Prophets Are All Around Us

I have been making meatloaf confidently (and deliciously) for 20 years now. I've always used my Nana O'Brien's basic recipe proportions but over the years I've tweaked it a bit: ground turkey instead of all beef, panko for regular bread crumbs, fresh rosemary in place of all purpose seasoning. But one thing I've kept exactly, precisely the same: The Glaze. It's a mixture of ketchup, yellow mustard & brown sugar. You mix all those things up and pour it on the meat before it goes in the oven and it is magic. 

I'm convinced that glaze sealed the deal for me and the hot husband. It's that good.

For years, I have made this dish for friends and family. Dinner parties and Wednesday nights. I love it so much that I often wish that it wasn't called "meatloaf", something this delicious needs- nay, DESERVES a far more sophisticated and culinarily appropriate title! "Chopped Meat Divine" would be so much better! Don't you think?

So anyway, as I was making yet another masterpiece tonight I did something I've never done before! And I have no idea what prompted me to do so: I plopped the meat in the baking dish (as usual) and shaped the loaf (like always), but this time instead of gauging the shape of the meat from looking down at the pan, I also got down low and looked at across the top; I spanned the Meatloaf Horizon and I saw that it was dramatically misshapen! It's lack of symmetry was shocking and I instantly felt motivated to adjust and correct and make it as pleasing in the baking dish as it was in my heart and mind. A few hugs and pushes and presses and soon enough if was more uniform and equal.

It was a revelation! And a reminder. You can look at something for 20 years and always see that thing the same way, OR, you can tilt your perspective and see it for how it could be. Don't you already feel smarter?

Dinner is at 7.

The Meniscus

The port I'm sipping tastes like raisins soaked for an eternity in sticky, dry wine. It's the color of a starless sky unless you put a light to it and then it shimmers from within like a ruby. It's delicious.

One day I hope I'll be this content and happy all on my own. One day this'll be easy. One day.
But right now, this day is very much like this:

"You always try to see yourself
Through the eyes of someone else

Too shy to say that you need help
You and everybody else
You and everybody else

One day it's here and then it's gone
How are you still holding on?"

How indeed! Today I can tell you that I held on because of my friends. Because of my succulent ladies draped across the low branches for me to pick off with ease and devour.

A billion times today I tried to come up with a reason why I wouldn't be able to make it out tonight. I'm too tired. Nothing fits. The kids will miss me. It's almost Christmas; too much to do. I'm waaaay toooo tired.

But I also knew that If I had one really good shot at rallying some Christmas spirit, it would be in the company of the hot blondes and the smoking brunette.

And oh, wow! Do they fill me up! They are as sweet and dark and delicious as the wine I'm sipping while all cozied up in my bed. And they're just as complicated and mysterious.

I need to remember that that is how I should judge my relationships. Do you suck me dry? Or do you fill me up and let me overlfow? So simple. So excruciatingly difficult.

And while I don't feel any more merry than I did earlier today and I still can't find the spark in my gut that I can usually ignite into a Christmas flame but I am calmer, less lonely feeling and more comfortable in my skin.


The lyrics I included above are from a song called "One Day" by a band called Kodaline. And while the whole album gets to me like bees in a hive, this particular tune as mattered most as of late. Give em a listen and be good to yourself.

All I want: Update

Alright! Message received. Jeeesh.

So, as it turns out, while I DON'T have a 6 year old boy who can put his business in the can, I DO have a 6 year old boy who can keep himself occupied without incident for a few hours while his mother gets shredded in a game of Monopoly by the rest of the family.

We can't choose these gifts, people. They're just doled out.

Again, Merry Christmas.

All I Want For Christmas Is...

I told Hot Husband this morning that the 3 words I fear most in this world are "Mom! Lincoln pooped!"

In the span of 36 hours I have cleaned up vomit, shit and blood all from my children none in an appropriate receptacle.

The best day could be swallowing me whole and then a body fluid disaster happens and suddenly I'm in the belly of a whale, desperate to gain traction on its huge, slimy tongue. It isn't a good time.

Perhaps the bloody noses, periods, stomach bugs wouldn't bother me so much if Captain Crap wasn't my 6 year old son. Maybe the grip of the whale's digestive tract wouldn't be such a burden if I had a boy who was confident  in the loo.

Keeps me real, though. No getting all haughty and high and mighty around here! Nothing quite like wiping shit from the walls and floor and toilet seat when your son tries to dispose of the load himself to keep a woman's head out of the clouds.

"Shit" is the word I use because that's what it is. He's a gyoza guzzling, mac n cheese munching, scrambled egg scarfing little man and his BM's hold all the glory of his varied, protein rich diet.

