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.

Thankful Thursday | you with the sad eyes, don't be discouraged

I have lived within the pages of my journal, lately. I have dived deep into these cheap composition notebooks and paper-mached myself in layers of National Geographic photos and Martigan's artwork and other paper ephemera I come across, like the O. avoseta bee who makes a Thumbelina cocoon of flower petals. I have explored and experimented more than, perhaps, ever before, and it has been therapy. I am grateful to the journaling inspiration gathered from various social media platforms. I am grateful for old books and magazines full of beautiful images and the glee of ripping into those pages to construct something new and personal. I am grateful for the patience of my husband as I sit down one more night, not to snuggle with him, but with the open journal on my lap. I am grateful for smooth-writing pens with heavy, dark ink. I am grateful for the particulars and peculiarities of my handwriting. I am grateful, again, to my husband for bringing home a stack of composition notebooks (my preferred medium), snagged for 30 cents each at the pharmacy up the street.

I Am Grateful.

• I am grateful for FM radio in the morning--the happy chatter, the recognizable commercial jingles, that one Tom Petty song every station plays.
• I am grateful when I drop a plate and it doesn't break; I am grateful for each of the vibrant, mismatched plates I've collected over the years, unwrapped from thrift store newspaper like treasures.
• I am grateful when Mads cannot wait to get home and asks me to read the books we choose at the library, right there, sitting in the aisles.
• I am grateful when I hear Wolfman's key in the door and the dog's wagging tail thumping against the sofa as she hears it and is grateful as well. I am grateful for the memory of Lunchbox's tail thumping against sofa, mattress, and floor. I am grateful for every dog who ever wagged a tail in my presence and the ones who will wag tails for me and my loves in the future.
• I am grateful turning the store sign over at the end of the night to announce to the dark parking lot "CLOSED."
• I am grateful for that moment driving in the rain, when the car drives under a bridge and all sound is sucked up into a vacuum, so briefly--a half second of eerie silence--before the sound of pounding rain on our roof commences again on the other side of the bridge.
• I am grateful for the fleeting softness of brand new, never-worn, never-washed socks.
• I am grateful for minty toothpaste on my baby's breath as I carry his sleeping body into the house at night.
• I am grateful to finally squeeze out a couple tears at the end of a long day (and longer summer), and I am grateful for Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" for getting me there.
• I am grateful for the sound of stew bubbling on the stove.
• I am grateful for the way Atalanta blushes pink when she's happy.
• I am grateful when Wolfman tells me, "I'm lucky to have you," and I get to respond, "I think I'm the lucky one."
• I am grateful for all the little messes in our home, because they show how we live and play here.
• I am grateful for Grandma's beef stew, the taste of my childhood in her home--warm, hearty, a touch spicy.

"True Colors," Cyndi Lauper