Months past, my marriage survived, my leg healed, our child/grandchild stayed the summer with her daddy, my son.  I became the goat herder after my husband had hand surgery.

Excerpts from my goatz journals:

Aug 10

The day I lost my temper at CC as he demanded to know what I was cooking for supper. The day I asked him what the law was that a woman had to cook supper every night. And the day my son, John, said "Why don't you take that outside because my daughters have to do their homework and it is more important than who cooks dinner." The day I apologized to CC later for losing my temper.

The day I took Slim and Christine to the lake to kayak and all four of my grandchildren to swim. The day CC pulled through and cooked chicken drumsticks, macaroni and cheese, and sweet potatoes, feeding eleven of us. 

The day I bought this new notebook which looks nothing like the notebooks I write the county news in, so I don't accidently take my journal into public and lose it. A new journal, a container to pour my too large self into. The Goatz Journal.

It is quiet and in the silence I can almost hear the world all around and my inner voice, the one that connects me, grounds me and heals me.

Aug 11

I began this newspaper with my partner because I wanted to do graphic design. I soon  found there was no money to be had, but I was doing what I love doing. Information design. Then business planning. Then going to city and county meetings and reporting. But today I want to back out, back down. 

I am scared. There are no monetary rewards yet, I am making myself a target by witnessing and speaking out. I live in a glass house. I am not sure I have the courage to do this.

My need for silence has grown like a hungry animal since I  married my first husband thirty years ago.  My Goddess. Thirty years ago, maybe to the day - I conceived my first son in a magical swirl of unreality and glibly changed my destiny. I conceived consciously, feeling like I was led by some sense of inevitability. Destiny.

There. I've said it twice. Destiny. This became the shape of my life that I have lived every day since. 

My first son adamantly told me today - you need to take your newspaper to print. He has the nobility of my father's spirit inhabiting him and what he says seems so impossible. Tilting at windmills, a symbol of my father, Don Quixote  sword brandished - going to print... 

Going to print, holding my family together, holding all the discordancies in cupped hands - I can't continue this. I must let go.  

Aug 12

Before getting out of bed, I find a tick on my privates.  I get a handful of ants with my tea and I sat on the toilet and got stung on the butt by a yellow jacket that CC had thrown in there earlier. Thus my day began.

My dog rolled in my own shit. I had the goats out behind the garage and they were munching down. I discovered I needed to poop so I walked a little ways away and dropped my drawers and pooped. Next I know, GD is rolling in it and then he ate it. He smelled really bad. 

My youngest son told me he smoked meth last night and took 10 xanexs. That he slept all day. Then he wanted money for food. I gave him food and told him I couldn't continue to subsidize his bad choices. He told me wouldn't be so fucked up if didn't have fucked up parents. He said I'd be lucky if he didn't kill himself tonight. I told him he was making his choices, I didn't make them for him.

So tonight I will sit under the stars with a spray bottle of vinegar to ward off my dog who rolled in my own shit. I will watch for meteor showers and I will cry  and  pray and wait. Wait for Slim to live or die, the choice only he can make. My heart is encased in steel and crumbling inside.

Today I told John in no uncertain terms I want him to have custody of his oldest daughter whom I've raised since birth. I went to a city committee meeting and found I am helping to change city politics with my reporting.

Shooting stars, the Goddess, the earth and sky. Prayer. Miracles. That is what I need tonight. Divine intervention. Help. Grace. Comfort. Because who is there to turn to besides God, the Goddess, earth and stars. If there is grace, I open myself to it. I will get under the stars of creation. I will sweat, cry, pray and grieve. I will give up hope, pick it back up and put it down again. I will live into another day. What will its gifts be? Its stings and pestilence?