500 Words, Day 24 -- Much a To-Do About a List

Things to do today that maybe could double as blog posts:

Pay PreMed’s tuition for Summer Sessions 1 and 2. This is a blog and a half right here.  PreMed and her tuition and the goals those classes will advance -- the convoluted nature of having two daughters so close in age yet so far apart in temperament, worldview, and life goals, it’s as though they were raised by different people. And in a way, they were. Troubled gravitated toward her dad, fun-loving and indulgent; PreMed was pulled in another direction, maybe not towards me exactly, but towards choices that I could support.  The way it has ended up, Dad gives Troubled $1,000 per month for living expenses.   He wanted me to split that with him, but I refused to even partially subsidize an indolent life of part time work, no school and nothing to show for it.   Instead, I chose to give PreMed $1,000 per month for her living expenses and get loans for tuition and put the rest on credit cards with zero interest on balance transfers and keep transferring the balance to a new card to keep that tuition flowing.  A double-major in Biology and International Relations.  On her way to a Master’s in Public Health.  That kid is going to save the world someday and I will be able to say I helped make it happen.  Next.

Call one of my two IRL friends

Call the other one too

I was this close to actually doing this today, but the thought of talking to anyone about what’s happening with me these days make my throat close which makes it hard to swallow, and I can’t really talk when I’m crying anyway. Which is why I prefer to write.  Next.

Curl up under bed and practice fetal position--I’m pretty much a champion at this already.  I’m not going to practice so that I can give you guys a chance to catch up, skill-level-wise.  You’re welcome.  Next.

Exercise--yes.  I will.  I have to get past the 2nd quarter estimate deadline on Monday but then I promise, back to the pool.  I can cry underwater and no one knows.  Well, they probably do actually but fuck em.   Next.

Laundry -- my favorite of the household chores and I am not being sarcastic.  Even though I don’t have laundry in my place anymore.  The laundry room at my little string of garden apartments is not far, maybe fifty yards down the row.  The periodic breaks to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer punctuate the day very nicely.  Thirty minutes is an episode of Girls or a half an episode of West Wing or time to get a meatloaf and roast potatoes in the oven for Sunday dinner.  

Sit quietly and look back at the past month or so and realize that all signs point to depression.

Not like oh I had a bad day 26 days in a row or even because there’s sad stuff happening.  But overall there’s good stuff happening, and the fact that I get teary way more often than usual even for me is telling me that this time it’s my whack neurochemistry.  You can offer me all kinds of advice and ta very much because I know it comes from a good place, but I’ve been rocking this gig for longer than some of you have been alive.   So believe me when I say I got this.  Sometimes you have to feel it, let it wash over you, accept that it’s happening, don’t beat yourself up, but pay attention.  Work with it and maybe go see your shrink or therapist and say, it’s really bad right now and I just want you to know.  Maybe we should adjust the meds but I dislike doing that because when I start to feel better I never know if it’s the meds or me pulling myself up on my own which let’s face it would be the better answer in that particular scenario.  

Next.  

500 Words, Day 23 -- The Twitter

So I’m taking another stab at The Twitter.   (Follow me!  @KlonnieChron!  Well, no, there’s no exclamation point, it’s just @KlonnieChron with no punctuation or anything.  A Twitter handle, that’s what it’s called right?  Username?  I don’t even know.)   Anyway, Twitter is even more like high school than Facebook, if that’s possible.  Facebook is the cafeteria, but Twitter is the hallway, where people sidle insidiously up and down the halls, muttering to those who pass.   Some random sumpin sumpin, some little quip, something pithy and relatable.  But make it quick.  You only get 140 characters.    You either repeat what you heard verbatim and get a pat on the head, or embellish it, or mock it, or simply outright steal it for your own.  I don’t know what happens then.  Probably you get chased into the bathroom and they blow smoke in your face or something.  #jerks  

