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.

To Bee or Not to Bee

It has been a weird few months. Bank fraud, ankle break, a friendship took the noon balloon (as my dad would say), flood, mouse infestation, stepson with some trubbles who moved in a week ago, and a ravaging longlasting cold and flu 

why not add bees?

I am still healing up, remember, taking it easy with my ankle, swimming and getting my riding muscles back, so I've been riding an easy one every day for a few weeks. Then I got sick with a bad flu so I stopped swimming but kept trying to ride as much as I could. So today I thought okay, I'll ride Meriwether out, and Dewey back, Meri is my youngest one in training, being ridden, but I felt up for it.

He was super, he needs guidance because he's like oooh butterfly look- but if you keep him going with constant guidance he's like oh okay! I like the rules, lemme do it for you! So Meri chugged along just fine, Dewey came along like the dopey sidekick with the heart of gold, and on the way back I switched horses so I could ride the easy one and have a relaxing ride home.

We're almost to the end of the dirt path in the estates and I smell smoke. Sky is clear. I'm like hmm someone must be having a fire. 

Then I am attacked by bees.

This has happened before, actually, twice, so now I'm just mad and yelling. 

I guess these neighbors behind the wall next to the dirt path are keeping bees. I guess they were smoking them out or something but I thought that made bees calm. All I know is there are bees in my eyes.  I want to keep them out of my helmet because that's what happened last time and they are looking for a way in. Dewey is even flipping his head around like wtf is going on get these off me - 

I get stung on the left eyebone and the right eyebone. I get the fuck out of there as fast as I can but you can't fight bees they fly all crazy and they are really really pissed.

I get around the corner and Meri takes advantage of my loose hold on his rope and pulls his head away so he's free and trots down the road like he's late for a concert. I don't worry about him because he will never leave Dewey. I get off Dewey to try and get the bees off his back leg that he's showing me by stomping his feet and looking at me like whyyyy

I hear a buzzing in his ear but I can't find the bee that is trapped but somehow it gets out. I'm not gonna ride a horse with a bee in its ear, that's for sure. 

Dewey seems to be fine now, I walk over to catch Meri who is merrily eating grass, and my stung face is throbbing and hot. I used to be allergic to bees but it hasn't been so bad as an adult. 

By the time I get home my cheek is swollen so that I look like Kurt Russell AND Goldie Hawn. 

By the time I put the horses away and get inside to tell Barry about my latest adventure on Hell Island which is what I'm going to call End of 2025 Beginning of 2026, my face is red hurting and my eye almost shut. 

B and I are almost laughing. I said first of all, I'm okay, yay no emergency room. And c, you thought you needed eyes? Let's try life looking through the eyes of post-fight Mike Tyson.

I HEAR YOU, 2026. 

With an ice pack to my eyes I scratch out a letter I address to Kind Neighbors and ask them to please move their bee boxes away from that wall so I can ride and perhaps old people can walk by also without being attacked by bees. I take the golf cart and drop it in the mailbox and I never want a confrontation but today I am looking and wishing those people were in their yard so I could give them a piece of my face. It's a good thing I read Frankenstein recently. Now I know why. 

I am the monster

I go get hay at the feed store in the golf cart with a cold soda pressed on my face and the kids up there at the cash register that I see every week all gasp and then they're saying well at least you're not sick! Cause that was last week.

Do things like this ever really get repaired? I am thinking. Those people will not move their bees. Now I will have to walk far across the street to avoid this repeat scenario. I mean people do what they want to do. They are behind a wall. The bees, unfortunately, fly right over. And directly into my eyes.

Why are they so mad? They are like little angry capsules full of fuck you. These certain bees. I love bees. Not these bees. Not ever.

Going to ice and ruminate. I took an antihistamine which should also help my annoying cold. 

The good news, the ride was really happy. I'll be doing well like myself again in no time. How much more careful do I have to be, I am ALREADY SO CAREFUL when riding. This bee thing and the face like a boiled ham, it's just, god is telling me something. I am listening but damn I swear I am just being a normal person doing normal things like all the rest of us. And then tipping my head sideways like wtf just happened.

Bee safe out there guys. You can never bee too safe. And it was only TWO BEES. 

We are all only two bees to the face away from being Kurt Russell.

ps update

The bee guy Boris actually called me and said he would move the bee boxes. (He said when did you ride by? I said a few hours ago. He said oh I know exactly when. I had just riled up the bees. 

I said (pause)  No kidding. You riled them right into my face. He said tell me when you ride and I won't bother them then. I said how bout you move the boxes wayyyyyy the fuck away from the common wall where people walk their dogs and ride.  You know, maybe try that. He said oh good idea.)  

