Church has reconvened and I'm...HA, I'm home getting drunk because Sam isn't watching right now and it's Sunday and for once I don't have to bow to anyone's schedule but my own. I've been dragging my iPad around the point all morning trying to find a good place to chill and it's probably going to be the stables for the duration because at least my studio has a fridge and in that fridge is a 24-case of hard lemonade because it's nice to have cold beverages when you're doing heavy yard work and there was no room in the house fridge and you can't put cans in the freezer so that rules out leaving them in the garage.
It's not a big fridge, it's one of the little retro Magic Chef ones but it's green. Also this is the place where the kids can have sleepovers or movie night. There's a back projection wall painted with silver screen paint, a couch and that fridge, since all of my art supplies and my easel pack up neatly and stow away. The children get privacy here, too. But they're only allowed one can of hard lemonade each and not if they're driving and their friends aren't if they're driving either and I check, because it's important.
So today I am sacked out in my studio day-drinking and drawing and listening to Oceans of Slumber and enjoying a whole two hour stretch with nothing to account to. My stomach growls. It doesn't want alcohol this early, it wants another cup of coffee, maybe a blueberry muffin and a long slow-painful stretch in the sun beside Lochlan.
But Lochlan is sleeping, it's about to rain, I don't want to go all the way back to the main house for coffee (on the other side of the driveway and down the hill) and besides, PJ ate the last of the blueberry muffins last night.
Why am I not in church? Lochlan is sleeping, I said. He woke up long enough to tell me he didn't want me to go at all and to wait another week or two and as much as I didn't want to miss Sam's in-person announcements about his and Matt's wedding, Lochlan is right and sitting in a room with a bunch of other people, even if it's far apart, even if it's a shortened service is kind of the last thing I want to do.
And for the first time in a long while my knee-jerk impulse isn't to throw myself from the cliff into a fire until you can't tell I was ever there, it's extreme self-preservation. This is probably the 'perspective' everyone is always talking about, or the Xanax is giving me tons of unusual clarity instead of the usual opposite.
Either way, I'm sure Jesus misses me. He told me this morning when he waved from the orchard as I was on my way up the hill. He called out something about not mixing alcohol and pills but I couldn't really hear him. I think he forgets I'm deaf. Everyone does.