*Before…

Molly nods. “Dysphoria sucks right?”
I nod.
(Sniffle.) “Thanks guys, I mean it really thanks. I was so fucking scared...I didn’t want this to break up the band, to break up our family…. (Sniffle-sob.)...I love you guys!”
Yeah that’s me hitting my emotional wall and I start crying with being happy and all of the nerves and them caring and having my back.
We sort of all gather into this big group hug and there’s crying and there’s more hugging and Rayne’s holding me really together through it as a lot of stuff comes pouring out that I didn’t know was all bottled up.
We sort of just end up sitting together back on all of the vehicles letting the fall sun warm all of us up and Brooklyn does this sway side to side and she hums a few bars before she starts singing.
It’s one of our definite themes for us as a group and it brings tears to my eyes.
“I don’t wanna be….Anything, other than what I’ve been lately…”
Kimmie jumps in with. “All I have to do is think of me and I have peace of mind…!”
I join in because the next lines are well just me… “I’m tired of lookin ‘round rooms...wondering what I got to do...Or who I’m supposed to be….!”
Rayne starts singing while she’s holding me tight her arms wrapped around me like the best blanket ever. “And I don’t want to be anything other than Me…”
Then it’s all of four of us along with Carmen and Molly together…
“I don’t wanna be….Anything, other than what I’ve been lately…”
“All I have to do is think of me and I have peace of mind…!”
“I’m tired of lookin ‘round rooms...wondering what I got to do...Or who I’m supposed to be….!”
“And I don’t want to be anything other than Me…”
And we all go again all together still and louder and closer and we all have tears in our eyes because really this is kind of all of us.
“I don’t wanna be….Anything, other than what I’ve been lately…”
“All I have to do is think of me and I have peace of mind…!”
“I’m tired of lookin ‘round rooms...wondering what I got to do...Or who I’m supposed to be….!”
“And I don’t want to be anything other than Me…”
We’re together, we’re together after all of it.
That’s amazing.

*And Now…

My heart literally breathes after all of that and us there together good with each other and singing together.

I feel like a big load has been lifted too.

And after the singing there’s hugs and some pretty deep ones like I’m getting some hugs from them for the first time.

And then we’re all getting sort of drug out as the stress and drama adrenaline wears off and we’re getting hit with our all nighter.

We pile into the vehicles and Rayne rolls the windows down which is cold as heck this time of the morning and with the chill coming off of the lake but that’s sort of the point.

Just being a little extra careful even with the coffee and we head inside leaving Kimmie to make out a little with Max before he heads out.

Even as tired as we are we take the time to put our things away and get things straightened up before we do the shower and bed thing.

I have enough time to whip up a big batch of dough while everyone is doing everything.

Some I make like whole wheat bread with me dumping in things like sunflower seeds, cranberries, sesame seeds, some wheat bud cereal (All Bran buds.) and a good dose of molasses in it as well.

I like whole wheat breads like this, they’re good cold for bread and butter but best toasted in the morning with jam.

And because we’re not going anywhere today and we’re all going to rest and flake out and stuff I get out some ground meat to thaw out in the sink.

Then it’s my turn to go and shower and get changed and it’s so much nicer.

Everything is still there and there is all that stuff going on with me but the pressure is off.

No more hiding.

Rayne already had her shower and was hanging with the girls for a while as I had my shower and they had stuff all straightened away with school and her with work.

Which was very cool.

Which literally mean we did have the day to ourselves.

Carmen tops everything off by coming up from downstairs with everyone’s quilts or comforters that she tossed into the dryer and they’re all warm and smelling good and snuggly as we all make our ways to our bedrooms.

That was really nice.

So was Rayne and I just taking some time to relax and to cuddle and snuggle under the warmth of the bedding and kissing and soft sweet touches before we settled into sleep.

I sleep really good.

Like only a few times that I can ever remember kind of good. You know that sleep where you were so hard asleep that you’re really dry and you can feel how hard that you slept.

It smells really nice in here too.

The sun is beaming through the windows and it’s still got some strength to it even for the end of October and it’s early afternoon sun so that helps too and Rayne has the window open some so there’s the whole fresh cool air coming in but she has a dryer sheet clothespinned to one of the curtains but over on the dresser she has one of those Glade scented oil candles going and it’s this whole autumn spice thing and she’s there smelling like herself and she has coffee.