I don’t understand how to control my Twitter feed.  I don’t know how I ended up following 600 people.  I must have gone on a Following Rampage in some kind of fugue state at some point. Like in Monopoly when I was a kid.  Land on it, buy it.   What is this, Baltic Avenue?  I’ll buy it.  Same thing with Twitter.  Neil Patrick Harris?  Fuck and yes.  Boom, following.  What do you mean, it’s not really Neil Patrick Harris?  That’s his photo.  RIGHT THERE.   #what

But even weirder is 900 people follow me.  How did THAT happen?   It’s like finding mysterious bruises after Girls’ Night Out.    Hmmm.  Here’s a clue -- for a while I had my Facebook page set up to Tweet whatever I posted on the page.  If the post was longer than 140 characters (um, hello, do you, like, know me at all?), there would be a link to the page to continue.   I wasn’t even paying attention to Twitter but I figured if I’m going to be shouting nonsense to strangers, I should make sure to shout it on every possible stage.   #narcissist

Here’s another thing about Twitter.  It’s like double dutch jump rope where you have to wait and watch for the perfect time to jump in but don’t wait too long or you’ll lose the moment, you know?  If you miss your window,  you’ll end up feeling the way you do when people are shout-talking to one another to be heard over really loud music that ends abruptly and so they’re just shouting into silence which is AWK-ward.   A friend told me.  And that really IS like high school and the rest of life, because with the spoken word and to some extent the written word, timing is basically everything.   #trustmeiknowthings

So the bitch of it is, there’s no “edit” in Twitter.  It’s “tweet or delete,” my friends, and if that isn’t some buzzkilling anxiety provocation right there, then I don’t know what.   I already tweeted something kind of brill, but there’s a typo in it and I can’t decide whether to delete and start over or let it stand.  It’s probably going to keep me up very late tonight agonizing over it.   #surprise  People have “favorited” this tweet already, so how are they going to feel if I delete it?  I guess I don’t like that “favorite-ing” nonsense, anyway.  I mean, I like it but it’s not my favorite, yanno?   #hyperbole

This shit is hard.   #500WordsADay  @KaleAndCigarettes which isn’t a Twitter handle username thingy so IDK what will happen if you try to search it.  But @KlonnieChron though.  #yeah 

#sonofa . . .

500 Words, Day 22 - Hashtag Heaven

The bad news:  Anne Lamott fucked up today.  

The good news:  I have rediscovered Twitter.  Again.  

The bad news:  I’m out of popcorn.  

The good news:  I’m on Atkins so no carbs.  

My love for and obsession with social media is ironic.  I saw the Anne Lamott debacle unfolding and my thought was, “Oh good, 500 words will write themselves tonight.”  It’s like a snow day for blogging.

Does it really matter what the flap is about?  I mean, in the grander scheme of things (a colleague in this experiment says “How meta” which is my new favorite phrase and which I’m going to suck the life out of from overuse), the reason I’m interested in it is because sociology.  Also voyeurism. Also schadenfreude.  Anne Lamott is a writer who has many followers because she is inspiring.  She writes in a way that produces pithy, relatable, encouraging quotes.   Today she tweeted the following:

“Is it okay to be a tiny tiny bit tired of Caitlyn?  Yes, was very brave but so far he's gone from man to mannequin, instead of man to woman.”

As several people I only know from social media said, “Oh dear.”

When I see shit like this go down events like this occur, my first reaction is to observe and analyze.  This kind of detachment is the result of many years of academic paper-writing, when ten pages on, say, the use of metaphor in the expression of abstract concepts, was due by 5 p.m. the following afternoon.  Everything is a potential thesis sentence, something to see as yet another example of a simple human truth, the stunning brilliance of which doesn’t crystallize until 2 a.m.

If I were still in academia, I would write a paper on the phenomenon of social media, how its mercurial nature facilitates the human tendency to blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.  

