Author: song dog sally

gluten? bring it

I have, in my home, at this moment, several loaves of bread from one friend’s bakery, a yummy ciabatta from my other friends’ bakery, and the remains of 2 dozen New York bagels.

I LOVE that my friends bring me gluten.

Years of baking completely gluten free has turned gluten into a sort of heroin for me.

Sometimes, I will treat myself to a fresh out of the oven baguette. I inhale almost all of it – pick pick pick. So then, when I start to gross myself out (but not enough to stop eating) I throw the rest of the loaf into the woodstove.

That way, I can honestly say that, no, I did not eat an entire loaf of bread.

what’s next?

It’s time for me to figure that out.

Now that the Era of the Accident has drawn to a close, it’s time to return to normal.

But I don’t have a normal any more.

It’s not like my life pre-accident still exists.

I’m going through this bizarre let down – the denouement, if you will.

This is the time, after the crisis, where things are supposed to shake out.

But nothing has shaken out just yet.

Limbo

It’s like I’ve suddenly realized that there is no going back – not one thing is that same. I can say what doesn’t exist any more but I’m having a harder time saying what does exist.

I have a fucking empty nest.

I have a job that I can do blindfolded and I’m no longer crying every day so no more excitement there.

Both my parents are holding steady for today.

In a way, I’m feeling purpose-less. Everything was about the accident and making sure my boys were okay. I couldn’t focus too much on the rest of my world because every bit of energy was going into the family. I couldn’t plan anything because I didn’t know if my son was going to be in jail or not.

And now, he’s not in jail and is doing everything he’s supposed to be doing, his brother is rowing boats in Utah, and number three is holding down a steady job and he’s my drama-less kid so he’s not going to be my cause.

I’m not needed like I was a month ago.

What’s a girl to do?

I feel aimless.

And…

Another way to look at it is that I have no strings attached. I’m free.

And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.

It’s a good thing – don’t get me wrong. How many mothers of three, at fifty-three, get to do whatever they want; no kids to monitor, no husband to please, no pigschickenshorsessteers to feed.

It’s a big wide world out there and quite honestly, it’s a bit disconcerting.

There’s a time in a young mother’s life when the kids become just a little more independent and self-sufficient. Mom has a bit of time on her hands and suddenly, she is faced with the question, “Who am I?”

That’s often when women have another baby.

I am not going to have a baby.

But, I do get to ask myself the same question and answer it however I want.

And the weirdest thing is that I feel like I know myself better than I ever have before – I really like myself right now. But I still don’t know the answer.

I’m going to say it out loud…

I think I’m having a midlife crisis.

I just got another tattoo. I pierced my nose but didn’t stick with it. I moved. I’ve smoked a ton of grass. I’ve already dated the much younger man.

I have not purchased a sports car, nor have I cut off all of my hair.

But if it looks and smells like a midlife crisis…

Gawd, I’m a fucking cliché.

 

 

lessons in friendship

This last year has been about friendships for me; who’s in, who’s out.

There has been great beauty in all of it and also deep, excruciating pain. The beauty and the pain have come hand in hand – gain a friend, lose a friend.

There are places in my heart that are still so deeply wounded that I can’t yet write about them.

Some day.

Last week I had the glaring contrast of letting go of a beloved friend and embracing two gals for whom my heart will always have space and love.

The ones that I’ve lost help me appreciate the ones that I’ve gained and the women that I have, the deepest love, shine a light on the flaws in other relationships.

In other words – the friends who show up provide a glaring contrast to those who don’t. And once seen, those discrepancies cannot be unseen.

Years ago, my friend DD said to me, “If a friendship isn’t feeding your soul, then let go of it.”

That’s been really hard for me. I want people to like me. I want to be seen as a nice person. I hate feeling like the bad guy. I hate thinking that people perceive me as angry or crazy – someone to avoid.

I can beat myself up pretty badly.

And that’s where the flip side of the coin comes in.

I have people who have supported and loved and laughed at, and with, me. I have people who love me despite my ugly.

Some might even love my ugly, or at least they tolerate it.

The relationships that feed me help with the loneliness and pain caused by the ones that don’t, but nothing can make the grief vanish. Just like the people who hurt me so badly can’t take away the love that I receive from others.

I so wish that I could just forget about the hurt, the betrayal, the isolation. I wish that reveling in the love erased the not-love.

But, if that could happen then the opposite could happen too; the pain could erase the warm embrace given to me by so many.

