It would be one thing if I were to say there’s no time. But that’s not the truth. I seem to find lots of stupid and inane things to do with my free time. But none of them involve writing. Which is, in truth, a terrible shame. Not because I’m such a great gift to the world and I’m depriving them of my genius. I have no delusions. But because it’s a good thing for me. Myself. My soul. It’s cathartic and comforting to write. It’s like being able to talk to a friend and that friend will only listen. They won’t judge. They won’t try to help. They won’t try to relate. This friend will simply listen and then you can vomit up great piles of emotional baggage and leave it there. Walk away. There is no guilt. It’s the way it’s supposed to be and that makes it okay.

I will also admit it hasn’t been fun around here, lately. Like most of the world I’m circling a drain of fear and dread. I’m afraid for my country and the world in general. I’m afraid of and for people who have reached their limit and that translates into horrible acts of violence and destruction. I’m afraid because it seems it’s happening more and more these days. People are reaching their limit.  There are so few signs of human kindness these days. It makes a body weary.

I’m so, so tired. I’m so tired of hearing about missing babies and mothers and daughters and sons. I’m sick of hearing about all the political screeching. I swear to God in his lofty heaven, they sound like a bunch of preschoolers in desperate need of a nap. I’m not kidding you. I know. I taught preschool. It’s the same thing. They’re all pissed off and pissed on and not getting their way and being greedy and petty and egocentric and it appears we’ve become complacent with it. Instead of saying enough of this bullshit, get your crap together and work it out or you’re going down for a long-assed nap, we’re the teacher who has reached her limit. She’s sneaked off to the coat closet for a nip of her flask and a brief moment of sanity in the dark silence — necessary evils to survive this mess. I can’t blame us. Kids will wear you down. It’s why I stopped teaching. The rewards feel highly inadequate when compared to the suffering. The difference is that it’s acceptable with kids. We expect them to be that way. It’s a part of the natural course of life. But politicians aren’t kids. They are supposed to be adults and we are supposed to be able to put our trust in them. Instead, Sarah Fucking Palin is a news item and she has a fucking reality show. A. REALITY. SHOW. This is where we are now? This is seriously how far we’ve come? We’ve evolved through the countless eons of time to become THAT? Seriously? Sarah “Punchline” Palin?? Words cannot honestly express how disappointing that is to me.

Closer to home, the boys have had health problems. I consider myself lucky that things weren’t worse. I have to keep telling myself it’s on the way up and we’ve seen the worst of it. For that, I am grateful. It still doesn’t completely erase the fear, but it certainly eases up a bit. Living with that constant fear and dread is draining. Moms aren’t tired because they spend their days working and cleaning and cooking and wearing a million different hats. Women are wired to push themselves toward those ends. Most of us thrive there. What exhausts us is the perpetual and debilitating weight we harness to our shoulders and drag behind us, kicking and screaming. Coming to terms with the impending adulthood and therefore, independence, of our children is no easy task. It’s the way life is meant to be and it’s well that it is. But the practice is nonetheless daunting and painful and fraught with peril. There is no guide book. No plan strong enough. They are forces of nature and they will blow a path of destruction in their wake. You will become persona non grate. You, the one who held them close in your lap, stroking their cheek, soothing them,  hair dripping with the vomit they just spewed over your shoulder. You, who tucked them in night after night, with a bedtime story and a song. You, who brought them safely from the womb to fifteen. You will be a stranger in your own child’s life. Or so one would believe. The reality is that they are growing up. Their world is getting bigger.  They love me just the same. Our relationship has just changed. It has taken me some time to accept that, but there it is. They no longer rely on me for their every need. They no longer need someone to hold their hand to cross their street. Metaphorically speaking. But still, the fear remains. It will always be there, I suspect. An unwelcome visitor in the house of my mind. But if they are to be happy, healthy, well-adjusted adults, we have to wade through all of this, first. In other words, they gotta learn. I gotta let them fall on their faces, if that’s the choice they make. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary. It’s time.

I lost a dear friend this week. He had been on my mind for months and I was dreading the arrival of the news. I tried to steel myself against it. I reached out to him, forced myself to talk to him instead of indulging the secret, scared part of me who wanted to avoid him at all costs. I told him how much I loved him. I repeated it almost to a degree of embarrassment. I just kept thinking he could be gone at any time. This might be it. This might be the last time, Kim! Tell him how much you love him! And then I started to worry that I was coming across as a loon-nut, so I stopped.

Then, he died.