Still only 381 words.  385.  Three hundred and eighty-nine.  (See what I did there?)  And that’s including the footnote about PreMed that made sense at the time, but I struck the lead-in that would have made it even remotely relevant, so now it’s just hanging around down there like an old man’s scrotum, and now that simile has me running over with silent, adolescent giggles.

It’s 11:55.  I will close this now, as though it’s important to post it on the day in question.  Well it is to me, actually.  It really bothered me that I couldn’t post yesterday’s until I finished it this morning.  Even though it turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself.  This one, not so much.  11:56.  I’d better get a move on.  (Footnote time!)1

1 My middle child, a daughter, known to the Nutjobs as “PreMed,” is the wisest, kindest, most loyal, staunchest defender, keenest bullshit detector I know.  An old soul of the first water, my spirit animal if you will, who taught me the phrase “ride or die” by saying that I was hers.

500 Words, Day 21 - Kitchen Work

Crashing wave of fatigue.  Good thing it’s time to get in bed, anyway.   She yearns for her bed, almost as soon as she gets home, she wants to set the groceries down and climb under the covers.   Just cook this chicken, this rice, then you can go lie down.  Just put the clean dishes away.  Just cut up this fruit for snacks tomorrow.  She consoles herself.  Then you can go lie down.  Then you can curl up with a season of something.  Just write this piece.  Then you can.

As she moves around the kitchen, she feels the inevitable tears welling, and she stops to consider this, to pay attention.  What is happening right now that is prompting this sad, familiar overwhelm?  Everything in general, nothing in particular.  But no, stand still, notice.  What is this really about, this time?  

As she moves around the kitchen, she stops occasionally to take a deep breath.  There is something keeping her from fully expanding her lungs, she stops short of a complete inhale.  It’s like the breath is stuck.  The almost frustrated sigh that escapes her is what’s triggering this wave of sadness.  It’s a sound that she grew up with, a sound that shades her memories of her mother, who moved around the kitchen after work, trying to breathe, and sighing instead.  It wasn’t disappointment or irritation or a passive-aggressive request for help, she had always thought.  She realizes this now as that same sound escapes her lips, and she steeps in the feeling that provoked it.  

“Just like your mother, just like your sister, destroying what makes you happy, and ending up alone.”  Her husband’s voice intones in her mind, confirming what she already suspected, that the her family history and the patterns of dysfunction inform her decisions like DNA, dictate her choices.  Her life is merely a vehicle for perpetuating the misery that infuses her emotional genes.

She nods ruefully to herself, yep, he’s right you know.  Ending a marriage, moving out on her own, single lady at 52.  The last kid will graduate high school, move out, and she’ll be alone.  “Just like your mother, just like your sister, you’ll be all alone, and wish you hadn’t pushed everyone away.”  He knows exactly what to say to completely wreck her.  

She tries to shake it off.  It was the right thing to do, leaving, starting over.  That’s what going over those old blogs is for.  Reminding herself that she’s not crazy, this disaster is not her fault.  Some very sick and painful stuff happened because of NOT HER, and this was the only healthy response.    As her therapist keeps reminding her, being the polaris in that constellation for twenty years was the sickness, propping everyone up and smoothing everything over for a generation, that was the madness, that was the crazy thing.

But standing at the kitchen sink rinsing dishes and hearing her mother’s sigh whistle through her mind, looking at a solitary life so parallel to those that came before her, it’s hard to remember.  She dries her hands on a dishtowel and heads to bed.   

500 Words, Day 20 -- The List

With 1:16 to go, I guess I should get started on my essay for today, huh.  It should be obvious that weekdays are my most difficult days for the experiment.  I do have huge blocks of time at work where, if I were a different sort of person, I’d fritter away on my blog and other internet interactions.  

As it is, I take Facebook breaks often, to tend to my page and see what my imaginary friends are up to.  We work in The Cloud in my office, and frequently the software can take a minute or even two to load, which is a decent interval for checking social media, as well as my phone, in case the notifications I have set have somehow reset themselves and I missed an all-important text.  It could happen.  But all too often, my lock screen looks like this:

which means no one loves me, not even the New York Times.  How many people can say that?  You might ask, “Why don’t you set Facebook to notifications?  Then you’re sure to have something on your lock screen every time you open it.”  But that’s too easy.  That wouldn’t count.  As you might have come to expect with me, it’s complicated.  

