You may remember we were burglarized last September, twice. In one week. They stole my laptop and essentially every piece of jewelry Mac had ever given me during our 13 years together. They stole my grandmother’s ring, the single item I inherited from her.

It took months to “get over it,” but recently, the wound was reopened. Basically, through a rather coincidental chain of events I’d rather not elaborate on, we found out for sure who burglarized our home, and it was the person I suspected: Our former nanny’s son, a young man addicted to methamphetamines.

I knew it was him the moment I saw my jewelry box laid open, empty. I drove immediately to his home. He was in the street. I walked right up to him looked him dead in the eyes and said “Hey. I get it. I was a drug addict once too. Just give me back my things. Have them show up on my doorstep and I’ll give you $1000. No questions asked.”

Looking back, I realize he had probably already traded everything for a 20 sack, maybe two.

He went around and around about how it wasn’t him. But I knew it was. The sight of his face in my mind’s eye makes me feel sick. Lying motherfucker. I had no proof, but I knew. 100%.

And the worst part is I knew it was going to happen before it happened. I saw it in my mind. I literally saw in my mind that this person was going to burglarize our home.

I knew it the day my nanny sat in our living room and told me her son (who lived with her) was addicted to meth. A thought crossed my mind: One of these days, he’s going to find out through his mom that you’re gone for the weekend and he’s going to burglarize your home.

Three months later, that is precisely, EXACTLY what happened.

After my nanny left that day, I called my mom. I told her “I need to find a new nanny. I need to disconnect. Something bad is going to happen.”

But I did nothing.

I talked to Mac about it, told him my concerns. I am no stranger to drug addiction and what it causes. I am no stranger to the monsters people become.

But still I did nothing.

I did nothing against my better judgment.

I did nothing against every cell of my being screaming at me “Stop this. Get out. Bad things are going to happen.”

I did nothing because I ignored my intuition.

I did nothing until it was too late.

And that is the part I can’t get over.

That is the part that haunts me, late at night when I think about the family photos and videos that were lost in the stolen laptop and the pearl necklace gone, the one Mac gave me a couple months into our relationship, and the diamond ring I remember so clearly on my beloved grandmother’s thin, wrinkled gorgeous finger.

I did nothing because I was stuck. I was stuck in a motherfucking rut and I could not see out. I refused to see out. I would not see out.

Life gave me the signs. It gave me the chance to redirect, to move along, to do something new. The universe hinted, nudged, and at times downright pushed and shoved, but still, I did nothing.

Why? Because it was too hard. Because I preferred the comfort of my rut to the difficulty of a new course.

Our home was dark. The neighborhood was terrible. I hated it. We all hated it.  It was a dead, depressing place. We lived two houses down from a known drug house. They’d do deals in the street. They’d park in front of our house waiting for the delivery. Sometimes I’d walk up to them and knock on the car window, ask if I could help. Probably not the safest move, but it gets to the point when you don’t fucking care anymore. The neighbor on our left occasionally got drunk and poisoned animals in the neighborhood. We lived in near-constant fear of our animals getting out. One day our cat did. We found her on our driveway, poisoned the same way our two kitties died when we first moved in, two years prior, before we knew. Our street was a thoroughfare to the worst street in town, so a constant stream of addicts and drunks poured down our road like a sad parade. They left their trash on our lawn and their baggies on the sidewalk.

We needed to move a long time before, but we didn’t. We didn’t because we were stuck.  We didn’t because sometimes the misery you know is easier than the unknown, because it’s safer, or you think it is, simply because it is known.

It all starts to feel so heavy: The change. The fear surrounding it all: What will happen? What if it doesn’t work? Where will we go and do and how will it all work?

One day turns into the next and the next and the next and it’s just you and the aching intuition, the burning feeling that something needs to change. But nothing changes, because nothing changes. And fear.

The burglary ended it.

Shaken to our core, we were faced with the reality of what our life had become and how distant we had grown from that reality. Within 45 days our house was on the market and we had moved into my mom’s house. Within 90 days our house was sold and we were in escrow on another. Around 4 months from that burglary we moved into the house we live in now, a place I love so much I never want to leave (which is its own problem but one I love to have!). I had forgotten how much a miserable house can bring you down. I had forgotten what it feels like to love where you’re living, to feel “home” each day, in your home.

