are you still reading?

After a hiatus, you’d love to come back with a bang. You’d love to hit one out of the park, write the most breathtaking treatise anyone has ever read. Unfortunately, tonight I can barely string these words together, and I hope you’ll forgive me for it. I just needed a place, I just needed a brief second, to catch my breath. To spit some of this poison out where its less damaging to my innards.

I’m overcome by fatigue, by sadness. I’m shuffling through my disappointments like tattered confetti on the floor, like his ashes, spread from an airplane flown low over our town on Friday night. I can’t escape the haunting and sorrow and bitterness in the air all around me. Worse, I’m trapped in the bell jar with all of this, stuck suffocating in some kind of sick snow globe.

I don’t understand people who live in small towns and think their actions are not witnessed, their lies not recorded. I don’t understand how so many people can snap their marriages apart with the effortless ease of stepping on twigs. I don’t understand why I’m feeling so used. I don’t understand incessant racial slurs in front of children. I don’t understand drunken name-calling over the phone. I only understand this: Given enough time, nearly everyone will disappoint you.

Most of the time I appreciate it all so very much, this world in all its painful, breathtaking glory. I swear I do. But sometimes I’m paralyzed, wounded, petty. Sometimes I can’t stop feeling sorry for myself, can’t stop ranting in my head at those I feel have wronged me. And those who haven’t, those who never do — these three beautiful creatures I’m incredibly blessed to share a home with — can’t do a thing to make it better. Not for all the sticky kisses, the breathy mother’s day wishes, the grubby fisted dandelion bouquets in the world — and that is what hurts the most.

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hiatus

I spent the day coated in freshly turned dirt, sinking my fingers deep beneath the darkened soil. I kneaded the earth like a prized loaf, its recipe secret and guarded and passed down through generations.

I sat on my front porch with coffee and an unfamiliar notebook; the pen in my hand awkward at first, but eventually loosened and graceful. I drove to town and fulfilled long overdue errands. I held Eva’s hand as we traded jokes. The sun never left us, not once.

Make no mistake, I love where I live. I’m all for the four seasons, the mysterious ways they slide into one another. I love watching winter awaken into spring, the way summer bleeds into fall…. But we suffered a six month winter this year, and I don’t choose that verb lightly. My house began to feel like a prison, this laptop my ball and chain. It does awful things to a person, to go months buried beneath piles of snow. It looks deceptively light, but it’s dangerously dead weight.

If this hasn’t all been a dream, if the good weather is finally here to stay, I plan to repeat this all tomorrow. Stories that beg to be shared, anecdotes that need to be recorded, will have to settle for the confines of my head. I just don’t feel like blogging about life. I feel like living it instead.

there but for the Grace

This is my favorite time of day, hands down. It is well past evening, but not yet late enough for me to worry about not getting enough sleep. I’ve shucked responsibilities and clothes. My bedroom window is yawning wide, the sweet country air dancing in and out as she pleases. All I can hear are the crickets, and Gracie’s voice muted through the floorboards as she reads her dad a bedtime story. I am utterly at peace.

We haven’t been home long. Tonight was the spring music concert, and in a town of fewer than 1,000 people, most all of them attend. There’s only one school here, grades k-12, and everyone knows everyone. Everyone’s woes are shared.

Tonight there was a silent auction and a raffle to benefit a teacher, a man whose 32-year-old wife was stricken with lung cancer. Everyone had worked very hard on the event, carefully planned it out for months. Throughout the concert they kept pausing to announce the winners, interrupting the practiced screeches of fifth grade violinists and the enviable bravado of kindergarten soloists. The announcer kept choking up, though, as did a good chunk of the audience, because the young woman didn’t make it to her own benefit. She died the night before last. She left behind a three-year-old daughter.

My own three-year-old daughter squiggled like a bored ferret on my lap throughout the concert, chattering endlessly, completely oblivious to the somber tone around her. She kept tugging at my necklace, begging to wear it, and I kept saying no without really thinking about it — simply because no seems a logical answer when diamonds and kids are involved. But then something gave me pause, and I changed my mind, unclasping the anniversary gift from my own neck and carefully placing it around Eva’s. “I thought dis was your peshal neckwass!” she cried, shocked. “It is, it’s very, very special,” I said. “But so are you.” I wish I had words for the look she gave me, for the way I felt as she buried her face into my chest in a furious hug. I soaked the curls at the crown of her head with tears I couldn’t hold in.

