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.

On the Dirt

Bro so I got too comfortable.

Yeahhhh sure Kurt I'll take your friend Bruce on your horse along with me to get used to trail riding. The guy's been riding a month, but I saw him ride, he's not terrible, he's got some good balance or a good seat as they say. But he is riding a huge apartment building horse. And a horse that used to be at my barn for five years and I know this horse. 

So sure I'll just throw on a bareback pad and take Maggie up. Dewey would be better but he's a little sore and it's Maggie's day to ride (I alternate days) so off I go, beautiful day.

I pick up Hank and Bruce and already Hank is being a bit fussy because he hasn't gotten out at all and he's got new buddies calling to him that he's leaving back in the barn. But still. 

I get the crop from Bruce because I see that Hank keeps snaking his head to bite Mags and she will kick him so I use the crop to keep his head away. We're talking about riding and how everything usually goes really well but they are horses so you never know. You're always learning, I tell him, swinging my legs on Mags, using the one leg that I will soon not be able to use very well.

I am grateful for every boring ride. I take nothing for granted, being able to move my body and get around and do all the million tasks for running a barn and a pool and a house efficiently. My house is never as clean as my tack room, but even my tack room gets dust. Dust is earth's blanket.

So I carefully keep Hank and Mags from each other, but we're going up a little hill and then down a little hill and then I miss the one second that Hank takes to snake his head out and bite her on the ass. And then Maggie just loses it. I have no idea what's going on because I am in the middle of a tornado funnel, but Maggie is backing her butt up into Hank and kicking out with both back legs like a mule, trapping him against a fence and just kicking the shit out of him. This tips the top of her body down and we're already aiming down hill so this tips me right off.  Which I realize is going to happen and I'm so pissed off and I land flat on my back.

Maggie is still attacking him and all I see is eight horse legs like fat sunflower stalks growing all around me on the floor like a horror movie and I think oh I'm dead she's going to stomp me and Maggie is not interested in stomping me, she keeps her body away she only wants to kill Hank.

So I roll out of there and try and stand up to see if my body works and then I see I have to get my horse away from the guy on the other horse who is saying what should I do should I jump off and I'm like to WHERE you are in the middle of the bombing of Berlin there so I focus on getting Maggie's rein and it takes me a few tries but I get Maggie and pull her off and incident over. She's eating grass.

I sit down on the side of the hill and say I need a minute

The guy, I don't know how he stayed on that horse, and I am doing a mental check of my whole body. I appear to be alive and all parts work. My body needs time to slow down. I am in shock. 

His horse has decided it's time to go home and I am thinking for a minute well wait we have to finish the ride, it's still a little more ride we just started. But I stand up and I feel my ankle is hurting. So I'm like okay yeah we can head back. I have to make the dreaded call to Kurt. He's like oh noooo should I come get you I'm like maybe

So I'm hobbling down the trail thinking dammit now I have to go to urgent care. And then as I keep walking limping I'm like nope. I have to go to the ER for an xray.

Kurt shows up with his truck once we're near the road he can reach and I climb on the back and lead my horse from the back of the truck which she's never done and I hope she'll be okay.  When we get to my house he says we should do all our rides that way and I was like yeah actually that was really fun. It was the best part. 

We throw my horse and stuff back in the yard and he leaves and I go inside to tell B I have to go to the ER and he is running out of the office saying they're stealing all our money there's something wrong at the bank there's fraud it's 15,000 dollars gone and I stare at him who doesn't get nervous easily and I say I have to go to the ER and I start crying and then he starts crying and then we're sort of laughing and I say go do the money meet me at the ER

Hours and xrays later, broken ankle. Just the tip of the bone. Hopefully it will slide back into place. They put a huge white ankle leg condom on my lower leg, and it hardens. It's not a cast but at least it's the size of a dwarf's torso.

So I get home and then I'm crying because I'm trying to do everything now with one leg. Crutches kill so bad on your armpits. You can't push your mom in a wheelchair. You can't shovel a muckfork full of horseshit. You can't do SHIT with one leg as a farmher.