Action. Finally. Happened.

In a way, that burglary was the best thing to ever happen to us, but still I’m full of hatred sometimes, toward him, but mostly toward myself. Why didn’t I act? Why didn’t I do something? Why didn’t I trust my gut and heart?

I know. I already know: I was doing the best I could at the time. And really, it was just stuff gone. It’s just stuff. Means nothing.

But shit. It’s hard. You know?

Hard to face the elements of responsibility in our own lives, hard to square off with the truth about ourselves. It is not my fault that he burglarized our home. It is, however, my fault that I denied my intuition and chose comfort over change, even though that comfort was making me fucking miserable and I KNEW IT.

It is my fault that I didn’t leave a house and town and situation that was sucking the life out of me.

It is my fault I DID NOT ACT.

Life is strange, isn’t it? The way we stay in things that are killing us because at least we feel safe – hang out in the muck and dirt and mire because at least it’s the muck and dirt and mire we’re accustomed to. The way we justify the shit in our lives as if it’s other people’s faults when really it’s us – we’re the ones too chicken shit to move, paralyzed by our own indecision, cut off at the knees with terror. Of what, who knows. How could it be worse than this?

Until life slaughters us one day, to be reborn.

I’m beginning to think life is just a series of little deaths, of becoming unstuck, of seeing how fear pulses through my mind and spine and legs, moving my body for me, on nothing more than a glorified rat wheel. Around and around we call it “living.” I know the truth but I’m too scared to face it. That bullshit job, relationship, habit, whatever. The truth rests deep inside of me. I work every day to ignore it, until I cannot any longer.

I was stuck. I’m not stuck now.

I want to forgive myself, but some mental construction won’t work. “I forgive you Janelle.”

Ah, fuck off.

That shit never works. I need action. I will forgive myself by staying unstuck, by laughing at the voice that says “You can’t. It’s too hard. Stay here.”

I tried that, asshole. I went down that road and it didn’t work. I couldn’t get off  the track on my own so life did it for me, and it hurt. I was shattered into a new direction.

I’m responsible for that, too, I guess. New digs and freedom. My own failure to move – literally and figuratively – killed me. But to begin again. Unstuck, one more time.

Maybe I’ll trust better, sooner.

Myself, and life.

The real kind.

sometimes I feel like this.

You know people keep talking about these damn “babymoons,” and once again I find myself shaking my head. Setting aside my disdain for the term itself (on account of its excessive cuteness), I just don’t understand how a trip to Turks and Fucking Caicos is really a “last hurrah” at all.

Yeah okay I get it: Quality time with your partner before the baby arrives and your life is ruined. Wait. Not what I meant.

It’s a time to “renew” and “reconnect,” blah blah blah, fine. It’s a time to really take advantage of your childless status. But why the hell are we telling new moms to take a vacation as the way to celebrate and cherish the way their lives are now (as opposed to the way it will be when baby enters the picture)? I mean that’s not the shit we miss. Right? Is it? Big vacations? Nah…I mean some of us could never afford those anyway, and Mac and I still take mini-vacations occasionally. At least I think we do.

Anyway for me it’s the little stuff, or was, back when I remembered life without kids.

If we really want to help women appreciate life before baby, I really think a trip to Florida isn’t the way to do it.

Hey, first-time moms. You want a babymoon? Try taking a shit and enjoying the way nobody bangs on the door.

Come to think of it, I have some other ideas:

Why would you EVER want a break from these faces? Ha. Ha. Ha.

