I need to write more often

Life tends to get so busy these days it’s the last thing I think of. Changed jobs, improved my screened porch, settling into my little home with the panthers. Dad is declining quickly. We honestly didn’t think he’d still be here at this point, and it’s been an adventure with many medical ups and downs and surprises.

He started radiation back up today, for two weeks he will be sick and weaker, but then it’ll be done and that’s the last go of it. Directly into hospice after and plenty of new adventures to come, I’m sure.

Dad is the dreamer side of me, the side that thinks out loud yet always had bigger dreams than I could accomplish. He has big dreams too. Always thought he’d end up sailing into the sunset in his final days, never to be heard from again. He still could, he’s going to the ocean in two weeks right after his treatments finish.

Here I am dreaming of doing the same when he’s gone, there is an 18 foot sailboat here on the property that would be rather easy to slip into the water somewhere. Dad will always sail with me and fly with me, long after he’s gone.

Had a rough day yesterday, drove and cried for almost two hours. There is so much of me that comes from him. Some of my favorite parts. My most favorite are from both my folks, and I’ve just been overcome with love for them. Over and over again.

It’s funny how sometimes it feels like although I know all parts of me won’t ever be accepted by them, I love every part of them both. It happens when you grow up with someone, and I grew up so close to them into my early thirties. I didn’t necessarily love some of the ways they’d behave but I understood it. Deeply. I accepted it fully too, in the way a child does because it’s the only way they’ll survive. Instinct to love is so very strong, a survival necessity. Do kids always accept their parents more than the parents can do in return? I think it might be so, at least for a time. Then we become adults and start seeing one another for everything each of us are.

Not one parent is perfect. Not one child isn’t screwed up in some way from them. We all wound our children. And our parents. This just amplified my love for them, I think. Because I see the fullness of each of them as a flawed human and it tempers my love like fine steel. Sharp enough to wound, that blade. But it also heals.

So now I sit with Jimmy Buffet’s memoir A Pirate Looks At Forty opened on my lap and watch the Grit channel with my dad. And we chat about random whatevers. He shuffles off to get a propane heater to show me how it works. His fingers are too weak to push the button and hold it to turn it on and it makes my eyes twinge.

I cooked down sweet onions in butter, then sauteed in some sausage and served it over some German rye bread from Dutchman’s Hidden Valley. It was scarfed down by us both. I sliced tender pears and made a crumble with homemade vanilla sugar. Mom texted that I’ll spoil him but that’s impossible now.

When mom needs me to sit with dad I’ll do so, as much as I can. Tease and poke and scratch his scalp and back until he shakes his leg like a dog. Clip his toenails when they need it. Trace the lines on his hand with a pen like when I was a kiddo in the Kingdom Hall.

And laugh at his stubby fingers.

From Every Beautiful Mile by Ashley Manley

This.

Through all the heartache. The numbness that’s plagued me for the past five years.

This is why I don’t regret loving who I’ve loved. Because it’s all part of me. And knowing I’m capable of so much passion and love is a wonderful thing.

My muse needs to be myself, and it always was, for what I write spews forth from me, not from them. All the depth and bliss, the short-breath-ed moments, it came from me. It wasn’t her or him or them. It was me.

Air

All the windows and doors open all day with no AC running, hearing the birds and wind again in my little home, piling on blankets to ward off the overnight chill while I listen to crickets in the dark…this weather is absolute bliss and the panthers and I are soaking it up as much as possible.

Texas summers mean isolation from the natural world that feeds me in every moment of my life. Closed off boxes with loud units cooling the air, that’s the only way for my sensitive extra-sensory abilities to survive the heat. Even the nights are suffocating and overwhelming. Being separated from the outdoors puts me into a serious depression for 8-10 months of every year here. I cannot breathe or dream, the trees cannot soothe me.

This bliss of basically living with only the screens between the wilds and I…it is restorative. In the way air rips into your lungs at LAST after holding your breath longer than you knew you could bear.

All of a sudden, I can breathe.

Divinity

Lengths of leather nudge the warps and welds of fingertips,

I leave fingerprints pressed in glue

And stitch over them to hide the marks.

