Crafting Madness

The weather has been perfectly dreadful. It has rained and been cold and dark for three solid days now: nearly non-stop cold rain. And I have become Crochet Mad in consequence.

Seriously, the worse thing I can be is BORED. And I feel like I get bored really easily. Even when I find something to entertain myself (obsess over), it doesn't last. I was all about painting for months, and then I put all my paints away and haven't touched them for months. 

Here's one of the last paintings I did before I packed it in:  Kobi giving me the stink-eye from under the coffee table. With the real Kobi giving me the eye from under my easel. 

Then for a few weeks I was obsessively making a big mosaic to go over the stove in the kitchen.  It was the biggest mosaic project I've ever done, but I got it finished in record time. 

Then I put my tiles away and started casting about for some new obsession. What did I find?  

Crochet. 

My mother crocheted when I was living at home. She always had an afghan in progress in her lap through the cold months... and she crocheted a host of other things, including some beautiful lacework tablecloths.  But it didn't really appeal to me so much. I learned to do it as a kid, but never really did much with it.  I took up knitting after my divorce, looking for something to do to occupy my mind and my hands and hopefully keep me a bit more sober than I would otherwise be. But I found I didn't really have the patience. I actually literally wadded up a knitted scarf one time and threw it across the room. 

But I must be entering my dotage, because this time around, crochet has gripped me.  It's much more forgiving:  meaning that when I inevitably make a mistake, I can easily unravel it back to the error and redo it, which is much more challenging with knitting.  Nobody with patience like mine should be asked to put knitting back on the needles after having unraveled ten rows. 

So, I'm stitching away like a madwoman. I've made a "handkerchief" scarf (which is slightly wonky, as I was just learning to read a pattern and got my stitch count all out of whack. So, instead of pointing straight down like a proper bandana, it pokes off to the side a bit, like its nose is bent), a puff-stitch cowl (which came out looking okay, but I hadn't perfected turning at the ends of the rows yet, so one end looks like a mountain range. Plus I made it out of wool yarn, which means it's so scratchy that I can't actually wear it, though it looks really pretty). Now I'm feeling overconfident, so this afternoon I bought nine skeins of yarn to make a big, colorful stitch sampler afghan.  That should provide hours of entertainment and/or frustration.  

It will hopefully keep me relatively sober and fend off boredom and depression--which, in the present global and national environment, is nothing to sneeze at. 

In which I try to cling to hope

 Colorado is burning.  The barn and some other buildings at C Lazy U Ranch have burned down (though thankfully the horses were all evacuated a week ago). 

Ice is falling on Oklahoma and trees are falling with it.  The power is out at my folks' house so they're holed up with no heat or way to warm up any food. 

Meanwhile the sea ice at the North Pole has still not frozen, long past when it should have. 

The trumpies confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, tilting the court hard to the right for the next 20 years. 

tRump signed an executive order last night that somehow gives him the power to clean out career staff members from the government and put in his cronies, poisoning the system against Biden, even if he does manage to get elected in spite of all the shady shit the republicans are doing to try to fix the election. 

Which is just one week away, which seems like a year in trump time.  He can wreak a lot of havoc in a week. Anything could happen. 

It feels pretty depressing right now. John keeps saying that the Rump is not gaining any new supporters in his madness these past few weeks. But there seem to me to be an alarming number of his cultists still in action, and emboldened to do weirder and weirder and more and more violent and hateful things in his name as the election gets closer. A ballot collection box was burned in an area where mostly democrats were using it. Mail-in ballots are getting lost and mis-delivered. And of course now the Supreme Court is in his pocket.  

I have to admit, I'm a little scared. I want to believe that there will be a blue wave:  that sane, responsible, normal people will come out in droves to wash this abomination out of office. But I've also seen some of the intimidation that's been taking place, and the zealous religiosity with which trump followers defend him.  It's madness. And even if he is swept out of office, I know he will fight the results, claim illegitimacy, pull strings and fight dirty to stay in power, and his minions will fall in line. 

I'm so tired of it all.  Nothing seems to stop them. And it feels like the world is burning around us.  In some places literally.  There are more than 500 children still in cages at the border whose parents cannot be located. Tiny infants, little kids. Their parents must be beside themselves. Nothing changes. It doesn't seem like anyone is doing anything about it. It doesn't feel like anyone can. 

Meanwhile, the number of virus cases is rising again. ICU units in Oklahoma City are full. Over a thousand people a day there are getting sick. I stopped following the numbers here in Arkansas.  I don't think I'll see my parents again until after this is over. I couldn't bear to be the cause of their catching the virus. But I fear for them. For us all. 

Today I will just take a deep breath, focus on the things I need to do at work. Be grateful for the peace and love and stability that I have in my life. And just keep swimming. 

Don't Even Say It

 I'm not going to say that I'm back.  Nope. I'm not even going to say that.  This blog, that I cherished for so many years, is limping along at best now and I recognize that.  I'd probably be better off just printing it out for my archive and closing it down. But I just can't do it. 

Back when I was doing the original Scrawlspace, it was almost a religious thing for me.  All day I'd be looking at my experience with an eye to the blog:  how I could spin things, what stood out as relatable or interesting.  I'd like to start looking at my world that way again. 

Working in city government does not have the same cache as working for a nationally recognized museum, to say the least. I'm no longer able to shore up any sagging parts of my self image with a glamorous job. Two years into this position and it doesn't look like I'm going anywhere else any time soon. Job hunting in your 50s is a whole different ball of wax. Especially as a woman, I think. I don't even get return emails on jobs I would definitely have at least gotten an interview for ten years ago. I've interviewed for jobs that never even called me back afterward. I think they take one look at me and see a woman ten years from retirement. Someone who is probably technologically behind and may need to be paid more than someone just out of school.  At least, that's what I've told myself when I've applied for jobs and not heard a response. 

So:  without my "career" to give me a sense of importance and usefulness, I look around for something else to sprinkle a little sunshine on my daily life. And blogging was one of those things. It's just about being motivated to keep my eyes open for some sense of wonder every day. 

My latest sense of wonder is not a new one. It's one I experience every year at this time. It's monarch butterflies.  

We raised three sets of caterpillars to raise in the Mayor's office this summer.  First there was a black swallowtail:  a green, black, and yellow monarch lookalike that made a strange greeny-brown chrysalis like a broken bit of twig that hung from a silken sling from a stick for 14 days before "eclosing" (that's the official term I learned for "emerging as a butterfly.")  as a gorgeous swallowtail.  