1. Go to a restaurant and have a conversation, like as in the whole time. Just do that. Just talk and eat. Do nothing else. Notice the way you don’t have to bounce a baby on your knee while eating or nurse anything or leave the restaurant entirely because Lungs of Steel refuses to enjoy the ambiance.
2. Come home from work, sit on the couch and do nothing. Trust me.
3. Get on the phone when you feel like it. Have a conversation. Talk as long as you want. Soon, the second you get on the phone, no matter how sure you are the baby is asleep, no matter how long she’s been happily playing by herself, no matter how short the call, the SECOND that call connects is the SECOND your baby will demand your undivided attention. (Note: the importance of the call is in direct proportion to the likelihood that your baby will not let you make that call. Just FYI.)
4. Have sex with the light on. What? Dude. When there’s a chance a small human could enter your room at pretty much any moment, that light ain’t going on.
5. Actually just have sex anywhere you want.
6. Get in the car and put on Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop.” When he says “motherfucker,” enjoy the way you don’t feel guilty for playing music with swear words.
7. Then, drive around in silence for a long, long, long time.
8. A long time.
9. Put your groceries in the car. Get in the car. Drive away. Appreciate how fast that was.
10. Go to a bar on Friday night with friends, get totally shitfaced, stay up til 2am, THEN SLEEP IN ON SATURDAY like the rest of your friends. Wait. Nevermind. You’re pregnant – BAD IDEA. Just sleep in Saturday. That’s revolutionary enough. Babies don’t care how late you stayed up. They also don’t care that you’re hung-over, puking, feverish or depressed. Neither do toddlers or kids. So yeah. Just sleep in on Saturday over and over and over again.
11. Cook a meal, sit at the dinner table and eat it with you partner, relishing the way you aren’t trying to quiet, ignore, or discuss deep philosophical shit with offspring, or teach them manners or tell them to eat their whatever or sit still damnit or stay in your seat or clear your place or stop bickering or OMG I hate dinner.
12. Crawl into your bed and observe the profound lack of infant in it.
13. Pack up your stuff for an overnight stay somewhere. You don’t actually have to leave, just pack. Just pack because it’s SO FUCKING EASY TO PACK when you aren’t packing for a baby.
14. Go to bed when you feel like it. As in, when you feel tired, go to bed. Yes, that’s it. That’s the whole exercise.
15. Watch whatever the hell you want on Netflix.
16. Spend some quality time with your dog.
17. Do laundry. Revel in how there aren’t 1,436 loads.
18. Don’t handle poop.
19. Walk barefoot in your house. No toys? Exactly.
20. Stare at the floor of your car. Soon you’ll forget what it looks like.
21. Clean a room in the morning. Clean another room in the afternoon. In the evening, delight in the way BOTH ROOMS ARE STILL CLEAN as opposed to re-destroyed in a sickening cycle of cat-and-mouse games. (By the time you clean one area of the house the other area is destroyed so you just keep going around and around and around cleaning rooms while others get destroyed, feeling the cat on your tail, wondering why you do it at all but also unable to function in the borderline-subhuman condition known as “kids in home.”)
22. Get yourself ready. Right. Yes. That. Get YOURSELF ready and then leave.
23. And then go on a trip, I guess, but not because you won’t ever get to again, rather because this is the last time you’ll go on a trip by yourselves when you won’t be oddly, frighteningly, inexplicably missing the insanity of numbers 1-22, just a little, as you walk around that gorgeous beach without your kids, thinking simultaneously “God it’s nice they’re gone” and “Damn I miss those little bastards so much. WHEN DO WE GO HOME?”

Now THAT is a fucking babymoon.

We’ll just call our trip to Monterey our 4th baby “babymoon.” Wait. Does that exist? Is that a thing? Since HE DIDN’T LICK MY FACE IN THIS ONE (I yelled at him), we’ll use this to prove we’re a romantic couple that takes babymoons and shit.

(First of all, it was last week, but whatevs.)

After a super handy internet helper diagnosed me with chronic depression based on the last blog post I wrote, I figured it was time to make some changes.

I jest. That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard.

First of all, EINSTEIN. You can’t diagnose strangers, even if they write things that make you go “Hmmmmmm?” Depression is a real thing, a serious thing, and 1,200 words on the internet are insufficient “evidence” to make such a determination. Or you might, at least, want to meet the person first, and then diagnose them based on blog posts.

Kidding. STOP DOING THAT.

Secondly, please consider just for a moment how goofy it is that you diagnosed a person with chronic depression based on A SINGLE piece of writing. Chronic, one blog post. CHRONIC, one single blog post. Do you see the problem here?