After the concert, I ran into another widower, a man who lost his wife a few days before Christmas this past year. I hugged him and he held on a little longer than expected, though not nearly long enough for me. He was there to watch his grandchildren perform for the first time without their grandma. He said every one of these “firsts” is profoundly hard. I couldn’t help but think about how many firsts the teacher, newly widowed, has ahead of him.

This is my favorite time of day, hands down, because everyone is home and accounted for. For at least one more night in this unpredictable world, spinning like a top, askance and wildly beautiful, everyone I love is safe.

I’m huge in Singapore

I keep trying to tell my husband how important I am. This has been going on for years, and I rarely gain any ground. My kids aren’t buying it either, despite numerous attempts on my part to blow my likeness up into an 11×14 so that Hannah Montana (that naked little hussy) has some competition on Gracie’s walls. I’ve even graciously offered to autograph these posters of myself, for free. No takers.

Dave’s always all, “So are you gonna do these fucking dishes already?” and I’m always all, “Excuse me, I have three blog comments I must respond to” and he’s all, “What the hell is a blog? Are you getting paid for this?” and I’m all, “Excuuuuuuse me, but I’m huge in Singapore” and he’s all, “I can’t believe I married you I want out.” Well, not really, but that’s what he means when he says, “I gotta go get a Gatorade quick. Be right back.” You and I both know what he’s really saying.

That’s why it’s so huge when somebody throws me a bone, even if it’s a cyber bone. (And by typing the words “cyber bone” I have just secured a new set of perverted Googlers, poor sots who will be ever-so-disappointed to arrive *here* instead of on Jenna Jameson’s page. Hi pervs! See how that works?)

My point is, I’m now on Alltop. The inventor of the Internet Alltop, Guy Kawasaki, says it’s like a “digital magazine rack.” He also said something about single page aggregations and Nononina and feeds and Truemors and I honestly have no idea what he’s talking about but I’m virtually-nodding like a coked-out woodpecker because I don’t know much, but I do know this: Guy Kawasaki is to the internets what Oprah is to depressing books. So if this Cyber King Midas is laboring under the delusion that my blog should be listed in the newly launched women.alltop.com next to iVillage and I am Bossy well then (HOLY SHIT how long before he deletes me, any betters out there??) let’s just keep feeding that delusion. OK? (Which means you won’t be seeing more posts like this one any time soon. You’re welcome. Please don’t hate me. Please, please come back. Oh God, you totally hate me now.)

So you see?

So what if my family doesn’t think I’m cool? So what if I can’t remember the last time I showered? So what if my house is on Social Services’ watch list? I’ve been Kawasakied.

(p.s. Since you’re all about to flee in droves over this self-important drivel, might I suggest a good blog or two? Check those links on the right — and if you’re not there and you think you should be, please let me know. Adios, patriots.)

so much for lightening up….

Let me ask you something.

A young man dies unexpectedly, tragically. The funeral home is packed with mourners, the vast majority of them friends, because his family has been disintegrating for years… his parents are long divorced, his father suddenly disabled. There was abuse, abandonment, alcoholism; a cornucopia of woes to feast upon his entire truncated life. Everyone is devastated. He was gentle and fiercely loyal to his devoted circle of friends.

After the service, after the mourners have gone back to their cozy homes and functional families, officials take his remains and deliver them back to the morgue. And that’s where he lies now, a body in hock.

His family can’t afford to bury him. His friends are planning a fundraiser for next week.

I am choking on sadness right now. Are you?

If you are, let me ask you this:

Does it change anything for you to know it’s this kid?

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little victories

When I weighed 115 pounds, the world thought I was hot. Well, maybe not my closest friends and family, but believe me, the rest of society approved. I looked like I had it all under control, like those vixens in 1980s cigarette ads, collected and desirable and Kool. It didn’t matter that I was sticking my head in the toilet several times a day, that I was limiting my daily caloric intake to 500. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t climb the stairs to my apartment without doubling over, my lungs heaving with hopes of fleeing my chest.

