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 It's not often that the world is forced to be just as it is. 

Snow can't simply be ignored. 

It levels us and flips the consequences of gravity.

It makes fast things go slow and slow things fast.

 Running knee deep through a field of frozen water carries a strange freedom- 

like a million gates left open.

I exist so well in the extremes.

Under the vastness of the desert my head is mercifully silent.

In the snow my body is set free.

It is as if there is no memory of anything that came before.

Even BC forgets. 

We left Beach to slide in peace and we took a hike over the backside of the mountain.  Forgetting who I am, and where I came from, he tried playfully shoving me backwards into the snow. Only he hadn't remembered to temper the power in his touch.  He hit me hard, hard enough I was too stunned to try and catch myself and I rolled twice before stopping. 

Neither of us knew quite what to do. Until I started laughing- and rubbing the spot high on my chest where he had hit me.  He apologized a half dozen times before I convinced him I was really okay.  Okay-er than I had been in long time.  

Tougher than I had planned on being ever again. 

Happier than I wanted to admit.    

 But the snow tends to do that to me.

the stars of Christmas

The stars of Christmas didn't come from our house. 

They didn't come from our shopping cart or our little budget.  Many of the simple joys & kindnesses that lit our season came from somewhere much bigger than meeting obligations. They came from deep within the true spirit of a Holiday I don't always see eye to eye with... but this part of it, like knowing the full story behind a surprise Yeti- this I can wrap my whole heart around. And so can she! <3   

"Oh... I believe there are angels among us

Sent down to us from somewhere up above

They come to you and me in our darkest hours

To show us how to live, to teach us how to give

To guide us with the light of love

To guide us with the light of love"

~Angels Among Us, Alabama~ 

~merry christmas my friends~

the salt lake sea

Through the whitecaps of thoughts tossed in the roughness of fever and capsized bed sheets an idea bobs like a beacon. I can call him home. And in that split second I believe that is true. So true I can smell him. Then reality hits me, no, no I cannot.
I think: I can call my mom, no I can't, that is too much to ask of her...too much driving, and I don't even know if I work or not....
I can call his mom, no, no that is too much to deal with...and again too much driving, too hard of directions to give...

And I return to what I was telling myself as I feel asleep last night: I can do this. I can't possibly feel as bad as I think I do...

I start running down the list of possible help and alternative plans, discounting them by either too much to ask of some else or I can't do that to Beach. 

I can call him home. 

No I can't. 

I know exactly what his day looks like. I know the details. And I know the way those details make his face look, the way he stands, one pant leg of his thick camel colored trousers falling over his boot, the other accidentally tucked in. I know the way he holds an overdue cup of gas station coffee and rubs his jaw, now thick overgrown with hair... I know that right now there is an early morning mad dash commute that started at 5 am into Grand Junction Colorado to get more forms in a frantic attempt to pour the last pour today to stay on schedule... I know the trailer he is sleeping in doesn't have a working heater.

I also know I am not alone here treading water in this sea of sickness. All over the valley there are sick moms 'playing through'. It is as if the ancient sea never reseeded. 

I show up at pick-up and the young single coaches ask what I'm doing at gym. The short answer is I'm a mom. This is what we do by definition. The longer answer is I'm a mom who lives the wrong direction from all the other moms, on the wrong side of town, in an un-pretty little house, without a teenage driver at home to help. And for now I am situationaly-single, and all the other wives in my flock are sick too.

The phone rings around 7:30 am. The voice is familiar but at first I can't place it until he announces himself "Misty, it's Andrew....can you help us with Sophie..." A husband reaching out into the extra wife pool for help for his own drowning family.  And just like that I am handed a life-preserver. I'm getting the help I need to make it through my day cleverly disguised as helping someone else. 

This I can do. 

The day's list is as follows: with Quin's help (as dispatched by BC) jump BC's old Chester the Molester van, meet some creep wanting to possibly want to buy it, straighten out the construction checks with the bank, rescue Soph-Soph from school, feed and supply ninjas, don't lose a 15 yr old on his possible last day in town under my supervision, drive gym taxi, work (?), stall 1.5 hrs then drive back across town as the birthday party taxi, feed 15 yr, & last but not least drink wine because the beer is all gone.

Before 8 am the phone rings again. It is BC's mother, knowing how sick I was yesterday, calling to check on me... No, but thank you I'm feeling better... which when I think of how the ripples of kindness and support radiate it doesn't feel like such a lie. 

Today really is all or nothing. 

Pro Se

BC's next return date to Utah [sic] has been pushed out to at least the end of the weekend and now hoovers suspended in fog of We Will See Land. I say his return to Utah because on Monday he called and kept saying "when I get back to Utah" I had to remind him the western states were not like the eastern ones; when you are in Utah you are generally in it for a very long time. Needless to say he was overly tired and possibly over whiskey-ed as well. 

I talked to his mom, assured her he would be here for Christmas because no one else will be willing to work. That was the only reason he came home for Thanksgiving. 