Still, he called me and apologized. That seems unrealistic, or the beginning of an intercontinental rom com where Boris the bumbling russian accidentally starts a mail order bride business with kindly american neighbors. He said oh I will leave you some honey. In the mailbox. (Not in a container, just IN the mailbox. I open the mailbox it's full of bees. Okay maybe that's a horror film.)

I told him Just please move the bees, Boris. Move them far.

Oh Brother

My brother came with an old laptop that had a very old nintendo blackjack game that we used to play. The groovy music reminded me of late nights in Van Nuys where he, Chris and I stayed up late playing while eating rice and broccoli while fifteen miles away from us in Hollywood, stars lounged in bars and backyard palm treed oases. 

My life has only shreds of what used to be back in my 20's, when all that mattered was this nintendo game and the next job we were gonna be on, and my black dog Jed and all the boys we chased with passion. My life came to get me like a late postman, fat and jolly, grabbing me up like his last package and delivering me to three kids and a jumble of a life, the remnants of which are still scattered around me now, at 59, now again about fifteen miles away from where Chris and Michael and I ate rice and played video blackjack. 

The goalposts of my life are clear, there's my mom or the stand in body of my mom still trying to be here, in her chair, near us and the dogs, and my kids' books and blankets, the pieces of a life lived frantically fast, birth to high school, and now all the kids happily scattered to colleges and careers, and my brother comes to help with my mom and he brings his video game and we are sitting, again, in the same place, with that same music.

I can't imagine a life like his, where he spent all his time away from the things that mattered the most. He lived in a paused haze without his son, filled with the fake friendship of vodka. He moved far to try to find peace and then after losing every opportunity for free living that he could find, finally luckily got sober and now, five years later, is becoming a person who lives works and feels. 

We only see each other twice a year when he comes to take care of mom so I can have a break and not think of her every minute. We sometimes get to spend time together on the couch and each time it is comforting. He's louder than me and sillier than me and easier than me and shorter than me. He cares the same as me, though, underneath all that stuff in there that he is careful not to disturb, the parts he hasn't found the guts to look at with two eyes. I have plenty of those parts too. Maybe none of us get to all the scary stuff too easily.

I just thought the video game summed up most of my brother, he still has it. He brought it with him. And it is fun. He's still in his 20's. He's good at being in his 20's. He never went to one talent show, one morning school drop off, one bagel breakfast, one boring basketball dinner, one drivers' license test, one graduation. He's still just starting his life and I lived my life mixed with three other tumbleweeds sprouting out of the pavement growing wild at our house. We just went opposite ways.  There's so many ways to go, every way is open.  

I love my brother. He shows up for me. We know each other, in dark ink indelible basics. Even when some of it is so old it may not even be true anymore. We did have mom together, for sure. We three were a tribe, we still are, and I'm sure my other brother would have liked to belong there. He deserved to be. Old history, not to be undone by this writer. But as a sister, I needed all the brothers I could get. At least I can say it if I can't make it true in real life.

It's all okay, though. 

There's still today.  I just got the flu and I had not at all expected that, it was in fact a rude shock, so anything can happen. So there's room for surprises.

I'm grateful for the tarmac of my life, with the literal skid marks and thin skin and heart weakened weighted by tremendous love. I may not know what to do with it, but I knew what I did with it. I spent it, I bet it all and I closed my eyes and you guys know I won.

Your Face Down There

It's a New Year. I am still waiting for it to happen, in my guts. I saw the countdown. My one daughter was there, in New York. Deciding she didn't need to live there ever, she said. Even though it's as cold as Boulder, it seems way colder. I'd say it's because everyone wears black there, I told her. When I went to NYU I remembered thinking what happened to color 

How can color be uncool

Course it mighta changed since then, that was 1984. 

I have been back riding for five straight days. I thought I would be scared to get back on and actually I was a little scared the first time, but it helps to have gentle faces on the ground that you can put all your faith into, and then swing your leg over and get on with it. 

I don't know how to be in the world usually, everyone seems to be so far away from who I really am, this body holding my throbbing real self, the pulp of emotion I drag around and try not to spill everywhere. I have to tone down myself wholly in order to fit through doors but on the outside I look like a regular person. I have secret weapons, I immerse myself in water at the Y. Water has enough space for me. Swimming makes me feel normal.  Getting back on the fat horse that I tumbled from is a good place to be. 

