Wrap your head with this material...

 Me standing in front of the high school admin assistant: It feels like there's something in my shoe. Me: Probably there is  something in my shoe. Me: (takes shoe off and checks) It is a tiny piece of dog food. Awesome, I love when I do something like this in front of another person. Admin Assistant: I'm surprised the dog didn't eat the shoe Me: Me too What I didn't say is that I'm surprised I walked around on a piece of dog food for the last 2 hours. Or am I?

At bedtime last night, my 10 year-old asked me to stay extra long in his room. He was teary and said he couldn't stop thinking about dying. He couldn't stop thinking that, at the end of his life, he'd feel like it had all gone by so fast that when he died it would all mean nothing. Can you imagine? 10 years old. Full existential crisis. So I held him and stayed extra long. I could tell you the things I said to him, and they were good and they helped. But the truth is, he's got a point. It's one that I don't subscribe to, but I do think his observations are astute and more well-reasoned than a 10-year-old should have to face. His view is a fair one albeit bleak. And the idea that he grapples with it definitely put a large crack in my heart last night.

 Monday I went to pick up our mail at the post office. The postal worker was blocking the path to my box with a giant blue roller bin of packages she was putting into the center aisle lockers so I joked, "if that's blocking the path to my box, does that mean I get a ride in it?" She popped up from behind it and smiled, rolling it out of my way. "I don't see why not," she joked back. I grabbed my mail then looked at the roller bin, looked at her, looked at the roller bin, and jumped on. She pushed me to the end of the aisle and stopped. I giggled away, running into someone I work with on the way to the line to retrieve packages. "Who says the post office can't be fun?"

 I used to always think the best thing I had to offer was fun. I'm a shitton of fun. During quarantine, I had students make sock puppets and do a lipsynch battle. I once let my kids sit on the roof of the car while I pulled up the driveway. I sing loud even at stoplights with the windows down. I am always thinking of games, texting funny pictures, saying weird stuff to make people laugh. I make myself happy nearly every day with silliness. But once when I said that was the best thing I have to offer, my husband disagreed. I didn't know what to make of it. I thought he was wrong. I was kinda mad actually. Why didn't he think the best thing about me was the best thing about me? Maybe he didn't get me.  But more than a year later, I don't think that's it at all. I'm not actually sure what he thinks it is and I'm still not sure if he's right. The fun part is pretty uniquely me and I really like it about myself. But maybe the fun part is the part that...

At the end of the first day of school, I was in a 2nd grade classroom where the teacher asked each child "What makes you shine, what makes you glow, what makes you special, what makes you unique?" One kid yells out, "I was born with a tail."

One of my sons sprained his wrist, the other broke his. One cast. One brace. I nearly cried about the lost swimming time at the end of the summer. We haven't even been to Waterworld yet! Unheard of. I bet my son ice cream that he wouldn't need a cast. I knew he probably would. I didn't want to win a bet so much as to cushion the frustrations and disappointments of spending the rest of summer in a cast. And let's be honest, I wanted to go out for ice cream. Win, win. He wasn't even all that upset in the end. He said that at least we still get to spend time together and at least we spent so much time on the river earlier in the summer and that it's really not so bad. He's usually the reactive one and I'm usually the positive sweep. I'm proud that there's nothing wrong with his broom. We also bought them Nintendo Sports to play with one hand. It's really pretty fun. Especially once my younger son figured out that he could take it outside and pla...

I wonder about the capillary action of our lives, which actions taken in small micromotions that move a nutrient or two here or there add up to be an entire system of goodness delivery. Noticing the house finch's shadow when it passes, feeling the pellets of cold rain on your face and running anyway, the wink at a bored toddler in her stroller, the moment to squeal about a former coworker's baby instead of saying you have a meeting. The way the feeling of participation is like the blood flow that travels into our tissues, simply diffusing itself into smaller and smaller pathways. Connecting our tissues to each other. It is in actions. Is it these small ones?  I judge people on whether they pick up trash as they walk or if they look at it, and choose to leave it. Though perhaps judge isn't the word. I judge outright littering. But picking up the litter of others, I notice. The people who never litter, who pick things up and put them away even when they don't have to, it...