Overall things are going well even without him. The 3 parents legally tied to the 15 yr old all agreed that he is doing the best he has ever done for the longest sustained period of time. And yet they managed to say that he and I together is in fact working without giving me any of the credit for it; you are welcome. 

I however am giving credit to me and to the boy. We are doing better than okay. Family life is fun and wild, as it should be. The house is mostly clean, the animals cared for, dinners are late but they are good, and the school isn't calling me. 

I've gotten him hooked on This American Life and he keeps busy fixing the things I keep breaking- like the van door.

We did have a break-in. It was my mother-in-law dropping off a case of cake mixes. In the name of security all I'm going to say is she went to great lengths to get in the house. (she scares me)

Yes, overall the daily is going fine.

It is the nights that are long. They lack definition or perhaps boundaries. On my own I find I don't have the sense to go to bed when I should and I can't stay asleep even when I do. 

BC calls me with the construction reports, when I close my eyes I can see the walls rising. When this is all over, months from now, spring I am guessing, I want us to drive out beyond the sand dunes, down the long dirt roads of the west desert to slopes of Desert Mountain so I can catch up on all the dreaming I am missing.

  

strings of lights

For 12 years, every step of the way I have fought & resisted all the logical arguments, laws, and facts that would define us as US. 

And in the end I have found without you I am simply not me. 

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. 

I will meet you there. 

~Rumi

BC, Thank you for holding all our faith and for talking the tree lot guys into opening at 8:30 am for her so the 2 of you could together find her perfect little tree among all the-too-big-of-ones in a real tree lot.  

Close your eyes.  Fall in love.  Stay there. 

~Rumi  

life in the land of oz

I suggested the kids go for a walk. Perhaps do some trespassing. Even offered a few good place they might enjoy. Being a practical mother I cautioned them about not getting picked up by the police, to cross streets carefully, and to not step on rusty nails. 

Once they were gone I laid down on my yoga mat and listened to the silence. The day was not going exactly as planned. 

I pause before offering this next detail because even I know there are somethings a grown-up shouldn't admit to...yeah, that would be a bad idea but I like bad ideas, here is the whole story...

I had 2 events this weekend that required funding: the gym meet on Saturday, check. And the gingerbread house party on Sunday, shit, forgot about that one and it was scheduled for my place. 

So early-ish Sunday morning, the day of the party I had headed to the store, well kind of I did. After little red sputtered to a shaky start in the driveway I decided let's try that again because going to the store is one thing, being able to come home is another. 

I pulled the key out of the ignition, noted I had started it with the gym key, doesn't matter, oh little red. I tired it again this time with the real key and nothing. 

No big deal. Since BC bought a truck it's sort of like a car lot around here. I simply climbed into the next car over which was the big red van. The van always starts but it also tends to never have a full tank. And as my luck would have it BC left it on empty. 

Despite my own mental objections to driving on empty I drove big red and the glowing low fuel light to the dollar store where I purchased 15 dollars worth of candy. This is where that not great for sharing detail shows up: that was my last 15 bucks.  

See one of BC's boys is/was due to deliver me some funds at some point yesterday. That math is pretty simple- he hasn't come. He will, he just hasn't yet.

It gets better. Me, the low fuel light, and a bag of candy came home just in time to discover that due to illness the party had to be canceled- dang. Knowing I just spend our last cash on candy (wow) I offered it to the kids. I mean what the hell anyway? 

Then strongly encouraged them to go find something fun to do, yes such as trespassing, or better we call it urban exploring. 

So that is why I was lying on my yoga mat listening, then laughing- (well, and the fact that I had turned my ankle kickboxing and standing had stopped being fun hours ago). And that was were I was when I looked up and saw that spider overhead on the ceiling. 

No BC, no kids, no way in hell I could leave it to live in my house or be the person who gets close enough to kill it.... I wondered if I got Beach's bird and taped it to a long stick and aim it's beak at the spider if it would eat it for me. I figured it might work but that I would most likely lose a finger during the taping phase of the plan- still I considered it for a long time.

I spent half an hour not being able to do anything but watch the spider before I finally sucked it up and killed it using a fly swatter. Which I then refused to pick up because it had touched the spider. 

The dead spider lay under it until the kids returned. Beach used a tissue and cleared the crime scene. It was a good hour before I allowed Beach who had touched the spider to touch me.  

By the end of the day, after having a discussion with my son about the dangers of siphoning gas from one car to another (him lecturing me not to do it) Beach and Sophie, who by that point had joined us, were eating a dinner of potato wedges and shooting orange jello, over, under, and through, the largest display of dollar store candy wrappers and cheap frosting while I argued to Jeff, Sophie's papa, that essentially potato wedges are the same as baked potatoes and baked potatoes are a meal....

He had come in the house laughing having already past little red in the driveway, hood up, battery charger connected. Luckily for me he was still laughing at my disaster when he left. "I'm around tomorrow, call me if you need me..." or did he say "when"?

Overall I think things are going pretty well.