I love the internet.

Also, if I were clinically depressed, I wouldn’t be writing. I’d be in my bed, possibly with some cocaine and a bottle of whiskey. I’m sorry. Was that a little dark? Yeah, well, so is clinical depression and THAT’S how it manifests for me and THAT is why I’m calling this human out rather than “being grateful” for her “concern.”

I think maybe people find it so utterly baffling that a woman wouldn’t be totally and completely fucking INTO MOTHERHOOD at all times that they can only conclude there’s something wrong with her brain. I mean, clearly this shit is adorable and infinitely fulfilling and it’s just irrational and frankly, incomprehensible that sometimes it could turn into a slow soul-sucking death.

Is hyperbole a symptom of clinical depression? I’m sorry. Inappropriate. Let’s move on.

When I was a kid, I grew up about 40 minutes from the ocean in Central California. We went there a lot. It was often cold and foggy (northern and central Californian beaches often are, no matter what they show you on TV). My mom would pack us up and head to the beach on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Often it would be 4 or 5pm. The fog rested on us, turned my hair into ringlets around my face. I loved those curls. I thought they were adorable. I’d wear a sweatshirt and jeans rolled up and my toes would flip the cold sand. It smelled like life. There were these trees that seemed to grow out of the sand with sprawling branches and a thick cover, like the coolest natural fort you’ve ever seen. Maybe cypress trees? We’d play under them while my mom made hot dogs and we listened to the waves and smelled the water and made up stories and got lost.

When I was in high school, I moved further north. After school when I was drowning in nondescript teenaged angst (maybe clinical depression?!) I’d listen to live Dead as I drove the 30 minutes to Bodega Bay. Often, at some point the sun would turn to deep fog, but I always had a sweatshirt in my car. I’d sit on the beach and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and write profound shit in my journal. Sometimes I’d fall asleep. I was alone. I loved being alone. I got back in my car and nothing had changed but it had all changed.

The ocean still does that for me, though I live 2 hours from it now.

We went Saturday morning to Monterey. My 35^th birthday was on Friday. It was a birthday trip. My mom was there, as she’s always been. She rolled up her jeans and held my toddler’s hand.

My closest friends came. They drove 3 hours and paid for a hotel room to be there, with us, to celebrate, with us. It takes my breath away to have friends like that, people who love me like that. And people I love like that.

It rained on Saturday, but we went to Lover’s Point where there are rocks and tide pools and shelter from the wind. Sometimes all we need is some shelter from the goddamn wind.

I always seem to find it, in time.

It was so beautiful I wanted a romantic selfie with my husband, but he licked my face because he’s a fucking moron.

It didn’t rain on Sunday. We went to Pacific Grove and found this amazing little restaurant that serves perfect breakfast. PERFECT BREAKFAST is no joke. Shit’s revolutionary. George got a buckwheat pancake and Rocket ordered lox, which I found adorable, until I saw it was $12.50. OOPS. Oh well. Kid’s got class. Or something.

Then we went to Carmel. And it was sunny.

some people “jog” on the beach for fun. I shall never understand such behavior.

my mom and georgie.

And then I came home, on the almost last day of March, and fell asleep remembering that my hell month is over and the universe always, eventually, hands us what we need, in salt and fog and sand, or lox, or the kiss of a friend or a licked face. Asshole.

Saved again, in the nick of time.

***

Also, I wanted to introduce a new sponsor. I’m really excited to have her join us because a.) She’s a mom like us making genuinely adorable things out of her home in southern Oregon and b.) part of the reason she started her business is so she could keep herself from going nuts as a sudden stay-at-home-mom amidst her 4 (!) offspring, a fact that strikes me as amazing.

I mean, when I’m overwhelmed I EAT SCONES. Rhiannon makes adorable baby and children’s products.  

Check out her Etsy shop. She makes teething rings (totally getting one for my baby) and blankets, burp cloths and children’s clothing (all at fair prices). She uses bright, engaging fabrics not traditionally used for “baby” items. In her words: she tries “not to make single-use products so people can enjoy our toys for longer than just the teething stage. Same thing with the clothing  – the dresses can be worn for years just by adding leggings, shorts, long sleeved shirt etc.”