Then there were the two pipevine swallowtails, which look like giant, creepy centipedes with their fat black bodies and red spines.  These are really twisty, active caterpillars that go on a day-long walkabout right before they pupate. I spent a lot of the day before the first one pupated plucking the traveling 'pillar off my desktop, my computer screen, the edge of my keyboard, out of my pencil cup, etc., and putting it back into the punch bowl we were keeping them in.  Finally I stapled it, punchbowl and all, into a mesh recycling bag for the night so it couldn't wander off and get lost.  In the morning we discovered its brown, spiky chrysalis that looked like a crumpled brown leaf.  The next day the second pillar went walkabout, and in the morning that one had formed a similar chrysalis, clinging to the glass wall of the punchbowl. 

This one emerged (excuse me, eclosed) as a gorgeous, glossy blue-black butterfly with irridescent blue hind wings. Breathtaking in the sunlight. 

The second one, however, has yet to emerge.  Turns out, some pipevine swallowtails overwinter in their pupal stage.  And some remain dormant for much longer:  a year, three years, five years, even SEVEN YEARS.  So this guy could be hanging with us for quite some time.  They say you can simply refrigerate the pupa through the cold months and then bring it back out again in the spring to see if it will eclose.  I imagine the Mayor's office staff dragging this little brown capsule out of the employee kitchen fridge every April for the next seven years...

Our latest caterpillar, however, is a monarch, the Queen of autumn butterflies. This little cutie, in its striped pajamas and adorable black antennae, recently pupated into this beautiful, delicate jewel of a chrysalis:  a jade and gold marvel that looks as if it belongs on a Christmas tree.  

What on earth can be the evolutionary advantage of such a gorgeous chrysalis?  That looks like actual gold on there.  How can this be?  Sure, it's sort of camouflaged if left in a green, leafy spot.  But a lot of things are getting pretty brown around now, so it has the potential to stand out: the opposite of what evolutionary common sense says it should do. To say nothing of all that bling. It's one of those things that shows you how sometimes nature just likes to dress up for no reason at all.  Beauty for its own sake. 

I believe this generation of monarchs: those that emerge this late in the fall, are among the ones who make their mind-blowing migration to Mexico for the winter. That place:  Michoacan, in the Sierra Madre mountains, is one of the places at the top of my bucket list to visit someday.  That and the little pub in the little town in Ireland where Shane MacGowan of the Pogues goes to drink. 

When I Grow Up...

I'm coming back to blogging.

I realize I've said that more than once in the past few years.

I have to say, I was "blogging" before it was "blogging": back in the day when it was "online journaling" and you had to build your own website and join a web circle. It seemed more real then.  Seems like the genre now is all full of people trying to get a book deal for their "mommy blog" or their DIY blog or their lifestyle blog showing how much more beautifully they live than you.

I don't live more beautifully than you.

My home is plagued with roving bands of dog-hair dustballs. My blinds and shelves are filmed in dust. There's liquid lettuce in my crisper drawers. My lawn is mostly dirt.  My clothes are a random, ill-assorted collection of items from thrift stores given to me by my thrift-junky Bosnian neighbor, items purchased retail at least 15 years ago, things given to me by my mom when she lost a bunch of weight, and a few things I got from Stitch Fix back when I could afford such luxuries.

It's been a rough year.

In January I lost my job, and I went six months before I found a new one that came close to matching the salary I'd made before. In the meantime I did a lot of crafting (I had this idea I'd set up an Etsy site and sell mosaics), a lot of writing (I was going to become a freelance writer), a little editing (also freelance... hated it), and then a lot of working retail for $9.50 an hour at JoAnn crafts and fabric. This last I found both exhausting and rewarding, though it was very awkward when someone from my "previous life" as a salaried professional would come in and see me in my green apron, stocking shelves, cutting fabric, or standing at the cash register. I could see the dismay and dare I say pity in their eyes. But there was something enjoyable about the work It was so immediate and task-oriented. I especially liked working in the loading dock, receiving freight then opening boxes and sorting the new merchandise into plastic bins to go out on the floor. It triggered what seems to be a deep-seated need for classification and organization in me.

You wouldn't know this by looking at my home, I warn you.

Then in July I got another "real" job: a full-time position working for city government, managing the website. It's not quite as far as you can get from editing, but it's definitely in a different neighborhood.

I like the people I work with, and when there's plenty of work, I do enjoy what I do. But there are down times that lead to boredom and inertia:  my old arch-nemesis. It will definitely do for now... but not forever.

So, here I am, at age 52, back to wondering what I'm going to be when I grow up.

Ghosts of Friendships Past

Okay, I said I was taking up the blog again, but it's been 9 months since I said that.  But here I am again. Like a bad penny, right?  Or a business card. You can never throw those things away, but then when you need to find a specific one... it's never findable.

Today I'm posting about dreams. I've been keeping a record of my dreams since I was about 13.  Not ALL of them, of course, that would be tedious.  (Actually, probably any record of my dreams is tedious, but I do it anyway.)  I like to watch for themes.  I used to dream about houses all the time:  I was inheriting a wonderful old house, or I was living in a ramshackle house, or I discovered a whole new wing of my house with rooms after rooms after rooms.  In one I was living in an old strip mall. Now that I own my very own house (yes, we did close and it's mine all mine now), I don't dream about houses as much.  But I've been dreaming about old friends and old jobs.

Last night it was about old friends AND old jobs.  I often dream about my time working at the Arts Institute, perhaps because it was such an all-encompassing job.  I spent literally six weeks working 15-hour days every fall and three weeks working around the clock every summer, plus all the months leading up to both those programs, hiring faculty, ordering supplies, and overseeing the move of all that stuff to the site.  It's been almost 20 years since I had that job, yet I still dream about it: either that I've been asked to come back, or that I'm suddenly back in the job and trying to figure out how things are run.

I dreamed that I met certain people who were my friends at the Institute, and discovered that they didn't actually like me. In fact, they reviled me. And I was heartbroken.  And then I was angry.  And I thought about doing something really dastardly. But then when I was handed some responsibility for the organization (moving parts of a sculpture from point a to point b, if I recall),  I dutifully did what I was supposed to do, even though I was thinking of all the things I could do:  pushing the stuff down the stairs or something. But I didn't. I just swallowed my pride, moved the stuff I needed to move, and the slipped out the door.

This reminded me of how I felt when I was there.  I was good at my job, but I never belonged there. I was never part of that social strata, if you will.  Art is always surrounded by money. And I didn't come from money or the social set who had it. No matter what I did, or how good I was, I would never wear the right clothes or eat at the right restaurants or know the right people or value the right things to make me belong there. It didn't matter what I could do. It only mattered who I was. Or what I was, perhaps.  And though I had what I thought were real friends then, I knew that if they were having a dinner party, I wouldn't be invited.  I just wasn't the right sort of person.

It preyed on me for a while, but I came to deal with it. And one of the things that helped was when I applied for a leadership position there and didn't get it. I knew it was, in large part, because of this class thing.  And I was hurt.  But my friend came to me and she said "Linda: you are a wonderful person. You're not like anyone else I know. Everyone who meets you loves you, you affect people's lives. Don't worry about what those people at the Arts Institute think.  you shouldn't try to be like them. Just be you."

