I love wound care

Pardon my departure from this blog, my mom was trying to die from pneumonia for a week and now she's been home a week flooding my back house with diarrhea and I have felt very out of body, mostly just into her body and keeping her body going and knowing that it is not forever, now. I am finally getting the picture that I am not fixing this dementia and going to get my mom back with a big ribbon on her under my christmas tree. I get my mom for right now, breathing much better, snug in her bed that I made for her, under the dangling christmas lights, next to the garage full of stuff from 26 years of kids, barely sorted through, but I have my mom. Little vulnerable thing, she has no one. She has me. I just see all those years where she ran the ship and made weird things important, like dancing, and making creamed chipped beef, and psychics who worked in the laundry at her work, and her jolly face, always her face, she was always there. Maybe she was a little obsessed with herself but who isn't obsessed with themselves. She was always there, the face I looked for to feel comfort. I still need her. But I understand now. I cain't always fight the pneumonia. Sometime she will need to slide out and go live with gramma, she will be so happy to be back at the Haley family reunion, in the sky, with the runny potato salad and most of the relatives that you don't like. But gramma was so good. Squatty, and sensible, and living near water always. I always wished I'd had the 15 siblings she'd had. What a crowded, rambunctious house that musta been, in Easton, Maryland. It's a tiny brick house, just up from the marina. We saw it. Anyway. Because of gramma marrying boring and mean Grandpa Hollaway, and having my bonny faced mom, I am.

I'm just glad for the comfort of her face. Safe at home. We've had such a long life together. I'm so lucky to have her still here, to feel with my nose. Moms and grammas and daughters are somethin.

The best thing about the hospital was the soup. And the guy named Logan who took us in the ambulance. ER is way better on tv than in person, make a note. 

While in the hospital, my mom aced her swallow test, she isn't aspirating. I told them she isn't aspirating. She just needed an antibiotic. The home health totally fucked me up by not giving me an antibiotic on Friday night. By Sunday night she had pneumonia and thus the very first mother daughter Logan ambulance ride. Logan was skinny jeans thin. A fireman. He would burn instantly, like flash paper, he'd be disintegrated in a cough, by fire. He couldn't have weighed more than a pocket protector. I'm so grateful there are crowds of people working at hospitals and in ambulances that are there for you when your mom can't breathe. I'm also really glad I'm not one of those people. 

I'm a teach people to ride person. Which is what I was going to blog about. My day today.

I don't actually like to do this teaching that much, but always I need the hay money and I'm kind of curious and at the same time terrified at meeting new people. I stress out so much when new people are coming to learn to ride. Then I do the lesson, 150% as I always do everything (except cooking) and then it takes me all day to readjust. People in my face take it all out of me, like my energy whirls right out of me and they take it away in carry out containers. I have no idea how not to do this. I just flow right out and puddle everywhere.

So today this girl named Kjersti and husband named Mauricio came to learn to ride. Kjersti was from Norway and from the size of her pants she had not been skimping on the chocolate up there. She met Mauricio on Tinder during the pandemic and they talked on the phone for two years before finally meeting. He's an electrician.  When they were texted me to come for the lesson, she said they wanted to learn horses because they were about to move to Chile and wanted to get their own horses so they wanted to know how to do it. I figured they were retirees, like in their 60s, so when they showed up Mauricio looks like he just finished high school and he married his Norwegian nanny, Fat Sal. Big boned really. She looks like she drained an entire dairy farm before emigrating. Milk fed. Those kids they have are going to be latin dancing snow globes. 

So aside from being surprised by their youth and the size of her, which I was instantly feeling sorry for old Dewey, who has arthritis and took one look at her like oh hell no but he gave me the side eye and lowered his head because okkkkkay I like to eat hay, I'll hellllp with the hay bill, he says. 

Apparently Mauricio is retiring at the age of preschool, he inherited a 30 acre farm in Chile from his grandfather, it has a house on it with electricity and a well, it's 30 minutes from the beach and ten minutes from a river and the town. I was already packing my bags and asking him how many shorts I should bring, they leave November 7th. 

I gave them the basics of riding, how to catch your horse, I put a brush in Kjersti's hand and she sort of held it limply but eventually did the job, Mauricio was more hardy, picking out Maggie's feet, learning how to saddle up. They live nearby in Burbank. She used to be a nurse but she said you know, after 9 years I needed a change. So she came here and is a dog walker. Then one of her dog walker owners is 80 and fell down and so now she's been patching her up as her nurse. I love wound care she said, a phrase that I'm pretty sure she used on Tinder. 

I got them all mounted up, Dewey almost broke in half when she hefted up there, and again, she's not fat, she's just her bones must be solid metal pipes in there. I guess the winters are pretty rugged in Norway, they gotta have like twice the bone density.

She asked where the best place to canter was, and I was like not here with me, that's for sure. You are just riding for the first time since you were a kid. That's like asking where you sign up for the Indy 500 while you're learning driver's ed. 

Also it was about a billion degrees, did I mention, the amount of water draining down my face was refreshing if it hadn't been hot soup temperature. I tried to look normal as I walked the dogs alongside them up the path, noting that my water bottle was almost at the end of the water and I also don't like walking that's why I have horses. 

I got them up to the flat straight part where there is actually a space to canter and the horses are used to cantering there so I said ok actually you can canter here, and there they went. Together, like carousel horses, my sweet buddies took good care of them and cantered easily up the little dirt trail sections between driveways that gives them enough space for a good feel of cantering without it being so long that the horses would go crazy taking off or anything. 

The hardest part of teaching the lesson and waiting for the money at the end is all the pretending to be interested in everything. I genuinely AM interested in people but when people are paying you for a service you have to do the service, act like you're not doing it for the money, and then write all about them later in your blog. 

They had such a good time they said, because they learned so much, and they said oh we are coming back and I was like please just go to chile and send me your instagram so I can watch this unfold. If they were a bit smaller of a people, it would actually be great but I am a little sorry for my horses. 

I can't imagine being 32 or 28 and retiring to a place where I knew no one and raising my kids in a country where I knew no one and there was no road that lead to Ventura Beach. I guess you find your new beach. I guess if you're from Norway you're just so glad to be anywhere else, and without a parka.

