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?)