That's what makes me the mom

Cleaning cat boxes for the zillionth time I thought, as one of my cats studied me while I worked, that's what really makes me the mom, as much as providing a warm lap and loving and feeding them when they're hungry. Really what separates you from all the others is that total willingness to clean up the excrement and excesses of the other. It makes me happy that I have a partner who also wants to help our child and pets in the same ways -- in fact it makes me want to do better, and so we wind up competing to do well by our daughter in a most healthy way.

There's always this terrible pull between writing and other work, and here I sit, choosing to write about it. My friend has made it her normal thing to do projects, and her place looks fantastic as a result. I have put so much time into my writing and reading and viewing and just being the mom that I haven't invested it in my surroundings, and we are still just getting by. It's time for something different, an amazing find. It's time to rent a truck and go touring Kansas to look for furniture. Paint the inside, start with some completely different ideas and found objects. We could even recover what we have, too. That's my kind of challenge. If we did a little road trip, maybe just for a weekend, picking somewhere within 300 miles that had a couple of promising sales coming up, perhaps I could write in the car. Judy wants to go to the Western Slope -- I could take her and poke around over there, I suppose, although I suspect there are so many people like me already poking around that the pickin's are slim.

I liked my idea of making over our place with lots of sliding doors. For cabinet doors, bedroom and bathroom doors, shower doors. Then we could do something more unified in our house. Brushed steel or nickel tracks suspended from the ceiling, with doors of metal, wood, and glass or wire mesh. It would look super mod and I could do things like enclose my dresser so the cats wouldn't get on it. It would work for bathroom cabinet door/mirror, and for the shower. Perhaps a sliding corner cabinet door, too?

I'm listening to Sia singing "Rewrite", and now "Sweet Potato." What amazing songs! They're all on the CD Colour the Small One. "Breathe Me" reminded me of the brilliance of putting that song over that final episode of Six Feet Under, with Claire (Lauren Ambrose) driving away from all she'd grown up with in her hybrid car, instead of the hearse. Sia's was such a perfect voice to express that feeling, that moment.