After I closed the gate on those immense people and came back in to feed my mom and see Bess for five minutes before she sweatily loaded people onto buses at the hollywood bowl and in a week we will be loading her back to UCSB, and then my mom is sleeping more and not eating that much and I hope she's okay, and I mucked the barn and put mom to bed and sat in the pool while the dogs hung out camped out right next to me saying

it's okay man. We're here.

The Pen

I was on a ride to the creek with these tatted up lesbians that come to ride every week, these girls are the funniest creatures to grace the backs of my horses. 

And now this ride was the first time I put them on different horses, I put the smaller, more skilled one on young Meriwether, the amount of riders he has had on him are ONE, that would be me. So I was a little worried but I got to ride old Dewey, the anchor of the ship. I figured if I'm on the masthead, I can sort of control how safe our ride is when I'm riding a gentleman, so off we went on a new adventure. 

The thing I wanted to try was once we got through the tunnel, maybe we could canter up the big hill that gets you to the top of the wilderness. Meriwether has not really cantered with a rider (that would be me) on him, I've only done a few seconds because he is the size of a matchstick and I am the size of a volcano. It is a little hard to balance on a tiny horse and I want to do right by him, and have success so he will canter easily for his whole life. We are setting up his habits for the future. 

I guess I did the same things with my kids. Little bits of things at a time until they were all growed, and doing well and hopefully sailing along happily with a full heart. 

Anyway, I had put the other rider on Mags, who is the queen and is pretty sure everyone wants to dethrone her, so she's always looking for someone to behead. But this girl really took Mags firmly in hand, which she needs to function at her best, and I was proud of the girl because this is only her second ever horse she has been on in her life. She has only ever ridden Dewey. For the last 7 months. Both girls started as total beginners.

These girls have come a long way, in little bits, and more and more I am seeing them become the teachers, and me the student. Like this ride.

We come through the tunnel and I get my camera out to video them in case we get his historic first long canter with a rider. I'm in front, because I can set the pace and keep the shenanigans at a zero, which is the only number for shenanigans on horses.

Dewey does a perfect easy canter, Mags is following him gently, I'm trying to video and I can't really see Meriwether but HE IS DOING IT! He does a nice slow canter, just keeping up with the big horses, the girl on him is having the time of her life (she loves speed, we are opposites) and we get to the top of the hill with everyone on board, Meriwether with a brand new skill, a new faster gear and new rider, and this is one of the biggest hurdles ever.

The rest of the ride is pretty nice, just a regular walk through the woods and creek, then back into the haunted woods on a newer trail then back up through the hill to head home. Meriwether did perfectly, was his normal balky self at times (he likes to stop and pretend he can't remember how to go, hoping you get off and he can eat grass), but we all got back busting with success.

I had to hurry our ride because my mom's yearly social worker had just pulled up and I had to leave the girls to rinse the horses and feed the chickens and put the saddles away. This social worker lady is important, she works for IHSS which is the government agency that pays me to care for mom. This was the yearly evaluation to make sure she qualifies and get her all set for next year. I came in all sweaty literally gross like a melting salt popsicle with dripping hair, but she couldn't tell how soaked I was cause she was up to her balls in paperwork and she asked questions and looked at mom and organized her stack of stapled official papers and wrote down all the things I answered. Everything went smoothly. Then she said ok, that's good, here you can sign these do you have a pen

I looked at her because she was HOLDING A PEN right there. I was like um 

yeah okay

So I went to the kitchen to get a pen, thinking wow she must really not like sharing her pen it must be a really great pen or maybe she's afraid of pen disease or do I look like I would not be able to cleanly handle her pen she did not look at all horrified by my sweaty horse situation during the whole interview, I don't know why she couldn't me HAND ME HER FUCKING PEN

Anyway I got MY OWN PEN it's a SHITTY PEN cause I couldn't find the good one and I signed about 300 places so my mom could get money and continue to sit in this chair for another year while I feed her burritos and ice cream. The lady left and I ran back out to help the girls finish putting the horses away and tidying up the barn and dismissing them for this Tuesday with some snacks and juice like it's preschool but they were so happy and they handed me my lesson money which I just stow for hay money later and I run back in to make sure mom has had some water and a bite of food and then I

LEAP into the pool to cool off, start my 100 laps to maintain my chiseled figure and as the water gives way forgivingly to my regular backstroke, I look at the sky and the trees and I contemplate 

the pen

Just have fun, he says

I had this great meeting with this guy I met when I was 20. I'm not sure if I even just dreamed that first meeting back then but if I did I convinced him and now here we are.

In college I had written a Moonlighting script because the writing and the love affair on that show was an all consuming creation. Plus the dialogue just ripped a river through me. I get all churned up when there's funny dialogue delivered by a rogue and it ends up in kissing. I loved disaster in unrequited love.

This exec guy was working with my dad and he read my script and liked it and we met on the balcony of some person's house in 1986 and we weren't even sitting down we were just standing by a rail and he said I'm gonna give your script to Glenn Caron and that was the creator of Moonlighting, the writer whose words changed the rhythm of my own. 

So now it's 40 yes 4 zero years later and I've run out of things to write about it (check backwards in this blog if you don't believe me) and my kids left for colleges and lives and I'm just training horses religiously and caring for my mostly blank mom, in other words THERE WAS SPACE here for a minute if I ignored all the cleaning and so I started writing to weird people I don't really know like Big Executives I met when I was 20 to see if anyone would take a look at my little Lewis and Clark show. 

I was ready (again) (I have done this before) to try and put my writing out there in the world. 

So first I wrote a letter to Batman. I was at his wedding when I was 15. It was one of the greatest memories of my life, sitting in a old barn in New Hampshire, in the rain, in the middle of a muddy field, watching this later to be superhero marry this lady my dad went to college with. Then I wrote to the exec guy from the balcony, Jordan. I wrote to my old best friend Howard from NYU who now runs the Discovery Channel. I wrote to David Witz who brought me in to interview for a job on Critters and inadvertently started my whole motherhood career. (He really owes me.) David went on from Critters to do other big movies, just like Leo DiCaprio and Angela Bassett (both from Critters). Let's not forget that big things start with low budget warehouses full of surfers and sets made out of old egg crates. That's the reality of the formation of my base. It's a solid place! If you can watch the art department build a spaceship out of things you find in a dumpster, you can do anything.

