Tag: winter

Humanity

I do not know

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Second birthday is done now. Onto the Christmas thing.

Just made three different kinds of cookies to give as gifts. It was hours in the kitchen and I gave up on holding onto my sanity and it went right out the front door. I watched it go, that skanky bitch. She had a fucking swagger, she did.

My eyes are dry and I’m slightly sticky from all the sugar. I don’t know, man. Its a chance to say thank you to people, to show them a little generosity: of time, of thought, sometimes of money. I like it, actually, but not the wild stampede of my guilt and overwhelm as I try to fit in all the things and the planning and the grocery. Its all the steps that get me, the ways in which I am overwhelmed three weeks before the thing, the way my brain carves a groove in the ‘is this worth it’ platter holding the cheeses we’ll eat on the Eve.

My kids have Christmas with their dad the day before they have it with me. Mine is smaller this year than it ever has been and I’m just so done with all the things I think about that. Man, I need a good therapist, and I’m just so damn mad at myself that I am still falling into old patterns, ones which I’ve already tired out a few therapists with. OOOOLD news. so fucking old.

I don’t even care about them anymore, those old pieces of shit, to tell you the truth. But they come up AGAIN with the overwhelm and the fear that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not appreciated, that maybe I’m still invisible, like I was then.

so shit. i do not know. and here i am, all cookie-d out. and i look forward to giving them out tomorrow. I have to be in early, and its cozy day, so i’m just wearing a gigantic sweatshirt that almost comes to my ankles. I may not ‘rally’ and ‘be lively’. I predict a sort-of dazed experience of the day.

Love you guys. Be merry if you want to. 🙂

Cookies! So many goddamned cookies.

Humanity

trying to keep my cup small

Lovelovemotherexpletive

its easier to overflow when you start small, fyi.

wish i could teach the value of small things to other people. there has to be a crack somewhere so i can get in, so i can show this. just a sliver.

the value of small things.

realizing that as much as i love people, and i really do, i can’t handle more than two or three at a time. this is a direct reflection of my hearing loss. the insecurity is overwhelming and I feel directly the shrinking, the ways in which i try to make my own self invisible to counter the possibility of embarrassing myself, or just being lost while surrounded by people. so, i left a conference i wanted to be at today, because it was lunchtime and too much small talk. and i don’t exactly know how i feel about leaving, but i am trying to honor my small cup, and i was overwhelmed and starting to feel isolated, and i needed to leave. so i did.

i’d love to grow flowers, but i listened to a flower farmer at this farmer’s conference and I don’t think I want that. I want to make a hundred dollars in a summer from the yard, or maybe double or triple that, but I don’t want to be a farmer. i don’t have the wherewithal for it. (unless you know two or three people who could build it all for me? cuz, man, if i could start with a greenhouse and some long beds? maybe we’d be talking.) but still, just the stand by the road. that’s it. that’s all. little cups.

i’m hoping to switch things up a little this summer, maybe give me some time to grow my own garden. last year i didn’t have the time and it was a shade of sadness.

yesterday i was bemoaning my lack of writing, and lovely bob leaned over and put his arm on my shoulder and said simply, ‘you do not have the time.’ and he was right. and here i am, finding it and forgiving myself for the times when i choose a movie or a nap instead of productivity.

trying to keep it small, folks.

small things have great value.

love you much,

kate

Browsing at a TJMAXX and not buying this, but loving it?: My medicine after leaving the conference.

Humanity

Hoard and Cave

Lovelovemotherexpletive

It used to be so much easier to write. I feel that truth. My days had more blank space and my mind was not as full of the minutiae of the day to day. the laundry is now and will forever be there, but somehow, even with young ones, i was able to throw down words in a way that felt cathartic, and creative somehow.

yellow duckies in line on a concrete floor
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

now i have more consciousness about who is reading, more private children, (and they can read), more ego, i guess, in terms of not wanting to embarass myself or anyone else. i can get really tired of people thinking i’m odd. i’m only as odd as the next guy. and i’m not talking about the naked guy at the beach. It gets old, and being embarassed is not that good a feeling, it seems to ride side-saddle to shame.

