Keep Your Head Up

You know when you have a really great ride.

First, though, you like when Violet gets too excited and catches a baby chicken with one meaty paw breaking it in half practically, and you have to shoo her off angrily and the chicken looks flat but she's trying to get up. And then you curse that you spend 10 dollars on that baby chick and also you want your chick to be able to walk and be part of her group like she was one second ago. It's day 2 now and she is still alive, and trying out her wooden leg, one leg is definitely mangled but like Vando on the Lakers, she's valiantly trying to get up and play. 

So because it's nice out or for some reason because my heart is lighter, or it was just the perfect day, I don't know, my back has been really hurting badly like I lift hundred pounds horse containers or something every few hours (oh wait I do) but today I decided okay, I'm going to to check on the creek. I've been doing practice rides, which are my daily neighborhood hour rides every morning, and my horses and I are good at the regular routine, we need to have a creek adventure. 

It was Mags and Meriwether day, so I saddled them both up and we headed out. The secret path right outside our door has been having a peacock on it in random places like a car bomb. You never know when it might pop out of the bushes and hopefully not with his feathers all shot up like a balloon arch. Nothing a horse likes better than a fancy chicken who JUMPS OUT and then SPLAYS a million feathers like a sudden umbrella opening. Today I saw the peacock lolling under a tree and I made sure the horses saw the peacock, and then I talked to the peacock about NOT moving until we had passed him which he apparently said ok. He stood up, bowed as we passed and then danger averted.

I rode Mags first because she's my solid one although you can never say for sure, but Meriwether is only 5 so he can be a little skippy at first with happiness. So I rode out Mags and made sure to trot canter the flat parts to get the excess energy out. Meri was cantering merrily along with us until he SLAMMED on the brakes (a trick he learned from Fast and Furious movies) and we couldn't stop in time so I ran out of rope and lost the rope, which he was saying YESSSS and then he looked around for which grass he was gonna trot over to. While I fumed and got off my fat mare and had to try and get in front of him on the side most aiming at a busy street so he didn't decide to run that way. He found a nice bush and I grabbed him, fought down the urge to beat the shit out of him, petted him instead, got back on my horse, and off we went over the mountain, through the tunnel and into the wilderness. 

Right through the tunnel someone decided to put a mattress and that is always helpful to horses who don't know what a huge white rectangle is and aren't sure if it can leap up to smother them. We got past that and then it seems like there were several old lady groups on horses, I saw so many riders, which is weird. The women -I'm always looking for a fun person- and mostly they just look like they've been beaten up by wire brushes like RIGHT before their ride. They look like when you go in a diner in a truck stop? The regulars? Or there's the quiet rich ladies, who have on the tight zip ups with their faces all zipped up and the obedient dog following along. Then there's me, today I wore pants but usually I ride in pajamas. Dementia care has stolen my ability to dress at all, and it was never a top priority. 

Anyway the most important part is I am out with my horses, on trails I know pretty well, and we're heading to water and I feel good inside. I have been feeling good for almost 2.5 days, this release of burden I don't know why it's happening but I am starting to feel like a regular person. So much tension from trying to take good care of so many people for so many years, and I'm starting to pop that mom bubble, and see if I can keep the good parts and lay down some of the worry from all those years. We care so much, moms, don't we. It's a full time job. 

I try and breathe instead of panic, breathe and remember everything is fine. I am alive. Water is ahead.

We get to the water and it's always different, we slosh on in, and it's not too deep, not sinky, there's other horses so we go around to the other side of the river where there's no one and then I see a hole in the bushes where the river is coming from, and it looks like it can fit my horses. I think today I can go through those branches and keep going up the creek to see how far I can get. Before, the water was too deep there.

So Mags and I tractor through there and it's so deep and splashy that my pants and boots are soaked, which makes me laugh, and she keeps going, and Meri is keeping up and I'm thinking ok next time I have to try and ride Meri through here, we haven't done deep water yet with me on his back. The three of us slosh very far up the creek, and it's perfect footing, open space, leafy, manageable current, horses are happy and interested, and listening. 

This is really all I like to do. I like to sit on them and feel my hips hurting, and let them eat some river plants and listen to the water and feel sorry that Kurt fired himself from our friendship for a second, but then it passes and I am just still with the horses, deep in water, where there is nothing to worry about. Stop adding worry. Or as Linda says, and I want to make into a t shirt, Stop Thinking About It.

The water washes us all three down, it gives Meriwether some experience, it gives Mags some relaxation, and it gives me courage. Or wait I used courage to go into the unknown area, so it gives me satisfaction.

I video on the way back since I think I can capture it without dropping my phone now that I've done it once, but this also takes courage. One hand on Mags, one hand on meri, phone and crop. I'm not sure how I do it, but I do focus hard. And the water is so nice. It is flowing from who knows where, Denver I guess, I hope Evie comes sailing down. In the water there is no dementia, there is my mom whole, and my kids little, and every dog I've ever had, and all the dead people are alive and gathering every blanket they can find to make a fort out of the couch. Everything seems happening in the creek but only the good things. 

