Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Summer goes and Fall comes in. Usually it's gradual. This year seems to have given notice on September 1st that this summer shit is facing its inevitable death on a tight timeline. Leaves are falling, temps are dropping, the sun is suddenly behind a bank of clouds for good and all. The rains are back. Torrential to drizzle and back again.

I wrote a year ago in my journal about hashing shit out after a fight with John, driving in a torrential, biblical downpour. Now is the time of year when things look monochromatic around the Pacific Northwest. Grey skies. Grey ocean. White and grey mountains. Soon the leaves will have fallen and the colors of early fall turn to brown and grey mush on the sidewalks, grey sludge on your galoshes, grey sidewalks and grey, rain slicked roads.

Fall always feels like a shakeup and the rebirth in Fall feels so familiar in Bellingham. School starts back up, Business picks up at the Drop and the weather sets in. We bury all the summer clothes in bins and bring out long sleeves and hoodies and I yet again search for wide calved boots to slog through Fall and Winter.

My bipolar is in check this time around. No crushing depression. No soaring mania. I'm even keeled and the words are stuck and bunged up. It's hard to find the time to sit down and write. Even now, typing this, I'm sandwiched between my two little girls on the couch, fending off their climbing knees and poking elbows and grasping fingers while I try to finish the sentences I've been desperately reaching for. I know the writing lives in me somewhere but I don't have the luxury of time to myself to dig it out. Being a mother is breaking me open while it is suffocating the little bits of self I find and unpack.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Get up. Make the breakfast. Get everyone changed and dressed and get John to work. Sometimes get myself to work. Drink a coffee. Try to wake up. Make the snack. Engage and read. Plan an activity and try to implement it. Lunch. Read all the library books. Make the snack. Pack Bea off to karate or dance class. Home to make dinner. Dinner. Pajamas. Books. Teeth brushing. Bedtime for the girls. Maybe an hour with John after the girls are down, play a game or watch a show. Go to bed. Up at 3:30. Work at 4. Come home after. Nap an hour. Get up. Make the breakfast.......

This weekend I am turning 38 and going away for the weekend with the 3 women I treasure most in the world. I will not just be a mom and a wife this weekend. I will get a lesson in spinning yarn and bum around Port Townsend looking for new yarn and new jewelry and I won't feel even a whit bad about it. I may even take this here little laptop so I can write.

When I get back, I have two weeks until school starts and I go back to being a student. I've never been a student while being a mother. I'm worried that being a student will make me a terrible mother or break my focus on raising my girls the way I want to. I'm scared to do something that seems so selfish on the surface, even though I know it's for the betterment of our family as a whole.

I'm scared that this challenge is more than I can handle. I'm scared that the shock from the wash rinse and repeat of my normal life will be too much and I'll flip manic. I'm scared that the change in Bellingham this fall is a change in me, too. When that changes, what will be left? Who will I be?

I've spent over 4 years being primarily a mom and building that aspect of my life. Now that school will be taking on an importance on the level of family responsibilities, where does that go? How does that work? Will I crave the wash, rinse and repeat of my previous life?

Here we go. We shall see.