They make some seriously ridiculous “parenting” products, but I have recently come across the winner of every WTF IS HAPPENING award ever made.

Behold, the speaker you stick up your vagina so your baby has direct and uninterrupted access to music from your iPhone.

Go ahead. I’ll wait. Let that one register.

And no, no I am not making this up. You think I could make this shit up? I could not. Ever. Why?

BECAUSE I DON’T HATE WOMEN.

And that it why I would never attempt to convince a pregnant woman that she needs to spend $137 on a speaker to put up her vag.

Direct quote from website: “Babypod is a small intravaginal device that stimulates neural development in unborn babies through music. Scientific studies show that it encourages communication and vocalization in babies before birth through the music streamed. Babypod gives them their first musical and learning experience.”

Ladies, it is no longer good enough for you to play music in the room or car or even buy some other music-making device to hold next to your belly. Oh, no. What you need is TO ENCOURAGE COMMUNICATION IN YOUR UNBORN YOUNG BY STICKING A SPEAKER IN YOUR BODY.

And playing music.

How does this even work? I mean, first of all obviously the woman in question has to get the thing up there somehow. Have the makers of this gem ever been pregnant? DO THEY KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO REACH YOUR VAGINA WHEN YOU CAN’T SEE YOUR TOES?

Maybe a partner is supposed to help. Okay, sure. That makes sense. That sounds amazing: “Hey honey, when you get a moment could you put this speaker up my vagina? Purely non-sexual though. Totally educational. Great. Thanks. Have a nice day.”

Nope.

Maybe they figure think it should be done early in the pregnancy. But, does a fetus even have ears that early?

I hate everything.

I’m not sure what’s worse: the idea that they really think we should “encourage vocalization” in a baby before she’s left the womb, or the idea that holding a speaker up to your belly is no longer good enough.

I seriously viewed the womb-music-activity thing as the pinnacle of Shit Mothers Apparently Do That I Would Never Pull Together. I used to look at those womb music CDs and be like “No for real do women actually do that?”

Frankly, the idea that we need to play symphonies for in utero offspring strikes me as a bit excessive.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it. It clearly does no harm, and maybe even some good, but it seems like a big, big extra to me, like THE MOST EXTRA. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. Don’t consume soda and processed foods or brie or salami (so basically just die) and get exercise and take prenatals and make all your appointments and do kegels and gain 20-25 pounds only (which is fucking impossible, assholes) and spend lots of time nurturing your marriage and other kids and sleep a lot and take lovely professional photos and…

PLAY MUSIC FOR YOUR WOMB BABY.

Cool. Okay. I failed.

Although, gotta level with ya, I had four kids and I didn’t play Bach string quartets for any of them and yet they appear to be thriving. Right down the barrel of “functioning like a motherfucker.” That’s my family! And never once did I hold any gadget up to my belly to “provide a first musical learning experience.” WHY?

Because I’m not totally convinced fetuses need learning experiences.

Perhaps we should also read them the alphabet, a bit of Foucault, and have them watch the history channel.

Oh my god we could play Netflix through the vag speaker and MAKE THEM LEARN HISTORY.

I’m sorry. But please. Come on. Pleeeeasseeee somebody work with me here.

The last thing I want to do as a pregnant woman is stick one more thing up my vagina. Midwife hands, those metal death things OBs use, and um, ahem, et cetera, perhaps we could NOT add to the list of things going in or out of that area. OMG. Ew. I feel weird.

Who washes the speaker after?

And now I’m going to throw up.

STOP ASKING SO MUCH OF US EVIL INVENTOR MOTHERFUCKERS GO HOME WITH YOUR IDIOTIC PRODUCTS AND LET US RAISE OUR BABIES.

I did play a lot of Grateful Dead though. I bet that’s why they all like tie-dye and swaying.

Pink vag speakers for all!

Nobody, ever.

Ever.

This is not our job.

Goodnight.

I have an excellent attitude when I’m pregnant and would for sure be interested in a small plastic item in my vagina.

***

Join me for the last Write Anyway writing workshop of 2016.

Tuesdays at 10am PST, October.

I promise we won’t talk about vaginas. That is a lie. I cannot actually promise that.

We have got to talk. We have got to talk about the way motherhood is so often depicted as this sanctimonious martyrdom of hell in which formerly interesting and intellectual humans are reduced to snot and cereal.

