I am relying heavily on David Byrne, strong coffee, and love.

I am headed to blogher for a few days.
I have obligations and I need some distraction.
I am hoping I can read my keynote and facilitate my workshop
with ease as I feel kinda out of sorts right now thinking about everything.
Everything is fine that can be fine at this moment.
My parents are here and they will stay with the boys
and the boys are just fine.
I am OK.
not.
my sweet joe
I am relying heavily on David Byrne, strong coffee, and love.
I am trying to find myself just now
so you will recognize me at blogher...

You never write the narrative of yr own sadness until the moment it happens.

I would have pulled bong hits today.
I would have drank hard liquor.
to forget

Today wasn't like any other day I have ever had.
I have never had to wake someone from slumber to deliver bad news like the news I gave today.
When you are younger than you even know you are and you are in love and most of yr problems can be solved in 24 short hours you don't look into the future and see heavy shit.
You just see much of the same.

You just forget to focus on the future and what will happen.
People tell you things and you look at others lives but it is never yr little life.

You never write the narrative of yr own sadness until the moment it happens.

Joe's father died last night.

It's like there is a giant hole in England now
in his town
in Joe's heart

And when I had to put my arms around him
to hold him and tell him
it was like he wasn't all there
like he had shrunk to the size of a boy
and even my strong strong arms
wrapped right around him
couldn't do enough

But sister, it's the opposite of hallelujah

I am not calm.
I was so desperate I even consulted archival posts of GOOP for help for a nanosecond.
It is bad if I am kneeling at the alter of Gwennie.
But she makes me think it is possible to be serene.
And thin and in white pantsuits.
Dude. I must chill.

I'd wait for all the dark clouds bursting in a perfect sky

While on the The world's most authentic, museum-quality representation of Christopher Columbus' flagship, the Santa Maria this morning in downtown Columbus-Finn Sharp starts asking very loudly about vaginas.
Seriously.
I had told him that I had a doctors appointment later in the day
and I should have stopped at that.
If I give just a tiny detail he will find a way to puff it up
and walk around with information falling from his mouth all day long.
Some days suck and we just don't schedule things well.
I really did not want to take my sons to the gyno, but it happened.
Anyhoo they were angels in the room, sucking on lollipops and talking bout chinas.

I have a pee pee and you have a china.

Yep. That's right.

But we both have pee pees really. Yrs is just on the inside and mine is on the outside.

Yep. Yr doing better than some college boys already with the info Finn.

Afterwards we drove home and it started to rain.
Actually it started to look like rain for a bit.
It smelled like it too.
I wish life were more like this.
That there were signs all along the way to point to things prior to when they just happen.
This past week has been hard.
It has been like the sky just quickly opened up
without any of those sweet signs
and rain just soaked us.
Slick and wet.

Joe' best friend is sick.
Sick enough to be worried that he could lose him
and all we can do is just walk around feeling lost.
Songs make us sad.
Watching The Kite Runner wrecked us last night.
I fell into sobs looking at Blaise and his tiny hands at one point on Tuesday.

It's like I just wish there would have been some little tiny bit of preparation
for the way it feels to be scared someone might leave.
Like the way leaves twist and turn their structure inside out
and all over the landscape it looks odd.

It looks like rain.

But at the end of the day- it probably would have felt the same-armed with information or not.

Rainy and real and as shitty as you can feel on a particular day in July.

"I don't have to believe it, and I think it's beautiful."

I am dreadfully tired of being outside.
It is hot and sticky and buggy and stop shuddering you outdoor folk- I like the outdoors.
I even paused to recognize Thoreau's birthday this week- I just grow weary of the boys demanding I spend all my time in the thick of summer.
I have tried to show them that turning the air on full blast and lounging in the house is fun.
They will have nothing to do with it.
They want to be mostly nude and outside.
I want to be in a cardi and drinking an iced coffee with my feet on wooden floors.

The truth is they play so freely and with such reckless abandon outside.
There is nothing more magical than to watch freedom like that.
In the house there are obstacles and rules and such, yet outside they seem to really hit a stride.
Outside they float and flicker.
Outside the happiness is really easier to see.
I am trying to love it more.
I did as a kid.
A country kid with whole summers spent in a creek.

I was thinking about the summer before middle school and we had a slumber party at my friend M's house. It was a normal garden variety nightmare for her parents involving rotary phones, pop music, and frozen training bras-
but in the early morning we decided to go for a hike.
M showed us a wooded area by her house where we had never ventured before
and it was like we went ape shit the moment we stepped into the tiny forest.