So to put 500 words together, I’m going to type up the notes I made this evening at the conference The Gamer and I had with the director of the tutoring center, to create a summer schedule to get ahead of the game in AP Physics and AP Calculus, as well as a host of other chores as will follow in the lines below.  

It was a meeting that I had scheduled, and it was not to include The Gamer’s dad, my ex, primarily because I want to shut him out of our son’s life limit our son’s exposure to what I consider to be an unhealthy environment that will not be improved until I see my ex making progress on getting sober, and by that I mean ceasing to drink.  Somehow he found out about the meeting and showed up.  I staunchly ignored him, to my delight, the director did as well, knowing that what little influence he has on The Gamer’s academic progress is mostly that of good-natured and unintentional sabotage.  In any case, what follows is the list of notes I took.  Considering I’m well over the 500 words, I will let them speak for themselves, without translation or interpretation.  

Find out can make up failed PE (local community college)

Run mile in 9:00

Eat healthy

Crunches rhythm anime subtitles

Bike to run

Bike to lift Y guest pass for (name of best friend)

Finish online health

Start calc and physics

2 weeks or as needed check in

Khan Academy online

Catch up on Japanese convo

Get text for Japanese 2

ID weakness  vocab

ANKI

Free app android

Go thru book ID words don't know

Routine

Accountable

Long term goals

ACT prep

MIT Lectures physics prof Lewin broad ideas

Khan academy for prob sets

EFT Check ins

Therapist - (name of my therapist)

Wrestling with motivation and follow thru

Desire to complete v paralysis

Self-soothe with entertainment; distraction

Pomodoro schedule

Make appt to go over it

Sent from my iPhone

500 Words, Day 19 -- Dumbshows and Noise

Facebook is the closest I will ever come to scrapbooking

Is there a way to download four years’ worth of FB posts?  I don’t care about the photos I found and the links I shared.  Status updates though --- some of them are hilarious if I do say so myself.  And some of them are painful, pithy, and poignant, not to mention cheesily alliterative.*

(Spellcheck let me have “cheesily” which was generous I must say  Curiously, it did not let me have “spellcheck.”   Built-in irony ftw).

For a while I was keeping tabs on those posts by copying them to a notepad on my desktop with the date.   But then my hard drive crashed and I didn’t save them elsewhere and so now they’re gone.  I keep saying I’m going to go through them from the beginning (July 27, 2011 -- save the date for the 4th birthday jam) and copy and paste.   But Facebook is an asshole (surprise) and doesn’t always show you everything from the past.  You have to keep telling it “show all posts” because the default is “highlights” and even then it’s pretty hit and miss.  (Hey, is it “hit  OR miss” or “hit AND miss?” Hang on, let me google it.  Huh.  Turns out either is correct.  Fantastic.  I need that kind of uncertainty in my life.)

One reason I want to be able to pull up some oldies but goodies is that I can use them for prompts when I’m out of ideas.  After all, that’s why I post them in the first place, so I won’t forget.  

Random hilarity around my house lately --
“Don’t let him hit ya where the good lord split ya.”  -- First time the Gamer had ever heard that expression and now he is rolling on the floor in non-ironic convulsive laughter.

Random hilarity from Summer 2011 --

“My kids drive me to drink.  The good news is they always come back to pick me up at closing time.”

Random mildly amusing observation from Fall 2012 --
“Filling up a shopping cart at Trader Joe's to take up to college when you visit your daughter: 75 dollars.

Laughing at yourself because your daughter lives closer to a Trader Joe's than you do: Priceless.”

Oh hey btw there was a bitter and angry (and heartbroken) paragraph up there also, but I put it down here in a footnote so it wouldn’t interrupt the bright and breezy flow of this fluffy post.    