Of course, she was one of the ones who wasn't inviting me to dinner parties. But I still considered her a friend. I think now that in a different way, she also struggled with that gap between worlds.  She came from the upper crust: the right clothes and wines, the right social circles, the right social graces.  She could visit my world, and I could visit hers, but neither of us belonged there.  She married money.  I changed jobs and went my merry way and that was the end of the friendship.  But what she said did help, at the time. And I believe she was sincere. I think she was telling me it was okay for me not to belong there.

I think all my life I've been looking for that niche where I truly do belong. I have found a few places I like, places I'd like to belong,  places I nearly belong, places I belong for a while and then don't anymore... but never a full fit. Maybe that's my niche: nearly belonging.

This morning, after that dream, I thought about these things. Seems I'm always trying to figure out what I should do to perfectly suit or embrace or express who I am. I think I'm seeking some sort of consistency. As if anyone was consistent.

Dark Days: Bright Spots

I haven't written here in a year, which surprises me.  I suppose I've turned inward as my focus has returned to my family and my daily life. My last post here was about losing my best friend. But I'm happy to report that I've since regained him. Last August John put down his foot and his vodka bottle and sobered up.  It was a tremendously brave and difficult thing to do:  more difficult than I can really imagine. He's been sober for more than a year, now.  Last fall he tiptoed back into my life and we orbited each other gently through the turn of the year, waiting to see what would happen.

Having been out "on the market" in the dating world, I had gained some perspective. I'm old enough now to recognize my own patterns and weaknesses where relationships are concerned. The upshot:  I can't be trusted with myself. I try to make every shoe fit. I fool myself into believing things are what they aren't. I want to BELIEVE. What I should have been doing all these years, instead of trying to make every relationship work, was to shut up and pay attention when it told me that it wouldn't work, and to bow out gracefully.

Love is so much more about comfort and trust than it is about passion or even "compatibility." To be "compatible" implies shared interests, tastes, histories. But comfort doesn't give a rat's ass about all of that. Comfort means you've found a nest that fits your shape. Comfort is the ability to be exactly who you are and know that whether or not that is the same as your beloved, it is accepted and cherished. It's a feeling of home.

In the spring, Grayson and I invited John to live with us, and we are gradually settling in together. This is a huge move, as I swore several years ago I would never bring someone into our home. But it felt right. I've found that comfort with John. And I have also found something I didn't know I was missing so much:  a feeling of family. For the first time in 8 years, my home includes two adults and a kid: a nice stable tripod of daily living that doesn't put too much weight on any one part. It changes the dynamic, loosening the symbiosis between me and Grayson a bit... just when he really needs it, I'm sure. At 16 he needs to turn his attention toward his friends and the discovery and development of his tribe.

For years he was all I had, my everything. I felt like it was Grayson and me, back to back, standing together in the face of a difficult world. Perhaps that wasn't the most healthy way for a boy to grow up, I don't know. I'm sure I did a lot of things wrong because I was angry and sad and damaged. But whatever missteps I took, my boy can never say that he wasn't loved. He was obliged to deal with some adult realities that I wish he hadn't been part of. But it was what it was what it was, and thought I didn't make the best choices every time where he was concerned... I did the best I could at the time.

So:  family. It's a good place to be.

This gives me hope in the face of last night's election and the somewhat grim future we face. Perhaps we were all wrong, and Donald Trump won't turn out to be the incompetent, bloated gasbag of self promotion and bigotry he gives all indication of being. Or perhaps he'll drive the country right into the ground. But I have a loving family to come home to... Grayson has a posse of friends and a school he likes, John and I are healthy and employed. None of that has changed.  So we keep on in the face of uncertainty and disappointment and doubt with some scrap of hope to light the way.

And there's more good news. Next week I will close on the purchase of our house. We've lived there for five years. This is my third attempt at buying, and home prices have gone up by about $10,000 since the last time, but this time I think it's going to go through and I'll be a home-owner again. For some reason this has been immensely important to me. I've felt so temporary as a renter, unable to make changes or improvements because the house wasn't MINE. Grayson held off on hanging posters in his room for the first couple of years, because he had also come to expect "home" to be temporary.  Now at last we can pull up carpet, paint walls, dig gardens, and sink our roots into this little house and little square of land because it belongs to US.

The fifteenth is the tentative closing date. Wish me luck.

In Which I Perform a Daring Water Rescue

My sweet old dog Flower nearly drowned on Sunday. But I heroically rescued her!

I took Roxy and Flower to Sugar Creek, one of our favorite places.  The water is up (as it is everywhere in NW Arkansas), and the creek was running fast. Flower was paddling about in the shallows, and I was upstream throwing a stick for Rox when I man nearby hollered to get my attention.

"Your dog is in trouble!"

Flower had gotten swept off her feet and into a deep channel, where she fetched up in a V of two fallen trees. She couldn't hold herself up on the logs, and she couldn't get past them to shore. Her head kept going under.

I made my way upstream as quickly as I could, set my illegal glass beer bottle down gently, and plowed into the freezing creek. It's spring fed, and was numbingly cold. I got to the log in shoulder-high water and grabbed Flower by her scruff, hauling her front legs up on the tree trunk between us.  The water was rushing by and there was no space between the tree and the surface. My only choice was to lift her over the log. There was no getting her under.  She weighs 90 pounds, easy, and that's dry.  I reached over and grabbed a hunk of skin and hair on her back and hauled. She scrabbled with her front feet, clawing my stomach and shoulders. I didn't think I could lift her, but I managed it.  She sat perched with all four feet on the log like a big, wet, hairy bird, and we both hung there and rested for a minute before I pulled her over to the other side of the log and gave her a shove toward shore.

I was surprised at how shocking the cold water was, and how quickly Flower had gotten into danger while I wasn't looking.  I couldn't decide if I felt more like a hero for saving her or more like a lousy mom for letting her get into trouble in the first place. I was shaking all over, and I kept thanking the people who had seen her and gotten my attention.

Flower at home last summer. 

Flower herself took it in stride, shook the water from her fur, and strolled off to sniff around an abandoned picnic site on the shore, where she promptly found and devoured half a hamburger, unfazed.

Lately my old girl has been moving a lot slower than before, and she gets a bit distracted or fuzzy-headed sometimes. At the park, she wanders off the trail and has to be called back; or she gets in between the sofa and coffee table and gets confused about how to get out. Lately she takes much, much slower walks than ever before, and she tires much earlier. I'm afraid she may not be able to go with us on river trips for much longer, or we'll have to make our trips much much shorter to keep from wearing her out. She's still sharp and feeling healthy. But I hate seeing these signs of her aging, and I dread any further decline. She's been with us since Grayson was two or maybe three. At least 11 years.

