Growing up all the girls got to the cute girly phase where they could bubble their letters and make posters for pep rallies, etc. I just reached the age where the boys were finally bigger than me and me kicking their asses was no longer cute, so naturally, I started practicing bubble lettering. I whipped my skillz out a few years back and both of my son’s jaws just dropped, and then things were said out of disbelief. They asked me when I was in a gang and how many trains and walls I wrote on. Yes, this is what they asked because my bubble lettering is not the cute shit teachers have. My bubble lettering looks like a skill I learned while sniffing/huffing a can of spray paint, something you would find on a poster hanging up in a prison cell. It is fucking terrible and I love it, but I mostly just love the boy’s utter disbelief. I love shocking my sons with new things about me. Last week I spent a solid hour telling them all of the different sports, hobbies, and clubs I have tried out throughout my life. Apparently, I had forgotten a lot of the things I have done as well so it kind of turned into a little inspirational talk for myself, and nothing super shocking to them. Cool, Mom…you did it all, you feel better, now? No, no I don’t, I want youuuu to explore life head-on. Try different sports, hobbies, food, etc. so you can confidently say “It is not for me.” They do not want to. It is during these moments I struggle to identify myself in them at all, but then I look at them standing next to me in the mirror or in a photo and I am like holy shit, phew, they are mine. I also forget it is impossible not to know if they are because they came out of my body. Whatever. Then there are other times I am absolutely certain they are mine. Like when we were playing a board game on Mother’s Day and I got frustrated and said “fuck a duck” and Otis said, “You’re going to do what?” And when I said “Otis!” He said “Yeah, I know, sorry” while making a stink face that was slightly remorseful but mostly just really trying not to be proud of himself. Truth be told, I was proud of him and his impeccable timing and I think my face screamed it. 

I have to make a confession. Something I am not proud of-ish. I was vacuuming the baseboards on Saturday using the heavy-duty shop vac, not the sweet little Dyson. I wanted to make sure I got everything and could not even hear myself think through my AirPods blaring the most random set of jams. Nothing like some good deep cleaning to purge some thoughts out of a brain that never knows when to turn off. I lifted the first set of shades (no penis drawing to be found) and I saw a fly and I thought vacuum that motherfucker up. And then I thought, oh my gosh, Britt, what the fuck is wrong with you? And then I thought, vacuum that motherfucker up. Since I heard that one twice, I went with it. Quantity over quality. I stuck the extender on, barely touched the window with the edge, and slid it towards the fly. I watched him holding on to the glass and slowly slide into the mouth of the hose. I panicked for a brief moment and thought I had to go let this little fella out. Then I realized he had been tossing around quite a bit in there and was likely dizzy and would not even know he was dying. Alternate outcomes ran through my mind like someone else was bound to hit him with the fly swatter, one of the dogs was going to whip out their mad fly killing skillz, he would end up escaping into the heat and fly right into one of the melting fly strips hanging outside and just grill to death with feet bound to goo, or he was going to slowly die staring out of one of the windows longing to be outside just once more if only to sizzle and bitch one last time about the humidity (I briefly became the fly). In the end, I concluded I was doing him a favor and I left him in the shop vac. I felt like I was really starting to live up to my street graffiti skillz reputation and I kind of liked it. #Flykilla

I went to sleep last night listening to a multitude of meditations. I love how zoned out I get. I particularly like getting my breathing under control. Pretty sure I mouth breath a lot lately with my allergies through the fucking roof, humidity fucking choking me while lifting my hair to the heavens, and spending a lot of time on cardio. I catch myself out of breath a lot of the time and think, ew. It also does not help that I will talk through anything. If I have something to say, it will be said, even when I am meditating. Sometimes I cannot help it. As I have mentioned before, my sister used to tell me bedtime stories and she would really enunciate the “cool” and “crisp” and I would be like, ew. You can hear the saliva clicking sometimes and the entire anatomical process of how someone speaks, breathes, and swallows at the same time. We clearly are not meant to speak so softly. Yoga instructors, therapists, and namaste fanatics all have this voice or attempt to. I will say though, I really do find certain peoples voices very soothing, but it usually is still a strong voice. Not like my momma voice strong, but a solid voice. Nothing will make me cringe quicker than a mousy voice on a woman. And I can almost always pinpoint the kind of man she is married to or dates…Brad. So here I was listening to these meditations last night, three dogs laying on me, my eyes closed, neck crooked and not properly supported, a slight S curve to my body, and this man’s voice just started irritating the living fuck out of me. I was supposed to have my palms face up and a straight back, but no man tells me what to do. As the irritation set in I felt my left hand gripping my hip bone tighter and tighter. I have no fingernails, because I think they are dirty and germ accumulators, and because that man from Düsseldorf back in 2008 told me you can tell a lot about a woman and her self-worth by her nails…naturally, I continued chopping mine off. Ain’t no man out there need to know a damn thing about me. I wonder how he fares in this day and age with all the insane witchy nails, soooo many self-worthy women to choose from. Anyway, I dig into my hip to try and hold on to the moment, and then boom. I snap out of the temporary zen, tell him out loud that he is full of shit, and completely discredit the entire 20-minute practice all because of his voice. We all have our thing. His voice, my “nails”. He sounded “judgy,” not healing. He particularly pissed me off when he said we should not carry stories around with us, and to rather leave storytelling to the moment. This came after partially telling his own story about not talking to his son for the last twenty-five years. Sounds like someone suddenly found it convenient not to discuss the past. No. People who abandon their stories ultimately abandon their evolving trails of truth, their hard-earned lessons, and most importantly their knowledge to do better and be better. Just because we remember does not mean we are living in that moment, it means we don’t ever want to live in that moment again, or at least not with fingernails.