I was pissed at first. Oh, Sweet Caroline, I was so pissed when I read the email from his wife. I was in the living room on my laptop when I read it. I tossed the laptop off my lap, across the couch, as though it had just morphed into a snake. I jumped up and walked into the kitchen. I stood at the island with my hands on my hips and I raged. I raged for 20 minutes straight. I walked circles around the island, an unholy ritual of rage and seething. I don’t even know who I was mad at. And I think that made me all the more mad, not knowing who to inflict that anger on, not knowing who to blame.

And then I stopped.

And then I cried.

I cried for him for the 200th time and felt so cheated and sad. I was sad for his wife. I was sad for his kids and his grand kids who he loved so damn much. I was sad for his friends who loved him dearly and I was sad for me. I felt selfish and small because my pain is not even equal to a drop in the bucket of sorrow his family must be swimming in. But mostly, I just felt sad.

That’s all there is. There’s no happy ending. There’s no big reveal in which I tell you it’s all okay, because, like, the lesson was there, man, and I totally learned it. There is no lesson. “People die” isn’t news. It’s not even interesting. It’s simply a fact and facts can’t be argued. And that makes it sadder still.

I will miss my friend. He was a gift to all who knew him and his absence will be felt to the core of us. I am just so happy to have known him, to have been able to share in some of his joy. I am so happy he chose me as a friend and I’m happy he is no longer suffering. I am happy that he was surrounded by people who loved him and made him happiest when he went. I am happy he once existed in the world. It was made a better place for it.

It’s hard to remember sometimes that there is so much beauty in the world. There are other people like my friend. They are out there. They make people happy just by being.  There are unspoiled wonders and breath taking moments of clarity.  There are real and good and true things. There are things that exist for no other reason than to entertain me. There is fresh air to breathe and a roof over my head. I am not hungry. I am not cold.  I am well. I love and I am loved.

It’s difficult to maintain perspective sometimes, so I hope it is to be forgiven, this self-indulgent whining. Most of the time, I get it right. All I can say is, I’m trying. I’ll get there. Be patient with me.

by Sharon Olds

When my mom was like nine, she thought that clowns were born that way and she was scared that when she had kids they would be born clowns. Years after telling us this she now says that she was right all along and had three clowns. But anyway, she thought that clowns were born with the white faces and red noses and big feet or something. But what i just realized is how funny it would be if clowns were actually born that way. And then the payoff, after the doctor shows the baby to the mother saying, “Congratulations, you’ve had a clown!” the doctor starts pulling on the umbilical cord like a handkerchief out of the mother’s uterus. And it keeps going and going. I dunno, maybe it’s because I’m drunk.

Yuk yuk yuk.

so when talking to a friend on the phone and they say, “oh, your blog was funny when you said so and so.” it always makes me stumble. first i stammer and blink hard about ten times. then i realize there’s been probably a full minute of silence and that’s awkward. blink. reset. then i make things worse by rushing to fill the silence. “oh you read that? ha. ha.” then i blush. hard. like, as in, you could hold a ripe tomato up to my face and you wouldn’t know where i end and the tomato begins. doesn’t matter if the entry they read was embarrassing or not, i still go red. just because i prefer pretending i’m all alone over here. it makes it easier to write. but also? i write some embarrassing stuff on here! sometimes. i mean, not always. i’m not crazy or anything. not totally. but sometimes i indulge in some things i probably shouldn’t say.

doesn’t mean i’ll stop. i’m just sayin’.

annnnyway. i’m not going anywhere with this. just thinking me thinks. you know, in case i happen to say something really humiliating. you’ll know and understand. i think i’m all alone over here. and, oh yeah, bg, this is for you:

also while surfing i decided to hit some sites i used to visit frequently, but no longer do because i just don’t have the time. or they bore me. or whatever. here’s the thing that struck me about that. they still bore me. i still don’t have the time. i don’t really know what led me there in the first place, but one of the things that used to sort of interest me (for lack of good content, i guess) was the blogroll. i was fascinated by who they linked to and why. i would click their links, following the trail of breadcrumbs to their natural conclusion to see if the original weblog owner had anything in common with these people they had chosen to link to or if it was simply networking, vanity, whatever. look, when you suffer long bouts of insomnia you get pretty desperate for something to pass the time. now, going back after a long break i find a few sites that have drastic changes in their blogroll. this makes a curious sort of person like me wonder. maybe i’m suspicious. maybe i’m nosy. maybe my boredom causes me to create scintillating and scandalous scenarios to relieve the tepid banality of surfing sites i’m not really interested in. for instance? i can’t tell you that! they might be looking right now! they’d be all like, “gah! you wicked girl! how dare you spill all our dirty secrets on the internet? the dirty secrets you learned about…on…the…uh, internet.” admittedly, it doesn’t make sense for them to get angry at me, but this is the internet and there are crazies on here. i don’t know if you know that or not. crazies on the internet are the worst sort of crazies. they’ll eff your ess word up, man.

listen to me. i sound awfully egotistical. like they’re even reading this. crazies or not. they certainly didn’t count *me* as a member of their blogroll, so i can’t say why i would even think for one minute that they would be here now.

