47 Minutes

Fitbit told me that I slept for 6 hours and 36 minutes last night with 47 minutes awake and/or restess. That would be the 47 minutes that I spent trying to get Prince’s Pop Life out of my head – it’s like a brain tumor now – and gave up trying to sleep because the full moon was fucking with me. I rarely allow myself to get up out of bed at night for anything other than to pee but last night I couldn’t stand it any more. I wandered around the dark house and found the moon shining through the back room window. It was hiding behind the maple tree’s branches but it was no better at hiding than a 2 year old “hiding” behind a living room curtain. I see your toes sticking out! I hear you giggling! You can’t fool me!

It’s been a rough couple of days for reasons I can’t fully explain. Maybe it’s been a rough few weeks. I don’t know. I’ve lost count.

I’ve been working on the band’s budget at the same time I’ve been working on my own. I’ve tallied up all the money I’ve spent on food and gas and miscellaneous and discovered that the “miscellaneous” needs to be axed or we will not make it. And maybe even the food. I’m pissed off at so many things and people these days I don’t even know where to start. I’ll start with pretty much every Republican in Congress and work my way down from there. I feel guilty that I can’t be involved in much of anything political because my life is too full of musts – work, kids, lying awake at night trying to shake off a song so I can sleep.

I wrote a note listing all the things to discuss, should I ever write a blog post again, and most of them boil down to money or lack thereof: budget, money stress, band fees, band trip, jobs, IB test fees, the whole idea of who is priveleged and who isn’t. I think when you can’t afford to buy yourself a bed frame, are you priveleged or not? If you aren’t even sure how to spell the word correctly are you privileged? I’m white, what do I know? I know I am stressing out over paying for band and the upcoming November trip to NYC where they will march in the Veterans Day Parade down 5th Avenue, on top of Dusty’s IB tests now that she’s starting the IB diploma program. Which should help with college except….add college to that list. Put it on the top of the list. Underline it.

I don’t sleep well. I worry. My mother is “worried” about me but only in the most general way. The way the average person is “worried” about a rising interest rate or the price of “summer blend” gasoline. There’s nothing behind that worry, nothing that helps.

My house needs a roof. My car has 231k miles on it and isn’t paid off yet and needs 4 tires. Should I be worried? What good would it do?

I’m doing all the things that I can to ignore/counteract the worry – I’ve started a garden again despite my utter exhaustion last fall (of course, I knew I would). I’m walking (goal is 7,500 steps a day and most days I exceed that). I’m mowing again. I’m obsessed with the podcast S-Town (are you? Let’s talk! I started to write a whole post about it and then lost the will to hit ‘publish’). I’m attempting to read but I’m not making much headway. I’m writing 10 minutes every morning. I’m meditating/napping 15 minutes most evenings. I was doing a weight lifting thing until I injured a rib and have had to wait for it to heal until I could get back to it. Today, I cleaned my gutters of maple tree helicopters while Red watched HGTV and dealt with cramps and nausea. I am dealing with a kid who does NOT want to grow up and is depressed by the changes in her body and really isn’t down with swallowing pills though tempus fugit and all that. I don’t know what to do for her except to buy a pill chopper for the ibuprofen she needs. We recently went through the Barbies to get rid of most of Barbie World and she has gotten it all out again, setting up new realms, refusing to grow up. It’s hard. It’s all hard.

She detects my stress, I think; the slogging I do every day to make sure we are housed and fed and clothed and the roof (that needs replacing) doesn’t leak and the clogged sinks get unclogged and the cat vomit is cleaned up and the clothes are washed and the dishes are washed and the car gets us where we need to go and I continue to go to a job I’m tired of – burnt out beyond all recognition – or the other job that pays shit but only requires that I am competent, which I am, even when I have to clean up some asshole’s literal shit he purposely left on the bathroom floor. I don’t know why people do this.

Either way, I put on the gloves and knelt down and scooped up his shit and mopped up the pond of piss and sprayed every inch with hazmat spray and locked the bathroom so that everyone else would lose because some shithead decided to make a statement. That is my life: cleaning up after other people’s statements.

It is what it is but what I’d really like is to have a family that says, Oh guess what? We forgot to tell you we’ve set something aside for the grandchildren’s college because we actually care. Or a life that says, Oh guess what? You can retire early and get the hell out of Dodge and do whatever you want to do without having to worry about paying the phone bill or the fact that soon three of you will need phones and we talked to the satellite company and they agreed your tv bill was too high so they’re cutting it in half and also decent internet is coming your way and it won’t cost any more than what you’re paying now and if you do flee for parts unknown, it’ll come with you! Oh, and buy all the underwear and shoes you need! Send us the bill!