This is the situation, partly. There are phases, particularly when children are in their infancy, when life seems to become nothing more than poop and milk and laundry peppered with zombie exhaustion, existential crises, and a lurking notion of “wtf has my life become?” (Clearly hyperbole remains intact, however.)

And there was absolutely a part of me that mourned my old self after I had my first child. I knew I would never be wholly the same, attached as I was, suddenly and irrevocably, to another human being. I could never walk away. I could never not be “mother.”

And that is heavy.

But it wasn’t the end. Motherhood is not the end of me and it never has been. I thought it was for a minute there, but I was wrong. My kids didn’t erase me. My kids didn’t turn me into a shadow of my former self. Yeah, I’m not out drinking fifths of Jack Daniels in Barcelona in my crop-top and mini-skirt, but ummmmmm, I’m also 37. Many of choose to change it up a bit around age 30. My husband and I aren’t frequenting bars and shooting pool in between shots we bought for our best friend Charlie who we met 10 minutes ago, but we’re also kinda old and tired and Netflix is calling.

We could still be doing this, but we aren’t, because our lives and values have changed, partly because we have kids, partly because we don’t find that stuff super fulfilling anymore (was it ever?). Also I’m an alcoholic but I digress.

The point is that motherhood was not the end of my personality, character, or identity. It wasn’t the end of my intellect and creativity and sarcasm. I still say fuck. I still like my music. I still like sex. I like movies and politics and critical theory. I like debating shit with people. I like getting fired up and thinking about things, and I like my husband. As a friend and as a lover. I like going places with him. I like to flirt with him. I like to swim in rivers and camp and write the shit out of things.

Even when my days are diapers and my nights are nursing, even when we haven’t had sex in way too long, even when my waking hours are finding shoes and washing dishes, even when kid voices drown out all the things forever, I AM STILL IN HERE.

Do not for a second erase me.

I like my friends who don’t have kids. I like my friends who have kids. I like going on girls’ trips and watching them get naked in hot tubs and smoke weed.

What is wrong with that? Nothing.

And there’s nothing wrong with women making other choices. SAHM, working mom, by choice or force, whatever. And maybe life has become a seemingly endless cycle of mundane tasks. We’ve all been there. But to me, that seems temporary, and I am sick and TIRED of this narrative that motherhood requires erasure of the self. Who the hell came up with this anyway?

And why isn’t it assumed that men disappear as individuals when they become dads? I don’t see too many men apologizing for becoming devoted and loving fathers. In fact, pretty sure we CONGRATULATE THE CRAP out of them for that sort of thing.

But more importantly, I DON’T SEE THIS WHEN I LOOK AROUND AT MOTHERS.

What I see is a bunch of fiercely powerful, badass humans – whether they are “stay at home moms” or not. I see artists: writers, painters, directors, knitters and bakers. I see pissed off feminists and fierce advocates for gender creativity. I see women of color fighting for the lives of their sons and daughters and I see doctors, lawyers, yogis and fat women in bikinis, sexy as hell and owning all 40 years of their beauty. Every motherfucking inch of it.

I see home-schoolers and friends and homemakers and executives. I see women creating businesses from their crafts and talents and heart, rockin’ PTA meetings and preschool events and women leading children on their paths to whoever they were meant to become: fighters and lovers and truth-sayers and storytellers. I see wickedly funny women who call out bullshit faster than you can say “Caillou is the spawn of Satan.”

And yet, they write us like we’re nothing. They write us like we’re sad little shells. They write us like we NEED TO BE APOLOGIZING TO OUR HUSBANDS FOR NOT MEETING THEIR NEEDS PERFECTLY.

Hey, the 1950s called. They totally want their rhetoric back.

Lemme tell ya something: WE GET TO DEFINE MOTHERHOOD HOWEVER THE FUCK WE WANT. And we get to do so unapologetically and locked in solidarity with all the other mamas out there who are like SURE I’M WIPING YOUR ASS ALL DAY BUT I DON’T LOVE IT and I’M IN HERE SOMEWHERE ASSHOLES.

And that’s the thing, really: I don’t buy that we’re gone. I don’t buy that we are really gone. I don’t buy that we curl up to the size of a sippy cup and wait for the years to pass.

We are powerful as we ever were, and I, for one, will never let you forget it.

