i need the action of challenging my heart to beat faster. not in fear or anxiety, but in body love. LOVE.

I’m trying to get more in touch with it. Maybe think about what pieces have not literally been touched (although LM is really taking care of that business lately, and always) …

The no-winter and the coming spring are also on my mind. the growth, the strength needed to withstand inconsistency, needed to push out of the ground. these are the things I need to have in my container.

the boy who was utterly smashed by sickness this week is sitting with me at the kitchen table this morning, after having slept for almost 14 hours. he asked me if being a mother was hard. I say, “Sometimes… but it is, mostly, the never knowing what you’ll get that is hard. sometimes it is yelling, sometimes it’s sick. you never know” and the secret is, that’s what makes it great too.  You never know what you’re going to get.  Those glory days sneak in on you and just APPEAR, in the midst of all the laundry. The orgasm that catches you off guard and throws you off the cliff.

It’s all worthwhile and my body has carried me, the whole way.  I’ve got my own Samwise, flaws and all.

Knight Helmet Body Love Unwifedmotherexpletive
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

 

 

Humanity

Soup is on.

Today i did a writing prompt about the things I tend, what i turn towards, how I tend. I’m sharing it here, because I like the change of pace, and the soup is really smelling up the place now, as well as the bacon that I had to add… ah, bacon. you make my heart sing.

I have added to and edited here, though this news will break the hearts of those who forgive me my ways. (capitalization is just not a thing, for instance.)

  1. Today was the day of the oil change. The making-sure the car makes it through the winter, though i suppose there is no guarantee against calamity, or trees. 
  2. I’m in love with the word TEND. I took a class called that, just for its name… only to run out of money in the end… but i lose a bit of my bonechill every time i see her writings. Women are pretty fucking great. of course it is a woman. Tend? c’mon. 
  3. I’m making a soup today as well, which is not a completely normal happening, but it will be potato when it is done with its time in the crock. I’ve been working at a farm stand and am thrilled to say that my reason, ‘to be closer to food, to cook more real food’, has come to pass. (also, people. and payment) These potatoes are almost fully personified in my mind. They are giving me their pleasure, and sustenance and i am chopping them to chunks and bits. (look away.) I also peeled their skin off. 
  4. The things i turn toward are colored amorphous blobs. Memories, smells… sounds or tactilities, these are the scenes i go towards. I’m so fully centered in my body, but there is all this space around the molten core of me, and i seem to want to fill it with yarn and sweaters knit by people who can, food smells, tacos… you see. It is escaping my typing fingers, what it is i tend towards, how it is i move into and out of the world outside my quiet body. I don’t even know how i have sex, out there, but i do… every once in a while i get a glimpse of a spark shooting off into the darkness, my fling towards connection. 
  5. i feel so insular, my molten core bringing all the self-sufficiency. (hello, they say no man is an island. but what of woman? )
  6. I tend to warmth, there are hats, there are blankets and there are never NOT those things. We have wood for the stove, we have pasta for the storms. It is always tended to. Always. 
  7. I’m not able to, or rather, it taxes me too dearly to slow down my writing brain. It must flow as it does. I tend to fly. 
  8. More colors to tend to in this dying light of Fall. the book i haven’t read, that i probably need to read, maybe. It is green-ly bound, and yellow at the heart. I think my chakras are interested by this.Books Yellow and Green UNwifedmotherexpletive
  9. I tend to personify. 
  10. I tend to leave space, for all the meaning and the worth that come from another. The shared experience that really isn’t. And is, too. 
  11. A season of tending outdoors has ended, and the wrapping up of it into storage, decay, decomposition, is a slow decay in an of itself. I start off strong. Always curious to see what is left to survive the elements, or not. That one hulahoop left by the shed. You see.

 

Humanity

hot apple cider

today i’m very strange. full warning.

