The Friday Diary: August goal wrap up, and September goal introduction, and probably some other nonsense

 

Today is Friday, and also the end of August.

How did this happen?

This month is just...over.

Crazy.

I suppose that means that along with wrapping up the week, we also have to wrap up the month goal, which was to start writing my book.

I actually call this goal a win, because I did write four chapters.

And then deleted them.

But then saved them!

But then rewrote them.

At this pace, I should have a legit book by the year 2043.

September's goal is to send out surprise letters and packages to people I care about.

No emails, less Facebook, more real, tangible stuff that says "Hey, you....I care about you, and I think about you and stuff. But not in a weird way....unless thinking about us being ninja turtles for Halloween is weird, in which case I think about you in very weird ways"

 

September may also be the month that I lose the majority of my friends.

 

Also, this month I will be starting a new venture in my professional life.

I'm getting back into taking photographs for people, and already have a few sessions booked.

I'm excited, nervous, anxious, and excited.

This is a semi-confusing time for me, as you can see.

 

Anyhow, that's my world right now.

I hope y'all are good.

I promise I'll start posting more again soon.

 

In the meantime, happy friday.

Don't do anything I wouldn't do.

Or especially anything I would do.

The Friday Diary: I have a coffee maker and an Instagram! Guess which one I'm more excited about

Hey, hey, it's Friday!

I thought we'd never make it.

This week was not the most amazing in the history of ever, but hey, we all survived, right?

Right.

 

It's been a while since I've written a legit Friday Diary, and I feel like we have a lot to catch up on with each other.

First of all, I finally bought a real coffee maker.

I know, I know, y'all have been waiting with baited breath for me to make this purchase for so long.

I get it.

I finally have one, his name is George, we've been together for two days, and we're already basically inseperable.

 

Also, speaking of getting with the times, I got a Smartphone.

It's hardcore crazy to me, and I literally can't stop touching it.

My phone before was an ancient Blackberry that once upon a time was Bill's, and it literally did nothing.

Actually by the time I got my new phone, it really didn't even make calls anymore unless it was plugged into the charger, with your finger holding the batter cover on, while standing on one leg and chanting.

And, since I do everything hardcore or not at all, I also got an Instagram.

I know, I know, trendy and stupid and I'm sure at some point I said I didn't get them, but now, as someone who loves taking random pictures of literally EVERYTHING, I want to say: I get it now.

I really get it.

Yesterday at lunch, I took a picture of the Taco Bell drive through...just because I could.

Someone save me from myself.

Also, if you want to peep me, my username is Radiowaltz, because I keep shit fresh and creative.

 

Lastly, I have a pen pal.

This is super exciting, because I love handwritten letters, and he sends super long ones that are funny and interesting.

He's also my uncle, so don't get too excited, everyone.

I'm still single.

 

Well, I think that about wraps it up, don't you?

That's been our life lately.

Weird, crazy, boring, but ours none the less.

 

Happy Friday!

Don't get pregnant.

 

 



When Can I?

 

Last night, as Lainie was getting ready for bed, she asked me when she could start drinking coffee.

I had just bought a new coffee maker {one that doesn't leak weird black water all over my cheap white counters}, so I figured she was just making conversation.

But then she wouldn't let it go.

She asked three more times before I finally got her to bed.

She asked again this morning when I was packing her lunch.

And I realized....it's started.

The phase of "When can I..." has begun, and I know from experience {because I was a 10 year old girl once} that this phase goes on basically until one of two things happens:

Either A) they become a teenager who rebels, and they no longer care when you say they can do things. They just start doing them.

Or, if you're exceptionally lucky, B) they turn 18 and THEN start doing things without asking you first.

If you make it that far without them foregoing your permission for things, call me and tell me how you did that.

Anyway, the phase has started where she is still, in my opinion, too little for everything, but in her mind, in a big ass hurry to get bigger and grow up already.

It starts with when can I have coffee, and before you know it, it's when can I wear makeup? when can I shave my legs? when can I go on dates? when can I wear a bra? when can I tattoo my face? when can I grow up and move out and leave you forever?!

 

So pass me all of the chips and all of the leftover mashed potatoes, because I think I'm officially in the level of Hell where to me she is a baby who should still play with babies, and to her she is a grown woman who drinks coffee and commutes 30 minutes in the morning.

 

We persevere. 

My Mother, Pt. 3

Since today is my mother's 53rd birthday, I decided to finish the series on her that I started over two years ago. 

I'll do my best to pick up where I left off.