And if you feel erased, mama, check it out: I see you. What you are, what you once were, and what you are still.

This is motherhood.

This is us.

We get to own it.

I am often the mom who forgets whatever it is I was supposed to do. The activity. The paperwork. The change in regular scheduling. The thing the kid was supposed to bring to school: a stuffed animal, for example.

This is not because I’m a “hot mess mom.” I don’t even know exactly what that means, but I am not a mess. I just suck at this.

I’m not flighty or air-headed, bouncing around all WHAT IS HAPPENING WHERE AM I OMGGGGGGG. My feet are on the ground, but I struggle, that’s for sure, and I forget a lot of things.

In my defense, there are a lot of fucking things to remember. Why are there so many things to remember?

And sometimes my tiny mistakes seem to quadruple in frequency and I find myself buried beneath a sense of my own failure, though I know I’m not really failing my children, my community, or myself.

I’m not a mess. But I’ll never be the mom who is uniformly on top of her game. I put things in my calendar then forget to check my calendar. I RSVP then forget the next day. Of course, I’m also working hard on my writing career. But even when I was a stay-at-home-mom, I gotta level with ya, sometimes all this kid shit STILL wasn’t first on my list of Critically Important Things, and I don’t feel guilty about that. Does that make me evil? A bad mother? No, it does not.

It makes me imperfect, and me.

Lately I’ve been struggling again with serious insomnia. It’s been five years now, but last week it went batshit and decided it would obliterate all sleep except for about 3 hours each night. I was crumbling. I woke with pain across my eyes and cheekbones in a zombie-like fog that wore off around 3pm, only to be replaced by a frantic exhaustion that I knew would never be soothed.

And my god is it heavy.

And so, I was messing up a lot. Forgetting a lot. Showing up late. Barely making it to this or that. And yet, at the same time, I’m writing my book and a screenplay and this blog and running writing workshops.

But I’m not a mess. I’m not in the air.

I am fucking tired though. And I sorta suck at this.

I volunteer in Georgia’s kindergarten on June 5 because it’s the last chance I’ll get this year. I volunteer for a last time even though I only did it two other times this year, and planned on doing it so many more times. I feel sad I didn’t do it more. Every week, there was more work, more sick kids, more sick me, and I didn’t do it like I planned I would.

I scramble to sign up for one last day and wonder where our year went. I get there and watch her on the floor, legs crossed, on her circle, looking up at her teacher. I try to burn the image into my mind. She turns around and waves, “Hi, mama!” she says under her breath, her little kindergarten fist and blonde head. Sitting there I remember our little co-op preschool, the way she always wanted to play “Sneaky Snacky Squirrel.” I remember how annoying those kids were.

I glance at my phone and wonder if I’ll have time to finish that writing project.

I’m grateful I get to go to her classroom at all, volunteer at all. When I worked in an office, I don’t think I even knew parents were allowed to volunteer in classrooms.

The next day, she’s supposed to bring a stuffed animal to school. We arrive on campus and I’m happy we’re not late. As soon as we pull up, I see one of her classmates with a stuffed animal. I put my hand on George’s shoulder and ask, “Oh no, honey, today is the day you’re supposed to bring a stuffed animal!”

Her face sinks, “Yes.” They are going to create a habitat for them, out of boxes. That even sounds fun to me. She told me about it the day before. How could I forget? God damnit. I WAS JUST HERE TALKING ABOUT IT WITH THE TEACHER WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.

“Maybe we have one in the car,” I say, figuring what are the chances we don’t have a fucking stuffed animal in this giant SUV full of every other item known by humankind.

But of course, we happened to do our bi-annual cleaning just a few days before. I’m kidding. We totally clean tri-annually.

There’s nothing. I can’t believe it. I look down at her and imagine saying, “Sorry, my love, but you’ll just have to not have one.” I imagine her sitting there without one. I tell myself it’s not a big deal. I KNOW it’s not that big of a deal, but in that moment in front of that school and child, I couldn’t take one more tiny failure. I felt my voice cracking. The exhaustion of my life seemed to plant itself across my shoulders and heart: Every irritated time I snapped or yelled at them, returning moments later to apologize, explain I acted badly. Every missed birthday party and every time they’ve been the kid whose mom forgot. I knew I had been blowing it lately, and I was so tired, I almost cried right there in the damn parking lot. I knew I was making a big deal out of this, but I didn’t care. I refused to do it again.