Spain is sounding really nice right now. Ireland. Scotland. Anywhere but here. Anywhere that I can get 8 hours of solid sleep without 47 minutes of wandering around looking for the reason for my problems and trying to get a Prince song out of my head. Not that I don’t love him but seriously. My brain hurts. He should understand and cut me a break.

I know this is the decade that’s supposed to be better but I’m thinking my better one might be the next one, should I live that long. I’ve got to get these kids through college first before I start my donkey rescue farm. With bee hives for kicks. I will live that long, right? Right?

Sucks To Be Nobody

Oh hi. It’s been two months and five days since my last confession. I haven’t had a lot to say. Or, rather, I’ve had a lot to say but just haven’t felt like saying it. The new world order is scaring me. I marched in January and called and wrote and emailed and joined in and filled out surveys and bit my nails (metaphorically – I’m not a nail biter) and just had a pro-ACA sign put up outside my house which I need to adjust tomorrow because the neighbor can’t see oncoming traffic from her driveway. But after feeling like I was burying myself in worry, I decided to do what I did last fall: give up the things I can’t do and focus on the things I can. Prioritize. So, it’s not that I don’t care but I just can’t spend every waking moment trying to save us all from imminent disaster. I hope that’s okay.

There is no heaven so I’m not worried about not making the cut. If there’s hell, I think we might be in it. I’m not sure. That’s not really not what I wanted to talk about.

On the cusp of stupid new temporary time, I’ve been working on what I can and can’t do and letting go of any residual guilt attached. This is actually getting easier the more often I practice the art of TCB, taking care of business.

What I’ve been doing lately: reading, getting enough sleep (generally), walking (a lot), beginning some upper body exercise to eradicate the grandma flesh flaps that have sprung up with menopause weight. I’ve decided I can only do so much about the weight but the turkey wings – that is fully within my control. So, I’m doing that. I’m doing my utmost to walk 7,500 steps or more a day. Which, considering I work a desk job and drive to and from work, is a challenge. I mostly meet my goal. I sometimes excede it. Some days, I come close but no cigar. I’m working on not beating myself up about it. That’s mostly what I’m doing these days: not beating myself up about what I don’t do and continuing to work towards a goal. Baby steps.

I’m reading a lot these days, slowly, but I’m having difficulty reading The Lonely City by Olivia Laing because I’m having trouble with the whole idea of “loneliness”. I used to be lonely, when I was married. I’m not lonely any more. I’ve finally hit a place of contentment. Not so content that I don’t continue to work towards new goals or try new things. But content enough that I don’t really need to search for that other person to fulfill what’s missing. Because what’s missing isn’t something I can get from another person. I’m okay exactly as-is. Yes, I’m fatter and saggier than I used to be but whatever. If if bothers you, I’m sorry. I’ve now reached that sweet spot: the invisible older woman. People FINALLY don’t see me! I no longer have to worry about what I wear and if I’m hip (I am not; never was, never will be) or cool (ditto) or frumpy. This used to concern me. It no longer does. If you don’t like what you see, look the other way. I’m not looking for a boyfriend or a lover. I don’t owe anything to anyone. I’m just doing my thing now, a thing that is really none of your business.

I’m not writing except for 10 minutes every morning and sometimes a little longer. Still feeling bad about this but only a little bad. I’m making art when I feel like it. I’m cleaning my house when the urge strikes. I’m letting Dusty drive us to school so she can get her practice in and I’m less nervous about it. We’re beginning to look at colleges and I’m not sad. Why should I be sad? The whole end game in parenting is to raise my children up and send them on their way. I’m happy for her and excited and I’ll miss her when she’s gone but I have lots of things to keep me occupied in her absense. Plus, I’ll have Red a few more years after that and she fills up a room like nobody’s business. So, lonely? Not a chance.

I have plans for the after life, after children, assuming the country isn’t completely destroyed and I don’t end up with a medical condition I can’t afford. Let’s hope the picture is rosier in 10 years.

Short term, the park job starts back up in a couple weeks and as exhausting as it can be, I’m looking forward to getting back to it. The extra money is nice and getting paid to get exercise and do a number of basic chores I’m fully competent to do is a good thing. There are so many worse ways to spend 8 hours a day, let me tell you.

I haven’t taken any trips to photograph abandoned structures this winter. My car isn’t up to it and I’ve spent that time doing other things. I re did my bathroom. I watched movies. I read books. I made art. I got political. I quietly lived my life. I am letting go of the guilt I feel for not doing ALL THE THINGS that others are doing to turn the tide and right wrongs. But I’m doing what I can do. I’m not looking for a companion. My friends are enough these days. It’s good to have friends. I’m busy raising my daughters. This is a fairly big job when you are doing it mostly alone.