Actually she had coffee, her tablet, a yellow paper notepad and one of the acoustic guitars all on the bed and the sheets and me.

She must have had that stuff on here before she returned with the coffees because she had one for me and she’s leaned over my side smiling and looking all happy and beautiful while holding the coffee in front of my face.

I carefully reach for my phone so as to not wreck the whole balance of this and I take a picture of her and the coffee and then a selfie and post that up.

It was just too cool a thing not to share.

That’s the thing, the posting, the selfies, taking pictures of things. We’re not insulated or self important or snowflakes. We have friends, we have friends all over and we’re more involved in other ways than other generations.

We post stuff like that because we’re happy or proud or venting.

It’s our community.

And yeah our community does have a whole generational and tech shift.

And honestly it’s just nice to record the memories too.

That first sip of coffee that I didn’t make or have to get up for was awesome, just like pure indulgence.

Rayne looks just brilliant too all smiles and relaxed in just a old loose crop top and no bra and in pajama bottoms.

I take a sip as she arranges a few things and takes the guitar back up on her lap and sort of leans on it smiling at me.

“Feel better chere?”

“A lot, I feel lighter.”

“I know, I could literally feel it in bed. You slept deeper than I think that i’ve ever seen you sleep.”

I have another sip. “I know, I kinda have sleep throat and cottonmouth.”

She smiled. “Well at least you don’t get that deep and snore.”

I smile and blush. “I didn’t know that I didn’t snore.”

“You don’t though sometimes you hum like music in your sleep or dreams though.”

“Really I didn’t know that either.”

“It’s cute, I’ve never seen anyone do that before.”

She leans over and she kisses me and I kiss her back and she looks at her tablet and then she starts playing and I don’t recognize the arrangement.

“Something new?”

“Just playing around, you know when you get just part of a melody in your head but not the rest of it?”

I nod. “I write them down when I can. It’s sometimes more a way of exorcising it out of my brain than a hope of finishing them.”

“I’m the same but I’m actually making some progress with this new program that Molly loaded for me.”

“Oh?”

She shows me what she has and you write the notes in with the stylus and then you can choose instruments and keys and it will play what you wrote out.

It’s that sort of computerized sound but as a tool this is great it really gives you an idea of how an arrangement will sound as you write it and you can get a real grasp for the feel of this.

We play around together with what she’s writing and it’s a kind of a pop sound or I sort of think of it as having that kind of sound.

It’s just so nice to spend the time and relax together.

I even go back to our bed after using the bathroom and getting the bread in the oven with the timer set.

It’s just hanging out having coffee and in my case listening to her and actually reading a little from a book that I’ve been slowly working my way through.

Not dressed up, or made up or even wearing bras just decompressing.

And it’s really nice when the baked fresh bread smell wafts through the house.

I take a break from my book and head down to the kitchen and switch out the bread loaves and then I take the thawed hamburger and some old bread that I break up in the food processor and some garlic and diced up onions and a little bit of brown sugar and then soy sauce and salt and pepper.

I make meatloaf.

I don’t really have some special recipe for meatloaf it’s just like I said and I set it in without anything on top of it first and cover it up with foil so it doesn’t dry out.

I head back upstairs with a plate of fresh sliced still hot bread and butter and peanut butter both all melty from the bread and we go back to just chilling out and enjoying ourselves.

Every once in a while you can tell the others are into the bread with yells of “Thanks Angel!” from them and sometimes it’s through muffled full mouths.

We’re just taking the time for us right now.

Rayne and me and that’s it.

I love everyone here but relationships need stuff like this.

And we go from me reading and listening to her playing around until us just stopping that and settling in with the bread and watching some stuff on our tablets.

School of Rock is a really good movie even if I’m only kinda iffy on Jack Black.

I did like him in High Fidelity when he sang near the end of the movie though.

And there’s such a good message in School of rock too with all the ways that he taught the kids to be accepting of themselves and all of the stuff about them.

Rock and Roll, hecking music in general is filled with a whole lot of accepting people, misfits, downtrodden and never do wells.

Heck there’s a long, long theme of rock literally being made up of outsiders.

And watching a movie actually gives me the idea for later.

“You want to go and see a movie tonight?’

Rayne looks at me. “You know I’d love that. We haven’t been out in a long time.”

“It’ll be good for the two of us to get out.”

