it is. it is the season in which i sweat myself, in all the ways. August, you bastard.
the grass is dead. it hurts to go barefoot. god bless you if you have to touch asphalt.
Spent the weekend driving a kid to maine, and returning home through boston, which is full of overly-seasoned aggressive travellers and/or angry wealthy suburbanites who are pissed they don’t have a lakehouse. or maybe they are pissed because they ‘only’ have a lakehouse and not oceanfront. I don’t know what it is, man, but they are some mad dude-like and women-like people.
so i sweat myself.
i’m too stubborn. i’m too much to handle. i’ve got too much to say, and i rattle on. i’m too curious. i refuse, a lot of things.
i’m too hot. so i sweat the kids too. I snap and crackle at them. i’m cranky because no one works like i do in this house, (BUT OF COURSE NOT! I’m a freaking adult, I own the place. Sigh.) the damn kids keep running off before they do their chores, to grow and live life and sin. and they are moving faster than i am, because i’m just lying on the sofa, you see.
i’m not sinning enough, thats part of the problem, for sure. but i’m having a hard time finding the time. between the work and the family? c’mon. when it is this hot, and everything is dying? i’m not chasing ass, or alcohol, or anything at all.
i’m just sitting here, dreading the coming work day. dread most foul.
August, you bastard. Why can’t I quit you?
i need someone to just step in. is it a weakness in me? Is it just a need for AC?
The return always sucks. It does. Firstly you have ‘the leaving’ which is a punch in the gut.
What? I have to leave? This doesn’t go on for ever and ever? I can’t just sit and reminisce every night while the fireflies dance? No? HOW DARE YOU interject reality and flight delays into my idyll?! How fucking daaaaaare you.
But I’m here again, I’ve done this before, the leaving. It doesn’t get better and I find myself looking for ways of escaping the mundane and the daily. Its only 24 hours later. One of the ways I tried to shake it up was going to the ER for six hours last night. This was not a good idea, but my brain spent a hell of a lot of time convincing itself that I was going to go septic from an infection and die without seeing my kids again. (they are at their dad’s this whole week for their once a year ‘whole week’ with their dad.)
This is most definitely not a good way to escape, and I would not suggest this to anyone, for any reason. Between the airport and the ER, I have seen the tops and bottoms of humanity. Literally. ALthough I suppose the 1 percent at both ends don’t use public airports. true. My brain, i think, leapt on the opportunity that having the kids all tucked away provides. All of a sudden, she did the math, realized she was working every other day this week and the timesuck could only be squeezed in to the one spot, directly after disembarking. One must schedule these emergencies, you see.
you can take the kids away from the mother, but you cannot take the mother out of the mother.
Its only been a little over 24 hours since I left and I’m bumming. I spent more time with a lot of Wisconsin nurses than you’d ever believe, and it was lovely, and I have a new appreciation for how different cultures can be within a group that looks ‘just like the other one’. Nope. Not the same. I ate cheese curds and learned how to make a mojito. Very delicious, I might add. My suggestion is white rum. Or leave it out and just have the rest. Very delicious.
I miss my best friend and wish I could see her more than once a year. But I think we are lucky we can both swing that, so I guess I’ll rest there, in the morass of humanity crawling and flying at all the different stages.
And maybe I’ll get caught up on the laundry. or that book I’m supposed to be writing.
Yeah, you know this guy had to hold this pose *just too long. Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com
Yesterday all three needed to be picked up at the same time in three different places. One, in another town. At the last minute, literally, their dad calls and asks if I need help. (it is his night that night so he’s in town-ish) I send him to pick up the farthest away who just called saying he’s hiding in a shed to keep out of the wind. Go get that one, fella.
All was well. Next week, things will have adjusted, and others will be involved. Certainly.
Surely.
Because i’m in the middle of a cycle of ‘toomuch’. I have perfect mom hours and I get home and I drive for the next three hours and then make dinner and then I fall down dead. I’m full of busy and the downtime I have is filled with lethargy, television and scrolling.
Even when the kids are gone, and the house is quiet, I am struggling to find my way to my space. I’ve added meditation minutes to each day, and plants, lots and lots of plants. I need to go put a chair in there. Maybe i should meditate in the plants. kill two birds and whatnot.
See? Even the meditation and beauty-hunting get multitasked to death.
Multitasking is the devil.
One of my jobs is bossed by a woman who has one million things running through her brain, as most farmers do. But the threads between the items, tying them into a web of ‘done’ have pulled loose. (my description, not hers) So things get left undone all the time. And, not in a way that is hurting her or her business, its just how she’s developed her system, running it solo as she does. And she knows what to prioritize, and ‘finished’ can be an unnecessary goal. Sometimes I dream of sneaking in and finishing all the things I’ve left behind, not even for her, just for me, so I can rest easier.
