Things About My Heart

I have so much to be grateful for. I've been given so much, and I've been forgiven for so much. I've had so many opportunities - for growth, for knowledge, for joy... I have no right to ask the universe for anything more, but if I could...

I'd ask for the wisdom to love without owning. To care without controlling. To give without needing. I'd ask for the depth to fight without violence and to challenge without harm. I'd ask for the strength to stand in the storm and be the shield that instead, I seek in others. I'd ask for the clarity to know when a path has ended and see where a new one begins. I'd ask for the faith to believe in a story that is bigger than me. 

I have so far to go in the building of this heart of mine. So much more that I could give if I can cast off the fear that holds me back and the self protection that shuts me down. 

I am thankful for the path that has brought me here, every mistake and every heartache and every scar in the surface of my soul that makes it what it is now. And I am thankful for the rest of the process. And what my heart can be if I keep it open. 

Things About Hosteling

In all fairness, staying in hostels was probably my favorite part of the trip to Brazil. For all of my grown-up complaining and fit-pitching, I can't help but smile when I think of the people and the things that I got to experience in hostels.

New Year's Eve on Copacabana!

Our first Hostel was in Rio de Janeiro. In case you don't know, Rio is a city of 6 million people, which is about 5,999,627 more people than I am really comfortable sharing a zip code with at one time. Our Hostel was located in the Santa Teresa neighborhood, known for it's colorful and artsy culture and the perpetual party atmosphere, which is obviously why I desperately needed to stay there. Because parties. Until at least 9 PM. We shared an 8 bunk room for 5 nights with 6 boys that rotated in and out like migrant shift workers from various continents. There was finally one other girl from London there, a bronze-skinned bohemian beauty who flitted in and out like she owned the place, which, if you consulted any of the 20-something international romeos in our dorm, would be the general consensus.

January 1st 2017. The aftermath. (the shirtless dude on the beanbags in the corner is the hostel owner

I was without question the oldest person in the hostel, which I would estimate houses anywhere from 20-75 people on any given night. I was also the only mom. Being a mom has it's definite advantages, as a few of the kids will respect your age and sleep needs by tiptoeing quietly around the darkened door room after 9 PM when I usually holed up in my bunk for the duration of the night. Halle was able to take full advantage of the perpetual party atmosphere and hit up some of the street parties and famous Cachaça bars and Samba joints.

One night, a friend of the hostel owner who was a Syrian refugee cooked dinner for the entire hostel - some amazing rice and beef dish with peanuts and I don't even know what. But it was really good. That night I stayed downstairs with all of the kids and drank caipirinhas and Antarctica beer like it was going out of style. In case you were wondering, a caipirinha is a traditional Brazilian cocktail made with limes, simple syrup and Cachaça, which is a spirit distilled from sugar cane. And it's delicious. I might have had a dozen or two during my stay.

The best part about staying in hostels is, hands down, the super cool and friendly people from all over the world that you get to meet and subsequently, hang out with. In every hostel (we stayed in three) we got the best tourist tips, sometimes tag along local guides and help getting everywhere we wanted to.

The second hostel that we stayed in was in the middle of the Mata Atlantica Rainforest, in a little hippie beach town called Trindade, and couldn't have been more different from our urban hostel in Rio. We spent the one day that we had in Trindade hiking to beaches that were squirreled along rustic coastal trails, slip-sliding in our Havianas in the mud from torrential downpours that happen at least once a day. While we were there, we sat out one of the awesome storms in a great little restaurant with good local beer and an American classic rock cover band. In the meantime, back at our hostel, the wood slat bridge that spanned the small creek between the main hostel lodge and the bunkhouse where we were sleeping collapsed when one end of the bridge support sloughed off in a miniature land slide. The minor catastrophe also cut off the water supply to the the entire hostel which meant that we were relegated to drinking the cheap beer on hand at the hostel. It was a super fun night, like camping with cousins when the power goes out. We played UNO with some kids from the Netherlands and I am pretty sure I didn't win.

I would tell you that the last hostel we stayed in was my favorite except that I really like all of them for different reasons. Green Haven Hostel in Ubatuba (yes, it's a real place) was located directly across from a big beach where giant, lifted tractors drive out into the surf with trailers to pick up boats that come into the bay. Ubatuba is the surf capital of Brazil, and while it took a little doing to find the "best surf beach", we finally did, and Halle got a lesson while I soaked up the last full beach day that we had in Brazil. It was exactly everything that I imagined Brazil would be. Turquoise water, crashing waves, and beautiful bronzed bodies of all shapes and sizes. And then we went back to the hostel, where they hosted a killer Brazilian barbeque and partied all. night. long.

