How Life Proceeds (Blog #203)

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It’s two in the afternoon, and it seems like I just did this twelve hours ago–because I did. Currently my sister is on her way to pick up Christopher from school, she has Ander in tow, and I have the house to myself. God willing and the creek don’t rise, I’m going out tonight. I guess you could call it a date. It’s been so long, I’m really not sure what the rules and definitions are anymore. Regardless, I’m meeting a boy for drinks, and it sucks to ditch a cute face in favor of a laptop. Not that I don’t love y’all, but let’s see if we can wrap this up before Daddy hits the town, okay?

Also, I’d really like to take a nap. I don’t mind saying this no-oxygen, sort of sick thing is a real drag. I used to have a boss that said that–What a drag, what a serious drag. All things considered, it could be a lot worse. But yeah, a nap would be good. And I should probably hydrate. Well, shit. I just realized I didn’t hit the right button to start my laundry for tonight. No worries–if at first you don’t succeed…

Drink. (To be clear, I don’t endorse drinking to solve your problems. Or anyone else’s.)

Well, shit again. I just saw a mouse run across the kitchen and back again. This must be his time of day to do cardio. I hope he doesn’t expect me to join him, at least until my lungs can get acclimated to the altitude. He could be waiting a while. We all could be waiting a while.

This morning my sister and I took Ander to story time at the local library. Y’all, it was the cutest thing. There were all these tiny people running around, and one of the boys had round red-rubber glasses strapped and fastened around his little head. My friend Leah calls kids like him “false advertisement,” since they look cute but will throw up on you before the week is over and not think twice about it. Also, once you have one, you can’t take them back. Anyway, the lady in charge of story time was wonderful. Today she wore an orange apron for Halloween, so I kept forgetting she wasn’t a Home Depot employee. But still, she read to the kids, played games, and used props. Had it been me, I could have been totally frustrated that all the little tots weren’t paying attention, but she was so patient. Amazing.

When we got back from the library, my sister and I changed clothes with the intention of painting in her master bedroom. She and her husband have been remodeling it since they’ve moved in. Anyway, we couldn’t find any rollers, so she ended up cutting in while I did the hard work of taking off light switch plates and trying to entertain Ander, who insisted on being underfoot. This went on for less than an hour before Dee-Anne had to leave to pick up Christopher. She said a lot of days she feels like saying, “Fuck it–these pink walls aren’t that bad,” since it’s so difficult to get stuff done with kids running around and wanting attention.

Obviously, there’s a reason they invented Benadryl and the Disney channel.

Now the wash is almost done, and I just took a lap around the house in search of inspiration. Normally I write at the end of the day, plenty of things “have happened,” and there’s a well of information to draw from. But this is clearly different–the sun is still up. What happens while the sun is up? Really, all I can think about is that nap. Also, I leave in a few days, and I’m feeling as if I’m running out of time. There were several things I wanted to do, but they simply haven’t happened yet. So it’s possible I won’t watch a movie, go country dancing, or see the Catholic chapel with the dirt that performs miracles. Que sera, sera.

Last night I started reading a book about writing, and the author says that artists need a lot of down time, a lot of time to “do nothing.” Maybe this looks like going for a walk, but only if going for a walk is not a to-do list item. Like, it should be relaxing. (I’ve heard this before and have been really slow to come around to this notion.) The idea is that inspiration and creativity happen in the present moment, and most of us wouldn’t recognize the present moment if it hit us between the eyes because we’re so busy running around stressing and fretting.

If this last part sounds familiar, please raise your hand.

Obviously, that last picture was a setup. My sister said, “Christopher doesn’t stress or fret about anything.” This is where I really believe children are our teachers. They’re almost always focused on what’s in front of them and not imagining they’d be better off somewhere else. When they do get upset because they’d rather be watching TV instead of eating brussel sprouts, they pitch a fit, it’s over quickly, and they don’t bitch or blog about it the next day. Children don’t give a shit how long it takes to paint a bedroom, whether or not there’s a mouse in the house, or whether or not they’ve been on a date in the last year.

Life proceeds at its own pace.

Of course, children can’t drive or pick up their own socks, so it’s not like they’re perfect. Still, today I’m reminded to accept life as it comes. Sometimes this looks like go, go, go. Things get done left and right. Other times it’s as if your every routine and desire have lain down for a long winter’s nap. You wake up, and not matter how hard you push, what gets done gets done. Just as your head hits the pillow you think, Is this really my life? Well, obviously the answer is yes. What happens, happens. One day your child grows up and stops needing so much attention. Somehow the walls get painted. Even if they don’t, life proceeds at its own pace. Constantly, quietly it saunters along, refusing to be hurried.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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It takes forty years in the desert for seas to part.

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A Mixed Bag (Blog #174)

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Yesterday morning, after three days of yard work and finding a possum in my bed the night before, I called waste management in Fayetteville to schedule a pick-up for all the tree branches piled by the curb in Ray’s front yard. Stuff like this makes me nervous because I usually feel as if I’m an imposition. My side of the conversation always sounds like, “Uh–I’ve got these–tree branches–I’m sorry if having trees makes me a bad person–but these branches fell and are dead–and could you–maybe, possibly, if you’re not busy–come get them?” At least that’s how it feels on the inside. Anyway, the nice lady at the trash department said sure, they’d come get them in a couple days, so long as everything was by the curb and nothing was over twelve feet long or more than so many inches wide.