I wrote this Jordan email because he was a nice guy, and I was hoping a nice guy who liked my writing would still be a nice guy. And that he would be really into gaying up history. My email was true, funny, friendly, nostalgic, Glenn Caron-worshipping, and              he wrote me back!

He said great to hear from you! Let my head of development set up a zoom call. Talk to you soon.

This was on like a regular Wednesday in late July. I went automatically out to muck the barn and I cried and I talked to the rake as I always do as I'm picking up piles of crap and horses are milling around ignoring me and I cried because I can't do any of this. I'm not a networker. I can't do a zoom call. I can barely do the microwave. I'm already holding everything together I have nothing left this is such a bad idea. 

By the time I was done mucking I realized that the people in me that like to throw mud on passing cars in a thunderstorm were just flinging mud so I would think I was incapable of doing a hard thing. Just because most of the people I have talked to in the last 40 years were growing up people, and dementia patients, and four legged thousand pound animals, this doesn't mean that I CAN'T DO WHAT I'M NOT USED TO DOING. I just have to get used to it. 

Calm down. One thing at a time.

I asked my friend Chris who does zooms every day to do a fake zoom with me so I could get used to it again. (I did teach zoom kindergarten during Covid. It's just been awhile since I taught math to 5 year olds without wearing pants.) I had all my notes for what I wanted to say. 

I was so serious planning my fake meeting and then seeing Chris on the zoom in  a white room doing what she does every day made me feel suddenly shrunken, like a drunk dwarf juggling chainsaws and feathers. She made me see that a) he doesn't care what you've been doing for 40 years, he wants to help you now. Throw out all that and 2) he wants to help you. And he did Fried Green Tomatoes. There's some gay in him.

By the time it came time for the real meeting, I had my notes down to four lines. I had no idea how to weave them into a meeting. The night before I told B I had all this I wanted to say, here's my list, but what if I couldn't say it all. He said, as he always does, very relaxed, you can't direct the meeting. You have your notes. But just have fun.

It was just like when we had just had Nathan at the hospital in Florida, and teeny Nathan was in that little clear crate beside the bed and for a second I thought oh no what if I can't do this. And he said you just have a new friend, that's all.

This is why we so rely on the baffling planet Barry. He sees no problem in the big mysteries and fears, but yet he cannot put a dish from the sink into the dishwasher or wipe a counter. That's all me, baby.

I was terrified up until the moment of the zoom and for several minutes into the call, and then --

--I had the greatest meeting of my writerly life. All heart, some nature of the industry talk by him to share his perspective as a decades long executive with how the studio system is functioning at the moment (this is where I breathed, and reassembled myself in karate gear to take on this meeting as a solid sparring partner), then lots of talk about writing, and good writing, and EB White (since he did Charlotte's Web, the movie), and we talked about how comedy is really all that matters, after family.  He's gonna read my script, it will take 6 weeks (it's really long) (it's 25 pages) no they're backlogged, but he's going to read it and I made a contact a person who if he can't help me will help guide me to a few other people, and that was the first push of my little Lewis and Clark pebble. My very first. 

It's not that I need to be the guy to gay up history. It's just that it won that Austin Best Comedy Pilot festival, and so even though I have other scripts and other projects I thought, let's go with this momentum. There was just that very popular gay hockey show. This has gay AND horses in it. And comedy and heartbreak and love.

When I mucked the barn next I just was busting at the guts happy. It is so fun to watch something you squeezed out of yourself from two guys talking in your head, shape it into a scene, shape it into a longer story, love your characters enough you want them to live, and then box them up and send them out into other people's eyes, hoping that someone else will get on the boat with you. It's like when they would send orphans into the old west with their names pinned onto their clothes, so they could go work on farms. You don't know where they're going, but you dressed them up as nice as you could and they have solid strong feet and we're hoping for the best. 

I'm in the ring. 

Silence is Golden

I love the levels of my life.

I love the caring for my mom. Knowing that she knows someone cares about her. Someone kisses her goodnight each night. Someone touches her cheek and puts a face down to find her hidden dementia eyes and moves away the dementia til I can see her and she smiles. The things that aren't easiest to find are the things worth looking for.

I like so much the riding into the creek and the worry of training a new horse. I like that it is also levels. You expose them to so much and then comes the time to get onboard the beast and then you start just in your backyard and today I rode the youngest horse, my last little one, into the creek, in the water, and she was just fine. Because we took a bunch of time and exposure there, so she didn't care at all to be walking in water carrying a me, she trusted me. It helps that she's curious, and willing. I feel safe because I set it up to be safe. I have the old mare along with us. I only rode for a fraction of a second, just to set myself up for the next time. Just to get the feet wet and feel success. Next time we'll do a little bit more. Next year I'll be riding her in the creek all the time and barely remembering that we never used to do that. That is was at one time the scariest thing of all because of the sinky sand and the youthful horse, because it was new and who knew how it would go.

This year has been stung in the face by bees, heart attack b, evie searching for love and striking out always, nattan trying out chauffering, bess home from college but in groups of loud girls, no beach really, no trip to the fair, things changing.

But always caring for things, mom, the kids, the horses, my body, the new weirdness of reaching out to random people to try and make my Lewis and Clark show happen, realizing I am on THEIR trip, just like they were, I have to ask a bunch of people to help me so I can make it come true just like they did, and they certainly didn't know what they were doing. They were doing everything with a paper map drawn only by hearsay.

I like that none of us actually know what's going on. We sort of know. We THINK we know. We're going forward based on something we did yesterday, fragments of a plan we had when we were kids shaped into whatever ran us over as we were on our way. Lumping that in. Lumping in every disaster with every success, and maybe they're all the same thing for real. It got us here.