Hostel living certainly isn't for everyone. In fact, I am not sure it's even for me, but it was a memorable experience, every sleepless night of it. Halle was insistent that the night that we spent at a hotel robbed us of the cultural experience that a hostel provides, and while I enjoyed the "private" bedroom and a bathroom and shower all to myself, I have to admit that I missed the adventure and intrigue of sharing a house with 50 strangers from all over the world. Even if I was the only mom.

Things About Getting Cocky

I get that I've been bragging a lot. I mean, the tropical wonderland of Brazil, all this blather about contentedness... I've kind of been rubbing it in your face, right? Well pride goeth before every good fall, doesn't it?

It's just that the minute you start feeling good about yourself, something is bound to go wrong. At least in my life that seems to prove true over and over again. Not that wrong is always bad. In fact usually it's pretty hilarious. Later on. But I have been getting way too cocky and it's catching up with me. Like when you finally get a few minutes of success on your toe edge when you're out snowboarding and suddenly you think you're cool enough to rock acid washed jeggings. And then the $500 latch that you had replaced on your stupid car breaks AGAIN, only this time in the UNLATCHED position, and the back door flops open every time you hit a bump, flashing the dome lights in your rig all the way home like a mobile rave.

Or like when you think you're tough enough to do hard core yoga two days in a row AND go snowboarding and slam your less-than petite frame on the ice several hundred times and then you wake up feeling like something chained down to a steel table in Dr. Frankensteins laboratory. Except you're not chained down and you have to actually get up and do stuff. Like work. And sitting on really uncomfortable bleachers for a lot of hours.

I really need to quit bragging, and getting all comfortable with myself. Because it doesn't change the fact that things break, technology freezes and catastrophes prevail as soon as I walk into the room and there will always be a trail of disaster following me for all of us to laugh at. And if we don't all laugh at the trail of disaster following me then I will surely need to be committed to an insane asylum where I can quit disastering and just cuddle with a padded wall all day long.

The minute I start to think that I actually have my shit together somebody is gonna faithfully remind me that my writing is schmaltzy, I still make minimum wage in most of my jobs and my driving habits may or may not be legal. But while we're laughing about the bungee cords holding the rear door of my ridiculously overpriced luxury SUV closed, can we also take a moment to remember all the cool stuff that I've done? Like Brazil, and getting on my toe edge. And TOTALLY rocking jeggings. ( <---- ok so really I slinked from shadow to shadow to avoid being caught in public, but I did wear them out of the house.)

Things About Being Content

Maybe it's not being thousands of miles away from All The Things That Matter To Me. Maybe it's watching Aspen do basketball moves I don't know the name of because I was homeschooled. Maybe it's the hot sleepytime tea I can sip while I watch Frank chew up my favorite Eos Mint Lip Balm on the living room floor. I'm not sure what's doing it, but I can't seem to shake this feeling of CONTENT.

It's a big deal, this contentedness thing, at least in my life. The life of going and chasing and wishing and hoping and trying and just Too Much. Contentedness means not caring if I can't chisel the dying Christmas Decorations out of the 4 inches of solid ice on my front porch until May. It means not freaking out that I might have frozen my washing machine to death when the dogs broke the dog door and invited the Whole Winter into the house. It means feeling, to the core of your being, the value of being warm curled up on a couch under a blanket with someone that gets you. It means knowing how very good the glass of $50 wine that your daughter accidentally opened on a day that didn't matter will taste. It means not being offended while you're mopping the dirtiest floor you've ever seen. It means knowing that you are EXACTLY where you were intended to be in this moment.

The root of contentedness is gratitude. And when you figure out how good you've got it, because you finally got to flush toilet paper down the toilet for the first time in two weeks, or because you can have as much butter on your english muffin as you want, you can't help but feel gratitude, and subsequently, contentedness.

I should be ashamed that it took a trip halfway around the world to remind me how good I've got it, but I am not ashamed. And honestly, taking the trip is half the reason that I have got it so good - because I CAN. And then I can come home to this beautiful, crazy place called Real Life where I am loved and I am safe and my people are.

quite possibly the luckiest girl alive...

Things About Cultural Experiences

He says the tap water is fine to drink. He says, “never mind the silt when it rains like this. It should be fine. It IS fine.” His self correction was so quick that I almost believe him. And after all, since Halle and I didn’t bring enough cash to pay for our two nights at his hostel where we had only booked ONE bed, who can question the integrity of the owner? Especially when he is a Brit named David, or George, or James, or one of those really super British names, and gives one the sneaking suspicion that his frequent emergent rendezvous in the dark and rainy alleyway have more to do with a booming drug business than a hostel with silty tap water. But who am I to question? It's all about the “cultural experience”. (Turns out that George, the hostel owner, actually owned the Pousada (hotel) across the street as well and was running back and forth in the torrential rain storm to deal with guests over there. So no drugs. I think [almost disappointing].)

it will hold me, right?

