Words I Like To Say Out Loud

1. matryoshka

2. wunderkammer

3. forsythia

4. hydrangea

5. parlour

And you?

insomnia

Jason Statham

that’s just the title because i don’t have one, and i was thinking of him.

the snow has stopped. eric worked 12 & 1/2 hrs today, (yesterday – whatever, it’s 1am), crazy overtime the day before, too. adam pops up and runs to the window when headlights appear on nights daddy isn’t home on time.

my brain is working. i took a hop skip and jump ahead and started brain-writing from there. what was it my horoscope said? avoid your escape reflex. i think i just effectively ignored that, leapt my snags and rewrites, and started thinking out scenes that are only single lines in my notebook outline.

i don’t know how to work the photo software on this mac, all my pictures are piling up and it’s making me insane. my son has new hair. the puppies are growing up. the SNOW. all i have to use is from my phone:

i didn’t originally intend to do that, but i know little enough about this stupid computer as to be having trouble with the phone photos, too, so fuck it. this is the only photo i can access, saved on my desktop for screensaver purposes. it balances the post title anyway.

2am, no tylenol pm, no benadryl…

,,, and so i’m awake. feedback given on 2 pieces, photo funya explored, Deadly Women watched, mild facebook stalking complete and unsatisfactory, dogs with full bellies (ALL ELEVEN), menfolk asleep, fire humming (i know crackling would sound better, but it’s just NOT, it’s humming), ceiling stared at, head cocked, tomorrow planned for, today evaluated and found satisfactory (and more than satisfactory), domesticity planned including heels, snow falling – or drifting, or floating, slowly. slowly, slowly….

low lights and the sounds of the keys. typing to hear them, too braindead to put my fingers to good use. listening to the fire and my fingers, and the drone of a documentary voiceover.

can. i. feel. my. heartbeat. as a sensation or as a sound? sensation. i never hear it. it rattles, coughs, bounces off my ribs and laughs, large and sloppy wet. the color of meat in fridge light at midnight, in the last hours before it goes bad.

but it’s been this color since….

well, at least it’s fat, and it works. my eyes are swollen – they might be getting rounder, my contacts slide around on them a lot lately.

bridget is drumming her fingertips (no nails, they’re bitten down) on a greyish formica table in the rec room, chin on her opposite palm, waiting for me to get my shit together so she and charlotte can get on with their dastardly plans – charlotte now fancies them villians, with arched backs and arched eyebrows, black capes and snickers and mischief. bridget now knows they are children, doing things movie-style because sometimes there is simply no other way to do them….

my soft kitty entry video wouldn’t load, that sucks, the timeslot is closed. i didn’t even know what the prize was, but i wanted to enter.

that’s all, i think. for now. glad when i wake up it will be friday.

wait, there are real things!

tomorrow is adam’s big Haircut Day. he goes in a baby, comes out a man. i’ll take too many pictures. he won’t be scared, he’s too excited. I’M excited.

the puppies are 4 weeks old this morning. they eat mush from a cracked devilled eggs platter and bark and growl and wink and blink. adam has selected a large and fluffy one, not the largest but easily the most mellow – and dubbed him R2D2. now when there are puppy riots and escapes, he heads directly for the door and into the house. he wants snuggled and scratched, and to sprawl on the lap of my son, to make eye contact and sniff, to learn about their relationship. my son wants them to play all the time. he is tender and careful and comfortable – they make a good match. i like them together. every boy needs a dog.

that is all. and here are the corresponding photos:

 

early a.m. ramble waiting for the “may cause drowsiness”

the christmas tree looks best in the middle of the night, when the lights are low and everyone is asleep and it’s the only warm thing in the room. huggable despite the white synthetic pine needles and wire branches. there are 4 metal bangle bracelets, a purple rubber Erase Hate bracelet, a pen on a string to hang around your neck, one of those plastic fake golf holes you put on the floor to put into, and a child-size stethoscope hanging from it, in addition to the ornaments.

this feels repetitive. i need to check my last post in case i mentioned this already – or if it’s just because i stare at the things adam has hung from the tree, looking for new things in the middle of the night, quite a bit.

nope. haven’t mentioned it. just a mind loop.

