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.  

Marathon Man

Brie showed me a video of Nathan running alongside his friend Jalen at the last mile of the LA Marathon yesterday. 

They had gone to support Jalen, the dude works at Panda and his mom used to lock him out if he got home too late but she's better now and this guy just ran to the beach and beverly hills and silverlake and back, 26 miles, in five hours. I couldn't even do that in my CAR in five hours.

But this stupid shaky happy instagram video made me stop and watch, and cry because there's something about people doing hard things because they need to try things, and then to have people show up like their friends, and cheer them on, and run alongside, even though they hate running. And Brie had made signs, just crappy quick signs made in the car with a fat sharpie on big posterboard, and Jalen was running with his poster that said YOU GOT THIS JAY DOGGG and Nathan is just yelling you can do it!! you're so stronggg!! and Brie is cheering good job and they're cheering strangers too. And I cry cause he's running and he's celebrated and he tried something hard and people showed up for him.

So then my dad today sends me a video made by my nephew's mom, about climbing a mountain in Mexico because it's good to challenge yourself and be in nature in your native land, and then she finds out halfway up the mountain that she's mourning the loss of her mom and sister to cancer, and she ends up crying on the mountain and finding healing in doing hard things.

I watched this sitting by the pool with my mom to get her in the sun for 20 minutes. I had just spent a solid week rewriting an old beloved script to send in to festivals. I had been sucked into that script, 14 hour days, cutting, reading, rewriting, trimming, thinking, listening, loving, letting them talk, undamming the crap parts and watching it trickle then flow. I turned it in late last night, finished for now, in solid good shape. This was my first 20 minutes of sitting down not laser focused, and this climbing the mountain video came in and so I watched it, right there, in my sudden open time, with my feet on my mom's lap.

The second time in two days that I see people doing hard things and finding joy and themselves right in there, running alongside themselves. 

The video was over, it was honest and inspiring.  I got up to vacuum the pool since it needed to be done and my mom could still sit in the sun a little longer. The sun asking nothing, but laying her fingers on you from above, heating all the parts that need attention. As I cleaned the pool I thought about these years with my mom. I thought man I'm doing hard things. I wish I had a team of people who came and carried signs and ran alongside me. To remind me how lucky I am to care for an important life, and they see how hard I'm trying.

Then I laughed because I immediately got the images of the people running alongside me.  It was Barry emptying the dishwasher. Nathan taking the heavy trashcans out. Bruce and Bess cracking hilarious unexpected jokes. GS and Evie leaving me books they like. My friends calling me to rant. Mom squeezing my leg and smiling at me. The horses  giving me new things to train everyday, and carrying me to windy nature. B's big family showing up to eat a burrito, my dad texting a picture look at this plant blooming so many pink flowers. 

A marathon is televised, but real daily life is thrown under the rug and that's where all the training for marathons gets done and that's where all the people with signs are secretly jumping up and down for us, every single day.  If you can't see it it's cause it just looks a little different. Cause it's your fabric.

well tended

The shrink said to let this time after kids be quiet and you can see what feels right to do after that. It's weird to sit quietly so I don't sit much I like to fuss and move around and tidy things, not deep clean, I like certain piles of things to add density to my holey life, even though I also wish the piles were gone. But maybe being in your 20s is when you have nothing extra in your closets because you haven't lived yet you haven't gathered and settled and formed. 