According to my 20 year old daughter, it was this rich cultural experience that I deprived her from when I insisted on paying for a hotel room after 5 nights in a hostel in Rio De Janiero: possibly the biggest, hottest, dirtiest city I have ever visited. It must have been the cultural deprivation that drove her to a 45 minute shower in the hotel room, uninterrupted by visitors of all sorts and unenhanced by the multicultural diarrhea nearby in a toilet that wouldn't flush. (#hostellifeforever!) I do feel like Halle should save passing her judgements on me for when she is thirty nine and a half and has given birth without medical aid in a dirt floor structure of questionable design and no flushing toilet. I will take “luxury”, with or without culture, whenever I can afford it. But luxury comes in many forms.

Like for instance, tonight, in my warm shower (all of the water here is solar heated, along with EVERYthing else), I was joined by a lightning bug. Now there is luxury you can't even buy. And the lighting storm on Ilha Grande last night, like a giant rave in the sky, thunder and rain screaming for attention like an emo support group - the kind of awesome drama that Hollywood can never recreate.

Feijoada FTW. I love this stuff. Just don't tell me what's in it. 

I like Brazil. Things that I like about Brazil include: The music. The food (at least the stuff I can identify). The very nice people who tolerate idiot Americans who don't bother to learn Portuguese before they visit (thank God Halle learned muito pequeno [I made those words up completely]). The fact that I have lost weight. The fact that losing weight precludes me from falling through the REALLY springy and far too flexible one by whatever wood slats on any of a hundred little bridges spanning murky water that looks like hot chocolate and smells like diarrhea. I like the turquoise water of the ocean, and the miles and miles of foamy beach, these rainbow people in all shades and colors and from every background. I like imagining a life on this side of the equator as normal, and not the foreign, sticky, sweaty, amazingly weird world it is to me.

I can honestly say that my comfort zone hasn't been breached to this level since I visited Uganda. Except that one time I had to go to church on Easter Sunday. But it's good. And I still keep pinching myself to make sure I am really experiencing it. Or maybe that was the biting ants that swarmed my feet at the waterfall. Who knows?

so much adventure.

Things About Dating, and disaster, and hope

By now I should be well aware of the consequences. What good can possibly come from it? Why, after so many failures, would I even consider trying again? But this pestilence called hope eats at me like a parasite, whispering lies in my ear about possibility, fueled by a million songs, a thousand books, a hundred memories... I can't stop believing. It's out there, I know it. My patchwork heart can't pretend that it's not real anymore than it can deny the existence of a Power greater than the tides of self that try to rule my life.

So I go. Once more into the fray. Once more unto the breech. Believing, hoping, singing, clinging desperately to an idea that Happily Ever After is, after all, a thing.

But of all the bad dating ideas, a blind date? Friends setting up friends for failure and awkward apologetic conversations about misconceptions and disappointed expectations. What could be more archaic and terrible - other than an arranged marriage, which I have come pretty close to already. Why not try the next worse thing? Bravely go...

And what if by some miracle the reality was better than expectation and the misconceptions really weren't? What if the yellow brick road of trust and trying One More Time led you back to the Kansas that you knew was out there the whole time? Or maybe Kansas doesn't look anything like you remember, or maybe Oz becomes your new Kansas, or maybe you decide that clicking your heels won't get you anywhere but a dirty pig pen and it's worth a chance to ride the Horse of A Different Color and give Oz a shot. Or maybe I am stretching this analogy out waaaayyy too far.

Either way, in spite of the distinct possibility of broken dreams and shattered hearts all over again, and the most certain trail of disasters that will threaten any hint of smooth sailing and Anything Good, because, after all, this is still MY life. And because of course it would. The minute something starts to look up, a disaster of ridiculous proportions has too swoop in to save me from eternal happiness.

If I get a couple hundred dollars in savings, some unheard of part on my car will break,  or an appliance will die an agonizing death, or some other unprotected and super expensive event will take place. If I meet a kind man who treats me with respect and that I actually like, some horrific thing must inevitably happen to ensure that I will never, ever be happily ever after. I mean, if he isn't hopelessly flawed, then fate will see to it that he is undeniably convinced of my lack of worth. Or maybe not. Maybe He'll be better than all of the Scary Things that are my life.

In spite of it all, I can't help but feel like it's so worth it. Because of the perpetual smile. Because of the butterflies. Because of feeling like a million bucks even when you're just a very muddy penny. And maybe I'll put all my wrong feet forward and do everything backwards and maybe, just maybe, if something is meant to be it won't matter anyway.

Things About Brazil

I decided to go to Brazil with my 20 year old daughter. I have no idea why. The opportunity presented itself, and, since South America is one of the very few remaining continents I have to visit (just antarctica and Australia left now!), it seemed foolish to say no. I was also moderately uncomfortable with my oldest daughter doing this new-fangled thing called couch-surfing (back when I was a kid we called it being a hobo) all over Brazil by herself, staying with random strangers that were probably human traffickers posing as nice South American families with comfortable couches. So, by going to Brazil myself, I could obviously prevent All the Worst Things from happening to Halle, being the formidable and intimidating character that I am.


