picture this

the thing about a blog without pictures is that you have to create one with words.  i envy picture blogs sometimes- a photo of child with chicken and a catchy caption.  how long does that take exactly?  especially if your phone takes pictures, with cool retro effects, and you just email off to your blog site as you wait at a red light somewhere between here and there.

and i love those blogs.

but this blog has more struggle to it- that's my way, i guess.  like now- i've been up since 3 am and even before that i didn't sleep well.  i went to bed by 9 with a stabbing pain in my back.  woke up at 11:34 because my left was suddenly weepy and stinging- only to find that my eldest was still awake, despite my very clear instruction to all that it was to be an early night.  and then at 2:48 the toddler waddles in the bedroom, determined to nurse me out of any chance of sleep.

whereas years before i would have sipped tea, read a book or written in a journal- i go to check me email, do a few quick errands via this wooden chair and the keyboard, and then decide to write in the blog.  a fairly egocentric affair, i feel at times.  what makes me think i've got anything worth while to say?  at least when you write in a journal you don't need to really say anything.  hell, you don't even ever have to read it again!

but since i'm here- and so are you.  i'm gonna do my bestest to make this worth our while.

when i woke up at 3 am- my brain is not a happy place- that's why i'm awake.  in that fuzzy space my head does this fucked up mind trip where all is wrong.  it's like eeyore, without his tail, his house blown down, on his birthday with no thistles to eat....times five thousand.  the list i start to make could be titled "why everything i have ever done was a clausal mistake."  it is ridiculous.  but at 3 am, laying in bed with sore back and weepy eye ("well, maybe if you took better care of yourself...." says my brain) it's hard to pull myself out of it.  until i just pull myself out of bed.

the bad mood lingers- i critiqued everything i see.  it's grouchy.  if it were a color it would be puke green.  it is were a smell it would be puke green.  but it's in my head- and harder to get rid of than puke- of any color.

until...

there's this tiny laugh somewhere between my ears.  it's kinda like the laugh of yoda or the dalai lama (as if those are two separate entities).  i ignore this giggle at first.  i throw some puke green thoughts at it.  this makes it laugh even harder.  the chuckles turn the green less pukey.  i shrug, roll my eyes- like a teenager determined to be pissed long after i even remember what the hell made me so angry.

this causes more laughing.  i cringe.  more laughing. i smile.  more laughing.  until this laughter says to me: none of that matters.  i try a few more...what about THIS green puke thought?

nope.  doesn't matter. giggle.

how about when this smelly funked out shit happened?

sorry.  irrelevant.  snort.

ummm, ok- well, remember how i still haven't done XYZ?

(wheezing sound of breathless laughter with subtle thuds of fist banging on wooden floor).

and then, my tail is back on, my house is rebuilt, i'm singing happy birthday to myself, and a patch of thistles sprouts at my feet.  because it doesn't really matter that i have no idea where find clean clothes to wear to work tomorrow, or that my son stayed up too late and will be a lumpy mess of complaints when  i wake him up, or that i didn't drink enough water yesterday, or that i forgot to pay the dentist....again, or that i don't know how to properly train a parakeet.

all that matters is that i am here.  whatever "i" means anyway.  all that matters is that i am still on this journey.  that i am awake is a gift a thousand people didn't open this morning.  all that matters is that i can feel puke green or zesty orange or beige.  i can feel beige, damnit.  that's something to celebrate...in a beige sort of way.

all that really matters is that i can hear that laugh.  over all the other noise- i can still hear the giggle of redemption- some call it amazing grace.

and even though there are a lot of great photos in the world, on blogs, tucked inside greeting cards, tattooed over the scars of battles fought and lost or won or never taken on-  there's no way i could have shown you that laugh without these words.