Tag: joy

Humanity

Make ’em laugh.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

We wrote about singing today in my writing group. I found myself lost in my dad’s choral career. usually the deepest voice in the group but for the lovely Lauren next to him. Church. His growing up Baptist with so many cousins, and hymns that focused on somber joy, was a way of being which I think he did pretty well. When I imagine him squeezing his elbows against his belly in laughter, his hands in balls (think manly t-rex) there is nothing better. He was a mixed bag, for sure, but he did find joy pretty often.

Between he and my grammie harriet, they were my true goals. To make them laugh meant I’d made it. I was a heroine amongst heroines. I didn’t know funny jokes or anything, it was perspective, or whimsy, or somesuch. My favorite motherinlaw said I had edge, and I suppose that too, is true. Took me a long time to appreciate that it was something different in me, not just weirdness.

I had an unfortunate marriage, and spent a lot of time sad, fearful and angry. I was still funny though, but threaded through with those emotions, and it felt like grit sometimes.

Now my days are filled with plants and little kids, and my own kids, bigger but still kids, all of them, even the one away in school. And there are few adults in my circles. And I’m a shoe-in to make a preschooler laugh. Absolutely. They are my spirit animals, so tangibly connected to joy.

there is nothing better.

What a terrifically unfunny post. Irony.

ha. LOVE YOU MOST.

-me.

Humanity

Woah Nelly

Lovelovemotherexpletive

the fury of finances is settling down. Have started being paid for the new hours, have asked the farm boss to pay me asap, and she’s happy willing and understanding. the credit card carried the day, which bites it but got me gas in the car and the kids got their juice. mofo.

in my adult life i have never had it be such a goddamned lightening strike as that was and I’d be very happy never to repeat it.

And spring has mostly exploded, so at the climax of it all are daffodils, and wild expanses of seedlings in a greenhouse and little baby grape hyacinths everywhere. So i am content.

Grape hyacinth in the front yard

I am sitting on my porch and I feel like I’m on a softly rocking boat, watching a sunset. One of those life altering appreciations, the wild privilege of a beautiful life.

So it swings, this pendulum, between sense and sensibility. today is all the senses.

and its kim smith’s birthday. holy shit. we be 50 this year.

Haapppy Birthday Gimmler!

hugs and kisses to us all. and to KIM!!

  • love love.
Humanity

Couple things.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m not a fan of these months of melancholy and memory. I know I’ve said it before, but they are hard hard, and this weekend was a doozy, mixed in with some whizbang sex and more tears than I thought I could shed while still being silent.

  1. I’m going to be fifty in June. Not really a big thing, in reality, and i’m happy to be alive and aging. But my mom is 78 and just recovering from a surgery and not feeling well and the combination is bringing mortality and life choices to a much larger screen near you.
    The choices I’ve made leave me entering my fifties working at a job which pays a fairly low hourly wage for very demanding work. I love it, but also dream of an actually fulfilling paycheck. but i really do love it. so what to do.
  2. I’m noticing that my ability to be teased is REALLY low. My eldest is home from college for two days now and he’s broken my spirit twice already. I know that he is surrounded only by peers there and forgets social niceties, but my god, the burn is real. I’m close to the veil.
  3. I can see so clearly the sins of others. (and by sins i mean human flaws, people, human flaws) but I know that I have so many of my own. Why am i so competitive in situations where there is no game at all? My ex has a lot of loose money, and I do not. I spent at least two weeks wildly obsessing about the expense of insuring another new driver, when the other parent had just assumed he would be doing it. miscommunication? assumptions? either way, the experience of the two weeks trying to ‘figure it out’ and failing? all mine. not my best time. In no dream can I afford to insure another car and a teenaged boy driver. In no dream. And it crushed me and I was flat.
  4. Its also become more scary to come and write here because I haven’t been doing it, and that builds on itself, so I am here today to try and cut it off at the knees. (if you know me, please tell me to keep writing, here, because my god, i’m getting scared of life without it. what do i have if i have no creative outlet? what.)
  5. The number of times I’ve said, ‘i’ll figure it out’ this week has been too many. I never made a list so I’m guessing I’m totally fucked. I don’t know what I’m figuring out anymore. I’ll probably keep the house, (of course i will, i’m just kidding) and I’ve got wood if I get chilly, so .. I’m guessing some stuff has been figured out. as for the rest of it? we’ll see….
    At least one of the things is the application of the sixteen year old to be a driver. And that rests in the hands of the folks at the DMV. bless them. And that fifteen year old redhead white boy just got his hair done into cornrows. There is much to discuss. Beautifully done, but still.
  6. I think five is good, but here I am at six. Half dozen. So, I love you, I love spilling some of my guts to you. I hope you are warm and have the lights you need to see in the darkness.

love love,

kate

Humanity

My youngest is 11.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

I’m tired of writing facts. This is going on. That is going on. I want to write dapple and splinters of silverfish at my feet when the waters come in.

bubbles of joy and overwhelm that fizzle and steam and lift, depending on the day.

the rush of the heart against the ribcage when the tears rise, a wild irrational thrust towards escape

cold fingers typing, calloused hands barely registering on touch screens these days. i may as well have lifeless clay in digit form. but then again, i do not. there is life in this clay, and i’m in reformation mode again.

(at times anyways, because sometimes i am also too much with my couch)

the heartbreak of november is heavy with me. the light itself brings me to tears. the cry of the newly red leaf, the flutter of the gold, as they fall, food for my next year’s garden.

i feel that veil is thin, yes, and it is the grey boundaries between past and future in which i feel myself becoming a flock of birds. the neither here nor there, an inability to be present for it.

clay, sodden ground, mud and how much value do i put on a clean shoe anyhow?

there is so much going on, and nothing. and i love you, and i’ll see you soon.

-kate

Humanity

what i learned in vegas.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Spent five days in Vegas, no kids and a lovely bf.

  1. what happens in vegas stays in vegas.
    yep, because there should be a wall put around the area and all the money and greed and waste and environmental ignorance should be encapsulated, so that the rest of the world can go on and on without any of that. Lets move trump’s mexico wall to nevada?
  2. the world of human creativity is alive and well, my faith in human goodness and magic is restored. the engineering feats? the lighting technicians who found their niche? the armies of cleaning people in the mornings? the ways in which an entire civilization has been built where no people can survive? Astonishing. I was constantly astonished. Look up, look down, its everywhere.
  3. Addendum to 2: I saw two Cirque de Soleil shows, Love and Ka. And I cried because my heart was so full of the majesty of humanity.
  4. the scenery of the cowboy movies is real, and that blew out the walls of my small world, and i’m better for it. buttes, bluffs, red rocks at sunset, all just outside the city limits, visible from my hotel room in the Fremont area.
  5. i love moscow mules. probably way too much. way.
  6. drag show humor is one of those things that restores my faith in humanity. i laughed so much, and loved those beautiful performers and their catty ways. It should be required for everyone to watch one, every year, like a thanksgiving dinner, good for the soul.

AND. I haven’t even told you about my sister’s wedding yet, at which there was a QUEEN, but not in drag. That body was 100% booming, and 100% hers. I’ll fill you in next time. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to my sister about it yet. But holy love fest, guys. HOLY LOVEFEST.

Chihuly ceiling at the Bellagio. A flipping ceiling.