“Go to class, George, and I’ll be right back with a stuffed animal. I promise.”

She beamed. I promised again and my lip may have quivered. I patted her head and felt remarkably pathetic.

My plan was to race to the grocery store down the road and hope for the best. It’s one of those fancy stores that sells triple-cream brie and bamboo cutting boards and homemade bread, but I was thinking maybe they’d have something in the balloon section.

They didn’t. I paced the store wondering what the fuck I was going to do. The baby aisle had a giraffe rattle. I considered it. Nope. I couldn’t. Too baby-ish. She’d get made fun of. But now I really couldn’t give up. I promised the kid, but I was running out of time. I decided I’d get a cup of coffee and race to Target, but I didn’t know if I’d even be back to her in time to do the activity.

As I was getting my coffee, I happened to glance down the aisle that leads to the back of the store, and on the clearance rack, happened to see the fuzzy top of some sort of stuffed animal. I think I actually said, “Oh thank god” out loud.

When I got there, I realized they were the leftover Mother’s Day bears. One said “I love you mom.” I considered it since she can’t read anyway. The other one didn’t say anything but was the most hideous shade of hot pink I’d ever seen in my life. Who the fuck makes a fluorescent pink bear with a rose? It was awful. Truly hideous.

But I knew it would work, and I bought it. It was $4.11.

When I peeked my head in the door, Georgia happened to be sitting at a table right near me. Her face burst into dimples when she saw me, and morphed into full on ecstasy when I held the pink bear out to her. “I LOVE IT!”

She hugged it. She showed her teacher. She was damn near bouncing.

As I left, I smiled, and thought, “Well, it was supposed to be a zoo animal of some sort – since it was a lesson on habitat – but George got a neon pink bear with a rose, and damn was she happy. You did good, Janelle.”

I felt restored by the slightly pathetic act. It was my tiny revolution, my refusal to give up. We do our best for our kids, and sometimes our best is a clearance-rack pink bear 30 minutes late.

I wonder if my kids will remember the pink bear or if they’ll remember the birthday party I forgot.

I think they’ll remember the bear.

They’ll remember all the clearance-rack bears you give them, too, the face of a mother who keeps showing up, even if she’s not just right, and it’s almost too late. They’ll remember the mother who even removed the tags before she handed it to her.

I see you out there, doing the best with what you have, every damn day, and watching the kids race past, while you wonder if it’s enough and what they’ll remember.

They’ll remember the bear.

It’s us who have to learn that it’s enough.

I think we can do that too, if we watch them closely, and learn. Love is love is love. Even in tardy fluorescent pink.

One of my goals in life is to not let my decision to have children ruin anybody’s life.

I talk a lot about asshole, entitled parents producing tiny asshole children, and I work really, really hard not to do that. It’s kind of my claim to fame.

It’s not. I’m not famous, or even special, really.

Anyway, on Saturday, the fruit of my womb (I just threw up a little) ruined a woman’s afternoon. Or a portion of it, at least.

We were in Santa Cruz at the Beach Boardwalk, celebrating Arlo’s 2^nd birthday. While walking through the amusement park to get ice cream, Georgia began vehemently asking for “a little bear dessert,” which of course I promptly ignored because that’s the first thing I do whenever any of my kids ask for anything.

But she kept on, and because we had stopped to let the bigger kids go on a ride, I decided to inquire about why child number three was hopping about and begging.

“What the fuck is a ‘bear dessert?’” I asked, but said the f word with my eyes only because I’m classy. She answered by pulling me around to a stand with an Icee ad. She was talking about the bear on the Icee ads. This is totally how they sell this crap to kids.

“Can I please have a bear dessert instead of ice cream?” She asked.

“Have you ever had one of those?” I asked.

“No, but it looks sooooo good.” She answered.

“Dude, they’re super gross,” I said, lying (I don’t remember how they taste). You see, I have a standing rule against sticky shit, particularly if it’s red. I’d like to tell you it’s because red dye number 40 kills people, but actually it’s because I don’t want to deal with the potential mess this  kind of thing brings. Plus, if you start buying your kids Icees and candy, all they ever want in the future is Icees and candy. Not interested, thanks.

But Mac disagreed, saying, “No they are not gross. Why are you ruining our kid’s childhood? Did you not drink those daily as a kid?”

