aubreii.com

We spent most of today at the beach.  I didn’t really go in the water but the day was beautiful, and the kids had a good time.  Christina brought Evie to join us and that made for good conversation and kid activity.  She and Bill are getting married, sooner rather than later.  It was warm but a little cloudy, and we shared a grill and a picnic table with some strangers for a few minutes.

This last week was so busy that it flew by; I can’t believe tomorrow is Monday.  I decided that because of our excess of cucumbers I would make dill pickles for party guests this coming weekend.

First Batch:

Batch #1

I ordered custom labels for the top, and Cassondra gave me ribbon to embellish the jars.  I think they will be cute.

Eddie and Rosie are back in the house as of yesterday, which is always warm and grounding.  Eddie has been working a ton of hours at Kroger, taking an SAT Prep course at Sylvan over the summer, and is dating a new girl, a young Julianne Moore, a vegan, and a year older than him.  She going to Western in the fall.  ‘This one is going to be rough at the end,’ was the way he described  feeling at the beginning of the relationship.  (Obviously, he has his father’s unusual brand of fuck-it pessimism.)  I adore her, and she seems to adore him, and that makes me happy.  He is almost an adult.  It’s odd to watch someone who was born an old wise man nearing the responsibilities and freedoms of an actual grown man.

Rosie is beautiful and moody and either creating art or engaging with it.  From what I can gather.  She is full and vast, an ocean of a person, and mostly unknowable, I think even to herself.  We will walk or lay in bed or be running errands and she won’t stop talking for the entire hour or two about all of her loves and interests, but she won’t once actually mention herself.  But it’s the closest you get to her, Rosie, Norah Rose, Alex Rose, all of the things she calls herself.  So you listen with drippy anticipation to dialogue about Detroit Becomes Human and Lin Manuel Miranda and her new Photoshop brushes and you look at her inking and sketches and offer advice on her plot lines and you accept every bit of reciprocal interest and smile and laugh and thank her.  Because it feels like a gift.

The littles are becoming people too, not just babies.  Even June.  She will fall and get hurt and when you offer her help she’ll slap your hand away and shout ‘WALK’ and get back up on her own, still crying and moaning, dusting off her chubby baby fingers as she rights herself.  It’s awe inspiring, really.  Ari is rowdy and impulsive as ever, but he will also double check with a hurt friend, ‘You OK?’ even after parental intervention and almost out of earshot.  He will spend five minutes trying to make sure June gets down from the trampoline safely, even if she’s refusing his help.  And Kaelen is at that age where he is SO filled with yearning for things beyond his years, and I think struggling with the tumult of living in two very different households.  His world as a newly independent reader is big.  He is filled with ideas and a want for things beyond his years, alongside a true extrovert’s desire to share his beloved life experiences with the people he loves.  He is always the one to suggest a day full of exciting activities.  And today he insisted he was ready to read The Hobbit.

Megan will be home from AZ in a few days.  I want to share my porch with her again.

I’m getting a dress tailored.  I finished The Handmaid’s Tale.  Nick is looking at buying houses.  We’ve lived here for four years.  I think that’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere.  I feel like moving a city away isn’t far enough.  Does it count as moving if you can still circle your old neighborhood between the grocery store and the car wash?  I don’t want to move and drive past here again.  Either stay, or leave it completely.

Without fresh starts, I don’t know if I am even myself.

It’s always hard to write when not much has changed. Events occur, the future is slightly altered, faces and streets swim in and out of my mind’s eye, only chance dictates which things will be remembered in two, five, ten years.

It’s always surprising to consider what I do and do not remember, when looking back over the years.

This last couple of weeks we rode bikes with my new bike (thanks Dad!) and trailer for the kids, saw a movie in the park, lost my keys at said park (found them in a hidden pocket in my bag after searching in the dark with Eddie after picking him up from work at Kroger), put a new picture display on the wall, planned the boys’ August birthday party, drove Eddie back and forth to an SAT prep course at Sylvan, drove Rosie back and forth to meet Dave with Sarnia, fought with Nick about a million times, made up with Nick just over a million times, read Dragons Love Tacos with June until she shouted ‘TACOS!’ all the way to bed and then blew me kisses, bought Ari ice cream and a trip to McDonald’s to play because it was rainy and his friend Maxwell canceled a play date and he was crushed, gave the cats flea treatments, managed to not run off to my dad’s to swim at the lake because I have too much to do, billed Amy for $60 or so for two weeks worth of not-enough work, went to Sully’s birthday party up the street with the kids, went grocery shopping at Meijer, listened to a very impactful news story on an immigrant woman trying to reconnect with her young son after being separated at the border for a month, watered my plants every day, mowed the lawn, bought new porch lights…  Every day is busy from the moment someone pesters me (long before I open my eyes) until the moment I lay down at night. I think I need it to be more meaningful.  More purposeful.

