What's been going on

My doctor would not give me fancy drugs to make me happy, because my anxiety is "situational". I know, right? What a quack. Sure, I'm stressed because of money and time and responsibility, but does knowing that make me any less likely to drive the car off a sea-cliff? Well, yes, but only grudgingly. I'm loading up on 5htp, instead, and waiting for the hallucinations and lucid nightmares.

This would be a good place to note that the kids are not with me, because they are spending winter break with grandma and their father on another island. So I'm by myself, which makes it totally ok to be irresponsible with vitamins.

And because I am the sort of person who worries about dying from vitamin overdoses, I've been jogging and cleaning and knitting and in general getting on in a really impressively boring manner. I am filling the time and loneliness with paring down - my belongings, my expenses, my underpant size. I don't need to be able to afford meat, because homemade bread and soups are fantastic. My furniture is good quality, my dishes are sturdy white china, my blankets are hand-quilted, my sweaters are hand-knit, and all I have to do is get rid of the detritus - junk mail, old toys, unused diapers, ratty blankets, that pot mitt I caught on fire - and try to keep the place simple and clean. Ta daa. Take pictures of my house for Shack Chic, I am Amanda Blake Fucking Soule.

Clearly, the 5htp is working.

And my patrons keep me engaged. There is the hobo who spends all his crumpled, sweaty dollars on our book sales, hoarding hundreds of books in mouldering piles for an orphanage in Thailand he claims to be starting. There is the muumuu hobo with a little dog she scoots around in a baby stroller, with a card to show it's a service animal - that service is elusive until you realize that baby-dog is the thing keeping her heart afloat. There is the hobo we all suspected of being a crazy child abuser, who was just arrested for being a crazy child abuser. My hobos keep me strapped to humanity, which is tender and tough and horrible in ways that are really important and funny and scary. I love them. Except when I hate their fucking guts.


And here is a draft I wrote a few weeks ago and never got around to posting because PATHETIC:


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12-10-11
I took Friday off to attend Christmas program and fundraiser stuff with the boys. Dropped them off at school and had a few hours to kill. The landlord had not paid the garbage men to pick up the Thanksgiving refuse, so I pulled on my shittiest jeans, opened all the windows of the car, and loaded two garbage cans of rancid rotting turkey into the hatchback for a ride to the dump. Chased an optimistic stray dog away from the maggoty bones I dropped. Drove off with my head out the window, trying to find a song on my ipod loud enough to drown out the smell. The wind sort of whipped the putrid carcass odor around in circles inside the cab. It was a tossup between forensic anthropology and library science for grad school; my current profession at least gets me laid more. Which is to say not at all, but at least I smell better while not doing it. Did not gag, though, which was a nod toward my ass-kickingness as a would-be corpse-examiner. As I pulled out of the dump, I passed a good-looking man I have been passively keeping an eye out for, and gunned it when he braked and waved because, well shit, maggoty carcass stink is not the best way to earn a place in a man's heart. I hope.

You know what kind of men love smelly carcasses? Bears.

There is something empowering about throwing all your shit out at the dump. I peeled out of my clothes, burned them*, found my running shorts, and went sprinting outside to run down the road to the bay. I didn't even stop to walk and pretend to fiddle with my ipod when trucks drove by, so they received the full visual impact of my jiggly parts, which are unexpected and alarming. The beach was empty, billowing with cold mist from the surf, and I did a skipping-hop-run to the music down to the pier and back again. Nearly died of muscle spasms on the way back up the hill. Showered all the garbage and running off, collapsed on couch. Much better than crying into knitting. Idiot-epiphany.

Lost it at the Christmas program, though. The kiddo was adorable and a bit of a ham, Leif sat on my lap and clapped dutifully, and all the other parents had plans for the weekend that did not include hanging out with my sorry ass. 'Holiday baking with family', and that kind of nonsense. I took the kids home and cried quietly into the laundry for a minute or two, then washed the car, grilled some sandwiches, made cookies, and put on a Christmas special while handing out egg nog. Mine was mostly brandy. Gavin curled up and said, "Ahh, best day ever," and I said, "Huh, where?"

Because when you can't make it, fake it. Their memories are more important than mine right now.

*threw them in washer