The art of losing...

Sugar Creek, or as John and I used to refer to it, "the river spot," was a regular hang-out spot for us in the summers. We'd bring the dogs and a cooler and chairs and hang out on a sandbar, or wade upstream to see what was there to be seen. Because of that association, there was a sadness to my visit on Sunday, but I knew I needed to get back there soon and reclaim it for my own.  I went there with the dogs before I met John. I thought of it as my place then, but it came to be our place.

I missed him, and wanted to tell him my story about saving Flower.  But he doesn't want to hear from me. Ever again, apparently. At first I tried to shut that feeling out. But I realized it's as legitimate to mourn the loss of him as a friend as it would have been if we were still romantically involved. So I let myself be a bit sad about it, and let myself remember things fondly.  Just for a bit. Then, of course, I had to save my dog from drowning.

Independence Day

Yes, I know technically Independence Day was yesterday. But I've declared mine for today.

I hereby hold these truths to be self evident:
That I am fundamentally a good person with no more than the average flaws and failures.
That I have a proven capacity to love and be loved.
That I have, therefore, an inalienable right to be treated with respect, kindness, and compassion. I have a right to choose my company, my friends, and my lovers, and if, at any time, those friends or lovers should become onerous or harmful to me, I have a right to disassociate from them, with or without explanation. I have a right to speak the truth and a right to decide for myself if that truth should be spoken, and to whom. I have a right to be free from abuse, either physical, mental, or emotional. And as in the Wiccan creed:  If I harm none, I have a right to do what I will.

Signed this the fifth day of July, two thousand and fifteen:
Linda McConnell DeBerry

Or in other words:  Fuck this shit, I'm out.

I sent John one last pleading, self-abasing message, apologizing again, asking for an explanation again, Receiving more "fuck you" messages. This time it's because I sent a message to his friend Clayton a few days ago, telling him about John wigging out and asking him to take care of him. It was a strange message to send, now that I think about it. I don't know why I did it. I'm often not very smart about my Facebook usage.  Probably I'd been drinking.  Sigh. When will I learn???

Anyway, the message I got from John was unequivocal and nasty and made me cry and doubt my humanity.  But I talked to my mom (thank god for my mom) and she said "Drop. him. He's not your friend."  And you know what? ... He's not. I may have hurt him by breaking up. It may have been hard for him to stay  my friend afterward. But I never abused him. I never called him names, and I never did anything deliberately to hurt him, even when I was sorely provoked, as yesterday, when there were a whole slew of harsh realities I did NOT lay down for him. And yet he has done all of that in spades in just this last couple of weeks. Like it was his fucking job.  So I sent one last message telling him I would officially disappear from his life, his family's life, and anyone he ever might remotely know. And I blocked his number, defriended anyone who might know him, erased him from my contact list, and blocked him on Facebook. I was thorough. So that's that.

Today I am free of mean "friends," and I get on with my life and don't waste any more time thinking about it.

It's Independence Day.
Long may I fucking wave.

We Lose Some

I am re-evaluating myself: what my capacity for love is, how empathetic I have it in me to be, how selfish I am, how blind.  

This final break-up with a dear friend lifts a veil and I don't think I like what's under it very much.  I see myself in a new light and it's not pretty. It's stupid and selfish and cold. I am beginning to believe that I have spent my life building an impenetrable wall around myself, and my interactions with others are false:  farces performed by personas I put on when I need to, to cover my vacuity.  This sounds really self-pitying. But I'm terribly afraid it may be true. 

It's terrifying to me that I may be living inside a complete lie, blind to my own narcissism and dispassion. I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach for fear that I really have no idea who I am, and nothing is real. 

If you're gleaning from this that the final rupture with John arrived, you're right. It's also unsettling because suddenly I'm dealing with a person I don't know at all, a bitter, angry person I have never seen him be, and I am heartsick that this change is because of me, and I didn't do the right thing somehow and I didn't even know what the right thing was. 

I still don't. 

How can I love? I have failed over and over and over again. I enter a relationship full of hope and trust... but gradually my heart just shuts down, closing like a camera aperture. I want space, I want things my way, I want out.  Even in relationships I thought I was succeeding at, I look back and I see myself becoming critical, unpleasant, hard. Who is this monster? 

Son of the Illuminati

This evening I took the Girls down to Park Springs Park for an evening run. It had rained an hour or so earlier, so the trees were glossy and damp, dripping, glorious green and fragrant. When we arrived and I let the dogs out of the car, there was a deer standing in the meadow: an adult female, just standing, watching us with her enormous ears and giant eyes. Of course Roxy chased her into the woods. And I was yelling to Rox that there was no way she was going to catch that deer, my eye caught the silhouette of a young man sitting on a picnic table under the pavilion.  He lifted a hand to me, I greeted him.  We exchanged a few words about dogs and hunting... blah blah. I took the girls into the forest.

When we came out, half an hour later, the  young man was sitting there still. I raised a hand to him again and he called out "How was your walk?" I told him it was fine, and asked if the deer had come back. He said she had, that she had come out of the forest and gone back in while we were gone. I  stepped up to the pavilion and sat on the picnic table next to him and we talked.

His name is Justin. He's a beautiful, damaged, deranged young man. In his early twenties. Ginger-haired and blue eyed and tattooed. Beautiful. And quite mad.  He talked to me about his adopted family that had "thrown him away" and his biological family who were Illuminati, and how he had an inheritance, and his siblings and cousins had been "switched out," (the meaning of which I never did glean). He told me he had a daughter, born June, 2012. He had never seen her. Only pictures. He said the Illuminati killed his first girlfriend with a baseball bat because she wanted to be with him.

He was so gentle and softspoken and destroyed. I wondered how he survived and where he lived. He told me I reminded him of his aunt (I can't remember if that was biological aunt or adoptive aunt), and told me we were related in some way, no matter what I told him about my faraway geneology.
He had a carp tattooed on his right bicep. The word "Pride" on his left tricep. A star on his chest. And that red, red hair. So beautiful.

I knew the young girl of me would have been hopelessly attracted to him:  his lostness, his outsiderness, the wild smell of him and his wild story. The mother in me wanted to hold him in my arms and feed him a sandwich  and give him clean sheets to sleep on until he was healed and safe from the world.

As a teenager I was always hopelessly drawn to the outsider:  the long-haired drop-out, the circus performer,the aging hippie, the hood. It's all part of that need to care for the broken and unloved. This boy sparked that in me. I wanted to love him, in some way: to heal him, to offer him a safe haven, get him help, feed him a good meal and give him a safe place to come to get his madness medicated and under control. I wondered what part of his story was true and what part was pure delusion.  Such a sweet, gentle, and broken boy.

