Tag: joy

Humanity

I love us.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Its spring and I’ve started to want to rake things. I just volunteered to clean the duck pen out on a day that I don’t usually work because the weather has changed and I am in love with everything. Try and stop me.

(my farmer will pay me, don’t worry.)

I love the smell of too cold dirt, getting muddy at its edges, as it, too, feels itself.

I love the people doing the jobs, the cashiers, the bus drivers, the people who’s real lives are outside of the work they do, but they’re showing up. showing up and showing up. keeping the world on its feet.

I love the people who say what they do as their identity. How incredible. God bless ’em, showing up and showing up. artists, farmers, healers, plumbers, keeping the world in water and wisdom, maybe even beauty if we get lucky. we so often do.

I love that so many humans have pets. come on and love a strange little beastie, come on. I love Bella the cat and Eddie the dog and the ten little wee dinosaur birds that are chirping in the next room. I also love the nearly 1500 big dinosaur birds that I get to feed each week. Them’s a lotta bird.

I love all the kids, all of them, with all of the learning they still have to do, and all they have to teach us as they do. (especial love today to trans kids and the kids without a box. holding them to the deepest depth of my ability. how incredibly brave they are to make something new.)

I love watching kids grow. I love watching spring hit this part of the earth. Yellow has begun to arrive and I am captured.

I love the candy, oh man, I do. too much. I could fill notebooks on the days when candy has gotten me through. My teeth are sad, sometimes, and probably my internal organs, but my god, I love it, and the relationship we have.

I love good parents and the ones who love their kids. I love all of us. the hard work we do for them. the way we love them long after they leave the house we first met them in. forever and a day.

I love the weirdos. I do. The truth is, everyone is a little bit weird. so, guess what?

I LOVE US!!

(This message brought to you by the sun, and the dirt and the outside.)

Humanity

it has happened, to me, finally. (fake drama)

Lovelovemotherexpletive
  1. there are no empty counterstops in this house. it is possible there are no empty surfaces at all. i need outside intervention that does not judge, in look, word, or attitude.
  2. two of my kids are away skiing with their dad. i’m spending a very long weekend with my eldest and we are going to eat out at almost every meal. this seriously may be the best weekend of my life.
  3. yesterday was my first fully-off day in a bit. well, i worked for an hour and a half with kids and was home by 8:30 am, but i’m not counting that. I made coffee, had a bowl of cereal and was on the phone most of the day until a kid came home. a FULL DAY OF NOTHINGNESS AND DECREPITUDE. i am not happy. the loss of a day. I mean, i took a nap, but it wasn’t even a particularly good day, just boring, and there were a million things I could have done and i’m pretty bummed at my blahghaness.
  4. Before the decrepitude, i had a six year old climb into my lap to snuggle. she lay her head under my chin and just sat. it is possibly the best thing to have happened in many weeks. we should all have such simple pleasures.
  5. A woman who is funny told me she liked my blog. In person. I’m still blushing and my ears are burning with flush and now i have to hide all the posts in which I whine. (no, i won’t, because it would be too much work, but oh god, it was cool and cool. )
  6. Okay, now that is the end of what has happened this week. Happy Friday loves!

-love love,

me.

have a great day sticker on brown surface
Photo by Cori Emmalea Rodriguez on Pexels.com
Humanity

I’m good at…

Lovelovemotherexpletive

What are you good at?

In my mind this week, I’ve been writing a whole post on what I’m bad at, because I’m awful at so many things. Like breakups, and shame. So bad at them, and also, the math. But I need to switch it, don’t I? Can I live like that?

I’m good at looking at things and appreciating them. the shape, the line, the light. The beauty in the minute, the large, the fantastical and the mundane.

Sometimes I am good at capturing it in type.

I’m good at being with kids, making them feel loved. I’m good at making brownies, from a box, but good at it, still.

I’m way fantastic at self-deprecation, which needs work, surely.

I’m good at making clutter, and tidying it, and letting go of things. I’m good at staring quietly off into the corner, good at making the most of a pregnant pause.

I was good at being pregnant. Feeling my rotund self amidst the madness of the rest of it.

I am good at color, filling the house with the things of whatever the season, color beyond belief. The circus-ing of things.

I am good, mostly. Though it makes my eyes well up, I think it is true. I try, I try to be right with the world, this green and blue breathing thing, full of creatures.

I am good at reading c.s. lewis, and good at ignoring the bits I don’t like.

I’m good at being stubborn. Oh yes. Another problematic one, but still, so good.

I’m good at making baked ziti. And collecting santas.

I’m good at brewing nice coffee. I’m good at growing things, tending things, nourishing things.

I’m good at piling on blankets, and wood, and sweaters. I’m good at feeding the dog, the cat and soon, the baby chicks.

I’m good at seeming to lose control and reining it back in. reeling sometimes, in all the ways, another thing I am good at.

I’m getting better at saying no. the opportunities to practice coming more often lately.

I’m good at being cozy. I’m good at needing so little, despite the ‘so much’ around me.

I’m good at dreaming. I’m good at making do.  

