he loves building fires

these are what I wanted but we went for him, not me, so no

 

no laces ft every new life chapter needs boots

the leather smell in that store. the saddles omg #swoooooon, they are works of art. he chose a pair of hybrid durangos, harness toe but no buckle, a new fangled sole capable of withstanding anything from oil to shit to snow to fire. threw in a shirt w snaps (buttons pfft). he needs jeans, first pair will be The Breakups as a gift methinks, scrawnyass and well-worn

back in civ, the storage unit was rented in M.'s name, about which D-Nozl fumed at us both. if I were him, I would want to HUG THE KID. but we all know he just cannot do that, and we came together around that fact briefly. if I had a heart for the guy, I would miss that hug from his kid unbearably, but he does not. and M. and my (ex) mother-in-law took the brunt of that, are taking it

meanwhile, I get to indulge in grippysock lovecraft finally. roasted game meat, coochiesnorters, baked sweets, boots bought, fires made, jack-o-lantern planning. Strawberry Milk Existentialism. I been craving that 

Ears and I split the bill atm. I am 🖤 while he feels kinda 💗 for hucksareus (he doesn't get any rabbit), the "nice one" - Ears has a very permeable heart, and I would like it to stay that way 

I feel like something whipped around in the winds until soggy knotted af

but. this kid is alive n kicking-ish. we couldn't keep them all alive but this one we did. and I am safe, sitting in one of my two bunkers (so far). I'll take it

last thing you need - m. wallen (from GTA VI)

May this full harvest moon let you enjoy what your labor has made and give you loyal and cozy company, too.

update: a mental health "summit" is going down over at the (ex-ish) inlaws atm. that's how they actually talk/are. it has its charms, but who in their not-right-mind would want to go to a summit about it w their extended fucking family like an intervention ft seminar? the kid did his own intervention aplenty. and seminars with someone as quiet as Ears is best 2-3 people max or his voice gets lost.

attending the summit are Ears' dad stepmom gma gpa uncle + his wife and baby. (TOO MUCH hahahaha jeezus obviously) and they know it, everyone but Dickhead. the uncle is helpfully a neuropsychologist, autism research, he can represent the rights of Ears' brain to heal. and, the kicker, Ears can't drive, so I would have had to attend the summit, which no. basically Dickhead needs his family atm to pull his shit own together and they know it.

Ears and are off the grid which means whatever we want bc in truth nobody knows where I live in the first place (vaguely) nor has any clue where the cottage is at all, and both have wifi we just dont tell anyone and don't use it much. it's very quiet. bird tv and fires and cooking (I'm gonna roast a rabbit). 

I am just starting to actually breathe 🤏. and it didn't even happen to me. so I know, I can feel, the beatdown this has been for him. he is bouncing, a little more 🤏 each day as long as I follow the directions (steps, always steps). 

my life just utterly stopped that day. it's been nothing been a fight for this kid every waking moment since and I am not expecting that to change much until prolly maybe xmas 🤷🏽‍♀️. 

live in the day. make today as Good as humanly possible. challenge accepted. so/but I gotta also relearn that skill (faster).

he massacred a fish fry, he could eat a breaded whale, we talked about a sleeve tattoo (so like my instincts too, seeing is believing re transformation), his desired pattern of damascus steel, not like a pic of a knife but the waves themselves and color shift options. we talked about everything and nothing like we always do. except now I stop him, all the time, I am supposed to and he wants me to stop him on the basis of his 1000-yard stare, ask "what are you thinking now?" and he has to think "what am I thinking?" repeat repeat. coming back slow, like that. 

me: you look bemused, what are thinking about?

him: (pausing to focus it). I was just thinking all my dads want take me camping alla sudden, it's kinda nice (shrugging sweetly)

he is painfully sweet

grippysock I love yous

it's only taken me a year+, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of that specific 

obviously 'I love you' means a million different things, depending on who is saying it to whom and under what circumstances. it means something different when I say it to my dog vs my sister vs my mother etc, on any given day.