I feel scared that we are so fragile, little living beings on a rolling planet. I can feel the world moving and it is so hectic.

Today in the creek after the ride on young Jane, I got back on the old mare Mags and rode thru deep water and then up into the sandy woods and it was so silent in there it was like being inside Notre Dame. It was like being in Athena's Temple. It was silent like the pope's robes hanging in the closet. 

We snaked through, on bare horse feet, taking nothing, but listening listening filling our hearts up with silence the most filling sound of all. You can hear everything in it.

Water and silence and horses and trying to do one hard thing every day. Many hard things. It chips away at you but eventually you become that greek statue with no arms but a perfectly tilted neck, humbled by the artist's chisel at your perfection. 

They're making you just right.

 

Well, ain't it somethin

Did you ever wake up in the middle of your life and you're like hot damn this is my life?? How did I ever get this lucky?

Maybe it's because I'm reading Henry Miller in the pool and he's wandering around Greece telling too much about nothing but every now and then he stabs you with a shard of how beautiful the world is the ordinary world, people exploring dirt patches of land that make them happy, the way a stranger can remind you of something you forgot to notice, the luck of being able to sit in your kitchen and drink tea and listen to quiet which is the sound of things unfolding easily.

I decided on my 60th I would finish this script called Subculture which has all the remnants of things I hadn't put into a story, things I held onto because I didn't want to look at them, so I shoved them all into this script about being a sub, being a temporary human, and if that means we are failures at long term or if that means we are just killer at the immediate. Part of the story is having a trenchcoat full of rocks and unloading those rocks into the sea. Evie said maybe you never get rid of your rocks even if you empty your pockets. 

But that shit works, bro. I have emptied my pockets. Really my brain would say, I have shifted my focus by an increment, but there are many other paths when you decide to not be burdened by what only you decided to hold onto. It has nothing to do with any other person. It's just the relationship to yourself, and freeing yourself. In the script she is trying to Free Lance, and there is a surfy Lance character, who lives in the tunnels under Subway, and there are old boyfriends that lure her with the past, and there are dead husbands. 

A true Shakespeare play of ghosts, folly, comedy, tragedy, the deaths of mothering and daughtering, love and temporary employment. Oh it is a terrible piece of work. But drafts are always easier to fix up later, it's the birthing of them that's hard. But lately I have been thinking as I roll my mom around in her husk, with her still beautiful to me shape and sound and familiar curving skin, I'll take it ALL. I'll take it all AGAIN. Every bit of my explosive tenure on earth, beloved spacehome circling the emptiness, circling itself, circling the yellow star. I'll take all the limping dogs, and the coffehouse theaters and bare feet and ducking under jungle branches in the creek, the shape of horses, the confoundment of love, playing cards, kids wearing tiny elastic pants, the journey

this one immense temporary ride

I vacuum up every crumb and stuff my pockets. Somebody thought to make pockets. There is so much I am seeing and that I need to still see. 

So calm down, Jules. I say. Since I emptied the rocks, and I ran out of things to write about because I wasn't mad or sad anymore, I decided hey time to sell my writing again.

I might never get anywhere or maybe I'll already there, but every day now I've been reaching out to some person new or some person who helped me in the past, or some far flung executive who's probably dead, but I'm reaching out to say hey. My stuff is good. Shove aside some other people's stuff for a minute and cram mine in there. There's beloved life in it. 

I'm speaking up for my work. The time I usually spent chasing people or love, let's try this, instead. It's addictive, like diving into cliff water far below, you gasp a chest full of water, scramble back up to leap again. 

When I get overwhelmed and drowning, I switch back to the other jobs like feeding my mom. Swimming. Taking the horses out. Getting on the new young horse Janey Pickle. Seeing how easy it is to just get on and try it for a few minutes, building a relationship. If I do it gently, I can build a relationship where she will literally carry me, happily, anywhere we want to go. I show her my heart, and if she decides, she matches it with hers. Horses always say yes. If you give them yourself.

Everywhere in life, you are doing the same thing. It looks like different tasks, using different clothes, different email addresses, different foods but it's all the same rope down into your well. You're nurturing your life, you're growing your soul. Nothing is wasted. Nobody's in trouble. 

It's good to let go of the rocks. You float up.

Put Your Money Where My Mouth Is

Today I took a ride in the creek after I got the second of two root canal visits done. Same tooth, just had to do the panama canal of root canals apparently. Like after the first visit the guy who was gentle said, well I can't quite get to the end of this root, I'm going to have the specialist do it tomorrow if you can come back and I was like I thought YOU were the specialist. 

But then today I met the specialist and what makes him special is he calls you my friend with his mouth while looking at you with the eyes of a dead serpent. Then he takes a novocain shot the size of a gas nozzle and crams it in your very trusting gummy face, the one you use to look up at carousels in wonder. But at least he presses the plunger like he's trying to flush out the biggest turd on the biggest water slide at Roaring Rapids. Imagine being married to THIS guy, or worse, in prison with him.

I say to him tentatively when he's telling me all the things that could go wrong as he assembles a trampoline in my mouth, I say they did most of the work yesterday, I say hopefully, eye gesturing to the large xray on the wall, big as a motel painting. Mengele just raises a smokey grey manicured eyebrow like we'll see about that and I opened wide because well, that was the only way in.

I'm not kidding, if you see your patient's legs go straight out when you're giving a novocain shot you might want to vary your technique by considering that the person wearing those legs is an alive person. Maybe Morgue Morty here is used to practicing root canals on bodies he fishes out of the LA river. 

All I know is, his assistant was nice, a sturdy guy with huge messy hair like Meatloaf, and he kept looking at me with eyes like I'm sorry but he signs my checks. 