At the new year's day party I went to at Barry's family's house, there was a lady Nora that had stood at my horse's head on stocking day when I got on the mounting block and got on my horse the first time after my broken ankle. It was barely healed enough to get on, but I got on carefully because I could look down and see a face holding my horse's reins, steadying my nerves with her calm presence. So I got on and rode around the backyard for a minute, feeling my ankle twinging telling me it still needed a few more weeks of careful. 

I saw Nora again at this new party and I don't know her really that well, she's a relative of a relative that keeps showing up at parties, she's someone you'd never notice, she wears a flannel shirt and makes really good cornbread, and she is pretty quiet. Anyway I told her at this party yesterday, hey I've been getting on my horses five days in a row now, and everytime I get on if I'm nervous I think about your face down there calmly looking up, being there for me.

I don't know how people have friends or talk about cool things or do parties and act normal, but this part of the party made me feel good cause I got to tell someone I don't know very well that their face is still helping me.

I think it would be nice if this was most of the world, being there for people and not knowing how much you are helping someone else. By doing nothing just being there.

That would be a good thing for the new year. Realizing you are important and not knowing how much people are feeling your presence. It is a mystery, isn't it. I have this every day with my disappearing mom, she is there but mostly I am there for both of us. I put her in the bed tonight and felt proud of my care of this lengthy legged needy human, tucking her feet into the bed, making sure she wasn't thirsty, brushing her teeth, telling her I'm here for you mom you are safe with me

It is nice to show up, man

Even though it is always muddy right now and there are leaks we've been trying to fix, and my mom can't be the mom she always was, being there smoothing my feathers, she is still floating here I am so glad to have her face looking up at me. 

Thumbs Up

Let's have a countdown to my days being an invalid being over. Now I'm scared to be able bodied. But let's wait and see what the stupid doctor says. I wouldn't mind slowing down a bit and not being a hyper spaz. I would like some new dreams to come true. I would like to organize some writing and submit around. I have time to do that now. I have a few years til grandkids so I have some time.

My littlest baby just finished her last final in her first semester of college. This is so huge! What a lucky girl to have all my kids going to college and being successful and trying all sorts of new things and being independent and still loving. And to have horses outside. 

The horses are the glue that holds everything together.

I had a friend drop out on me, my horsey companion friend. He just quit when I needed him most, when I was healing from this injury I got while doing him a favor taking his friend and his horse out. He really let me down. He says it's because the emoji I put on his text was a thumbs up emoji and because I didn't say thank you, I just sent a thumbs up emoji when he was helping me the one time with my horses after I was hurt, he thought I needed distance so he stopped texting or helping me.

I finally asked him after a whole month wtf actually happened? Why did you disappear? And then he told me that emoji caused him to leave me alone.

I told him that I was pushing my mom in a wheelchair while I was on a knee scooter, and while my house was being attacked by bank fraud. Have you ever tried to care for a total care dementia patient while you are on a knee scooter? Have you ever tried to push someone up a ramp in a wheelchair when you only have one throbbing leg? You can't actually do it. 

Then it rained like noah's ark time for three days and the mud was so bad in the barn I couldn't knee scooter through there and the knee scooter was eating a hole in my knee. So then Leo Mucker at the high cost of money was hired to be my barn self, and Barry was hired at the cost of nothing but bunches of tears to help push mom up the ramp and I had to order everyone around which was way harder than just doing the fucking things myself. 

I had to make mom's bed at one point, we had hoisted mom up from the wheelchair in the swing and she was hanging in space waiting to be lowered while we made the bed under her and B had the pile of sheets and I said hand me that bottom sheet and he said what's a bottom sheet.  Wide eyed emoji. I said what do you mean what's a BOTTOM SHEET it has elastic. He said they didn't have elastic when he was growing up. I said YOU HAVE MADE A BED SINCE THE 1940's BRO. Once the sheets were on I said hand me that pillowcase and he said WHAT'S A PILLOWCASE 

I said ARE YOU ACTUALLY MENTAL 

ARE YOU MENTAL

Later after yelling at him for a very long time I asked him what the hell was wrong with him and he said what he meant was, which ONE is the pillowcase, because it was a flannel unmatched pillowcase so it wasn't like he didn't KNOW what a PILLOWCASE was, he just thought the flannel thing was a shirt.

But I said what if you LOOKED AT THE THING AND TURNED IT OVER IN YOUR HANDS UNTIL YOU SAW IT WAS ACTUALLY A POCKET FOR A PILLOW

instead of saying WHAT'S A PILLOWCASE

So this is what I was dealing with when Kurt texted me that he had taken two of my horses out and he couldn't get to the other two horses yet because of the mud and I texted back a thumbs up emoji

instead of saying "thank you" 

So he took his help and love away.