Navigating home is a little hard after the water for about 20 minutes. The horses get exiting creek fever and you have to calmly guide and distract them until they settle down. Their energy zings from the same thing I get from it, from all the good. You just wanna make sure a 1200 pound horse under you isn't zinging. Walking only please.

Then they settle and I switch to Meri to go up the big mountain home because it's his turn and otherwise he likes to stop a bunch and hope I drop the rope. (He's a smart goat) I ride him up the mountain and he is tiny but mighty and on the way down I tell him he will be my grandkid horse someday so he has to be reliable and mannerly, and he has only half of that down, half of the time. 

I get back and we do pass one fat snake but only I see him, this is the second snake in 3 days. I've only ever seen four total snakes after riding here for 14 years, and one of them was dead. 

I unload myself from the guys, untack, rinse them off, give them some of the sweet hay for the reward, check on my little mutilated chicken but she's still rallying, a bit sideways but that's better than no ways. 

There's also a bunny loose under the hot tub, he tunneled out of the hutch. If I catch him I'm going to name him Alcatraz. If he's going to take a journey that is also okay. I'm happy keeping just two bunnies or maybe no bunnies. Eventually. My making a home for little kids, it's okay if I have to do some other stuff. Other than what I used to. Like the fair we did every year. Now this year, first time in many years, maybe no fair. Unfair. Ha.

It's okay to be without. Just because things are different doesn't mean there aren't going to be things that matter and make me feel good. It just was really weird to be suddenly free. Especially since I wasn't trapped at all. I only ever felt free.

I just love the kids so much. We sucked every minute out of every minute. 

Now I get to see what else there is to suck okayokay come on no I want to keep feeling happy. Thank god there's no extra troubles. B lived. His son went to have a life somewhere else. The sun came out again after cloudy April. There is water. There is today. As this Irish guy on instagram keeps telling me softly on his walks in green green Ireland, Keep your head up. You're doin great. 

Stuff Your Pockets

So I am starting to figure out how I can still be myself without my kids. In one way at least

I teach a riding lesson once a week to two girls in their 20s, all tatted up, they're a couple, they're dopey and cute and love animals, and I was scared at first, to have to talk to people, and to do a good enough job to make it worth the $150 they were paying me to do something I would do for free, and now it's been a few months and even though I don't love the having to be responsible and caring for 2 hours on tuesday, I am finding that it keeps me from being lonely, it keeps me learning my horses from a newer angle, and I am getting paid. 

And most of all it gives me a thing I care about improving, how I can mix my teaching with my horses, both separate skills. AND today I supplied them with a snack chamber full of junk that I used to give to Bess's basketball friends, so I feel happiest that I can continue that momming aspect of myself that I liked, feeding people in ways that make them happy. Who doesn't like a little surprise.

I think I'm learning that what I like best is treat or treating and christmas stockings. I like anything where someone is handing you a surprise. It was even my favorite part of volunteering at Children's Hospital back in the day before I had kids and was thinking about joining the Peace Corps. You had to have volunteer hours doing the sort of thing you might do in the Peace Corps and since I didn't have a degree in forestry (which is really helpful apparently for them), I knew I'd end up working with kids and families, so I did my volunteering at that hospital. And in the basement there is a richie rich style vault room that is full of toys and stuffed animals and prizes. They would make you sign a ledger stating what toy you were taking and to which sick kid.  So officially you did that, but the other volunteers whispered also stuff your pockets full of things and give them out to visiting brothers and sisters on the the elevator. Which totally appealed to the robin hood thief me. This was the greatest part of the work there. Cheering up not just the kids in the hospital where you could bring them like a huge toy truck or giant bear, but the kids in the elevators that are stuck in a bad time, to pull out a fun trinket or a coloring book or a ball, this was the time of my life. 

So today after I helped the kids learn more little steps to becoming solid riders, I opened their snack vault and they stuffed their pockets and one girl said well I don't want to take more than one so I can have something next week and I said I'll put more in, take as much as you want.

Because I like that somewhere later today a kid is going to have a cookie she wouldn't have normally had and she's going to sit in a patch of sun on her couch that that cookie created, and she's going to think, my day is looking up.

Maybe this journey of figuring out Why I Matter is actually fun. Some of the things are so basic, it just takes me looking at them from a different angle to know that Hey, I already am that person. That person is all oiled up and ready to go. I am always going to be a nurturer because it is like liquid love. Pour it on like coppertone. 

Maybe the hardest challenge in my life will never happen, like learning to let a person touch my body who knows me, and also trying to get money for my writing. Maybe I should try to get money with my body and just touch my writing.

I did learn from my neighbor who grew up in a fam where the parents stayed married that she always thought marriage was a place you could feel safe and care the most. My view of marriage was it was the most unsafe place to be and never to allow that if you wanted to live. It's good to know that some things you learned can be removed from your pockets. Even if you can never do it. You can feel safe knowing that there is another, crazy truth. 

And save some space in that pocket for cookies for sweet kids.

