It’s rained at the Plantation all day. I don’t mind. As I’ve said before, it gives me justification for staying home and doing nothing. Not that I’ve done nothing. I fixed breakfast (the biscuits were of the frozen variety, but the from-scratch ones are time consuming and we never can eat them all), washed a load of laundry, fixed hot dogs on white bread (how can I remember to buy cole slaw, macaroni salad, and chili but not buns?!), finished one book and started another (The Nightingale & The Winter People, if you’re interested), and updated my Goodreads. Six books so far this year. Goal is 75. Staying off social media helps, and I’ve discovered I’m not hardly missing a thing.
I baked sugar cookies and iced them then added hot pink crystal sprinkles, because sprinkles help everything. I’ve certainly needed my allocation of sprinkles lately.

Johnny put together my step stool yesterday. It’s pretty cool, very retro, and also very red. I’m short, and since we don’t have chairs in the dining room anymore, just those benches for the table; I had to have something. I had been using a cube of Mountain Dew, but as much as I weigh I decided that wasn’t a sound idea. Plus it looks cute at the counter. My great grandmother had one just like it, hers was a dark tan color, with mushroom stickers stuck on, and chipping paint revealed a black base. I’m fairly certain everybody in my extended family fell from it at least once. I don’t know what happened to it.

I fell asleep crying last night. Most women wouldn’t admit this, not even to their best friend over wine spritzers, but I’m not typical. I don’t save my tears for the shower. They fall as they may. It’s Johnny’s fault. He got to talking about me needing to think about a new vehicle, which got me feeling all sentimental about Patsy. She was supposed to be our old beater truck, around forever and ever, and then he went and bought that old rattletrap rusty Ford. He’s like, “Hold on, don’t be upset, I didn’t say you had to get rid of her!” And it wasn’t about her. It was about decisions that have to be made. When you’re married, you (hopefully) make them as a unit. Then someone dies and you have to make them alone and you’re not even sure how to do it anymore, without looking towards someone else for their opinion, their assurance or disapproval. So I was thinking about that last night, his weight heavy beside me in bed, his low snores. How many more nights would I have him? How many more decisions will we make together? How will I go on without him? I can’t even put a step stool together, when all it supposedly required was a screwdriver? And then I’m reading this book, The Nightingale, and all the men have gone to fight in the war and the women are doing it all- working all day, splitting firewood, mending clothes, standing in lines with their ration cards only to be turned away because there’s nothing left…and it’s the same thing. How would I make it in wartime? I wouldn’t. I’d be better off just slitting my own throat. That’s with indoor plumbing and electricity to get me through. And I realize that plenty of women do it already, and men too, and maybe you don’t realize how strong you are alone until you have to be. But I know I’m not a plumber, or a roofer, or a ditch digger. Or even a stool putter-togetherer.

I guess my emotions are just on the very surface, like a blister ready to pop. Kent is not doing well. Every update his wife posts sends an arrow straight to my heart. And if it’s affecting me this strongly, how is she able to even stand to type out a message to us? How is my Uncle able to hear it?

You just go on because you have to.

And so it was a normal day and I was thankful for it.

Anybody who has ever read a single post on here can thank Kent. All credit is due to him. He was the one who forced me to start it. He came over and we learned together, pecking buttons over Uncle Dale’s dining room table, and then mine. Please pray for him. He is fighting. He just wants another uneventful day.