So I do some crying while washing my hair which unhinges B cause I always do everything and I don't make anything his problem except the really important unfixable things so he sees my mortal heart for a minute and then there's just crying. I do not like being hurting and inefficient. To me there is never enough time to do everything. And now I can't even swim and ride, the things I love to do every morning. 

It's one day later now. I remembered that mom had a nurse awhile back named Pedro with really nice hair who had a knee injury and was on a knee scooter which I had never seen before and I thought that's a cool thing and I had no idea that months later that very knee scooter would be mine. 

I text Pedro and he says yes come get the scooter and use it so B drives to fuckall Woodland Hills to get the scooter but it's free and having the scooter is like being a rescue dog with no back legs, at least I can get around and my armpits aren't shredded. I'm sure I can wreck myself on this scooter but I'm trying to go slower than I want to and do less than I want to. I want my ankle to heal.

So we'll see that the orthopedist says when I call monday and get to go in, hopefully it'll heal up quick and easily and I can be back to two footed. In the meantime my neighbor Julia made mom's eggs for breakfast and B helps me wheel my mom and it's okay to do something else for awhile. To stop trying to be efficient. To just try to understand what this new little piece is. Temporary. Even though it feels like All Over. 

Last time I broke something I needlepointed 40 christmas stockings. Time to break out the yarn.

I did learn that if you're riding a horse that is kicking then they are telling you that you aren't giving them a safe bubble around them where a horse can't bite them. They are trusting you to keep them safe from other horses biting them and if you don't do the job they will do it the way they would in the pasture as if you aren't on their back, they will kick the other horse's ass. So when my ankle heals I will fix that hole in poor Maggie's (and my) training and hopefully it's the last time I end up on the dirt to learn something.

I prefer to not have a car accident body. 

I did the math and I've had 4200 rides in 13 years. I've had 5 bad rides. The chances of me having a bad ride are .0011

I thank the godsngoddesses for getting away with just a small bone crack. I thank the helmet, the strong body from swimming and riding, the horse hooves that didn't go into my soft stomach parts, the thought and time I've put into these guys to make them safe horses and partners. 

I love the guys so much. I can't wait to have my foot back under me. And then in a stirrup.  

Halloheist

Bess came home and brought 3 kids with her. I can't tell what they're like cause they're really polite. They say thank you so much I'm thinking it's a blocker to their true selves and I'm much more interested in their less polite parts. But maybe in time.

I was thinking maybe I was free from Halloween this year since everyone was in college but instead we were trick or treating with a gang of hundreds ok just nathan's friends and patrick and his baby and the mom of the baby and bess and her college friends and my niece and her fixit boyfriend who won't get in the car with someone who's coughing. I always dread everything that causes extra energy but then when we're on the pavement I AM halloween it infuses me and most important I have all the kids

Tall kids, babies, old kids dressed like the chipmunks, kids know how to laugh. This is why I like the kids.

Then the dodgers won the world series and my friend Julia couldn't sit in one chair she had to sit in all the chairs and also she would stand up to hit to ball to give the batter energy and that's why we won the world series

and the day before no the day OF halloween I had the dentist chopping out my old front teeth to make way for new ones and it was so scary to change something 30 years old even though I don't even like my teeth that's why I wanted to change them but when you use something that pretty much works and tears food for you it's like a basic tool in your face that isn't ugly but isn't something you like in pictures. So I did it I figured if I can ride a young horse I can get my teeth fixed for the last time, years of fixing those teeth when I was a teenager and it was so stressful were my teeth going to fall out you know like that nightmare we all have. I think I'm finally going to have teeth that will work for me and I can count on them forever.

I can do this with people maybe too.

And then b sick and when a boy is sick the world is sick bro. And then he and Bruce dealing with Nandy and her team of stooges who have decided she's getting her money stolen by us and they're gonna go to the bank and switch her bank account to a secret bank account and I think this is how the louvre heist got started. 