I'm going to be sixty this year and this is highly irregular but I've never been sixty before, this will be the first time I'm trying it on. I think I'm realizing I like doing a little bit of everything and nothing all day. I like floating along with my mom and caring for the horses, then having some tea and breakfast and word games and french, and then riding in the rain or sunshine, and then swimming and then lunch and couch with my mom and checking on her, then the expanse of the afternoon where my body feels alive and cared for and yet there is still free time and then the day is wrapping up I can tell by the sun and I feel sad at this time of day like you opened all your presents at christmas and now you have to wait for next christmas but then the chickens need to be helped to bed and my mom too, and then nathan comes home and I see his face a few minutes. In that late sunlight time is when I think about needlepointing an ornament for Emma's boulder school, to remember it for this christmas. I just finished a stocking so I can start a new one or do a little ornament that's always a good challenge. I also am going to write this subculture thing I think, I've been adding ideas to that, it's in the idea phase. The gathering part. There's always stress about money. That part has never been easy.  At least if I'm writing a new thing I'm doing what I'm here to do. Taking care of the barn and my mom and my fam and the laundry and pool and vacuuming and blowing the yard, and hottub, it's keeping me busy enough. Nathan takes care of all the cars. B does all the bills. B is the calm center. I'm going to send two shorts in to a festival and see if I can win somebody looking at my work. 

There has to be someplace for these shorts. They're funny and look people have no attention span. I'm reading my dad's book. I've been reading again. When I'm swimming and riding I've been trying to remember to be unlocked. Unlock my arms, unlock my face, unlock all the stuff I haven't been using, as I try to hold my mom together. Just float, use my whole body. Remember to feel all the earth vibrating around me, I can feel all those colors out on the trail, and the horse's gentle reminders to plod along, looking for snacks. The water's reminder to stretch and breathe. The dogs' reminder to keep an eye on me and settle at my feet wherever I am, when I land on a couch or bed. They're my life supervisors. I am well tended. 

It's good to remember you are vital to small things.

I think I can desire to find more with my writing, find a place to reach more people, and still stay my quiet secluded self so I can keep writing. I don't have to be great at selling. I'm great at the writing part and imagining. Being in love with the world. I thought today when I was swimming, what if I am just going to take care of people, and that's my job. I can stay in my pajamas. I can still write and swim and ride that way. What if I'm in a pretty good profession just here at my house where I feel comfortable. Pretty soon grandkids are coming anyway. I don't wanna miss that. I can go back to school or publish or whatever or I can just be here where I already am. I'm rich here. 

Maybe my farm will never be huge pastures that I'd really like to have. But I do really like the place I already am in, and what I'm doing in it. I wouldn't mind a sheep. 

Just my musings about where I'm headed and where feels right, and who am I trying to prove anything to. I'm going to be sixty. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who gets to know what me getting to sixty is like on the inside. It's my path with myself and for myself.

All around me is so much stuff I've created though, imagine this house wihtout me and my millions of stockings and all things furry and clean pool and well tended family, and those three kids. Those three angel babies. My greatest achievement of all time. No wonder I feel full. That's why having to go get a blood test or have to go to the store feels like SO MUCH EXTRA. I'm already good enough. What if I already have everything I need? (I am getting a new saddle shh) Bruce is so loud.

I love my life.

Just have to publish Large, and Momish, and Subculture, and a book of short plays, and produce Lewis and Clark, Home on the Range, the movie of Momish, the movie of Large, shoot all the shorts, make the luge short, and most importantly don't forget that taking care of your mom and the kids and b and the animals is really all that matters in the real world of your life. The writing is just the proof. on paper

Also the loss of my friend hasn't been that bad. Once I got over the horror of something was changing, and without warning, just like ripping off a bandaid, it hurt hard for awhile and now I just see that it's too bad he didn't love me. Cause we were hilarious. I'm kinda glad to see what's up next and what the space will bring. I did order space mountain mickey ears for next year. Maybe that's why I love space mountain. All the space and the black and all the fun inside.

I miss bess. And Evie is too far in Boulder. Also I'm writing this from my great big bed. Recently evacuated  by B. So now I can sleep in mom's room if I want but I have my very own space in the real house too. So I don't have to always sleep at work.

Maybe this will help my hair grow back. Rest is underrated. But look little changes are happening everywhere, and even if some of them felt bad, as that ice skater said, it's still a story part of the story and the story is interesting. 

Team Earthlings

The rain makes me rethink my life. Also just waking up makes me rethink my life.

