365 | I wish I had a river I could skate away on

027/365 | Sunday 1 December 2019, Work - I work with Christmas people. I don't know how to feel about Christmas. This time of year I waffle between being Sandra Bullock slumped over a counter, separated from humanity by a plexiglass window, wearing a stocking cap and fingerless gloves, counting change apathetically and Meg Ryan decorating her tree alone, listening to sad Joni Mitchell songs and thinking of her dead mother and failing business.

028/365 | Monday 2 December 2019, Cary - This pizza gave me a bellyache so I left the last slice as an offering to the Kids Together Playground squirrels (who have lion heads only figuratively).

029/365 | Tuesday 3 December 2019, Work - Communicating with ease, directness, humor, and aplomb today. It is Day 28 of my cycle. I often feel that the days leading up to my bleed I am at my sharpest, moving through my own life like a blade.

030/365 | Wednesday 4 December 2019, Grandma's House - I believe Entenmann's "rich frosted" chocolate donuts are the greatest donuts in existence. Mads almost agrees with me but says the Duck Donuts maple bacon "kill the chocolate ones dead."

031/365 | Thursday 5 December 2019, Bond Park - A hike with some of the homeschool group today. We started out at the back of the group but somehow ended up at the front with most of the older kids (over 10s). As Mads and the other kids stood off the trail at the water's edge, tossing rocks and examining mussels, Wolfman stood above them, dad-ing (reminding them not to throw rocks bigger than their fists and to aim carefully, guiding them, complimenting them). He can't help himself. He's been dad-ing since he was just a kid, himself.

032/365 | Friday 6 December 2019 - Photo by Mads

033/365 - Saturday 7 December 2019, Work - Santa Paws Day is like our Rex Manning Day.

034/365 | Sunday 8 December 2019, Work - Special delivery of assless chaps for Shamble Pill. I did my training for this company in early spring (2017), and one of the employees referred to the upcoming Easter holiday as "Zombie Jesus Day." I knew I'd fit in just fine.

035/365 | Monday 9 December 2019, Grandma's house - My new morning routine living at Grandma's house includes turning on the kitchen faucet for this running-water-obsessed cat, Billie Holliday. She may die of thirst when Mads and I leave for our new house in January.

036/365 | Tuesday 10 December 2019, Grandma's house - The dolls are not what they seem.

037/365 | Wednesday 11 December 2019, Cary - A teenage girl at the downtown fountain offered to take a picture of us. I wasn't sure she'd ever used an old point-and-shoot camera like mine, but she managed one perfect picture which I'll send out with my Christmas cards this year. It took until December 11th, but I'm finally feeling kind of festive, or at least less outright ba-humbuggy.

038/365 | Thursday 12 December 2019, Grandma's house - Ludo tried to leave with Wolfman, Mads, and me this afternoon. He has a bad habit of trying to hop into cars and go for rides if we let the doors linger open too long in the drive way. Wolfman carried him away, into the yard, and whispered a secret in his ear. I think I know what the secret is, but I won't say it out loud.

039/365 | Friday 13 December 2019, Apex - These two are a planet until themselves, and I am a satellite, circling them, admiring them.

040/365 | Saturday 14 December 2019 - This Fittonia has been with me since April of this year (my only pink plant). It survived two moves and then nearly perished from neglect when I forgot about it in the window of an upstairs bedroom at Grandma's house. I thought it was surely dead but soaked it in the bathroom sink, with many apologies and laments and curses against myself. And here it is, a couple days after its long drink, very much alive and very forgiving.

365 | well I'll be damned

014/365 | Monday 18 November 2019, Grandma's 72nd Birthday - He Who Kept Me Up All Night, Yowling and Rattling Doors

015/365 | Tuesday 19 November 2019, Cary - This flight suit was packed away with clothes too big for Mads. Only, clearly, the jumpsuit isn't too big for Mads; it is, in fact, just a touch too small. The realization that my baby isn't a Small anymore but a Medium hit me hard.

016/365 | Wednesday 20 November 2019, Doc Holliday & the Furbies, Grandma's house - Even for my grandparents the impeachment hearings have lost their draw. Grandpa switches channels, flipping from Fox News to Midsommer Murders on PBS.