Favorite quote from our interactions:  “My kids are awesome most days…when they’re not I put them to work in the ‘sweat shop’ that is my home-based business.” Need I say more? She’s our people. We love her.

I’m feeling ill-equipped for motherhood lately. I can’t stop being an asshole to my kids.

I’m yelling too much. My patience is almost always already gone.

I lose it over nothing. Them. Being kids. Doing annoying kid things. Leaving their shoes on the couch one more time. The 5^th time I have to ask him to get dressed. The bickering again about the dishes. The flailing in the back seat.

I know it’s me, you know. I know it’s my exhaustion and profound discomfort and the weight of this baby on my back and bladder and heart.

I realized the other day I haven’t had time to love this baby. Does that make me a monster? That probably makes me a monster. I feel distant, disconnected. Though I feel her (him?) against the deepest swells of my body, and the little pushes and jabs comfort me, I only barrel forward through the days. I only wonder how it’s possible to pee so many fucking times a night. I wonder how many thoughts can awaken me at 4am. I wonder why I screw around on my phone until 10:30pm when my whole self needs only sleep. Maybe it’s the privacy, the silence. Maybe I’m just not equipped for adult life. Maybe the responsible decision will always elude me. Or it will sometimes, at night, when I should be asleep.

I want to settle down and wonder at my baby.

I feel the weight when I rise, go down, roll over in bed. Every time I get up I wonder how so simple a task could be so hard. The pressure shifts. My joints barely cooperate.

My kids drain me. That’s pretty much all.

I do it one more time. I do it a hundred more times.

I should be in better shape. I should have taken better care of myself. I should eat better.

You think I’m feeling sorry for myself.

I am, though it doesn’t manifest in inactivity. I wake up in the morning and think “I can’t.”

But I do.

Not because I’m some fucking martyr, but because there’s no other choice. It’s a job. You get up and fucking do it.

I look at the calendar and wonder how much longer. How much longer will I be teaching these classes? Standing for hours at a time. Standing until my hip and thigh go numb. I took on too much, I guess. I took on too much but we need the money. A woman in Austria told me pregnant women get 8 weeks standard time off before the baby comes. I went to Austria. Austria is nice. Do they take Americans?

They say “You should feel blessed and lucky to be 30 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby.”

What a lovely family you have.

What a sacred thing.

Well, it doesn’t feel sacred now, motherfucker.

It feels like work. Grueling, brutal work. It feels like relentless work, like the kind that robs you of your air and laughter and body. It feels like taunting teasing heavy heavy labor.

I wish they’d stop calling it sacred.

I wish they’d stop talking about motherhood like it’s some sort of gentle rainbow across a bucolic meadow. I wish they’d stop telling women like me who are barely doing it that “motherhood is the most important job in the world.”

Is that true? Is that really true? Then what does it mean that I suck right now? What does it mean that I just cannot pull it together and I probably won’t for at least 2 more months?

I am failing my kids. Myself. My husband.

Right?

The weight of the souls of 3 kids. Their futures. Their whole beings: It rests on me, right now, ME this broken human who hurts and took on too much and can’t or won’t do much of anything beyond getting through, barely, trying not to get mad today, to keep it under control when all I want is for it to end – RIGHT NOW – this pregnancy – this job – the finances and futures and laundry – I’m crushed under it all (And what were we thinking anyway? And will it be worth it and how will we handle it all?)

Are these lives really on my shoulders, right now? Am I all there is?

No. I don’t think I am, and I wish you’d stop making that shit up.

The fact is that motherhood is important, and my role in the lives of my kids cannot be diminished or overlooked or ignored, but it’s also a fact that sometimes humans suck and my kids will be just fine.

Sometimes this shit is sacred.

SOMETIMES THIS SHIT IS NOT SACRED AT ALL.

Sometimes it’s day after day of just pulling through and wondering when things will chill the fuck out again. Sometimes it’s wondering what exactly you were thinking. Sometimes it’s searching for the meaning in all this work, just like any other job.