There is nothing like the heavy rain to make you find your way to a blanket covered bed, and a dog jumps up to be at your feet, and it's the end of the day with only the barest of light out there, the crumbs of the day thrown to us earthlings from Mt Olympus in the sky and really all I did was labor all day. Make sure things didn't flood. Make sure things didn't float away. Make sure my mom is fed dry warm watered. I like to feel my body tired and used, and my skin happy after the deluge. In the hot tub it started raining so I didn't rush away like my first instinct, like rain was an unwanted asian paparazzi. I stayed instead and tipped my head up. I washed my face with sky water. I'm watered from space now.

I am exhausted though, having to get up at 7 to do all the barn chores before it rained and then running out to get 2 loads of hay in the golf cart hoping it doesn't die on the way home, then getting mom in. Then swimming with B. Making Bess a little breakfast. Making some cheery tuna with lots of colors in it, purple, orange, green veggies. Eating tuna and crackers while watching Suddenly Amish can solve alot of problems. I put it down as research for my Momish novel. 

It is weird to go to basketball games when your daughter isn't on the team anymore. We went to the last one of the season the other night, and it's like going shopping with empty pockets, you forgot your wallet but you really still want to shop. I told Bess pretty soon we'll be going to the games just wearing trenchcoats. They lost the playoff game but it was fierce and I said to Bess were you glad you weren't out there playing and she said well when I was out there we won.

Later that night she brought the two basketball kids home with her that she has a lovehate relationship with, the two star player sisters. Their lovehate depends solely on if they're lovehating Bess, it could be which way the wind is blowing, there's no telling. But the next morning I woke up to cozy kids wandering into my kitchen in Bess's pajamas (wearing the shirt that says Best Grandpa) and I made them stacks of waffles and bacon just like in the old days. I told B we should have a boarding house where people only stay like one or two days, he can make spaghetti, I can do breakfast, they can visit and share their stories and then they can leave us to our regular quiet house. This is the ideal.

Rain makes no riding, but we did go swimming. Rain made hardly anyone at the pool I guess people were boating down Foothill, it was like a rushing river. So when I was bored swimming I was staring at the ceiling and imagining this was my mansion and I invited everyone in to come take a spin class or use my gym or swim in my enormous olympic sized pool. You feel better about other people taking up space around you at the gym if you think of them as your guests.

I thought about the olympic boy ice skater from Virginia who trained for 21 years to get to those last 3 minutes on the ice to get his gold and he (as he said) blew it, fell over two times. I think sometimes the promise of gold around the neck throws off your high speed air spins. He's been doing that routine that specific 3 minutes for 6 hours a day for at least 4 straight years. (well not straight, by the look of his game of thrones costume.) As I did my backstroke laps in my olympic gym mansion party, it made me feel kind of comforted that you can be the best in the world and still manage to do your worst at a key moment. It gives me hope.

He had done his best for so long. He was ready for a little worst. The best part is imagine going home in the car that night with his parents, who are both olympic ice skaters. I imagine that car ride was mostly awkward. 

Skate on, all of us. Do your worst. Our worst is actually so hard fought and intricate, we're just trying to chisel a little bit of immortality onto this hard rock. We're trying to ice skate slice our souls open and let the pain spill out, because sometimes it's so sparkly, when someone else sees themselves in that very same pain. Then it flips and becomes joy. Because we share experiences. Team earthlings.

Clear Pebbles

It's a Saturday and Bess is home from college just for the weekend and she's sleeping in the sun in her room which is all cleaned and de-bruced for her so he could enjoy her time in her space.

It was Disneyland week and Emma birthday week, so sleep was not on the agenda, and now Emma's packed off to Boulder and Nathan filled his trunk with balloons and flowers for his girlfriend and we all laughed seeing that happiness, and now he's out at the beach and I could rest a minute, it's nice out, it's just I still I have this houseguest this   this  there's this guy here who is this 

this guy in the unibomber sweatshirt who is loud and walks loud and wears headphones everywhere and eats meals every hour. He can be funny which is the part I like but today is a Saturday and he started the day so loud and overly cheerful as I was wheeling my mom in so the inner me that wasn't awake yet just stepped myself to the side and filled up the gap with anxiety.