I didn't go to Brazil because it has been a lifelong dream of mine to go there, even though it is a country in the world and I plan to see them all before I die. I didn't go to Brazil because I had some opportunity to serve the global community and make the world a better place by throwing around my white privilege and lack of cultural understanding. I certainly didn't go to Brazil because I could afford it, or because I deserved it, or because taking the time off of work and ditching my other kids and pets and responsibilities just made sense. I guess I went because I could, and because I was curious. And also because it was negative a thousand degrees in Stevens County this month and I never had time to get a tan last summer.

It seemed like a good idea at first, which is often how ideas start out. And then it started to seem like a questionable idea, but I had committed to Halle. And then it seemed like a terrible, scary and irresponsible idea and I am much too old and broke and nervous to be traipsing around South America like a 20 year old with no bills or dependent creatures, but I had already bought the ticket. So Brazil was happening, and I pretended to put my worries aside to go enjoy the burning hot equatorial sunshine and 97% RH.

I spent two weeks in the 5th largest country in the world. Brazil occupies almost half of the continent of South America. It is the largest Portuguese speaking nation in the world, and the only one in South America, having been claimed as a Portuguese territory in 1500. The fascinating thing about world travel is that no part remains untouched by the cultures of other places. Before I went to Brazil I spent a few days in Washington DC with my family for Christmas, and was able to visit the recently opened National Museum of African American History. Wandering through those halls, and then revisiting the replicated history of enslaved people in South America (Brazil was one of the last large countries to abolish slavery), made me wonder what our worlds would look like if the slave ships had never reached our shores. Everything would be different. But that's a tar baby I won't tackle here. Brazil is rich with the combined culture of the native Amerindian, enslaved African transplants and European occupational influence.

But most importantly, in January, Brazil is hot. SO HOT. Hot as Hades in the Devil's summertime. The average daily temperatures while we were in Rio were in the high nineties, with relative humidities to match. It took me two weeks to acclimatize, so I was just about comfortable in time to come home to -18 degree mornings at home. One thing for sure, this trip wasn't about being comfortable.

The thing about traveling with your 20 year old daughter is that she's 20, and you're not. And she's your daughter, and you're the mom. So there is a little bit of a weirdness there. Mostly it worked out great because if I was up for partying (see exhibit A: New Years Eve on Copacabana [maybe in the next post]), I could party her into the ground, and if I wasn't, then I would just go to bed and worry about her getting partied into the ground by someone else's mom, or more accurately, getting mugged at a street party in Rio without me there to protect her.

We packed our two week schedule tight, and even so we only scratched the surface of Brazil's southeastern coastal area, with the exception of a two day excursion to Iguacu Falls, the largest waterfall system in the world, wherein I made friends with a pack of very naughty Coatis and accidentally didn't book a hotel room for our first night. Luckily things worked out somehow, in spite of our total inability to communicate with the poor hotel clerk who was working at 2 AM when we showed up, sans reservations.

But Iguacu Falls, or Iguazu Falls, as it's called on the Argentinian side where we also visited (passport stamps, yo!), was my first taste of the wild and dramatic summer storms of South America. It was amazing and beautiful. Before we even got to Rio Halle introduced me to what would become a survival staple, Pao de Quiejo, which I still have great difficulty pronouncing and just decided to call Bow-chicka-Bow-wows. Bow Chickas are like little cheese-bread balls made of manioc flour and parmesan. What's not to love?

There is no way to encapsulate the entire trip in one blog post, so I will be back with more, after I sleep off some jet lag.

Things Worth Fighting For

The white flakes of ash float down all around me in the crisp November air. If I didn’t know better and if the smoke wasn’t thick in the backdrop of the landscape, I could almost imagine it is snow as it settles without melting on the headstones that chase up and down the steep hill next to Lone Oak Church. Tomorrow is veterans day, and the solitary grave marker of a soldier is in front of me with a flag being tossed carelessly to and fro by an undecided wind. The colors are right, but this is not the flag that I look for at a veteran’s headstone.

Another peculiarity strikes me as I read the numbers etched into the white marble: March 18, 1910. Adam Chariker was 81 when he died. Not a young man. And not a veteran of the great wars in memory… but then my slow yankee mind begins to compile the facts. These stars and bars are not Old Glory. They are the demonized symbol of an internal struggle so great that we still bear the scars more than 150 years later.