It was all magical and I had just read Bridge to Terabithia
and the world just stopped and these 6 girls played hard all day and made up a whole back story to the place and decided it was their place.

We were in love with the secret spot and play came naturally and imagination soared and nothing was the matter with any of us.
Nothing was wrong.
Nothing felt ridiculous to believe in there.
It was like we checked our insecurities and problems and suspicions of each other at the crisp leafy entrance to a forest that whispered.
To a forest that was dark like in the day.
To a forest that promised we could just be.

You know how things happen when yr young.
A few hours can be ten years and all of the sudden you believe something is real
and it is just so heartbreakingly beautiful that the world stops.

It was like that and we all believed that the summer
would save us from the impending hell of middle school.
But it didn't.
Time marched right on and tore us promptly apart from one another
like some sort of jacked up Stand By Me bullshit.

Some taking their rightful place at the head of the class, some discovering that you define the word slut for yrself in a small town, some smoking cigs in acid washed jean jackets down by the old catholic church, and some just really sad that childhood was pretty much gone.

I think if we had gone there everyday after school that things would have been different somehow for us. If we would have thrown our books across wooden tables and ran to a place where we could just be free then life would not have been so hard. I am not sure. I think it is just the way the world unfolds that middle school girls get surly and stomp and scream and invest more time in the mirror than in play. To turn against each other and let go. I guess there was nothing really that could of kept us in that forest. Perhaps we had not found it in time. But for some weeks in the mid 80's it was as right as rain. It was a place that I can only find in the play of my children now.
I can see it wash across their faces like a flush of red from the hot long day.


title post- Bridge to Terabithia 2007

yeah well I can't help it. I want to talk about blogher.

So I was talking on the phone to one of my blogher roomies this past week and just shooting the shit and talking about blogher.
This will be Piper's first conference and my second so I have all the knowledge apparently.

(It reminded me of the conversation I so distinctly recall between me and my childhood friend Missy Mount the summer before I went into first grade. I was laying on the brown nubby carpet of my living room and twirling the long beige phone cord around my little legs and telling her about what to expect at Kindergarten as she was one year younger than me. I cannot believe that I remember it- but I do. I was reassuring her of the fun she would have and telling her about the teacher and it blows my mind that I can retrieve this memory just now)

Anyhoo- I was telling Piper how excited that I am to go back to this amazing event this year.
Last year I felt like I had an enormous time.
I met so many folks that I admired and got to meet up with my soul sister.
I found my sisterhood of Kirtsy and just knew I was on the right path.
I opened my mind and ears and tried to learn and listen and absorb
so much of the amazing buzz that filled the conference.

I told Piper to just be prepared to be surrounded by wonderful.
But- even me- the extrovert to the tenth power had trouble completely fitting in.
It's like I revert to type and really kinda just entertain.
And when yr the clown- sometimes you miss out on the conversations and interactions behind the wall of people having a blast laughing with (at) you.
You know?

This year I am certain at least once (or thirty two times) I will drink a lot and dance on some sort of shaky wooden thing. I will laugh so hard that it will mimic an ab workout and I will get into some sort of mischief. This is me.
But I really want to sit quietly and talk more
to these people inside of my computer.
To engage in real life.

I want to be more brave and stop assuming that just because my blog is not a powerhouse and read by thousands that I am not someone wicked cool to talk to.
I wanted to talk to more people last year- but I was hesitant.
I suck!
I want to have interactions and experiences that go beyond what we can do for each other.
Or who we are Or who we are friends with Or what we look like.
I want to tell people all the times that their posts broke my heart and how wonderful they are and how much it means to me that writing and thoughts like I stumble upon everyday exist.
They exist in this world like a fricking buffet in the blogosphere.
Like a junkie I come and get my fill and I am delirious with it.

I wanna have the time for everything and I am certain it will fly by.
And then there are the folks I know already and my God-
I can't wait to inappropriately grope them.

I am excited to work with Neil on a ROYO session.
He is brill and I feel like I kinda know him even though I don't.
I think he will like me, but I think I will scare him.

I am nervous about reading on the keynote even though last year it was one of my favorite parts of the conference and I wanted badly to be up there under the lights. I wanted to be the girl with the most cake. I wanted to be validated and shiny and pretty. Now I just want to be able to speak properly.
Yo.

But, I am still nervous.
I am also crap with faces.
I can pick out an obscure actors voice in a disney film.
I can recall voices for a lifetime-
but faces it takes me a moment.
I am nervous about that.