Check, check, check.

“Oh, and one more thing,” she said. “There can’t be anything ABOVE the pile for fourteen feet.”

I thought, Shit. There’s a tree AND a power line over the pile of branches–the REALLY BIG pile of branches that’s not going to move itself.

Did I say shit?

After all the yard work/hard work, the thought of moving that pile was more than I could handle, so I decided to run some errands and give it a minute. Since I had sinus surgery in February, I’d been meaning to drop off a cookie cake for the doctor and his office. I mean, they were amazing and my life is a hundred times better than it was before. Y’all, if you haven’t tried breathing, you should–it rocks. Anyway, I’d been trying to come up with a cute saying or something clever to put on the cookie cake. Like, I did this once before for my dermatologist’s office after the little warts that had been on my face for over a year FINALLY disappeared. That cake said, “I’m happy to report that I can’t find a wart.”

Cute, right?

Well, despite the fact that I’m a writer and an all-around creative guy, I couldn’t come up with squat for the sinus doctor. Uh, gee, it’s nice to breathe. Nobody knows noses like you do. (Strike one, strike two.) So this weekend I gave up and decided I didn’t have to be cute and that I should just go ahead and order the damn cake and have it say, “Thank you.” (Short and to the point.) So I picked up the phone, dialed the number, and–I’m not kidding–exactly as someone answered, the idea showed up.

I said, “Yes, I’d like a cake that says, ‘Thanks (exclamation point). You’re a breath of fresh air.’ And please don’t spell ‘you’re’ wrong.”

All that to say that after finding out those branches were piled in the wrong spot, I delivered the cake to my doctor’s office. Afterwards I was starving, so I stopped at Village Inn, ate breakfast, and drank a lot of coffee. Y’all, it’s amazing what pancakes and caffeine can do. I thought, Okay, that pile of branches isn’t so big. I can move that.

Fortunately, Jesse helped. We got it done in less than an hour. After we picked up the scraps and swept the sidewalk, it was like magic, as if the pile of branches had never been there in the first place.

Here’s the new pile, on the side of the house. Hopefully it will also disappear before the week is over. Also, if I never see a pile of branches like this again, it’ll be too soon.

Today I’ve been smelling my arm pits a lot. I decided to try again with better eating, so I went to Walmart earlier to buy groceries, and every now and then I’d sneak my nose over by my shoulder, lift my arm as if reaching for something on the top shelf, and sniff. As I’ve said before, they used to smell like–I don’t know–bleach or ammonia, anything but a turn-on. Well, I’ve been using a deodorant cream I read about online, so twice a day I’ve been smearing it under my arms and everywhere else that doesn’t see the sun. I don’t want to speak to soon, but I think the cream is working. It has boric acid in it, so as a bonus I don’t have any cockroaches on my–well–you know. That being said, the cream has its own distinct odor, so I keep trying to sort out all the aromas. Honestly, I feel like a child picking at a scab.

Leave it alone, Marcus.

The first time I blogged about my mom having cancer, I discovered a mouse in the house. Since then, we’ve all seen the mouse running around, putting his feet up on the divan, smoking cigars, and generally making himself at home. Mom says there’s more than one. We’ve had traps set out, but nothing has worked. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the whole thing, it’s been easier to give the little assholes a high-five than reset the traps or try something different. But tonight at Walmart I thought, I can do this, and bought new traps. Then when I got home–get this shit–one of the mice was actually stuck on a glue pad behind a chair in the living room.

And it was still alive.

Squeaking.

I’m just going to say it.

Dad pulled the mouse off the glue pad, the mouse bit Dad’s finger, and Dad put the mouse down the garbage disposal (and turned it on).

It was kind of awful.

I still have a mixed bag of feelings about it.

Dad’s finger should be fine.

Just a while ago my mom and I had a long talk about cancer and depression. She has both and says depression is worse. I don’t have either, but I believe her. All of it is tough to watch, but that’s life. Today our neighbor brought Mom a scarf to wear on her head, and Mom said she was planning to Google how to fashion it. Pulling the scarf out of the sack, I tied it around my head like a bandana. Mom said, “Or I guess I could just ask my gay son.” Then she laughed, which was wonderful to hear.

Some days, most days, are a mixed bag. We cry, we laugh, we quit, we start again. That’s life.

I don’t know why life works the way it does. You spend months with warts on your face, a smell in your arm pits, or a mouse in your house, and then one day it’s gone like a pile of branches that’s been picked up, cleaned up, and moved somewhere else. Or maybe you spend half a year trying to think of something to say on a cookie cake, and the moment you let go is the moment the thing shows up. I guess all of us deal with problems of all shapes and sizes. One minute we look at whatever it is and think, I can’t–it’s too much. Then we eat breakfast, maybe go for a walk, and we realize we can. Some days, most days, are a mixed bag. We cry, we laugh, we quit, we start again. That’s life. In the process, we find out we’re stronger than we thought we were, and perhaps this is at the heart of healing.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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Answers come built-in. There are no "just problems."

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