  1. hot apple cider, available at the coffee shop. not coffee. and boy, when you ask for it plain, you get a look. however, this is new England and hot cider is a required force on a fall morning.
  2.  cider smells like breast-fed baby poop. i’m happy about that. also glad that it doesn’t TASTE like breast-fed baby poop.
  3.  I ran out of my kitchen (at 8:30 am) because my tenant was there. she lives there. I don’t have any problem with her. I just ran away, because.
  4.  I am afraid to talk to people at the ‘real’ health food store. because I feel guilt for fast food, and high fructose corn syrup and not enjoying cooking, and so I feel a fraud, or like I have to confess. Makes for an awful lot of drama. Sneakers at Coffeeshop Unwifedmotherexpletive
  5.  So many people here are still wearing flipflops, or sandals of some sort. I don’t care about toes but I do care too much about warmth and chilly-ness. too much, I know. but hats are imminent, people!
  6.  there’s all these women with babies under 6 months old. some mommy and me class must’ve just finished somewhere.
  7. plus, its gone from before 10 am to after 10 am and the place is hopping. who lives these lives? I wish they would all stop by my table and tell me. (not really, maybe. maybe.)
  8. I’m too distracted by my phone. memes can be really funny. i’m still tired of snark though.
  9.  I don’t ever want to be around pumpkin spice. i’m a purist. apple cider. i’m going to make a flag for my pickup.
  10. maybe they are nannies. this one does not have a body which has carried a child. are nannies a thing here? maybe i’m in the wrong end of town.
  11.  I have to go back home to take a walk, and to hear me some more Mother Teresa. because. what else would you do while waiting for the work to roll in, right?
  12.  I think a dozen is a pretty good place to stop. I imagine my Lionness getting down with the apple cider too.

(seriously, where the hell are all these babies coming from? there are SO many babies here! a meet-up?)

shitcakes and fuckery. I wrote that this week in a shared space and made two women laugh. and man that feels pretty great.

also wrote that I was a zipper in the wash.

love love love,

uwmf

Humanity

Christmas, and the wind howls…

so, there are these things.

  1. everyone should get divorced. everyone. because during the time that the former-spouse has the kids, you do not. so what i get is three full days before christmas in which i actually roll around in christmas spirit.  i might bake cookies, i might wrap something. I danced in the kitchen. i reveled. in the spirit of sparkle and gifting of greens, and all of it. i even went out to a store on christmas eve, to buy myself a present.  god bless marshall’s. i don’t think i’ve ever been into a store on christmas eve and i was there really early, and i was so happy to see that the employees were mostly giddy and laughing, and not beleagured.
  2. don’t get divorced because i say so.  really.
  3. but maybe you could shake things up and send them to your folks before the holiday, to give yourself your own merry. if you have folks, if you like merry.
  4. i just came downstairs after a long bath, ready to order pizza for dinner because i’ve been ill, and i’m ready for bed.  Its 1:23 in the afternoon.   this was both, a funny moment and a sad one.  the kids have been on screens for the entire day, and made their own lunches while i pointed weakly from the chair. barely.
  5. my mom dropped off gatorades because the 6 year old and i were not keeping down any water and i was concerned about other things… 6 year old has now fully recovered and even ate chicken nuggets.  that is frankly disgusting and i’m aware of the possibility of demonic possession.
  6. i am not recovered. but i’m typing, i’m looking out the window.  i’m so glad Christmas is over.  Its just too much for my kids.  Its all meerrrgh.  too many inflated expectations and disappointed faces. its insane.

 

do you like it? Christmas, I mean. If you do christmas? (though i’ve heard hannukah has its own challenges… and lasts 8 freaking days….) i like it, but only for my rolling around in glitter experience, not as an experience i have with kids. 1227181017a I’m not sure its good for them, and I’m sort of tired of doing it to them.

i’m not sure the ‘spirit of Christmas’ means someone should be distraught because they are just overstimulated.

there’s something of a feeling of being trapped by the expectations, as a parent… and i’d like to figure something out to change it up a bit, maybe give them a few more options as they move out into the world.

hm. we’ll see. i’ve got a little time.