You’re welcome.

*Some of the posts help mark the events of the past four years, when the chronology gets a little vague, like, when did Troubled and Juvie try make money selling poppy seed tea that they made in water bottles in the cul-de-sac?  When did Mr. K. said it was romantic that they were running an extension cord out to the truck so they could watch movies on the laptop when they spent the night in the truck in the driveway after I banished them from the house?  When did Mr. K. write me that deluded drunken denial-filled email describing a conversation he and Troubled had where they came to the conclusion that I had done a shitty job of mothering and wife-ing? I do try to let shit like this go because I'm never going to be happy reliving it all the damn time, but when I do, when I beat it back for a little while, Guilt and Blame and Shame come to call and those assholes will NOT take the hint.  Then the next thing you know, there's that shiny imaginary revolver to suck on or the phantom Volvo station wagon to drive off a cliff. So, no, not letting it go. Anger is keeping me alive. Next.

500 Words, Day 18 -- Round and Round and Round We Spin

She scrubs the inside of the microwave.  Someone had heated a plate of spaghetti without covering it and now there is a corona of splattered sauce around the platen.  Her sponge goes round and round inside the microwave.  Her thoughts go round and round the inside of the problems she is trying to solve.  They chase their tails like the puppy that her daughter brought home, unbidden, without permission, far too young to leave its mother.  She has come to love that puppy, effortlessly and without rancor.  Of course she would fall in love with it, another dervish in the chaos that her household has become.

She looks around what used to be her beautiful house.  She has returned for the few days that her husband is traveling for work.  Someone needs to be here for her son.  Someone adult, a responsible party.  Who will take charge of things.  Who will call the police and tell them that there is a man living in a rusted-out Cadillac in her cul-de-sac, who has been forbidden to enter the house, but who comes in anyway, bidden by the daughter, to lie around doing bong hits all day when the rest of them are at work, at school.  "Call us when you are home and you know that he is actually there," the dispatcher tells her when she calls from work.  "We can't do anything unless he is there when you are.  Even then it would be a stretch."  But he is living in a car, she screams inside her head.  He is living in a car in the nice cul-de-sac where she clings to the shreds of the middle-class lifestyle that she used to make fun of but now desperately defends.

She's a light sleeper, really light.  At the moment she is trending toward the manic side of of the bipolar spectrum.   Now it helps her stay vigilant for the squeaky door, the stealthy tread.  One night, she woke to hear her daughter just a few feet away, rummaging in her desk, searching for a hidden set of forbidden car keys.  A shouting match ensued, a scuffle.  She ended up hurling herself to the floor with her back to the bedroom door, preventing egress.  Her husband slept through it until the very end when he got up and drove her daughter where she had been stealing the keys to go.

That was the time she left for real.  She had left twice before but had always come back by dark, like a child, her tail between her legs, mortified, penitent.  She left three times and the third time she stayed gone.  Friends had finally convinced her that her instincts were right.  That despite all the condescension and head games, the gaslighting, the bewildering denial, despite all of that, she was really right and had been all along.

The situation was intolerable and bizarre beyond measure.   It should have ended months ago.  If he had listened to her, given her credence, if he hadn't dismissed her.  If he hadn't taunted her with suggestions to visit her shrink and consider changing her meds, because "that's always something to try when you get like this."   Now, the cold comfort of "I told you so" is too weak to describe the way she feels.  She wanted to grab him by the ears and shake him. What. The. Fuck. Is. Wrong. With. You.  Why aren't you outraged by what is happening?  Your daughter is bringing her feral, drug-dealing boyfriend home to sleep with him in your house.  Do something!   She mentally pounded him with her fists.

And he would tell her to do something herself, if she felt so strongly about it.    

So she did. She left.

She left him to clean up the filthy mess she had allowed him to make.  And came back to clean it up when she saw that he would not.

The zipper of a suitcase being opened sounds different than when it is being shut.    