—

you’re not are you?

—

(now, i’m kind of freaking out here. nobody move. i’ll tell you the truth: the internet scares me. lil bit.)

sorry. i get a little worked up sometimes. anyway, i’ve decided. i can’t give you specifics. but generally, i just wonder, you know?

like, maybe, generally speaking, say this guy had a pretty popular weblog. not like A-list, celebrity, self-indulgent, quit his day job and move to Hollywood popular, but, you know, a lot of hits a day and a minimum of fifty and as many as a hundred and fifty or more comments on each post; no matter how insipid and boring. big, long, healthy blogroll. say he was to meet a couple girls that were on his blogroll, a couple girls who had also linked to him from their sites. i’m not naming any names or anything. but say he did. and he blogged about it, the lead up to the meeting, how much he liked them, etc. and these girls also blogged about it and commented on his posts and vice versa until the cows come home. it was a great big tangled web of links and track backs and posts. everything seemed really, really, really h!a!p!p!y! for all of them. the guy, the girl, the other girl. they were all such great friends. according to the posts, the comments, the numbers. but NOW when i go to his site, both of their links are gone from his blogroll and his link is gone from theirs and his comments have dwindled to like, maybe ten. i don’t care. i mean, if i didn’t remember to check my stats once in a blue moon and went by comments alone you’d think anji was my only reader. so i know comments alone don’t mean anything. but still, something happened, yeah? if they aren’t going to tell me — and believe me, i looked. i realize i’ve not been to the site in probably a year so i had a LOT of archives to go through — then i’m simply going to have to fill in the blanks myself. and those blanks are not going to be pretty after i’m done filling them in, let me tell ya. because i likes me a good juicy scandal when i’m bored. i mean, generally speaking, of course. something happened at that meeting, i betcha. something went terribly awry that cause bad blood and now he’s odd man out. off the blogrolls. no longer the golden child of the interweb. no one will comment on you now, buddy! we’ll ruin you! it’s so seedy and delicious! too bad i don’t know the details. it would make his site so much more interesting.

btw, the people on my links list? they’re there because they interest me and i like reading them and i passionately feel as though the best way to live life is to force my preferences on people around me. it makes me happy. if one of those links should happen to disappear it’s probably because we had a mad, torrid love affair in which a lot of lube and probably a small animal or three was involved. also: drugs. and possibly a blade, masking tape, rope and some sort of vinyl. you can bet on that. it gets awkward after that. too awkward to maintain a “blog” relationship.

either that or they decided not to blog anymore so i was literally forced to remove their link. but that first thing sounds like so much more fun.

and finally: i have a confession to make: apparently, i’m quite stupid. and not very observant. but i won’t go backwards. i’ll own what i’ve done. something FINALLY dawned on me today. speaking of blogrolls on boring sites, i was looking at my own links list today and i visited Trouble‘s site again to see if he was back yet. i finally saw what i apparently missed for the last eight months. he posted back in freaking August saying he was moving house and i actually commented saying i wouldn’t help him because blahblahblah. i don’t know. i tried to say something clever. but okay, here’s the stupid thing. i thought he was being literal. i missed the line above that saying he was moving his site to WordPress. which, good for him. i’ve been using WP for a few years now and i love it. but i feel like the biggest moron on the planet because every time i went to check to see if he updated yet i saw that the post was the same and navigated away, still missing the link to his new site. i did wonder what was up. i wondered if he was ever coming back. i refused to take his link down. the last link i had to remove from my list didn’t come down until the 404 error message finally came up, assuring me that he wasn’t coming back to post. never, ever. there was no such message on trouble’s page. hope springs eternal.