She honestly looked surprised. “Just us and not the gang?”

“Just us if that’s okay. We can go out as a group other times we don’t get to do us that much Rayne.”

She slipped over across the sheets. “I’d actually love that.”

We kiss for a good while together just enjoying that until I can smell the meatloaf. I grin around the kiss. “I should go and get things ready for supper and then we can get ready to go out?”

“What are we going to go and see?”

“You pick?”

“The new Sherlock Holmes? I like Robert Downey Junior.”

“That works for me, he’s kind of funny.”

With a bit of a groan I slip out of bed and pad downstairs with her following me and the other girls are there downstairs doing all sorts of things like Molly at the computer again with Carmen sitting behind her and pressed up against her tightly and with her head on her shoulder as she was doing something.

Kimmie was watching something on the TV with these big headphones on and she was dancing along with it. It looked like videos from Much Music but some hip hop stuff that I have no idea about.

And Brooklyn is playing her guitar in the practice space with headphones plugged into the her amp from what I can hear though she’s playing something that sounds original and she’s playing it to Mike who’s sitting and listening with her and his own set of headphones.

That’s pretty cool because they seem into it and she’s doing that lean and rock back and forth playing thing on the stool and he’s doing that into it head nodding but it’s that stuff that you do when you’re kind of rocking out and stuff.

It’s really cool to see.

I make my way to the kitchen and Rayne is staying in the living room to hang out and stuff.

She joins Kimmie dancing who unplugs the headphones and they both start to dance with each other to this hip hop song.

I do a trick my mom used to do with the meatloaf because some folks don’t like the tomato sauce topping or the mushroom one so I take some crackers and stick them in the meatloaf after I make the two toppings.

The tomato one gets a layer of cheese slices and they start melting as I mix up a can of tomato soup with a few dollops of red pepper jelly and pour that over the top. The other side gets coated with a little grated mozzarella and then mixture of butter-milk-flour into a cooked out light brown color and then a can of cream of mushroom soup.

It goes back into the over just long enough to bake so that both sauces bubble and sort of get this baked sauce top to them.

And because this is a relaxing day and night I open a bag of Superfries and put them in the oven.

By the time they’re done so will everything else.

Some frozen veggie mixture reheated in the microwave, I do the whole bag since there’s a lot of us and there’s broccoli and cauliflower in the mix so there’s less there than you’d think. I add a handful of frozen squash chunks and some frozen brussel sprouts just to add some more variety and the trick is to toss them in butter or olive oil when you drain them and add a little salt and pepper and I do all of that and get all cheffy and grate a little lemon zest over it and some juice too. Oh I used olive oil on the veggies this time.

Dessert I get super cheating with and that’s a boxed chocolate cake mix with just some water, egg, and some olive oil in it and really rough mixed right in a casserole dish and then I buzz together a box of Jello pudding mix really fast and not even enough to get it to set and pour that into the casserole dish and it goes in the oven as the meatloaf and fries come out.

Voila, chocolate pudding cake and enough for a family.

It doesn’t take long for the smells to hit everyone and that’s the great thing about fall is the air is starting to get thet way where things like cooking or the dyer sort of will waft through the house.

I love this.

I mean I really love this the full house and the chaos usually but this, today is all of us without the pressure of the stuff lately going on.

So we’re all relaxed and happy and talkative and it’s just happier and slowed down.

Apparently no one has had either topped version of my meatloaf.

Rayne’s family topped theirs with mashed garlic potatoes sort of like a shepherds or a cottage pie. Molly’s family did it with powdered gravy mix over it and thought it was really fancy and Mike’s family when they were together did it covered in fried onions and smothered in BBQ sauce while they had baked potatoes on the side.

Brooklyn only had frozen versions before and Kimmie and Carmen never ate meatloaf in their lives.

It goes over really well and we eat all of it even the veggies that I did. Seriously with Rayne, Molly and Carmen taking big helpings of those it just barely lasted for the rest of us.

Pudding cake must be the simplest dessert I know. I mean they taught this to my mom when she was in home ec back in those days. You’d think the way that they reacted that I made a black forest fancy cake.

Molly hugged me because she had a grandmother that used to make this kind of stuff and she never had it since she passed away.

It all really just feels good to have that be another good thing for us and something we shared with my mom and her grandmother.

It just really set the happy feeling as Rayne and I left the others to it and we went and got ready for our date.