I know what you’ve been thinking.

You’ve been sitting around, living your life and enjoying it, but something’s been missing. It’s been wearing at you like a nagging toothache: What was The Besst for today? Or yesterday? How can I function if I don’t find evidence of The Pony in Mom, Interrupted’s life?

You’ve probably figured that everything’s gotten too busy or a meteor has struck the family room or my dog ate my webpage, but you’d be wrong. Okay granted: everything has been busy, but not so much that I couldn’t find the besst thing in every day. Sometimes the only evidence of The Pony has been petrified horse poop, but every day it’s been there.

No, the problem has its roots in something I knew about last spring. The short story is that it never got better; in fact, it just got worse. Over the last few months I’ve come to suspect/understand/discern that certain key relationships in my life have actually been harmed, perhaps irreparably, by my determination to live by my own rule:

Your life is what you remember. Make sure you remember the good stuff.

It would appear that to some that, if faced with the same stimulus as they, if I do not join them in publicly wringing my hands and wailing, I am somehow negating the sacrifices they make, that I am minimizing the trials they endure.

Of course, they fail to know, because I do not treat them to the display, that I am wringing my hands alright. That I’m making sacrifices and enduring trials, too.

I should note, by the way, that some of you (and you know who you are) have come back and asked for more Pony Updates. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that.

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You know, I started writing this with the idea that I would just kick The Besst to the curb. I was about to write that I would start over with 2015 (I’m already cooking up ideas) and just let this lie. Because I’m so tired of hearing the digs about how it must be nice to be able to just float through life without a care; of seeing the exasperated eye rolls as I obviously fail to comprehend the gravity of Our Entire Freaking Lives…

And then I thought: Screw it. I’m not going to let negativity win. If you (and you know who you are) don’t like it that I’m doing my best to see happy, screw it. Don’t like it, then. Marinate yourself in it. Knock yerself out.

Me? I’m digging for the pony.

Pony: Last weekend, I saw my daughter get her white coat in her physician’s assistant program.

Pony: All the boxes are out of my living room.

Pony: I’m watching the Cardinals play. Dad’s watching, too.

I’m up to my ears in Pony Poop.

What is the Besst project? 

And why is it called Besst?

© E. Stocking Evans 2014