Can’t help but stumble and drop needles,

My hands atremble for you are near.

Blowing fan behind your hourglass form

I’m in a breeze that hugged you first

It whispers your name in my ear and

I can taste the scent of you

On the back of my tongue

I swallow to gulp you down,

Salivating wet my deepest root

Pulses in time with your breathing.

I try to not stare at your hands as you swift them over wood,

Your movements dusting a confetti of sweat beads

I bite my lip I long to lick you clean

Savor the salt of your skin sprinklings of wood dust

The bite of your nails scratching my back

As I lean over to kiss your bare knee

For a taste of you

You burn your nails into me, welcoming me home again

A baptism of sweat

Divinity in the woodshop.

Melting Dripping Summer

My folks are out of town and as I live on their property amongst the giant pecan trees, I offered to help out with the kitties and the garden. They are off to cruise from Iceland to Norway over the edge of the Arctic Circle and their days and nights probably aren’t getting warmer than about 40 or 50° every day. And here we are in Texas melting away in a sauna. This morning when I woke up, I checked the weather and it was 78°F but 90% humidity and this was before the sun even rose.

When mom and dad left on their trip, the plum tree on the property was so weighed down with little red globes of sweetness that it looked depressed and pregnant. The leaves were this beautiful, dark and golden green tone, every one of them unique and blended in color like a spoon through coffee and cream. After doing probably four or five batches myself of plum processing and making them into jellies and jams and juices, finally the tree is lifted up and unburdened.

It’s so lovely to be able to live so close to nature in such a tiny little space. When I wake in the mornings and the air inside the RV is chilly from the air conditioner running all night, I like to throw all the doors and windows and vents open to the dark of late night early morning cricket song. Except for this morning, when it felt like stepping out into an absolute sauna. And oh how I hate that I’m having to use an air conditioner to survive and not have an autistic meltdown from overstimulation.

And the continued hot flashes.

In the mornings when it’s still somewhat tolerable outside, I will brush off the mosquitoes that meet me at my door and step out barefoot in the grass that’s just a little bit too long and pick green beans under the sunrise and tuck cucumbers into the bowl beside them as the light lifts.

With the amount of rain that we’ve been having, which is very unusual for this part of Texas, the green beans and cucumbers and peppers and plums and pears and tomatoes almost outweigh us all.

Tomorrow, I am going to experiment with canning some sweet and spicy and perky pickles. Try saying that five times fast.

The kitties at mom‘s place are thrown off with not having their primary person and secondary person around full-time. The 18-year-old Twoey with the galaxy in his eyes sleeps out primarily on the screened in porch in the back under the trees cover. He has fans and protection from the coyotes that run along the side of the river at night. Dashing Dash has been sleeping in the spare room mostly leaving an outline of black hair where he naps on the bed. Demi the dingbat, she likes to lay in the same place every day in the main bedroom. Every time I go in to bother her I am reminded that I am invading a sacred space. For her, at least. Chip is an absolute pig and swine and won’t stop yelling at me the entire time I am in the house. He’s a food fiend and absolutely ridiculous. I toss laundry at him and pretend that I am angry, but it’s a game that he and I have learned to play together.

I can feel the house missing its people. Dad’s shop isn’t usually this quiet and it feels disconcerting to not see the doors open and shut every day. When he is gone, I think that I will be opening and shutting the doors just to keep it feeling alive.

Five more days and they’ll return, so I give the house a pay and let it know how many days it has to wait. I know it loves me considering its feelings and giving it updates.

Our homes have their own presence, you realize. And they miss us, as do our trees and the sequestered bedrock we live our lives on.

Closer to home

As I write the skies are still pre-dawn dark, dripping down lazily as I wipe the sleep from my eyes. The house panthers cuddled in close when the rain begun, I thought it was just chilly but was soon throwing off the sheet and blanket, covered in a humid sheen of sweat. It is late April in central Texas and I’ve still avoided turning on the A/C just yet, which is unheard of. In my past homes they’d heat so quickly under the relentless sun that by February the air conditioner was in full-time duty.

But this morning it’s the moisture in the air making me sweat, and I rolled over to turn the fan a bit to cool my skin.

