[just-4-thought]

Most of the space in my home has been claimed by its denizens

Of that which is mine alone, I have

-two and a half dresser drawers

-a half a bar in the closet

-& one bathroom cubby.

So intertwined, we are.

My son taking the first of his steps

While my daughter scores her first goal

Punctuates the chaos

I could sweep and mop and sweep more but they are deftly skilled at creating mess

And I don't have time to write anymore, so on this summer morning--while everyone sleeps--I wanted to sit here amongst the chorus of birds and recount the beauty of their smiles, the way my son leans his head in for kisses or babbles softly when he is feeling snuggly. And even though he wants to explore this great new world, how his favorite spot is still the carrier pressed against my tummy and heart, like before he was born. My back has been curved in ways that may never be undone--showing him the world while I whisper, "I love you" and he whispers back.

Or how My daughter squeals with delight when she sees her new friends. So ready to find herself in the music and waterslides and now she wants to try baseball and dance. And there is a soft pink tent over her dinosaur bed where we snuggle her to sleep each night.

She moved her hair ties into my bathroom drawer, leaving me two and a half dresser drawers and a half a bar in the closet.

But as she snuggles up in my lap and asks me to brush her hair--so excited for the next adventure, big or small--

I don't need the space.

[just-4-thought]

There it is—

The single isolated moment of peace

mixed into the loud and messy chaos.

Pink waves whisper on the horizon,

and the birds still chatter—

They might be busier than I.

Somehow, the same poem keeps writing itself (at least once a year) when I have a single moment to breathe,

and it goes like this:

My entire life, it has felt like someone was missing

until recently.

Now, everyone is here, and my life is complete.

The love -- deeper than i could have dreamed,

their laughter--more beautiful than any breeze or melody.

I long for nothing but more time to live in these moments,

A little less pain,

A lot more sleep,

And just a bit of space for me.

[just-4-thought]

So, I do not think I have mentioned on here that I started attending church again after an old country church flew a giant pride flag one summer.

[just-4-thought]

I walked into the church—and the sea of blue hair—expecting to leave disappointed. I waited for a long time for the shoe to drop. I am not sure I have stopped waiting if I am being honest.

[just-4-thought]

They face a lot of harassment and anger for that flag, for marching in pride, for attending events to support immigrants and oppose kings.

There are less than 20 regular attendees, and this church is dying in a literal sense. We've been exposed to more death and funerals and grief than we have right to claim being newer members. I can tell it is not over with some of the congregation being 40 even 50 years my senior.

[just-4-thought]

So, I do not think I have mentioned on here that I started attending church again after an old country church flew a giant pride flag one summer.

[just-4-thought]

I walked into the church—and the sea of blue hair—expecting to leave disappointed. I waited for a long time for the shoe to drop. I am not sure I have stopped waiting if I am being honest.

[just-4-thought]

So, I do not think I have mentioned on here that I started attending church again after an old country church flew a giant pride flag one summer.

[just-4-thought]

Can you believe I have now had 3 surgeries as a result of having 2 kids?? I keep joking that 1) i now have more scars on my abdomen than a fantasy novel protagonist. 2) children demand their blood sacrifices

[just-4-thought]

I've been learning a lot about parenting as my daughter nears her 3rd birthday and struggles with some big changes in her life. The philosophy of parenting by giving your children tools for understanding their emotions and problem solving appeals to me more than parenting through punishment or control.

Punishment feels like an escalation and I've personally never responded well to it. The few times I've tried "time out" just made the situation worse and... no one told me this when I signed up to be a mom but apparently my daughter hasn't even begun to develop impulse control?! (internal screaming). So there is no point in parenting like she's going to miraculously not squeeze toothpaste in her mouth if I put the toothpaste in front of her and tell her I'm going to punish her if she squeezes toothpaste in her mouth.

