time in a cleaned out studio / where I can actually work

breakfast with someone who likes breakfast and maybe even drinks coffee 

an art show that moves me

big luscious paintings

beer and guacamole at midnight in the quiet of my house after work

driving alone with the music loud

to feel loving and patient with my oldest child

to be a better mom these days

to understand why all of this is going on

to move through it gracefully

I think I have finally perfected my state of denial. Things are certainly going to hell and I’m ready with drink in hand. Maybe this would be a good time to drag my camera and photoshop skills out of the closet because when shit falls apart is when the ‘artist’ in me loves life the most. Who knows maybe something good can come out of all this depression, anger and apathy.

I am going thru the motions with my brain in the gutter and desires for everything beautiful and dirty.  I have moments where I remember what it was to be the artist and I sometimes wish I could be again. I used to be good, but like with anything, without practice…it’s going to take awhile to get back where I was. I feel like some old athlete or musician. It’s going to be a steep learning curve, but  maybe something worth seeing will be at the end of this tunnel.  Is it too late to make a come-back or is it just depressing and sad to see at this point? Like someone past their prime having a mid-life crisis with a silly car and new tastes in clothes or music? What kind of art comes out of all this b.s. anyway but narcissistic, self absorbed skills thrown out for an ego stroke?  Really, but what is art anyway then, right?

seems to have heated me up too. I’m feeling like an animal in heat these days. My brain has been taken over by S.E.X. It’s a good thing we got that whole reproductive thing taken care of after kid #3.

and it’s not like all of a sudden a bunch of crazy kinky things are happening over here or anything. The Mr. has been out of state working, so we’re barely hitting twice a month over here, but it’s all that I can think about. How did I go from ‘what’s sex?’ in May to ‘can we lock all 3 kids out of our room for like an hour?’ now?

Is it the monsoon season? The heat? The truth to “absence makes the heart grow fonder”? That I am drinking more? The fact that a guy 17 years younger than me flirts with me at work? I dunno….but the combination is apparently working and the switch has been flipped.

Now what to do with all this energy? Since I can’t do it 4x a day like we used to…and. It is way powerful. I forgot how much sexual energy  swirls in me since it left even though it was for just a few months that it was gone. It feels overwhelming now. I feel like every single person I talk to can see right through me and know that I am just ooozing sex, dripping sex, looking at any man strictly on a ‘does looking at him do anything for me? basis’ -  if I can only properly harness it all I could rearrange this life. Serious manifesting energy swirling. It is all creation energy. I can feel it tangibly, like electricity, bringing my thoughts into reality before I know how things happened, in ways totally unimaginable. (not like all that ‘the secret’ financial crap, but what I really think about….and dang…. instant karma for the kids, flowers from the husband and major psychic hits)

I need to get control, and let go of all control. Trying to take it into the next level, in meditation because I know this energy could be turned around and go up, up, up. But it’s soooo hard when my focus is so physical. My skin on the fabric of my clothes, the feel of every sensation, my breath, my breathing, following my breath. Breathe. Breathe. My mind: “um….breath on my neck”….and back to my breath,  but then I feel my tongue in my mouth and my teeth with my tongue and there I go thinking of biting skin and tongues and you get the point… But I feel the potential if I can follow the right road here (which I probably can’t until fall, but then the energy will be different and so will that level of power in me) so for now, for tonight…I need to go wake up my husband. mmmmmm, I hope he doesn’t mind. and if he does ….. I can always try meditation again, but damn it’s fun to have a body this go round.

When my life is on shaky ground, my libido evaporates. Maybe everyone’s does, but for me, this is new.

In the past, nothing, and I mean nothing could affect my needs for physical pleasure. It didn’t matter if I was feeling emotionally distant from whoever I was involved with…that was a separate issue to the needs at hand. I used to also say that I didn’t need a man for anything but that one particular thing. I had a good job, hobbies, friends…the one thing I wanted from the guy in my life was a good orgasm and if he couldn’t deliver, well, he was just a friend then.

So, now fast forward 10 or so years, I married the guy that happened to do that one particular thing way better than anyone else ever could have. And now, I can’t get out of my head and back into bed, or wherever it might be likely to happen…the parking lot of the science center, a second grade classroom, church, off the side of the highway…you get the idea.

So, I have some serious ::::NEEDS:::: but everytime I think we might be going somewhere that they might be met…damn, he has to go say something that reminds me of all this shit we are going through financially right now and then I’m stuck in my head and can’t get out. Then the to-do list is running and my list of complaints I have about shit he didn’t do while I was working….that I would have got done if he’d been the one working and I was home all day…

Now, how the hell (without batteries or indiscretions) do I get back to that happy place? Someone tell me, please. I haven’t gone this long since I was single!

hmmmm, It’s 1:19am, I just got home from work, I’ve been up since 6:45am. I’m up drinking beer and eating chips and salsa. I have been making an awful lot of mexican food lately, it’s my comfort food. I grew up in Texas and chips and salsa can be very therapeutic.