By the time I weighed 207 pounds, some ten years later, I’d learned to love myself differently. After all, my body had created and nurtured two new human beings; I’d groaned them into existence without drug nor epidural, I’d nourished them at my breast for a year apiece. Sure, I’d gained a lot of weight, but some of it was muscle, my arms and hips strong from the carrying. The constant nagging voices screeching hateful fat slurs, my incessant internal devil’s choir, had quieted significantly. The voices simply didn’t hold the same power they once had, they’d shriveled in the wake of my painfully-earned perspective, cowered beneath the shadow of my chin’s new proud jut. Slowly, I racked up mile upon mile on the steep hike back to myself. One step at a time.

This picture was taken last July, the same month I wrote the “207″ post — about nine months ago.

As resolute as I am in my conviction that I will never again degrade my body and soul to lose weight, it’s still pretty hard to look at this photo. That girl is not who I see when I close my eyes, when I carry my girls upon my hips. She doesn’t reflect the strength I feel inside.

On December 1st I started working with a personal trainer twice a week. I’d be lying if I said it was enjoyable, that I look forward to these sessions and grin my way through them. The truth is, they’re pretty brutal. On more than one occasion I’ve vomited in the parking lot afterward, each time my mind flashing back to a time I would have thought the puking an added bonus. A couple months ago I added a running program to these workouts, and though I haven’t been as faithful to it as I have to the personal training, I never — never — could have done five months ago what I did yesterday: I ran the 8k, I didn’t stop, and yes, I had my beer at the end — but it didn’t taste nearly as sweet as the savory victory over my own bloody demons.

Dave snapped this shot just before the finish line.

And this is after the race, with Katie, my partner in crime, and inspiration for starting this running thing in the first place. She’s going on to do a half marathon in four weeks, but I’m older and therefore smarter than she — there’s no way in hell I’m doing that race. At least not this year.

So this is me. Not 115 pounds, but no longer 207, either. I’m not interested in telling my new weight because I’m so much more than could ever be defined by numbers flashed from a cold steel box. My heart is strong and I’ve shed the shame like a brittle skin I’ve outgrown, one I’ll no longer tolerate. The only challenge that remains is using this strength to fight for my daughters, to ensure that the sickly eating disorder parasite will never attach itself to their cells, never multiply like cancer as they grow. That their hearts will always pump strong and true. That they, too, will be blessed with moments when they feel invincible.

Let’s lighten the f*ck up around here

It’s not that I’m afraid to say fuck. The use of the gimped swear up there is simply a gracious nod to those of you who work in concentration camps, those evil workplaces that block my blog for security purposes. All this heightened security is likely a direct result of one of those new fangled laws like the Patriot Act or No Child Left Behind (same thing.) Apparently there’s only so much cursing you can do and Big Brother catches on — I’d hate to have innocents suffer the unthinkable (being denied the ecstatic pleasure of reading my blog) because of my foul mouth, so I inserted a strategically placed asterisk. I’m sneaky like that.

There’s only so much dark posting about drunk driving and child abduction a medicated girl like me can take. Thankfully, my friends at Ask and Ye Shall Receive posted a video today that had me so distracted my coffee went cold (which is a good thing because I can’t drink it anyway now with my cheeks numb from laughing. I would dribble all over my jammies, and coffee STAINS, people. I do not take that shit lightly.) This kid is just what I needed to remind myself to take a sad song and make it behrrer.

So happy Friday to you, and wish me luck on running the first 8k of my life tomorrow morning (yes I sneaked that in there with hopes no one would really read it because I am still in denial that it is actually taking place.)

panic.

The world stops, the loamy tang of quiche and coffee caught suddenly at the back of my throat.

The cafe’s picture window morphs into a horror movie screen, the leading lady sprinting into the center of traffic. My eyes are glued to her stricken, desperate face. Inside, a scream, the stilling of my heart, and the slow screeching as time pulls its emergency brake chain. Seven or eight of her friends turn in unison, grindingly slow, terrified, knowing; the child is gone. She can’t find him. The worst has happened.