At least this office started being nice to be AFTER they told me they wouldn't take my insurance which  I found out is actually illegal since they do TAKE my insurance in reality, and my parents were like here let us help you since your face hurts so bad let's get it done. What do people do who don't have nice parents and a lot of tooth pain, I'll tell you what they do, it's called meth. I only know this since I drove directly from my first appointment to DPSS to try and fix my insurance and I was in line with people who use umbrellas as homes. Fixing teeth is maybe 55th on their list, behind stealing guns and fistfighting. I felt like Jimmy Stewart in there, I wanted to climb on a desk and wave my papers and say we don't have to live like this the government is supposed to help us when we're workers who make a smaller dollar. We're still important! But instead I just turned my ring around so the diamond didn't show (the only jewelry on me) and of course the lady in the booth told me I was in the wrong office and to go to the right one on Monday. So I left with my aching jaw, past the skinny sunburnt tweakers with their necks all worn away and I took my social injustice to my car where I left it in the gutter.

Because it's hard to fight for rights when your face hurts.

So now I have an appointment in three days to get my crown fitted and then in two weeks I'll have hopefully the last dental visit of my lifetime putting that bastard on and being done with it and feeling like a king.  I just feel bad I wasted my parents' money when the state could have paid for it. They could have spent it on Fritos or hookers or taken hookers out to pizza or anything with hookers. Instead they put their money where my mouth is.

Every bite I take, I'll be thanking you. Little known Sting lyric. 

The point of this blog was going to be, that AFTER ALL THIS, I was riding in the creek because root canal be DAMMED and half my face was numb but I made it to the water with the most gentlest two horses a girl could have, young Janey and old Dewey, and Jane rolled immediately and then we just sloshed slowly upstream, and listened to water, and ambled, and stood again, and listened, and I said out loud all the people and things I'm grateful for at almost 60 tomorrow, and believe me you were on there, and I cried and sprinkled my fresh teary water into the creek because grateful water should always mingle with rambling peaceful water. And now the creek and I are one. 

I am grateful for every moment of my ever evolving life, and all the paths that keep unfolding. Even the old everyday ones that I cherish so much I do them every single day and grateful to wake up to them waiting for me to be there to walk them. An old house, an old barn, an old car, an old creek, some old kids, some old parents, an old husband, some old dogs and horses, a flaking pool, some mismatched furniture, some tuna on crackers, a few carrots, some ripe peaches, what else does a person need. 

Just one more day, maybe.

From the River of julietmyf Time

I'm going to turn 60. In 8 days.

I have a mom and a dad. And another mom. And a dad of the kids. And a dogsitting dog who looks like a pixar waffle. 

I have a beautiful estate. I have sunshine. I have water. I have bare feet. I made it SO FAR. I MADE IT HERE. 

I have Lin's farm in Maryland where I woke up early and worked in her steel roofed barn watching her ride and knowing that if I walked into the trees I could walk very far (on a horse) and not see a person. Just a path, and nature. 

I used to call Barry there, from the barn phone, and bill it somehow to another phone because that's when phone calls cost money if they were from far away. 

We didn't have any kids, in fact I was married to Will, I was 29. I was thinner and free. I was the same exact person I am today. I laughed the same. 

I miss the Maryland roads, and the lack of cars, and the bridges over water. I miss working on shows where I daydreamed and picked out men and women and wrote and wrote and lived with my dumb brother and dumb friend and slept with whoever I wanted whenever I wanted. I miss the adventure of having nothing, when buying soda was extravagant. 

I got handed a little baby three times, that I could keep. 

I kept the babies and I nursed them. I nursed them as long as I possibly could. Because feeding your own baby with your body is the most amazing connection to a person aside from Halloween 1991 I have ever had.

I have had some incredible horses. Rides through water over the years where I just sat in water and watched the horses eat. Chopped down bushes to get through the trail. Talked and laughed with stupid friends, my main riding friends are all gone now. Like their time has passed maybe because of me but maybe because of them or maybe because of time and because of nothing.

I'm learning that I don't want to carry into my next years any of the bullshit I don't need to carry. It's just an empty suitcase. There's no need to pay for a carryon with nothing in it, you know how expensive traveling can be. My goal these next few years aside from horses and grandkids is to let go of everything. Let go of everything. Keep the real stuff. Let go of the hurt. I don't need it anymore and frankly it stinks and it's over. 

All I need to carry is my love of the planet, the beautiful kids I helped create, the words I made that are as true as they can be, the discoveries and understanding of myself I've gotten from writing things out, and the laughs especially from writing the crazy stuff. I love all those characters, lewis and clark, Alex and Lilly, Tomcat, Jesse James, Vaughn and Daphne, Clark and Kenneth and Helen, Seal and the amish, Seahorse Guy and Fosse. All the friends we have because of the kids, all the stockings I got to make, the colors to play with, the designs, the laughs making them up. The time with my mom on the water, on boats, with uncle wayne, showing my kids the amish market and the east, driving all across the country like my mom did with us, trying so so hard to do the right things for them and show them everything and most of all to be able to dress them each day and see everything they saw and listen to their tiny voices, their discoveries and bask in them. 

All the movie sets where everything was so real it was fake, where everything is a simulation and how that can feel way better than the real thing. To my body who I am barely shaking hands with even though we've known each other since the beginning, I wish I knew you better, I wish I was able to love people through you but I know you have your stopsigns when it comes to real people mattering. You could do a great job when climbing through Mike Krone's window at night after in n out and being a dumbass having sex to feel good but when it came to day to day mattering to someone, you could not handle the reality of sex and knowing someone. For very long. 

Short term. Yes. So excellent at that.

I have been wanting to work on that one. But maybe nobody works on that one. I just learned yesterday that there is no orgasm that isn't clitoral. I thought I was just broken. Why don't they tell girls these things. I think orgasms should be on menus because they are nature's candy. Use them. I tried to tell my girls this. I got them vibrators when they left for college. Good for tension, and just plain fun. But shh.

I'm not sure why.

I'm going to be 60 and my writing has only really entertained me. I'm hoping that I can reach a little bit bigger audience. That's what I'm going to do until I have grandkids. I have written so much. I can stop and sell it. 

I'm not going to feel bad or abandoned anymore. I want to feel good and solid now. There is no need to be hanging on to stupid things. My older brother can go be stupid. My younger brother can go be stupid. I will just be myself imperfect, perfect, funny, dark, weird, happy, outdoors, indoors, and get wrinkly and cuter. I will be loud. I won't fake being nice, how bout that. As much as is kind, anyway.