 Yesterday while pumping up watercraft to go paddling, my husband pointed out a girl on a inner tube box and was like, "When I was 9, I would've been like, "I hope she's gonna teach me how to swim.""  I wondered if our 10 year old liked girls and my husband was like, "he sure isn't going to tell us if he does, but probably." Taking matters into my own dumb voice, I was like, "hey, do you get all nervous and excited and like girls like the girl on this box?" He mostly avoided eye contact or glared so I further clarified, "I mean, I'm just curious if you like girls, you know, like, like them-like them?" And he goes, "your curiosities are my insecurities." 

 Theoretically, you can cook a chicken by slapping it. Yes, my 10 year-old started me down an internet rabbit hole looking into that and it turns out to be true. 

 I'm always trying to remember to be awesome, to do awesome things. The main awesome thing I do regularly is ski. But I come up with other ideas too and some of them I even do.  Today the kids and I went and picked out pictures from the thrift store we planned to paint partly over or ink marker into our own designs. One kid picked a leopard lounging and made the background the word "hug" repeated in various shades of purple all over.  My other son picked out a watercolor of teddy bears he intended to makeover as creepy bears. It's been a pretty fun afternoon of it. Alcohol ink and markers everywhere. I drag a waterproof mattress pad over the table for this kind of activity and there's something about spreading out ideas on the large, protected table that gives me a sense of plenty. And it's less about the product and more about carrying out an idea. In my very long dryspell of not writing much, and publishing exactly nothing, I'm finding a creative lifelin...

 We went to St. Louis. While in St. Louis, we stayed at a variety of family and friends' houses but set up our primary base at Rob's parents' house. One night when we were going to stay at our friend's house, I told the kids to pack overnight bags.  Upon arrival one kid goes, "Did you grab my bag?"  And I was like, what the hell? No. Why didn't you get your bag? Why would you think I should grab your bag? You are plenty old enough to both pack and carry a plastic bag of clothes?  And then the other kid goes, "Oh, I didn't pack a bag." WHAT?! "I didn't have any clean clothes so I just didn't pack one." "But...toothbrush and also YOUR CLEAN CLOTHES THAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT WERE IN A LAUNDRY BASKET FOLDED AT YOUR STUPIDLY PRIVILEGED FEET!"  Okay, that's not exactly what I said. But I thought something like it.  One of the idiot-genius offspring of mine in the previous story also once arrived to the hot springs weari...

Do you sometimes forget to kick ass? Like it's supposed to be riding a bike and you're supposed to just get on there and ride around like it's nothing but you--unlike everyone else in the adage, who say it's-like-riding-a-bike--have somehow forgotten how the bike works and are scared now? Ahem, me neither. We moved and I hadn't done that in a lot, a lot of years. The last time I did it, I made friends instantly and am still friends with a fair number of those people. It was also before I got married and before I had kids. Bizarrely, I still feel like fundamentally the same person. I still light up about snow and just about die of excitement about a powder day. I jam out to music and dance too vigorously at red lights. I haven't stopped playing board games and liking puzzles. An aside: the Spanish word for puzzles, "rumpecabezas," means broken head. Like, the idea was hard and my head broke. Spanish is so awesome. For comparison, the German concept peo...

There’s a rhythm to the seasons that I’ve gotten used to over the years. When I crest a mountain trail in late September, the leaves are just a smidge past their prime, the brush is burnt orange and desiccating and my hair is the dried grass, my eyes the crisp of a blue autumn sky. I am in-step with this life’s rhythm.  Having moved, further away, to a lower altitude, I miss the timing by a quarter of a step. Fifteen or 20 days off, I am left nostalgic for other falls when I crested the same hill I have for 8 or 10 or 15 years. Missing the familiar way it caught my eye and inspired my heart. Yet it weighed me down too. I couldn’t keep doing the same things over and over again. So I moved on. Reminded myself of my gypsy-soul and how I’ve always yearned to keep my feet moving, keep living new places, breathing new scents, seeing new wildlife, drinking in new vistas. Stagnating so long in one beautiful place, I have forgotten the fearlessness of new places, the exhilaration of chasin...

