How Have You Been?

 In looking at how long it's been since I have dumped my brain, one would think that the words would endlessly flow. That I would have to stop them before I (and they) became unbearably annoying. Seems it ain't so. Coming home to skirt! feels a little like going back home, land of 2500, where, if you're not at the local diner between the hours of 7 and 10, you don't get breakfast because the doors are locked. Seriously. It is a feeling of having to learn my way around again. Locate my friends, and, hopefully, develop new relationships with those who don't want to throw up after our first few exchanges. Things have changed. Some friends have moved away, some have moved up, and all have remained beautiful writers whose words make me breathe. I have missed you, this, it all, and feel blessed to be welcomed back so warmly. (This is merely an assumption, but I've been told that if you speak it, it will eventually  become a reality.) 

What have I been doing? Most importantly, I've been mommying the spawn. Freddy is eight, and Dora six. I now whisper the "God, please slow this all down so that I can listen to them breathe the I love you completely and I want to live with my mommy forever" prayer daily, vastly different than the "Holy cow, I wish they would stop all this mommy, mommy, mommy business and get a job" mantra. I've turned into "It all goes by SO fast" mom, full of the happy sadness that comes with watching your babes evolve into little grown-up people. I am proud. I still "garden". Leo continues to be the amazingly supportive and sexy husband he has always been, and we laugh together. I am still a teacher. Other than that, I am still me, the laugher, the sobber, the passionate, the crazy, the...well, the me. I am clay in my hands, as dirty as I have been and will always be, but I take shape sometimes, and it is enough. I hope, that in writing again, I will also become the me that sighs with a feeling of total completeness after putting it all here. I hope to become all naked again, for better or worse, offensive or even more offensive, but always just what I am. 

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I have to go wash myself. Summer often means that I "forget" to shower for days, only remembering that I've forgotten when Dora walks into the room and asks if something has died recently. I blame it on the fiber Freddy had for lunch, and then run. Running...