Work In Progress

Imagine you have been an at amusement park all day, wandering the park, going on rides, eating and the park is closing and you are heading home.  Half way home you suddenly get this weird feeling and reach for your wallet.  It's not in your pocket, or your purse.  You pull over and it's not in the car.  You rack your brain to remember the last time you had it in your hand.  You remember setting it on the toilet paper dispenser in the bathroom. OMG, maybe you left it there.     Ok so that, that right there, that stomach flip feeling of dread, terror, guilt, self-deprecation, fear, your mind racing to how you will possibly replace all your ID, cancel your credit cards, THAT is the feeling I have been living with every morning when I wake up. It's a new experience.  The other two times I have been off work, trying to unspool my doom spirals, I was always able to get up in the morning.  It's possible, I got up those times because I had something to do.  I had kids that need

I have been browsing my writing. Just a few samples here and there. Noting the gaps--like the big one where I posted on the eve of 2020 not knowing a global pandemic would shut down the world and then didn't post again until just last week. Feels like that would have been a good time to write. During a pandemic.  Write about survival mode, collecting oldest and his gf from their rental to camp out in our basement bedroom for five months, the middle home as college was closed and R and I getting a week to figure out how to be online college instructors. There were days of washing groceries, yelling at my mom and step-dad to get their asses home from Florida before the boarder closed and scouring the internet for toilet paper and masks. It was exhausting and scary and bitterness flowed unhampered at every #qualitytimewiththekiddos" posting of crafts and puzzles and tiktok dances from those who found themselves at home, not working.  It was all hands on deck at our place wi