 Gavin got his adenoids out today. When the wooo-whoo meds hit, I was like, "Gavin, you're going to tell me all your secrets now," as a joke. He had that misty, dazed look and goes, "I'm gonna tell you my deepest darkest secret." He pauses for dramatic effect and then whispers, "I like turtles."

Sometimes when I want to read, I can't. I fill with distaste and disdain for each book I pick up, because none of it is Maya Angelou, or Toni Morrison, or the literary meal I need to sate my soul's craving for meaning and a cosmic guide for that moment in life. The problem with the book I’m reading isn’t the story. It’s the problem of my living. The rote nature of it. The sentences– simple declaratives, the tasks –things that get struck from a list, done and redone. Remember? See it? Done. Life. Life is not merely written down like any other list of things not to be forgotten, but witnessed so never forgotten  even after memory failed to hit record,  because a day was witnessed at its onset is the answer. It’s the lack of feeling mornings, not the story of what happened. The lack of witnessing. Mornings, that time of awakening at t he birth of the world watch an egret’s legs in water, slender limbs glistening beneath a cool tide pool surface barely moved in the stillness of a ...

Rob was talking about how a presenter at a conference he was at hadn't seen him until she was mid-slide. She interrupted her presentation and said, "Hi Rob. You still look young even with the gray hair." The kids picked up the rope and Gavin argued, "Mom looks way younger than Dad." Magnus whispered, "she has more wrinkles though." "That's cuz she smiles  more, no offense Dad." I've always known I'd have great laugh lines because I smile a lot. And now I do.

Rumi said to treat each morning like a new arrival to ourselves as if we are a guest house . A day may bring darkness that sweeps us of our furniture and destroys parts but doing so makes room for another guest. Another morning.  I wonder if we treated this life like a Meow Wolf exhibit imbued with fervent curiosity, would that work just as well? Here wonders expand us and allow our minds to be at once separate yet converging on a moment of experience.  You are here.  I will die.  We are here.  We will cry.  Not denying the fear of death/misfortune/endings but not avoiding either.  Enthusiasm and curiosity, a drive to see and touch and feel the bright colors drives forward. It all compels you too. Forward from room to room. Open the sky.  Treat each moment like an experience that has a place and allow it to expand us, to be curious about it. Where does regret live in my body? Does it have weight or zip? Tendrils or a forcefield? How does it vibrat...

 For Christmas, I found my first silver hair, then more and more and more of them. They're hard to detect in the ash blonde surrounding them, but they're there. I saw them in the fluorescent hotel bathroom in Mexico. I have two reactions. I am elated at the idea of winning the hair lottery with first a beautiful color of blonde hair followed by the best color of gray.  And I am thrown by the idea of not being blonde and the way it chucks my identity around like I've just found myself in a rock tumbler. 10 years is what it takes to go gray. 10 years bouncing around, aging to old.  What if you don't recognize me or think I'm beautiful anymore? What if it means you don't know me? And the most bizarre is the idea that I don't know this self I am set to become. I'm the person who still jumps off cliffs and dances and blares music.  How do I reconcile that concept of self with a silver haired woman? I'm not cute and quiet and docile. I don't bake cooki...

 We're in Mexico. The kids are watching TV. "Is that a soap opera?" "No, it's The Smurfs!"  

 I'm writing again and it's good to be in another world in my mind. I build it from scraps that interest me. A sound wave I ride into another 3D world created by sounds themselves.  Climb a tree with giant knots and consider how your foot fits into its crooks and know the reds in its bark even though you never left the library. I smell the cedar.  Anywhere's exactly where I needed to be for the story to come free. Sometimes I hunt factoids and digest them instead of weaving them in. Sometimes, I put them in a box to save for wrapping up just right in story and language. Tissue paper placed just so, box-lid laid down slow. And don't forget the bow. This tale I'm weaving is becoming a scarf over my head protecting me from thinking too much about the unraveling world around me. I will pull you in, give you a cup of hot story tea, and you'll drink down the magic wending its way through these threads. I have lost myself entirely here and good riddance too. Attachment...