Made a cuppa, sat down to read by candlelight with the door open to my just-finished porch. Mostly finished. Still have to build the cat tree out of pecan branches and leftover wood.

Yesterday Yuki and Squish finally were allowed out to enjoy the porch and they’ve been elated and terrified all at the same time. Unsure what to do with all the extra room to run about and feel exposed. Surprisingly wee Squish is the more cautious one and Yukes is the big bouncing nerd about it all. He nearly threw a cog loose yelling at me for a nibble of fresh grass from the yard, had his fill, and leapt up to watch from the table and judge his sister. She of course was being far too vigorous in her enjoyment of the greens and over-ate them just to retch it all up again.

This morning though, while the leftover bits of grass lay limp on the boards, they watched the rain come and increase then diminish.

In the four hours since waking fully they flowed like the storm outside, in and out, closer tucked to my side, then out climbing the bookshelf. I contented myself with leftover onion rings heated in the air fryer and some dipping sauce of my own making. I watched a scary movie then when the light lifted enough picked up a book to get lost in.

These days we are as separated from literature as we are from the wild. It’s too easy to pick up our handy little pocket computers and rush through clips, justifying ignoring our shelves with saying we are learning more online than we can from books.

With the porch comes an era of far fewer excuses. And more days of all the windows open 24/7 until the sun actively tries to cook those of us in Texas. Thankfully with a little home it cools and heats quickly so I can live more in flow with the temperature changes each day, and in turn more in flow with the natural world.

Absent Moments

Another month has passed in a whirlwind of absent moments. To where I feel the only mark of time is how often I refill my pill sorting box. It’s Wednesday again, another week gone, in cycle over and over again and it’s a month, it’s a quarter of the year, it’s four years altogether.

The constant evolution of a person over spans of time is never ending. I’m an entirely different person than I was when I drove back to Texas from Idaho. I’m not as much of a writer as I was, emotion has been stilted and stunted, twisted into a whole lot of numb nothing. It was safer then, but I’m tired of it now. I’m exhausted from never feeling the depth that was me before. My life isn’t meant to be felt so pillowed and insulated from emotion. Though doing so through medication likely saved my life. Or sanity. Or both.

No longer do I feel on the edge of tears at any moment, grieving for the loss of a life I thought I wanted. It was folly thinking I was ready to leave my son behind. To think he didn’t need me. Just when I was finally sober after his lifetime of having an alcoholic mother, I left him. Even if it was only for a few months overall the trauma of the entire experience will last him forever. He’s far more cautious in all things than I ever have been, and I’m learning a certain “slowness” from him. Where I’ve always been voracious and insatiable, he shows me that forethought and planning aren’t entirely unappealing. In fact, they are necessary for the bedrocks of what we build ourselves upon.

It does make sense, that when you’ve been stripped of the foundation your entire existence was built upon. When I abandoned the faith and marriage of my youth I didn’t realize how unmoored I’d become. I clung to anything deemed safer and solid, what I was told I “should” build a life upon. Even now it’s pressed on me from all directions, if I allow it. The pressure to pair. I chuckle about it now, as in every conversation with my mother it’s brought up in some way. When I see her clearly as miserable overall with the path she took in life. When she would have been so much happier building a life of her own, instead of marrying young and having kiddos. We all choose how to handle those things we accept as bedrock. Oh, freedom, how delicious and lip-smacking it can be. And when people speak of how ingrained patriarchy and “shoulds” are they can’t even touch the base of the pyramid. It’s in our genetic memory going back thousands and thousands of years. Shaking it free isn’t simple, I have to be constantly on the watch against slipping back into the comfort of things that are, instead of dreaming of how things could be.

My entire life seems to have been a cycle of stripping down to naked newness and grasping at hope. We are raised to do anything other than trust the wisdom of our Self. Conditioning is a powerful thing. Genetic memory is even stronger. And the pull of safety known is so very strong. Pairing up and hopping on the relationship escalator is irresistible for so many of us who have had the rug of security ripped from beneath us. I scrabbled to grab it back for so long.