there are two nectarine-sized jack-o-lantern candles on the tv stand – the last of the halloween decorations i forgot to put away, i think. adam eyed them from the time they were placed there, and periodically asked to take them down and look at them. i let him. today i gave them to him – put one in each hand and said he could keep them. he was happy holding them, sitting on the couch half asleep with handfuls of orange candle, but at some point he put them back where they’d been. i wonder if i made some sort of tactical error, and he doesn’t really like them anymore since he can have them whenever…. or he just liked them there.

ten puppies on the porch, and one tired dog. she likes to lie in the sun by the dryer, away from them, and to play in the snow. she looks a little bored and a lot tired. she has that “this is my function”glazed look to her eyes. little mouths all over her. we make too much eye contact, i think. she’s waiting it out.

this is a ramble. i have no cold pills so i’m using benadryl to make the sleep come, and i’m going to type until i’m drowsy.

today we took adam to see santa. we picked him up from my mom’s at noon and headed in, he thinks snow boots make him ten feet tall, the child is invincible in snow boots. he was a little wary but went right up and hopped on his lap. said “i would like a fortress,” before he was asked and was ready to get down. then he stepped back to look at santa for a minute, and they made a little small talk, santa gave him a candy cane, they talked about bells, and adam had another go at the lap-sitting and was much happier about the whole experience. i got excellent pictures.

tomorrow i need to finish catching up on housework and try to get somewhat ahead, it’s “people are in town” week and i don’t want to think about laundry or clean floors. if eric and adam spend some hardcore playing time i can move around them, quietly productive, like a ninja housekeeper.

i think i will have most of thursday to myself, day-wise, and i think i’m going to turn off my phone and type until my fingers hurt. there will be no one else i’m supposed to be thinking about for a solid – well, from morning through about 3:40pm. i don’t know when the last time that has happened. the goal will be to keep the tv off and not spend the better part of the day napping and lying on my back like a bloated carcass, stinking and happy to remain at rest. if i can get my fingers in motion, they will be happy to stay in motion for the day… it will be a little christmas gift to myself. 6 or 7 hours of undivided attention to a world that only exists in my head. gluttony.

feeling a little sleepy i think. reptilian, but i always feel a little reptilian.  everyone’s moods are like little raw eggs. nothing can be maintained, it’s maddening.  circles and circles of assesment to see what everyone is feeling, what the moods are, what’s changed, is it the fucking barometric PRESSURE, i can’t control the barometric pressure… just trying to keep everything even and steady and not miss anything, not let anything get ruined. dance monkey, pour the tea, take the temperature, thumb in the wind, strngs on my fingers, bells in everyone’s hands, i need to stop passing out goddamned BELLS.

i’m not feeling grinchy. just, you know, like an uncooked egg, like everyone else. but i just bite down, or try to as much as possible. leak a little venom now and then and clean it up as efficiently as possible, throw some sugar over all of it to kill the bitter parts. leave no trace, you know.

maybe the benadryl has kicked in, i know i’ve stopped making sense.

just want the house clean so i don’t think about it. just want a little of the tension to ease out of everyone – this is a tense time of year, and that will never stop being bizarre. just want thursday to write. just want h- to go fuck herself for not even bothering to send so much as a TEXT since she woke up her first morning in louisiana. if you read this h-, merry christmas. just want an afternoon to myself. just want everyone to be happy for longer than ten minutes at a time. just want the kid to have a happy christmas – to be happy, excited, to enjoy himself. because after age 7, i think, it begins that descent to where i am now – maintenance. maintenance crew. and the maintenace crew just wants this to be over. just wants to SLEEP.

tuesday night pleasantries

sometimes not finding sleep on a weeknight post-coitus turns into lonely internet rambling that underscores middle of the night Loneliness with a tinge of Melancholia, especially if your feet are bare and it’s november –

other times you wake up to an email from a friend you’d feared lost just after finding, a horoscope that says it might be okay to be a little two-faced (or double-sided like a coin, if you prefer), and discovering your grinning mug and that of your sister’s in a few photos (5,6,11) on the website of a lovely philosopher met on a lovely spring day: http://www.zentennyson.com/default.html  – i’ll link that in here permanently so angela and heather can more easily find it 😉

my return to bed will be to sleep. this brief interlude of wakefulness has proved fortifying as opposed to alienating thanks to andrea, rob breszny & frank tennyson ❤

p.s. amy has a picture of her own hand holding a FIVE leaf clover – i know it’s real because i recognize her thumb. it’s preposterous!