Mothering the world, as usual. Bringing home strays. But I'll be watching for him around town now, looking after him in some small way. Sigh. like the spirit of Lucky inhabiting some lost boy's thin, tattooed body.

As we talked, the doe came back to the edge of the forest and watched us from halfway behind a tree in the shadows. I didn't see her at first, but Justin pointed her out to me. She stood and watched us for a long time, even with Kobi barking at her. Eventually she ghosted away.

No owl tonight, though I told Justin to listen for it: the barred owl that lives there and calls "Who? Who? Who Cooks for You?"

Wonder if he'll hear it tonight?

The Art of Losing Isn't Hard to Master

I may be in the midst of losing a dear friend. Or I may not be. I'm waiting to see which way it goes.

John, Tabs and Lucky in healthier days.

Since our split as a "couple" nearly a year ago, John and I have remained friends. We've done favors for one another: I loan him my car so he can get to Fayetteville, he watches my dogs while I'm at my folks for the weekend. We've gone on several memorable hikes (generally getting lost or separated or suffering some other form of inconvenience in the course thereof, including, but not limited to a back floorboard full of puppy poop). And we talk almost every day. This last seems to have been my undoing.

I'm not a telephone person. I don't generally choose to talk on the phone for any extended period of time, and I don't call to "check in" with people unless I have something specific to talk about. John's different: he likes to be in touch every day, and when you say "I'll call later" he expects you to mean it and follow through. Well, I failed to call on Tuesday afternoon when I said I would. I got home from an after-work beer and pizza fest with coworkers and crashed on the sofa. I woke up at quarter to midnight with a string of increasingly angry texts.

I don't really think the phone call was the issue. I think the very nature of our relationship is at issue. For me, being "just friends" is easy because I had moved on from a romantic relationship a year ago when I broke up. Not so for John. And on a couple of occasions the genie has gotten out of the bottle and he is angry at me. Furious, in fact, and hateful.

At Hawksbill Crag this spring.

This time may be the last, and I'm heartsick. He has been my best friend here in Arkansas for three years. He and I share some things that are special just to us, and when I think of going for a day on the river or taking the dogs for a run, he's the one I think of coming with me. But I may have been selfish in taking this comaraderie for granted. I think it has been more difficult for him than I realized.

I don't make friends very easily. Some people who know me on a superficial social level would be shocked to hear me say that because of my "hail fellow well met" front for social situations. I get very animated and "entertaining" when I'm uncomfortable, and I can get a group of people I don't know laughing and thinking I'm super friendly, when the opposite is true. That blustery entertainer is like my alter ego who comes out to protect me from actually making contact with anyone. It works pretty well.

With John I have always been able to be who I really am--as jacked-up or fearful or goofy or angry as I am at that moment--and he accepts it with an indulgent smile. Now I'm at a risk of losing that kindness and friendship forever. And I don't know what I can do to prevent it.

I can't go back to the way we were because my feelings changed. I didn't ask them to change. They just did. And I don't know if he can go forward. So I wait. And I hope it comes out okay.

One Art 

             by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master; 

so many things seem filled with the intent 

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. 

 Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

 Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 

places, and names, and where it was you meant 

 to travel. None of these will bring disaster. 

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or 

next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 

The art of losing isn’t hard to master. 

 I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster. 

 —Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident 

the art of losing’s not too hard to master 

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Re-Centering, Surprisingly

Three weeks ago I uploaded a post about the impending departure of my son for El Paso.  I was worried about the potential for melt-down in his absence.  Well, it's time to report in on that.

I'm fine.

That's it. It's kind of weird.  I expected to be really missing him by this time. But I don't. I think it's the first time ever that he's gone to his dad's and I sincerely have not missed him.  I think about him from time to time. I comment on his Facebook posts, or ponder what he's up to today.  But that's not the same as missing him.

It's a sea change in parenting for me.  That boy has been the very center of my existence for 14 years. Now, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, I find my own self able to creep in there with him. I am edging back into my own center.

I have been truly liberated since the ex moved. I don't know if there's a cause-and-effect thing going on there, or just a matter of their move coinciding with a change in attitude (perhaps a bit of both), but it's like coming out of a dim and frigid interior into the light and warmth of a fine June day. hallelujah!

So what am I doing with my time?  Well, that's sort of pathetic. Nothing, really. I'm subsisting largely on cereal, red wine, radishes, bananas, and avocados (not all at the same time). I go to the gym (my one redeeming activity). I journal. I indulge in graphic novels (truly an indulgence since they're stupid expensive and don't last that long) and binge-watch Netflix series (Sense8 was awesome). I've been listening to music, which I had gotten out of the habit of. I'm indolent. hedonistic. And summer is a good time to be that way.

I remember summer when I was a teenager:  it seemed to go on forever.  I spent hours in the pool, drifting on a raft listening to the cicadas buzz, or hanging out with friends at night, or lazing around my room with a stack of books from the library. I didn't realize then that my experience of summer in that way was destined to be short-lived. It was just the way summer was. It never occurred to me that my parents' experience of summer was quite different.

Lately, however, my experience of summer has been the blast of hot air as I step out of the frigid museum at 5:15. I haven't done any of the things I associate so nostalgically with summer. I haven't been to a lake or river yet this season. I haven't been to a pool. I haven't carried a cooler anywhere for any purpose. I haven't gardened to any significant degree. The cucumbers are feral.  I haven't even hung in my porch swing with a bottle of beer and a book.

So in honor of Fourth of July weekend, I hereby declare it Summer. High Summer.  And I shall observe it in appropriate manner.  This weekend I will swim in the lake, catch fireflies, drink cold beer, listen to summer music, read in my swing, and grill chicken on the patio. If I could I'd even make out on a blanket under the summer stars. I can't be a grown-up all the time.

This evening I'll take Roxy for a walk, and I'll be sure to go out after dark to observe the close passage of Venus and Jupiter, which are supposed to be very bright tonight on the western horizon at dusk. Stargazing is a zen thing. It gives you a sense of scale. Sometimes it's a relief to be small and insignificant: to not have to hold the sky up for now. To just drift and look at the universe.

A Loss

This is a cut-and-paste from Facebook.  I waited a week to be ready to write about Lucky's passing, but I still just don't want to try to put it in words yet.  But it needs to be told:  so this is what I can manage for now. 

Tuesday, June 23

My Lucky boy passed away in the night.

One of the last photos of us. My heart is broken. 

I woke up around 2:30 and he was not in his bed. I found him in the living room. Like most animals, I suppose he did not want to die in his den.

Today was the day we were to take him to the vet hospital. I had so hoped we could save him. But his time just ran out.

I knew he was very fragile, so yesterday I stayed home and sat with him. He liked to have his neck scratched and petted, and he would climb out of his bed and come lean against me, or lie down beside me, just asking for love. I'm so glad I was there for him and we had that time together. He loved his family, and he was loved by so many. No little dog was ever more loved, or will be so missed as this one.

