A crown of thorns.

Crone. 

It's a weird word, a single harsh sound with some sort of baggage attached. You think wizened old witch, bitter shrew who lives in the trees and doesn't want to be bothered and-

Wait, that actually sounds perfect. 

It's the triple goddess, the final life boss, the aspiration of a women who has cheated death and lives to tell the tale. 

Maiden, Mother, Crone. 

Before menses, then the fertility years and then the end of those years, counted off in three hundred and sixty five days without bleeding. 

And here we are, May 22, 2025. I began bleeding at the age of nine, and so we have a perfect forty-five year circle here and we're done. No more babies (there were not going to be any more babies anyway, I've written that story to death), no more expectations of those sorts, no more stupid hormones, no more surprise mood swings or accidents, in which someone would helpfully wrap their flannel around me and hang out in a t-shirt until we could leave and I always looked as if I loved grunge fashion and I was always overheated, flush and tripping on long trailing cuffs. From the first midway night when I thought I was dying and Lochlan explained what was happening, using a Judy Blume book that he read out loud every night for a week when we were together until a week or so ago when my doctor unhelpfully suggested I try synthetic hormones. The first domestic chore I ever learned was how to get blood out of a Levi's button down. I'm still really good at getting blood out of clothes. It's a useful talent, okay?

No, thank you to the hormones. I much prefer to ride out the swings, the hot flashes and freeze outs, the inability to sleep at all anymore, past three or four hours, tops. Rides are better than watching from the sidelines, as always. I prefer to figure out the food cravings and the anxiety and the sheer anger. I prefer to slow down and heal instead of pushing through the leg pain and phantom cramps and wild headaches. 

And the freeing, delicious, extravagant lack of care about anything that doesn't interest me. 

Pffft. 

Especially when it comes to being weird, as I said already. I spent an awful lot of years trying to fit in, trying to be who Cole wanted me to be, trying to blend into the woodwork in the best way possible and be supermom and a fashion icon and a smart cookie. Who isn't trying to be every woman all the time? 

Exactly. Now? The uniform is patchwork overalls or a mended dress and a homeknit sweater. Sometimes also handmade socks and clogs. My hair hasn't been cut in months but it's growing into the cutest mini shag/bob thing. Makeup? I don't know what that is. Nail Polish? I threw it all away though we keep a dark blue for Benjamin because he looks better with his nails done than I ever did. 

More dresses, less pants. Big bags because I like to have all my stuff handy. Painting a mural on the fence because it's MY FUCKING HOUSE. Cake for breakfast? Of course, but then again I always did that. Champagne on a Thursday at four in the afternoon because it's a party and I had to google rituals to celebrate this very solemn, very important milestone in my life. No one talks about this. I live in a house full of men and I think that was part of the issue, the person who taught me to be a lady was a boy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still a routine-based girl. I still brush my teeth before bed, pay all the bills on time and have a calendar entry to reload the toilet paper on the shelf in each bathroom because no one else can ever remember. I still make sure all the beds and towels get changed weekly and I keep on top of everything to make sure everything is up to date and all our work is done. But it's whimsical and magical and a little bit off somehow. The way I always wanted it to be but I no longer have to fight for it because I have arrived.

Am I smart? No. I'm logical. I'm practical and I'm empathetic to a fault. I'm weird. And I've hit the third level so now I AM the final boss. Congratulations to me. I did it. I survived. 

Five hundred and twenty-four periods. Ish. That's almost thirty-six hundred days of bleeding and she still walks and talks and breathes and hasn't killed anyone (on purpose). 

Go me. 

Cheers.

(And a huge thank you to my boys for never making it seem like it was a defect or a weakness, even when I yelled at them to go get chocolate and stop breathing so loud, but especially to Lochlan for being a really good big sister about all of it when Bailey had already flown the coop).

Happy Mother's Day

My beautiful children both greeted me with hugs and celebratory exclamations and cards and more hugs and extra hugs from newer honorary children in the form of their significant others and then we made casual dinner plans for later and they took off to spend the meantime on their Sundays as always because it's sunny and everyone is free so please, go and enjoy the day. Dinner will be fun. 

(It was, and now it's very late and I think it's been close to eighteen or twenty years since I've opened a tab at night to write. I actually sat down to work on PJ's sweater (he requested a knit! FINALLY!) and watch La Dolce Villa on Netflix because the Oklahoma Bombing documentary was too harsh for me today and I need a good horror or a Christmas hallmark and it started and I was like is that Scott Foley? You know, from Felicity that was actually on television last time I wrote at nighttime, around twenty years ago and I'm thinking he's old now, playing the dad of a grown daughter who is in Italy and about to buy a villa and then I was like oh, right. 

He's my age. 

Did I mention three days ago I went to Shopper's Drug Mart to pick up some things that never seem to be at the grocery store and the clerk helpfully gave me the discount. You know, the 10% off senior's discount?)