I want to keep writing funny things and I would like to have them performed or seen or heard. That is something I need. What else am I here for. 

I will focus on the beauty of the world around me (not the freeway) and if god willing I can get the fuck out of the city I would really like to be where I can see woods and water, and take walks like that with dogs and horses. I don't want to give up my house. I love this place. But I wouldn't mind having a place where I could breathe a little easier, where there was space and more more more gentle nature. Even just a few months a year. Please birthday wish. 

Also I love my weird friends, Chris, Rebecca, Linette. I love that they make me laugh and rein me in when I need it. I love my little sick mom, and B for always being there and knowing exactly what to say and feel. His heart, we all float on it. 

Time to put the chickens and my mom away. Thank you gods for making me. Thank you new york for taking me, at birth and at college. And for releasing me because fuck I never want to live there again. Thank you Maryland and LA for giving me roads to the movies and to water. Thanks to water and the ocean for making me feel shocked, small and unprotected. Thank you to stars for doing the same. Thank you life for giving me my family, grandparents, I am so lucky to have each person and all their layers, and all their stories and all their loving arms, and all their visions. Thank you judy blume and anne shirley and jane austen and shakespeare and murray and sedaris and steve martin and monty python and prince and cowboy junkies and cookie dough and mnms and mel brooks and women and men who make me laugh and blankets and travel and french and eyes and hands and feet and thoughts.

How do I feel about time passing and no way to stop it?

As Nick would say on New Girl when he broke up with his girlfriend: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? No, because a summer's day is not a bitch.

To Be Fair

This is the summer not like all other summers. This is the first summer of non kids. I mean I do have two home, one from college, the other just lives here. I have one visitor daughter who pops in every few weeks from colorody way. 

It started with not going to the fair in May. I don't know why that was a big deal, it's just a hot cement place with sheep you can touch and it smells like burning meat. But I loved that tradition. I would take them out of school to do the fair, and disneyland, once a year. This year nobody was home to do the fair. The fair and its kettle corn went on without me. No one pulled the rope to make the steam engine whistlescream and scare the shit out of people. We didn't have the snack stroller. The drawstrings of my life, they are unravelling sir.

Before kids I never went to the fair every year. Okay my mom did take us to the state fair in Maryland where we ended up picking up a man for her at the bobo booth. The one where the guy is sitting over the dunk tank of water, insulting you until you throw a ball at him. Need a baaaalllll player, he would drawl. We stood in front of that booth for so long because the jokes were so funny. Who would think an alcoholic poised over a tank of water with little or no education and no real dental care (just guessing) would be so funny with dry jokes. We ended up on a state fair kick for a few months, going to different fairs to follow these guys around and listen to their jokes. Comedy is a seductive mistress my friend. There must not have been enough comedy in Maryland. 

We ended up taking that first guy home. Billy Redgate. He was my first alcoholic if you don't count my grandmother. First alcoholic I ever lived with, let's say. I was 13, we lived on a river in Maryland in a rented house, I slept downstairs and everyone else was upstairs. When I got off the bus and walked down to our house, if I heard Sweet Home Alabama blaring at full blast from our house, I knew Billy was drunk.

Billy was 21. I thought that was ANCIENT. My mom was 38. I thought they were the same age basically. Old. My mom drove a fast car, was crying most of the time from her divorce, and now we had Billy at our house, her first (of many) male diversions. I did not know what alcoholics were, but I did know that by night time, there was alot of screaming. All of it by him, not us. None of it made any sense. He told me he would go to my barn and poison my horse so he would be dead next time I saw him. 

The next day I was at my barn and Billy came in with some flowers. He said he didn't mean what he said. He was gentle Billy, the one who could be so funny hoisted above water. I looked at Billy over the stall door, with my chestnut gelding Zeus still alive and chewing hay next to me. It was the first time I realized that people could be liars.

Also Billy wasn't my problem, he was just upstairs and making alot of yelling at times, but really he was not in the realm of me and my brother, and even my mom. He was just Extra. He was never going to stay forever. The fairs only stay a month at most. 

So my kids growing up did not have the same fair experience as I did. We actually just pet the sheep and ate ice cream and watched the pig races, I kept everything rated G because a kid should have clear bliss for as many years as they can. The Billy thing did not add to the understanding of my life, it just was a curious eyebrow knitting to me. I thought maybe we were going to follow the fairs around forever, until we found the right prince. The jokes were so good, and the lights were so colorfully flashing. And I had my buddies, my mom and my little brother, he was only 9. We were always floating in our own boat, above the world, there was the sea, and there was us 3. I never thought anything could really touch us.

I think the goddesses wrap you in a special cloth when your dad and big brother are far off, and nothing can prick through it, not a diaper pin not a dagger. If life barfs at you, you just rock one way or the other and it passes right by. Later on you will unravel, when you can unwrap yourself and see all the heartache you stored up being wrapped so tightly. The goddesses know, that you needed the protection. They don't leave you any instructions for how to unwrap yourself or how to manage the rest of your unruly emotions the rest of your life. I suppose that is how we all grow up, untangling, overwhelmed,  enthralled, dumb in the reality of how huge life is when you are a real live person, exposed raw to this little earth and your singular self. This is why we gather in clans. We wear animal skin and stay warm and go to the bagel place or Palm Springs and make smores and we feel safe inside walls because we already know there is so much we can't know or understand outside because we are whipping through life before we can grasp it. We can only grasp the tiniest fraction.

That's how a one day at the beach trip every week in June and July helped make the summer feel real. That taking a day off to go to disneyland and the fair helped us mark growing up years. That seeing our people at dumb parties over and over helped remember and celebrate how rich all their faces are. 

Just Float

Going out of town with your family makes you forget you ever had any problems. You can literally drive away and leave all your troubles behind, just like Joel Grey says in Cabaret. 

It didn't happen on the road, because it was new to have moose in the car and what if she died in the car, she never is in the car except last year at this time going to this same place. So I felt a little bit dubious looking at her because she's my whole cup of tea, nobody else's, and I feel that responsibility, especially if she croaks while on the desert road to Palm Springs. 