The summer that we lived with her in that little Sunnyslope apartment was the first experience I had with her being an alcoholic. The first time she was the only parent there to watch, and so I finally started to notice things. Things like the slurred speech at 10 am, the wobbly walk when she came home from work, the way that her work day ended at all kinds of hours, anytime between 5 pm and 6 the next morning, but she was a nurse in a doctor's office. 

She'd go out drinking after work, and sometimes come home the next morning still in her scrubs.

My mother and I were never close, but that summer I was 8 and still thought we might be someday.

But she was either sleeping, or wandering around the house with beer-blind eyes, not seeing any of us, so when my sisters and I moved out, I didn't let myself cry.

It wasn't for another two years that I lived with her again, or even so much spent a weekend at her house.

When I was 10 she showed up on the back of a motorcycle, driven by a man who then I only knew as my dad's friend Alan. 

I found out later it was her boyfriend and they were living together.

I still wonder what those two years without her three daughters was like.

How it was to go from seeing your children every day, to not seeing them at all.

Eventually summer rolled around again, and she came to the house one afternoon by herself, to tell us that Alan said we could come live at his house for the summer with them if we wanted to. 

I didn't want to go and neither did Michele, but Erica always butted heads with our dad more than we did, so she was the first to volunteer. 

On the weekends my dad would drive me to their house though, a squat, perfectly square little gray brick house, again in Sunnyslope. There was a sad little yard with a sagging chain link fence, and a German Shepherd that Alan said was older than me, and I believed him.

But inside, Erica spent her days drinking Pepsi and watching MTV, and generally being left alone, which in comparison to my Dad's house, seemed awesome. No one was yelling at her to do chores, or hitting her if they weren't done right. As far as I could see, if she left Anita alone, Anita returned the favor. 

So I moved in.

There were neighbor kids and very few rules.

Late nights of Uno games, and a young mom down the street who took an interest in us.

Anita spent her time either in her room, drinking until Alan came home and then drank with him in the kitchen, or she worked. Off and on in hospitals and doctor's offices, but when staying sober between 8 and 5 became too hard, she took a job as a clerk at the corner store and nobody said anything about it.

For years things went on like this.

I moved back into and back out of her house several times, for various reasons.

The majority of the time it was like living alone, only without being responsible for any bills, and some of the time she'd get angry drunk, and want to fight. 

Other times she'd get nice and tight and then want to go grocery shopping with all of us girls, who had little choice but to pile in the back seat of her Honda and let her take us swerving down the mountain to the store, all of us pretending there was nothing abnormal about it.

Her and I never had a relationship.

We didn't kiss, we didn't hug. In fact we both went out of our way to avoid touching each other at all.

Saying we loved each other was rare, and always forced.

My sisters had to remind her of my birthday.

Eventually I moved out of both my parent's homes and on my own.

Over the course of my first year in that little apartment, all on my own with a 2 year old daughter, and what seemed like endless paths in front of me for what my life, and my relationship with my kid could be like, I started getting mad at my mother, for the first time.

My whole life I had assumed our relationship was normal.

If not always normal, then certainly not that far from it.

But standing in the kitchen, face to face with my own child, I didn't understand her indifference.

I couldn't.

So one night, I decided to ask her about it.
All my life other people had explained my mother to me. I wanted to give her the chance to speak for herself. 

I stayed up all night, so that I could call her at 5 a.m. when I knew she'd be up getting my step dad ready for work, but wouldn't have started drinking yet for the day.

As the phone rang, my heart hammered in my chest.

When I heard her voice, soft and pretty, like it always had been, unexpected tears rushed to my eyes.

Her voice was the hand on my cheek at night, only once.

It was the soft murmur in the living room that I would stay up at night and listen for before I could fall asleep.

It was the flame of red hair that I watched get smaller and smaller in all the rear windows of all the cars that she put me in and waved goodbye, as she sent me back to live with my dad, my sister, my grandma, my aunts or uncles or anyone but her.

I hadn't planned what I wanted to say, so when she answered, I just asked the one question I really couldn't get passed: why she didn't love me.

I expected her to sigh, to roll her eyes so hard I'd be able to hear it over the phone, to tell me I was being dramatic and silly and of course she loved me, and why on earth was I calling so damn early?

But instead she was quiet, for a long time.

When she finally spoke, she told the truth. I at least have to give her that. She spoke her truth, as best as she could, and explained how I had come to be, and what I had always represented to her, and what her own childhood had done to her.

