stupid thought zombies

My sleeping brain has been rummaging these past few nights, pulling up terrible things to set creeping into dreams.

Oh, you are missing your son while he stays the week at his grandmother's? Maybe he is really gone because you killed him.

This was the worst thing I have ever dreamed.

Oh, is this torch still burning? Let's see how that flame fares if he's gained 80lbs. 

Nice try, brain. Torches don't give a damn. But I could have done without that particular reminder.

Where is the baby? Is the baby still in the bed? Has she fallen down the crack and smothered?

Woke up groping around blindly in the bed for the baby, who had been sleeping until I pawed her face. GODAMMIT BRAIN.

I blame my phone, with its news articles and social media distresses. I have started calling it "Riddle's Diary", and frisbeeing it away if it appears in my hand again.

Stinks.

2014: a year in review

So, the annual end-of-year quiz has become a thing of gnashing and squinky-side-eyeing, because it is a thing written by a YOUTH, and after you've answered a couple of questions about money and death and love as an adult, you're pretty much ready to torch the thing and go get a drink. So here is a modified end-of-year thing, hitting the same main points. Perhaps a good thing to go with here after a protracted absence, as I have been over at Wordpress for most of the year, and managed to burn that to the ground, too. If it is a sign that I am too old and incompetent to write anymore, I am going to choose to ignore it and whack away stubbornly until one of my grandkids comes along and gives me something too advanced in its simplicity for me to operate.

So here we are. 2014 in Review.

THE GOOD - oh, go ahead and brag, you shameless tart

I got a job! And I bought a house! Am now once again a respectable Children's Librarian, in a respectable suburban three-bedroom home in Hawaii. Big improvement.

(I have been a librarian for almost 10 years, but took a year off to move islands and have my daughter, so getting back into the career stream was of great import.)

THE BAD - just get it out with quickly and move on

My 18 month-old daughter almost died after tripping and falling on a tile floor while shoe shopping - concussion, seizure, stopped breathing, ambulance, hospital, recovery, observation. I still have the dress they cut off of her. It was a horror. Then, just as we were relaxing a bit, it happened again while visiting friends in the most remote part of Maui, necessitating an air rescue - which I could not ride along on. Watching the helicopter leave, and the drive to Kahului, with no cell reception and no way of knowing if my baby was dying of a brain bleed, were maybe the worst 2 hours of my life to date. We bought the child a helmet, and she is ok. I am all nerves whenever we go out, hovering and yipping. So that's nice for everyone.

Less bad but still not great: I didn't publish a book this year. But I had Reasons.

Also, I broke a tooth. And got two other teeth capped. The dentist knows my name and asks pertinent questions about my personal life, and that is never a good situation to be in with someone who drives a Lexus or runs an administrative office.

STYLE - was there any?

I am eyeballing the skirt-and-boots-and-tights look, but haven't gotten out of my pants yet. I have a hard time buying legwear that costs as much as discount jeans but can be eaten by cats.

But I have really been getting into oxford shoes.

MEDIA - the best and the worst of 2014

Podcasts: I listened to Serial, which I didn't expect to get hooked into, but totally am. Welcome to Night Vale is always wonderful, too.

Books: Most of my reading is done in the car, via audiobook. I listened to a bit of everything, depending on what passed through my hands at the library, then I went fast and hard through Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, because they are wonderful madmen. The top 3 books of the year were Anansi Boys, Good Omens, the Tiffany Aching series, and the Silkworm (by JK Rowling as Robert Galbraith). Ok, that is 4. Well, 7, really, when you count the individual Tiffany Aching books. They are all worth having a go at.

The worst book was Velocity, by Dean Koontz. Put down the thesaurus and assume your reader is intelligent enough to follow you along with a character's emotional journey without explaining every reaction and physical movement in minute and florid detail, ok Koontz? Three sentences to describe the function of a bandaid and why it was important to the character to put one on (spoiler: to stop the bleeding). THREE SENTENCES.

Look at this nonsense:

 
Music: I liked a couple songs on the radio. It wasn't a big year for music. I tend to listen to celtic stuff and classical if I'm cleaning or knitting or doing something around the house, lest I become an angsty insufferable thing. Otherwise, it's audio books.





RESOLVE. Get some.

People talk shit about resolutions, but I am of the opinion that resolve and follow-through and ambition are all good things to have in life. You must better yourself. You must fight back against the years and the health problems and the heartbreak. Work. Try. Fail. Redouble your efforts. So that is where I am now: 2015's theme is REDOUBLE MY EFFORTS. Last year was I AM SUPPORTIVE OF YOUR ENDEAVOR (and yes, these are said in all-caps, even in conversation), and that was a pretty good one. My mother cat-sat for Stephen King's grand-kitties, and Mike brewed the legal limit of beer in one year (which is stacked floor-to-ceiling in the Harry Potter closet, because we don't actually drink that much). There was travel and new food experiences and motorcycle action. Could have done without the hospital mishaps, but that was not through any lack of cheerleading or support on my part - just dumb bad luck and a child with the physical grace of a pelican.

So this year I will learn to oil paint.
And refinish floors.
And renovate bathrooms.
I will foster my oldest child's new interests in coding, Monty Python, and Neil Gaiman novels. My middle child will be read to from a variety of excellent young-people books by Kate DiCamillo and Cressida Cowell. There will be a big home-made dollhouse for the little one, and I'll finish her quilt. We will make the new house a home. I am resolute.