 

It strikes me as poignant, this banner of Civil War, placed reverently at the grave of a soldier, a veteran of combat in the defense of his country. A warrior for a cause he believed in deeply enough to fight and kill other men - his own countrymen. We awaken now in the hangover of an historic election that has divided our nation in a way that perhaps it hasn’t been in these 150 years. And this little rebel flag brings tears to my eyes to remember the thousands and thousands of men and women who have fought and died on both sides of causes that were sacred to them.


Tomorrow is Veteran’s Day. It shakes me to think that in all of my respect and reverence for those who have served it is easy to overlook the American Soldiers who fought one another, brother against brother, father against son, in the bloodiest battles that this land has been forced to drink up, believing uto their last breath in what they fought for. It’s easy to discount their service because depending on which side of the Mason/Dixon line you live on, it’s too uncomfortable to condone their fight. To call a confederate soldier a patriot is as unpopular as calling a law enforcement officer a hero. Racists, right?


The civil war was not about slavery any more than modern violent protests are about racism or mass shootings are about guns. There is a deeper underlying issue that may be just as unsuccessfully resolved by modern lawmakers as it was by the blue and the grey so long ago. The battle between north and south was about self government, external control, and the fine line between too much and not enough of both. As long as we are human we will fight this fight, and the only battleground where we will find victory is the landscape of our own minds and hearts.


I stand along the fireline here in North Carolina, shoulder to shoulder with veterans of more than one war. I stand next to conservatives and liberals, libertarians and pacifists. I work alongside Yankees who will endure grueling hours and physical labor to save the goat barn of the descendant of a confederate infantryman from burning up. This is the great America - the people who break a sweat every day to fight the very real enemies. The teachers who insist on a generation more well educated than their own. The “uneducated” voters who changed the oil in your car and grew the kale you bought at Costco. The scientists and lawyers who battle in trenches, bathed in a different gore, for our protection and our salvation from perverse humans and pervasive diseases. The doctors, backhoe operators, linemen and priests who refuse to proliferate conjecture of the condition of our nation from their couches, but with the work of their hands and minds and hearts they generate change.


It is not about making America Great Again, because that so-called “greatness” was borne on the backs of slaves, of minorities struggling first to survive, then to succeed. It’s about being the Great America that we have always intended, and continuing towards the ever elusive mark. We are perhaps now as great as we’ve ever been, as states pass laws calling assault of a police officer a “non-violent” felony and replace the rights of individuals with a higher minimum wage. The war against racism is far from over, as is the war against ignorance, greed, sloth and corruption. We owe our veterans at least our best efforts to maintain a nation worth their fight. A people worth their hope.


Our president is a representation of who we are as a people, the good, the bad, and the very, very ugly. We have cast off restraint after years of bowing to the strong arm of money and power and we now stand, naked and exposed, like the emperor in his new clothes. The real fight for American Liberty and virtue is not in Afghanistan or Aleppo, it is here in our own homes and on our own streets, and we have just run into battle with weapons that we have no idea how to control. But we can learn, and we must. And we can love, and we must.

Things About My House

I have a pretty magical house. I don't know if you know that, but I do. It's not just the WWII Bomber nose ceiling fan and the collection of stolen signage of felonious proportions. It's not even the homey aura of too many dogs, cats, hedgehogs, guinea pigs and various and assorted other known and unknown pets that make it magical, although that helps. It's not the silvery sheen of unicorn breath (dried bloodhound drool) on every arm of every piece of furniture. It's not the rainbow of ABC gum on the DVD shelf donated by high school students from every continent in the world. It's not even the archeological collection of candy wrappers from holidays long forgotten underneath the couches.

If I had to pinpoint what really makes my house magical, it's the eery and unexplained phenomenon that happen when you're least expecting. Like late at night, or even 2:39 AM when you've almost just drifted off to sleep after a long shift at work and aching feet have kept you awake. It's when you hear the mysterious tinkling joy of a 6 month old kitten who found a jingle bell ball that some sadistic child purchased for him at the dollar store. It's the realization that there are 18.74 square miles of hard, resonant, bare floor directly under your bed on which to roll the jingle bell ball. You had no idea such vastness existed in your domicile until 2:39 in the morning when Jim Halpert started rolling his jingle bell ball back and forth underneath your bed for miles and miles and miles, as if the rolling and jingling could just go on forever... I mean, if you had known it was there, you would have certainly utilized it for storing all of those clothes that are organized neatly across your bedroom floor in an easy-access schematic for any occasion dressing. If you had known there were nearly 20 square miles of bare floor, you might have bought a throw rug or two. Or an acre or so of carpet, so that Jim Harpert would have something to scratch up and pee on when his litter box got moved outside by someone who was tired of looking at it and cleaning it out and all of the things that one grows tired of with litter boxes.

Magic, my friends. Like the wardrobe entrance to Narnia, the bare floor under my bed holds endless and mythical potential.