500 Words, Day 17 - In Which I Start to Bore Myself

That feeling when you want to go to bed but you know your kid is gonna need a ride home.  He’s being a little inconsiderate, but I’m going to give him a pass because he turned in his final paper today, last day of sophomore year, huzzah!  But the little shit is really vague about it, saying  “call ya later mom.”  So I have to stay awake until he calls to let me know at what point “later” becomes “now.”

That feeling when you toy with the idea of asking his dad to be on call for the call, so to speak.  But you realize that (a) he’s probably already halfway in the bag and (2) that would be asking a favor, which you won’t allow yourself to do because martyr.  And excuse me, but isn’t it the weekend and time for him to be the weekend dad he always was even when we were still married?  And while we’re at it, why *isn’t* he taking The Gamer for weekends like he insisted he was going to?   But I’m not about to facilitate that or even ask about it because again, I’m playing the superior card, and I’m simply refusing to comment on this very odd reluctance on his part to have time with his son.  

I’m starting to bore myself with my agonizing over my ex.  I need to let that shit go but I’m still mourning the loss of the family life we once had.   It’s true that I exhausted myself trying to spread a cloak of normalcy around it even though in retrospect it was massively fucked up.  It really is time begin to make a new life and all the other optimistic things I talk about when I have the energy.  The truth be told, I’m a loner these days, having isolated myself from almost everyone I know.  It’s too painful to have to stop and explain everything.  It’s embarrassing to confess that I left my husband to flail about in the whirlpool of his own making, that I cut ties with my oldest because she hurt me beyond my ability to heal, at least for now.

I’m lonely, I guess, but being with people is exhausting.   I mostly just hole up at home because the calm and quiet environment is surcease from decades of being on for other people, with a partner who gave zero fucks about what I needed to thrive and grow as a person and a mother and a wife.  It wasn’t malicious, although at times I think it was purposeful since I always stood in the way of what he wanted to do.   

I’m gonna wrap this up kind of abruptly right now.  Eyes are closing. No photo, even. If you’re counting words, it’s slightly less than 500.  Sue me.   

.

500 Words, Day 16 Already? Ugh

Crap!  500 Words due in 1:22.  Time for some self-referential nonsense.  Oh my 500 words are due oh okay let me try to use up a bunch talking about how I’m going to use up a bunch talking about    . . . .

Ugh.  My kingdom for a prompt.  

I was just saying less than 24 hours ago how much I was enjoying the structure of the daily deadline.  I woke up looking forward to writing.   I think I would look a lot more forward to it if I didn't have to do all these other nonsensical things with my time.  For example, I spent a very frustrating 2.5 hours this afternoon trying to get from point A to point B and back again in my car.  There are a lot of people where I live who don’t want to be where they are and are trying to change that at all at once at 5 pm.  It wasn’t a SigAlert or anything but damn.  I know LA has bad traffic but I think the Bay Area is catching up in that regard.  I suspect that my boss sent me on this errand at that particular time on purpose so that from now on I will appreciate staying at work later until the traffic subsides.  Keep my butt in the chair an extra hour, yanno?  He’s a sly fox, that one.  

Casting about for a topic.  

How about my ex who is causing me no end of consternation at the moment.   There are all these divorce details to take care of, most of which involve figuring out how much money to give me (hint: lots) so I get why he wouldn’t be returning those emails and I’m trying to tread lightly because you catch more blood from a stone with honey or whatever, if you see what I mean.  In addition to being annoying, it’s expensive, because every time I have to contact him, it has to go through about three attorneys who all need two-tenths of an hour each just to turn on their damn computers apparently so it ends up costing a couple hundred bucks just to ask him, “So how’s about coughing up those documents I asked you for about nine other times buddy whaddya say?”  