balloons

the car is full of  balloons for adam’s big-boy-wearing-underpants semi-party. yellow cake, brown candles…. he’ll love it. he slowed down long enough to talk to me on the phone this morning for about 15 seconds, he was teaching Papa his numbers (apparently it’s the craziest thing in the world that my dad doesn’t know his numbers, so my kid has appointed himself tutor – love my dad for that) and didn’t really have time for a break from his lessons. we’ll have a hard time getting him home tonight, especially once he’s full of cake and ice cream.

the sky is flat grey. my organs are doing battle with each other, i think. there’s the feeling of jostling around for space. my eyeballs and brain seem to want the same space in my head. it’s the sky, i think. and bad sleep forever. and ever and ever. as soon as the sky breaks open i’ll start breathing normally again.

bellah is really starting to show. i am getting preposterously excited about a litter of illegitimate puppies…. maybe i should just put ribbons around their necks and hand them out as gifts to family members – mwahahaha. a fat black puppy with a red ribbon. nothing is cuter. 

no ending for this. being more promiscuous with my stories, just handing them out whenever someone shows interest. nudity.

balloons. cake. ice cream. grey sky. saturday.

stephen king is voodoo

today is my 4 year wedding anniversary.

it’s been a crap week off and on.  the kind of crap week where things are sailing along, happy, even keel, then BOOM – belly and faceful of nasty whatever. i can take a gut punch if i have time to clench, but this hasn’t been that kind of week. but with the lack of sleep, these punches could’ve been coming a mile away and i might not have noticed.

anyway – 4 years married, moving into a better mood and a better weekend. forget this week, it’s disappearing (and taking indian summer with it). thursday and the kid is a ray of sunshine,  eric sent me a dozen roses, and i have enough coffee to sustain me through this sleep-deprived exhaustion that’s like extra gravity, like in Slapstick.

who could ask for more?

NO ONE. and still, i’m getting more. i’m halfway through the first draft of my 2nd short story in less than 2 weeks – and this after a dry spell of MONTHS. last night after some stupid bickering and the cat taking a dump in the bed and not having solid sleep in who knows how long, i sat down and wrote a thousand words. half braindead but the images just fell out.

last week i wrote Teetotaler, killed someone else in an alley but was still pretty satisfied with it – AND satisfied that i opened a blank document and closed it with a story. asked angela a couple nights ago if she could give me some ideas, something that i could turn into a story that didn’t have a dead body in it. ten minutes later we had an outline, and last night it merged with an image i’d been saving (maybe i can write a story without a body in it, but i can’t write one without at least SOME blood).

what does this have to do with stephen king? fuck if i know, but he’s involved. i’m always reading something – i abandoned reading minimalists for awhile a few months ago due to the paralysis it seemed to be causing when i tried to shape a sentence, and switched to anais nin – unstructured, honest, sexual, freeing.  my brain relaxed, but still those blank documents, fingers hovering over the keyboard or rapidly discarding the scraps i was coming out with.

my sister gives me Lisey’s Story, and i fall into it. stop halfway through and write Teetotaler. finish the book a few days ago, and now this untitled story is already working its way out on paper. if i don’t owe that somehow to whatever relaxingstorytelling no-pressure gorgeous-image diarrhea-mouthed stephen king voodoo, then who gets the credit?

SO. happy anniversary to me, happy anniversary to eric, happy weekend to everyone, and apologies to Caroline for her fingertips, but i just can’t keep my characters clean…..

random love courtesy of insomnia…

haven’t been to sleep

i feel sort of like this:

and even a little like this:

i also learned, while seeking  photos, that if i have any questions i can Ask Sister Mary Martha on her award-winning blog – because, as her tagline puts it: Life is Hard. Nuns Are Tougher. thank you sister, for making me chuckle this morning…..