Also, I will lose 10 pounds. I am instituting a no-facebook-until-fitbit-has-been-input rule, so I will probably be off of FB completely inside of a month.

So there it is. 2014 did not suck, except when it profoundly did, but as a larger picture it is a lovely snapshot in my life. One of work, nice drives, good books, happy family, too many cats and birds, and old friends come to call. Must not screw it up now.

I still miss the people I always do. I still have bad dreams and wishful ones. But it is less acutely stabby now, and that's progress.

all the fails

Things are derailing, as they do when you get pulled along by someone because you don't want to hurt them by yanking your hand away and staying on safe ground. I once found myself trapped for a week at vacation bible camp because my high school boyfriend snowballed me into signing up, even though the roster of other campers looked suspicious. I suppose the good thing that can be said about this type of gullibility is that it almost always results in an adventure. The party you shouldn't have been at, the nudity that should have been avoided, the vehicle you shouldn't have tried to operate, the masseur you shouldn't have trusted, the drink concoction you were volunteered to taste test - adventure! Adventures are usually no fun when they're happening, though.

So I have done what I did at vacation bible camp; called my mom and cried to come home. I've also sent a whole bunch of flaily, hysterical emails to sarahapple, who mustered the forces and cried DEATH MATCH!

So next Friday TUESDAY (because I still can't count), we will be posting a new death match challenge. The theme: SPOILED EXPIRED MILK. Here's hoping it doesn't end up in a pile of torn scraps like all my other recent projects. I've already broken my sewing machine and taken to stitching the whole thing by hand. Can do this.

The burning of the boyfriend boxes

It was a lighter, as I said. And a damned classy one, too.

The boxes looked innocuous. The most recent one had accumulated detritus, a bit of which I had added as recently as last spring. I packed the tokens and photos into a bag and set them aside. I'm trying to find closure, not death by toxic fumes.

The first to go: the RETURN TO SENDER. Just like the song! Only much, much suckier. It was an act of chivalry which, while appreciated, was nevertheless as effective as turning it on its edge and stabbing it straight into my chest.

At this point I began shaking a bit, so I balled up the bag, tossed the letters back into the box, and looked inside the second one. This box was much older, and fell apart when I rummaged it. Mostly recess notes and complaints about how mean our parents were.There were also assorted photos and remnants from high school jammed in there. It was sad sorting through it; I broke up with this boy very poorly. I was 17, and self-absorbed, and casually cruel. I've been sorry about it for a long time.

The burning spot had grown over, and I needed to pull a lot of wild jungle weeds out of it. Mongooses flew through the brush like popping weasels as I crashed around yanking on vines.

I got the Mormon Lady pot out and filled it with water, in case I started a brush fire. Because a pot of water will totally stop a raging brush fire.

I was scared of the lighter, which didn't have a safety clip. If there is no safety, HOW WILL I NOT BURN OFF MY FACE?! I lit a note, puffed out the lighter, and dropped it. I had to hunt around for it when the first paper died out. It is possible that dropping a hot lighter into the grass and losing it may not be the best way to avoid a brush fire.

Somehow, I did not ignite my pants or hair. I fed the papers in one by one, and only had to put the grass out once. It took a surprisingly long time, and I was alarmed by how hot it was. Obviously, fire is supposed to be hot, but when you watch a movie with a hero on one side of a wall of fire, it's easy to think, oh, just jump through it, you weenie! No. Fire is fucking hot. I'm so sorry, Dennis Quaid.

When I had watched the last one wither to grey ashes, I dumped the pot of water on the pit and went back to the house with the empty boxes.

I don't feel jubilant, or free, or closured (closed? closurated? clostophicated?) but I haven't started crying or scraping all the ashes into an urn to sleep with at night, so that's good. If my motorcycle lessons end in disaster, these old secrets are safe with me. And if that's the last reparation I can make, well, that's something, at least.

burning love

The man likes to order mystery packages from the Something Store. The premise is that you pay $10, and you receive a parcel that may contain anything from a laptop to a deck of cards. The boy and I refer to it as the "something disappointing store", as we have so far opened them up to find luggage tags, a pet brush, and a eye-bleedingly hideous tie. Nevertheless, it is the man's form of gambling, and about two weeks ago he succumbed to the lure of chance again.
At the same time, I was starting to knit the man-sweater. Between sketching out the design and carefully choosing the wool, I got it into my head that the item itself would become a magical love totem - that stitch by stitch, I would bind myself to the man and graft shut the injury to my heart. Since I was a kid, I have suffered from bookish mysticism. I still feel in the backs of wardrobes for snow from time to time.

An idea formed itself in my head as I sat counting stitches and conjuring magic - I needed to burn the boyfriend boxes. As a librarian, the idea of disturbing provenance is bad enough; destroying written material is kind of horrifying. This weekend the man climbed up into the attic space and tossed down the shoe boxes from the trunk in which they were hidden, careful not to look into them. I caught them from the air and did not open them, either. These are love notes I will never again read; the girl in the letters is no longer me. I need to move on, and maybe protect the dignity of the boys who, I think, loved me. The idea of setting fire to them panicked me a bit, so I tucked the boxes under the bed, instead.

Yesterday, the envelope from the Something Store arrived. The boy tore it open, then sagged in disappointment. "Dad, you need to stop ordering things from there. Don't they have a box to check if you're buying something for a kid?" He handed it to the man, who said, "Oh, well," and handed it to me.

It was a lighter.