So this is now a month later and I am realizing that I have to be really clear to ask for the help I need, even when I am in pain and overwhelmed, especially when texting or talking to boys. 

Or I will not get the results I require. 

Also it is just douchy to leave your friends when you know they are hurting. When you're hurting you should be allowed to be a mess

So it's almost heading into a new year, I will have a superfixed ankle bone if my body is doing its mending job and it has never let me down in the past. I have a new appreciation for a life lived safely and boringly, I feel lucky for all the millions of rides I've done where the best thing that happens is we see a pretty slant of light on a leafy path, or a bird pauses to watch us go by in the creek.

These are the applause of nature, and I am missing them. I told this to B when driving to try and put up christmas lights at my boss's house which we later aborted moments later due to exploding pre-war light strands that needed replacing. I said to B when we were driving back down Hollywood Way how I can't stand to even be on the freeway, when I'm not riding. At least with riding I can handle it, this city with the swelling of humans and cars everywhere, because if I have ridden I have seen an empty path, I've heard only hoof falls in quiet, and I've seen trees and sky. But with no riding, the freeways crisscross through my eye nerves, surfing me toward the crashing rocks.

I told my friend that I didn't think the Chinese had invented an emoji for the amount of stress I had been under but that next time I would certainly search out that emoji and click accordingly. I told my friend that we would have to start over from now, and let it all wash away. So it is a fresh start. But really, I have now a door open there, because it's best when people want to leave, to let them.

At Half Mast

I see the horses over there from far away, shadows in the christmas lights. It's been three whole days I've been back on full time barn duty without Leo Mucker helping me in the mornings. I'm glad to have my barn back. I can't ride yet, I have two more weeks and one more doc appointment and then I can leave all this in the dust. 

It is weird though to see your life from a distance and to slam on the brakes. All the fun whistles out like a flat tire and it's just you flat on the pavement watching a glitching tv with your mom looking dementia scared over there and your foot up high on the couch back. The garage still paused at barely cleaned out. The pool waiting with dead leaves at the bottom. Your life at half mast.

A lady came to thanksgiving that was the girlfriend of someone and I didn't talk to her but later found out she just retired and started doing crazy shit she'd always wanted to do. Jumping out of planes. Pottery. Fencing. 

Dude. 

Inspiring. I didn't even KNOW we could make up new fun stuff to do. I feel like I'm still stuck on the homework of life and looking around to see if anyone sees me cheating. I was just rushing around to ride as much as I could and now I spend all my time adrift on the couch and then complaining about how B won't laugh at my jokes as soon as he enters the room. No wonder he stays in the other room with the foot heater on full blast. He says his feet are cold. I told him to take a walk every day. I should cut an album of all the stuff I tell him would improve his life and then wrap it up and then throw it into a dumpster where it could shatter. That would be satisfying.

Evie brought her friend from Bowdough who is tall and looks like my dead friend Dirk before he was dead. He's a smart math guy and he brought some weird shredded carrot thing to thanksgiving. He hardly ate anything at thanksgiving because he shredded five pounds of carrots but you can't shred the middle because it's too wet so he just ate the middles of five pounds of carrots and that can fill a guy up.

And Bess hugged us for no reason, several times. College has origamied up her affection skills, she is unfolding all over. She wanted to go to the galleria to see some special Billie Eilish pop up store selling perfume a few hours before her train back to SB and Nattan said I'll take you. He took her, he waited in line, he bought them hot pretzels and then he bought her the perfume. This is the brother to have, my friend. 

Then there's the residual bank fraud and the circling the drain Nandy calling to have someone buy her some weed. Christmas coming and not ready at all, there's still a pumpkin on the porch from Halloween. I gotta carve that maybe I'll carve a Christmas tree but wait there's other stuff to do now maybe I should make a gingerbread house out of jackolanterns. 

My niece Aela, tiny and birth assister doctor, came and loaded me into the golf cart with her driving which we had never done taking two horses at a time ponied off the back which we had never done to get them exercise. I'm glad there's a big back of the golf cart cause there was plenty of room for the large amount of fear I downloaded cause leading giant horses with only one good leg on my body to use and not being sure how they respond - I'm not really good with being incapacitated. If there was going to be a tea brand with my face on it it would not be called "Incapacitated and At Her Best."

I look forward to being whole and then slightly lopsided in the onboard the horse confidence department. That's what sucks about falling it makes your brain stupid for a few years predicting horror. I'm going to try and pretend that I'm strong but really I'm just a girl with no other hobbies.

I do like to listen to words and play with words here on the page. Words are little presents that cheer me because they always dutifully line up like frolicking soldiers wherever I put them. I sent my Lewis and Clark words to a writing contest, I hope I get to share some gay history with a greater group. Widening the gay. 

