I want to write about nothing. About its lack of depth and imagination. How its void isn’t gained or lost—it just is. I want to talk about how nice it is to do. How, when it’s happening, things feel peaceful.
I don’t want to talk about anything. The sheer breadth of it paralyzes me. It’s like standing before a microphone, told to speak about anything—frozen by the weight of infinite choices. That kind of on-the-spot thinking is not for me.
A crinkled sticker barely clings to the top of my hand, stuck in the valley between my pointer and middle finger tendons. Having a five-year-old means stickers. And a five-year-old with stickers means you will, at some point, be tagged—lapel, hand, forehead—like an alleyway hit with sporadic graffiti.
I’m a little worked up about the U.S. landing on a human rights watchlist. My thoughts whirl with angst over what that means. But I won’t overindulge. More than half a teaspoon of doom is too much, so I take my bitter spoonful straight—no Mary Poppins sugar—then redirect.
Redirect north, to the simplicity of a day at Ocmulgee Indian Mounds, where a park ranger painted vivid pictures of mammoth hunts and how fingerprints in pottery link distant artifacts to the same hands. Perhaps those hands belonged to someone sought after, a skilled artisan whose pieces were valued.
Of course, disease from a Spanish explorer wiped out nearly 2,000 people there. Then came battles and other things. Boo.
But the mounds are cool. Over a million artifacts unearthed. The taller the mound, the higher the status of the person whose house sat atop it.
One of the other homeschool moms in attendance is a trauma-informed nurse. She travels, giving seminars to future gynecologists, using her body for hands-on practice. “It’s interesting with a classroom full of men,” she said. “At first, they’re intimidated, but once I set the tone, they get curious. They ask, ‘If I said this, would that be okay?’” I appreciated hearing about her work.
Lately, I’ve got butterflies on my brain. Last summer, swallowtails—those flitting blue, yellow, and black beauties—danced around my sister-in-law’s lantana blooms. Now, seeing the first of the season catch air over the house, I’m even more eager to plant milkweed, lantana, and butterfly bushes.
The temperature swings are dramatic this week—70s to 50s and back again. One moment, I’m bundled up and freezing. The next, I’m ready to dive into a pool. With so many seeds in the ground, my only real concern is no more frost. So far, so good. The forecast keeps the lows at 44.
Alright, time to study Spanish. Tonight’s read: El Señor de las Moscas (Lord of the Flies). Impressed? You only get to be halfway. It’s written in a short, easy-to-read style—like CliffsNotes. The app is called EWA, and I like dropping unfamiliar words into a study bucket. A bucket where I can battle strangers for top scores in language challenges.
Anything competitive works well to pull me back in.
That’ll do it for today. See you tomorrow.
Love,
Jaclynn
Going On 40 