it wasn’t until today that i actually paused half a second longer before closing the window that i saw it. so i admit it. i’m a maroon. but hooray! trouble is back! and he has a new site! sort of. i mean, he didn’t actually GO anywhere and the new site has been around since August. but it’s new to me. and now i have a LOT of reading to catch up on. and i should probably get my brain looked at it. it’s clearly leaking cells at an alarmingly rapid rate. : /

the men all have riding mowers or tractors. the heavy duty types because we’re not talking about sissy lawns here. i’ve got nearly three acres of land with grass so high i was afraid to let kaileb outside to play for fear of losing him. so two of my male neighbors decided what with me being a single mom and everything they were going to come over and “tend to that lawn” of mine today.

which, you know, was awfully nice. and i don’t mean that in a pervy way. the tending to the lawn thing. in case you were thinking that. because, when i reread it, that’s the first thing *i* thought of.

i’m just not used to all this country living yet, i guess. i still have a hard time just letting the boys run all over the countryside building forts in the backforty with all the neighbor’s kids. i can’t get used to the idea that sometimes they’ll be running around with a squirt gun and sometimes it’ll be a bow. as in a bow and arrow. with actual arrows. and they’ll be shooting bales of hay. did i mention they’ll be using actual arrows?

sometimes they’ll be riding their bikes around in circles in someone’s pasture. but sometimes they’ll be riding their bikes in someone’s pasture doing “mega-wicked cool” jumps and tricks off this mound of dirt someone just had delivered. this 9 million feet of dirt. and when they come home i have to hose them down with the garden hose to a) allow them to walk through the house to the shower and b) make sure i’ve got the right kid.

all this is well and good. i did the same kind of stuff when i was growing up in south carolina. i was a tomgirl who scraped my knees on a regular basis and shot cans off the fence with a twenty two. i can hardly expect two growing boys to sit at home and play with dolls. i wouldn’t want them to. it’s just that we went from a small two bedroom duplex in the city where no one ever spoke to us or even acknowledged our existence, to a spacious three bedroom on three acres in the country where the entire street knows our name. which is odd considering in the city we were all slammed right up against each other. you could throw a rock in any direction and hit someone’s front door. but out here you have to walk a good bit just to be able to see the front porch of your nearest neighbor. so the logic escapes me. it takes some getting used to, this familiarity.

so the guys come over today, unannounced with their tractor and their weedeater and their beer and they just proclaim that we will be doing some yard work. what could i do? the lawn was beginning to take on a life of its own and i had no other options. it was the first decent weather we had had in a while and they were offering to do it for free. so i put my back into it and started working. work, i don’t mind. we worked until the sun went down. the boys ran back and forth between our house and the neighbors and i adjusted to being told what to do by a sweaty man on a tractor who was neither my father nor my lover.

however.

as i was going through the yard picking up toys hidden in the grass discarded by poe and/or the boys my neighbor climbs off the tractor and goes over in between two trees, opens his fly, and PEES. (!!!!) he peed on my tree. what does THAT mean? was he marking his territory? did he just have to go really bad? was it the beer? was he sweaty and dirty and didn’t want to trouble me by asking to use my restroom? was he staking a claim? what the helen of troy was that all about?

it’s not that i’m a prude. i’m not. not by any stretch of the imagination. urinate all you want. urinate until the cows come home. i’m not even that concerned about a semi-strange man whipping his cock out in front of me. i’ve seen them before. they’re nothing to write home about. but come on. i tried to avert my eyes. i turned and starting walking the other way. i pretended to be looking for rocks and general what-have-you in the other direction. i know that he knows that i knew. he didn’t seem that fussed about it. just got back on his tractor and started mowing again.

okay. so this is the thing: i decided i don’t care. the three acres? they look great. all around the house is beautiful and back to being ship-shape and lush and green and i got some great tips for the garden. i could have paid someone to come out and do it for me. but it would have cost an arm and a leg and it feels like cheating. these guys came over and helped me do it for free and all it cost me was a …well i had to let him pee on my tree and do what they told me for a few hours. it’s my land, my responsibility. so i guess if i’m going to be a grown up i have to pick my battles.

to be sure this never would have happened in the city.

also: people kind of remind me of shiny new toys. when you first get them they’re all exciting and fun to look at and explore. but after you examine it a little further and discover the chips and tarnished surface, you’re horribly disappointed. and sometimes you love the toy anyway because it’s a wicked cool toy and it’s yours and you love it in spite of all its flaws.

but sometimes those flaws, when the rosey glow of newness wears off, when the chinks in the armor begin to manifest, those flaws make you think twice about that person toy and you just want to get as far away from it as you possibly can and never ever play with it again.

you know, just saying.