Though he was weak and fragile these last couple of weeks, this little guy fought the good fight all his life. He was sick so frequently with so many things that he might easily have been frail and spiritless. But he took it all in stride and never knew he was sick. Until these last two weeks, we could not keep him from escaping the fence to chase raccoons who were twice his weight. When we took him to Park Springs Park to run, he could keep pace with Roxy, though she was three or four times larger than him and a tireless runner. He never gave up and he never slowed down, and he never for one second believed he was anything but the best damned dog there was.

And he was right.
We'll never forget him.

Circles of Life

This past  Friday my parents' little dog Beau (sometimes called Boby but mostly "Pootie-Poot") went into emergency surgery for his liver shunt.  Yes, the same thing my Lucky has. Beau is Lucky's little brother, 9 months younger.

Sadly, once the doctors got to his liver, they found that he had multiple shunts, both inside and outside. There was no way to fix it.  So they euthanized him right then and there.  My folks and I were heartbroken.

Now, of course,  I'm even more anxious for Lucky.  He has held out longer than Beau did: stayed healthier for longer. But he has the same family background and until we get the tests on the 23rd, there's no way of guessing if his situation will be any better than Beau's.  Just like Beau, he has a lot of fluid in his abdomen, so an ultrasound will likely be inconclusive. But if Lucky can't be saved, I want to take him home and just love him and pamper him for whatever days he has left. I don't want to put him through the surgery if I'm only going to lose him all the earlier for it. I agonize over this, though there's nothing I can do until we get test results and talk with the doctors at OSU. No amount of worrying will change the outcome.

He wouldn't eat yesterday. Just sniffed tiredly at whatever I put in front of him and turned away. Finally, in desperation at the end of the day, I offered him a bowl of Corn Chex, and he ate those, along with a few bites of fresh peach.  Go figure. At least there's food in his little tummy to give him a modicum of energy to keep fighting. I don't know how much longer he can go on that way, though. And every day that passes that he doesn't eat, his condition gets worse and he gets weaker.

There's also the question of the cost, which my folks tell me is likely to be much more than the $3,000 I was quoted, and which I have less than half raised. My folks paid almost $4,000 for Boby's surgery, and lost him anyway.

It's hard knowing that the answer is probably right there:  he's genetically got a definite date with death, or he doesn't. But I can't know yet. Poor Boby was doomed from the start.  I can only hope Lucky is not.

On a less depressing note:  I'm back in the critter care business. Sunday I spent four hours at Wild Heart, doing whatever I could. I helped to give medicines to the herd of little fawns:  17 of them, I think. Then I got to help bottle feed them, though I'm told their appetites are off lately (hence the medication).  I also cleaned up a LOT of deer diarrhea from the little sick fawns. That was less fun.  But toward the end of the day I got to feed a tiny baby bat, no longer than a finger.  You take a teensy 1cc syringe and get a little bead of milk on the tip:  the bat baby then licks up the bead. Adorable.

I tell myself that if some of these wild animals are able to survive the illness, abandonment, or injury they sustain, surely my little Luck dragon is strong enough for this surgery.  Lord, I hope so.

Flying Solo

On Sunday I dropped my son off at the Tulsa airport and hugged him goodbye for the last time until August 9.  This will be the longest amount of time I've ever been separated from him:  this, my "little boy" who once grew inside my body and now towers four inches over me.  The longest I've ever been apart from him before is four weeks. This will be nine.


I was strangely okay with this. I got a little teary as I was saying goodbye, but as I got back into my car I was already thinking ahead toward my summer flying solo.  I was already taking advantage of the new found freedom:  instead of returning straight home from the airport, I took a half-hour detour up to Foyil, Oklahoma, where I spent a few hours volunteering for Wild Heart Ranch, a wildlife rehabilitator. I scrubbed hawk poop out of cages, refilled supplies, folded laundry, squirted food into a dozen wide-open baby bird mouths from a syringe, and, best of all, I got to feed several tiny baby skunks, just big enough to have their eyes open.  I got home sweaty, tired, with my shirt smeared with hawk poop, but happy, at 10 p.m.


I know I will miss my boy. He is, as I mentioned in an earlier post, always a presence in my life and my home. But this summer feels different. This time is mine.

I'm also working furiously on raising money for Lucky. Our GoFundMe campaign is now up to more than $1,000, which is amazing. I've been really touched by the way my friends and co-workers have come out with support, both emotional and financial. I have even received an offer of a free apartment to stay in while I'm in Stillwater for Lucky's surgery!  One colleague baked and decorated beautiful sugar cookies shaped like shamrocks and dog bones and put them in the breakroom with a donation jar.  They garnered $150!  And at the end of the day yesterday, I received an envelope of cash from an "anonymous donor" that put the fund over the $1,000 mark.


Still, that leaves about $2,000 to be raised, so I've listed several items for sale on Craig's List. These are big items, things I've been hauling around for six years now for one reason or another:  the armoire my X and I bought on our honeymoon that weighs a ton; the ginormous coffee table that was scaled perfectly for the large living room we had before, but looks like an ice rink in my current space; a chest of drawers that belonged to my great grandmother and is the last of a bedroom suit that has long since been broken up and sold off piece by piece by various family members.


I've been attached to these items and have argued with myself that I need them, that I love them. But it feels somehow liberating to put them up for sale now. I crave the empty space in my home, and the opportunity to go through my stuff and decide what warrants space in my reduced storage capacity and what has to go.


Perhaps in the same spirit, I've gone back to the gym. I find I am no longer resigned to the 20 pounds I put on over the past two years.  Hormonal changes made me pack on the weight and depression made me feel helpless to do anything about it.  But I feel stronger these days, and I realize I'm not helpless. It's not impossible to regain the body that feels like me, and I want to get my strength and stamina back.


So I'm doing okay with my looming stretch of solitude. I've got shit to do!

The Fight for Lucky

As I write, our little dog Lucky is at the vet, having had X-rays earlier today.  It's been a while since I mentioned Lucky, but his issues have not gone away and in fact have gotten worse.

After conducting a liver bile acids test, our vet is convinced that Lucky has a liver shunt: that means that the blood vessels that carried blood away from his liver to his mother's liver while he was in utero failed to close after he was born, so his blood is not getting to his liver properly to be cleaned. This is causing pretty much all the problems he has been experiencing:  lowered immune function, protein elimination problems, wasting, the seizures, and now abdominal bloating as fluids leak from the liver and possibly intestines because of the protein imbalance.  (That's why he was getting X-rays.)

It's all very complicated.  The upshot is that  he needs surgery to fix the shunt. The surgery could kill him, as it is long and complicated and he is weak.  But he will certainly die without it, as his condition continues to worsen. It has to be done by a specialist and will cost an estimated $2500 to $3000.

