Tag: fear

Humanity

A list. B list. C list. Love and Fear it.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

IF its not cup size, I just don’t care, guys.

A list, for me. Because I need to get the swing back in my hips.

What do I love? What am I scared of? What do I love…

  1. I love the ellipses… the dangle, the possibility of surprise, and the more, more, more…
  2. I’m scared that I’m not doing enough for my kids, that my predilection to let them do stuff on their own is just laziness and that they’ll compare me so unfavorably to their dad who is so flawed, but ‘fun’.
  3. I love the ups and downs and whoopsadaisys. I wish there were more ups right now. But I’m in it for the longhaul, I am. Whoopsadaisy.
  4. I’m scared of a lot of things. I have these ‘great ideas’ but kind of want to give them to someone else to do. I have a hard time overcoming myself. Anyone want to come to a writing workshop at my house? and pay for it? Yeah, me too.
  5. I love fish and chips. with vinegar, and with ketchup. and tartar sauce. its been ages. AGES.
  6. I’m afraid I will never read all the books I have staring at me. The library is starting to smoke its anger at me. I just can’t stop. Anyone want to do a giant bookswap in July? My yard. Tables and tables. Bring yours.
  7. I love my body, I really do. Its pretty damn amazing. Its larger right now than it is meant to handle, and I’m adjusting to that very slowly. (Do not give me advice or pointers on this because I will seriously resent you and probably never forget it, either.)
  8. I’m afraid that I’ll never stop comparing myself to other people and intellectually I realize it is fruitless and entirely imaginary, but goddamn, I haven’t found the trick to stopping yet.
  9. I love my body, did I say that yet? Damn, she is a hot one.
  10. I’m afraid I won’t get used to being alone. I’m working on it.

I’m working on all of it. Taking it apart. Getting it together. All with jazz hands. (No.)

love love,

me.

fried meat beside sliced lemon and white mustard
Fish and Chips. Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.com
Humanity

Off the cuff .

Lovelovemotherexpletive

(the whole ‘in which i’ thing has died. i can’t sustain it. I love its format, but it is incompatible with today’s off the cuff nature. maybe it will resurrect later? No idea. Don’t hold your breath.)

i’ve got my coffee, i’ve got a prompt to follow, i’ve probably got another man i like who drinks too much. i’ve got a lot of thoughts today, and giant pauses in between them.

so, here is where i work it out, in the full glory of the public eye. (no, not everything. but still.)

  1. wasted time. can time be wasted? lots of divorced people say they wasted their best years. because of my kids, i never say that. so, it wasn’t wasted and i don’t feel like my life ended. surprised? yes i am. . . and i also feel curious about what lies ahead of me all the time, even if its sometimes bleak, in my mood. wasted?
    its one of those things, that is a perspective shift. a personality trait. of course it wasn’t wasted time, it was just life. i think it was damaging to me, but i did the best i knew how and I got three amazing kids birthed and raised, so, wasted? no. difficult? yes. perspective.
  2. i’m realizing how thought-filled i am, all the time. i mean, i suppose its not surprising to a reader, but maybe more specifically, i am realizing that it isn’t the norm. I spend too much time on my phone, like most people these days but in between that scrolling compulsion? I could just sit and stare for quite a long time and be fine.
  3. alcohol. shit, man. a whole lot of people depend on it, a lot. I don’t have any frame of ‘normal’ in reaction to it. I actually ‘try’ to drink once in a while so that i can keep myself in the norm. isn’t that insane? it really kind of is. but i don’t see anything wrong with a glass of wine with dinner and i even appreciate it, as a nod to pleasure and deep appreciation of food. but lately i have been hungover from a single glass of wine, and i’m not willing to give up my mornings. — so what is it? what is this reliance born of habit and why are so many people who take care of themselves including it in their lives? is it the pleasure and appreciation i mentioned or is it the escapism that i also sometimes feel? when my kids are away and i go buy a can?! of watermelon margarita? (so classy) Its basically a swedish fish alcohol, which makes me laugh. so predictable.
    oh god, this is all so random. Escape. I think its about escape. (maybe i don’t have anything really to escape from anymore?)
  4. The prompt was to make a list or write for ten minutes on what you say no to. I say no to lying, to looking like everyone else, to trying to. I say no to mean humor, at my table and in my kids. i say no to pretending i’m not mad. i say no to stupid thinking, easy ways out. i say no to kale. i say no to closed doors, unless i’m in the tub. i say no to littering.
  5. I laugh at myself a lot. Littering? That was a fantastically glib ending to a ten second writing. i’m tired of alcohol being a thing in my life. i really am. And yet, life. There is nothing better than a cold beer with a hot slice. Nothing. I nod at it as I move about.
  6. I’m trying to work out what my dreams for the future are. and I’m bumping into a lot of resistance to making a plan. or even writing down what the dreams are, (i have two big ones and even typing that is stupid scary) and it comes back to fear, in a big way. that the dreams are stupid, unreachable (for me, because i am stupid, you see.)
  7. I am making a mental list of things I need to actually fix in my house. That will make me feel like a million bucks. I know it will.
  8. Sigh. God bless you for reading. I don’t know how you do it, somedays.

ha. love love,

kate

random, mug, glasses, tax forms, lamp and heart cutouts on a chair. Random shapefest.
Humanity

NOVEMBER NONO: TwentyTWO, Obstacles

Lovelovemotherexpletive

what’s in the way?