My house is also magical because it does that trick where if you find one leak and fix it, another one instantly develops several feet away in an entirely new location. Ceilings, plumbing fixtures, animals... you name it, the minute you clean one puddle up, a new one appears to replace it.

We also mysteriously breed flies here. Whether it's the rotting carcass of a forgotten pet underneath the furniture (maybe they drowned in candy wrappers) or whether Frank the Bloodhound has a collection of putrefying artifacts he has salvaged from the garbage hidden out of sight, I am not sure, but there is an army of flies multiplying somewhere and it's a little unnerving as the temperatures drop below survivable degrees for these insects.

There are technically only three people living here now, along with 8 creatures (not all inside!) that have names and a myriad of giant spiders that we refuse to acknowledge, but somehow, the house always looks like 17 college students live here. It's almost like a haunting. There's never anybody home between work and school and sports, but the sink is ALWAYS full of dishes and there's never a clean glass in the house. It's supernatural. Sometimes I wonder if the dogs have parties while we are gone, mixing drinks and chilling on the couches like a bunch of frat boys. It wouldn't surprise me. It would explain what happened to that liter of Fireball that was in the freezer. It would also explain how we go through 2 gallons of milk a week and four boxes of cold cereal. Probably Jim Halpert instigates all of it, prancing around on his hind feet like he's a celebrity monkey-person, drinking cinnamon whiskey and making all the messes. Cats. SMH.

Any way you cut it, it's magic. Upright walking cats and garbage mongering dogs, we do magic here. We dirty every dish without ever coming home and we provide endless horizons for feline antics all.night.long. All the cool stuff happens here.

Things That I Just Can't Even

It's cyclic, ok. I get that. Every couple of weeks I can more or less guarantee a breakdown in my life of some sort - emotional, mental, physical, financial... The really exciting ones combine all of those factors into an abysmal vortex of darkness and mayhem. I think that's where I am right now.

Tomorrow is Halloween. Since the very first day of this month I have been trying to make time to do the fall appropriate activities. You know, corn mazes and pumpkin patches and all that stuff. FAIL. Absolute fail. Today was the last straw. The last ditch effort. The final grasp for seasonal success. I don't work until 4, which is practically like a day off for me, and I wanted to take the Few Remaining Kids I could wrangle and rush down to the pumpkin patch and get some jack-o-lanterns made. Turns out the Few Remaining Kids had other ideas. One showed up at 7:30 AM and roused me out of what was quite possibly the best sleep I've had all week to tell me that she was taking my car to Spokane. Just as soon as I got back to sleep the next one woke me up to tell me that she and her dad were taking my truck to sell some of her rabbits. (By the way, you parents of young kids who think that it will get easier and you'll get more sleep when they grow up: you're dead wrong.) All of this means I am down to one kid (who, incidentally, sprained her ankle at a basketball game yesterday) and no car.

Meanwhile the beautiful, festive caramel apples I made on Friday night (another unsuccessful pumpkin carving time slot I had hoped for) between work at the school and doing the ambulance standby for the football game are sitting on my counter like the empty tokens they are of a Holiday Season that promises to be a series of hollow promises and crushed visions of sugar plums.

To make things even worse, on the way home from work last night at some god awful hour, a black and white cat (that was very reminiscent of my niece's fluffy kitten named Cake) darted out of the ditch and into my tires as I sped by on the highway. There was nothing I could do but scream in agony and pray it died instantly. I sobbed for the last ten miles home. I am a murderer. Visions of Crookshanks and poor little Bijour and ALL of the horror of this spring just wrecked me. It was the worst. I am the worst. I deserve the death penalty. I cried for a long time. Ugly cried. And I am doing it again. Because I just can't even. All of the things.

I need to quit some of my jobs. I could keep one of them and go on welfare. It would be perfect. I could stay home in my sweatpants all day and watch Netflix and eat junk food I get with food stamps. I don't know why I am not. There is certainly no reward in working 5 jobs to barely pay the bills and miss out on every good thing while I watch my friends and family frolicking in corn mazes and making amazing Jack-o-Lanterns and having costume parties. The stupid thing is that with all of this working (between 50-60 hours a week, not counting newspaper obligations) I haven't had a paycheck over $300. How is that even possible? I make more than that in one day on a fire. I feel like I am losing my mind.

Sorry guys. This has been a total rant. And it sucks. I should come up with some upbeat life lesson out of it that redeems all of my complaining and moaning. But I got nothing. If you have some inspiring memes you can share with me about hope and things getting better, all that darkest before dawn crap, I'd be grateful. In the meantime I guess I will pull up my big girl Broncos undies and hope for a win there. Because it ain't happening anywhere else these days.

Things I Have Taught My Children

1) How to appropriately react to spiders: This involves glass shattering shrieks, full-blown emotional break downs and as many cuss words as possible. Also squishing them and hoping the cat or someone else cleans up the carnage.