“Well of course I did, Mac, because it was 1989 and all I had to entertain myself was the 7-11 down the street.”

But I realized he was right, and we’re at an amusement park and beach, so what could happen? I bought her one. I even bought a big one because I figured the other kids would want to try it. Plus it was like 50 cents more for twice the size. Why do they do that? WHY MUST THEY ALWAYS WIN WITH THEIR CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA?

So we get our ice cream and return to our spot on the beach. George drank about a third of the red-dye-death drink then stuck the cup with the remaining liquid in  the cup-holder of a beach chair.

Time passes. Arlo discovers the cup, removes the lid, and begins depositing chips in the remaining liquid. Normally I would care about this sort of thing, but I didn’t this time, because a.) he was already disgusting; red sticky shit couldn’t possibly make this worse; b.) he was super annoying at the beach and this activity had no drowning risk, so I could sit down for a minute; and c.) they were “baked” chips. Mac bought them. Who the fuck buys “baked” chips?

Men sent to the store, that’s who.

He didn’t mean to. We aren’t monsters.

Anyway, more time passes. Like an hour, or more.

Arlo saunters over to the chair, and, before I could even notice what he was doing, sits down in just the right way that he flips the chair over on it’s side, launching the melted Icee-chip mixture out of the chair and onto, yep, you guessed it, the woman enjoying herself on the blanket in front of us. Oh, but it didn’t just hit her. It hit her blanket. It went inside her bag. It pretty much doused every single thing she owned, including, understandably, her will to live.

That’s right: Sticky red melted ice drink with chips and possibly kettle corn spewed across a total stranger. My entire family was horrified. We were immediately on our hands and knees helping her clean it up. I’m giving her wipes and offering water bottles and begging forgiveness and she’s looking at me like, “Please die in your sleep” and I’m like believe me I’d like to, but there was nothing I could do.

The damage had been done.

I had become one of them.

I was the asshole.

It wasn’t intentional, and I’m not sure I could have prevented it, but it felt terrible. There was nothing to do but own the fact that my existence seriously inconvenienced an innocent bystander, despite my efforts to not be that person.

As we sat there watching the woman play totally unobtrusively with her son and husband, I kept glancing at the red all over her blanket and realizing, once again, that sometimes I AM THE ASSHOLE. In life. In general.

I can think I’m not. I can deny it. I can try to wish it away. But the time will come when I’ll have no choice but to face the truth. Will it set me free?

I had to leave. Fuck freedom.

On the off chance Arlo flung sand from his shovel or threw up and it hit her or some shit, I had to get out of there. It was time to leave anyway, maybe.

As we were leaving, I saw some grown ups and kids having a grand old time throwing sand at each other. Yes, you read that correctly. Literally engaging in my idea of hell, gleefully. My first thought was, “What the actual fuck. What kind of monster throws sand at a beach? What if that gets on ME?”

Then I thought: Well I guess it’s their turn to be the asshole.

But I looked at my kids anyway and said, “DO NOT EVER THROW SAND.”

Because we can’t avoid being the asshole all the time, but we sure as hell can avoid it most of the time.

This is my deep learning message for the day.

Have a nice afternoon.

Hey, hiiiiii! Fuck your pleasant life!

In December 2014, I ran my first online writing workshop.

That was possibly the most boring first sentence I’ve ever written in my life. Stay with me here. It may get better.

Anyway, my business manager and family had been encouraging me to launch a class for a long time, but I didn’t, because I didn’t think anybody would sign up. I saw myself as the kid left standing hopefully on the lawn realizing nobody’s coming to her birthday party.

This never actually happened to me but shit, dude, these fears are real.

But in December 2014, there wasn’t much construction work for my husband, and I lost my last writing gig, and I realized we didn’t have money for a goddamn Christmas tree, and for some reason, that threw me over the edge. I REALLY LIKE CHRISTMAS.

And yes, even then I realized we were really lucky to have “no presents or tree” as a motivator, as opposed to, say, no food or housing. We do not live in poverty. We’ve always had a home, and food, and a car, and healthcare, but it was in that paycheck-to-paycheck, pay-the-oldest-bills-first kind of way, and I knew I was either going to have to get a “real” job or try to make my living as a “real” writer.

And the workshops were one step in the direction of the latter.