Hopper

Hopper died. Okay not the real Hopper. If you watch Stranger Things, the big hulking sheriff with the beard, the huge man with the kind heart, saving the little girl, saving the town. 

This guy Bill looked exactly like Hopper. He came to our stocking party at Christmas. He's the dad of some cousins in our family. He was like maybe 50. His (newer) wife thought he was sleeping in, she went in to check on him, he was dead. Died in his sleep. Heart attack they say.

Nathan says how do they know it's a heart attack. What if she killed him. Where were the kids. How do you tell kids someone died. Do you not tell them? 

They'd eventually notice, I said. 

This guy once showed up at our house, on our lawn, with the two kids he was raising zooming around like spazzes, they were not easy kids, and he took them on when his girlfriend (the mother of them) became a drug addict. So Bill wasn't related to us except by trauma, and sacrifice. And dedication. Anyway he showed up on the lawn one day with a wrapped present and I said Bill hi what're you doing here and he said oh, we're here for the party

And I looked down at my pajamas and then I said um the party is next week end. 

He stared and kind of laughed, then we both laughed and the kids were running in circles because these two kids have more energy than some entire classes I've subbed. This guy Bill was huge, not fat, just a giant man, blonde, beard, apparently an ex cokehead and ex is always good when paired with coke head. He decided to fly straight and then took on these kids when the girlfriend decided NOT to be an ex cokehead.

The only other thing about Bill besides his tall physical presence was one time they were here at a party and the kids wanted to go see the horses. So they followed me through a gate and he turned around to latch the gate right and he said always leave a gate the way you found it. And I said hey I never thought of that.

And he was just at passover last month, and sitting at our table, and I came late and I didn't even really say hi to Bill because I didn't get over there and I thought oh well next time, he's so nice  and now that's his last time sitting there, with his smiley self, the gentle oak shading his sunny kids, he called his daughter Sunny, he had no idea that it's way easier to raise some kids, these are the ones he got and he was doing an incredible job where I woulda had my hair in an afro from that full time energy, with that gig. He was big enough to absorb it all, and not give up. There wasn't a piece of him that wanted to give up.

He had partnered up with this other wife after the willowy bio mom/drug addict continued on her way, exiting the scene. This other wife loved our horses even though she musta had some kind of injury cause she dragged her legs around, they bent kind of sideways when she walked like it hurt to move and she kept saying she wanted to help trim my horses, she used to know how to do horse feet. I would love to have help with the horses but she'd have to be able to move her body safely in emergencies and I sorta worried about her.

Now I really worry about her. On her own with those two, and no oak to lean on. He looked like he mighta held them all together. 

B said man I wish I had known him better. Why didn't I know him better? Because he was always on the periphery at parties, the dad of b's brother's grandkids. Part of the family but over there in that part, and a face we liked but we hadn't had the time to know yet.

We didn't know we didn't have the time. He didn't know.

The gate thing, and the missed party, this is all I really got from Bill. What about all the other things and secrets we'll never know. What about his band, and his art directing, and what he thought about in the car when he was alone, what did he regret, what was his loudest laughing memory, what moved him, what did he picture when falling asleep, and his family, the one he made from shards of other things. His daughter wasn't even his daughter. When he took in his son, the daughter was a baby of another man, they had no one, and he took them both. He adored her. He's the only dad she knew. 

The kids didn't understand when they told them their dad died. They were watching a movie and I'm sure they thought okay, well, whatever you say, but I'm sure he'll show up later, he always shows up. He's never not shown up. So. 

I wish we'd known more, not just a little pink taster spoon from 31 flavors. There's so much we missed out on. We always miss out on so much because life is just tumbling at us, all the time, and it's so interesting. It's hard to catch it all in your fingers, it just leaks out like mercury.

I hope he grows a whole forest, wherever he is. He was a grove of gentle trees.

Door #1

I'm in a place I don't understand. I must never have been here before. I don't think I remember myself without kids. I do remember myself though, I was just an untethered child running free and playing with whoever said yes. I wasn't serious. I was just living. 

Now after these 25 years of tethered, solid, living for others, family, I am once again here. Untethered. 

But now my back hurts and I work very hard physically to maintain a body I before just got for free. I am a little bitter about that. I spend half my morning exercising just to stay slightly too fat. 

Untethered. Well now things are much graver, I suppose. Because I'm closer to the grave. I got a letter from SS (not THE SS) saying I could retire in 7 years. Retire from what? Oh I guess I did make money in my 20's and subbing in my 50's. There is a huge gap in my 30's-40's where I did my best work, but it's reflected in the beauty of my children smiling and not in the social security payment column. It's too stunning to fit there, there should just be a glow.

I know what I'm worth. I know my writing is funny and true, mostly true. When I can. I know I've helped my mom in her sickness years as her approaching death coach. She said not to be afraid of death. So I just take her hand and we wait. And eat ice cream usually at around 4. Come over by the way.