Hot Husband laughed when I said it, he's been there. He knows. He mourns this part of our son, too. As he so eloquently puts it: "Lincoln will always be the most interesting person in the room, he's just gotta stop shitting his pants."

So this Christmas, among all of the other things I'm sure my totally charmed life will be handing me, I have one extra request (obviously our of pure selfishness): Please, Universe, don't let him poop under the tree. Thank you.

The First Cut Is the Deepest. Baby, I know.

Lat night, Ruby asked me to stop loving someone. She had crawled into bed with me and the small boy and snuggled right down and let us be with her, on her. But just like that! She was up and out and said to me from the foot of the bed: "I need to ask you something. I need you to stop loving ___. It hurts me that you do and I need you to stop."

The cruelty of the whole thing, the way she let me in and then cut me to the bone. I was instantly cold and my heart was pounding and the pressure in my face, eyes and head from the wanting to cry was overwhelming.

"OK." I said. I said "OK", I didn't have a choice.

She is my daughter! My love! The one I need to keep me going for the other two! Without her and her trust and devotion I am not whole.

It is the hardest thing I have ever had to do for her. She is demanding I have a broken heart to match her own.  All of this without even knowing how broken hearts really work yet.  Like a Joffrey, she is demanding sacrifice. Mercilessly.

They don't tell you about this part of mothering. About these exquisitely painful slices of pie you are asked to eat in one gulp with no sip of water, no mastication.

Her defiance is at once terrifying and exhilarating. She has strength and power I never did as a young woman. And since she has been given the freedom to wield her sword at will, sometimes I am the target.

Never once have I wished my babies to be a different age than they are. I pride myself on loving them right where they stand at the moment but today, as I spied her sleeping in her bed, if she had suddenly turned small and a little bit helpless, I would have been happy and I wouldn't have wept silently in her doorway.

Now You See Me

Hello, my Dreamlets. Let me tell you a story about things before I dreamed you*:

I wasn't always who you see now. I used to be under some covers. Some crocheted with affection, some perfectly matched to the curtains and the mat and the wallpaper, some soft and lovely, some scratchy and rough.

As much as love has always been my strongest desire, fear has always been my greatest motivator. Before you all knew me, fear was my friend. My jelly. My ketchup. My meatballs. My constant companion.

Before you all knew me, Houdini had nothing on me. I slid and skulked and moved through rooms and days like a ghost. You will not see me, hear me, touch me. I will escape. This was how it went and it went on and on and on.

When I would dance and sing and put on a show at Thanksgiving dinner, I hoped. When I'd do great in school, I hoped. When I learned how to make American Chop Suey without anyone asking me to, I hoped. When I got friends and boyfriends and jobs and I was away I was still tangled up in those blankets, dragging some of them along behind me, some clutched in my fingers.

And I did alright. I did pretty fucking good, actually. And I grew up and packed some things away and found my love and moved on and away and up and up and towards something that I didn't know what.

Then November 16th, 2008 @ 1215 happened and within minutes it was clear that there was a thing in my life that would not be very interested in who I had been. Something that only needed me for who I could be, the someone I was capable of finding underneath the pile.

He was a lovely, trusting baby. He believed in me from his first breath and every day since, I am the one he looks for when he opens his eyes in the morning. I'm the one he demands join him in bed when he lays down his downy head at night.

Every day for 6 years that boy has pulled me more and more into the light of the goddamned day.

My blanket cocoon  hangs on. Let's not get crazy. It's attached at certain parts of me that are hard to reach. Parts that are hard to name because I don't like to look at them very much. But a lot of it is gone. Gone and burnt to bits or stuffed into dank and dusty cupboards. And I have to thank my son for that. My boy. My Lincoln. My love.

Happy Birthday, baby.


* That first line is paraphrased from my absolute most favorite book: "Geek Love" by Katherine Dunn

Maybe if I Squint I'll See Straight

My perspective is a drunken sailor riding a skateboard listening to Dolly Parton songs on a Walkman.

My judgment is a sea bird not waiting another second to snatch that delectable little fishy.

A little boy hit me square on the back with a piece of a dripping wet clam shell as I moseyed along in the tide pools searching for small critters to delight my Prince with. Instinct dictated that I turn my head around to see who'd thrown it and in that shutter snap of a moment, I clapped my hand to my mouth to stifle a laugh.

The kid was knee high to a horseshoe crab and standing like a damn boss as his father admonished him with a finger so waggly it looked disembodied. "Your mother would go CRAZY if she saw you do that!" He whisper/screamed.

Whereas I was all like: Good arm, dude.