Writing – The Book of Her

Leave It Un-Done

Today was a day. Today I had many thoughts that need to be written down. About how waiting for sex until I was married wasn’t what fucked up my brain, but the purity culture that fueled it. About how romcom love isn’t actually love and living life together while still enjoying each other while you have young kids and fuck tons of pressure on every side is the best thing ever. Literally. It is freedom. It is joy. It is looking at your person and knowing that there is nothing life can throw at you that you won’t make it through together. Because it’s not about what the journey looks like. It’s not even where it’s going (that vision will change many, many times). It’s about doing it together, and discovering yourself along the way. About how I once read about a “pious” woman who worried, constantly, about getting grilled about her time on earth once she was in heaven. And how it’s taken me years to begin deconstruction on this bullshit but today, while watching IG reels and laughing my ass off, I thought that if anyone on the other side of death had the *audacity* to ask me if I thought today was well spent I would respond with “Well fuck yes it was. Actually. Thanks. Had a great time. 9/10. Would recommend.” About how people in the middle of doing the work don’t get enough fucking credit for how difficult it is in the middle of it.

But it’s the end of the day. My babies need cuddles. My brain needs a break. My shoulders need to come down from my chin. And I just do not have the capacity to give any of those topics the attention they deserve.

So, instead, I’m going to do this. I’m going to talk to myself (and you). Just a quick little message. Here we go.

Everyone deserves rest. Even writers. Even moms. Even people who haven’t gotten out of bed because it was just too much today. Here is your permission to leave it un-done. To try again tomorrow. To celebrate how far you made it today, against all the odds. Play the game on your phone. Binge the show you have watched a million times. Let your brain shut off, take a deep breath, eat the donut, and love yourself.

Not Dead Yet

In a perfect storm of bad timing, I got a bunch of new followers in the middle of a time when I had so much on my plate that writing got shoved right off of it. Long story short: we all got COVID! I had mild cold symptoms for a few days and then promptly lost my sense of smell and taste. The kids each had a fever for about a day, and then they were completely fine. Satya just got really tired, but pretty sure that was less COVID related and more to do with the fact that she was taking care of Eilan 24/7. Speaking of Eilan, he got hella sick and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia. He’s home now, recovering, and – blessedly – off oxygen! Which is the shortest recap of a month long saga in the history of my writing, but it’s what I’ve got.

In other news, today is a day of mourning for me. Winter seems to have passed WELL BEFORE HER TIME and that bitch Spring is already moving in. I am not okay. I’m gonna have to mow next week and GAH JUST NO. NO. It is JANUARY. And I need to be thinking of when and how to begin planting my garden. And while this is usually something that brings me joy, despite the fact that I am planting a future graveyard of plants that have no chance in hell’s chance of surviving, let alone bearing edible fruit, today there is no joy. Just a simmering resentment at the lack of cold and the fact that I’m going to have to fight my other two partners to not turn on the AC later this afternoon.

Today I am not just on the struggle bus, I am driving it and this is the bus from Speed. There is no slowing down. There is no getting off. There is just endless pedal to the metal refusing to even consider an off ramp. All without Keanu Reeves to make it better. Buckle up, bitches.

To make it even worse, I cannot describe to you how awful eating is without taste. It’s doable, but terrible. It’s a great diet plan, if that’s your kind of thing. Because when you can neither smell nor taste your sugar, it becomes an unpleasant glob in your mouth that is completely unworth the effort of chewing. And so I find myself rather unwillingly on the ‘everything is tasteless’ train. Blegh. That being said, when the only difference between a kale salad and some pie is texture, it’s really easy to pick the salad. The salad at least doesn’t make me angry that I can’t taste it.

When my prozac and sugar cannot help us, what is a mom to do? Target, if I’m being honest. A few days ago I rage bought 14 organizational tubs of various sizes to try to once and for all organize the kids’ room. While rage buying off the app, I also saw some STEM activities hella discounted and rage bought those too. Which ended up being today’s saving grace. Invent, children. Craft in your super clean room. Let mom rage type into her computer and talk to her internet friends while you see how much glue it takes to put a googly eye on a sparkly pom pom.

And also Nintendo. I’m sorry if you are PC gamers, or XBox folks, or Playstation peeps, but the Switch is just unbeatable when it comes to gaming when parenting. It’s portable, for one. So I can sit on the couch and cuddle and do it while NOT taking up a TV screen. I can pause instantly and repeatedly and just walk away for two hours and come pick it back up with 0 consequence. Animal Crossing? Hell yes, dinosaur obsessed daughter, let’s take a walk through the museum and see which fossils we still need to find. Let’s chat with that super cute cat and run away from the bear with the grinch eyebrows. And currently losing myself in My Time In Portia, which, frankly, is one of my favorite games of all time and YES I DID buy the sequel on kickstarter slated for 2022. SO WHAT.

To be clear, I’m not getting any sort of kickback for my advertising. I wish. I’m just being honest about what’s working over here. And it’s not the essential oils I cannot smell, it’s not meditation, it’s not nature. It’s gaming and independent play for my youngins. And by independent play I also mean shouting “GO PLAY OUTSIDE” at the top of my lungs and then contemplating (but never following through) with locking them out. So I guess nature might be helping them. When it’s not raining and gross outside. I digress.

All of this to say, I’m not dead yet. I’m here. I post rather constantly in my stories on Insta and respond quickly to questions about polyamory and parenting and politics. I am determined to get back on a schedule for writing and pumping out content.

Question is: what do you want to read about?

Every Damn Day

My dad died when he was 60. He was a writer. A brilliant one, in my opinion. Albeit I believe his talents were wasted in writing technical manuals for John Deere, he did have an ‘advice’ column that did quite well. Yes, it was also about tractors but the man knew tractors. And they always do say, “Write what you know.”

He loved writing. He was good at it. He could tell a story like few people I have ever known. And yet, once, when asked if he could do it all over, what he would do – I shit you not the man told me he’d be a weatherman. Meteorology really did it for him.

Sometimes that story floats back into my head and I wonder – what would I change if I could do it all over again?

Well. First off, I’d yank myself right out of college because that was utterly useless and expensive. Secondly, holy fucking shit would I go and get myself diagnosed with depression and anxiety and stop thinking that level of unease in literally any social situation is normal. There’s introverted and then there’s ‘wow girl you need prozac’ and I am definitely in the second category. But other than useless debt and finally having a semi normal social life – I wouldn’t change much.

And that’s when it hit me, today. I wouldn’t change much because I’m still reeeeeeeally fucking young. My dad died relatively young (fuck you cancer) and I’m barely half his age.

This is the age to DO it. To change whatever you want to because you can (except the kids, I’m stuck with them, but they’ve started to grow on me) and NOT just coast *stressfully* through the next two decades.

So. In a completely out of character move I am starting now. Today. Not tomorrow. Not when I finish getting the aesthetic just right on my WordPress. Not on Monday (despite how enormously tempting that sounds) but today. And then tomorrow. And then every. damn. day. after.

I am going to write.

Because unlike my closet meteorogically inclined writer father, my dream is in fact to be a writer. And writers write.

Sometimes they write what they know. Sometimes they write what they don’t. Sometimes they write what the dream, hope, wish, fear, and imagine but one thing they all have in common is simply this: they write.

So I write. Today. Tomorrow.

I’ll see you then.