017/365 | Thursday 21 November 2019, Cary Towne Center - Currently Reading: Free to Learn by Peter Gray. "The things children learn through their own initiatives, in free play, cannot be taught in other ways."

018/365 | Friday 22 November 2019, Apex - Mads sings, "Mommies are the worst!" at the tail end of our walk because I will not carry him. "You don't know what it's like to be me," he says, philosophically, angrily.

019/365| Saturday 23 November 2019, Cary - I'm on the phone with Wolfman, my love. I remind him, we survived that first rocky year of marriage and that first tormented, sleepless year with a new born. I say, for my own benefit more than his, if we can survive our failed attempt at off-grid living and this subsequent two-month separation while we get our ducks in a row, we'll die old together. He doesn't want to die old, but I insist on it.

020/365 | Sunday 24 November 2019 - Kath writes of her grandmother-in-law, "She does that thing some older women (I guess, really, some of all women) do where they always seem to be apologizing for their presence and existence while also refusing to stop adamantly loving/worrying about you." This describes my own grandmother, too. I always have to remind myself when I'm feeling oppressed by her worry that this is a privelege, a blessing, to be loved and worried over.

021/365 | Monday 25 November 2019 - Kombucha is the closest thing to drinking a beer at work. I drink a lot of kombucha at work.

022/365 | Tuesday 26 November 2019 - Wolfman Was Here.

023/365 | Wednesday 27 November 2019 - I like watching movies about women with Type A personalities. I find the idea of a woman having her shit together--even if the point the movie tries to make is that her rigidity is a personality flaw and must be remedied by some roguish man with a big dick (probably)--aspirational. 

024/365 | Thursday 28 November 2019, Thanksgiving - My little brothers, Jordan and Josh, stopped by the house today. I can't get over how grown up they are. (Josh has a mustache.) They showed me a picture of our little sister, Savannah--now a teenager; the last time I saw her she was barely in elementary school. She looks so much like our mother now, I gasped. Grandpa looked at the photo and said, "Well I'll be damned."

025/365 | Friday 29 November 2019 - Here was our Thanksgiving menu: turkey (by Wolfman), stuffing (Grandma's recipe), collards (Wolfman's recipe), Michelle's cranberry sauce, canned cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes & gravy (by Grandma), broccoli casserole (for Grandpa), green bean casserole (for Wolfman), beer bread, deviled eggs, pumpkin pie (which I forgot to add the evaporated milk to, but it turned out just fine).

026/365 | Saturday 30 November 2019, Cary - New ballet slippers for Mads & Ella. They both wear a size 12, Mads a wide, Ella a narrow.

365 | talking and cooking biscuits and getting drunk on the porch

007/365 | Monday 11 November 2019, Cary - Early to work today, so I get to take a walk and admire the leaf show. Autumn doesn't properly start in North Carolina until November, but it is glorious (perhaps because so short-lived).

008/365 | Tuesday 12 November 2019 - Discovered today that the CD player in my little Ford Ranger works perfectly. I love this little truck; it is the little truck I was always meant to have. I call him Gus after Augustus McRae. I once had a cat named Woodrow Call. Now I have a truck named Gus.

009/365 | Wednesday 12 November 2019 - Grandma's house is like a Museum of Childhood--my childhood, my son's, my niece's.

010/365 | Thursday 14 November 2019, Cary - I read an article in the paper about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for the death of his son, involuntary manslaughter; the boy died of blunt-force trauma to his stomach. I cried. Dismissed myself from the kitchen and cried for that little boy while Jared sat on the kitchen floor with our son, the two of them playing with plastic dinosaurs.

011/365 | Friday 15 November 2019, Wake Zone, Apex - My world on Friday mornings is this dog and this boy. Nothing else exists but these two.

012/365 - Saturday 16 November 2019, Cary - Peter Gray's 7 Sins of Compulsive Schooling: 1. Denial of liberty without just cause or due process 2. Interference with the development of personal responsibility and self-direction 3. Undermining of intrinsic motivation to learn 4. Judging students in ways that foster shame, hubris, cynicism, and cheating 5. Interference with the development of cooperation and promotion of bullying. 6. Inhibition of critical thinking. 7. Reduction in diversity of skills and knowledge.

