Admitting it. I feel: _______________ .

I am certain this isn't limited to folks who are caretakers.

Or folks who are worried/worriable/nearly spent with worry.

I'm certain it isn't exclusive to psychopaths, sycophants, and the psychotic... though with that I could be wrong. Overly boastful folks, neurotic folks, folks who don't know which applies to them, if not all... it's about admitting how you feel.

That crap is harder than I can in my gut admit that I am committed to feeling about it.

What?!

So, its like this, I started today, at about seven-twenty-eight, feeling... down. I was late. I had a meeting. It was off site. I was thinking about my reputation.

Now, no, reputations aren't completely based on being late or early, but new ones, and my relative external brownnes (and extreme brown in-ness) make my lateness a genetic/africanish thing... but that's a whole notha blog. And it's sufficient to say: i didn't want to be late, I didn't like how I felt about being late. I took seriously that I was... you get the point.

By noon-thirty, I felt proud. I walked straighter. I'd sealed a deal. I was future-thinking. I was in a suit (kinda, a blazer) but still. I was suit-able. And I did so solitarily.

By three, I was borderline. I was anxious over the maintenance of a few things. Overly planning several other things. And dammit, I forgot my phone. It was internally ugly. Though, when I bumped into someone I know who complimented my half-way suit, I smiled, big. When another person said (seriously) I resembled Jordan-Somebody, a newscaster from somewhere, I smiled again broadly and said "I'll take that". I told the guard it was a great day.

Lord have mercy, how the hell do I feel today? How the hell do any of us feel?

What separates this from a rant is that I have no clue if I'm necessarily angry or sad (though it may be time to let up OFF the caffeine), and that I'm really asking the question to any given one of us (given there is more than one of us reading this blog)...

Why is it so hard to really get in touch with how we feel, ruminate on it, speak on it (truly speak on it) and get over it (truly get over it)?

I mean, I realize some things are big... and take time... perhaps forever, but not every-damn-thing.

So, I guess this is where I admit it. I friggin feel: (pause...pause...)

I feel: _____________________.
(like I need to figure it out)
#crap.

Today I went to a party. Yesterday I ordered groceries online. #Mundane but #notsomuch

So, as the title suggests, I did some pretty normal things. I partied and purchased. I don't do as much of one as I do of the other, and unfortunately I guess... the things I do purchase aren't exactly as sexy or as fun/wild as they could be either.

Most will laugh when I say this: it's par for the course; I'm 31 not 21.

That's supposed to mean something. (#Kanyeshrug)

Back to the party I went to...today actually... I had a side conversation with someone who jokingly showcased that she was 24, but it was very much in a "go tell THAT to your 31" kind of way. I know it was meant to be cute, and it was, though I just didn't get it completely. I had liked my 24-days too. 31 is aiight, right?

I mean, at 24, I like her was finishing my first masters. I could probably eat a few more hamburgers and get away with a bit less sleep than I could manage at this point in the game (FU 31)... but I was missing something. Some longing (that I simply don't have) for me to be there again.

I think that there is a time for things... I'm not certain there is always a place (I mean, outside of the whole pee pee belongs in the bathroom kind of thing) but time is an important anchor, for me at least. And 31 is good to me right now.

My mom was 24 when she and my father got married and had me. I'm certain it wasn't easy. It was when my parents were in this whole "wilderness phase"... which involved a lot of greenery: they lived in the Salem Willos...a lot more greenery.... they were plant based people (diet)... and a whole lot more greenery... its rumored weed (and then some) was involved, with less of the bill-paying kind of greens, and kids, baby kids, like milk, not weed (which costs cash not crop). So, these were hungry years,quite a few of them. Theirs, my parents, was a hard 24. It just was.

And so sometimes, my 31 is anxious. Sometimes it's (very) fed up. Sometimes it just wants my family to eat with ease and organically. Sometimes it just wants to go out and do what the hell it/I want to do without all the damn snarkiness. The semi-bold-anti-cuteness. The ill-informed and ill-timed stuff too.

