Blog Break

It’s been hot. Unseasonably HOT. The kind of hot that causes me to have outbursts full of caterwauling and profanities. I had one of these fiery explosions the other day at work, a group of my nurse chums  and I were enjoying our so-short- it-should-be-illegal-lunch-break, when I checked Google weather. “104 on Sunday? FUCK! what the fuck, it’s April! Fucking Fuck, FUCK!  My chums all stared at me….chewing…the room was silent, except for the TV vomiting  daytime who-gives-a-shit-ness.. I apologized later, and was forgiven without much work on my part.

It’s April, and it’s 104? That’s too hot. There is something seriously wrong, I feel wronged. I deserve cool weather in April, I’ve  EARNED  70’s to 80’s in April. I suffered for 6 months last year, 117 every day for too many days…DAMN IT!!!! I want to complain, and I do, I sound like a mad woman….but it doesn’t help, and no one is getting on the “I hate April and it’s fucked-up-unfair-weather” train. I’m a lone rider. I don’t understand why nobody else is mad. I want to put together a petition, get 10, 000 signatures,  and send it to GOD…104 in April? Why? Please make it stop…I feel crazed. Desperate. Alone. Sweaty. 

“That’s what GOD make swimming pools for, Kate:)”, this is what my well-meaning friends say…but they don’t understand..this means I’m on lockdown. Going outside causes me to wither, the sun steals my energy to fuel itself, I’m left empty of APT, I’m a katepuddle, after my outings, I move from room to air-conditioned room, pouring my me-puddle in the form of cat naps on this and that….Please don’t tell me to move elsewhere if I don’t like it….I’ve tried that. Phoenix is home. For now.

I’m stuck in this dastardly desert. The sky is dingy, I want to spray it with Mrs. Meyers, scrub it good, til the blue shines through. That’s what happens in a hot valley full of cars…dingy skies.  The mountains that hold our fair city become barely visible, and most people don’t notice how low visibility gets around here when it’s hot unless I point it out to them. Yes, misery does love company.

My friend Melissa thinks this is a great opportunity to stay inside…and  WRITE. THE. BOOK. My friends are lemonade makers, they take my lemons and sweeten them for me.  Thanks y’all.

I have a book to write.  I’ve been writing it for a few years now, but it’s in disjointed piles–some in my computer,  but most litter my mind.  I get distracted. Tossed away. I get really tired when I think about tearing open my mind and working through my life. I fall into naps , I answer emails, I have a library of unread books to read—-I’m suddenly hungry for stir fry, I need a pedicure—- I should wash my car, and do laundry, buy new sheets, and call my sister, trim the rosebush–get a new drivers license picture, I hate the one I have. The DMV sounds like—– fun!

“I nap on a daily basis like a cross country truck driver.”  ~ Mary Karr ~   My memoir writing idol about her memoir writing process.

I know lots of writers struggle when it comes to getting down and dirty with their manuscripts.  Today I didn’t struggle too much, I let the drama drop away, and I wrote. and wrote. and I’m still writing…. And I think part of the reason why I run so far away from the very thing that feeds me like nothing else in this world, is because it hurts to write this stuff. Not this stuff, but the stuff of my memoir.

Today as I was writing, I met my mom again. All those years ago when I was having my post-bad-acid-trip-spontaneous-kundalini-arising -panic -attacks, my mom was working as a phone sex operator and helping a friend run a beauty salon. She went into mounds of debt rushing me in cabs (because she didn’t drive) to emergency rooms and doctors appointments, trying to solve the puzzle of my very mysterious physical ailments.  We didn’t have medical insurance, but that didn’t stop her from finding a way to help me.  I was insane with anxiety, and the very real belief that I was dying.  I remember my mother’s face…worried and full of love. Eventually she took me to a chiropractor who cracked me back into sanity..my spine was trashed from the electrical storm that flooded my nervous system..but you can read about all that  in greater detail sometime in the future. 

And because it’s too hot to drive around with the top down, run up mountains, laze under lacy trees with a book, I’m taking this opportunity to slow down and allow my past to catch me…all the years and all the therapy ( you-name-it…I ‘ve tried it)  have brought me right here to this place.

 And somewhere inside of me I am forgiving my mom for getting sick, for being a nutjob and such a shoddy mother.  I’m thanking her for loving me…for being right about a few things…for dragging me to this hot place in the desert when I was three..a place where I am forced to stay inside and write all about her…and me…and him and she…

Now I shall go cut ten thousand and twenty ZZZZZZZZZ’s—making room in me for poetr-ee.