Alone but not lonely. I’m not lonely. I’m not bored or sad. Not any longer. It’s okay that I have to contemplate spending money on a new roof rather than a month in Italy but I could be in a position where I couldn’t replace the roof. Where it could continue to leak and slowly destroy the house and I’d be living in Grey Gardens without the benefit of living in Grey Gardens by the ocean and being cousins to the First Lady. Some people have all the luck. I just have this life. And it’s not a bad one, all things being equal. Which they aren’t. Things aren’t equal but they can still be good.

Things are generally good so I haven’t bothered to write about them because what is there to say? Nobody wants to hear about good anymore than they want to see an old lady with flabby arms walk down the street in frumpy clothes. Sucks to be nobody.

2017: It’s No Game

Draw the blinds on yesterday and its all so much scarier.”

So, here we are. Entering what might be the scariest year in our lifetime. 2016 killed off so many good people. Celebrities, idols, friends’ relatives (parents, siblings) and friends’ friends….it’s like they could feel the shift in the wind and wanted to get out of here before the storm arrived.

“Throw a rock against the road and it breaks into pieces.”

But we – you and I – are still standing. Or maybe you’re sitting. I don’t know. Maybe you are gripping the edges of your chair, gnashing your teeth, and making phone calls to the idiots who are running the asylum right now. Maybe I’ll see you in DC on the 21st. Maybe you’re knitting hats or making signs or trying to find a good use of your energy.

Maybe you don’t think the apocolypse is arriving on fiery steeds. I don’t know. Maybe nothing bad will happen. Maybe we’ll find a way to save ourselves.

In the meantime, since my time allotted to help save the world is minimal, I’m looking for ways to use my nervous energy for the good.

I’m making art. I even actually did a little bit of writing the other day though it was preliminary what-are-all-my-characters-up-to-if-I-start-this-over-from-a-different-angle writing. 900 words worth of that. I don’t usually give myself props for that kind of thing. But since Santa gave the girls Chromebooks for Christmas (thanks to Santa’s second job), I now have my laptop back and it’s a little anxiety-inducing. I mean, I had an excuse all last year and now I don’t have any more excuses. I feel like life is short and I want to leave it with at least ONE decent unpublished manuscript. Maybe when it’s burned with the others, it’ll flare up a little brighter.

My horoscope for 2017 talks about jobs and careers and things flipping on their head and courage and risks and I have had my eye on a couple of organizations I like, that do the kind of work I’d like to be a part of. A job opening appeared and I thought, a ha! Here it is! But I’m not sure it really is. If I was unencumbered and spoke a second language and could take a pay cut and live closer to society, maybe. But while contemplating that, I realized that it’s something I can do eventually. Right now, I need to count my blessings and keep the motor idling for a bit longer. It’s boring to do that but I’m pretty good and finding ways to charge up my brain outside of work.

And I need to keep saying “no” to things, extra things. Things I want to do and be involved in but cannot. I am only one person without a backup person. I am working on letting go of the guilt of not doing all the things. I am reminding myself that my first job is to be a mother to my children.

My second part-time job will start up again in the spring which is a relief. There were a few moments when it seemed like the positions would be turned into something else, a full-time parks job, which I’m not in the market for.

I’m actually planning the vegetable garden again after giving it up last year. I literally dropped the hoe on the whole big weedy mess in August. But now, my slate is slightly less full. One volunteer board is over with and the other is much easier to manage. So, we’ll see. I’ve made a planting plan and have my seed/plant orders ready to send once payday rolls around again.

I’m painting my bathroom which has needed an update for a long while. I’ll add the final coat this weekend and then begin to consider what to hang on the walls and save up for more peel-and-stick tiles for the box that holds the tub. I am really, really tired of looking at that shop class particle board monstrosity. I can’t afford to gut the whole room so I’ll cover up the worst of it as best I can. Frame some photos. Put up new switchplates. Bought a fluffy towel to turn into two bath mats since everything I saw at the store was rubber backed and too big for the space I have. Small inexpensive changes. That is the mantra now.

I’ll be focusing on little things this year. The things I can control. The things that make me happy. I’m lucky in a lot of ways and I’m going to do my best to ride this rollercoaster with my list of things I’m grateful for folded up in my pocket (which is not easy to do since pockets on women’s clothing are a fucking joke). I’m going to hang on tight, do what I can, and hope we come out the other side intact.

“To be insulted by these fascists, it’s so degrading. And it’s no game.”