She didn't deny anything, she made no excuses.

People ask me now if I'm angry at my mom. 

If I miss her.

If I hate her for what she did, or blame her for the issues I have now.

If I love her.

If I forgive her.

The answer to all of that, is no....and yes....

As I get older, I understand her more, and less at the same time.

I don't know if I miss her, because I didn't know her, but I know that I miss the idea of her.

For the idea of a mother that we all want, and really very few of us had - even people whose mothers tried much harder than mine to do it right.

There are times when I am so scared, or when I hurt so bad, that I feel myself asking for my mother deep down inside....but I know that I don't mean Anita.

I'm not asking for the woman who left me, who didn't look at me, who never wanted me. I'm not asking for the woman who sneered, and scowled, and punished me for the sins of my father. I don't want the person who smelled like alcohol, who didn't protect me, who dropped me off at the Emergency room and never came in, who fell down at my church play and who drove me drunk to the grocery store.

I want the idea of her, the smell of her in the morning, the soft anguish of her perfume. I want her hair in my face that time she held me when I cried, the color of her eyes. I want her wide hips, her soft tummy, the times she was sober enough and present enough to let me sink down to the bottom of her. I want the woman who let me hide behind her, who gave me my name, who taught me how to walk in heels.

I'm not angry at her, but I can't miss her, and I don't know how to hate her. 

But I'll always painfully, distantly, wishfully, and impossibly, 

love her.

Read part one

Read part two

Dear Friend, on your 26th birthday

Dear Best Friend, 

Today is your birthday.

You are 26, but it feels like just yesterday that we were 14, watching Monty Python and being ridiculous in my backyard. 

Do you remember the underground fort we were going to build?

And the futon mattress we dragged into the corner of the yard, forever forgotten.

Remember when we used to go down the stairs in my condo like we were sledding?

Remember the wall we claimed as our own on our lunch hour?

The notebook full of secrets, the artichokes for dinner, the box we pushed each other around in for hours, Amenti making out with baby Jackson?

I'm so glad I have you as my soul sister.

I'm so glad that you were born. 

Happy Birthday.

House Rules

Every house has rules, that's just a fact of life.

We all had rules in our homes when we were growing up, and as we became adults ourselves, and either cohabited with roommates or boyfriends, or got married or had children, we developed rules for our own homes.

Some we adopted from our parents, some we just made up as we went along, as evidenced by the list of some of the rules in our home:

- No yelling inside

-Unless Mom is yelling. Mom is allowed to yell. 

-But don't make mom yell!

-No feet on the dinner table

-No farting on other people on purpose

-If you do fart on someone else, whether on accident or on purpose, you have to make them a treat to make up for the damage you can never really undo.

-Don't bother mom when she's in the closet with the door shut

-We don't do homework in the bathroom while Mom is peeing, we do homework at the kitchen table

-Don't bother Mom while she's in the shower unless you're bleeding

-I am not putting the cat in time out

-Do your homework before you go outside

-If you don't do your homework, you have to practice filling out McDonald's applications until you're ready to do your homework

-Don't moon me

-Don't lick me

-Don't jump on me naked

-My bedroom is not your playground

-Don't eat my chocolate

-After Halloween, Mom can eat your chocolate

-Lying kills Santa

-If you make me coffee, you're my favorite

-If I have to put down my coffee to chase you, find you, grab you, or otherwise stop you from doing whatever bullshit you're doing, you are going to regret it.

-Pee goes in the toilet, not on the floor, walls, front yard, my leg, the back of the couch, the back porch, the cat, or any brick wall you see. 

-Same goes for poop JACKSON

-If you pooped or peed on it, you're cleaning it

-Do not wake me before it's time to get up unless someone is missing, bleeding, losing their arm, or literally dying.

What are your house rules?

Do Parents Have Favorites?

 

People who do not have children, ask me all the time if I have a favorite child.

When my sisters and brother and I were growing up, we asked all the time if our parents had a favorite.

The correct answer that you give your child, always, forever, is no. I do not have a favorite. I love you all the same.

The truth of course, at least in my opinion, is yes.

Parents have favorites.

The caviat to this uncomfortable truth, is that favorites change over time, depending on the age and the stage that your kids are in.

When your 16 year old daughter is screaminig that she hates you from the top of the stairs, as she throws the expensive shit you bought her around the bedroom in the house you pay for, over something as trivial as what you made for dinner, she is probably not your favorite.

