Ya’ll, if you’ve  never had a little dog lying along side ‘a ya on the couch, breathing into yer armpit with her funny little puppy sighs…. I highly recommend!  She is… just good for my soul…

Life is pretty good right now, there’s the promise of spring coming… you know, but with that comes THE MUD… we gotta get through the Muddy Season to get to the good stuff… It’s really bad when you have a pasture and horses and dogs… and husbands with giant clunking workboots… and you’ve never really had a Shoe Law in yer house before, so it ain’t no use startin’ it now… sigh…

I met Mary at a dark, smokey, dirty ol’ bowling alley lounge to give her a Big Bag O’ Birthday Joy And Sparkly Stuff, onaccounta the only other place in town was a Subway, and they roll up their sidewalks and their coffee pot at 8 pm! So we were the only coffee drinkers in that place, because they had to make a fresh pot, and I gotta, say, that was the best cuppa coffee I’ve had in a long time… I just kinda kicked back and looked around.. at everyone drinkin’ and carousin’ on a Thursday night… it looked like they were having fun… and I thought to myself, well, lookie there, so are YOU, girl!  I was sitting there with my Certifiable Mary, and we were going through the bag and hooting and laughing and the world’s tiniest little birthday cake (I stopped to find her a cupcake at the grocery store, but they had teeny tiny little rectangle cakes that almost made me HOWL with birthday joy!!! Teeny! Tiny! With cake inside!!!!)  So I’m just sayin, if I needed to find out that I could walk into a place like that, with all the craziness and the beer flowin’ and NOT be triggered…. well… I guess I can check that one off the list. This time last year I was detoxing and OTHER ASSORTED HORRORS TOO PAINFUL to revisit…

This year, I am looking forward… FORWARD, to new adventures… sigh… I can sigh, but it’s not a depressed kinda sigh, it’s more of a … well… I’m taking inventory, you tend to do that when the big markers roll around… and February is a huge one for me. Fuggin’ February is behind me now, and ol’ Muddy March is moving right along… What shall I call April this year? Astounding? Amazing? Auspicious? Adventurous April! That’s it! Look now further!

I’m embrarrassed to write what I’m really thinking… because it will seem to me like I’m bragging, or something along those lines… I don’t mean it that way,  but I just feel like I should document… changes… and growth… and stuff… Just skip this, this is for me, completely self-serving: I feel like a positive influence now. There. I said it. Instead of an instrument of the devil, har, HARRRRR, no, seriously, I think the devil was working thru me… Just fer instance, Mary is going through a divorce right now, and it aiin’t pretty, it’s one of those ones where the dad is poisoning the kids against the mom and the mom cares too much about the kids’ DELICATE PSYCHES to RETURN FIRE, you know, one of those one-sided UGLINESS campaigns… and what does she do, she latches onto me at this particular time… And I could’ve been a really destructive friend to her, I could’ve been all about the partyin’ and the bonding over the booze and the wild times… because that was me, I was always the one who thought to bring booze into any and every situation… And that would’ve been such great amunition for Mary’s husband to use against her, you see?! You see?!  Instead, her son is going to go back to Dear Old Dad and have to report that we were sittin’ in a bar, snortin’ coffee and laughing  and taking ThelmaNLouise pictures and singing to a teeny tiny birthday cake!  Let that ol’ devil make somethin’ outta THAT!

It’s like that pebble inna pond, and I’m to the part where we get to watch the ripples reach farther and farther… It’s not just Mary…  it’s Ang too, my daughter’s friend… she’s been texting me for a couple months… and it’s like… I’m able to mother her a little and at the same time… she’s “daughtering” me… it’s hard to explain, but it’s just a good feeling, that she’s chosen me to talk to… because it’s right at the time when my own daughters aren’t able to see much value in what I have to say, it’s okay, it’s natural that they separate right now… but it’s painful… har… but here’s Ang, keeping in touch and just keeping some kind of fire lit inside me, that lets me know…  I’m still needed, someone still thinks I’m sorta… cool… Yesterday she texted me that she was going with her boyfriend to the museum of natural history, and I told her to keep her eyes and ears open, because there are great metaphors and messages echoing in there, especially in the Great Hall O’ Collossal Jurassic Sea Creatures  (I get really philosophical in there, I think it’s got something to do with primal fear, and friggin’ 9 inch TEETH) , but you know, I texted something like THAT to her, and not only did she not laugh at me,  but I really think she’s going to remember me saying that to her, and she’s going to get something more out of the museum today because of it. I really think that. Ripple…

Here’s where I remind myself, don’t over-do. Dont’ smother poor Ang with all your residual mothering urges… That’s why we have Poppy, remember?

har

Meanwhile, Franki proceeds, with the inevitable… She’s been growing like some kind of wild thing lately, an inch last month. Sometimes I catch her out of the corner of my eye and I don’t know who it is, she’s almost as tall as me now, and she’s got long brown hair, and I have one of those weird moments where I don’t know if I’m me, or I’m looking at me, didja ever do that, I’ve done that in my car, I have a silver minivan, like BILLIONS of other peoples, and sometimes I’ll see another minivan exactly like mine, and I’ll think for a minute, HEY, that’s MY car, but then I think, no wait, I’m DRIVING my car… and I have to work backwards in my brain to realize that I am ME and I am in MY car…  does that happen to you? Is it just me? I dont’ know. I worry sometimes…

So Franki’s been asking to wear makeup.. and she’s been fixing her hair… and putting together “outfits”… She’s so funny though, she’s laughing and she gets this wry little worried expression on her face, and she says, “MOM! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO MEEEEEEEE???!!!” So we laugh about it and we talk about it and I have to tell her 5billion times that it’s okay and it’s natural, and she says, but I didn’t used to be GIRLY at alllllllll!!!! Why am I getting to be so GIRLYYYYYY!!!!!! We’re having a lot of fun with it, I painted her nails purple last night, she was going to a Social at the school… She had a checklist made, of what she was going to wear, and what earrings, what color eye-shadow… seriously, ON PAPER, a checklist! She was asking me what I thought about a side-ponytail, and I was all… well, I was imagining something like what Deb wears in Napoleon Dynamite:

so I was all… hmmmm… I’m not sure hon…. so she goes back in the bathroom and pulls her hair down and to the side of the nape of her neck, she had a sweet, sorta “spanish flamenco” thing going… it looked so pretty!!! And I didn’t get a picture,. dangit, onaccounta Charlotte’s mom came to pick them up and it got noisy and confusing… But I’m sure we’re gonna see more of the side ponytail around here, so I’ll get another chance for a picture, onaccounta she got billions and billions of compliments on it at the dance…

okay, so today is baseball tryouts for the boy, and after that, the weekend is MINE!! All mine!!!! I gotta make it a good one…

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