Mockingjay World

I go away for two months and some change and this fucking year just….blows up in my face.

A dear friend came out for a visit today and we shared our fears about this new potentially-fascist reality we find ourselves in. Should we move to Canada? Go completely off-grid so we aren’t found when things get bad? Will we be able to have the quiet retirements we want? Will my retirement fund implode if we face another 1929 stock meltdown? Who knows? Are we worried about the wrong things?

All I know is that 2016 can kiss my pink ass. So much death and heartache. And yet I think the coming years will hurt even more. Not so much for me (though that’s still a distinct possibility as a single mother attempting to raise two very smart girls in an atmostphere that seems to feel it’s okay to voice sexist, homophobic and xenophobic beliefs) as for others much worse off. I don’t want to live through another WWII. I also don’t want to watch things devolve into bureaucratic chaos either. It all seems bleak. It’s hard to get up in the morning.

I feel like I’m living an episode of Survivor where the most delusionally complacent person is blindsided and voted out. I feel we’ve just voted ourselves out. Not me. Us. Have we been thinking about us? Because I have. I’ve been thinking about us. You. I’m negligible. I’m a drop in the bucket.

I don’t know. Either my fears are ill-founded or we need to strap on our boots and sharpen our weapons for a prolonged fight. Either way, I’m prepping for the fight. There isn’t much I can do, in my tiny white world, that will make a difference. The idiot has invited all the members of The Man to run the show for awhile. I don’t think that’s what his sheep thought they were voting for. Feels a little North Korea up in here right now. Tell me I’m wrong. Please tell me I’m wrong. But lies are what’s for dinner right now. And they taste like stale fish sticks.

I’m focusing on what I can do. I’m making art. Making things. Perhaps when the wrong button is pushed or the wrong dictator has been insulted beyond acceptace and we’re nothing but fairy dust in the sky, it won’t matter, but I’m doing and making and trying to quell the fears my kids have about the future they face. We can laugh and say, oh, this too shall pass, but we haven’t been a country all that long. Not in the scheme of things. Maybe this is a phase or maybe its the end of the world as we know it and we don’t feel so fine. Who knows? I sure as hell don’t.

Art will fight the power until we’re dust. Love and compassion and beauty. So throw it all out there and make a contingency plan. Maybe I’m crazy, but it feels like the end of something. This whole year has felt like the end of something. I don’t feel hopeful any more. I feel like all those dystopic novels weren’t actual fiction. They were sent from the future as warnings. Except the people that got us in this mess don’t read so we’re screwed.

Perhaps I’m wrong. I hope I am. I continue to go through the motions and pretend these holidays mean something as if they ever did. We make plans. What else can you do? We fight back. We resist. We insert sticks in moving wheels. We scatter tacks on the ground. We blow pepper in faces. We clog websites and email accounts and voice mails. We take down phone lines. We fight and express ire and refuse to go down without a fight. It’s our right to do so. The ignorant fearful disenfranchised think they’ve won but they haven’t. They put their eggs in the wrong basket. At the very least, the next few years will be clogged pipes and stuck gears. At the very worst….

I have the next few months off from the second job and Santa is bringing the children chromebooks so I’m hopeful (on this microscopic level) that I’ll be able to write again with some frequency. I have lots of photos to post on the other blog. I haven’t been idle, just computer- and time-impaired.

Until I’m jailed for not pledging allegiance to the new order, I’ll be here. I hope you will too. I’m holding up two fingers, Hunger Games-style. The sign of solidarity. President Snow can kiss my ass. I’m on Team Rue.

Teeth and Claws

I couldn’t find my phone this morning. I’m not a married-to-my-phone kind of gal but I use it to time the early morning ten minute writing I do. If I don’t do it, I’m an even bigger bitch to the world. We don’t want that. Every night, I turn it off and leave it by the coffee pot. When I wake up, I turn it and the coffee on. When I get out of the shower, I’m ready to go. But, by the time I found it this morning (living room table – wth?), I’d wasted that precious ten minutes and the cats were flinging themselves (literally) against the back door, howling, wanting their breakfast.

Recently, I’ve taken to hiding in my room, coffee in one hand, pen in the other, to write before I let them in because otherwise I’m covered in “playing” cats while trying to write and protect my coffee from flying animals.

This morning, though, I had to be [insert sarcasm face]  flexible, which pissed me off. I have a routine, dammit! It keeps me sane, for gods sake! I let out a large sigh, cursed the universe, let in the cats, fed their sorry asses, and then went back to my room to write.

