::: Howling :::

Tonight, G picked up his plate and stalked into the kitchen.  “I am sick of the government,” he said. (He did NOT slam the plate down on the counter. Not my new plates, he wouldn’t.)  We’d been listening to the news.  And I have to say, I agree with him.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard the word “government” as many times as I have in the last several months – and I’m sick of them – all the governments in the whole entire world.  Maybe they just all ought to go home and try living normal lives for a while.  Just go home, take care of their kids, do something productive, stop talking and leave the rest of us alone.

And thus I start a piece about pretty much nothing.  I have not come to blog (can that really be a verb?) about blogging, but rather to pace up and down, blogging about NOT blogging.

I learned many years ago, more than thirty years ago, that you can either write about life or you can live life, but it’s almost impossible to do both.  If you choose to write about life, you put yourself in the enviable position of those who can shovel out criticism of almost everything—as long as whatever it is, they can’t actually do it themselves.  Too busy writing, being witty and taking cheap shots to actually do anything.  And the ones who are living instead of arting about living? (yes.  That is ART-ing)  They can’t defend themselves – too busy doing things to write back.

The Brave Little Snowdrops

(this picture taken just before the puppies dug them up)

You cannot be the woman who preserves her entire photographic family history and the woman who trains the puppies and the horses, and the one who does the accounting, and the authoress, and the mother of grown children, and the genealogist who hangs around the Long Cane mailing list, and the one who is obsessed with making things and learning things and eating responsibly and exercising and reading keeping in touch with all the people she loves, loves, loves.  No one can be this many women.  Not and write about it at the same time.

I never thought I’d say that having four children running around the house was easier than retirement, but in some ways it is: children focus you.  And you have a team – you and the kids against the world.  When they are gone, things get very complicated: not just the matter of trying to get them all together at one time to take a family picture.  But things like: it’s going to be G’s birthday, but we can’t eat cake because we’ve learned that middle-aged abdominal fat becomes an actual organ with its own endocrine system and causes heart disease and dementia and even if you can’t see it on your abs, it’s already infiltrated your liver.  That’s a real party killer.

And yet, his sister (the nicest person in the world) is holding a dinner in his honor, and we’re responsible to bring cake and ice cream for the entire extended family.

Complicated.

As is spring.  It was nice when spring meant little lambs and egg hunts—even while it was flirting with you and playing hard to get.  Now it’s muck in the arena, puppies with fast, muddy feet and a yard that half slime, half ice.

I wrote some things on Sunday – Sunday kinds of things.  But never got them proof-read and went through a fit of self-consciousness about how Sunday they actually were, and now it’s Wednesday night and not Sunday, and so it’s probably too late.

Here is one good amazing thing.  Our crocus have never come up all colors at the same time.  Usually, it’s the golden ones.  Then they die.  Then the white ones; then they die.  Then the purple.  This is the first time I have seen them all come up at the same time, which is stunning and fun and magical.  And I hope the dang puppies don’t notice them, because I’d like this to last.

So all I’m left with is explaining that I am living like the Flash and somehow, with all that ground covered, have absolutely nothing to write about.  And aren’t you glad I took this long to say it?