I think all my life is open doors and I'm knocking but nobody is really answering. So I think I haven't sat and thought about it enough to approach the right door. I have been watching alot of Let's Make a Deal. Door #1 Door #2 Door #3. The agony of the lady dressed like a cow trying to decide where is her winner. Maybe I am scrutinizing what is the best door, where is the Deal of the Day. I definitely don't want a new washer dryer or any of those stupid prizes.  I don't want to be singing on tour like Billie Eilish.  I want to have quiet mornings where everything is still possible. I want to plod along on the trail until all my thoughts dribble away and I can hear the birds again. I want to be a passenger buckled up on earth, looking for my next adventure. I've had so many good adventures so far. 

I want to like myself. Most of all. She's been waiting for me to notice.

And, Scene

(my blogs are a bit behind real life, and this feels like a million years ago now. But I'll post it because 1) I wrote it and b) it can be the end of this rant. Things are shape shifting back to normal around here.)

After receiving an email back from b's son I feel I must respond here.

We (gently) kicked him out after living here for three months, and arriving here in Jan after 4 years of mental abuse he caused by texting barry nonstop about what a terrible father b is. 

So having him here was awkward to start with, coming from that track record. I was not excited to have this guy in our house, because he had just spent years telling us how shitty we were.  But b said this is my son. He has a good opportunity with an internship for 3 mos, I want him to come live here. It mattered to B.

So we talked on the phone, the three of us and we all three agreed that if he was going to live with us, he would be required to be continuing in therapy he had just started and with medication for the OCD diagnosis he was just given. He had no problem with that.

Then he came to live here and didn't ever set up any therapy.

I work in my house. I live here and take care of my mom, and the barn, and the pool, and the yard and b and me and Nathan. Nathan takes care of all the cars, of all floods, of all things broken, and vacuums and mows the lawn. B takes care of all the bills, and provides a sound, solid love we depend on. 

I agree that when he came to live here, and was sitting in my kitchen everyday on a laptop with headphones, clogging up my kitchen like a ghost because he was distanced by his headphones, I agree, I felt awkward. I would try and time my breakfast making to when he wasn't there. Or I would take my food and eat in the living room. Because I was not hired to make him feel comfortable. And yet I live here. And I love my busy, and peaceful routine. And I love my house. And now my house was not mine. 

I barely am doing my real life too. I have been doing dementia for 6 years added on top of my raising three miraculous kids for 25 years. I'm at the tail end and celebrating the achievements. 

Then a sick motherfucker came to live here and act like no one has it worse than him and no one understands him. Because he's adopted and had a dad that wasn't manly and he's queer (which he isn't if you saw how messily he kept his room and how he treats his mother) and all of us are mean liars for making him clean up and be responsible and be kind and be grateful. 

He actually said that he's tired of faking being grateful.

After we gave him our whole house for 3 months at a great emotional price.

He has 70,000 dollars left of a 250,000 inheritance. He is not broke. He has 2 masters degrees. He could easily get a job. 

He is so angry at the world, as we are all angry at the world at times, but he has made it his full time job. There's alot of momentum in anger and bitterness. He should make scented candles with those flavors.

I'm so sad for b that he has inherited this son, whom he gave (and I saw, and our nieces and fam saw) his whole heart and soul to. B did nothing wrong raising this son. I loved the way B raised his son so much that I came to b when it was time for me to raise some kids, and he has been the perfect partner for loving and nurturing tiny souls and spirits. Just like he was with his son.

All I can say is, you can't be mad and blame everyone else if you aren't doing any of the work. Like literally he did ZERO at our house unless I handed him a vacuum (once), or I handed him a leaf blower (once). Or I said clean your room. Or I said you're crazy get the fuck out of my house. 

He was coming in from his car one time, saw me outside sweating, lugging heavy trash cans out and we locked eyes and he kept walking went into the house and I thought oh maybe he went to put his stuff down. But he never came back out to help. That is who he is right now. 

I care about the 7 year old little kid he was when I met him, when he was healthy and kind and believed in himself and the world. That is the kid I still care about. 

He says he needs to take a break from us because I stress him the fuck out. Yes. And also. SAME. And also, you never would have left our house if I didn't say hey you didn't do the work. You promised when you came here that you would be in therapy. And you never did shit the whole time. So you have to leave.

So it just proves, AGAIN, that you can't save anyone but yourself. And the rest is a waste of time. Also it proves that you can provide the most beautiful tiny farm, sweet (if tentative) family, quiet environment and no pressure and that does not help a person determined to hate themselves. In fact, it just robs you of those three months of your life where you gave up your most precious things, your safe haven from the world, and your loving functioning family. To someone whom you had to eventually force out, and then they send you an email where they shit all over your sacrifice.

But you can love love love the people who are doing the work. All of us imperfect, trying to understand ourselves and each other, making mistakes, mending mistakes, hiding from mistakes. All of us, vulnerable. And sometimes, not even at all suffering, but laughing, crying, wrestling, playing, loving each other, seeing the sky.  

Stillness

It's day 2 of being rid of the monster. (The monster that sits atop the person we were hoping to save, underneath.)