Then, suddenly, he’s here. The toddling boy was safe inside with us all the while. The jangle of the bell on the front door, the unassuming stranger that entered quickly and left, the way the boy disappeared suddenly, it all meant nothing. It was an optical illusion.

But the boy’s mother still doesn’t know. One of her pack rushes out to tell her, sprinting because she knows that every nanosecond is an eternity to the lost woman outside. She is screaming his name in the middle of the street. The look on her face is utterly unforgettable.

At my coffee shop table for one, I am frozen. My belly aches, a painful tugging deep and low. The ghosts of the chords first cut eight, and then again three years ago, are viscerally hemorrhaging. I just wanted a cup of coffee, a quiet place to work, and suddenly I am gutted. This worry never dissipates, hits when you’re least expecting it, leaves you bleeding out in a room full of strangers. It’s the worst sort of panic I’ve ever known, and it’s mine to know forever.

Just another dead kid to remember on my runs.

In case you were wondering, Busch Light is the “road soda” of choice in my neighborhood.

It’s sickening, the sheer numbers of beer cans strewn about the ditches of the country road I live on. A whole hell of a lot of people must drive around slurping the foam from newly cracked cans, careful not to make the steering wheel sticky; squeeze half-full cans between their thighs while shifting; throw the empties out the window with one hand as they grab for a fresh can with the other. They must blow daily past my driveway while my girls circle their bicycles in the gravel, or jump blissfully toward space on our trampoline. There are new cans every day.

I used to take a garbage bag with me on our walks, stuffed in the bottom tray of the stroller. I thought I might be able to teach first Gracie, then Eva, about recycling, about cleaning up our own special patch of mother nature’s quilt. After a while I gave up, though. Gracie started understanding what the cans were, what they meant, started asking questions, and I didn’t have the heart for the answers.

This morning as I headed out for my run, I counted them like I always do. It’s kind of a throw-back to my days spent counting ceiling tiles in the nurse’s office, and it’s also a way to pass the time, to keep my mind occupied. That, and they’re hard to miss, there are so many of them. This morning I lost count by mile three, but the beer of choice was crystal clear: the assholes who make a sport of drinking and driving prefer Busch Light, at least around here.

Today I left my driveway headed south, taking every left turn I could until I returned to my driveway from the north five miles later — it’s the closest thing we’ve got to a “block” out here in the boonies. Because I’m a terribly slow runner, I had a lot of time to think.

Wisconsin is a beautiful state. We don’t have a whole lot of cities here; the population of our capital, Madison, is only around 250,000. For the most part, the state is a chain maille suit of smaller, independent communities like my hometown. The air is pure, the lakes are plentiful, the people are down to earth and the cultural opportunities are surprisingly solid. I have never wanted to live anywhere else.

But we do drink. What I’m about to say will not make me popular with my local readers, but I’m so fucking pissed tonight I don’t even care about the potential for angry anonymous comments: Wisconsin breeds a culture of drinking and driving, particularly among its small town inhabitants. It’s the plain and simple truth. My whole life it’s been normal. I know people around here who brag about it on MySpace, whose profile pictures regularly feature beer cans with straws posed next to the steering wheel. My alma mater, UW Madison, is one of the top public education institutions in the country; it also regularly ranks among the top binge drinking universities, more than once taking first place. We’re known for our beer and cheese in this state, but it’s more than that — it is perfectly acceptable in Wisconsin culture to drive to the bar, drink all night, and then drive yourself home. And that’s just those of us who bother to go to the bar — many, many others, would rather hop in the car with friends and drive all night through the breathtaking countryside. It’s called “road-tripping”, and everyone knows what it means. Everyone knows it means something different when they say it in other states.

And we lose people. It’s a numbers game, right? Only a matter of time? The first one I remember was ten, almost eleven years ago now. Three of my classmates drove drunk off an on-ramp and one of them died, though they didn’t find him until the next morning. I went home for the funeral and after the service, everyone headed up to the bar. To toast him, give him a proper send-off.