013/365 | Sunday 17 November 2019 - I blew off a customer to flirt shamelessly with my husband. I'm liking these little visits Wolfman's paying me at work. (Did I mention how handsome he is?)

365 | the most ridiculous thing

001/365 | Tuesday 5 November 2019, Prowlandia - It is Day 33 of my cycle. My bleed is imminent, and I am feeling fragile and on edge. Reminding myself to be gentle, to be soft--with myself, with others. A quiet day. A few moments of tears springing to my eyes for no real reason except Day 33-ness.

002/365 | Wednesday 6 November 2019, Prowlandia - Though Mads rides a bike sans training wheels at Grandma's house, he's convinced himself that his Batman bike is too heavy to ride without them. So, when one training wheel rattles off on our morning walk/ride, he is thrown into crisis mode. I tell him: "Look, I know it sucks to be forced to do something before you think you're ready. It so completely sucks. Believe me, I know--that's all adulthood is, bud. You just have to get on your bike and ride. Maybe it will be hard. Maybe it won't." I walk his bike for him and give him some space and time to wail and rant and then, soon enough, he's riding.

003/365 | Thursday 7 November 2019, NCMA - "Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing." - Frida Kahlo 

004/365 | Friday 8 November 2019, Wake Zone, Apex - A woman approached us before we'd settled at the cafe, and Attie attempted to greet her in the enthusiastic Attie way (i.e. knocking her down to slime her with a film of kisses and love nips). I held her harness tight, foiling her efforts. "She's in training," I told the woman. "Training for what?" she asked. "To be a good girl," I said.

005/365 | Saturday 9 November 2019, Phydeaux, Cary - Grandma asks me out of the blue, "Are you still crazy about your husband?" I feel myself grin and blush. I gush, "Yes! When he walked in the door last night, after a day of not seeing him, I was knocked over by how handsome he is. I couldn't take my eyes off him." Grandma says, "He is handsome, but there's something else..." And I know what she means. It's the something else that counts.

006/365 | Sunday 10 November 2019 - I knew when I prepped November in my daybook (read: bullet journal) that I'd run out of pages before the month was out. Daybook Volume 4 has covered the shortest time span of any daybook yet. I think Ryder Carroll would say I'm doing it right.

Julie & Michelle (& Julia) & Meat & Trailers

In the course of our marriage (10 years) Wolfman and I have done a lot of talk about living adventurously, about making our life together as a made thing, building it in our hands, together, making something. We've talked of WWOOFing in New Zealand or Norway. We've talked of living in a yurt in the Appalachians. We've talked of opening a cafe/herb shop called NAME REDACTED (as in, I don't want to share the name because we haven't given up on that dream, not that the cafe would be called, in all caps, NAME REDACTED).

None of these projects have come to fruition; none have even come close to happening. These have just been dreams we've woven together, aloud, over coffee in the morning, laying together in bed at night. We are dreamers, but too practical and poor. We've loved and made a baby, that magnificent creature who fills and defines our lives, but with the exception of our odd senses of style and creepy, demonic laughs, we've lived a pretty conventional life. We've settled in (what became) Money Magazine's Best Place to Live 2015, worked hard to pay bills and with whatever energy and money we had left over after the working and bills, made haphazard attempts at celebrating our life.

I'm reading Julie Powell lately, poor much-maligned Julie Powell. I finished Julie & Julia (while also watching Julia Child videos on Youtube with my husband and son) a few weeks ago and am now reading her follow-up, Cleaving. Julie Powell is a messy gal, about which she is not shy in admitting and not particularly apologetic. And I don't mean she is messy in that self-deprecating way we're trained to believe will make us more likable and relatable; she is messy in the nitty gritty way that is answered in horrified and disgusted Goodreads reviews. Despite all this, despite even the painful extramarital affair which makes up the bulk of her second book, I can't help but feel Julie Powell is a kindred spirit. I admire her. Yes, following Faith Lehane's "Want. Take. Have." as a personal, life-long, mantra is ultimately not the best way to live (wasn't this the lesson Faith had to learn on Buffy and Angel over and over again?). But, I recognize the impulse to shake up your life, to do something that gives it meaning, and I admire Julie Powell's ability to follow through.