I talk to myself all day. Out loud, I'm mostly saying thank god. I'm so happy. He's fucking insane. What a drain. He did nothing. He contributed nothing. It was piles of anger and sadness and anxiety and lurking and non action and bitterness and weird. But at least it went on for three months. 

I can't believe he left, really. He didn't have to leave. The kids aren't home til May and June. He had a full month he totally could have stayed and I wouldn't have been able to do anything. But he found that place and it was cheap and pretty and he was riding that high and signed the lease and then he was talking about it and as soon as I said well I hope you get your mental health figured out then he went dark like storm clouds and resisted that it was about mental health, said instead that it was because it was going to be too crowded here, he rejected, in fact, my whole statement and he didn't know there was a time limit to getting mental health help 

and I said well we said to move in with us you had to have continuation of your mental health care. We agreed to that. You were in therapy. We said okay move here January, have a therapist set up so you stay safe and helped. It's April. You never set up a therapist

Well I got cheap insurance

Your insurance has the therapy

I've been busy

Then he moved out and b cried because that's his baby and he's all alone.

and I was in the other room feeling like a helicopter was lifting a hundred thousand pound mean asshole off my heart.

I don't want b to feel bad. I want this guy to get the help he needs. I just can't be in the same room with him until he has accepted help from strangers, from trained people who can help him. I'm telling the truth. Get help or get out.

But I understand B. I feel and know exactly how his gentle heart feels. So I'm giving him hugs.

But now I can take care of my mom, and work here at home without dreading this guy coming into the house, or coming into the room. I can Live at my house that I made with my family, the place I nurtured into a safe and peaceful, loving environment and I don't have to be angry or irritated that someone is in my kitchen every time I want to be in there. I figured out that even if Bradley Cooper had wanted to be here at my house for 3 months, speaking to me in French (he speaks French) and cracking jokes after we had spent hours hanging out in bed with Jennifer Lawrence together, I would ALSO be sick of even Bradley fucking Cooper in my kitchen at 8 am. That is strictly an empty place for me and my tea and my feet up eating breakfast without a fork. 

My heart can finally rest a minute and I can have JUST dementia mom and heart attack survivor B, and their love and care to tend to. And the horses to give me my challenge and time outdoors in nature. And swimming to decompress. And dogs on the bed to remind me to breathe and relax. And wrestling with words and stories, and when not writing, then thinking of words and stories. It's a very gentle balance and now things have a chance to settle like a birdbath with only one drop of rain after a storm is passing, over there in the distance. 

I hope it stays for a bit, stillness.

 

Ultimate Blockage

So one day I crying in my rice trying to figure my marriage and identity out and the next day B's trying die like for real during the moon landing.

It was a regular Friday night, except that Artemis II space pod had landed in the ocean and it was on tv and b and I were watching it for a few hours just bobbing there while I was at the same time building a saddle rack that had come in the mail. It is a huge black metal number that required stacking and screwing metal poles in and luckily Nathan had stopped by home just in time to drill the harder parts together.

So the moon people got back safely and out onto boats in the ocean amidst other humans after being Off Planet for a few days, and the mystery of Leaving in the hugest sense of the word and Coming Back safely in the other hugest sense, B and I just kept watching cause it all seemed so unlikely and otherworldly.

Then I dragged my saddle rack out to the barn in the dark and arranged some saddles on it and felt happy to see my barn shaping up in a new way, it's fun to change things around and improve little things. It's my favorite place to waste time.

Then I checked on my mom, and made her comfy, and made sure she wasn't tipping over and was watered and resting and tended. Then on the way back in I thought okay I'll just jump in the hot tub a min just to warm up and I was getting out of the hot tub when B opened the screen door and said     I think I'm having a heart attack

I've had enough emergencies in my life and I live with a jew and he was ambulatory so I thought let's just check this out first. 

I found out he felt like it was heartburn, and his arm was numb and he felt this way last night but it went away and I went to get my mom's meters and things and tested his oxygen and blood pressure but the blood pressure thing didn't work right and I listened a bit more to how he was feeling and more the way he was saying it, which was a little not quite normal B edgily and I said ok let's go. We're only gonna miss a laker game and most of our guys are injured anyway.

So we're driving in the van and b is holding his arm and he's saying I wonder if we should have called an ambulance and that's when my eyes get a bit wide internally so I start gently running red lights when safe and saying hey let's keep talking buddy, tell me how you're doing and maybe we should talk about the lakers

I try to keep him talking cause if he's quiet I can't look at him while driving and if he dies in the car I don't think I want that as a cherished memory so I'm like don't die motherfucker keep talking and he says it seems like there's so many more exits on the freeway to get there and so I gun it faster and we get there, he walks in, we say chest pain, the waiting room is full like there's a movie premiere, and we sit DOWN which I think is weird because on tv chest pain usually gets you back fast where the movie stars are doctors.

We do get in and the young girl doctor, literally Doc McStuffins, does a stroke test on B and then says ok we're gonna call code stroke just because it gets you a bunch of heart attack and stroke tests really quick. They wheel him away to do a CT scan and they tell me just wait in the waiting room and we'll get you in a bit.