I was well into adulthood before I realized I didn't have great strategies for conflict resolution. Part of that is parenting through punishment and control provides one of the worst models for conflict resolution. I have great hopes for a loving and kind and gentle house, but my daughter screaming at her baby brother every time he tries to sleep, or inconsolably scream-crying for hours, or finding previously unheard of ways to put herself into danger coupled with her wicked smart resistance to all the clever parenting tricks has made life pretty wild right now. I'm sure the local librarians are fully aware of my situation as my son's stroller basket overflows with another round of parenting books while I try to convince my daughter not to [insert dangerous activity of the week]. Many of these books are just written by people who have no real reason to be writing a parenting book (hypnotist and public speakers??)...yeah no. One has been beneficial, coupled with the very thin but punchy strategies from the academy of pediatrics.

Slowly, things are improving for my daughter, and thus, for everyone who has to share a roof with her high-pitched and stubbornly lengthy screaming sessions. We are slowly learning to problem solve together and she is using words like "I am angry/worried/scared" instead of kicking and screaming. Some of the hacks (like turn everything into a game or make it fun) she sees right through.

Me: "First one in their jammies wins"

Not Having It Toddler: "You are going to win because I am not playing"

Me: "You are in charge of getting your stuffed animals to bed. They need your help snuggling with them"

Not Having It Toddler: "They aren't going to bed because it isn't their bedtime yet."

*Big, BIG, exhausted sleep deprived sigh*

Little body, big (developmentally appropriate) attitude and pour on mountains and mountains of unconditional love ...we are getting there, team.

[just-4-thought]

August is for the bugs

And unseasoned vegetables—too fresh to hide the flavor.

The molting birds quiet their gossip

And milk, and rag, and all such weeds

leave dust on the butterfly's wings.

Too tall, too tangled

An unruly thing,

August is a toddler climbing out of her crib—

Clinging to the old

Ready for something new.

[just-4-thought]

I saw someone ask for advice on using a dating app in their 30s when they didn't have much dating experience. I felt oddly compelled to talk to the anon who literally should do anything but take advice from an internet stranger but whatever here's my

Advice from an internet stranger on using a dating app in your 30s when you dont have much dating experience:

1. Meet up before you get too emotionally attached. Over text, you fill in a lot of the gaps incorrectly. If you've never met them in person, you may be missing out on important pieces of who they are (tone, body language, etc.). Meet somewhere very public and keep safety a priority.

2. You will meet people you are comically incompatible with - just laugh it off (sometimes even together). It is a great big world and is expected. Don't hide the parts of yourself that you aren't willing to compromise on for too long, better to know early that it isnt a fit and move on.

3. Along the same line, you will meet people who you are just regular old incompatible with and sometimes those people will recognize it before you do. Often this is because they are hiding parts of themselves from you and you are filling in those gaps with your imagined ideal partner. Just trust the choice they made and that your idealized version of them likely doesn't exist and move on. It's not a reflection of you.

4. People who are smooth and charming and seem extra good at first dates may be just that -- smooth and charming and good at first dates.

5. Which brings me to my next point, know yourself and what you want. If you find yourself compromising a lot with a person, stop and ask yourself if your sacrificing too much.

6. As soon as you meet them, try to move important or deep conversations to in person or over the phone instead of text. You will likely have to state your preference for in-person communication. This may end up being weird for them, too, because relationships are so text heavy these days, but it will likely reduce doubts and misunderstandings and build deeper connections longterm.

7. Communication is important... obviously but still almost everyone needs reminded

8. Lastly, I say this as a person who is married to someone who was once an ex of mine. Relationships can sometimes be complicated and challenging and sometimes you have to be a little patient with each other, but relationships should always be gentle and respectful. You can certainly both play a little healthy hard-to-get and engage in back and forth banter, but if it is miserable, you feel pressured to do things you don't want to do, or the games don't feel like games... it ain't it.

9. Oh and one more thing... don't listen to advice from an internet stranger. Unless of course it's useful

[just-4-thought]

In the quiet and soft morning

when the sky stretches amber

and the gentlest blue,

I forget the chaos of yesterday,

I forget the reopening of still open wounds.

I listen to my thoughts

but

find only the robin calling from his perch.

I've got things to do, of course--

branches criss crossed

I'll hop on to.

Maybe I'll step firmly

--or lightly--

into these shoes

and try somewhere

completely new.

[just-4-thought]

I couldn't begin to count the little yellow flowers popping out of the ground

Dandelions, daffodils, a daredevil defiance

our first defenders against the last waves of frost

And who needs that bright sunshine yellow

Amidst all of winter's leftover mucus?