In that moment, the child who is sitting quietly at the table coloring you a picture, probably looks like they're sitting in a golden ray of heaven's light. Perfect.

But, when that lovely angel baby who was coloring you a picture yesterday, throws a screaming tantrum in Walmart over a water gun today, and your bratty 16 year old daughter is the one to calm them down and distract them, you would suddenly give anything to bathe in the glow of your precious teenage cherub's spirit energy.

Sometimes favorites change by the day, sometimes they change with the beginning or end of a new phase, or particularly difficult age group.

 

I don't like the fact that this isn't something we can admit to, at least among other adult parents, far from the prying ears of our sensitive children.

Of course I would never say to my lovely son that because he has been acting like a meth addicted lab monkey for the past 6 weeks, and making my hair fall out in crazy, horror movie stress clumps, he is not my favorite right now.

But I wonder why we're so scared to admit it to one another, as parents.

Are we scared to admit that our children are not perfect?

Is it uncomfortable to look at them, and our relationships with them, that nakedly?

Does it feel wrong to admit that there are aspects of our children's personalities that are hard for us to deal with or accept?

As parents we're supposed to love completely, 100%, and unconditionally.

Does admitting that we sometimes don't like every single thing about our kids every day of their lives, feel like we're not loving them like we're supposed to?

Maybe we're being too hard on ourselves.

To be fair, we don't get a lot of say in who our children are, in the most basic aspects of the personality anyway.

When we have kids, we have as little control, if not less, over what kind of personality they will have, than we do what eye color they're born with or if they're right or left handed.

There is no guarantee that we as human beings, will mesh perfectly with every aspect of their ever evolving and changing personalities and unique identities, all the time.

We will love them, we will cherish them, but we may not always harmonize with them.

There will almost definitely be times where our relationship with one child is requiring more work, while simultaneously our relationship with the other is in an easier phase, a period of closeness and harmony that just happens to be coming more easily at that exact moment.

And that's ok.

And, if we're being honest, there will almost definitely be qualities or traits to our children, that we would not like very much if we encountered them in a perfect stranger, and therefor will require more effort from us in order to be patient and accepting of those things all the time.

And that's ok.

 

I don't believe this means I love either of my kids less than the other.

I think it means that I recognize their differences.

They are two completely individual and unique people. Both have their own wonderful set of charms and blessings that they've bestowed upon my life. Both children also have their own unique set of challenges and struggles, and both children go through their own phases of growing up that are hard on me in different ways.

 

And maybe it does even mean that I love them differently.

Not different amounts, but in different ways.

Love is not a blanket that can be blindly tossed over everyone in the same way.

It's a unique and precious bond between two people, a commitment that takes work, and flexibility.

My children are not identical to each other,

they are not identical to me,

they will not be the same people for the rest of their lives.

They have to be loved in different ways.

 

In the end though, when we have kids, it's like entering a marriage that we can't ever get out of.

It won't be a honey-tinted Pampers commercial all the time, any more than marriage is a rose colored Zales commercial all the time either.

It will require work, it will get hard, it will sometimes be your least favorite thing to do.

There shouldn't be anything wrong with admitting to that.

 

What gets us through raising little humans, is not that its all roses or that our children never irritate, infuriate, or disappoint us.

It's that unlike a marriage, you can't ever fall out of love with your kids.

No matter how much they scream they hate you and your tasteless chicken, from the top of the stairs.

 

 



My 12th Friend Anniversary

12 years ago today, I was a scared high school freshman, at a new school, in a new area, where I knew no one.

I stood in the halls with a terrible haircut and sweaty palms, clutching my class schedule and having no idea where I was supposed to go, or what I was supposed to do, or who I was going to have lunch with.

I spotted a girl standing against a wall, looking just as scared and sweaty as I was.

Boldly, I approached her.

Hi, I'm Sarah, I said. 

I'm Meghan, she responded.

Do you want to be best friends? I asked.

Sure, she answered.

And thus, our friendship was born.

Meghan was weird, and different, like me. She was socially awkward and didn't like most people, like me.

And from that point on, she has been one of the closest people to me.

We've had our ups and downs. 

We've seen each other through so much that life brings.

Through babies, boyfriends, break ups, shitty jobs, moves, unemployment. Through our awkward teenage years, fucking terrible drug experimentation, family problems, boy problems, and so many happy times. Hospital visits, deaths, and all manner of changes.

She's been there for my joys, my triumphs, and my unbearable losses.

She's seen my embarrassments and my humiliations, my weaknesses and she's given me strength.

