This has been a weird week.  Summer time and writing usually don’t work well together, but I am trying my best.  Luckily for me, after having about four or five days in a row without writing, I was able to pick up my story today where I left off with great fanfare and wonderful ideas.  I am eighty six thousand words into Alice the Fiftha no still have quite a ways to go.  86,000 words has translated into roughly 425 pages.  I’m truly glad that after my real life has taken over me and kept me away from her that Alice so graciously has let me back in.  Man, what a wild chapter.  I spilled out roughly 4,000 world today alone, which as a novel writer is a feat in and of itself.  It feels fucking fantastic and I’m looking forward to see where ALice and Abigail take me next.  

Aside from that, I do feel particularly inclined to share a rather embarrassing and stressful, personal anecdote that ties up the last weekend.  Again, I don’t normally blog about my personal life, but this incident is too precious not to comment on, write about and document for posterity.

On Saturday night, Jilian and I were left at home with no children.  My boys were at their mothers’ and her daughter was at her dad’s.  We had a night alone.  Both of us had worked later into the night and felt like blowing off some steam after work.  We settled ourselves in and decided to go down the street to the local corner bar and have a few drinks.  That night in and of itself was rather uneventful.   We had a few drinks and headed home.  

When we got home, the dryer was buzzing.  It was announcing to us that it’s contents were drye and that wee needed to circulate said laundry.  Jil went to the dryer and popped the door open and this fell out:
We both looked at each other in confusion and horror.  That’s a drug baggie.  Nothing comes in those tiny ziploc bag as aside from drugs.   We were panicked and lost.  We sorted through all the clothes in the dryer, since we knew that none of our clothes had little baggies in them with little tiny mushroom caps in them.   That meant one thing.  My boys, one of them, at age twelve or age fifteen, had shrooms in their pocket when we did their laundry. 

It’s 1am.  We went through the house and flipped mattresses like prison guards searching Andy Dufresne’s cell in Shawshank.   Which kid had fucking shrooms in the house and where the fuck were the rest of them?

After about an hour, we gave up and went back to bed.  I barely slept.  When I did sleep, I awoke ten minutes later concerned and stressed.  One of my perfect angels was doing drugs.   My heart was broken.  My trust and faith corrupted.  My life was suddenly upside down for the first time.   None of this made any sense whatsoever.   My kids wouldn’t do something like that.  Yet, here was the evidence, fresh out of a spring scented fresh load of laundry that consisted of 83% one child’s clothes and 17% the other’s.  We did the math.
I got out of bed around 5am.  My sleep wasn’t getting better and I couldn’t tolerate it anymore.  I got up and started sending the photo to friends to get second opinions.  Not a single person said that these were something other than mushrooms.  So, that meant, later today, when I [icked my kids up around 7 PM that I would have to sit down with my kids and figure out who the drugs belonged to.  

Not my idea of a good day.

I needed to occupy myself.  Which we did. We took a wonderful day trip to the water and went a small little boat tour.   

That worked for a few hours, but not nearly as long as it needed to.  As we drove home to pick up the kids, I felt that my heart was going to fall out of my chest.  I was more than certain that the entire contents of my stomach was going to spill directly onto the passenger seat of Jil’s car.  And, I wasn’t entirely unsure that my hands weren’t going to fall off from shaking so much.

Eventually, and finally, I was able to get the boys back home.   Once the little one was situated and the others gone outside, I confronted my oldest with that little baggie in my hand.  As much as I hated to believe it, there was no explanation.  I held up the baggie and asked him about it.  His eyes went black.  They filled with tears and I felt horrible, but I needed answers.  Who brought drugs into my house?!!  

He denied it.  He had no idea what they were.  I couldn’t tell if he was truthful or lying.  I wanted to believe him, but no.  It couldn’t be.  These mushrooms couldn’t belong to my youngest.  Are twelve year olds doing mushrooms now?   I know that he’s had issues, but shrooms?

The youngest was across the street at the neighbor’s.  He had to be called back.  Which, he was.

“Now, son, can you tell me what the fuck this little baggie is?  We know what this looks like.  It fell out of the laundry.  We just need to know who the fuck it belongs to and why the fuck it’s in my house and where the fuck did you get it from?”

That’s what I wanted to say.  That’s not exactly what came out, but close enough.  

“Oh, those are silver dollar seeds.  Mimi gave them to me to plant,” he says.  

Silver Dollar Seeds.

The other son googles it and shows us, “Oh yeah, they are, look”

Mother fuck.

Messages were instantly sent to my mother.  “Please don’t send my kids home with bags of seeds that come in little drug baggies.  It’s really inconvenient, Mom.  I just scared the fuck out of my fifteen year old.”

My youngest laughed his ass off while the older child cried.  

And that, that’s being a dad.