a bag of chips

February 1: Things at work have been getting hard lately. People are starting to come apart at the seems. Fernando is falling asleep at his desk. People are getting frustrated at each other over car rides. Our lessons are coming simpler, smaller. It doesn’t take as much for our kids to make us upset. We went out to blow off some steam and drank and yelled more than we should have.

February 2: Hangovers got worse after I hit 25. During college, I would wake up thirsty and with a headache. Now, I wake up feeling fine. A few hours after being up, a headache would set in and my stomach would cramp. It gets worse through the day and lasts until I go to sleep that night.

February 3: He gets upset at me when I can’t let go of things. But he doesn’t do anything to help me do that. He gives a blank apology for something that happened repeatedly over the course of years and can’t understand why that doesn’t fix everything. He doesn’t get that it’s not like fixing a broken sink, one replacement part can’t make it like new again. It’s more like being hogtied. He wrapped and tangled in a rope, dropped the end, and then stares at me while I try to get myself out.

February 4: It started hailing in the middle of our community building activity. I paused during the directions to point out the window.”Hey,” I said calmly. “Look at that.” Five of them reacted by immediately screaming.

February 5: The CPR instructor told us that if we are performing the compressions correctly, the rib cage will crack and sound like a bag of chips. The older the person is, the crunchier they will be. Despite the horrifying image he put in our heads, he told us not to worry about that. He once met a man who went through almost half an hour of compressions and when he woke up, he said that his chest was kind of sore.

February 6: Our program is having an attendance audit, so we need to turn in all of the attendance sheets from the entire school year. A few parents are asking for copies of that and our sign out sheets. They are planning on using them as evidence during divorce proceedings to gain full custody of their children.

February 7: Sometimes what Milo notices and remembers is unnerving. Today, I wore a pair of dress pants that I don’t usually wear to work. She pointed it out as my “Rosie the Riveter” pants because the last time I wore them was as part of my Halloween costume. She also mentioned how I went to Chapman University, something I haven’t mentioned since the college march when she was in third grade. She told me she remembered it because “Chapman” sounds so similar to my last name.




much love,
hedgie