VerySo

Usually I will google first before writing about something I just thought of to see if someone has already said it like this. But I decided to just type it all out and see what I get. I don't care if it's already been figured out. This is me figuring it out.  I was walking Penny in the dark night of 6:40 PM. Our Friday night routine. I get off work at 5 but then I gotta do dinner, and every other weekend Ivy goes to her dad's at 6 so there's that, like tonight, and we try to cuddle on the couch before she has to leave. Then our dog Penny is next up ready for full attention. Eventually I get to be "off". Here I am.  I decided to designate a spot in the corner of the living room for my writing. I wrote and then backspaced these words: Our house is so tiny. It's fact but not what I mean or want to say right now. It's just that I was considering all my writing spaces of past... and how we've always had both a living room and a family room and an offic...

Since the divorce the kids have done their own laundry, but this afternoon Ivy was invited to the movies with a friend unexpectedly and so I retrieved her clothes from the dryer while she was gone. I don’t remember the last time a pair of pants in this house ended in T, when they moved to the adults section it all runs together. Three black sweatshirts, pajama bottoms, and shorts. You’d think it would’ve made a dent, back then, back when, had I known it was the last pair of kid pants I’d fold.  Oh, maybe it did. 

 It's 6:13 am. I've been up for about an hour or more, tossing, turning. It finally sank in and I believed myself when I say over and over, "You're safe, baby. You're safe." I claim this early morning, short glass of cold brew, under blanket on the couch as much-needed. I am very deficient in alone time. I'm not alone, in a house full of sleeping people. But it is the closest I will get for now.  It's dark, pitch black in the kitchen. The glow from the streetlight behind my house shows that fog is heavy and low and engulfing the houses behind mine. I wish for this moment to last all day.  I want to write and tell you everything. If I show all my cards, could it harm me? What I am asking is... what am I asking? 

  What is a curse, of yours   that really isn’t a curse?,  I think, awake at 5:06 am and noticing the quiet and that literally my only chance at alone “down” time is right now. The night is still outside and the stars, and the stillness. Every opportunity to get to see what the colors of the sunrise will be is always marvelous.  They are telling us that smoke from the wildfires should be making its way to our skies later today. I can see the haze over the mountains on my drive to work this morning. It's become a regular part of our weather here, a mini season I suppose, fire season. Pretty much the same time for the past few years. I did not handle it well the first couple times. Those were really bad fires with air that smelled burnt and ominous, and the sky was orange, like we lived on another planet now. Do we? I feel like a visitor. Are aliens even from another galaxy at all?  I started to believe it was possible that we'd never see blue or white clouds agai...

Luvvie Ajayi Jones It’s on my right knee. In the shape of a chicken’s foot, a lightning strike with three legs, and is a dirty purple color that to this day I claim is the gravel that was left inside and my skin grew over.   I must have been about 10 or 11, it was when we were living on Pryor Rd in the late 80’s and I was riding my ten speed through the neighborhood behind our house. It began to rain and I hurried too fast around a turn, spilling onto that super tiny almost soft (but actually little daggers) kind of dusty gravel. My knee was black and felt like it was burning. I made it home as fast as I could, crying through the house to find Mom. She administered first aid in her bedroom bathroom by pouring hydrogen peroxide generously over my bloody dirty knee and I felt so betrayed by that sizzling sting. Then Neosporin, then bandaid, then a summer-long scab that I thought my mom’s friend Marcia’s pool would heal. And no amount of dog licks worked either.  So, 35 years lat...

I need to be writing down the good days. It’s come to this. I need to keep track of this. Proof.  Sometimes the clouds part and the mirage fades/the fog burns off and I see a glimpse of things being okay. This weekend I woke up early and didn’t begrudge it, I *embraced* it. I made a giant breakfast of waffles with the new waffle maker I finally got around to buying, bacon, eggs, hashbrowns, fresh cut strawberries and blueberries. People ate as they got up from bed throughout the morning/afternoon. I napped. Found soccer cleats for Ivy at Play It Again Sports. She’s starting soccer this week and is all prepared now. Big relief.  Carter bought a new used car and needed help transporting the vehicles back and forth to Salem so we made a family trip of it and after we dropped him off where he needed to be, James, Luna, & Ivy and I hit up some stores for last minute school prep: Luna’s first Ulta trip (thankful to the gal helping us navigate the store & that she didn’t even...