Only with this job, you’re raising America. With this job, you break souls. With this job, the world looks at you and yells “YOU DID THIS TO YOURSELF. Figure it out.”

Do you realize how insane that is? We tell women “motherhood is the most important job in the world” but then bash them for struggling with it.

Incidentally, it’s not the most important job in the world.

Let it go, people.

I am a mother, but I am a whole lot of other things, and right now, I am a woman who is totally and completely NOT FEELING IT.

Will that ruin my kids? Probably not.

Will that crush their little hearts? Doubt it.

Rather, they’ll probably learn that people struggle sometimes and battle personal demons and sometimes you don’t get the “best” version of a person. You get a piece of them. You get glimpses. You feel their love in splintered fragments, as it’s always been, because this is humanity. These are humans. This is as good as it gets for us.

Right now, I am the mother who doesn’t read stories.

I am the mother who can’t cuddle for more than a minute or two.

I’m the mother not tucking you in…getting you late to school, letting you watch too much TV, feeding you questionable dinners.

I’m the mother who doesn’t want to hear stories or endless toddler questioning and “what happened at school today?”

I’m the mother who doesn’t care.

I’m the mother not RSVP-ing to parties, forgetting commitments, not helping with projects.

I am the one irritated with the way the kids eat, the one telling them to brush their teeth because damn! That breath. Foul little creatures, really.

I am the mother finished, demolished, pulling herself up with nothing.

I go to bed.

I’m the mother in bed, who lies down at night and feels the weight of all these things, hears her own yells rattling in her gray brain, wishes she could be a woman who holds her fucking tongue and lets it go.

To preserve the sacred family. To stop messing with goddamn rainbow meadow and shit.

In 5 years she’ll be 16 years old. My first, nearly grown.

I turn my giant body and flinch at the pain of my back, and that thought.

In 10 weeks my toddler will gaze into the face of a new baby. She stomps in each morning “Can I cuggle (cuddle) with you?” I hold her though my bladder protests violently. In 10 weeks a baby will be in this bed too. Where will she fit? There will be times I cannot hold her. There will be times she is not the center anymore.

I close my eyes and hold those mornings.

I listen to my son breathe as he sleeps on my husband’s chest. I wonder how his first 2 weeks of homeschool went.

I realize it’s 5:30am.

I’m so tired.

I wish my love were enough, enough to make me the kind of mom who doesn’t cave sometimes, into some place only time can dissolve. I wish my love were enough to make me “strong enough” or good enough or pure enough or whatever the fuck it is that makes women capable of doing all this and feeling all this and finding themselves pinned to the ground by life and still, not yell at their kids. Turn off. Shut down. Crawl away.

Yesterday I read them The Tale of Tom Kitten.

Today maybe I will make some stir-fried chicken.

In 10 weeks I’ll birth a baby and find myself reborn too, with a gush of waters I’ll enter this family carrying a new extension of my heart, my blood, my life.

I’ll watch my family enfold him as they’ve done me, and I’ll kiss their heads with a whisper of thank you, for holding me as I trudge humanity. Motherhood. The shattered sacredness of today.

because they look like little rocker warriors.