I tried to do just my regular day, feed me and mom, set her up in the sun, go riding and then come in, make waffles for Bess and then retire to the beloved couch to be nearby company for my mom and read or enjoy time resting. Then the unibomber guy comes to wrestle the dogs that are lying peacefully near me. I wait. Then he decides to sit in the same room on another couch and I try and be patient with his noise and sighing and eating. I'm just quietly learning some french in the sunshine with the brady bunch on for my mom, and he's making fun of that show and it's only on cause it's peaceful and gentle, and I'm used to dealing with only one wheelchair person nearby. No extra people. It disrupts my relaxation. 

So I go outside for awhile and take a second ride, and then wheel my mom into the back bedroom since he's taken over my living room, so I can find this nice back quiet space to be, and read and sit with my mom for another last bit of the day. B hides in his office all day long, so I'm going to do the same.

Then here he is again, coming in to wrestle the dog at my feet, even though I am reading and not looking at anything but the book. He leaves. Then he comes back, with the bowl of popcorn that is mine I made for me and he sets it up  like he's going to sit on the bed here. I finally say so quietly  hey   I'm having some quiet time right now in here. I needed some quiet.

He takes the popcorn bowl and exits.

I've been trying something new which is to not say anything, just live my life in my house. This person is important to B, so I am trying to just live my life without any conflict and definitely without talking about anything. This guy roasted B's balls over a pit viciously for years by text and I am not over that horror. So the feel of this guy in my house is like pouring vinegar over a perfectly good watermelon. Which someone did at a party one time to make a "super cool trendy" salad but in fact just made a shitty tasting watermelon.

I want my quiet home without anxiety. I live enough with anxiety all alone, generated and stoked by me. I don't need a walking anxiety ball in my eyesight to now add the extra. I am very aware whenever he has a knife and is in my kitchen.  But also I watch too many murder shows.

I am at work all the time because of living at my job here caring for my mom these last almost 6 years now. So I have to manage my time and quiet carefully so I don't fry my brain and feelings with overworrying, which is what you do with a dementia mom. I'm already fried, and also this guy is not my emergency, as my cousin's firefighter husband say. I'm a suck it all in kind of person but I can't suck it all in, I am not sucking in dirty creek water washed up after heavy rain. I'm looking for clear water, with pebbles I can see at the bottom.  That's what you do at the creek when you're riding if you don't want your horse to sink in quicksand. I have a desire to not be airlifted out of a bog. 

And also, in a grander sense, a family is built with hard work. Belonging to a family means you earned your way in by showing up and throwing in your whole heart for others to see, dismantle, encourage and share the growth. You can't walk into my family. Some of us have been working at it for years here. You certainly can't shit all over my family and then show up and expect to not have to earn your way back. You need to read the room, be incredibly respectful and take out the trash. I am handing him the trash can right now, but maybe someday he will see the trash and take it out before I have to ask.

So I am aiming for the clear pebbles, and I'm not going to be responsible for a 41 year old emergency trying to figure himself out. That's what his life is for, his glowing path, the one that he's on all by himself. We all have this unfolding beauty right in front of us, all for ourselves, we all have our very own path, and it's so humbling to look at all our choices and the moments we get to have. This is my feeling. I have had all the emergencies I want in my life. I'm happy for the clear pebbles and the quiet bedroom. I'm gonna fight for that.

Why they gotta make all these challenges all the time, it's Valentine's Day for heck's sake. B got all the girls in the house flowers cause he says even if it's sexist to only get the girls flowers, he says he was doing it before sexism was a thing. 

He's a clear pebble.

Hold Up

This month has disneyland in it so I feel like I'm in olympic training to do that run through the park we like to do. It's happening in 3 days and I'm not quite ready but my niece is going and she likes to NOT run through the park so I'm not sure how I'm going to do it the way I like to do it. I think I might just run anyway.