And we wouldn’t want that to happen, now, would we?

 

 

 

There’s that moment when the clouds part after a storm and what you see is that the mountains which, yesterday, were bone-dry-brown, have turned blue-white; thick with fresh snow.

Today, when that happened, I felt every part of my body unclench just a tad. I had no idea how tense I was until I wasn’t as much.

It’s been a stress reaction to the seriousness of the drought.

We had an orange fire moon in April.

But this tension isn’t on a mental or emotional plane; it’s visceral. My body feels parched along with the landscape.

Just a little bit of moisture has brought relief – at least for today. There is snow on the mountains. The river literally doubled it’s flow today. The pastures turned green while I was at work.

You can feel a collective sigh amongst the community. I doubt there’s anyone in this town who hasn’t said a prayer of thanks today.

I feel so connected to this place. I think most of us do. It gets in your cells.

It feels as if the lines between me and the dirt and the rocks and the grasses are quite blurred.

There’s a sense of solidity to this landscape that keeps one grounded.

It’s breathtakingly beautiful.

A woman asked me today, “Does it ever get old?”

No. No.

It’s so overwhelmingly stunning in every direction, and it’s so big, so, so big, and every moment of every day the light changes, drifts in and out, casts shadows across the mountains and the canyons, and, there is wind in the ponderosas, owls hoot-hooting in the night, and meadowlarks singing up the sun.

Our storms are events; people drive up to the mountains to them. Wildfires are yearly happenings. The sun will melt chocolate buried in your pack, in February.

It’s ever-changing and never-boring here.

When you love a place so much that it becomes a part of you, and you it; when your soul connects with the soul of the landscape; when it’s relief is your relief; that’s true love.

And true love never grows old.

 

bounce back

When you have friends like T.B. and D.J., you can’t ask for better.

The depth of my friendships from my Outward Bound days; the quality of character and indisputable levels of integrity, are unparalleled.

And then there was this tonight:

And then, this:

How can life be anything but good?

I will not be crying myself to sleep tonight.

This one’s not pretty

I’m in a fucking heap this afternoon and I am just going to whine here for a moment, so if you don’t feel like listening, that’s fine with me.

I feel beaten down. I want a break. I want something good to happen.

I know I have plenty of good and at the heart of all of it are my people. I am blessed and I know it and I’m not being bombed with chemical weapons, whatever. Blah blah blah.

My reality is that I have been and continue to be pummelled.

My 87-year-old father is in the hospital with multiple issues, my son is getting sentenced to jail for this fucking accident on Friday, and I can’t get past how I’ve been treated this year by people who supposedly loved me, because all of these people are around.

I feel pain. I’m tired. The teary floodgates have opened and I can’t stop the waterworks.

All was contained today until I got a call from the son of a friend who died (not recently) asking me about scattering his father’s ashes and I know that MXB should be a part of that and we can’t both be a part of it so I bowed out.

It was the right thing to do.

But how much can a gal take? I know that I keep referring to the last several months when my world imploded; the breakup, losing the home, boys moving out, accident, giardia, concussion etc. But the reality is that this started long before that with my mom’s cancer and my dad’s life-threatening heart and lung issues.

I want to go to Florida now – I know it would help them. But I can’t go because of this week’s sentencing.

So then I have to face the reality that my son is likely going to have to do jail time and I really didn’t plan that when I decided to have children.

I feel crushed beneath a boot heel.

Last fall, when the shit hit, even though I was crippled with sadness and there was too much on my plate for any one person to manage, I knew that I had the fortitude and tenacity (god, I love that word) to make it through.

Today, I don’t have that confidence. All I have today is a wall of disbelief and a petulant sense of deserving better.

I want to kick and scream and throw shit and then not have all of this crap happening any more.

Like I said, I want something good to happen.

I’ve had Utah.

Without Utah, I wouldn’t be walking and talking.

I have incredible people. One showed up today with a Sally-green spatula for my kitchen which made me smile.

But I just feel like I can’t do any more. My reserves for tackling this next round have been completely depleted. And yet it’s here. I’m in it.

It’s thick and murky and sludgy and I just want to lie down and let it consume me.

I am tired of fighting the fight.

I am tired of having to be resilient and strong and tenacious.

I want to wake up excited for the day, not weighted down before I am even out of bed.

No one deserves the suffering that they must endure, but I’m at the point where I’m thinking I fucking deserve something better than this.

I’m tired.

I’m tired.

I’m tired.