Um. 

CHRIST.

Jacob is laughing somewhere right now, up in the clouds, while I lament the continued unstoppable trainwreck of time itself and Scott Foley should be frozen in time somewhere and my children should not be adults showing up to tell me of their travel plans and their First Home Savings accounts and their pets  that they raise and care for and their cars and their opinions on politics and why is Caleb so FUCKING difficult, though I must point out here that Ruth is a bull in a china shop when it comes to Caleb, able to put him in his place with an eyebrow raise. She is a barracuda and he is her prey and she is out to protect her mother at all costs and luckily she will never know the real prices that have been paid because I've always protected her from that.

And Henry doesn't want to deal at all. Henry just keeps Caleb at arms length or beyond, instead leaning in towards Lochlan as his anchor father and he is professionally polite but warm and logical and also can be as cold as ice sometimes. I'm sure Jake sees this too and is proud of Henry. Henry is as tall as Jake now and has the beard and the long hair and the doesn't-give-a-fuck outward attitude that makes me warm and fuzzy inside. 

Dinner was big, in any case and afterward, maybe after at least several glasses of wine, Caleb practically knocks me over with an aggressive forehead kiss and a proclamation that my children are incredible humans because of me, and that I did a wonderful job in spite of the challenges, in spite of everything, in spite of him. 

I know. I say it softly. I am two very large glasses of wine into the night and oddly feel as if I want to cry. Which is a daily thing, and not a big deal anymore but I also don't want to give him that window into how fragile I feel suddenly again after not feeling anything at all for so long when it comes to him.

Why didn't you go? I ask him and suddenly realize I wasn't clear. 

But he knew exactly what I meant. 

I couldn't, not when everyone else already had. I didn't want you to be alone. I didn't want to be alone. But we could be alone together. 

Yep. I don't know what else to say. It's possibly the saddest conversation we've ever had somehow but we put it away and finished our wine and went to bid the kids goodnight as they took off, with more plans still for the evening ahead. 

I say Woah.

Our dancing, James Bondesque Prime Minister won this week and I'm breathing a slight sigh of relief. Still pissed off because 1/3 of the country seemingly couldn't be arsed to get out and vote, even though they had from Easter to the 28th of April to get it done and there are no excuses but it was an amazing and thankful boomerang from the stress surrounding politics and the seeping stress we're absorbing from our neighbors to the south. I feel as if I live far too close to a border now. I used to be a ten hour drive, and then a four hour drive and now it's really easy to just whip down to a southern facing highway and BOOM, signs for the United States pop up everywhere. Trader Joes, oh so expensive, oh so close but nope, Pomme will suffice. Same stuff mostly, it seems though not Trader Joes branded. I don't know. I don't care. I feel somewhat safe again so let's let the politics die back in favour of spring. 

Happy Beltane. 

To celebrate, I smudged myself and then walked the property tucking sunflower seeds under the soil every foot or so. I spread some grass seed on the few bare patches that didn't bounce back after winter. I made Dalton tackle the spiders and sort out cleaning the sauna and the pool shed and we drug everything out and pressure washed it. Well, he did and then Sam came out to help. By then I had retreated inside because the sun feels so strongly now and it almost hurts. The year my newest acquisition is a UV jacket to pop on when I'm gardening or spending a lot of time outside. I don't want faded tattoos because I'm not redoing any more of them. It's starting to hurt, finally. I think I've had my fill, though everyone else says I'm down to do the scary painful parts, having run out of room everywhere else so these parts just hurt. I don't know about that, but I could be done? The list keeps shrinking, the available area grows smaller every year and so the UV jacket is a must. I may order a second one for walks. Something with pockets. 

Things seem more normal, anyway. I'm trying hard to sleep and rest and organize. This morning I had a huge iced coffee from take out (someone always goes in the morning so why make it? No, we don't do gig services for food delivery, we are the food delivery but it's a regular thing that someone heads down to get something), I cleaned all of the windows and watered all of the plants, and then I did the budget (this is a twice a week thing) and organized some drawers and finished with the outside and now I'm going to knit and continue playing catchup with my shows and movies. 

And Demon Hunter has a! New! Song! And I love it! And the sun is shining but the rain will move in this evening and so maybe a swim late tonight and an ice cream sandwich and maybe a sauna first? Maybe a five hour hot tub stint. Maybe I'll just go to bed at four pm. Maybe I'll finish my book (Reading the Curve of Time right now. Local and vintage!). This weekend the big home show and psychic fair is out in the valley and I am definitely going. There's amusements and food trucks and it'll be bad weather which works fine for me, thanks. Otherwise at this rate I'll have to graduate from a UV jacket to a whole portable UV bubble and I'll end up on a British science show. "The Girl who was allergic to the outside" because it's mostly true at this point.