It’s not a new thought.  It’s just constant.

My doctor told me a few days ago that his advice was that I ‘enjoy my life.’  I told him bluntly that I enjoy it too much, and that was the problem.  But he seemed to think I was ok.

I’ll post final pics of that wall when its done.  But here is the painting of the frames:

Work in Progress

Well, I 100% chickened out. I memorized my monologue and recorded myself performing it, and it wasn’t even bad. I mean, not TOO bad. But the thought of having to go in front of people to perform it was paralyzing. I made it about halfway to Royal Oak and just kept driving north instead.

I’m at the bar, after a strong pep talk about how if I want to be a writer instead I need to buckle down and actually write regularly. So here I am. Writing. Drinking light beer. Thinking about how I have been unraveling.

I’m exhausted all the time, seeing everything through a fog, changing my clothes five times a day but not washing my hair. I compulsively clean the house, like inner peace is right under that layer of smashed crackers. I barely see my friends or anyone else. I can feel my furrow lines cementing between my brows. Clay skin hardening.

Instead of visiting potential daycares for Ari, I went to IKEA to buy silverware for Stephanie today. Steve is moving out and apparently he’s taking the flatware with him. I also picked up candles and plastic dishes for the kids, and some cable you stretch across the wall to hang pictures on. You know how that place is. It took up most of the usable day, until I had to do school pick ups.

But I’ve been putting off setting up daycare for a couple of weeks. Probably longer, actually. I don’t mean to. I just can’t focus. So everything is weirdly stagnant.

I feel haunted. Jordan is everywhere. He comments on everything I do, mopes around the house when we should be sleeping, laughs when the kids laugh. Teases Rosie when she acts silly. Maybe my grip on reality was never great and this assault on it is too jarring right now. I feel like I need help but I don’t know how to ask for it, or what it would be. The only thing that sounds comforting is quiet, time to reflect and focus. Consider things. Realign. My circumstances do not, unfortunately, allow for peace and quiet. Ha! Not right now. JD used to blend right into our hyperactive household so seamlessly. I miss my brother, man.

But I’m fairly certain I won’t see him again. I mean, I saw him there, contorted, so uncomfortable looking, I couldn’t wait for the ME’s to get there and just MOVE him already, lay the poor kid flat. How many hours was he stuck there like that? In that stink? Was he hoping someone would show up and help him at the end? Why didn’t he call me? Could he call? Did he realize this time was different?

It’s a loop, starting with that sleepless night. Hearing noises on the baby monitor, hearing a little boy talking down the hall. Rolling around in bed with stomach cramping like something was eating me from the inside. Right up to laying my hand on his stomach and feeling a room temperature body through that thin white t-shirt. I might forget everything else, but I will never forget how he felt under my hand.

How long is it before that loop quits? Or if it won’t, when will I be able to pull it together and focus regardless? Functioning at 60% will only keep life support going; this ship will never reach its destination point unless we repair the broken machinery.

CAPTAIN! FIGURE THIS SHIT OUT! WE ARE AIMLESSLY STAGGERING INTO THE NETHER REGIONS OF AN UNCHARTED UNIVERSE AND THE CREW IS TERRIFIED.

Nothing is as loud as grief. In your ears, in your mind’s eye, when you try to settle.

I love you. I miss you.

Rosie made this for you, because you asked her to, and you forgot to bring it home. Every second I look at it I just want you to hold it and have it. It is the kind of thing you would deeply treasure, it would never be just paper and wax.

You were more loved than you will ever get to know.

I love you.

Tonight was the Open House at The Actor’s Loft. I got to meet Hugh and hear about all of the workshops they offer, including the one Nick signed me up for as my Christmas gift, The Fundamentals of Acting.

All of the workshops sound amazing, and I’m so excited to start next week, but it quickly became apparent sitting there that I am going to be the biggest fish out of the most water. A whale in a desert.

The screenwriting workshop instructor (Charles) nearly had me salivating as he described the protagonist’s necessary journey through conflict and to glorious resolution that he would be helping the writers to understand. I was literally on the edge of my seat considering sinking my teeth into a good screenplay idea. It felt so natural to consider! My constant state is running storylines through my head for believability and appeal.