But I figure lots of people die in Palm Springs, it's the Florida of LA. It's really the BEST place to die. It's warm, there's probably lots of oxygen machines we could rent if she needed it, it's a good send off, especially if going to hell where it's almost as hot I think. Less of a transition.

But she didn't die, and we got there, and I think we just left all the problems in the pool. That's why it was so cloudy. All of us shed our many layers of crap, and my niece put an umbrella straw into a cup of  ice and then magically there were people just floating around and way too many meals made by not me. Where I just showed up. I could even eat a smore BEFORE I got to the table.

Then back in the pool. Forget what time it is. Who cares if the sun or moon is out. There's nowhere to be and time cripples you. Throw out time. I brought 47 games and we never cracked one game, we never got bored. We floated, burned our bare feet, threw a tennis ball for the dogs, floated, read a little, visited with whoever floated by, peed on the grass, went to a thrift store eventually, but really never went anywhere or did anything.

At one point at night all three kids and I walked out front and down the driveway 2 minutes down into the wilderness and there was nothing but desert around and stars and we laid on the hot road in the empty dark desert and looked up at the stars and it was so quiet. 

Then later we were on couches in the area that had carpet, playing a game called Werewolf where it helps if you're a good liar and the kid cousins were very good actors, and later Bess and another little cousin made drinks out of fruit juice in the bar area and another cousin played the sound of Bar Noises so it sounded authentic like a bar and this was the favorite game, drinking shots of grape juice and tipping your waiter. 

Best part was waking up and getting tea and getting back into this cushy millionaire's bed not my bed, and reading my book while having hot tea. And then a cousin or two would come in and burrow under the covers and play a game on their phone and there was nothing to do except be comfortable and quiet.

Somehow it's the last night and the kids fold a piece of paper into a hard pointy star and turn off all the lights and they play ninja star which is basically you have to hide in a bunch of places silently in the pitch dark but you can't stay in hiding long, you have to keep moving and finding new spots and the person with the ninja star looks for you and then whales the ninja star at you to tag you. One cousin crammed himself under a desk which later turned out to pop something in his back so when we left the next day we had to take our family photo in his bed because he couldn't move his back.

Then the scurrying of packing the too much food and cleaning all the dishes and trash and straightening and cars are crammed and old people are loaded in with dogs and suitcases and then we're leaving the quiet desert and I'm in the car with no gossiping so I am bummed but I look out the window and think I can't go back to my life everything is different now my life is vacation life real life is too hard and then I get home and my life falls back around me like a silent snow scarf and I am okay, there is peace also in structure. 

The Extreme Family noise though, that takes awhile to not miss. I like their sounds, people cooking and talking and floating, just over there. Where no one needs me, but I can help if I want to, when I'm ready. For a writer, just the right amount of space to daydream.

Meri ly We Roll Along

Meriwether is the horse that has taught me the most.

He is the size of a great dane, if you have seen how tall I am, so we are as mismatched as some NBA players, but he's my horse and there's no one else to train him. So poor little guy. I tell him everyday, you're going to be the grandkids' horse. I just have to ride you first for awhile.

He is a very smart horse. He is 5 so he should be done with shenanigans but when he learns a trick he will use it until you very clearly tell him he can't be doing that. Like when I'm riding Dewey at a canter and ponying Meri alongside and Meri slams on the brakes and Dewey and I try to slam our brakes but not as quickly so I run out of rope and it drops and Meri goes running back and up the crumbly hill to eat a tree he saw that looked good. 

So then I have to climb the crumbly mountain and try and drag him down without sliding on shale and he always shows me luckily the easiest path to take if you have one toe on each leg (him) and sandals (me). He's a generous host that way.

After that shitty trick I was complaining to Aela that when I pony Meri he is just a goofy moron like a 4th grader on a field trip but when I RIDE Meri, he is super good because I have arms and legs to give him clear boundaries and he knows exactly the little box he needs to stay in to listen and succeed. She said oh he's just like Matt. Her boyfriend. He wants to know exactly what the rules are, and then he can do it.

So today when I was riding instead of ponying, and ponying Dewey alongside like the anchor old man that he is, my safety device, I thought okay I'll pretend this is Matt. 

It was SO MUCH easier to guide a pony when you think of them as just needing clear instructions without any emotion. Don't clog it up with all your thoughts and feelings which are free ranging loudly in my head. He wants JUST THE FACTS, please. He needs clarity. 

So Meri kept asking so many questions like want me to go faster here? How bout we walk in this shady part here where I might accidentally scrape your leg on the wall? Hey that wall is knobby! Can I itch my butt on that wall? Lemme see if I can at least scratch my shoulder on there. 

Each question I was able to just say with my hands on the reins and my legs on his sides, hey no. Nudge nudge. Let's go over here silly.  Two steps over, way easier over here. He was like oh over HERE!! Oh okay!! Hey look it's so open over here I can walk over here way easier!

I ask for the trot which is a new thing we're working on where you want the horse to go gently and not hurriedly into any new faster gait, and usually he tumbles into it like a dryer full of wet clothes and today he was like hey you want me to just stay easy under you, ohhhhh like this!

Of course it's only a few strides every time but it is so amazing when we both realize he's trying very hard to be a good student. His brain is VERY busy. I know this because he chews everything. The reins, my stirrup, my boot, Dewey, any ropes hanging, all chains. He needs me to ease him out of all the questions so he can relax. Kinda just like I need to stop all the emotion blabbering behind everything and just focus on giving clear simple cues. 

No wonder our partnership is so volatile at times. It takes practice to figure out how to communicate with two loud brains in the way. 

So back to this ride. Everything's continuing well, forward, relaxed, listening. I'm still learning to trust this youngster. I get moments of that.