The great luxury of time and a slow-moving brain is that you can focus on one thing, beat it to death, revive it and send it on its way.
(hollah to the easter story, unintentional, and no blasphemy intended.)
But the release, the ‘send it on its way’ is part of the story. And, in oblique reference to the above hollah, its probably the most important part. Right? For living on…?
my brain is not slow, this i know. but man, I am missing the time to let it leap. Ask me to pick forty-five perfect nasturtium blossoms in under five minutes and I’m on it. But getting into writing, or letting my mind wander over a keyboard is so much more difficult to fit into a five minute block. And there’s kids here quite often, and I’m responsive mostly. And I haven’t figured out how to give myself a way to write each day yet. Its been since January that I’ve been working all week. . . And Now its the end of MARCH, and is this my IDES, I ask you, is this my torment?!
I know i’m whining, and I’m more irritated than you are, i swear.
I’m here. There’s my big plant sale in May, a thing that will finish… and I think my brain will be more interwoven after that. My house will be less full of plants, and maybe my fingers will run for more clicketyclack. I’m hoping so. Deeply.
I’m leaving you with a photo of what goes on the compost heap. Truly amazing. So, I want you to think about this, (she says also to herself),
when you are focused on a perfect blossom, maybe you should be focused on the perfect dirtpile. when you are focused on finishing, maybe a focus could be on starting.
Well, two of the three kids have tested positive for covid. So, if you read that last post in which I whine? WELL.
I’m an asshole and so it is. No more whining except that I’m glad I’m vaccinated, and since they’re really quite recovered already, I can say I’m glad that they’ll have antibodies. Sigh.
And, on a positive note, my freezer will finally have its day. (i’m vaccinated, so according to the town nurse I can go to the store, but I’m concerned about the ego of the freezer, and how much its been looking forward to this day.)
It brings up a host of problems in co-parenting, in case you were wondering. So many and so varied, and so much of my life right now is just spent listening, and keeping my mouth shut and waiting for ‘conversation’ to end. I’m definitely out of practice of talking, because I do not know how people rattle on anymore. I really don’t.
Should I get out there and practice? (well, after we’re done quarantining.) Just go up to strangers and rattle off on them? or maybe that is what I use this forum for?
I honestly do not know. I think it might be time for more rattle practice, because listening sucks. I’d like to be the rattler for once.
See here for a small complaining post about why I wish we were all more thoughtful about covid in the schools, and parents, and homelives.
SO. My kids school requires a PCR molecular test if the kid has any of the covid symptoms. Not more than one, or seriousness or any such combination, just one. So my kid had a fever, a mild one but enough to knock her off her game and I kept her home til she recovered. Now, unless I get a doctor to say she has strep or some other distinct alternative to covid, she is essentially presumed to have covid and I have to keep her home for ten days.
And now I have another one with a fever.
SO. I feel this. I know that it is so complicated, and putting decisions like this in the hands of school nurses is just tragic. So, I really do get that. But with kids? There isn’t always a diagnosis to explain everything. Like, sometimes they just have a fever, or get a cold, you know? And yes, I’m getting two of my kids a PCR test today, Thursday, in hopes that, with a negative, they can go back to school on Monday. Because they have a dad who can GIVE a pcr test. because there were no appointments anywhere until SUNDAY. WHICH WOULD MEAN THEY COULDN”T GO BACK TIL POSSIBLY THURSDAY WHICH WOULD PUT ME AT ALMOST A WEEK PLUS OF NO SCHOOL FOR a 24 hour something or other, and in my daughter’s case she’s up and raring to go.
so. MONDAY.
I work at home, and won’t be doing any today or tomorrow and that is just wretched. But what are parents doing? Taking days off? A whole week’s worth?! Are parents going to start lying? Are doctors, knowing what vaguery is doing to a typical family life? Will people just send sick kids to school? Will nurses have to meet kids at the door to keep them out? How is this being handled?
ALL of this is grotesquely caricatured in the assumption that they are negative, of course.
I do not like this, sam.
And here I am. Driving for a covid test, fingers crossed that they’ll go back to school and science is a tricky business and full of rebels and thy will be done, etc. etc. And no, my kids aren’t vaccinated yet, but honestly, it would change absolutely nothing about this post, because the protocol is the same for everyone.
and yeah, i hear you out there calling me a whiner. I do. and I know, I am.
HERE ME WHINE.
-ugh.
Covid, in the shape of the light fixture in the living room. Its everywhere.
