Bread and Bread

I take a walk and do the exercise my therapist taught me: something I can see, something I can hear, something I can smell, something I can feel, something I can taste. At first I can’t remember the fifth sense, and I worry it’s a sign of a problem with my brain (other than the ones I know about: the ruminations, the anxiety, the sadness that touches down like a tornado). Or it’s lack of coffee. I’m walking to a coffee shop. I like this exercise because it’s also a writing exercise, and I like the words that offer themselves: clicking crow, ladies gathered for cafecito, the sugar and oil of cooking pastries on the breeze . I try to taste my tongue and it feels slightly burnt, which is not a taste, and…is that something I should worry about? Dash is worried about my work trip next week. And angry and sad. He says he’s going to miss me so much that he wants a different mom, one who doesn’t ever have to travel for work. I try to explain how that makes no sense, but doesn’t it actually mak...

Putting Dash to bed has been an ordeal lately, an up-to-two-hour affair involving multiple requests for milk (yes, after he's brushed his teeth; I judge me too!) and kisses from whichever mom isn't in the room. He wants "one more book." He wants to sleep on the floor. No, wait, he wants to sleep on the bed. No, the floor. He wants "that pillow." No " my pillow," which might look like that pillow, but is in fact inexplicably different. He wants "Dinosaur Boom Boom," a game I used to play when he was a baby, which has recently enjoyed a revival. He lays down and I hold his legs and chant "Boom boom, boom boom, dinosaur walking, dinosaur walking. Swish swish, swish swish, dinosaur dancing, dinosaur dancing." Etc. Recently he added a part where he kind of kicks me in the face. Good times. He has successfully sleep-trained me. He is, as you may have gleaned based on the behaviors described above, 2.75 years old. My emotions s...