Who needs it

but

each

of us

My son will always burst through the skin

through the heart

with that bright and happy yellow.

I will stand with you against the last waves of frost

in daredevil defiance

your first defender

your cavalry

[just-4-thought]

11am Yesterday, my husband passed a test and got a certificate he needed for work. Riding that high, we planned to celebrate.

12pm: "It's been real, guys," one of his coworkers posted in the work chat. A few moments later he left the chat. My husband went to track him down, but his account had been terminated.

"He was just let go" someone else in the chat clarified.

Confusion settled over the group. "What, why?"

1pm: My husband's friend called him, "they are having me terminate accounts today. I am told I will terminate 10% of the company. They are giving me one name at a time. So, I dont know who is on the list."

"Thanks for the heads up," my husband said and went to report the news to me.

"Shit...L just sent me a message 'can you talk?'"He said and pulled out his phone referencing a coworker with whom we have a friendship. "I hope she wasn't let go."

I sat anxiously awaiting what L could possibly be saying....knowing it wasn't good news.

We knew the company hadn't been doing well. "Not to get political," his boss had said a couple months ago, "but [redacted] and [redacted] are pretty spooked by the current administration's behavior. The tariffs especially. They are pulling out of contracts." Both companies are large, top 5 companies in their industry 1 an automobile manufacturer and the other a petroleum distributor. An exec stepped down, several managers and an owner were demoted. All of their services were discounted, but continued complaints about companies pulling out of contracts, refusing to commit to projects they had begun ... There were signs.

My husband got off the phone with L. "There's a meeting with HR at 4pm titled '[Company Name] Confidential'" my husband shared. "Most of my team was invited, but I was not."

1:30pm. He's in a client meeting until 2. If this HR meeting was where they announced the layoffs to the rest of the company, his exclusion was a bad sign...there really wasn't a good way to spin him being left off the meeting invite.

2pm comes. I go to ask him if he has any new meeting invites from his boss. None.

2:30.... more "goodbyes" in the chats followed by more deactivated accounts. My husband notices 2 members of his team, both very knowledgeable, high performers, with 20 years of tenure each are no longer active. He goes to check.

They are ghosts now.

3pm. "They wouldn't lay me off after that sale I made last week. It covers my whole salary in 4 months. I passed the exam. And who would lay off someone who is going to have a newborn in 2 weeks" he tries to justify his denial.

"With this stress, I may go into labor now." I sort of joke, but it isn't really a joke. I begin researching how to get on a new healthcare as quickly as possible to avoid getting hit with 40k of hospital bills should he get laid off with no severance.

3:30pm... another "see you in the next life" from a terminated account. "He was a really good one." My husband said confused. "They arent taking the bottom performers" i know they don't have much time to inform my husband if he is going to be told before this confidential meeting. But there are still no meeting invites.

3:45pm. He sends a message to his boss "give it to me straight. Do I still have a job"

"No easy way to say it." His boss starts. "It's been a shit day, but you are in the clear."

I cried, relieved.

4pm: The meeting my husband wasn't invited to was with "the future of [company]" according to the ceo. They expected to lay off 2 extra people who made it through the day. No one knows who those 2 are.

Today 12:30pm: my husband's boss tells him in a roundabout way that he is not safe. The company is struggling with sales/cash flow and the layoffs were a bandaid to get them through June.

Boss tries to explain his decision for the people on my husband's team that were let go "set in their ways." "Not likely to learn new skills to help out as needed." But they were not given any warning or opportunity to address these concerns after 2 decades with the company. Maybe my husband didn't get let go because he passed the exam, secured the sale, and has a newborn on the way.... but what about next time? How does he even know what he needs to be doing?

I guess it doesn't matter, does it. Many of my husband's connections across the industry are getting laid off for the same reason... we just got to hope that [company] can ride out this storm and bring him with them.

[just-4-thought]

I'm working on mantras this week. Trying to reframe the fear that has been clawing it's way up my ankles and now feels like a choke collar gripping at my face. I have 2 weeks left before times up and I keep having intrusive thoughts "this could be the last time that I ever...."