I go to sit back down in the place full of people competing for a spot where nobody wants to be, and sit down shoulder to shoulder with sick and this is the first time I think oh no what if he dies on the table. We have no idea what's going on but what if it's all over? I think for a minute about how I don't know where any files are. I have been doing the hands on kid raising not the number crunching, there is so much I don't know and don't want to know about how life actually runs at my address. I have done all the maintenance b has done all the bills. Also, the kids need a dad. Also, b is supposed to be here forever, forever annoying, forever smart, always forgiving. I'm alone in that waiting room. 

They call me back but they call me Linda. I say oh no did he forget my name already? Then the nurse says oh man I can never remember anything no, he gave the right name. 

B is still living and in a tiny room in the back with 3 roommates behind curtains. He has the corner suite, it's luxurious and not worrisome or uncomfortable just kidding. The same young doctor returns, tall, thin, in a zip up dark grey patagonia fleece and I say you look like an ice skater. She says first time I've heard that one! She says his triponin levels have earned him a night's stay in the hospital, even if they aren't super high she wants to keep doing more tests and giving him blood thinner til we know what it is. 

B is feeling no pain. I text his errant son to come to the hospital. We sit with B until around midnight hoping to get him a room but it's going to be awhile. At 1 he says go home and I'll tell you when they move me. 

I sleep at home from 2-6. Then he says they're going to get me a room. 

All Saturday we spend at the hospital while B's miraculous family comes in and out, bringing food, sitting stacked up, bringing cheer. Bringing cheer. I don't think B felt one bit of tension because there was so much family it was like being at one of the kids' birthday parties. The voices drowned out all the worries because what could happen, when your family loves you. They wrapped us in a hammock of food and love and warded off the evil. Somewhere in there the nurses say he had a heart attack and they have to do some kind of test to stick a tube up there and shoot a dye and see if anything is blocked. If nothing blocked, they take tube out and manage with meds. If artery is blocked they stick little stent tubes up there to open it up. If too many arteries are blocked they do nothing, and later have to a do a bigger surgery. We're hoping for option 1 or 2. They can't do the surgery til Monday.

The next day he texts me at 7 am. They're going to do the angiogram right now. His niece and his brother show up to wait in the room next to him, to be there. I have to juggle managing my mom and farm and then shooting over there as soon as I can. 

The outcome is #2, they stick in 3 stents. He has never been in the hospital in his life.  This is very un-b like. His heart should work fine now. He has a big purple arm from a bruise. He's back in the bed. It's Sunday. There is more family and food. B has really no idea anything has happened because his family is the ultimate blockage from feeling pain. Or worse, fear.

He gets out 1 day later. He goes swimming the next day. He's tired and dizzy, and he feels paper thin in his brain. He feels like an old man. We realize his blood pressure is a little low. So we have to call his doc and for the first time I am helping him call doctors and make sure about his health. His doc takes him off those blood pressure meds for now. Today he is more like himself. It's now day 5. It is now Friday again. There is no splashdown from the moon today. 

There is just the sound of Nathan in his red boxers and no shirt talking to B in his comfy chair out there, talking about the chances of the lakers making it in the playoffs. Even though all their good players are injured. 

Like the hospital, this is the sound of family.

the beef goes on

So yeah it turns out that wasting a bunch of energy yelling at some smelly guy in your house does exactly what I thought it would do while I was doing it. It does nothing. 

Just like when I lived with alcoholics. Or dated them. Hold your scorecards up and look where you checked all the boxes that said Waste Of Time.  

Yes you are the big winner. 

I knew this lesson. But hell nobody was doing anything, it was a slow night, so I just stepped right forward and jabbed a finger into someone's crazy and then I paid for it with three days of recovering from emotional outpouring. Raise your hand if you'd like to learn to pause instead of talk. I just have such a hard time NOT pointing out where people who annoy me are fucking up. It is like a really fun hobby of mine to a) be shocked by fat people and 2) be self righteous because I know a bunch of stuff. 

Also after years of being ignored by the kids when they were in their latter teen years and I was a ghost in the car where they blared their music and I slowly disappeared from the relevance scale, I had a lot of talking stored up. Also I don't have my mom with a functioning brain to tell me to shut up sometimes. But I've been shut up ALL the times, for awhile now. 

Well now I'm talking, charlie. 

Sure, the house guest and his wheelbarrow of mental illness is unfortunate and unexpectedly now about to move into my back bedroom.  Sometimes I get mad and then I hide the food he likes. But now I think really the bigger problem is my marriage is a sham and my kids all left, which is what revealed my marriage is a sham. Or is it a shame. His side of the marriage is really good. His closet is also really neat. 

Okay so it's not a TOTAL sham (yes it is). It requires tending. And instead of tending I like to remember how fun it is to go on Space Mountain. I like to complain about other things and tidy the house which it all just melts back into untidiness like sandcastles built too close to the waves. 