And whenever I need her, she's always a phone call and a bottle of wine away.

Happy friend-iversary, to my true sister, my Cristina Yang, my hetero-lifemate. 

The Friday Diary: According to Jackson, Birthdays Will Kill You

Hey, hey, it's Friday.

I must say, I'm happy to have made it to today.

Not because the week was extra hard. It wasn't.

Not because I feel so old now that I'm 26. I don't.

Just because the other night, two nights before my birthday to be exact, Jackson came to me and said

"You get older and older and older, and then you have another birthday, and then dead."

He said this in his adorable, precious, baby voice, until the end, when he cut his hands through the air with a sense of finality and said "Dead." Just so matter of factly.

He didn't really clarify which birthday I was going to die immediately after, so to be still alive and kicking the day after my birthday is good news to me.

 

In any case, Friday is here again, and I am pretty super stoked about it.

My hetero-lifemate is coming over tonight to hang out with me for my birthday, and then our friend anniversary is Monday, so tomorrow we'll likely go shopping for our outfits to go get super classy pictures taken at the Walmart portrait studio.

I mean, you gotta do something big to celebrate 12 years of best friendship, right?!

We're dressing up as old lady princess hookers.

It's going to be the best day of my life.

This week was good.

Filled with birthday lunches, ginormous cheeseburgers, perfect gifts from good friends, and a successful first week back at school for the kids. Jackson even made a friend, and Lainie told me last night that when she brought her Harry Potter wand to class for show and tell, she was "like the most popular girl all day".

Way to go, little rock and roller.

 

Aside from that, I expect a pretty happy and relatively quiet weekend.

I say relatively, because I have two small children, and who am I kidding?

If you're short on stuff to read, you can go back in time to this time last year here, or you can read the incredibly insightful post on why Purity Campaigns are not the message we should be teaching our girls about sex here, and you can listen to my new favorite song here. {Ok I know that's not reading, but it's good and you can look up the lyrics and read those if you want. Shut up.}

  

So I hope y'all have a splendid Friday, and an awesome weekend.

And watch out for those birthdays.

You never know which one could be your last.



Today is my birthday

Today is my birthday.
I am 26 years old.
Now that I'm more than halfway through my twenties, I feel like I've learned a lot.
Not everything.
You don't know everything in your 20's. You feel everything, and it's easy to confuse the two.

I've learned that a lot of life depends on how much fight you've got in you.

We fight to hold on, we fight to let go, and it's all about figuring out which of those is the right path at the time, and that's hard.
I've learned that love doesn't conquer all.
I believed for a long time that love was bigger and stronger than everything else, and as long as it existed in a relationship, the relationship would survive.
I've come to accept that love conquers some stuff, and in the eternal words of Grey's Anatomy, "Other stuff kicks the crap out of love."
I've spent my entire twenties raising babies, and I've learned that there really is no one right way to raise kids. There are a lot of good ways, some absolutely terrible ways, and a lot of trial and error in between. I've learned that the more I believe in the choices I make, the less it matters what anyone else thinks of them, and confident parents are effective parents, so we persevere.

I'm still learning how to let go of things that feel big at the time, but when weighted against the cost of losing someone you love, are actually pretty small.
I'm still learning that making one mistake, or having an ungraceful moment or bad day, is no reason to just let go completely, and lose sight of the progress you have made.
I'm still learning to forgive myself, let it go, and try to fail a little better tomorrow.
 

I lived the first half of this decade at break neck speed, and am now ready to live the last half focused on finding my place, finding my home, and making the most of my years instead of merely surviving them.
 

I wish more TV shows depicted being in your twenties more accurately, because I think for most people it's not as glamorous and sexy as they try to make it look.
It is not a funny episode of Friends where everyone has nice clothes and no one ever has to go to work, and none of your 6 best friends have kids yet.
Most likely you are either struggling because you are out of work, or you're struggling in other ways because you're always working.
Most likely you do not have 6 best friends.

Your 20's are most likely fast, jumbled, tear stained, and confusing.

It's starting out in the world on your own at the same time that you can legally buy alcohol, and trying in the midst of all that to figure out who your tribe is.

It's finding the right career, the right life partner, and the right shade of lipstick for your skin tone.

It's watching your friends grow up...and realizing that some of them never will.
It's trying to strike the perfect balance between fun, and responsibility.

It's love and loss and bad dates and hard break ups usually a lot of alcohol.
For some of us it might also be navigating marriage and/or parenthood and realizing our parents were right: it all goes really fast.
 