Are you going to blogher?
Can we hug?
Will you tell me everything is going to be alright and I won't fall down on the stage?

I want to french kiss the whole conference and tell it that it is beautiful.
That each one of us make up the whole and
that we all glisten and shine brighter through laptops across the world than stars.

I also wanna drink copious amounts of vodka and lick Tim Gunn.

it's blurry like the speed of life

and they run off into the evening of the neighborhood for just one more
walk around the block in pajamas.
My strict early bedtime has been way easy breezy this past month.
My three shirtless boys walking and talking and I am in the house now with my feet up
enjoying the relax of two happy hour beers.

We all met daddy and had happy hour on the porch of a very old place.
Earlier in the day me and the boys sat in front
of our local hardware store for 1.5 hours talking to everyone.
We sat on one of those swing gliders and ate some candy.
Finn and Blaise and Joe all amazed me today.
In quiet moments randomly through the day they struck me with arrows of love and shook me right out of the bullshit that I tend to get stuck on.
It was a lovely day.


It was a day that reminded me of the very sweetness of life.
The moments that we stitch together on a very long string.
The string that we must, I imagine-
twiddle with our thumbs when we are very old.
Looking back
remembering
and glowing
glowing with a mix of peace and that feeling that you get right before you cry:
That small push up of muscles in yr throat that announces feeling.
I felt very deep about this day I had.
Just a normal Wednesday-
but not really.
Have you had these kind of days?

I guess this post is kinda like when Ferris Bueller occasionally speaks to the camera.

All you can eat DVD buffet and dried cereal in bowls on the couch.
Do not judge me. I am superfuckingmom most days.
Mama bathes and throws on pajamas at three pm and we do not leave this hot house.
We do not do a thing except count down the hours
till Joe shouts through the metal mail slot.
It is always like this on Tuesdays.

I play magna doodle flipping drawfest 2009 with Blaise
until I cannot even draw one more requested kitty.
I slobber on my cheek as I flip in and out of consciousness.
I run my tongue across my slick freshly cleaned teeth.
Oh God why do I always book 8am dental appointments and think it a good idea?
I am tired.
I had slow moving dreams that I kept waking from as Blaise slapped me repeatedly in the face shouting no mummy no mummy DRAW!

I say yes all the time.
I worry a bit more than necessary.
I fear that I live in an alternative universe where John Hughes film quotes fall from my mouth like broken teeth
as the world punches me
and shouts at me
like an insolent child
Do more.
Grab the ring.
Write it all down and when did I start to beat myself up?
When did I gain this thirst for everything?
Like I have to cram it all in at once.
Like everyday is the day you have to make your own.
Oh- when I realized that it was.
I just need a good nights sleep.
Like fatigue can make you an unreliable narrator of yr own life you know.

out my kitchen window yesterday

What can I expect when I give them paints outside?
They are my children.
They are free spirits.
Have you painted yr body lately?
It's kinda fun.

Little Doe is Love

Add to list of things I just want.
I want one of these handmade rocking headpieces.
Anyone who knows me in a social way....They know this would be so my thing to pull from my handbag and wear.
I often have masks and hats and little gems ready to wear when it gets half past Vodka tonic.
I would so wear one at Blogher when reading my keynote! ROAR!
love. love. love.

photos via teen vogue

You’ve done a hundred things before half past nine

like omg- thanks to my pal Jen for sending me this song.
Love it.
lyrics:
Oh Gillian, you’re up with the sun
You’ve done a hundred things before half past nine
By the time most folk are up and gone
You’ll be starting on one hundred and one

There’s not enough hours in a day
To do all the things she’s just got to do
When the daylight fades and the night invades
She’s only just begun

Weary as you lay at night waiting for the sun
Planning out tomorrow now before this day is done
‘Gillian you work too hard’
But don’t you try to slow her down – she’ll tell you
‘Idleness is good for none work's how I get my fun
Idleness is good for none work's how I get things done’

Gillian you’re the one you’re the one
Shining in my life, you’re my eternal sun
I’m trying to thank you now for what I’ve become
But I’ve only just begun

Your influence has been profound and I’m proud to be your son
Your blood is my blood we are forever bound
You’re the inspiration to the way I live my life
I’m singing,
Gillian if you weren’t my mother I would make you my wife
Gillian if you weren’t my mother I’d make you my wife
Gillian if you weren’t my mother I’d make you my wife
Gillian if you weren’t my mother I would make you my wife

to all the mamas doing ten thousands things and still kicking ass!