Obviously, that's money I don't have.

Yesterday I started a Go Fund Me campaign to try to raise part of the money.  My Facebook friends have been sweet, and so far we've raised $145.  Not bad for one day.  I'm hoping as friends share with friends we can continue to get that up to at least $500.  I'm going to sell a few things around the house to try to get it up to $1000.

The vet is reluctant to give me a firm timeline, but based on the rate at which Lucky's condition is deteriorating, he said in 4 weeks, Lucks could be beyond help, so we need to get him into surgery as soon as possible, if we want to increase his odds. He gets weaker with every passing day, and the more depleted he becomes, the harder it will be for him to withstand the surgery.

Whatever happens, I tell myself, he has been and continues to be loved.  Whatever happens, he's had more life and a healthier life than he would have without us, because me and my family have been willing to pour money into him to keep his little furry head above water all these months.


But we have had him less than a year.  And he's only a year and a half old.  It's not fair.

I don't want him to die.  I don't want to have to hold him and say goodbye, and I don't want to let that little personality go because I failed him.  But I don't know if I can keep that from happening.  There's a sad little part of my heart that fears Lucky was never meant to be long in this world: that he's had a date with death since the beginning, and I've just barely been keeping it at bay.  But he's also been a trooper, and resilient.  I don't think he's giving up yet, and I'm not giving up on him.

The clock is ticking... or is it a time bomb?

Tomorrow is the last day of school for G.  That's the end of junior high for him. In just ten short weeks he'll be a high school student.  

Years ago, when he was still fat and could be patted on the bottom, I tried to imagine myself as the mother of a teenage son.  I pictured myself in the grocery store, trailed by this tall, slouching, demi-man.  I imagined our two-word conversations as he devoured everything in the refrigerator.  I resigned myself to fist-bumps rather than hugs at departures.

Aaaaaand, that's pretty much what I got.

My boy cleared 5'10" last month--officially equaling--perhaps surpassing by now--his father in height. He avoids going to the grocery store with me, or on any errand that doesn't involve the possibility of food or a stop at the book store or game store. And when he is persuaded to accompany me, he doesn't exactly slouch.  What he does do is careen  through the parking lot on the back of the shopping cart on our way to the car, and I can't help but imagine that A) a car is going to pull out suddenly and send him flying, or B) a little old lady is going to step out and get creamed.

Our conversations, though comprising sentences of more than two words, are largely the opposite of what I thought they would be (me talking and him grunting). Example:

G:  So this character in my game is a god, but he's, like, a really weak god, you know?
Me:  Mmmm?
G: But it's because he is just a (insert element) god, he can (insert activity) and he'll transform into a (whatever).
Me:  Mmmmm.
G: So if you meet him in the game, he'll always ask you if you have a (whatever) for him.  Because that's what he needs to do (whatever).  Nobody ever has it, but he asks it every time.
Me.  Hmmm.

This is pretty much what I see every day,
from the time I get home until I go to bed.

The other conversation alternative is that he's wearing earbuds and every time I say anything to him he pauses his computer, pulls out an earbud, and says " what?"  After which I repeat it. He's sort of present and not present at the same time. He's rather like a piece of semi-sapient furniture that periodically bursts out laughing or asks what's for dinner.

And yet he is there.  He is pretty much always there.

And in just a few days, he won't be.  I'll be shipping him off to Texas to be with his dad for nine weeks.  This will be a heroic act on my part because I've never...
EVER...
been separated from him for this amount of time.

Four weeks has been, I believe, my max.  And on Sunday I'll be saying goodbye to him until August. Fucking AUGUST!

Granted, there's a little selfish and weary piece of me that enjoys the idea of a home in which Family Guy is not playing continually... a home with TWO clean bathrooms, and in which I can purchase milk one gallon at a time.  But I figure the novelty will wear off in a few weeks. After that, I'll have to start finding a way to keep from turning into the Crazy Dog Lady.  


Tick tick tick...

We didn't have that when I was a kid

Note hiking shoes and jacket.
It's all over from here. 

This year I've become infected with CHD:  Compulsive Hiking Disorder.  It's sort of strange that it took me four years to contract a highly contagious disease for which the majority of NW Arkansans seem to be carriers, and is endemic to the environment. But this spring I got it.

It started with a few innocent half-hour walks on the trail near a local spring.  Then I graduated to longer hikes in the nearby wildlife management area, then to trail hikes in a state park half an hour away.

Then I bought a pair of hiking shoes and a Gor-Tex jacket, and everything went all to hell.

Now I find myself poring over trail maps and guide books, looking for the next fix. My car is covered in mud and gravel from the unpaved roads, the back floorboard littered with empty water bottles, and my Flickr account is full of photos of moss-covered rocks and waterfalls.

I've never been particularly "outdoorsy."  The outdoors, as lovely as it is, is also full of bugs. It gets too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter, and I'm allergic to red cedar (rampant in Oklahoma) and most grass pollens. But I also spent a good part of my childhood at my godparents' 140-acre "farm" in St. Louis, Oklahoma (population 158 at the last census).My godfather was a weekend rancher: he lived an hour away from the farm, so he raised cattle and grew alfalfa and otherwise just let the land run wild; and my parents pretty much let me run wild over it.

For me, an introspective and imaginative only child, that 140 acres was my personal fairytale world. Each stream, pond, forest path, and red sandstone outcropping had its own special magic to me.
I explored every nook and cranny:  collecting fireflies in the meadow, catching tiny frogs on the sandstone falls, following cattle trails through the woods and crawling about through the fort made of hay bales my Godfather built me each fall as he loaded the barn with winter fodder for the cattle.  It was a maze of tunnels, room,s and windows that grew gradually smaller all winter as he used up the hay.

Hawksbill Crag, probably the most
photographed spot in all of Arkansas.

But we didn't have anything like this back in Oklahoma!

Everywhere you turn in the Natural State you're looking at clear, running streams, springs pouring out from under rocky ledges, towering trees and even more towering bluffs, caves, hollows, and waterfalls. The kid in me is entranced all over again. It's good to be reminded of the magic in the world!

The Cruellest

April is the cruellest month,
breeding Lilacs out of the dead land,
mixing Memory and desire,
stirring Dull roots with spring rain.

                                              --T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"


I have argued that T.S. Eliot was wrong:  that March is the cruellest month, with its false starts and bitter remissions. I almost always jump the gun: plant my garden too early and have to run out as the sleet falls, covering the beds with sheets or plopping plastic bottle-halves over tender pepper plants. I want to believe in spring... that this time spring won't let me down.  This time, spring will be true, right from the beginning. There will be no misunderstanding, no heart-clutching doubt, no failure.