The improv workshop sounded fun and interesting and attainable. I know it was a million years ago, but as I described in a previous episode of aubreii.com, I took improv classes in my youth. And they were great. I like to think on my toes and bounce ideas off of a partner.

The actual Acting class sounds so foreign. It became obvious that it’s going to be all new to me. And I realized sitting there that I have an some major insecurities I’m going to have to deal with moving forward. Shall we list the things? We all know I like to list the things:

• I have the grace of a corpse when I am nervous. My mouth will keep doing the moving and spitting out of words. But my body will take on jerky movements not unlike those of a zombie from literally any zombie movie. You know what I’m describing.
• I like to think I’m not horribly unattractive. On film, this disillusionment becomes obvious. Whatever beauty or grace I *may* possess is due to skilled chin angling and proper hair swingimg during conversation. This illusion disappears the instant I’m on film. (Whenever I doubt this I let someone try to take a good picture of me. Their increasing frustration as they ‘adjust the angle’ and eventually angrily direct me to do smoky eyes and pout at the lens until they sigh, defeated, and say ‘look how white your teeth are, so… pretty’ is all I need to remind me to avoid the camera.) This class is all about working the camera, my old foe.
• I know nothing about ‘The Craft’
• There is A Craft
• I had no idea
• Guess I will be doing some homework
• I have no future in this stuff, at least not in the immediate. I have almost zero time to do anything. I know what a time requirement something like this is. My working availability is at ’20 seconds per bathroom break every six hour’s level right now.

So I guess the biggest actual fears are that I am wasting everyone’s time, and in doing so, I’m going to make a complete fool of myself.

Acknowledging this actually makes it seem far less scary than it did earlier.

I regularly look like and idiot AND waste people’s time. And the sun still rises every morning. So what is the worst that can happen ?

I have kind of been dreading coming here.  Ugh ugh ugh to the feeling that I’m just waxing philosophical, mommy blogging myself into boring, pointless oblivion.  But I guess that means my life is just boring.  And I don’t post enough for this to be a ‘mommy blog’.  Either way, this so far hasn’t been a ‘Lit’ (as Rosie would say) bit of the internet.  OH WELL.  Go away then.

June is finally walking with some confidence, and it’s great.  She had a play date today with her friend Sydney and they played really well together.  Unless he touched her water bottle.  Gents be warned, this lady doesn’t share her water.  She displayed the same pterodactyl-like screeching abilities as Ari as she defended it.  Poor Sydney.

For Christmas, Nick got me Acting Lessons at the Actor’s Loft in Royal Oak. The last acting lessons I had were at the Civic Theater in Grand Rapids when I was still young enough to be dropped off by my mom.  I honestly have no idea if I was 8 or 15.  What I do remember is the rawness of being a fool in front of strangers, the freedom of needing confidence and finding it by being more brash, more loud than everyone else.  The absolute glory of realizing I was maybe good.

And maybe I wasn’t.  Maybe I was having my Florence Foster Jenkins moment that surely we ALL must have at some point.  Maybe the rest of my group was cringing and holding their breath until we separated so they could congratulate each other on their natural talent while that silly blond girl floundered like a fish out of water.  That part is irrelevant.

What was important was how amazing it all FELT. Playing silly improv games and discovering ‘animal essence’ in this dusty, magical back room buried in the guts of the nearly 100-year-old theater, glowing ochre sunlight flooding the room, life had never felt more perfect.

I went on to get as involved in theater as I could in high school, and until the worst of what I can now easily call at least mild depression hit during my Junior year, I lived for those moments spent on stage.  What a wonderful thing, for people to just enjoy watching you do something you absolutely loved.  (Though now that I have lived on the other side of school performances, it is possible that very few of the people in the audience were enjoying anything.)

Life after school was a quick and hefty whirlwind of early marriage, babies, lots of work, moving, staying afloat, and for me, lots and lots of daydreaming and trying to write (my more accessible but questionably second passion).  But I haven’t ever forgotten the draw of the damn theater.

The very last ‘acting’ anything I was involved in was the 48 Hour Film Project, and that was as a writer.  It wasn’t nearly as fulfilling or interesting as any of my (very limited) acting experiences.

So we will see how this goes.  I’m nervous and distracted with the rest of my crazy life.  I can’t imagine trying to do anything like this for myself now.  This is probably just an exercise in making myself look ridiculous.

But hey, I’ll have something to write about.  So you can all quit complaining.  🙂