Miley plays on the first day of my period. Every month. Like clockwork. I can picture the wrecking ball swinging in and everything, every bit of calm I spent three weeks rebuilding, just… gone. Shattered in the chaos of exhaustion and the very specific kind of drain that makes your bones feel heavy and your patience feel like it’s held together with a single piece of scotch tape.
Saturday I sat on the floor for hours playing Legos with Evelyn and I did not get out of my pajamas once. Sunday I made it to the couch. Heating pad on my abdomen, horizontal, not apologizing for any of it. Listen, some weekends are for thriving. Some are for surviving. This was a surviving weekend and I have made my peace with that.
The one saving grace? It landed on a weekend. Nick was here. Hands on with Evelyn, completely unbothered, practically begging me not to feel guilty about laying completely still or playing COD mindlessly while I bled to death in real life. And I mean that with my whole chest. There is something profoundly loving about a person who looks at you horizontal on the couch, controller in hand, and says stay there. I stayed there. Zero guilt. Okay, minimal guilt. I’m working on it.
Then the weather decided to have its own moment. We went from 50s and 60s straight into the 20s, a snowstorm, and me shoveling again — because just like a woman, the tempest is never truly done. I thought I was finished with winter. Winter was not finished with me.
Tuesday felt like it should have been Thursday at minimum. Evelyn woke up with a boogery nose — no fever, just snot, courtesy of temperatures that cannot make up their mind. We shoveled in what I can only describe as a blizzard that kept interrupting itself with blue skies, and then the wind would come back just to remind us who’s in charge.
And then there’s the animals.
Finn is one year old and has recently and enthusiastically discovered that he has opinions about everything and hormones to back them up. Sally is seven months old and slowly coming into her own teenage energy. Clark is ten and is simply asserting dominance the way only a ten year old dog who has seen everything and cares about nothing can. As of this week there is far too much humping happening in this house and none of it is human. I want that on the record. Calls will be made. Appointments will be scheduled. Rest assured there will be no further reproducing in this house by any species. We are closed for business. The factory is shutting down. We wish everyone involved a speedy recovery.
So. Tuesday morning. I had separated the dogs from each other, separated Finn from Sally (for reasons we’ve established), told Evelyn approximately one thousand times to stop pulling Finn’s tail and stop picking up Sally — even after Sally gave her a love bite right on the nose, which, honestly Sally, same — and I was trying to read something when I said no to Evelyn one more time and she beamed me directly in the side of the head with a Lego.
A Lego.
That was it. TV off. Legos removed. Dogs in crates. Sally to the basement with litter box access. Airpods in. World: off. Deep breaths. Slow ones. The kind where you’re not sure if you’re calming down or just going somewhere else entirely for a few minutes.
It passed. It always does. But wow.
Wednesday was slower and steadier. We’re making progress with ChildWatch — I know it feels like the never ending saga and everyone has an opinion about ripping the bandaid off, but it’s easier said than done and we’re doing it our way. The portrait series is still very much in motion. I genuinely believe there are brave women out there ready to tell their stories and at this point I am not above recruiting. Consider this your formal notice.
The teenagers come back this weekend. I’m moving into my follicular phase and the nervous cleaning energy is already stirring — I want to reorganize everything and I have the spreadsheet drafted in my head already. I cracked and ordered a cat tower for Sally because she needs somewhere to escape to, and I’m fully aware that the first time Evelyn and Finn both try to climb it I will regret every decision I’ve ever made. But small wins. We manifest only good things in this house.
Oh — and I signed Evelyn up for Pre-K. We’re not talking about it. First rule of Pre-K is we do not talk about Pre-K.
The world is a little slower right now. The restlessness that comes with that is real — I remember longing for slow days and now that they’re here I don’t quite know what to do with myself. But I’m trying to let it be what it is.
And then I remembered.
Chicago. Three weeks. My big sister. And Florence + the Machine.
My first solo trip as an adult for something that is not a funeral — and I say that with complete sincerity because when I actually stopped to think about it, that is the reality and it deserves to be acknowledged. I am going to get big girl time with my big sister and I am going to stand in a room with Florence Welch and I am going to do my happy girl jumping in place move until my lymphatic system is completely and utterly drained. I have seen her once before — close enough at Governors Ball in 2019 that she was literally at my fingertips as she frolicked past singing Delilah — and I have been waiting for a moment like this ever since.
The restlessness makes a lot more sense now. My body knew something good was coming before my brain caught up.
Even if whatever comes next involves a cat tower, a Lego to the skull, and three weeks of counting down like a giddy schoolgirl.
Worth it. All of it.
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