Naturally, when they were done eating they came to find me. The kitten, belly full, began to attack the others in the middle of the carpet. Pokey, my long-suffering sleek black panther, jumped into an open window to get away from her. She leapt and leapt at him until he hissed. Not taking the hint, she kept at him until he growled, threw a punch, and jumped out of the window, fleeing to another room. The kitten, convinced this was part of the fun, ran after him. He sat in front of Dusty’s closed bedroom door, meowing to be let in. He needed sanctuary and knew he’d find it under her bed in a kitten-free environment.

I am truly feeling Pokey’s pain these days. I’m chased by kittens all day long in the form of needs, requests, expectations of others. They are piling on top of each other, each with their particular teeth and claws, grabbing hold of my sanity in all the most tender places, the most vulnerable spots. I’m ready to quit and run for the hills but I’d take a weekend with no must-dos. I want that under-the-bed hiding place behind the camera bags and chemistry textbooks and middle school diaries full of angst and woe. I want a window sill high enough to keep the predators of my time at bay. I need a wife. A personal assistant. A new car. Money and time to solve the problems their lack has created.

I am reminded of my favorite Steve Martin bit: “You can be a millionaire! First: get a million dollars!”

It’s Friday. It’s been raining forever. If I was the praying kind, I’d be praying that the football game would be cancelled so my sick daughter can come home tonight at a reasonable hour and get some sleep and kitten-free sanctuary before her band competition tomorrow (before she ends up with pneumonia). Instead I will just send a message up to the clouds to keep pouring down on us (soundtrack: Quadrophenia) until that email comes. Our Sunday will be filled with must-dos, the teeth and claws of things that gotta be done. But hopefully there will be some rest in there, too. Some deep, boneless kitten sleep full of loud purring.

Or, at least a damn beer.

The Season of No

I gotta tell ya, August just about killed me. Everything was too much. The schedule was untenable. I’m back working two jobs which means 12 days on, 2 days off in a fortnight. My volunteer gig has turned out to be much more work than I’d been led to believe it would be. The rules changed suddenly. I’m trying to figure out how to manage my time.

Red got braces a few weeks back and couldn’t eat the first night and was sad and it made me sad and then we figured it out. But it has taken all I have to get through the last couple of weeks. I’ve finally caught up with the mowing but the garden….sigh. Let’s not talk about it. Really, everything started to fall apart when I went off to Nashville for four days. It’s taken a month for me to get back to a place that feels less crazy and unmanageable. It’s very hard when there’s no backup. No one I can count on to help. No one close by. And it’s not like I ever really had back up but life has gotten more complicated lately.

I was lying in bed the other night, not sleeping (as per usual; I rarely get anything other than snatches of sleep on a good night), and listed all the things I have to let go of for awhile. And some of those are things I have loved to do, things that define who I am or who I was until the shit hit the fan. Things I’ve been guilting myself over not doing. Because I can’t do them. I can’t. I have to step back and re-prioritize in the short term.

And then my horoscope – written as an affirmation – for the week popped up in my overloaded in-box. And it was as if I’d written it myself during a long night staring into the darkness of my room. I’ve cut it down to the important bit:

I remember to go with the flow. I remember that everything will happen in its own way on its own schedule and that my schedule might need a little tweaking here or there. Which of my daily rituals work and which don’t? Which parts of my schedule are just too much to keep up with and which help to keep me on track?

 

Yeah. So, here’s what I’m allowing myself to let go for now. I have not put an end date on “now”.

1. Blog-writing. Maybe this is ironic because I’m writing this but I bit off way more than I could chew with blogs. So the Motherhood one will be put on hiatus or turned into a place to post my art. Or I might just take it down altogether. I don’t know why I thought I could that. Three blogs? I’m out of my mind. I am. I am full of ideas – bad and good – but no time to make them happen. This blog will continue (I mean, it’s not like I’m writing much these days anyway so I don’t feel the same pressure.) The Route One blog will continue because it’s updated whenever I have something to share.
   *
2. Novel-writing. This novel I keep thinking about? The one I started writing about a year or so ago? I’m allowing myself to not write it. At all. Guilt be gone! I’m officially not writing a novel. If I feel the urge, I’ll move a pen across a pad of paper but I’m not writing a novel.
   *
3. Volunteer work. As soon as one board tenure is up, I’m not accepting another one. As soon as the second one is up, that’s it. I’m done. Not that I hate doing it. I don’t. It just takes up way more time than I’d anticipated.
   *
4. Conferences. I used to love them back when I yearned for time alone. Now that I have that pretty often, I hate them. I rarely return with anything I can possibly put into place because I am a solo researcher and all the things I learn are helpful to bigger shops with newer databases that do whiz-bang amazing stuff. I ain’t there and I may never be. I’m kind of done chasing my career. I’m ready to not have a career. I just need the semblance of one until my kids are grown.
   *
5. The garden. I know. I know. I swear to you, I know what I’m saying. And I say to you I just don’t have the wherewithal to keep up with a garden any longer. The weeds took over when I was in Nashville and the sky dried up and the temperature rose and all my free time was spent mowing and working. And everything kind of died and felt horrible but I can’t feel horrible any longer. I can’t. I can’t even look the garden in the eye. I can hear it moaning. I’ve let it down. I’ve let myself down. I have to stop doing that.

