Lovely little things, 24

The lovely little things this week centered mostly around my still broken refrigerator. Sorry, I know you’re tired of hearing about it. Me too. But in the ridiculousness, there was lovely and if I don’t focus on the lovely, then the big evil corporation wins. And we can’t have that.

the power of venting

All day on Monday, I fought. With my heart and my words and I fought all day to drag my stories out of me. I fought to not vent my anger and to write around it. And then, at the end of the day, I got in the car and called a friend on the way to pick up my daughter. And, finally, I vented. I spewed all the anger I felt about how awfully we’re being treated and how there is nothing we can do about it and I let it all out. And then my friend, in turn, vented to me about something in her life and I listened and watched our anger stream out into the air and evaporate together. By the time I left my car to greet my daughter, I felt a thousand times lighter. Venting is powerful.

the power of solutions

After listening to me flip out and after spending hours on the phone trying to get things sorted out, my husband came home, took us all to the grocery store, and then led the entire family in an exercise of organizing and packaging our food safely into several coolers now tucked into corners in our kitchen. He didn’t succumb to the depths of anger and frustration. He worked a solution and brought us along. And standing in our kitchen, cutting cucumbers as my girl separated bunches of grapes into containers and my husband poured ice over cartons of milk and eggs and the baby pushed a still empty cooler around the kitchen, I realized. This is life. This is family. We stick together and we make it through. And it’s the most lovely thing.

big day out

I’ve been doing the thing you should not do. The thing that all the more experienced writers and workers-at-home tell you to not do. I’ve been burrowing. I’ve been sitting in my house and curling up in my office. And a lot of that time, most of it in fact, I’ve been writing. But this week, I’ve been flailing. And falling. And not writing. So when a friend asked me out on a writing date, I took her up on it. And then I made a day of it, meeting another friend and then more and writing in between. I actually got up in the morning and dressed and prepared to be out of my house. And the energy I got from that is undeniable. Even an introvert needs people, sometimes.

thank you

This week I wrote about my baby boy. That he is still not talking and we’re not freaking out but we are worried. And the response was so lovely. Friends and strangers, all so eager to help and console and stand by us and share resources and knowledge. Sometimes writing here helps to make things smaller in a way that I need them to be smaller (like that dang fridge). But sometimes it makes them bigger in a way they really need to be bigger. Like the circle of support around us and our worry and our parenting journey and our son. I don’t know what we’re going to do, if anything, just yet with him but I know, better, our options. And for that, I am so so grateful.

favorite words

At the end of a very long Monday, during which I spent entirely too much time fretting over my broken refrigerator and horrible customer service and struggling to write and the progress I just didn’t feel was good enough and it was the Monday after a long, holiday weekend and that was hard too… after all of that, my husband (after, as described above, cheerfully devising solution after solution to our fridge woes) searched for and found this video to show to me. Because he knows well my love of awesomely bad jokes and and nacho jokes and fun animation and he knew it would cheer me up. And it did.

So, today, I share with you: Two Chips. (warning: there is some chip-on-chip violence that I don’t condone, but the rest is pure hilarity)

Have a happy weekend! Come back Monday and let’s taco ’bout it!