But when things are full like the world series is on and your neighbor is over and kids are home from college and Evie is on the phone cause her two friends kissed but then lied about it and then the drama of the nandy bank heist on speaker phone and sometimes you can barely recognize momentarily that this is your actual life  because it's so loud, it's loud velvet drapes, thick like 1920's cigar smoke you could rest your drink on it

and even the worst things happening are really ok cause it's all funny and you're all here, watching it together

As the horse training book I've been reading says, you just have to consider things. If you think you can do something, you probly can.

Sideways Scribbled

Well guys I don't know much but I do know that when you've had diarrhea for four weeks and then for three days you have what looks like your body's heroic attempt to form a soft serve chocolate ice cream poop you look at it and you are damn proud.

Flush away potential colon cancer lets fight a better fight than the toilet fight.

Other than the south end of me, life is pretty fucking amazing. I'm typing in my little daughter's room because it is the only one with sun at this last drops of the light time of day and there are two dogs at my feet lying in the same direction shape like furry synchronized croissant. From this room you can see through the big bedroom out across the pool to the horses gently swishing tails and eating hay lazily in dappled light and I'm in a fucking french painting.

I was at the shrink which I never want to do and this week we were talking about not carrying any more heavy stones around, like what is in me that I've been hefting for years that I maybe don't need anymore? Apparently carrying around sadness and clutching pain can be an eternal internal burden. 

I was riding around the lake yesterday with two horses and two dogs and just me and I was thinking what the actual efff, I can throw away stuff?? My mom never did. I mean she did keep a tidy house, we moved a bunch so we had only a core bundle of stuff, but emotionally she had a wide load. 

We can throw stuff away that we don't need

whaaaat

So I don't know if it was the ride around the lake which I then did again today because when I went to bed that night I felt actually happy and I don't know if it was the sun or the idea of a lighter life but all these weeks with the shrink I really thought I was doing it for her, I mean she needs a paycheck and then I thought wait a minute I think I can help myself here, too. In this little space where I control everything, she said. It was amazing, to consider.

The creek looked bigger to me. The house seems bigger. Also it is the losing of children, this is a strange thing, watching a movie with B at night and no one is interrupting us with a project or  screaming excitement or tears. Of course that is the tragic part of 25 years with chaos and kids. The kids are the meaning of everything. After one month we are slowly breathing again. No one needs a driver's test. No one is hiding in their room on the internet. No one familiar is stomping through the house. This is the tragedy.

But it is quiet and the light is filtering in like it must have been all these years and busy me didn't have a minute to see it. Yesterday I put a chair outside in the barnyard and sat down and watched the chickens and slowly my mind stopped ravelling. Unravelling instead like loose spaghetti on a cheap italian tablecloth. Meriwether the intermittent devil babyhorse came over and stood right next to me and I scratched him. Then when I stopped scratching him he still stayed and rested his head on my head. Then his head got so heavy he rested his nose on my shoulder and fell asleep. He stood there sleeping on me for five minutes. 

Retired from active hands on motherhood is a little studied Avengers universe. It's only been a month. There are yawning spans of time that seem like silent film (mostly comedies). There is writing to be edited and done. The garage is looking workable but plenty more hours to be done. But I can open cabinets in there.  And then there's me. Me and my rocks. Interior rock pile. The ones inside that I could throw away and watch the huge splash. They're rumbling and I'm putting a curious ear cone down to hear them. The shrink says it doesn't matter when you finally get to your rocks. There is no rush. She says every time you catch a fish, it's fresh.

Having a minute to gather your thoughts without the welfare of three lovely human beings looming in the forefront of your mind is a confusing, hot summer lake vacation. And there is so much writing in the garage. In boxes I am finding envelopes and scrap paper with sideways scribbled notes from scripts I was working on with baby Bess's infant pen doodling all over it and it looks like crazy. Like to hear dialogue and scratch it down on crinkled paper with a baby in your lap that's crazy. There's an urgency to writing. And mothering. Looks crazy.

Looking back from this dog spot on the bed, shhh    it is crazy