After this ankle injury I had to heal up my broken heart mostly, but you know what's been so good? Swimming. And riding. I told B the only sports I like to keep my body strong are things that hold me up. Floating in water and dangling from the top of Dewey, it's so nice to give the burden of your body to a body of water, or put your whole self on a huge furry beast. 

Dewey doesn't mind carrying me silently and steadfastly. He says go ahead man. Look at the birds. Listen to stuff. Forget roads. Forget people. Forget ankles. Oh maybe stretch that ankle while you're riding. Sing.

I forced B to come to the Y with me to swim this winter since our pool feels like the water inside Santa's eyes right now. The Y is very entertaining. It's about 4 old men with white beards and bloated bellies (oh wait, santa) and they mostly like to just HANG OUT at the end of a lane, with their arms hoisted casually on the side of the pool. There's some hefty ladies too wearing sunhats even though we're inside and it's cloudy. I guess when they're getting dressed, they're like okay, POOL = FUN HAT. They look like old moms who would be really good at making you a turkey sandwich and chocolate milk while they talked about their day. Aside from watching the old people as I do laps I like to just look at the glass ceiling where there are patches of sunshine peeking in, and the ceiling has some old used up panels which makes me feel the same. Part sunshine, part broken. I let the water hold me up, it is vast and it says no problem. It says here. Use more of me. There's water everywhere. Barely anyone is using me. B walks the laps like he's run bobbing away from robbers. He's dashing at the speed of boing boing boing. I usually share a lane with him and I manage to hit him in the face at least 3 times when passing him. If he's not there and there's too many old men I have to share a lane with some weirdo and I try and pick the slowest, most likely to die guy in there. That way they spend most of the time lounging at the end of the lane and I can actually swim without slapping anyone accidentally as we pass.

I finally made it back to the creek with the horses after 3 long months of recovery. It took lots of short rides building my muscles and then the swimming. Then it was just the right day, 80 degrees in February the other day, so we went. Then I went again the next day, so all four horses are back on track with our regular rides. This ankle did make me feel like giving up. It was just a hard few months back there. 

Tell me I'll make it through disneyland and hopefully have fun. Little Evie is coming from Boulder, and we're going on the day she squeezed out of my body, 24 years ago. It'll be time with my babies, except for the UCSB one who has midterms. 

Even though I'm swimming and riding, pondering what to write next, cleaning, and caring for mom and hiding from B's son who is 4 weeks into his 12 week stay with us, I'm really secretly still just waiting for the kids to come back. I'm still raising them, in my guts. I'm not deciding to do that, it's just happening to me. My guts have decided to always be with the children. It was so good in there. Everything else seems just like a waste of time. A mom in search of her ducklings.

This is just a weird whirlpool.

I'll let the horses and water hold me up, and look up at the sunshine.

Nothing's Ever Over, it's Just Over There

Aww you came too late to enjoy the last of the great Julie and Kurt Friendship.

That happened yesterday, on a phone call. I made the call. There was quite a bit of yelling, and almost all of it was from me.

I figure there are lots of things that we're really glad had endings, the endings were the best part. Nazi Germany, let's say. How bout dental surgeries. Blizzards. How bout this flu I still have. How bout that play Emma was in in 4th grade.  Any movie with Laura Dern. Hailstorms. Texas.

The Kurt thing, well I look at it like we weren't renewed for another season. We came together to try and hash out a last season, we'd had a pretty good run, five seasons of the show, ripping along pretty well, had some good feedback. Then we just ran out of story. We sat at those tables trying to pound out one last season, we have some pretty loyal viewers (a few horses, a dog or two, handful of chickens). But as we wound down the meeting, it was clear there were some creative differences and both our teams decided it'd be better if we pursued other projects and let this go for now. I wish Kurt and his team the best, I know they gotta lotta good things in the works, I wouldn't be surprised to catch him later on some other platform, like we promised we'd meet in hell. So I got that hot ticket still. 

