Lately

You ever just feel like you don't have anything interesting to say? Like the whimsy and clever are gone and you're just going through cobwebs? Like your life has taken a turn for the irritating if not mundane? Gray minutia.

The good stuff is so good I don't know how to describe it. The curve of Magnus's mouth as he whispers his new consonent secrets. The kicking when he's excited. The giggles. Soooo good. But who wants to read about my vast love for my child and his every new move. (with the exception of this new screaming, shrieking noise he's making. That I could really live without.)

Then there's the hard stuff. Adjusting to my mom living across the street and how busy life has gotten with her moving. She's had pneumonia lately, so that's been unpleasant. She's on the mend now but its a long road. There's the neighbors. Its horrible sharing walls with people who are violent. Who want to hurt each other. Who want to hurt you. Want bad things. It makes me want bad things to happen to them. I'm usually good at dismissing the toxic folks from my life. Strangely never being around where they are at a party, always in another room, smile, shake hands, nice to see you, and I'm back to being engrossed in a conversation elsewhere. But you can't get away when they share your walls. How do you keep their ick out of your soul?

We moved Magnus's room farther from the shared wall. I was really sad about it at first. I spent all this time sitting in the rocking chair in his room when I was pregnant. It was my time with him before I even knew it was him. I rocked and thought about each detail- where things would hang, where shoes and diapers and thermometers should go, what our futures would be. Ready him children's books and felt him MOVE. It felt like a small, sad, little loss to move him at first. But the distance of one room feels different when I put him to bed at night. Like there's a bigger buffer between us and them. Like his space won't become theirs. Their ick won't leak onto his solace, his learning, his loving, his secure little corner.