I just know this guy who is driving back here at this moment with a trailer full of stuff he moved out of his place up north is going to show up here with the stuff instead of pre-renting the storage space and taking it directly there, like an efficient person. Then there will be the discussion of unloading and I will have to say hey maybe you need to go to the storage space like efficiently. Or better yet like I mentioned, get an apartment and unload it directly into that place. And then occasionally visit here.

But this guy does not want to visit this family. If he had no job here he wouldn't even step foot in our house. This guy trashed B for four years. Then got an internship nearby and needed a place to stay and now here we are. If he moved out he would never in a million years come by to have dinner. I would like to place bets on that one, when he moves out, will he ever ever call B again to check up on him. 

I'd like to put a thousand dollars on No Fucking Way, chuck. 

So these have been hard discussions to have. Especially because this is the son of the person I live with, and for some reason parents do not give up on their kids. 

So THAT is why I initiated that screaming battle a week ago, because if we're not giving up on this bloke, then we are FIXING this guy. If he won't go to therapy or be responsible in this house with chores and cleanliness, then it looks like we can wrap all this up with a nice restraining order.

Also I am only blogging because I should be writing my new book which I don't like very much. So that's why I'm here confessing, father, son, holy ghost, amen.

I know I'm not easy to live with. Trust me, I have to live with me all the time. But inside I'm so much fun. I'm quiet AND funny. 

So let's see how this chapter rounds out, readers. This traveling turd whose destination is my beautiful peaceful farm, I truly wish he would heal up somewhere else and THEN come here, with flowers and a shamefaced grin, and say man I'm so sorry for all of this, but look I am happy now and I did it all myself. 

I hope he believes in himself. And I hope I am not the towel he's wiping the ass of his soul on, because healing up takes a ton of time and I already have done too many sickies. I'm full up, and sailing on a different boat. Unfortch, he's about to board mine anyway cause he's knows a guy, and that guy feels he's redeemable. 

Fingers crossed, but keep an eye out for some tiny farm I can rent and take my horses to, if I need to get out of here.  ps come with me

off loading

After three months I finally poked the What Are You Doing Here mental health bubble of our house guest, and man that erupted into a yelling fight I haven't done much of since my brother was a serious drunk. Unless you count the recent Kurt screaming break up. Maybe there is a future for me in screaming my needs and calling people crazy to their faces. 

It was not my best work and my shrink said sometimes we yell at people when we are angry at things that aren't working in our OWN lives and man I really wanted to fire her that day. 

But the fight ended up being good because at the end of it, there was crying, and there was understanding, even though I was wiped out emotionally for two days afterwards, like Eleven on Stranger Things when she gets a single bloody nose after intensely navigating things in the Upside Down.

Now at my house I can just stop being angry at this person all day, it was really dragging me down. I'm happier to have him understand that when you trash Barry for 4 years and then come to live here like nothing happened, it is a little weird and people don't like you. So we got it ALLLL out in the open, and hopefully now he will take care of his mental health, he will appreciate the family he hasn't deserved for 4 years, but he will endeavor, perhaps, to deserve us. Everyone deserves a chance to fuck up and be redeemed. 

For now I will focus on teaching my riding lessons to my two paying riders who are some really sweet tatted up girls who hand me $150 dollars every tuesday for doing the ride I would normally do anyway. I take the money for the amount of personality I have to expend. That part is really hard. I don't really know how to teach riding, I only know how to enjoy riding. But I fake it okay. They don't notice.

They like to rescue fallen birds and lost cats. They're only 24 years old. I looked at the bird they were pointing to on the ground on our ride that may have hit its head and needed help and I just didn't understand. I can only take care of the horses under us. Birds are supposed to work out their own shit on their own. 

I'm also trying to write this stupid Subculture book or whatever it is, it doesn't feel like a book but I'm 8 pages in and maybe it's a script. Maybe the problem is I'm not a writer. But I fake it. No one notices. Chris said to write the thing you're scared of so I'm going to keep going I can always throw it away or it can end up in my garage and it will eventually be thrown away. Might as well write the bitch. I only ever write to understand something. Or entertain myself.

I do have so much finished writing that needs to be out in the world maybe earning me some cash. I'd also like to hear and see it. Hear other people saying it. I have to find those people and venues. I'm still home taking care of my mom so I have time to figure it out. I am not crazy to network to make things happen but maybe if I network with writers I admire. Or reach out to the ones I think are mavericks, who speak to me. Maybe they can give me pointers about my leaping off place. 

In the meantime I am leaping off right from here. I'm not holding anything back. In some cases, I'm screaming it all. 

I decided or something decided in me and is dragging me along, that I'd really like it to be the time where I let go of all the things I'm carrying that I don't need anymore. I'm tired of carrying them. It's not you. It's me. I need more room for happiness, and ice cream.

Okay going to put my mom to bed. 

modern times

The riddle of Bruce is a weird one. I can't quite grasp it. I know I could spend alot of time trying to figure it out if I wanted to avoid writing which is what I'm doing right now. 