I like an impossible love story. 

head in a bucket

So it looks like the only thing between me and fame is not being able to upload a file to Blacklist. 

It's not the wrestling with the story or making the characters real or thinking too much or falling off a horse or the rain or even the tremendous burn on my leg that I got from pouring hot tea in my lap. And which my computer is sitting on right now.

The problem is the content won't upload.

Imagine Emily Dickinson had this problem. 

I have sat at this computer all day refreshing and retrying and wheeling my mom out to get a bath from a new johnny washer because johnny washer was in the hospital last I heard, I wonder if HE is getting washed by a johnny washer now. This temporary johnny washer, brian washer, he had the personality of a you know when a subway car stops and it's just waiting there in the middle of nowhere and nobody's talking but the lights are on and people are just hanging there holding onto poles, people going somewhere not going anywhere now, mute suspended time that isn't efficient at all

that was brian washer

he left with the rain, whisked in and out of my life like bad corn devoured by locusts just out of my vision. I will never see him again.

But back to my story which is if I am never famous, it is because of bad internet. Or programs that promise literary greatness yet won't let you upload anything and there's no one to call with your hand raised tentatively. There's no one.

But it is raining. Mud on top of mud. My mom lives in her own world, her head in a bucket with shiny pictures flashing all around and sometimes she says thank you and reaches for my hand. She did that today. I think motrin helps. And Bess is getting a cold again in SB and all the kids will be home in a few days and then the thanksgiving onslaught after this two weeks of injury and bank fraud hell. It is life suspended. Not even ebay shopping is fun. The only fun thing is giving up.

Listening to the rain.

Wondering if brian washer made it to his car. 

Wondering why I am fighting so hard for gay lewis and clark to live in the minds of others not just of me. Are they banging on me to tell their story their fake story, glorified. I already like them. I don't care if anyone else likes them.

But it would be fun to hear people laugh.

That is actually a good reason to keep trying.

Time of your life

It's important that when you have a fat cast boot on your foot to keep it immobile and you stick it up on a chair, it's important that you try to pour tea from the kettle into the mug over your lap and then slip and spill boiling hot tea water all over your crotch.

Then leap up screaming. Hobble to the bathroom with scalded thighs. Put a bunch of Foille on it as my granddaddy would. Then sit on the toilet and start laughing. Because at this point, just bring it on.

It's raining like Noah's second coming. I have to double trash bag my boot to go out and check on the barn. They told me not to do anything to put everything down and sit with my foot up. But I'm allowed to walk. But my walking involves cleaning and heavy lifting daily. I've been pretty good for me, only a little bit of mucking. No lifting. I do want my bone to heal perfectly. But I got shit to do. I couldn't have done it without gay Leo mucker from down the street. He is a perfect barn boy. In the rain even. But I like being Leo. I hate being stymied. I said stymie.

The only good part is I can't ride so I have been fixing up Lewis and Clark and putting better words in their mouths. Honing. I could do quite a bit of honing in this down time.

Then I'm sick of everyone, B having his computer and bank problems, the hacking and the fraud, and then trying to wheel my mom around when I had only one leg that was actually the worst days of my life. You start looking at your life when you don't have your health and capacity, and everything looks like a horrible burden. Your regular, light life that keeps you humming. Being outdoors in the sun everyday with the horses after getting mom set up in the morning, that was a good balance. Even the doctor said my Vitamin D was excellent. I know it is!

Then Johnny texted that he was in the emergency room and now I haven't heard from him in days. Did Johnny Washer also die? I washed my mom today in my hobbled boot, not a great Johnny job but better than a dead Johnny could do, at least she looks better. We went to the bank with my sore foot in the rain but Nathan and I got ice cream. I think things hurt as they heal. Maybe that's what's happening with my ankle. I hope. Cause it really hurts. I imagine the concrete ankle guys scurrying in there in my leg on emergency power, trying to lay the better bone, trying to work with me who has trouble staying off the foot. I'll try to help you guys.

It is nice to sort of rest. I was doing too much. I was recovering from motherhood. I miss swimming though. I miss being semi agile. I love my life so much. From the couch, I just see how dottering everything is around me. It's a bit sad to see how struggling everyone is, and when I say everyone I mean B. He' s normally just there, like wallpaper, we live simultaneously creating this life but we don't have to bother each other with tragedy. Then tragedy monster trucked through our house leaving tire treads in mud. 

And then Thanksgiving and Christmas barreling at us and I have no whimsy to greet these good times. I have time. I hope.