i’m in the winter of a farm life, treasuring the time i have now that the ground is frozen, spending hours and hours at home, reading, gazing at the fire, eating too much, worrying about the money that is not coming in, the weight that is coming back, knowing how close spring is, and the return of the too much, all the while still awaiting a real snow. I should have already started the eucalyptus seeds but i’m feeling stubborn, and i want my cave-in to be complete, whole. Me in a blanket fort for days. Coffee and cookies and potato-cheese products delivered at will. That’s all. And money, money would be good too. but, just stacks. I think i could stuff a pillowcase just fine. Or, maybe not, but i could certainly use it as a coaster for my coffee mug.

Hoard, and Cave.

Thats where I’m at, friends. Happy January.

love love,

me.

*I’m a branch swinging wildly in the wind. I’m just hoping I stay attached, or that the crash is not devastating.

Humanity

Deadening, the season.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

Why does it feel so twisted to take down the tree every year? I’m happy, yes, to make a little space. But I’m mostly concerned that I’ve got an empty space that I’ve got to heat somehow, that its too nordically sparse. that somehow a cold bear will find its way to hibernate in that corner, while snow falls on him.

and there will be a lone figure walking off into the shadows between the trees, and it will be me.

Today is bright and sunny though, and I’ve been looking at seed catalogues a lot, but it all feels fraudulent somehow. This tease on these cold days is just a delusion of mine own, that spring will ever arrive. my intellect knows that it does, that it gets colder first, and wet, and then life bursts forth. but my animal brain, the primitive goo riding side-saddle next to my internal glowing orb? that goo is convinced that a bear is coming.

let it be sung.

-lovelove, in january.

landscape photo of forest
Photo by Anton Atanasov on Pexels.com
Humanity

January, ya cold. Winter garden indeed.

Lovelovemotherexpletive

The coffee is delicious and so strong my teeth get involved. So I’m sharing my writing group prompt here, and what I wrote, in ten minutes, because . because.

Tell me about a winter garden. 

It feels like the months are unevenly split here, the winter lasts forever and not long enough and then summer rushes by. But i like the winter so much more and so the fall and the buildup to this cold and cozying time is all part and parcel of my favorite. The yard is left undone. I walk about and check on the places where things will grow again. Yesterday i found a cache of chicken eggs in amongst where the daisies grow. It will take a very careful collection, at this point. The shells are bleached white and are sharp against the frozen greens . 

The ground is hard, what is noticed is shape and curve, a torment of the branch. Its beautiful, flat out. I wonder if i like this more than i like the chaos of the growth that happens, even though i do love that too. It starts slow but by the end of the season, this yard is completely beyond human interference, and while that is wild and beautiful, it is daunting, and there is no small part of me that feels i’ve failed somehow, in training, in dominating, in being the apex human. 

The winter garden, the small strong things that have grown anyway, (how damn strong) that cover the raised bed in humps and bumps of green, despite the freeze. Its all cold, the bones ache, I leave the stalks and dry bits for the insects that hide in there, the winter homes of the bees. 

There is no type A in me.

So what? Fear and acknowledgement of the chaos and the tumult to come, and its roots are stark and here, and making up the ground that is so hard. Its not a soft walk, right now, the ground as hard as asphalt, but not smooth, full of whatever makes the millions of pits and valleys.  It does bring to mind poetry, it does. There is a great line that called cut corn stalks … sword hilts and it makes a battleground of my yard, those sword hilts all around. Although maybe more an art installation in my case. Laughing. There is so much in this. 

The winter garden. What lies beneath… the flip side of the coin, the summer of growth and renewal and the winter of our discontent and burden. – oh my. Not burden but secrecy. Growth in secret.

THERE IS SO MUCH IN HERE THAT I AM ABSOLUTELY IN LOVE WITH. what strikes you, my pretties?

love love,

me

There are at least a dozen eggs in here. My ladies are unfertilized and so may not know that there are no bebe inside. This is the second stash I have found. Why my ladies, why?