At this point I'm pretty OK with being closer to 30 than to 20.

 

I spent the last five years moving, crying, laughing, yelling, drinking, loving, traveling, mothering, job-changing, planning, worrying, starting over, fucking up, and looking back.

Now it's time to look forward and make the most of what's left of this crazy, embarrassing, difficult, beautiful, intense, and magnificent decade of my life.
So let's all raise our glasses of cheap champagne in honor of someday having our shit together, someday not being completely ruled by emotion, someday accepting that 6 inch heels are bad for us, and someday, someday maybe, mastering a successful exfoliate and moisturize routine.

Today I am 26.
Cheers.

1st Days

The kids started school yesterday.

Lainie in fourth grade, Jackson in Kindergarten.

Both the kids being in school at once, has been a milestone I've waited for for a long time. 

Now that it's here, it's surreal, sad, wonderful, and scary.

I forgot how much you fear for your kids on their very first day in school, which even though it's just Kindergarten, feels very much like "the big bad world".

I forgot about how I laid awake at night and wondered "What if she goes to the bathroom and can't find her way back to her class and just sits in the hall crying all alone?" and "What if she can't get her juice box open at lunch and no one is there to help her so she's thirsty?", when Lainie was first getting started.

We had four years of school under our belts. She was a pro, and aside from the usual girl drama and other-people's-kids stuff, I didn't do much laying awake at night worrying.

Now it's Jackson's turn, and the fear is all coming back to me.

What if he gets asked a question and he doesn't know the answer?

Did we practice the ABC's enough? Oh God, what's enough?

What if he gets lost?

What if he gets distracted and they leave him on the playground after recess and then someone walks up and just takes him?

What if the sky falls?

What if he's not ready?

What if I'm not ready?

Why did I want this day to come so badly?

I wish he could have stayed four forever.

Of course I don't really want him to be four forever, just like I didn't really want Lainie to stay home with me forever.

I want them to both grow up, find their feet and their wings, and go have great big lives.

But with every new milestone, with every new transition into another phase of their life, and the way it inevitably separates from mine with time, I feel myself holding on, and wishing I could stay in control a little longer. 

Wishing I could always be there to open every juice box, to wipe every tear, to hold every hand on every walk to the bathroom.

To always make sure they won't be alone and confused and scared.

I feel myself secretly wishing for that, while I outwardly smile, kiss their cheeks, and gently push them toward the door of the school.

Because I know they have to be alone

And confused

And even sometimes scared

In order to have a great big life.

So I kiss their cheeks, and let go of their hands.

The Friday Diary: Holy Shit It's August

Today is Friday, which technically concludes my week off from work, since it's the last work day I have off. Now we're just moving into the regular old saturday and sunday that I usually have off....listen to me talk about that like it's not good enough. 

First world problems.

Anyway, it's been a pretty good week. 

Deep cleaning the house, a quick trip to California, getting the kids' school shopping done, and meeting their teachers, and basically cleansing all the wild and unregulated "summer break" out of the house, and trying to usher the routine and regularity of the school year back in.

Both my kids thrive on routines, but Jackson can function without a very hardcore routine without much disruption to his general disposition, where as Lainie cannot.

Needless to say, on that note I am quite ready for the school year to begin.

Now that the pencils are bought and the backpacks filled, I will spend the better part of the next two days preparing 10 meals for the freezer, pre-packing 10 lunches for the next week, picking out first day outfits, and feeling a steady back and forth between melancholy and excitement for the fact that my youngest, my last, baby is starting school. 

There will also therefor be wine and chocolate over dosing as well.

This is also the beginning of a brand new month.

August's goal was to start my book. 

If you promise not to tell anyone, I'll tell you that I have technically started it. 

In the last 8 months of this year, I have successfully written two whole chapters....and then hid them from myself so I wouldn't feel disgusted and throw them out when I re-read them.

This month though, it's time to stop fucking around.

I am going to tell my goddamn story, even if every single page isn't a masterpiece.

Even if none of the pages are a masterpiece...

Even if I accidentally tell the story of my sexual awakening in graphic detail, and then run into my high school art teacher in the grocery store, and have to hear her feedback on the part about my sexual awakening, and I can't find any way out of that conversation....

Even if I can't figure out how to end the book, and the story goes on and on and on, eventually strangulating on itself and dying a slow and embarrassing death in front of all five people who I might be able to convince to read my book....

Even if...

Even if....

Fuck, where's the wine?