Six years

It’s taken me almost six years to blog again.

Six years.

In my defense, I’ve been busy doing stuff like raising Helena, working full-time, forgetting how to cook, not getting my car washed and, with a few exceptions, dating every emotionally stunted man on the eastern seaboard. I am exhausted.

Just for fun, I tried Googling other notable events that occur ever six years and the only thing I could find was the blooming of the corpse flower, which occurs every 6-7 years and looks freakishly exotic and smells like a decaying body left out in the Arizona sun in mid-summer.   You could make the argument that I am the equivalent of a flower full of stinky, withered reproductive organs that attracts dung beetles and flesh flies.

Sounds about right.

My kids have grown way the hell up. About six and a half years ago, they looked like this:

This is Helena now and I’m all DAMN, I MAKE PRETTY HUMANS:

Zoe went all adult on me and got herself married and I’m all DAMN, I MAKE PRETTY HUMANS WHO ABANDON ME.

As for me, I went about my business of working, making seriously poor dating choices, buying shoes, painting my house, and convincing myself that I could scratch my creative itch by drafting complaints and memorandum of law 40+ hours a week, and I tucked that delusion deep into my psyche, right next to the one about how my neck was NOT starting to bear a striking resemblance to a turkey wattle. And then I’d promptly forget about that creative itch until I wouldn’t, which was often, and then that itch morphed into poison ivy.

A little over a year ago, I re-connected with Scott Gibbs, a friend from high school. And by re-connecting, I don’t mean dating because he’s got his shit together so obviously I wasn’t attracted to him and besides, I think his wife would have objected. No, I mean we re-connected last year when he accosted me on a pier, gave me a bear hug and then yelled at me for not blogging anymore because he missed it. I  responded with something like “hey, that is really very sweet of you to think of me, thank you, I’ve been considering it but life gets in the way, you know how it is, right? How’s Sue? How are the kids?” But it was cold and windy and we were both wearing hats so it’s entirely possible it came out sounding more like FUCK YOU, I’M NOT READY AND YOU CAN’T MAKE ME. We decided to sit down and talk about it and talk we did, with my brother, Tino, in Scott’s finished basement. Then we decided to use microphones and get all fancy and talk about anything and everything and how we’re getting older and life is getting shorter, and the cost of college is getting pricier and government is getting What.The.Fuckier and I am getting menopause-ier and then there was a chorus of crickets and I never mentioned my shriveling ovaries again. We decided to call these sessions “podcasts” because that’s what all the cool kids do and for once, I want to be cool and not just cause I’m typing this between hot flashes.

We wound up recording a few of them and every single one starts off the same way, with Scott and Tino forgetting what gets plugged where, which microphone is whose, what’s this cable for, where the hell does it go, and why the hell isn’t this thing working? And then I say something super smart, like “ummmm, that’s twenty minutes of my life I’ll never get back, what say we take a picture of this set-up so that we know what we’re doing next time?” And then someone who shall remain nameless but let’s just call him Scott for shits and giggles, says “great idea” to anyone who will listen which is no one a/k/a/ Tino because no one a/k/a Tino ever takes the damn picture so if there’s no audio in the podcast, blame Scott and Tino. By the way, there’s no photographic evidence to the contrary so you’ll just have to trust me, I looked smokin’ hot during every single recording. You can listen to two of our podcasts below and the YouTube channel can be found HERE – The Creative Junkie. Keep in mind, Tino and Scott left the editing to me, which is kind of like cooking Thanksgiving dinner and then putting a hyperactive toddler in charge of plating and serving it. Oh, and they were recorded a year ago. Don’t judge me.

Podcast #1: Online dating a/k/a WTF am I doing?

Podcast #2: My story

It is thanks to Tino and Scott that I returned to blogging. They were incredibly encouraging and supportive and finally convinced me to get off the couch back to my laptop, except I’m blogging from my couch so they were only partly successful. At one point, Scott got frustrated with me because I came up with reason #872 as to why I wasn’t ready to write again, and he towel-whipped me so hard that it sounded like a gunshot and left a welt on my leg the size of a dill pickle and left me speechless which is probably the very definition of a silver lining. I plan on forgiving him as soon as he gives me his dog, Finley, because that dog is just smooches waiting to happen.

I’ll wrap this up by simply saying thank you. Thank you for finding your way back to me and for being here when I finally found my way back to you. I’ve missed this place.