   I’ll go out soon (when, I have no idea) and pull everything up and figure out what I can handle and scale that shit down. Because it’s not just the tending to, it’s the harvesting and turning all that produce into food that’s time consuming. Tomatoes rotted before I could eat them all. Peppers came in prolifically and I tried as hard as I could to use them up. I failed. Most of the cucumbers were turned into pickles (which are still taking up an enormous amount of real estate in the fridge) and a few sat on the counter and slowly turned into ooze. I made hot sauce and spaghetti sauce with most of the tomatoes but still. It got overwhelming. So, the garden will be a different place next year. I’d like to say I’m giving up gardening but we both know that’s a lie. By March I’ll be ready to go back out and try again. Hope springs eternal in spring. Hope is a cudgel that passion hits me on the head with every year. So, I’m not giving up entirely but I might do a lot of it in bags and containers on my deck where it’s easier to deal with. I don’t know.

I don’t know how to quit. I don’t know how to pare down. Whenever I stop doing one thing, I come up with 12 other things I want to do and I try to do them and end up spinning myself into a pool of butter at the base of the tree. I don’t do it on purpose. I might be a glutton for punishment but I’m unable to stop doing. I can’t turn my brain off. I have difficulty sitting and reading longer than half an hour these days.

Sometimes I feel how short life is and I want to cram as much in as possible so that when I do die, no one can say my life was full of nothing. I like to be busy but not to the point of insanity. Finding that line is what I’m trying to do. So, allowing myself to let go of the things I feel I *should* be doing but can’t right now, is the first step.

So, I’ll be back but I don’t know when. This is the Season of No. The Season of Let Me Get Back To You. The Season of I’m Not Dead Yet! Give Me a Call and Let’s Do Something! The Season of Finding the Right Balance for Now.

 

Art For Sale

In lieu of all the other posts I’ve written in my head but don’t have time to write for real, I give you the ART POST. Below are all the stained glass pieces Dusty made this year while working as a volunteer assistant for her stained glass teacher. All of her work has sold briskly in the past so if there’s a piece that interests you, let me know.

Proceeds go to help pay for her band trip to Disney World in the spring.

The unicorn is an older piece. I think she did that when she was 13 and it’s needed a few tweaks and repairs before it was ready to sell.

All of these are much more beautiful in person than my photographs can capture. Especially the “small pieces” made from bits of rare and unusual glass.

Candle holders – $60 (each) + shipping (3.5″ in diameter; 4″ in height at tallest point) – One is primarily shades of red, the other shades of blue

Large feather – $45 + shipping (9.5″ in length) – SOLD

Mountains – $70 + shipping  (11.5 x 5″) – SOLD

Small Piece #1  – $40 +shipping (3 x 3.5″)

Small Piece #2 – $35 + shipping (4.5 x 3″) – SOLD

Small Piece #3 – $35 + shipping (3.25 x 3.25″) – SOLD

Small Piece #4 – $35 + shipping (3.5 x 3″) – SOLD

Small Piece #5  – $40 + shipping (3 x 4.5″)

Unicorn – $100 + shipping (16.5 x 8.5″) – SOLD

 

Time May Change Me….

I’ve changed. I knew it at some level and I also knew that a lot of it has to do with age and time passing and having older children. But it really hit home when I went to Nashville for a conference in July. I began to miss home before I’d even left it. I worried about the cats and the kitten even though I knew they were in the best of hands. I worried about the garden and whether there’d be enough rain (there was – in spades). But it was more than that.

I arrived at the bizarro-world resort hotel conference complex and after a long board meeting was finally able to check in to my room. Finally, a room of my own. Quiet and basic and mine for 4 days. That was my first thought. My second was: I can’t wait for these four days to be over so I can go back home.

I used to love going to conferences because the allure of the hotel room, of being alone, of deciding when to sleep and what to do and where to go were a vacation in and of themselves. I was escaping a life that was becoming more fraught, more divisive, more depressing each day. Coming home from work should have made me heave a sigh of relief, “Finally, I’m home!” but it was the opposite. And this had little to do with the children per se. It was the knowledge that what I was coming home to was more work, scorn, everything that was not happy or relaxing or even helpful. It was more than a second job and it was the least enjoyable one.