1. For the past few months, I’ve had a mantra. It’s very complicated. It goes like this: “All you have to do is get through March.” I knew this month was going to be a killer one. I’m teaching 5 classes: 3 at community colleges in 2 cities and 2 high school English classes for homeschool students. And I’m 29 weeks pregnant. On Mondays and Wednesdays I’m gone from home for 12 hours straight, working. I used to “relax” and “rejuvenate” (did that make you laugh out loud too?) on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Fridays, but now I teach two of those days too. So basically I just want to off myself.
2. Had I known this would be the month Georgia’s preschool would suddenly close, AND the month wherein we would decide to pull Rocket out of school, I would have just thrown in the towel on March 1. You win, motherfucker. I’m out.
3. I wake up every day thinking “I can’t do this.” I can’t get up. I can’t get them ready. I can’t drive the hour it takes to get the three of them dropped off (Ava is still in school in our old town 30 minutes away, and Georgia’s preschool is 30 minutes away from that). I can’t prepare these classes. I can’t stand and teach. I can’t grade these papers or write or send those emails or find shit or do laundry. I can’t. I can’t do my life.
4. And then I get up and do it one more day. Sometimes I text my best girl and she tells me “You’re already doing it.” And she’s right. Our greatest struggle, our hardest time, we’re often already doing it.
5. Ava went to her first dance on Friday night. A 6^th grade dance. She was worried her dad wouldn’t let her go so she told me “Hey mama I’m just gonna tell daddy it’s a ‘social.’ I mean it’s a 6^th grade dance. It’s not like anybody dances at 6^th-grade dances. People are way too freaked out for that.” I think it’s funny that I have a 12-year-old observing and analyzing the social dynamics of other 12-year-olds. That’s normal, right?
6. We have pulled Rocket out of school. He is being homeschooled by his grandmother out on their ranch. We are working together but she has essentially taken it over. I am one lucky woman, and so is my son. There is no way he could be homeschooled by me right now.
7. He was coming home from school with headaches every day, learning absolutely nothing and losing his soul (from what I could tell). Maybe it was a terrible classroom. Maybe the school just wasn’t right, but it doesn’t really matter who’s “at fault,” right? It wasn’t working. Period. In the week that he’s been home, for the first time ALL FUCKING YEAR he was excited about something he did at “school” and told me all about it… “Mama! Did you know yeast can grow without sugar! We set up this experiment…” and “So there was this guy who started this bird organization (Audubon) and he had a ‘lifetime bird list’ so Nana and I started one and I already have two birds!”
8. It’s nice to have my boy back. I’m glad this disaster of a school year left enough of him that he can be rebuilt. Cheers.
9. Georgia is obsessed with the baby exiting my belly (admittedly, I can relate). As I mentioned on Facebook, I explained it comes out the vagina, and she said something involving milk and vaginas and I was like “no milk is boobs” and the whole thing was slightly disastrous. There was some hope of comprehension this morning when she said “So the baby comes out the bagina,” but then she announced: “But the bagina doesn’t make milk because it doesn’t have the recipe!” Right. Sure kid. That’s exactly what’s up.
10. Why are kids so fucking weird?

And is this not, friends, exactly what an 8-year-old boy should be doing for his “school day?” Hanging with his grandpa, eating an apple out in the country?

Ah, fuck it. I have no idea what kids “should” be doing and I have no idea what’s right or wrong or good or bad with any of this. I’m just trying really hard to keep my boy’s spirit and curiosity intact (or at least not diminishing before my very eyes).

I’ll do anything to not lose him.

Also, hey. In case you forgot (since it’s been so long), I used to write these “week in review” posts on Sundays. I’ve kind of gotten out of the habit (um, understatement?) but I’m going to start writing them again (maybe every 2 weeks?). And at the end of these, if I have a new sponsor, I’m going to tell you about that sponsor. And I’m really, REALLY excited to tell you about this one.

Heather Thorkelson is the founder of “Republic of Freedom.” Her title? “Architect of Freedom, Idea Generator, and International Sherpa.” Or, in fewer words: a fucking badass, real-deal life/business coach for people trying to build a livelihood rooted in freedom. For people like me who have a vision, desire that vision, know the vision is possible but have no fucking clue how to get there.

She helps us get there. She’s done profoundly interesting things. She is living a life most of us only dream of (um, she just got back from some crazy trip to Antarctica with some team of researchers or some shit and then she was in Peru and apparently her 2014 will be in “Canada and Europe”). But she started terrified, too.

I don’t call people “inspiring” because, um, most people aren’t. It’s a word so overused it’s degenerated into platitude. But when you see a human living a life of freedom, her definition of freedom, a life that she designed  rather than some other person’s version of “success,” well, that’s some actual inspiration.

She has helped me personally, and in a time when I was ready to throw in the towel on everything I was trying to do. (writing, etc.). Here was my email to her: “You’re amazing. I can’t believe you’ve just helped me like this, outta the blue. Thank you for carving a path for me. Helping me see shit. You really are fucking awesome and I am elated we’ve crossed paths.

Jesus. What luck. I feel empowered and alive.”