Things I've learned thus far in 2019:

• Exclaiming with whichever seemingly appropriate intonation the phrase, "IT IS TWO THOUUUUSAND AND NINETEEN!" is a fantastic motivator to do or not do something. Try it. I'll wait.
• All this time I thought I was dancing with everyone and I've actually been dancing alone. Thanks, Latin Dance Night.
• Hormones are not done with me--Holy shit I feel like a basketcase horny animal when I ovulate. Women should talk about that more. Go home, ovary--you're drunk!
• Dating is hard with a kid. Dating is hard without a kid. Dating is hard. Dating. Hard.
• I can buy condoms and sex toys cuz I'm an adult.
• Podcasts are a very personal thing to some.
• Buying new bras and underwear that fit is a self-love must. They pretty, I pretty.
• I can work and paint and socialize while being a Mom.
• The thing I do where I teach kids to paint while painting is respectable, difficult, and not everyone can do it so I need to tip my tiny hat to myself. Just because something comes hella natural to me and I make shit look easy doesn't mean it's not actually difficult.  
• The turnaround time on card and ID replacement after losing a wallet is fucking bullshit.
• The time has passed to sleep when baby sleeps.
• Having a blog is millennial and I'm okay with that. Reminds me of the time I wrote a guidebook on how to date me... except this might be more long winded and depressing.
• I'm really glad I'm here for this amazing winter and not in Olympia, Washington in the rain and gray. I'll take white wonderland any day.
• Everyone is trying. I think.
• Prozac in the morning makes me nauseous. I miss weed.
• Why do repair men act like they're there to save the fucking day and feel the need to mansplain everything? Asking for a ME.
• Do not be fooled by the baby’s pre-poop poop. The one that reeks but is like a tiny brick. That’s just the cork, boo. Put another diaper on.
• The Reno Tarot will be something eventually.
• Halloween is coming and I get to paint parts of it.
• A book is in the works and I can't wait to piece the story together.
• My babe is gonna be one. ONE. 1!!!!
• I should’ve invested in one of those sweet 80’s mini workout trampolines instead of bouncing kiddo to sleep on my bed. Fahking wrecked my mattress.
• Do not give strange dudes your business card.
• There's a language of flowers and I wish we still spoke it.
• Dating is hard with a kid. Dating is hard without a kid. Dating is hard. Dating. Hard.

I've been trying new things.
I've been trying.
Not on purpose and not with feeling all the time, more like I'm forcing myself to expand the tiny box universe I live in. Maybe one inch at a text.
I tried Tinder. I tried Bumble. Went back to Tinder. Popped onto Plenty of Fish. Now I'm off everything. I was clean about a week and a half. Lonely, yes. Sad, yes. Ready to try again... yeah.
Even though it's crazy outside my house.
Wang is dangerous.

Anyway... Here I was, carpe-ing my 2019 and proving my Mom wrong that I could, in fact, ''meet someone nice'' without leaving my house, when I realized it's really really really hard.

Dating over 30 is.... beyond hard. Everyone is so set in their ways, myself included. Us single folk want someone to fit in the spot we've carved out of our lives so perfectly, so tightly, and so precisely that we choke/stuff/cram our desired partner in there even if they don't fit. I wanted so much to fit in his cookie cutter that I didn't really realize I was slowly getting crammed into a cookie cutter. That's how it felt anyway. I'm not done upgrading to Mom yet and still have so much confusion over what and who I am, it's silly of me to try to be anyone's cookie.
I really wanted to be the right cookie.
*sigh*
Meeting someone from scratch and not imposing your hopes/fears/baggage/vaggage onto them is a struggle. What's a relationship red flag without it being violently tinged with the fear of crippling emotional baggage?
Is it me?
Is it him?
It's probably me.
That's what Old me would say.
Rinse. Repeat.

Defending and opening your heart at the same time is ludicrous?
Guarding your kiddo from all of the above is exhausting.
Finding time for anything outside this kid the last month has been daunting. It's been a snowy, indoor Dotty bender of almost a month straight with no moments to myself. I love it. I really do... but it would be nice to get to pluck my eyebrows or take a shit or be able to chew my food without squatting in the kitchen.

I shouldn't date.
My skin isn't thick enough yet.
Maybe it won't ever go back to being thick enough?
Maybe that's a good thing.

"There's nothing more dangerous than a woman who has rebuilt herself."

I think about those words often.
My slight wade into the dating pool as of late has me running back into myself. Seeking cover from all this unknown. I mean, are these red flags or are they just red fears of mine? I thought I was sure I had room for someone... and now I have no idea. It's scary out there. Murky. Complicated. I'm not sure I'm a strong enough re-woven tapestry to weave another person into us. When you have a little one, you just can't... you just shouldn't jump in. I used to jump in like an asshole--cannonball with water and utter disregard flying everywhere. People left wet that didn't want to be, waves crashing into delicate things.
Man, I was an asshole.

And now what? I just have to start over? Like it's middle school again and it's up to me to develop some sort of decipherable courtship dance?


I'm a lonely blog of my own failures.

It's a metaphor I use often...
Wait, is it metaphor??

I'm no longer sure it is metaphor.
Is it even a figure of speech?

I don't mean it rhetorically.
The high road is a path that I choose daily when it comes to my perspective on coparenting and dealing with FOB. It's a tangible visualization, I can smell the soil and hear the scrape of the rock under my feet. 
It started in a field. I felt like I had been dropped there after some sort of out of body experience or alien abduction. Dawn breaking over hills and solitude, it is just me and my body ready to work and keep working--from child labor to emotional labor to manual labor.
Yeah.
It's not a figure of speech.

Aw, man.
It has to do with morality?
Catholic school just absolutely formed and ruined me on that at the same time.
Fine.
Let's do that one, too.

OK. I think I've got the gist of that one. I mean, granted, in my existence (as with most humans I think), I have created a gray ground of moral ambiguity so I could sway between, learn from, and exist in right and wrong without hating myself or over loving myself. Like, that line between the black and white part of a yin yang? It's gray.

I guess the point of this post is this.
I joke? confess? profess? declare? state? exist? in a place with coparenting where I feel like I build the high road on a daily basis. One little goddess shoulder Mallory says, "fuck that cocksucker he dumped you make him pay {insert maniacal, hurt laughter here} and other Little goddess shoulder Mallory says, ''think of the kid, think of forever, think and build... even if it's hard."
And that's who I've tried to listen to for the past year.

It's fucking hard.
It's me after a year of building. I have a sunburn and my hands are no longer pretty. Water is running low but it looks like it's going to rain soon.
I have one giant rock in each hand.
Fingers clenched around each piece of earth, withered, broken, bloody, and nails bent.
Feet underneath each fist exhausted, confused, vulnerable, holding the world upright. Moving forward continuously with the occasional stumble, building the road as you go means it's always behind you. More earth to move, more to labor.
This birds eye view of these hands backed by a mind of thought.... wondering what it will do today.
Will it take each rock and smash whatever (or whomever) is in the way to smithereens?
Will it continue to build?
Will there be an alarm that goes off before the bloodshed at least?

Oh, the bloodshed.... it's a metaphor.