But I’ve not felt so safe as I do now in a very long time. Instead of sharing a life and centering another’s needs I’ve only myself to answer to. And in the vacuum of chosen isolation I’ve grabbed what I’d always wanted but never felt I deserved. Never felt it was in reach to have a little home of my own and build it up into exactly what I wanted. Never thought I could do it, to be honest. Even with daydreams of sailing the world solo, of hoping I could use my own feet to carry me anywhere I wanted with infinite time laid before me, wishes to sink into solitude which is security to my nervous system, I never thought I’d have the freedom. So I’d snatch bits of time here and there to revel in solitary moments, then return to the fray.

And now all I have is time, and the freedom to fill it as I will. So the moments when I’m refilling my pill sorting box and reminded that yet another week has passed I try to remind myself of the blissful “empty” time passing in which I pursued what I needed, instead of what I was told to need.

So many things

Moved back to the land that has held my heart for more than half my life. I wake every morning feeling hugged by the roots below me. I walk outside barefoot, haven’t for over four years. Perhaps longer. Every step I take I can feel the land pulling me back to her.

Everything is blooming. The plum, the pear, the pomegranates, figs, wildflowers, my favorite the mountain laurel, they are abuzz with bees and wasps and beetles. They smile back at songbirds who share the branches.

Bought an old 1991 RV trailer, been remodeling with SO MUCH HELP from my folks and aunt and sister while I was in surgery and recovering last year. It is small, but I can open so many more windows for fresh air and get sung awake every morning.

There are crows who fly over my new home before eight every morning, without fail. They caw loud enough I can hear them during work meetings, and I can’t wait to make friends with them.

A pair of nesting red-shouldered hawks come back every year and they cry their raptor voices from trees all around, scaring the songbirds into silence.

I’m building a big porch that will be covered and screened in, both to shade the RV during the season the sun is trying to cook us, and to have a space for my kitties and myself to live outdoors more. It is so satisfying to see it grow, with a little help here and there. But I love more so being able to work on it myself. Seeing it come together little by little makes my heart so happy.

And renovating a small shed into a tiny home for the teenaged spawn. What I wouldn’t have done for a little place all my own at that age!! It’s about ten feet from the RV, and we will spend a lot of time this summer on the porch together.

Getting ready for vending coming up at the end of the month with the woodshop. We’ve been coming up with new ideas and expanding our skills, and have volunteers with us almost every weekend. Stuns me how I’ve been doing this now three years and the preteen me inside cannot fucking believe the woman I’ve become.

Broke my best friend’s heart. The one who was there through my entire cancer scare and surgery. Still struggling with that. Feel quite the monster, honestly. Just wondering why I let people close just to love them and hurt them. When I know I’m happiest alone. Just isn’t fair to them, and I know it. Going to have a field day in therapy.

Days are full of my 9-5 job, then immediately after working on my place. Thankfully it’s going more quickly now that I’m living here. Weekends I’m in the woodshop in the morning, then working on the porch or tiny home after.

I don’t take time off, am busy as hell, and loving every damn moment.

Keep Sucking

Sooooo had a massive cancer scare. GET YOUR ANNUAL CHECKUPS!! Huge tumors in my abdomen from left-behind fibroid tissue after my partial hysterectomy (took the uterus, left the ovaries) in 2012.

That left behind tissue grew into massive tumors. And MANY of them. Hence my persistent belly no matter what I did to lose weight over the past several years. Almost constant abdomen pain and horrible digestion, for a decade. Told by doctors I just needed to lose weight.

Finally, my newest PCP, Dr Whatley of Pride Family Medicine in Cedar Park, took me seriously. She saved my life. This started a roller coaster over the month of October of non-stop doctors appointments, CT Scans, multiple biopsies, and finally surgery.

They opened me up from ribcage to pubis and I have the scar to prove it (pretty sexy, actually). Removed everything. Took six hours to get it all. Then four days in the hospital, as the procedure ended up being much much more invasive than predicted. They took the huge masses, they took my (scary looking) ovaries, they checked for anything they may have missed, and closed me back up.

All tissue tests came back benign. I should buy some lottery tickets.

Now im on bed rest for at least two weeks and four to eight weeks to fully recover.