A good ten minutes of freewriting, that’s all that was. Thank you Maddie and Pippa. We all should do a little focused action on what we are good at. We . ARE. GOOD.

-lovelove

Despite our best plans…
Humanity

dear god, it’s me, incapable.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’d love to tell you the website was down. it may have been. but I’ve been unable to open the page which enables me to write a new post on my laptop. on my phone? why yes. But here, with space to type with two hands and a screen as big as I want? no, no, no. (if you tell me it’s my laptop and that I need a new one, I’m just going to start screaming nonstop for the next hour. people will be upset. don’t do it.)

clearly, i AM capable.

I’ve swamped the google with my questions and i’m clear of a cache and really, that’s just how simple it was. sluggish thy name is…

if none of that makes sense, you are probably my people. you are also my people if you’re laughing at how simple a fix that was.

Basically everyone is my people. except the hate mongers. but really, even them, if i could just get them to come and stay with me and my kids for a few weeks. There are other ways to be in the world, and I’ve got one of those ways.

I’m coming off of a birthday dinner with my middle, a brand new fifteen-year-old. He is very funny, and very charming, and so smart. Sitting at the dinner table with my kids and my mom last night, I just fell in love with them all. in all of their cantankerous, funny, teen and pre-teen ways, these kids are just fucking incredible. it’s one of the great bittersweets that having one who is a senior and will leave the nest soon, has made everything so sweet, so watchable, so sentimental. It’s a great gift to have this time to watch them and see them together. these moments are really affecting their entire lives, these sibling relationships. I dream that they’ll be able to support each other as they go forward in their lives.

Meanwhile, they’ll have to deal with the fact that they are getting a lot of socks for Christmas. As a team, they’ll start the support system sooner than they’d rather. I’m very much the hopeful mom on that one. I’m just going to make sure breakfast is good, that’s all there is to it.

Happy Winter Holidays to you, whatever you celebrate, however you live. . .

love love,

kate

Cosmic Fairy Lights
Cosmic Fairy Lights by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Cosmic fairy lights? Seriously? C’mon NASA, its like you are in my brain. Wait. ARE YOU in my brain?

Humanity

That car is mine now. Zippy.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Well, mine and the bank’s. And it is super zippy. So deliciously zippy. I can honestly say that ceasing the anxiety of driving a car with every emergency light on has been amazing. Her favorite thing to do at the end was stall out at a stoplight. So much fun. Only in letting her go did I ever give her a gender. She did her job. I drove her until there was no more drive.

And I can honestly say that 98% of what spurred me to get the car I did was exhaustion; exhaustion from anxiety and exhaustion from ceaseless car research. My mother let me borrow her car for several days in a row and it was heavenly and almost necessary that I drive her car, which has 287,000 miles on it. I just surrendered. Car salesmen got me in the chair, and I would have given them my children just to make it all stop.

I don’t think I got taken advantage of, by the way. Because I had a little time when I knew I’d need a new car, I’d actually done a shit ton of research. So I don’t think I’ll be unhappy with my purchase. Maybe when I realize that the bills will just not stop. Ha. But that is probably true when any damn big purchase is made, I suppose. I always expect to be turned down. Where the hell does that come from? No idea at all. But there it is.

and now, the rush.

…And I’ve just finished my FAFSA, to begin the whole shebang of kids in college and all that foolishness. And I bought an easel off Facebook marketplace this weekend and I’m wildly in love with it. I just keep looking at it as an object. Maybe I should’ve bought an uglier one. It’s like a perfect notebook, that you don’t want to write in because it’ll get ruined.

well. idiocy.

And what else? Plant watering is getting away from me and I worry about my houseplants. Pulled up all my dahlias to carry them through the year and now I have no idea how to store them and the whole livingroom is full of what looks like bulbous dried turds. I have a friend who’s son is a chef and I got one of the best meals of my life this week. Holy salivation. I made the call to a home health aide place, and they’ve put me on their list for aides. I don’t know if that means anything, like: will they call me?, but I’m wondering if I get more hands-on experience, I’ll have more of a notion if I would like to make a life around taking care of the elderly, until i become so, i guess. Made my daughter watch the Muppets Christmas Carol and I was bored out of my head. Gah. Gonzo is the only one I love. And also, two of my favorite people got great new job news this week and I’m jealous, I mean, not in a horrible way. Maybe jealous is the wrong word. I’m curious for myself, I think. I’m over the moon for them both and small slices of me slide into contentment at hearing other people’s joy. Great feeling of bubbling bliss. I miss my friend Pam, another bubbler of bliss, and she’s just a damn phone call away. Why aren’t I calling out for more?

and i wonder what the heck is my next movement of joy as regards work? I’m not especially adept at waiting, i confess that much, and i’m not necessarily working towards anything, or it doesn’t feel that way. just muddling. maybe its the doldrums of a seasonal worker? Gargh. So, when allowing things to happen organically, and being impatient, and recognizing actions are necessary, one feels all vitamixed up and choppy.

Yeah, man, I don’t think I should publish this either.

but then .

reality of a bullishly stubborn person… here it is.

-lovelove

An old beginning and some new ones.