Mantras I've used in the past dont seem strong enough for what im facing. I need something different for this one. I need something...anything... to reclaim the power. Something to take fear and turn it into fight. Where my hands threaten to freeze, I need them to become fists...not just fists but fists with all the strength i can muster behind their punch.

So many things are running through my head and some of them are almost funny in how stupid they are but, hey, I'm going to use what I can to take back the power.

As I set out to create some sort of peptalk to reframe my thoughts, one of the first quotes that kept coming to me was the one from Independence Day

"I will not go quietly into the night. I will not vanish without a fight. I'm going to live on. I'm going to survive"

One of the biggest sources of inspiration is Vi from Arcane. She feels deeply but throws a big punch. How would she handle this situation? It's not that she wouldn't be afraid, it's that she'd use the fear...it make her angry. I think her mantra would be simple "bring it the fuck on" "let's fucking go" but the music that played would be epic, of course.

Then there is something that feels more me:

"Is this what you think is going to break me? Do you know who I am, what I've been through to get here?"

There is a doubt in my mind that any of it can really do much to combat bad blood and a weak heart, but I'm starting to believe that maybe it can give me a little more oomph.

All together it becomes quite a mouthful but it personal to me and it is helping

"Do you think this is going to break me? Do you know who I am, what I've been through to get here? I will not go quietly into the night. I will not vanish without a fight. I'm going to live on. I'm going to be the one to raise my children. Whatever you've got, bring it the fuck on. Because I am ready and I've got strength in me that even I didn't know... Let's fucking go" *queue the arcane soundtrack*

[just-4-thought]

If I could go back in time and fix something in my past,

I wouldn't.

My husband and I could fall in love in a million different ways

All we'd have to do is find each other.

But my daughter,

It would be like trying to pick up the same grain of sand on a beach several years later.

So many millions of improbable moments had to align for her to ever exist.

I could find my husband again,

I believe his warmth and light have always been a beacon.

I could change a few moments to build us a better life.

But even the smallest change and I'd risk writing my daughter out of our lives,

And there is nothing worth more than her.

She's about to have a little brother.

Which means I am yet again about to discover great caverns in my heart, deep deep wells of love that I never even knew existed. Never even knew i was capable of.

How can there be any regrets in a universe where I get to be with them?

[just-4-thought]

I went in for my first c-section late September. It was a bight 85 degree day--the last of the year. You see, dying is a cold endeavor. Death itself is mostly neutral if slightly warm, but dying freezes you all the way to the bones. I was used to being so hot that each step was a battle. I could barely sleep or walk through the sweat. The abrupt chill that took its place happened the moment she was born.

In the days that followed, the leaves turned beautiful colors--or so I'm told. I could tell they were falling for the strobing of sunlight through the trees in my window. I passed into consciousness here and there like some kind of drug induced disco. And I grew weaker, never sure if I would wake each time I happened to fall asleep.

I could write about the transfusion they told me I needed, but I barely remember. I could pretend my daughter's first day wasn't built on watching my slip from consciousness as the doctors rushed in. I could share that a month later the heavy bleeding told me what I already knew--I wasn't healing. But nothing I could write would explain how close I felt to death.

No one likes pain, but I can withstand it if I must. I don't know how to fight shadows that threaten to suffocate--that bitter cold blanket still filled with sweat. I don't know how to hold such a delicate being in my arms when the raging waters threaten to pull me under.

And as I walk down this road again. I can't help but draw my concern taunt. I've done this before and I wish that meant I could do it again. But somewhere I'm hiding--not even that deep--the fear that I cannot.

[just-4-thought]

I've been spending my time in a state of survival--

more so now with how little I can change.

The steady march of time, an executioner's drum.

How do I lift my chin up to the sun,

breathe deeply in the laughter,

take a step into the fire,

square my shoulders to the blade?

Bring it on!

I guess

There's no other choice to be made

[just-4-thought]

I can taste spring on the tip of my tongue

Like an old word, just there

slipping away.

I need no interpreter for my dreams;

They speak my fears plainly.

25 days of spring, I'll hold,

and then

what comes next?

I cannot say,

but same again, I can taste it

on the tip of my tongue

just there,

slipping away.