Through it all dearest little Kitten has been at my side, patient and kind and holding my hand. And keeping me safe from my stubborn spirit that is just impatient to return to life as usual. My Leather family has been right there supporting us both. I can’t convey the words that would communicate my gratitude and shock to my spirit at the number of people who have rallied to show love 💕 But especially to wee Kitten, who understands this grumpy queer-mudgeon better than I do sometimes. Most times.

Please, ladies and gents and theys and thems, please take your body seriously. Insist on checking on things you KNOW aren’t right, even if the doctors shrug it off. This should have killed me. It should have been cancer. I don’t know how it wasn’t.

Dont sit on the sidelines of your life with a half-assed complacent attitude until your imminent death slaps you hard across the face. It’s NEVER “good enough” when it’s almost over.

The shock of this all still hasn’t fully hit. Most times it feels like it’s happened to another person and I’m on the sidelines watching. And that’s even more a sign of how blasé I became in my every day.

Now I shall suck the very marrow from the bones of life after devouring it fully. I’ll feel the juices trickle down the back of my throat and reach for more until all that remains is a pile of white sticks in the moonlight. And I will go on the hunt for more.

Keep sucking 🐺

Sunday

Sitting thinking there was nothing to write about these days. And my mind is such a whirlwind that I can’t even remember who I’ve told about my dad and his brain surgery a few weeks ago. Have I even written about it here?

That’s a later post if not.

I woke on the day after bringing my irrevocably changed father home (which happened yesterday) after a fitful night. I’m cutting back on my over the counter sleep aids at the wrong time. Think I’ll take the usual dose tonight for sure. Even after the first exhaustion of work lately and helping with dad when I can you’d think my sleep would be better for that alone. Nope. Can’t sleep well. So today was a stay at home with kiddo day.

He of course sleeps until after noon and I had been up four hours at nine-thirty, and was quite stir crazy. Went and got a coffee (PSL season just began after all), and thrifted a minute, then decided to listen to my audio book and just drive a little.

Adventures clear my mind and make my soul happy. I drove under the glaring painful sun and light cornflower skies into hills that ache for rain. It’s beautiful in its harsh way, watching this premature Fall. But it’s not Fall, it’s trees in pain and turning brown. No pretty reds and crisp air, it’s oppressive and hot as a hair dryer blowing full blast in your face. Hard to breathe, sweat rolling down your spine.

The Desert Willows were blooming in soft pinks though, waving long green fingers at the traffic as I passed. I had to pull over and trim a twig to see if I can root it. I also grabbed a piece of Jerusalem Thorns, it’s spiky and odd and a perfect addition to a native (sadist’s) garden. Those now sit next to the native rose I’ve been holding onto for two years now. I’d like to plant them someday. Maybe these will be plants I can’t kill, who knows? My black thumb seems to know no bounds. I think it’s because I love freedom so much that when I try to contain a plant it senses the conundrum and commits suicide.

After snagging the bits of native wild things I ran to the natural gardening place close by to get some rooting powder (which they didn’t have, I had to get it at Lowe’s). They had the cutest entry rug that had a black kitty and said “Beware of Cat”, I’m going to have to go back to get one.

When I got home I still had the antsies, so cut out material for a better ribbon skirt than the one I’d started. The pattern for this one was fuller and very similar to the one I’ve been working on this week. Better waistband though, this is going to be a lovely garment when done. I need to stop being so hard on myself. Too much a perfectionist.

Speaking if, I need to stop giving myself shit for not using a rare day off to its fullest. It simply isn’t fair to myself. It’s felt odd not being at the woodshop every weekend, odd enough I had to go do a little work a week ago. Just needed to play on the lathe and concentrate. It’s meditative, wood turning. It requires you to focus, and safely. The loudness of the machine and tools against the wood remind you again and again that you are quite literally in danger. Not a lot of room for many thoughts when you’re in danger. And that’s precisely what I needed.

So now I sit with another skirt started, really excited to see what I can do with it. I’ve so many pretty pieces to do, and they yell at me from across the room when I have lazy days like this one. I’ve two house panthers snoozing next to me, and the earth has sweltered so long with no rain that when I heard thunder from a front coming in I thought it was a truck backfiring.

Raw? Numb? Yes and yes. Many things and many emotions, all at the same time.