It is weird to get to a place where you're both talking but there is an empty room and nothing is absorbing. That's why they make those production offices so temporary. Everything is rented. Every table eventually is folded up and stacked against the wall and it's usually me there at the end with the last working phone making the call to make sure everything gets picked up. Then you leave that show forever but there's always another show. There's another show and another show and another show until you forget yourself and 25 years goes by and your shrink says ok now it's time for you to ask

what do you like

just you

That's a thing, that people can ask themselves? After 25 years of motherhood (my longest production job), I get to ask this? And then have the fun of figuring out?

So that's the positive side. I leave this awkward sidebar behind, I left that relationship actually screaming and being hung up on, and I think the only times I've actually screamed at people were at my drunk brother. I'm kind of glad these things are not my usual. My brother is better now. 

The shrink says that vulnerability is what takes you to the next place. It opens the door, and maybe it feels sort of terrible, but inside the door are a bunch of other doors, and some of them have prizes behind them. Because all those doors are there for you, and your one little life, and every door is the right door, because you are opening it because you are curious.

The shrink didn't say that, but that is the truth.

So I will always love Kurt, my riding buddy, who was like an inflatable human follow along in case of emergencies. I had a ton of really fun times out in the watery creek, ducking under branches. But before Kurt ever even came along, I was already having a ton of really fun times, under the branches, in the creek with the horses, with just myself. So this is just a shift not backwards, just over there.

How and more importantly, why did this phone call happen, you ask? 

Since the friendship had tried to die when my ankle broke, but hadn't quite sputtered its last, I felt that hole still in my heart. I had been doing pretty well healing it up, using the flu and bees (ha), but I felt the need to have that one last talk. 

This was last night. It took me two days to actually call him, but yesterday it was getting to be sunset and I thought okay I can't put it off any longer and I was rolling my mom out so I could keep my hands busy and he answered and I thought we would have just a gentle hey man. I miss you. I'm sorry things got weird. How ya feelin.

Instead just like that bee day, I literally walked into a mass of stings. 

I don't really know what happened, man. All I know is I was changing mom's pants and cleaning her up and listening to this person tell me all the things I had done wrong when I was flipping out with the sudden emergency of a broken ankle, which now feels like years ago and I wasn't even thinking about talking about, and my hands started shaking from the injustice of the accusations of this friend on the phone. 

The shrink said communication is really always the place where we as humans fail each other. And then feelings of anger fill in the places that aren't well talked through or understood.

Well that anger BARFED out of me like the exorcist. I hadn't wanted to go backwards. I was thinking of moving forwards, and taking Kurt with me. What I got was I reached out a hand and he left it hanging there. All while telling me how wrong I was.  

I just had no place for this injustice of feelings. So it was all ANGRY. I just started yelling. I had anger from having my central good core character attacked. This person knows my life. This person knows my feelings. There was no understanding or value to the emergency of the ankle, and the difficult life it then caused in my work/home that I had been having. It was very impersonal. 

I figured this out as I was filling up the washing machine when he was saying well we have two choices, we can move forward with our friendship or we can not do that. I knew already that there was no option 1. This person on the phone was not the person I had been friends with for so long. This friendship he was offering, without a single care about the pain I had been going through, that friendship died from lack of him stoking it. I was a good friend. In the past, he was an excellent friend. 

When I was broken, and vulnerable, he disappeared. 

I could have a friendship like that with someone I met on a bus, if I wanted. I'm pretty sure those friendships are plentiful.

So in that talk yesterday, when I was broken and vulnerable again, only yelling this time, SOMETHING ISN'T RIGHT HERE, he hung up on me.

So now I leave it to grow its own roots and flower over somewhere else, on a grave somewhere. Still beautiful, but neglected. An overgrown grave can be full of nostalgia and silence and beauty and no doubt, bees. 

I'm not dead yet, though. I want to still see what's behind all the other doors. I've never been let down yet.

My other friends and family, they are there for me, and they love me, all of us imperfect but vulnerable.