I think the reality is that he doesn't even have the key to himSELF so there's really no way I would suddenly have the key, like in my apron pocket in a dusty Henry James governess novel. My role in the Bruce Lives Here Right Now saga is I am part of the couch and the kitchen. So I can graciously accept my role and work up my oscar speech for how effective I have been as open and caring loving family member, and I can thank Ireland and my mom (oh wait that was an actual speech at the Oscars) I can realize that the spotlight is over there, where I'm not looking, and I can leave that spotlight to itself.

I can try and comfort little Nathan Detroit who had four teeth stolen from his face a few days ago and is now writhing in agony with something he thinks is called dry socket which sounds like a golf hazard. He's about to pour some antibiotics into himself and I told him he'll be okay, I really can't do anything there either except make jello and pat his leg, which is what I've done. I still look at him like he's 3. He's just a giant 3. He's so adorable. I would put him in a carseat and keep him forever.

Bess just finished her last finals and only has a few more months at her first year in college. She didn't enjoy her antarctica class and found her buddhism class lacked zen. Her film class had a horrible teacher but her environmental class was easy. For her film final she wrote an answer to a vocab term up her arm in case she forgot it but then she didn't need it. 

Evie is in Germany eating fat pretzels and saying fuck you USA for a few more days. She and her friend are faking german accents because it makes you sound like you are a bavarian ass kicker and I recommended visiting the BMW plant and leaving a flower there for her brother's humble devotion to his car.

B and I just entering contests and trying to get my writing out in the world. 

Is it me or is everyone constantly dissolved in the minute you're in, and then outside yourself saying you'rewastingyourdaywhatareyoudoing and then making some food and then the sun packed its bags and left and there's still some weird guy in your kitchen who sighs alot and then I get in bed and read one page and fall asleep.

Modern times. Not just a charlie chaplin movie.

might as well ride

So my kids all left to go START THEIR LIVES or whatever and it's been like ALMOST five months and I've been doing alot of horse training.

I thought I was just fooling around and getting out of the house which I am but I am every ride taking a little moron horse along with my regular big boring horse and every time it is like I'm on the fishing boat towing a whopper behind me. Like what's the biggest fish? Swordfish? I'll take two.

I think just riding wouldn't be interesting enough. I like the battle to make a decent horse out of baby horse. I like working with something. Also I like racking up the days one by one, and building something. I think because dementia is just racking DOWN everything, I keep trying to put stones back in the dam cause maybe if I train this baby horse my mom will throw off her heated blanket and dance with her arms above her head. 

Either way I figure I end up with a trained horse at the end so no harm looking for a miracle.

I feel like because life is so much paying the hot tub guy 900 dollars to fix a tiny part or buying chlorine and cleaning the pool and tearing up branches off a limb that fell in the front yard in the dark in my pajamas I am a one man show in our house. Show nuff. Life is so many boring things.

So in the mornings I get up and get mom up and feed and muck her and the animals, have some tea and fresh eggs and toast and blackberries, and then with mom warm and situated watching cartoons I'm off to train the little horse of the day, and even though they run when they see me coming with the bridle, they're all business out on the trail. They like an adventure. 

Yesterday I went to the creek which I hadn't been to in awhile cause of rain and it was swole up so big I daren't neer cross it (okI'lllstop) but today I went back with the two naughtier horses, Mags and Meriwether, and because my friend Susie said she had crossed it I was like well fuck if she can I can so I hitched up my pants probly literally and I picked the section of creek that I knew was flattest under kind of rushing water and we pounded right in and through to the other side just like the goddamn oregon trail.

It was deep too, and swirling but we did it and then we did it again since I knew we wouldn't die so I could enjoy that one. 

Then on the way back in the desert landscape with the scrub cactus and the bushes that Jesse James no doubt surveyed with squinted eyes back in the day a few hunned miles from here, I thought about how success happens in the one day you cross a rain fattened creek and that opens the door or the trail to the next hundred times you cross it. And when you cross a creek there is a whole other land on the other side just waiting for you to discover, christophresscolumbus.

Nature gives a middle finger to the internet. Nature says throw your phone away instagram. Nature says oh okay keep your phone to take pictures because it is worth seeing what I've laid out for you. She says.

So I'm horse training til they're solid citizens even though I'm tired and mucking is alot, it's better than sitting on the New Jersey Turnpike to get to my accounting job. 

I can't wait to use up all of 59, it's the last bit of 59 here in my Juliet Myfanwy skin, and I'm grateful she still likes to do stupid shit. 

Also Jane is almost 3 and I have to drape the kids off her back soon so she can get used to carrying weight this summer. And Meriwether will be 5 soon and that is the magic number that means he is a usable horse just like all the others. So his workload will slowly trickle upwards. And then if I can't do any of it anymore cause I'm tired I guess I just sell them all and start gambling.

But for now I like using my body, even though I am shaped in the shape of a saddle when I get off the horse, I like the company of their gentle ears, I like the somewhat danger of teaching a new horse, as long as it's only moderate danger, I like a slow ride where we come home new and smarter.