Tuesday ✨Manifesting✨

My kid, he does his liar “all-dones” and leaves his chair at the table. Then he spends his time sprinting to the front door, then back to the table to say “another bite of beans” until his beans are all gone.

My kid, he has stopped napping because he realized he can get out of bed instead. When I sing him his song and close him into his room, cozy in his crib newly missing its front bars because he started getting really intent on breaking his neck, he gets right out and piles up every book he owns and sits yelling about whatever’s on the pages until the hour is up. He is like me in that way. Later, too tired to keep his head up, he sleeps in the stroller on a frigid dog walk. He is like me in that way.

I want two quarter jobs that add up to one half-time job. I want half of it to be reading short stories, one of three new true loves this year. I want the other half of it to be writing short stories, another of three new true loves this year. I have written short stories before, sure, but never intentionally – they’ve always been, instead, the salvaged remains of some failed other project. And I’ve read them here and there, but always gravitated toward novels and also basically stopped reading those when the kid came along. How stupid of me. Every few short stories is one I can’t believe I’ve lived my whole life without. And how lucky am I to have found three new true loves in one year, when before this year my most recent new true love was that little creature who does his liar “all-dones” and comes back for beans, who emerged screaming from my sliced belly two years, eight months ago and has not stopped screaming since?

My other new true love is crocheting, which helps me to stay awake sometimes when I otherwise would not. My friend’s book reading. Watching TV with my husband at the late hour of 7:30pm. But it doesn’t always work, and I fall asleep, hook in hand.

Not everyone eats beans, you know. But give me two to three hundred beans and you won’t hear me complain.

I am, of course, writing this from a weight bench.