Another reason it’s troublesome is that he might really be struggling.  I know he’s drinking at least some.  It’s none of my business and not my problem except for the sticky wicket of The Gamer spending time at his place (or not spending time there which is what it’s looking like for now).  Also and no melodrama for reals he might die so there goes my support which goes to show you what a heartless bitch I am.  Ultimately what’s wrong with everything is basically me and how I make everyone miserable which is actually not that easy to refute at 11:25 pm when I’m sitting here in bed blinking back tears because I’m the girl that cries all the time, remember that one?  

So anyway, this one didn’t turn out all that great, but tomorrow is another day, Scarlett, and that’s a good thing.   

Namaste, bitches.  We out.

500 Words, Day 15 - In Soviet Russia . . .

In the course of doing this project,  I have noticed a change in the way I think about writing. Now that I have this structure, this daily deadline, I’m taking my blog more seriously.   I’m not just dropping in when I feel particularly creative, or when an event prompts some scribbling, or some dialogue takes place that is too good to pass up.   Each day brings a deadline, and with the deadline comes adrenaline.   Each day demands another 500 words.  And each day I look around all the corners in search of some that will sound good if I string them together.  

It’s like the old joke -- in Soviet Russia, words write YOU.  Six characters in search of an author.  500 words in search of a blog post.  

When I was in seventh grade, we had to put together an insect collection for science class.  Each student was supposed to get out there and catch a lot of bugs, stick them onto cardboard with pins, and turn that mess in for a grade.   I don’t know why I couldn’t get it together on this one.  It’s not that I was that grossed-out by bugs, or that I revered life especially, or anything.   I just couldn’t make it happen.    

Anyway, the day it was due, I got up super early and headed out to the edge of the development where they had stopped work on the houses when the money ran out.  (I swear my childhood was a series of movie cliches).  There were undeveloped lots of milkweed and goldenrod, where the collectible insect population was said to be particularly dense.   I don’t know what I was thinking would happen, but I knew I had to get out there so that I wouldn’t be lying when I got to class and said that I had tried.  I ended up with exactly five of the required 25 insects.  When I got back to the house, my mother was waiting for me with a panicked fury that subsided somewhat when she saw that I was safe.  I went to school, and when it was time to turn in the science projects, I went up to the teacher and confessed that I hadn’t done the collection because I couldn’t find any bugs.  

And then I burst into tears.    The teacher, who was pretty cool about the whole thing, told me that I could write a five-page paper about insects instead.   Wait, what?   No bugs and I get to write?   Beautiful.  

I’ve been thinking about that day off and on for years, just a little vignette, just a little sumpin sumpin.   I got a million of em.  The point is that I wouldn’t have thought to write about it if I hadn’t been sitting here struggling to come up with something to write about.  That’s the point.  That writing when you’re inspired is awesome.  But writing when you’re not inspired may end up being more awesome.    Practicing starting fires instead of waiting for a bolt of lightning.   A controlled burn versus a wildfire.   

500 Words, Day 14 - Award Night BBQ

She pulls into the high school parking lot and texts her son, “Hi, I’m here.”  There’s no response, as is often the case.   They laugh about it sometimes. “Sorry I missed this," the reply arrives often days after it was needed.  But it’s not funny right now.  She dreads getting out of the car, making her way through an unfamiliar venue.  Shielding her gaze from people she recognizes, but doesn’t know, and people she knows, but doesn’t recognize.  She grasps her phone firmly, tries texting again.  “Where are you?”  Nothing.   Feigning competence, she gets in line for the buffet of grilled food she has no intention of eating.  Although she arrived late, she unwraps the veggie tray she bought from Safeway and puts it on the table, consolidating food from other plates to make room.   She studies the presentation at the front of the courtyard, nodding approvingly and chuckling at the jokes the students are telling as they hand out the awards.  Most Likely to Walk in Late to Class with a Starbucks Cup in Hand makes her smile, but then there are serious ones, too. Most Likely to Win a Webby, a Grammy, Most Improved Artist, Best Designer.   Her son is in this art/music/video/design program; he will begin in the fall.  She peers into the different rooms, one is a recording studio complete with a great mixer, how many tracks is that?  The English classroom is full of books she knows she should be reading.  She surreptitiously takes photos of each shelf to remind herself later.

