It’s 2011.  It’s July.  I’ve been away a while.  A little over a year ago I got a job.  An actual working-for-a-company-that-pays job.  Kind of.  I work remotely from home for a max 20 hours per week.  As you can imagine it has been very taxing on my delicate person.  I no longer have time to clean my house 12 hours a day.  Now I have to work a few hours, and mop, vacuum, and straighten the pillows on my couch with the other eight.  I also have to regularly communicate with strangers via email and Skype.  I’m not sure who I am anymore.

In the last year I also bleached my hair blond orange and then dyed it back brown four separate times.  I then cut most of it off, and what I didn’t cut just kind of snapped off.  I joined Facebook and friended 150 people.  I resigned from the Mormon church.  I read Pulitzer prize winning novels, with word upon word that I hardly understood.  I got tattooed, twice.  I rearranged all the furniture in the house.  I planted a garden.  And I did all these things to help me feel worth something.  To prove to myself there is value in myself.  To try and find the small nubby growths that should be my wings.

It’s hard to write that I feel sad, lonely, scared, and little.  It’s hard to write that I struggle, or have been struggling for the past…while.  It’s hard for me to say I’m human, of the most basic kind.

Maybe that’s why for so long I haven’t said anything at all.

*************

It’s December now.  Last day of the year.  And man when I read what I wrote in July, I realize I wasn’t feeling all that well.  Not well at all.  I’m feeling better now.  Much better.  I’ve had to let go of a bunch of stuff that was sharp and poking at me.  Poking little holes in me constantly.  Now I only get poked now and then. (The bad kind of poking that is, wink)

Here is to all of you feeling better in 2012!  Happy new year.

Leo: Just call me Mr. Feekishly Random!

Badger: Feekish?

Leo: Yeah, feekish is the new freakish.

The phone rings and Leo answers.  It’s for Sunny.  A woman from the local church youth program is calling to invite Sunny to a weekend activity.  I know this because I saw the caller ID.  I would probably have not answered.  I don’t like talking to people on the phone very much.

I hear Leo say, “Hello?..  Yes, yes you can.  In fact, she is right here.”  He waves the phone in Sunny’s general direction, says it’s for her and repeats the name he read off the caller ID.

Sunny is busy playing some hand held electronic thingy.  She answers him impatiently, “Hold on!”

Leo puts the phone back to his ear and taking on an extremely rigid robotic tone says, “Hold.  On.  Dee dee do wah do dee dee do dee do….”  He is making hold music with his mouth.  Into the phone.  With the church lady on the other end.

Sunny grabs the phone and begins speaking as the rest of the room dies laughing.  Leo is surprised that we find him funny.  “What?”, he says, “I always like to hear music while I’m waiting.”

“I’m OK, it’s just pain!” -Leo, age 10

“Mom, do we have a plan to survive a nuclear fallout?”

“That’s not going to happen Leo.”

“How do you know?’

“Because… well, I guess I don’t know for sure but it’s really, really unlikely.  And it’s not something you should spend time worrying about.  We will all be fine.”

“There is a meteor that is going to hit the Earth in 2024.”

–Leo, age 10

Last April we took an awesome trip to go scuba diving in Hawaii.  So much has happened in the year since that trip.  The pendulum of life swung me from side to side, stopping only briefly in the middle to let me catch my breath before starting to swing once more.  But if I close my eyes and take slow deep breaths I am sitting warm on the beach with the wind in my hair and crash of waves in my ears, keeping time with my slow steady pulse.

this was our favorite beach on Maui

these were our beach drinks

and this was the turtle who came to say hi

PYFK6B8RTHDT

It really is the greatest snow on Earth.

This is a great Recession drinking game.  Play this game to get hammered and forget about the fact that you are broke and then, when you throw up on it, the good news is it’s hand washable.  Or if it’s ruined, you only spent $5.

“Oh.  My.  God.  Mom, my milk is breaking the laws of physics!  It’s fizzing!”

“Let me see this fizzy milk…”

“Oh, I killed it.  With my FIST!”

–Badger, age 7

My new depression treatment:  mini donuts and bbq potato chips.

I dare you to try it and not smile.

I DARE YOU.