Around the corner on our regular trail someone left a LADDER folded and leaning neatly against the fence, not in the way at all, not exploding or on fire, and Meri's head went straight up like DO YOU SEE THAT?! THAT IS NOT NORMAL! and his legs went LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE THIS WAY and started to try and head hurriedly to the right and I just kept my right hand and leg (oh his fleeing side) like a wall with his head turned toward the HORRIBLE LADDER which was NOT CHASING US, it's just lying there on its lunch break soaking up some sun. Meri and Dewey did stop finally and stared at it for a full 5 minutes on full alert.  Heads straight up like giraffes, eyes bulging. There is no way they will pass it. If I try to urge Meri forward he is either backing up or going farther to the right.

The goal as the rider here (as a good trainer Mark Rashid says in his books) once you get your horse stopped, is to just sit there yawning. There's no rush. You can stand there all day. Where you gotta be in a hurry? When a horse sees danger, their instinct is to run far and ask questions later like way later like maybe down at the Dairy Queen. But you just ease your horse to a stop and face the direction you want to go (which includes the dangerous ladder in this case) and then you just sit there. So the horse learns after keeping its head up for 5 whole minutes, that when you're riding them, you're gonna sit with them quietly in danger, and when they relax their head down, emotion dissipating, then you sit there a little longer and then nudge them forward like there's no danger at all. And you walk by the ladder with no shouting or kicking or drama, and your horse has one more moment of knowing you're his partner, and to trust you when they're scared. Also learning to rest when they feel danger. Cause horses like THE MOST to stop and rest. If they can rest when there's a surprise ladder, or in real danger like when their feet are trapped in wire, or when you're stuck on the side of a crumbling mountain, then you have the chance to help make it safe.

I wish I was as good at stopping when I'm mad and resting until I can walk past danger in my non horsey life.  

So the rest of our regular practice ride up the hill and back felt like it was stitching me and Meri together in a way that would help our future. I felt like I could keep learning to trust my skills and my horse, be aware without being scared, and even look at the flowers and leafy trees while building a bond with my solid trail partner for life.

Man am I sure it is the same building communication with people, why is it so much more interesting with horses.

Maybe Meri will help show me the way.

You Just Take Your Time

The most beautiful day. Blue sky puffy clouds, breeze. 

Yesterday I had the hardest day, had to take my two tatted up riders on a trail ride even though I knew my youngster horse my gangsta horse needed to run around and let off energy at the arena. Instead I took these girls up the bushy mountain trail on my tiny horse warrior carrying a backpack of New Trails anxiety but going anyway. It was cold and cloudy and I had to be responsible, so you can imagine that dark cloud added on, and if only I was riding my two old horses, I looked ruefully at them chattering away on the horses I've spent 14 years maturing and who are safe, while I'm on the Tiny Most Likely to Do Something Stupid award horse. 

Anyway he is a good plower, he plowed right through the bushy overgrown trail, up the mountain like a goat, we get to the first little downhill and I'm like okay take it easy man, and he is doing so well that I forget to sort of guide him and if you don't have your hands on the wheel at all times with Meriwether he likes to try fun stuff like in this case, he wanders into the bushes which are so scratchy and satisfying he says hey lemme just sit down a minute right on this tumbleweed brush. So I KNEW he might do something dumb and his sitting down takes a really long time, but I am also almost 60 so my jumping off my horse ALSO takes a bit longer. I do manage to leap off to the side just as he sits, which makes it sort of like he was doing me a favor getting closer to the ground and then he stands back up like it was the greatest achievement of his life. 

The girls I'm with behind me have eyes wide like platters and they're like ohmygodareyouokay and then we keep walking up the trail while I gather the nerve to dump that recent cortisol spike into the bushes and get back on my little demon french fry. 

We are now riding the last part of the bushy trail which are two steep inclines like a Z, and the girls are in front of me and I'm charging up behind steadily on Meriwether. They go up and around the very steep Z corner part and for some reason Meriwether and I accidentally cut the corner too sharply and he gets two feet off the trail which is like a sheer cliff to the left and his feet are sinking in the loose sand like it's emptying out under his feet like a dirt avalanche. This is way worse than sitting down on the trail because at least with that there is GROUND under you. I make the split second decision to jump off on the avalanche side because throwing my leg over to the right is stiffer for my body, and luckily somehow Meriwether is smart and doesn't flail around and slide down the mountain. He waits, when there's trouble, and says hey you better do something bro.  I land on secure steep mountainside and then grab onto him and rappel myself around to the actual trail side where it's flat, and then we're walking up the steep incline to catch up with the girls who have no idea why I'm again off my horse. I walk until my nerves settle again and then swing back on the little matchstick pony and the rest of the ride the dark cloud hovers over me because when rides don't go 100% boringly I get really irritated. The rest of my life is where things can go wrong, the horses are like the balm. So my internal need-o-meter for peace is all broken and spinning frazzled. 

After I get the girls back to the barn, I get paid and then get them shoved off to their car, I am still grumpy so I decide to take Meri out again with Jane to the park to run around to get their energy out and erase the bad ride. We do that, I lunge them both to teach them voice commands, then for a reward I let them run crazily like loose salmon in Alaska, and on the ride back I still don't feel any better, in fact, I'm just tired from too much riding. 

But then THIS MORNING, Emma is home and I slip off to the creek just to keep my routine, but also to see beauty, and I ride my big oaf Dewey, the president of our barn, posterboy for all things benevolent. He gently herds me and Meriwether to the wide open land by the creek, and then navigates us with deep contented sighs through the water, where there are green plants and no people to worry about, and no way to think anything, just listening to the water. Meriwether after two rides yesterday and time with his favorite president in the creek, he is just a perfect boy. We ride back out of there better, quiet, the sun cracks out for moments from the clouds to give us that special slant of sunlight that is meaningful on a cooler day.

I switch horses to go home over the big hill, and that means getting on the sassafras pony, and he doesn't sit on any bushes or try to avalanche down any cliffs, he is acting like yesterday never happened. I'm glad it happened because it helped me remember he won't always be a young horse, to keep doing a little each day, vigilant but with sighing, to see the improvements and know that like the clouds and the water we were just a part of, everything keeps moving.  There's always something good up ahead.

As the neighbor said in her truck when the horses and I passed her, almost to our house, happy to be home, she looked at us passing and she said  you just take your time.