I never worked on a sheep farm in Norway, can barely even picture what that life might have been like. I never built a yurt in the Blue Ridge mountains. I never traveled. I never wrote. I've got all the dreams in my pocket, but I lack follow through. (I cry when I hear Kermit sing "Rainbow Connection," the INFP theme song.) I never get further in these fantasy lives than scribbling in my journal some version of the thing and a "wouldn't that be neat?," "if only."

In Julie & Julia, Julie writes of how perplexed family and friends were as she tortured herself torturing lobsters and roaming the city in search of offal. Why? Why do this thing? And why force yourself to do it in only a year? Why make things hard on yourself? Well, writes Julie, it has less to do with the readers of her blog (though she does cite them) and more with the need to DO SOMETHING, to not resign herself to a humdrum little existence but to shake things up, to give herself a challenge and to discover herself through that self-inflicted adversity and strain. If she didn't do this, if she didn't complete it, if she gave up--who would she be,what would she be? Nobody. Nothing. And, of course, this isn't true. She'd still be Julie Powell, wife and cat mom and doer of the things in her life she did do, but I wouldn't be writing about her now, would I?

And, again, a couple years later, after she'd written a book of her first challenge, after she'd turned the frustration and panic and maggots in her kitchen into a bonafide success, she took on yet another pipe dream--she became an apprentice at a butcher shop. She learned the craft of boucherie for no other reason than that it had always interested and intimidated her and she was bedeviled by the desire to not settle into the status quo.

All I do is settle into the status quo. It is my great burden and my darkest shadow, this incapacitation--which has all kinds of roots and stems and knots which are long and, frankly, boring, and which I will not get into here. But, take it from me, I am a classic settler, with the briefest moments of inspired, spasmodic kicks against the cage I build myself (I married that good-looking man, after all, and we made this beautiful baby together).

Prowlandia is my Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Tiny Living is my boucherie and charcuterie. And, let me tell you, if you were reading this in my memoir or watching a movie version of this starring a more adorable version of me, Mila Kunis or Amanda Seyfried maybe (oh I flatter myself), you would be saying to yourself "why is she complaining so much, what a whiny drag, even Mila Kunis can't make here likable," and I am sorry/not sorry about that. Unraveling the status quo you've quilted around yourself like a protective cocoon is hard fucking work. I am in the midst of deprogramming a lot of fearful bullshit from my mind that I've been carrying for far too long. And, also, living in a tiny home with a man, a boy, an 80 pound meathead dog, and a cat who just MUST eat at 5 in the morning is hard, even if it's a life you've chosen for yourself, and turning a dusty lot filled with broken glass and, probably, ticks into a Wolfpeople utopia is hard fucking work, too. I'm dealing with some stuff. It's hard. But, I'm doing it. Wolfman and I are making something, with our hands, together, and it sucks, and it's glorious.

Boredom and Frustration in Prowlandia

My dishware and kitchen appliances have been culled (in a haphazard Konmari that probably cannot even be called that--both practicality and joy were consulted in the weeding), and yet I stand in the narrow dinette of our tiny home, Prowler, looking into my blissfully open cabinetry (the heavy mirrored doors were the first thing to go--I broke one in the grass as I tossed it out of the trailer in my haste to be rid of them and then continued to walk the yard barefoot all summer, forgetfully pushing my luck), defeated. I've always wanted open cabinetry in my kitchen, and here it is. The only thing keeping my grandmother from flipping her lid over the tiny home is that I've been talking about it for years, and here it is.

But, it's tiny.

What looked like generous-to-the-point-of-unfairness (like the game was rigged for us) storage when Prowler was empty I now realized, in this moment, was shit. How am I going to fit all our stuff in here? Meanwhile Wolfman is outside in the sticky heat building a makeshift fence, alone, and I feel guilty and frivolous for focusing on how this open cabinetry will look (because it is the first thing we will see when we arrive home). I think--has Instagram and Pinterest mashed my brain to useless goop? But then I think, no, this is important; I'm making a home, not just a place to sleep and fart. And then my little guy--one of the people I'm making this home for (the VIP, actually) interrupts my furrowed brow with his need.