Just last year, Dave and I were at the wedding of another of my classmates. Yet another classmate left the reception after 12 or 15 pitchers of beer and proceeded to mow down and kill a pedestrian. They didn’t catch him at first, though, because he left the young man to die in the weedy ditch while he hid his truck in the woods across town. These are just two examples off the top of my head, but I thought of them both on my run today, as I counted those cans.

At four o’clock this afternoon I got word that another one died last night, at 9:42pm. He was a sweet kid, one I’ve known the better part of my life, a regular fixture at the bars. He was miles from home, and “alcohol was a factor.” He was “partially ejected and pinned” beneath his car, and died at the scene. He was a friend of my brother’s; my dad remembers a night they sneaked out his bedroom window because his own father had come home drunk and was threatening to beat him to a pulp. Like many kids in my hometown, I wonder sometimes if he ever had a chance. He was 29.

He was one of the best friends of the girl whose MySpace picture regularly celebrates her road trips. She changed that picture today to one of the two of them inside a bar. He is flexing a muscled arm, a pool cue leaned haphazardly against the other. She is laughing at whatever funny thing he has just said. They are safe inside the bar forever. No one has left yet.

And you know what? I bet they’re all at the bar toasting him right now. Later tonight, if I’m still out here on my front porch with my laptop, the Wisconsin air musky with the sweet smoke of the spring prairie burns, perhaps I’ll be able to wave to them as they drive by.

**Update, April 21: The kid who died received his third drunk driving ticket just last month. Had he lived, Saturday night would have been his fourth. So those of you who mentioned stricter laws? Apparently it wouldn’t have made a difference in this case. Three drunk driving tickets and he’s still getting behind the wheel, his buddies are still climbing in next to him (there was an uninjured passenger in this accident) and his friends are still joking about it on MySpace. Guess he won’t be making his April court date for that third offense, huh?

Well? What do you think?

I’m not sure y’all realize how much I love this blog.

It’s not the words I’m writing, it’s the space itself. The template and the format. For whatever reason, when I log in here I feel a freedom I can’t experience anywhere else. It’s even affecting my work.

When I write my articles, it’s in the standard Word doc format, but a few months back I discovered a secret: when I’m stuck, when the words aren’t coming, if I go to my blog they flow. So I created a private blog solely for my articles, and I work on them over there, in the blog format, when they’re not coming together in my word processing program. Am I explaining this well? Is that the craziest thing ever? It kind of reminds me of that Sex in the City episode where Charlotte’s husband couldn’t — *ahem* — enjoy his wife without thinking of his special magazines. (I think there was something about his mother, too, but I’m not going there right now. This situation is quite similar, unfortunately. The word docs are my husband but my blog is my mother. Or something like that.)

I think it’s because of the way I learned to write, without help from journalism school or years on the beat. I don’t know how many of you know this, but I came quite late to writing, and if you put me in some sort of journalist’s trivial pursuit game I would lose miserably; I would make all the other guys look really good. The only writing education I’ve ever had has come from a lifetime of reading, and the look of crisp words on a clean page in a book. That’s why the look of the words on the screen is so critical to me putting them out there at all. If I can’t see it, I can’t write it.

And so it is, with great trepidation, that I change my look of my blog once again. I wanted a more customized look, and my choices were limited unless I switched platforms and changed my URL address, and I didn’t want to put you precious kittens through that again. (We were just there, remember?) So I decided on a new header instead, and I had to switch templates to allow for that. My custom header was invented by the incomparable Furiousball, with essentially no guidance from me. The hand signals up there? The typewriter keys from my childhood memories? All him. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty impressed. And yes, they’re my hands. Dave took time out from cuddling with Gracie’s hermit crab to snap them. Ain’t he kind?

So tell me, what do you think? Be honest.

I know I’ve had a lot of fluffy posts lately. I will reward your honest responses to my inquiry with a post of substance tomorrow, OK? I promise.

I think I’ll also ask my Ask and Ye Shall Receive friends what they think. They’ve been incredibly good to me, but they’ve never liked my look. They’re the ultimate test, I suppose, next to Gracie. But she’s not here.

So…. What do you think?