So, getting away for a couple days was blissful apart from the travel which I always hate. So many hours wasted getting from one place to another!

These days, home is the refuge I’d always wanted. Home is where I most want to be. I missed my summer routines, my favorite chair, my first cup of coffee in the morning looking out at my neglected trees. Feeding my cats and getting ready for work. Coming home and deciding in what order I’d do things – mow first and then eat? Or the other way around? Mow at all? Harvest vegetables? Write instead? Make some art? I could do all these things or none of them. I could wash a load of clothes and vacuum at 10pm. Or I could put off until tomorrow what I was too lazy to do today and no one would make me feel guilty or less-than or sulk and stew and criticize.

This summer in particular I missed the children slightly less than the summer before. Part of that was just that I was busy. The days went by fast. I packed two vacation weeks into a three-week period – one away with the kids and one at home with a good friend. And then I was in Nashville and then I was FINALLY home and now it’s August and I have one of the kids back with the other coming home week after this coming one.

But with them or without them, there is still that good feeling. If I’m coming home to an empty house with an evening full of selfishly-driven possibility, or one with the most important people in it and I have to make dinner for three (which I almost forgot how to do) and then mow and then make sure things are picked up and put away….it’s good. It’s really good. And it’s nice to feel at home in my house.

I was going to write about KonMari and minimalism (which I have mixed feelings about) because there was an article in the paper about it (hipsters have discovered it or maybe rediscovered it – who really cares?) and how KonMariing my house helped with this whole process of feeling comfortable here and making it mine (and ours). But, clearly I didn’t get there in time. So that might be another post. Something I’ve been really bad at doing lately. I’m going to poke around in the links given in the article and perhaps share them here if they’re worth sharing. There’s something to be said about having less and my reasons are a bit different than the folks in the article but there’s also something to be said for keeping the things that spark joy, that you love, that make you happy when you see them.

Being home sparks joy. Sleeping in my own bed sparks joy. Hearing my kids thinking their thoughts in their rooms does too. Dusty came home and immediately started cleaning her room. I’ve been neglectful this summer but I also feel that I don’t need to be everyone’s maid anymore. Not to teenagers who can use magic sponges and vacuum cleaners as well as I can. Watching them grown into smart, independent people sparks the most joy. As does, acknowledging that I’ve changed and its been to the good.

Why I Love Summer

The other night, after falling asleep and waking up again an hour later, I got up and prowled around the house. When insomnia hits, I usually try to conjure up a meditative state of mind, writing down all the things that are bothering me or I need to remember, and then I attempt to lie quietly and wait for my body to fall back to sleep. If that doesn’t work, I’ll read. If that doesn’t work, I walk around and peer out windows and listen to the insects. It was a full moon so I went down to the other end of the house to see it more fully without going outside. There she was, shining on the house, keeping me awake. But I don’t mind insomnia quite so much in the summer as I do in the winter. The temperature is pleasant for one thing, everything’s alive outside.

Finally, I went back to bed and thought about all the things I love about summer. I’ve probably written this post before but I’m gonna do it again, ahead of a big awful triple-digit heat wave that even I don’t like. It can actually get to hot for me but being cold is always worse.
1. The heat. I like warmth. I like to be warm. I like to be comfortable in just a sleeveless top and a pair of short pants. I like to be comfortable in no clothes at all. I’m cold natured. I’m not a fan of a/c except when it’s really really hot – it has its place – but I don’t really like chilly air blowing on me, ever. I like walking out of the house in one layer. No coat, no socks, none of that other crap you have to layer on yourself just to get the paper in the winter. It’s a whole production, going outside when it’s freezing. I was meant for warm weather.

2. The humidity. I do. I like it. Sure, sometimes there’s too much of a good thing and I don’t really enjoy sweating and being damp all day but my skin likes the humidity and it feels….right. Maybe it’s that I’m a Southerner. I’m used to it. I don’t know. But humidity is never something I’ll complain about.

3. Cicadas and the night noises of insects. It’s 8:00pm, still light out and there’s something trilling rhythmically outside that isn’t a cricket. Crickets are for other seasons, insects of last resort. Cicadas are music – that chwee-chwee-chweeee-chweeeeeeeee they make tells me it’s summer. They are harmless bumbling creatures. Ugly but harmless. They don’t eat my garden, they don’t sting or bite. They don’t carry disease. That’s my kind of insect.