Just yesterday, my 31 went grocery shopping online. Chose spicy hummus and tabouleh for a dad (who fibs about his age) but who deserves to shave a few years off, just as he deserves a rich chickpea dip. My 31 ordered my mom diabetic friendly foods that (hopefully) won't go to waste. My (ancient-ass) 31 called twice, perhaps thrice to ensure they let the delivery guy in. Swallowed a sharp shard of pride when Mummi thinks the food just showed up, dropped down from the Divine and into the fridge... when in fact the source of that divinity was due to the parting in my e-checking. And so, sometimes my 31 goes a bit unthanked.

But it's my 31 that lets me do what I can do, and care in the way that I can, and caretake as I do. Even if pissily, grumpily, and humbly so.

So, I appreciate that.

And this is just where I'm at.

Telling the Kids. Oh yeah, and Charlie Sheen.

A few weeks back, I begin our typical Saturday to Boston from Uberbia. Zora awakes whenever the heck she likes, we eat vegetarian sausage, over-syruped, non-homemade waffles and drink carrot juice. She dresses in her best princess outfit over jeans, over a diaper, over whatever else she decides shed like to also wear, as they are all "must-haves" and she is a must-do kinda kid. We, as usual, are overdone.

I like to think we're genetically predisposed to being so.

We finally get out of the house, into the green car (which of our two, Zora refers to as her own) and drive to see Nana and Papa. My parents. I type this proudly as a little over two years ago, I certainly didn't think I'd refer to them so lovingly. But I do, and I am lovingly loving them.

But back to the today. So, Zora is happy. She hasn't seen Nana in days. She knows Nana will have her "interesting" concoction of a surprise for her: a bag of second-hand (if coffee and cigarette scented) surprises. Perhaps they'll be in a pillowcase; a reused lingerie bag; a gucci store canvas... it's always a surprise for us all. An endearing one. An expected one.

We pull up to the brownstone and Zora is giddy. Nana emerges from the doors; she isn't glowing. She isn't smiling. There is no bag.

Shit.

So, it began, Nana's first low day in 2 years since she's first laid eyes on her granddaughter, whom, in my mind I refer to as my mother's "cure". She has been on a high with love and affection for my little one, and most are: the kid is hilarious, engaging, and well, a bit overdone. She inspires the overdoneness in all. Which, is what she's done for my Mummi. Her Nana. Just perhaps not today.

Zora doesn't understand whats up, but she realizes its something. Now none of my bubbles are bubbling, not Zora, not her Nana.

So, I'm annoyed, and I don't navigate well annoyed. I try to get food, to coax them into a compliant happiness with music. I'm driving them from park to main street and realizing I'm getting miffed about lost gas. Which isn't the problem. It's just an off-day in all of our lives.

So I end it. I get Nana/Mummi some food, diabetic-friendly, no fructose, closer to the grain organic, which I'm not convinced anyone in her household will consume. I let everyone know the visit is going to need to come to its end. Politely. I love everyone, Drop Nana/Mummi off and drive a little bit faster than I should back home.

Zora, looking out the window in our now quiet car says: "Nana sick?"
Startled, I say "Yes baby"
Z: "Her head hurt?"
Me: "Yup. And maybe some other stuff does too."
Z: (long pause). "Oh. She need her doctor?"
"Perhaps sweetie she does"
Z: "Why?"

So, this is where it ends and begins. How to melt the reason why into something a 2.5 year old will get, will or won't share, will or won't ask me about constantly. And since she doesn't believe in Santa, does believe in princess magic, knows God makes everything including Mummah's purse and Noah's arc, I give her the best of a response I can offer:

"Baby, everyone is a little different. Nana too. Some days when Nana doesn't feel good; she sounds like she did today. Some days she doesn't. But we love her anyway. And we maybe love her more on these days. And she loves us all the time. But maybe something inside her doesn't feel good today."

In traffic. En route to our burbs, Zora's accepts this response, almost relieved by it. She falls asleep. We go home. I cry a little.
Ultimately though, its more than ok. We are as we are made.

I threw the Charlie Sheen piece in there for good measure.
But...Someone please help him now. He needs it. Perhaps now more than most times/most days.

And help doesn't come on a stage, it comes in a car, from a conversation with your kid, and a head-not towards your most humbled self.

Mine did.

-D