He's bored. He wants me to play with him---the make-believe game where his cousin's Rapunzel doll (that's me) doesn't realize the new airplane she just bought is actually a Transformer (him) and then, eventually, after the shock and confusion are settled, they must work together to defeat Darth Vader.

It's the same scenario every time, the same game, which is part of the reason I'm reluctant to play but, also, where am I going to hide this ugly propane burner now that all my cabinets are blissfully open?

It's really easy for Wolfman and I to spout tough love in our morning (and afternoon, evening, before bed, geez we're obsessed) talks about our son. "He's just going to have to get used to being a little bored. He'll figure out what to do with his boredom eventually." It's another thing to face it head on as you're bleeding and sweating and standing in the place that is supposed to be your home, your hearth, and it looks like nothing but a jumbled collection of odds and ends unearthed after a natural disaster, a volcano maybe.

Perhaps I'm not conveying to you the existential dread I experienced standing in that dinette, looking at all the objects before me, cataloging all the objects still at home and thinking, not for the first time, this is not going to work. Also: I'm crazy. Also: I'm damaging my son. All these uncertainties and fears crashing down on me in my own voice and also the voices of people I hate, people whom I have fought who take up residence in my head when I'm sad or scared.

After the third or fourth "I'm bored," I snapped at Mads. I wasn't particularly cruel or harsh, but I was exasperated and frustrated. I spoke to him as a person, not a mother.

Yes, of course, motherhood did not negate my personhood, and so perhaps I should not be so hard on myself. But, motherhood did elevate my personhood, or maybe just complicate it. Motherhood, at the very least, has added layers to my personhood. My son, Mads, does not know me as Michelle. He knows that is my name, but it is not what he calls me. He knows his dad calls me Shelly, but, again, that's not Mads' name to use for me. And he knows practically nothing of when I was a little girl called, dismissively, Mouse. No, Mads knows me as Mom-Momma-MOM!  My role in his life is a big one, arguably the biggest one (we once shared a body, after all). My relationship with him will build the parameters and foundation of so many of his relationships, particularly with women. And my voice will become his inner voice. If he is ever standing in a kitchen, mid-move, feeling overwhelmed, I don't want the voice in his head to be one of exasperation and frustration, directed inward--frustration with a situation, sure, but never himself. I don't want him carrying my very particular and dramatically weary sigh with him through manhood like a boulder strapped to his back. (Have you ever heard me sigh? I could do a voice acting spot where all I do is sigh, my sigh is that pronounced and definitive.)

Wolfman and I are devoted to kind, patient, respectful parenting of our son. But we have our limits and shortcomings. Very occasionally one or the other of us will use a careless astringent tone with Mads, and I become a child again myself. I hear it and step away from myself, and I am Mouse, shame and anger bubbling up in my belly--anger at the unfairness and tyranny of adults. Then, in combination with whatever irritant caused that tone and those words in the first place, guilt--a wave of it. What can I do in that moment but tell Mads, "I've hit my limit, bud. I'm overwhelmed. I'm hot. I'm cranky. I'm bleeding. I'm sweating. I don't feel good." I'm sorry. Give me a minute. I am just not feeling up to the challenge of motherhood in this particular moment.

At six years old, Mads has a lot of compassion for me and my moods (fears, shortcomings). He also, however, reserves the right to be bummed out by them and a little exasperated himself.

I read one parent's account in How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk. He wrote, "the more comfortably you can accept bad feelings, the easier it is for kids to let go of them. I guess you could say that if you want to have a happy family you better be prepared to permit the expression of a lot of unhappiness."

"I'm bored," is not my favorite thing to hear my son say. But I'm sure he doesn't love it when I say, "I'm frustrated." Not every human emotion is pleasant, and none of us are perfect. Mads knows his parents are not infallible. We're just people, but we're his people. He's not being raised inside a floating incandescent bubble in the sky by angels with perfect teeth. He's being raised by Mom and Dad, whose teeth are less than perfect, and who struggle with the awkwardness of humanity and the caprice of bad feelings and are honest with him about it. Just as I have to be honest with myself and face the facts that not every kitchen appliance I own is display worthy.