It’s difficult to be here, and she congratulates herself.  It’s important, and she made it, and so far she has stifled the urge to run back to the car and read until it’s time to go home.  She takes perverse pride in showing up to these things.   She didn’t mention it to her ex.  If he can’t be bothered to subscribe to the e-newsletter that announces such things, that’s not her problem.  Figure it out like everybody else.    

It was his day to drive to school but he forgot.   She had forgotten as well, and she and her son made their way to school and work as they always did.  He texted her around ten o’clock to ask if The Gamer had gotten to school.  “I know it’s my day to take him . . .” and the ellipsis trails off, as vague as his resolve to make good on his promises.   “Yes, I took him,” she texted back.  “Sorry if you came by and we weren’t there.”   His name in her phone is "Straight to Voicemail."

She scowls to herself, but her irritation quickly passes.  She’s really rocking this single mom gig, but let’s face it, even when she was married, she was a single parent, managing schedules, writing checks, making brownies.  Taking care of business all by herself.   Showing up to school events despite crippling social anxiety.   Being there for her son, whom she finally locates on the floor of the Web Audio classroom, playing Cards Against Humanity with a half dozen of his friends.   

“Here you are,” she says, grinning.  “I could have used you earlier.”

“Yeah, I know,”  he says, with a matching grin.  “Sorry I didn’t text you back.”

500 Words, Day 13. The Prompt

For Day 13 of the #500WordsADay experiment via @KaleandCigarettes, we received a prompt:   

What would someone see if they looked through your window for 24 hours?  

I love this prompt because clearly I need encouragement to be more introspective and self-absorbed.  (lol winkie)   It reinforces the conspicuous feeling I have a lot of the time.   Surveying my space, watching myself, wondering how I’m coming across.  The phantom audience that is with me ALL THE FREAKING TIME.  So, yeah, resonance achieved.    

In the midnight hour

At midnight, you’d see me getting a burst of inspiration to create something despite the hour, sitting up in bed, tapping away on Chromebook.  In an hour or so, you’d see me succumb to sleep with the Chromebook still open and the lights still on.  (How that device has survived being rolled on while still open umpteen times would make a good commercial.)

Of course I must sleep at some point, but I don’t know what this would look like, although a private fear is that I’m a really weird sleeper and do all kinds of bizarre shenanigans like sit up and sing the national anthem with my hand over my heart or something in the night.

At five or so, you’d see me wake briefly to close the device and turn off the light.  You’d see me rummaging, panicked, under the covers or maybe under the pillow, for my phone, blinking blindly at the brightness of the screen, despite the fact that the room light was on until about three minutes ago.  You’d see me swipe “snooze” for the first of many, many times.

At six, you’d see me stumble to kitchen.  Pour coffee, drink coffee.  I don’t know whether waves of gratitude would be visible through a window, but there would be a moment for coffee pots with auto-brew, and another for the memory to set it up the night before.   You’d see breakfast and showers and morning routines.   A relaxed, pleasant energy between my son and me.    No, really!

At seven, you’d see me shut the door to my beautiful airy spacious neat apartment, my quiet peaceful space that creates harmony and fosters calm.  Another gratitude moment.  You’d see me open the garage door.   Marvel at having a garage.  With a car in it, even.   A myriad of miracles before 7:30 a.m. in the got-damned morning.

Then there would be very little to observe for over ten hours.

Back home at six, what’s for dinner let’s get burritos how was your day okay is there homework yes did you do it yes did you really yes mom god.    You’d see me standing lost in thought in the kitchen.   You’d see me clear the dishes and open up the Chromebook and put my hands on the keys, weaving contentment and gratitude and relief with regret and sorrow and grief, the rhythm varying in speed and urgency, until it’s time to climb into my bed and start the whole process again.