Not terribly late into the evening here in our little corner of Maryland. However, both my husband and my daughter are sound asleep. I’m awake peeling skin off my feet – mom gave me this foot mask.

Anyway, foot mask. It’s supposed to shred the dead skin off your feet. I was all in. And damn – it works. I put the mask on two nights ago and the label said it would work within 48 hours but also suggested soaking feet again in hot water at that point. It sounds really gross – just ask Veruca who witnessed it – but the skin peels off your feet in sheets and what’s left behind is baby soft. It’s impressive but I’m still en medias res so I’ll update you when it’s totally done.

V is writing her own piece on Silverfox that promises to be every bit as entertaining as anything I could write… so you may get to read The Punk, if she allows me to have her be a guest writer.

Another trip to Quest, TJMaxx, and lunch from Saladworks. I found a curling wand that will hopefully make me look less frumpy and more – Tara from the 90s. Well, maybe not the 90s, but less like some 50-year-old woman who’s past her prime and has no handle on what looks hot. (Seriously, what the hell happened to us? We were “it” at one time.)

V wanted me to watch The Kissing Booth (Netflix) because it’s sooooo good, so I did yesterday. Another adolescent movie about love and drama that makes a teenaged girl swoon. I liked it. The “adult parent” in me didn’t agree with the portrayal of certain things but I do remember being a teenaged girl and I would’ve loved every bit of this movie. I thought about Todd and me and how it used to be when we were young.

While I was watching, he was in the next room hammering and chiseling away at the Samsung refrigerator that continues to crap out every few days. We’re not high schoolers anymore, mixing up chocolate chip cookies in my mom’s new KitchenAid mixer and leaning into each other with the powerful need of teenage love. I’m on the couch peeling skin off of my feet and watching teenage romance movies and he’s cursing at the fridge and we’re adults who are too easily caught up in the problems of home ownership. When he finally sat down on the couch, he was exhausted and I was glowing (at least I’d like to think I was) at the memory of exhilarating young love.

So there’s this new song out called If the World Was Ending and it knocked me on my ass on my way to work one morning. Confession: many, many years ago, in another [unhappy] life I used to imagine how I would feel if I knew the world was ending, and where I’d want to be and what would matter most to me. My first thoughts were, of course, that I would want to hold my children close to me when it happened, but then beyond that … if life as we know it was going to be over, I wanted to be with the one person I shared a longtime, epic love with. And it wasn’t where I was. The truth of that was hard and profound. I knew I deserved better than the verbal abuse and the pain of always being “wrong” and unvalued.

The beauty of hearing this song today is the reminder of all that is good in my life today. It’s not perfect but it is… Everything. Todd – you don’t read my blog much anymore – but you are Everything. There is nothing I would wish more than for my life to end with you by my side.

I have loved many over my lifetime, but none of them would matter as the sky darkens and the air suffocates us. I think of them today with reverence and appreciation for what I learned from them, but they aren’t You. You are the one that makes my life worth living and for whom I am forever grateful. You. You are everything.