I have a hard time living in the present right now…I find myself remembering another me.

and missing art and texas and simplicity of being the artist I was back then.

thinking like an artist and holding little pieces of paper delicately, pondering the way things look and feel. being alive and in love. I want to make myself something. Something small and delicate and beautiful. I need something to hold onto right now. I need to remember what art can be for me, that it can be the way through this. It can be the light at the end of the tunnel right now, a way to take my past through this present.

I’m get nostalgic about texas…mostly because of this: 

it reminds me of texas and boots and sex and tequila

Obviously with 3 kids, it would not work, but a girl can dream of a date night only truck, right?

I am starting to try to see myself more like my grandmother than my mother everyday.
I know that she never had much money, but somehow managed to raise 7 kids during the depression, she never raised her voice at them according to my mom, and still my memories of her all revolve around the flowers in her garden and her love of children. I am trying to channel some of her loves for gardening and being a gentle force around my children more these days.

I fear so much in myself lately, so I am looking to her example through the bits I still have, to become someone different and stronger after all of this.

Well, things have been changing fast around here. I find my leisure hours at the coffeeshop with pen in hand in my ‘real’ journal all but gone. So, I turn back here to pour out in much less thought about, pure stream of consciousness again.

I’ve gone back to work full time after being a stay at home mom for over 3 years. I miss the kids fiercely. For me, now that I have experienced what it is to stay at home with my kids, returning to work feels like a deep and indescribable loss. Everything feels fake and surreal. I feel like both the kids and I have changed. I feel myself less attached to them and much less knowledgeable about them. Not like we are strangers, more like we all have to put on a tough front to hide the pain of our separation from each other through the daily rhythms of life. It feels like such a disconnect for me. It feels like they (my husband and kids) are the family and I am some kind of visitor or intruder into their routines and ways. Is this how my husband felt/feels? Is this how it was the last time I worked and I just don’t remember it like this?  After spending 3 days at home, I just start to feel like I have a place and then I have to leave again. It’s getting easier to just not re-connect or remember what family is supposed to feel like.

I have 3 days a week with them; they are with my husband on the weekends. So, fortunately, babysitter time is limited and they love the girl we hired, even the baby likes her and I don’t mind my job. I know that isn’t the same as liking it or loving it. I’m good at it and it doesn’t bother me. So, I’m grateful for that. I am fortunate in these times to have a means to pay our bills.

My husband is getting a lot more time with the kids than he used to when I was at home. He used to work a lot more, but now he’s probably only working 25 hrs a week to my 40. Maybe, probably, okay, definately I have some resentment about this, but it isn’t as if I could go part time or he could work more. And as he pointed out, it is better for the kids to be with one of us, even if it isn’t me. For the hours thing, it is not by choice. He just hasn’t had that much work lately, which is why I’m working in the first place. I know with the world the way it is right now I should be grateful for where we are. I just wish I didn’t know what I was missing this time around.

Before staying home with my kids, I used to think I was a better mom because I worked. I may have been happier and more pleasant with them but to my kids, I was not a better mom. To put it another way, in the words of my four year old, “Mommy I hate you. Why don’t you just go to work. You don’t love me. I want Daddy.”

As my 3rd child approaches her first birthday I feel my reason for starting this online journal is complete. I began this wondering about adding to my family. We chose to and I have been following my path of nurturing and mothering 3 for the duration of this blog. 

I am taking a break from this place for words as my other journal is filling itself again with pen on paper. I’ve always been a more private person with my feelings, so if I see an interesting link or post photos perhaps they will end up here with some tidbit of our life.  

I hope everyone has a full and beautiful year. I know I plan on it.

I’ve been having some dark times, dark thoughts, and dark words to those around me but I think it is finally passing.
Hopefully, with the new year all the old will go and I will be ready to face the new challenges with more wisdom.
So much has happened and I’m still processing much of it. I hope to rid myself and my home of much of it’s causes and effects over the next months to be in a more secure place physically, spiritually and mentally next year.

I have:

a good marriage

healthy kids

passion

plenty of wine

clean clothes

an art studio

love

a big backyard

a grapefruit tree

an orange tree

a big bed

a warm blanket

art

a library card

food in my pantry

jeans I look good in

a happy baby

tea

a quilt

a cool book bag

music

a farmer’s market close to me

plenty of cloth diapers

hand made bowls to eat from

flowers growing in my backyard 

seeds for more flowers

family coming for the holidays