Ten.Two Hundred & Twenty
1. I am a little late coming downstairs. The light is already here.
2. Light gray. Dusty rose. Pale blue.
3. No one is happy about bacon and toast for breakfast again. I’m also out of sliced cheese. They are killing my vibe.
4. There is not enough coffee to keep me warm.
5. Fever Dreams.
6. The snow is just beginning. I am wishing for basketball to be cancelled. I am wishing for winter to be over.
7. I make him a cheese quesadilla and keep refreshing my email to see if practice will be cancelled.
8. The snow is light but there is still a lot of it.
9. I drive with my hands gripped around the steering wheel. Everyone is moving so slowly. I can’t see the lines in the road.
10. I pull the van in the garage and then get out to shovel again. The neighbors next door are also out. So is the guy three doors down. If I have to be out here, at least I’m not out here alone. The snow is glittering like diamonds.
Ten.Two Hundred & Nineteen
1. I hear the alarm and decide to turn it off and go back to sleep.
2. I can sense the light creeping in to the room. All I want is someone to bring me coffee.
3. He offers to bring me coffee.
4. I eat grapes and drink the coffee and read.
5. “Your will, in other words, is not a manifestation of your character...”
6. The nap was long and luxurious. And so needed.
7. We chat on the phone about me and my work, her and her writing.
8. The light. So much light.
9. The smell of the dough. I dump it onto the counter and watch it spread. I cut it into six triangles and then roll each one into a rope. It is elastic and yeasty and light.
10. It is going to happen. It is going to happen.
Ten.One Hundred & Sixty
1. Jordan Marsh’s blueberry muffin recipe really is the best. I’ve now eaten enough of them to know it without a doubt.
2. I am interrupted 5 minutes into my 10-minute meditation.
3. I throw the cold coffee out of my mug and into the sink. I am feeling unprepared to deal with a child who doesn’t like school. I want it to get better but it doesn’t. And I don’t know how to help.
4. Burnt up log.
5. Robin and I talk. It’s been far too long since we last spoke. But I love how we can just dive right back into co-creation.
6. I had forgotten just how joy-filled Molly is. That one hour with her was so needed and I didn’t even realize it.
7. When you saw a big dream out loud for the first time.
8. Laundry.
9. “1957” by Milo Green. “As” by Stevie Wonder. “The Water” by Feist.
10. Rosé.
Ten.Seventy
1. I wake up before the alarm and then stay in bed after it goes off. The sickness has traveled from the nose into the throat and chest.
2. This morning is layers and light foam and staring out the window over the kitchen sink waiting for the sun to turn the grass gold-green.
3. I complain a lot but really I do prefer the spaciousness of our mornings.
4. I wonder why I care so much about certain things and yet not enough about others. Is it really true that how you do one thing is how you do everything? I don't think it is.
5. I find a spot underneath the tent where I can see all three kids. I am sweating and my nose is still running and occasionally I get up to give a few kids a high five. I'm glad I get to do these kinds of things. I don't want to give up this freedom.
6. I prepare the pot roast for dinner. Her recipe never fails. Brown the onions and the the carrots. Sear the meat on all sides and then deglaze the pan with red wine. (Tonight it's a bottle of Primitivo.) Put everything back into the pan with beef stock and fresh herbs. (I cut generous amounts of rosemary and oregano from the bushes out back.) Stick it in the oven.
7. I play with him in the backyard, a badminton type of game. He keeps asking me to play. I keep saying yes. I keep enjoying it more than I think I will.
8. I want to rest my eyes before dinner but I just keep rehearsing phrases for the workshop.
9. Honey to coat the throat.
10. Who am I?
Ten.Fifty-Nine
1. I want to make an apple crisp because it's a Monday and I think we need comfort food to start the day.
2. I break my no-caffeine streak and make myself a cappuccino. I still have two lunches and two snacks to pack, 7 loads of laundry to fold, and a meeting with a teacher.
3. The one who threw up the night before is still in pajamas and the oldest one is still coughing and wheezing and looks pained. Two kids home sick. I have to take the girl with me to the teacher meeting.
4. I hate to compare, but it's so different. I need to let it be different. I will only make myself more upset by listing all the ways in which it's different, instead of appreciating what's here in front of me. But it's still so different.
5. Errands.
6. I start in on the seven loads and watch last night's Love & Hip-Hop and then The Conjuring. It takes me 2.5 hours to fold it and put it all away.
7. I haven't met her yet but she offers me medicine and I need it, and so I take it and remember that this just might be everything I need it to be if I let it.
8. I'm in the middle of making Chicken Parmesan and the oldest comes down to tell us he doesn't feel well. That he's going to throw up. I pull the trash bin out of the drawer and bring it to his chin just in time, dusting the underside of his face with flour.
9. Sick day number two tomorrow.
10. This is all that got done today. I am salty because I didn't even get to eat any of the apple crisp. I didn't get to edit the photos. Which means I didn't write the blog post. In my down time I ate leftover Greek salad and pita chips, drank tea and water, rubbed essential oils on my chest and took a mucinex, wondered how we're supposed to do all of this. Wondered how I get to do all of this.
10.1 I am out of sleepy time tea and settle instead for very-hot-water with lemon and honey. I catch the last bits of sunset. Orange and gray and faded blue denim. I sometimes cannot handle all of the beauty and the pain.