4. The junglizing of everything, the greenness, the lushness of everything. This is how everything is supposed to look, all time. All the other seasons are just minor transitions to get us back to this: fully leafed trees, flowers, grass. There are sections of the road I drive every day that are covered by a canopy of leaves as the branches of trees over the road make shade tunnels.

5. School’s out. No school buses, kids sleep late most days, teachers are home, everyone takes a deep breath and lets it out again. The pace is slower, offices have skeleton crews as people cycle in and out of vacations. It’s how life should be if none of us had to work all the time and the kids didn’t have to study all the time.

6. Spending whole days reading or daydreaming or napping or whatever you want. I have spent almost entire days reading. It’s lovely. Oh sure, you could probably do it any other weekend during the rest of the year but most of them are filled up with things, chores, activities, errands, demands, commitments. Summer is different.

7. The beach. Everything about the beach I love. The sand, the ocean, the sound of the waves crashing, the horizon melting into the ocean far away with nothing blocking that line between earth and air but distance.

8. Thunderstorms – the sound of thunder and rain pouring down on the roof, the thunder and lightning, that ozone smell, the build up, the release,

9. Fireflies. Another summer-only insect that is harmless and beautiful. Who doesn’t love fireflies? You don’t get that in the winter.

10. Praying mantises. I should probably write a whole post about My Favorite Bugs. I love these guys with their freaky alien heads. I love watching them walk about, trying not to get in the way, scanning for a meal, pouncing on some awful bad bug and eating its head. When I find their egg cases, I protect them. They are a gardener’s friend.

11. The garden. Goes without saying, perhaps, but even though I reach maximum laziness by August and I’m not doing much more than keeping things alive and picking food off the plants, I love my garden. I love the whole process – planning, digging, planting, weeding, protecting, watering, watching things grow – but I really like it when it’s reached full jungle stage in July when there’s not really much more you (me) can do but keep things alive and watered, weed, pick, and then begin to dismantle bit by bit.

Every summer seems shorter than the last. It used to seem to last forever but those were days when I didn’t work, when I catapulted out of my house in the morning after eating a bowl of cereal and throwing on yesterday’s clothes, and went to find a friend to have adventures with or sit around on half broken swing sets and moan about being bored, the whole day stretching out into the evening until dark which came much later than the rest of the year.

Now I’m in an office all day and the most outdoor time I have is when I’m mowing. Which, granted, is a lot of time, but it’s not quite the same. But it doesn’t matter because it’s summer. Whatever I’m doing, inside or out, it’s still summer.

July

It’s hot. This is probably not news to you. It’s been too hot to do a lot of things I usually do like walk outside during the day. So I’ve been staying inside and reading more. I should be writing more but my writing brain seems to have taken a vacation. I write a little but it’s really shitty writing. Very shitty. I have ideas, I jot them down and….that’s about it.

When I’m not mowing (heat or no heat, it must be done), I’m in the garden picking cucumbers and beans and digging up potatoes. Or watering. After a super rainy spring, the rain clouds clocked out and moved elsewhere for the summer. Watering is not my favorite thing to do but it gives me a chance to weed and plan for next year. It offers an opportunity to crouch down and see my garden at a different angle.

When I’m not doing garden chores or house chores or reading, I’m planning short excursions for the fall. I’ve got two state parks picked out for weekends when there’s no band practice, no football games, no school or work interferences. One is by the Potomac River at the end of October when it might still be nice enough during the day to stick our feet in the water but chilly enough at night to light a fire in the cabin’s fireplace. The other is near the mountains. I’m saving that for Thanksgiving weekend if I can get the cabin I want (I always choose the ones farthest away from people; the ones at the end of the road). That one has no tv, no wifi and probably terrible cell phone service but that’s exactly what we’ll need (whether the children agree or not) by then. Marching band madness will be over and we can take a deep breath and go on hikes after (I hope) the first frost has killed the majority of the most annoying insects. More fires in the fire place and movies on the computer. A little time to unwind and be bored.

Josie the kitten and I have settled into a routine. She’s learned the ropes and the other cats are getting used to her. They’ll touch noses with her before they hiss. They are coming around. She’s found favorite places to sleep and favorite toys to play with. Every new change takes time to become regular life. Having no children here in the summer has become regular life. A couple more weeks and then they’ll be back and we’ll revert to our “regularly scheduled programming” – our other regular life. This time will be folding in a new cat.

Until then, I’m catching up on my reading. It’s nice to just sit and read. My part-time gig has dried up for the time being – too hot for even park events and all the teams are on vacation until it cools down – so my weekends alone are quiet. Just me and Josie and the cicadas outside the window.

Summer is best when it’s spent slowly, doing very little. And so that’s what I’m doing.