  • 1. Obstreperous. Obtuse.
  • 2. I can’t always make a decision. I’m often fine with just going along, and one, it makes someone else happy or two, it frustrates someone. but truly, if i can’t make a decision about something, its because I don’t frigging care. What’s for dinner? I do not care. Almost always, I do not care.
  • 3. Fear. “I can’t do that really well right off the bat, so I’m not going to.”
  • 4. Insecurity holds hands with fear and fear leads it into a swamp full of gators and snakes.
  • 5. Desire is not an obstacle, in and of itself. But when there is desire, one can chew one’s own arm off in the pursuit of its satisfaction, and that knowing can become an obstacle TO the desire, in the first place. Dig that one? Convoluted but still true. Takes some age to get that one.
  • 6. Fear. “If I try that, I might not succeed and everyone will know I am a loser.”
  • 7. Exhaustion. Seriously. Enough already.
  • 8. Fear. “Too many changes. Too many changes. I can’t handle anymore.”
  • 9. The sheer number of chairs I have in my house is an obstacle. I mean, what the hell? How did that happen?
  • 10. Mess. Mess. I used to not be afraid of it, and now I have to consider if the mess is worth the cleanup. This is a sea change. I’m getting old.

Don’t worry about me because I write morose stuff. Soon I’ll hit the ‘how to blow up fears’ list. Its just a moment, a prompt. Chill.

amphibian animal close up color
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
Humanity

NOVEMBER NONO- ELEVEN : brain dump

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Apologies ahead of time.

I’m not even doing this one in my journal first, its straight to the presses. good luck, readers.

  1. Its Veterans Day here. My dad, my former father-in-law, all of my uncles, two of the men I have dated and cared for, old friends, cousins, these are the men and women who have been willing to do what I cannot. I don’t forget them, or their choices.
  2. My daughter’s birthday is tomorrow. 8 years old. My baby. The times they are a-changing. I’ll be fine.
  3. Its supernaturally warm here, for November and I really desperately want to believe its a totally natural ‘Indian Summer’ but its freaking me out. There is too much to freak out about, still, and I want to punch Donald Trump in his fat head. Get out already. Don’t do some skeevy ‘destroy the country’ move. Don’t. See number one. Be like that.
  4. I’m ducking the real work I have to be doing, and this is like day 4 of that. I have no good excuse but man, I am dodging. I’m afraid I’ll do the work and it still won’t be good enough. that’s the key.
  5. My kids want a real tree this year, which is giving me agita. I switched to a fake tree when the idea of going to a tree farm on my own and figuring out how to put up a huge honker and not have it be a live flame in my living room was too too much. fake is fantastic. but i concede (unlike the fucker.) that there is no smell, and the whiff of cold and Christmas tree is an honest to goodness wonder. Tomten softness and quiet, if you know what I mean, you know. I don’t want to cut anything down, I mean, really. (see #3- hello, we need trees – globally freaky weather) I will sort it out somehow. I do like to keep the damn kids happy.
  6. When you know you are a people pleaser and you can see yourself reacting to someone’s displeasure with guilt and self-flagellation and you can’t stop it. but if you just give yourself another 5 minutes, you can stop and think again. and then you know that time in therapy is effective after all. 5 minutes, as opposed to 5 days. win.
  7. One of the significant sucks about being so profoundly hearing impaired is that I can hear a sound but not be able to identify what it is, and not know where it is coming from. So, living in an old farmhouse with two animals and three children and probably a slew of mice means that I am occasionally in full twitch, trying to figure out sounds to see if I need to respond. Was that a breaking sound? Something fell. Where? Was it a person? Was it a plant?
  8. I took a beautiful bath yesterday. I cannot tell you how long it has been. Literally cannot. My brain shattered all over the yard in the buildup and wait of this election cycle. It is not entirely gathered up yet. Self-care was a grenade in the shed, and the walls are gone.
  9. I’m a little bit proud that I’ve made it this far in the month. Eleven days of writing. Chuffed.
  10. I’m trying to figure out a way to console my Republican friends that involves making politics personal, and its not about Orangeman, its about their serious and stable fear that Democrats are some sort of devil. I just want them to see me as a model somehow, of a different perspective, but not scary. Fear is what is running all of this. It started in September 2001, and we’ve not shaken it yet.
Humanity

let me reassure you.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

let’s be frank, shall we?

i am not going to learn a new language during my stayathome pandemica.

i am going to read more books. many of them will contain dwarves or thwarted knights, or possibly detectives. None of them will address racial inequity or the doomed American government.

it has been noticed, that LM, in anxiety/frustration/pandemica exhaustion, will stab frozen ricotta. he does not stab people, which is what i want you to know. but ricotta? that sucka died.

i have purchased a new lawnmower, because i have saved so much money in having all my vacations cancelled. and while i hate that one night at a waterpark hotel is the equivalent of a garden tool that i will use for at least 5 years, and that one night is what ‘all my vacations’ consist of.

i’m probably not going to figure out how to cook Indian food.

my kids are going to watch too many screens, way way too many.

i’m not going to think good thoughts about men. they suck. too many of them have jobs that directly affect my life. i’m talking politicians here. they suck. across the board. it is not time to pretend that the women are just the same. what women?

there are these perfect, golden shard of light moments that keep happening. almost every day. i’m just trying to stay alive to catch them. i can’t collect them, or share them, they just melt away, but they are sustaining me.

one of my 7-year-old’s teachers is reading ‘The Magician’s Nephew’ by C.S.Lewis for the class on youtube.  I can’t get over how much I love listening to it with her. Its fulfilling my life’s purpose that at least one of my children will get my love for C.S.Lewis before adulthood.

so, golden shards, stabbing ricotta, lawnmowing in circles.

got it?

love you. hang in there.

uwmofo

Old Mower Unwifedmotherexpletive