2) How to be cool: This is manifest in the perpetual recycling of my entire wardrobe (INCLUDING UNDERGARMENTS) onto the bodies of 4 younger prototypes of myself. This is also exhibited in the following scenario:

ME: Happily unpacking and promptly donning the new deer antlers I bought during a wine-fueled Amazon Halloween Extravaganza at 1 AM two days ago so I can be a deer for Halloween.
TEENAGER: I need to borrow those for my deer costume on Halloween.
ME: BUT I AM BEING A DEER. WHY ARE YOU BEING A DEER?
TEENAGER: Me and my homies are deers, and our BFs are the hunters. We decided ages ago.
ME: I don't have a hunter. Why you gotta always one-up me?
TEENAGER: I will be a cuter deer anyway.
ME: *teardrop emoji

3) How to be a food snob: Step one: make an entire Crock Pot full of perfectly decent potato soup Step 2: decide you hate it, feed it to the dogs and get pizza for dinner. (I really have no room to complain when they won't eat my food. I won't either.) (Why do I insist on cooking things I won't eat? Good intentions pave the road to dead broke and a lot of wasted food.)

4) How to get out of chores: If you have a bad enough attitude, somebody else will just do it to avoid having to deal with you.  Try: slamming objects, heavy sighs, and whimpering indiscernibly about phantom pains in random body parts.

5) How to set and maintain priorities in life: If you hate it, don't do it. If you like it, do it all the time. See also: Hedonism.

6) How to problem solve: Step one: procure Costco sized box of Oreos. Step two: milk. Step three: problem solved. Try also: wine.

7) How to attract visitors to your house: A) never clean B) decorate with as much dog hair as possible C) run out of toilet paper D) have snacks E) wine

8) How to make and keep friends: never say no. offer snacks. coffee. wine.

9) How to take care of pets: give up your bed. give up your couch. give up your food. give up your sanity.

10) How to value family: Everyone knows that family is represented by holiday traditions. Therefore, traditions must be observed at ALL COST. Which is why we will be carving pumpkins at midnight on Saturday, which is the only time that the Whole Family could do it. You're welcome to join. (see #8)

Things About Misery, and the Company it Loves

Allow me to share my headache with you.

In addition to working All The Jobs and Doing All the Things, I also happen to be responsible for All The Children and the various and assorted types of mayhem that they create. As in: "Mom it's three AM and my car won't start because I dropped the keys in an ice-cold rushing river so now what do I do?" and "Mom I have this weird rash all over my skin that won't heal and I can't get insurance because the website where you nearly completed my application for me is way too complicated so how can I go to the doctor?" and "Mom I forgot my shoes and knee pads and the league volleyball tournament starts in 15 minutes but you can get them from the locker room and drive 76 miles before game time, right?". You know, things like that.

Two nights ago, it was this:

"What is your access code?"

me: "for what? why? what is going on?"

"My iPad was stolen and I have to file an insurance claim."

"HOW?"

"I was really careful all day."

"But I mean the stolen part."

"My window was down. And they were punks on skateboards."

#notthatcareful

After discovering that a certain phone company doesn't have 24/7 customer service and I apparently don't know my access code, I told All of The Children that I couldn't solve anymore problems until I had slept. And after two nights of quasi-acceptable sleep, I finally found the mental courage to tackle it.

So begins my headache.

It was a simple call to a certain phone company to find out how to file an insurance claim for a stolen iPad. It resulted in an upgrade to unlimited data upon the "shocking" discovery that we had, yet again, exceeded our data limit. Unfortunately for my moral high ground, the upgrade came at the cost of a two year subscription to television, which means A) I might accidentally catch part of this presidential election process (gods forbid) and B) FOOTBALL.

Once I sold my soul for a few extra gigabytes, I remembered why I called in the first place and asked about the insurance thing. "Oh sure," the extra-peppy-because-she-scored-an-upgrade service rep chirped, "I just need to transfer you to our insurance provider. Or you can do it online, it's super easy." Lies. all lies. From the pit of hell.

That was 2.5 hours ago. I am now on my 5th representative, I have been locked out of the website three times. I have been in two three way conversations with four different people from both the phone company AND the insurance company, and while almost everybody agrees (depending on the particular group I am chatting with at any given hour) that I do have insurance on my devices (which is pretty damn good since I am paying an extra $29.99 a month), there is a lot of confusion about which devices I have and how they are covered. But don't worry. I am sure that Raychelle and Matt can figure out what Paula, Carrie, Jaida, Roger, and that one dude in a "special department" I got transferred to that only spoke Spanish, haven't been able to in TWO AND A HALF FREAKING HOURS. And then there was the heinous witch who told Roger that she wanted to speak to his supervisor while we were in a three way because she wasn't allowed to be put on hold due to her job restrictions but insisted that I should call her back and wait on hold once the inept Roger got his sh*t together. For the record, that chick had her info more wrong than the whole rest of the troop combined.