Sometimes it turns out that way. Other times my gentle basil plant is blackened by frost, or the spring rain pounds all my just-bloomed tulips into muddy mush, or the cut-worms nip my pepper plants off at the ground, leaving them  fallen like tiny forest trees, limp and lifeless. Why?

Lately I ask myself the same thing about love, and I realize now, more than I ever could have as a young graduate student, what Eliot was talking about: that dreadful return of a need to love that we experience after losing it or failing at it or being horrifically scarred by it. You want to turn your back for good: just climb into your treehouse and close the door, watch it all pass below you as if it didn't involve you. But it does. Your heart sends out grasping tendrils, craving connection, and it beats a little Morse code message into your brain:  maybe ... maybe ... maybe ... maybe...

So Memory and desire get mixed:  Memory telling you you have no luck, you're not good at this, you're unlovable, you're set in your ways now, you don't want to give up your freedom or share your space or pick up anyone else's socks off the bedroom floor. But desire is there with its big, sad eyes, staring forlornly at happy couples in the grocery store, thinking "why not me?"

When I was a kid, I loved stuffed animals. They were one of my favorite toys. And when I was allowed to pick out a new stuffed animal, I would go through the entire pile or shelf or bin, looking for the one that was imperfect. I looked for eyes that were out of level, ears that were wonky, fur that went the wrong way...for missing bits and broken bits and stains... I sought out the unlovable. I knew that only I could love them as they should be loved. (Maybe that's why this book, and this one, wrench my heart)

It took me years--decades--to figure out that my choice of imperfect stuffed animals was like a prayer that I, too, could be loved. That someone could and would see past my weaknesses and quirks and fears and manage--somehow--to love me anyway.

Today I still take in the unlovable. I bring home problematic pets who have been rejected or abandoned or who are just too much trouble for most people to take on. I know only I can love them as they should be loved. And I do my best. I give up a lot:  money, time, the freedom to run off on a moment's notice, a clean house and the ability to wear anything that doesn't have a sprinkling of dog hair. But I trade it easily for the sense of security I gain. Here, at least, among these misfits, I am loved without question, and I love without regret. I gather them to me. They are my furry equivalent of the bedclothes that protected me from fear in the night as a child.  With them pulled up around me, I am safe. Nothing can get me.

That's how I have felt when I've been in love: like love is that magic blanket and nothing can get me. It's a strange way to feel, I guess.  In reality, nothing is out to get me. The world is not out to cause me pain or sorrow. But lying in the arms of a beloved, I have heard myself say "nothing can get me now."

But it did.  It does get me. Love is lost, or broken, or illusory. Love is impossible, or hopeless, or mean, or toxic, and it either fades away, turns its back on me, or I realize that my love is ill-adapted to the environment and can't survive there, even if it wants to.

So that's the "dead land" Eliot speaks of.  And while the quest for love may be a positive thing, at the same time, it requires that I open myself up yet again to doubt and discomfort at best: with the real possibility of failure and pain, or worse, the illusion of success and crushing loss.

So yeah. I get it now.  Me and my dull roots...

The Secret They Don't Tell You When You Agree to Grow Up

The thing about being an adult that they don't tell you as a kid is how roaringly, howlingly, utterly demoralizingly BORING it is most of the time. What I would give for an hour of all-out, all-consuming imaginative PLAY, the way I did when I was a kid. The real world is an utter drag at least 90% of the time.

That was my facebook post this evening. And its disgustingly true.  I don't know what I expected from adulthood, but it wasn't this. My life is sometimes little more than a loop of letting dogs in and out, washing the same damned dishes and clothes over and over, driving, and worrying over money. No wonder I stopped keeping house. What's the point?  Really, it's just going to get dirty again. 

What if I entered a life of complete surrender to entropy?  What would happen if I just failed to do any life maintenance work at all?  

I'll tell you what, besides homelessness and starvation....even more boredom. Maintaining the little buggery buggeries of life is sometimes the only thing that keeps me sane... and I barely manage those. 

Once in a while I pause, look around myself, and realize that my life is completely going to shit.  In some cases, as noted in an earlier post, this is quite literal.  And even now, with my not-house-trained pup, shit continues to be... not a figurative expression. But it's amazing how I can KNOW there's dog poops on the rug next to the laundry room... and just not give a damn.  It's not going anywhere. I can pick it up any time. Entropy. 

When I was married I became convinced that my husband's body somehow manufactured bits of paper and small coins.  They were everywhere;  every surface seemed to have a little pile of wadded or folded up paper and change. Now I look around and must conclude that my person is manufacturing books and small toiletries.  Within eyeshot at present I see a bottle of hand creme, a tube of yeast infection cream (in the living room, yes, but not for the reason you're thinking.  It's also used to treat ringworm on Lucky's paw... which I'm beginning to despair of ever curing and I've started referring to him as "zombie paw"), a dog brush, an empty tissue box with a wad of black dog hair in it, one sock, a tube of chapstick, and a nail clipper. And god only knows what's in my sofa.  

Sometimes I want to scoop everything up, put it in a box, and shove it out to the curb. Would I miss it?  Really?  I'm not sure. And imagine coming home to a room empty of all objects except furniture and a stereo. Hell maybe I could opt out of furniture as well and just revel in the empty space.  IT would be like being Japanese.  It would be like coming home every day to a new house:  you know, that New House feel, where everything is clean and empty and feels bigger and more hopeful than your old, dirty, crowded house that smells like wet dog?  LIke that. 

Things.  Things and chores.'

And dogs.  Okay. 

Actually, I shouldn't complain. This year is off to a glowing start.  The ex is moving back to his hometown, with his babymomma and family, more than 900 miles away. This in itself is cause for joy. I may actually not set eyes on him again for four years, until our son graduates  high school.

I will soon have an actual OFFICE at work, no more gray cubicle corner, but an actual office with walls (which, granted don't go all the way to the ceiling, but hey) and a WINDOW.  Like human people. THIS is my year.

So things are good.  But this week has been an unhealthy one. G got strep throat, which I remember from when I was a kid and I know how awful it feels, like you're trying to swallow a bundle of needles; and Scipio got some sort of infection that has made one side of his little ratty face swell up and has given him a red rat-snotty nose and a really miserable wheeze when he breathes.  A sick rat is a really pitiful thing. So I took the kid and the rat to the doctor.  No, separate doctors... and now I'm administering antibiotics twice daily to both of them. I am Florence Frickin' Nightingale. Angel of mercy.

I of course do not wish my child to be ill, ever.  But now that he's 14... well, it's sort of nice when he really needs me, and wants to snuggle up and hold my hand, and lets me smooth his hair back and put my hand on his forehead. I guess I will always want to do that. So I take my little pleasures where I can find them before he feels well again and jacks back into the Matrix.

Leaving me alone... in this utterly boring and eventless adult life I've been sentenced to. I see more blogging in my future.