So I fucking did it. I hit “publish” on the workshop sales page I had sitting in the draft folder.

Motherfucker sold out in 48 hours.

I’ll never forget calling my husband and yelling, “People are signing up!” It felt like, well, Christmas.

Yeah. I went there.

We bought a big ass tree.

I had been writing the blog for almost four years, and I had a graduate degree in English, but there was still some voice in me that said, “You can’t do it. It won’t work. NOBODY LIKES YOU ASSHOLE.”

But it got too uncomfortable where I was standing, so I decided to take a step, because even if it failed, at least I’d have tried. Since then, those workshops have enabled me to get by as a writer between freelance gigs, and I get to pick my kids up from school, which is wild and awesome and also kind of terrible but whatever. #blessed.

The second class I taught began in March 2015 and involved 15 women. Eleven of them wanted to keep working after the class, and I had mentioned possibly forming a writing group in which we wrote every day for 30 days and held each other accountable. They encouraged me to create it.

And I did it, with less hesitation, because the first one went well. Fear is like that. It diminishes as we take steps we’re afraid of.

Of course I had no real idea if it would work or not, but by the end of the 30 days, we all realized something odd was happening between us. There was an energy, a buzz in the interweb air we breathed together. Basically, we all just wanted to keep working together, AND SO WE DID. WE just kept going. A couple of people dropped out of the little crew, but there’s a core group of nine of us that haven’t stopped. We have a little Facebook group and hold monthly calls online.

During one of those calls, I suggested rather flippantly that we “have a writing retreat someday, in person.”

There was a roar of agreement, but I shoved it out of my head as a pipe dream, a “yeah right like that would ever fucking happen” kind of thing. But as time passed, I started asking myself, why can’t it happen? Could it? Maybe it could. Why the hell couldn’t it?

I’ve never run a fucking retreat in my life, but I had also never written a goddamn blog.

So I did some research and found us a spot in my beloved homeland and my worst friend Sarah agreed to cook (she’s a chef) and my husband Mac agreed to make us fires (he’s a builder) and help Sarah in the kitchen and I wrote the workshops and last Tuesday I joined eight women from around the world at an old ranch house nestled in redwoods, 5 miles off the coast of northern California, where the choir of angels live.

And we were all, immediately, writersisterfriends. We wrote, cried, laughed maniacally. We sat around fires and work-shopped pieces of writing. We walked the beach and sorted pebbles. We sat in a yurt (yes, I said “yurt”) and talked craft. Voice, tone, syntax. We listened to Mac and Sarah sing “Rocky Raccoon” and “Don’t think twice, it’s alright” and Joni Mitchell and Prince. Some of us smoked and drank beer and wine around a fire under brilliant northern stars. Some of us didn’t.

All of  us though wondered what the actual fuck had happened, and how we got there. How does something like this happen? How does something so gorgeous materialize out of nothing? A dream. A thought. The internet? How profoundly unromantic.

And yet, it did happen. Out of a flippant suggestion, a silly idea, a wisp of smoky dreaming.

But that wasn’t it. Because what it actually came from, on the ground, was a group of humans who decided to do something and respond to life as it presented itself even though it made perhaps no sense in the “rational” world. It happened because a group of women found something together and committed to it, for themselves, for each other, for the act of creation itself, to jump off the cliff and trust it’ll be worth it, that people will show up, that you won’t be left standing alone, wondering why you even tried.

I wonder sometimes how we decide what’s worth our time. I wonder how we choose what we “should” be doing. I wonder how we’ve convinced ourselves that magic doesn’t come from weird ass decisions, that we shouldn’t get a bit reckless sometimes, that we shouldn’t say “fuck it” and at least try, for no other reason than an opportunity has shown up and it fucking looks interesting.

We may end up right where we started, and we may end up losing, but then again we may end up circling the fire of the source itself, connected to some humans that can never be strangers again, wondering how the hell we arrived, and forgetting altogether the piece that wondered if such things were possible.

I want to tell you everything, bring you there through my words, but the magic lives in the thing itself, and every time I try, my voice isn’t enough.

And that, I think, is the point. We have no choice but to try again.

typical cooks

yurt school

first time we all met

Maybe it’s the happiest I’ve ever been, or as happy as I am today. If I remember it’s mine to find.

P.S. Also please read this 4-70 times.