OH! STATUS UPDATE! Raychelle took me off hold for a minute to tell me that  - wait, oh, no. It looks like not all of my devices are covered by the multi device protection plan. Only the ones that I don't want to file any claims on. Wait - she's double checking. Yep. Only the devices that are fine are covered.

I am about to send Aspen on a rescue mission for tylenol and wine. Except my phone is going to die soon so I can probably get my own survival supplies myself while I brace emotionally for calling the 1-800 number again for the 6th time, after I got hung up on once, transferred 8 times and then shuttled off to Jorge in Tijuana before I hung up to start over on my own prerogative earlier.

Well, all's well that ends well, right? Or never ends...It is now a quarter til six and I just got off the phone. I still have to complete a 2 page affidavit and scrounge up a proof of purchase (because I am SURE I saved that since March) and upload it all to the insurance company so they can replace the iPad. Please tell me it's worth it. Please tell me the zombies are coming soon.

#wineme

Things About Doing (all the) Things

"You're such a jack-of-all-trades," she said, with what could be wantonly construed as a hint of admiration. "No seriously, you do it all!"

I shook my head, guzzled the last third of my Flume Creek/Honey Basil mix and sighed. "But I suck at every one of them."

The reality of this has never been more clear to me than it was as I stood raking dirt back into a hole that I had attempted to dig earlier in the week. The hole is big enough to park a Volkswagon Bug in, because I dug in the wrong direction exactly three times (which is how many you need to find all of the wrong edges of the septic tank) in order to begin digging in the right direction to find the second septic tank lid. I say begin because I let my strong, young daughter uncover the second lid much as she did the first one: efficiently and much more quickly than I could have. Being young is such a benefit in so many ways, I still regret my decision to get old.

Yes, I do all of the things. I teach school. I write words. I go on ambulance calls. I work on wildland fires. I pour beer. I cook. I clean. I raise children. I work out. I pay bills. And each one of them I do more poorly than the last.

Case in point: How many people have you met that have DESTROYED food in a Crock Pot MORE THAN ONCE? Like, obliterated past the point of recognition? I burned apple sauce (of all the easiest things) in a Crock Pot. Granted, it was cooking for about 4.5 days while I was carefree and forgetful at work, but the poor slow cooker has never recovered.

My housekeeping skills (or lack thereof) are fairly evident and have been recently and vociferously denounced, so I don't feel the need to dwell on that.

When I open up the most recent edition of the paper that I write for and see a multitude of apostrophe mistakes and there/their/they're faux pas, I quickly let my boss know that I am fired and she insists, in desperation, on rehiring me on the spot.

It's really desperation that saves me. A rurally isolated school desperate for substitutes, a volunteer-strapped first response agency that would LOVE to replace me, starving children who have to eat SOMETHING - I get by on the desperation of others. I'd like to brag that it's my universal skill set and remarkable capabilities that make me a "jack-of-all-trades", but it's really the desperation of myself and others that has propelled me to this level of quasi-success. I suppose all I am really lacking is a desperate man to put up with me for the rest of my life.

"Master of None" should be the title emblazoned on my office door. If I ever had an office, or a door. I suspect they gave me a Bachelor's Degree just so I would stop taking classes and turning in mediocre work. I suspect I get hired at jobs not because of my revolutionary work ethic or brilliant business savvy, but because I operate on just enough of a guilt complex to always show up (turns out that's a rare commodity in itself).

But the truth of it is, we are our own worst critics, and despite my lack of rip-roaring success in this lifetime (so far) nobody has died, either from my cooking or my parenting or my lack of housecleaning. Somehow even in my mediocrity we have made it (thus far) without evictions or homelessness or (very much) jail time. So I guess I need to bask in the glory of the little triumphs, like being reminded 15 minutes before my kids sports physicals that my kids HAVE sports physicals, and 15 minutes is definitely enough time to put the clothes on that I forgot I wasn't wearing when my pajamas just kind of hung around until 2:45 in the afternoon. And successes like getting out of bed at 8:00 AM without cussing at the kid who comes over to get my help with his college homework, because maybe, after all, I am a little bit good at something.

I really am not being fair to myself, because I do have a couple of landmark skills: eating and drinking. Really I am pro level at both. In fact, I am so dedicated to the craft that my calorie counting attempts all peter out at around 2:00 PM when the beer-drinking-cheese-eating frenzy begins in earnest for the day. OK 2:00 might be generous. Can we go with noon? I used to also be an expert sleeper but that skill seems to have waned along with youth and enthusiasm. Now I lie awake all night wondering what I will suck at doing the next day. The one beautiful thing about doing all the things is that I never know, day-to-day, which one I'll be doing. It's like a perpetual, exhausting surprise.