when your mother-in-law who is not your mother-in-law anymore says it to you, thankfully it does not mean you have to remarry her step-son! once M. started calling me, my (ex) mother-in-law followed suit. and that resulted in a sunshower of I love yous today from this family that I've been apart from for years. from everybody in it except my EX (thank christ). if he and I started saying that shit to each other 👀 well, thatd be gross hahahaha 🤢

I don't think huckforcats is gross and it was his (ex) mother-in-law not mine and many rounds/layers of bruising trappednesses followed 😵‍💫 - the specifity of the grippysock I love you was lost on me in that shit🌪.  but my own (ex) mother-in-law clarified it in my mind today. it is its own category that is not specific, it falls into no specific narrative (there is no specific "and thus" implied), it just is. I think I'd translate it as "we are all gonna die, maybe today!, so I love you or whatever, js"

(and I spose it wasn't jesus in that horoscope earlier, it was inlaws 👀 whoda thunk that?)

we, the women of that family, are hiding Ears from D-Nozl, who is driving in tonight and none of us think he's a good inflence, so our I love yous made a thus we are a wall in this specific instance at this specific time. a wall we will hold, try to, until D-Nozl's safely back in CT. it's not forever. but right now Ears can't afford the burden of his father's unrelenting specific expectations. 

status: migrating to the cottage where we cannot be found ft. turning off our phones as if outa range

play used to be part of our every day. so we're bringing back the inapproprate-o-lanterns. I do not remember how we made this, but TJ votes we bring this one back except with a ball gag. it's a solid idea, but maybe a bit much for Vegas 

update: M. is marshalling the storage unit rental around D-Nozl's texting objections (not to the principle but to the $30 🙄, fucking twat). mayyyyybe one thing will get taken off my plate. maybe. #cwabby

in a frozen copse of dogs

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You make 'em laugh. You don't bring jokes. You don't do prat falls or wear a funny nose. You've never slipped on a banana peel in your life. You say the truth and say it fast. Suddenly everyone is connected.

the emotional roller coaster - can we agree to GET OFF once in a while? js, for all the updown backforth loopdyloops, you'd think there would some getting off occasionally

pagan angel and a borrowed car - iron&wine

September 25, 2026

That polished exterior of yours can get in the way of anyone knowing how you actually feel, Virgo. 👀 Let the mask slip a little. If you’ve got more on your plate than you can manage, say so clearly, because people can’t step in when everything looks handled. Cash in one of the many favors you’re owed. And when evening rolls around, let somebody else make the plans for once.

🤔 

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think that 👆 did anything ft tonight is fish fry presumably 

update: unable to stop thinking about M. and our conversation (I have missed her more than I could allow myself to feel), I asked Ears. yes, he hid the wellbutrin, took it secretively "maybe 1-3 times" in those 10 days w his father and came back in pieces. and D-Nozzle will be protected from that fact of his own child nearly killing himself rather than disappoint him. like the big fucking dangerous baby he is. imo, he is an utter piece of absolute dogshit stuck in the ruts of my tread. 

M. told me that Ears "went quiet" midway through that trip, D-Nozzle complaining that he wouldn't "get into the swing" of the vaca. so, she and I have pieced it together, exactly when/where Ears decided to come back here and off himself. two things stopped him: Huckforcats couldn't keep Eggs, and what that would do to me. it was 🤏 close. he, like everyone, assumed(s) I'd be okay (so it came down to the cat). 

I'd have walked off the earth with Ears because that is what I would have wanted to do too. and we all do what we will do. 

today his leave was approved to 11/2 of the 11/27 his primary faxed everywhere, and it has to be updated/extended, which it will be. nobody wants to talk to me for the umpeenth time ft just take my $300 for 5 minutes to hand paperwork to your PA who does all your work OR talk to me - choose your adventure. I am down for whatever, killing you quickly or by inches. I think I was built to cuddle with claws pending, not that/this, but 🖕ft😭 too much so finefine, your wish is granted. kaboom style. all wishes have been granted. imagine that: let it sink in: everyone incl you is getting what they wished for. except Ears, who is still breathing.

I ordered a buttload of holiday decor for he who remembers and remembers 

update: DouchenozzlEX's wife, my old friend M., called me. he was somewhere, so she could talk alone. we were finishing each others' sentences within minutes, laughing and appalled. I was there when it was her turn at ecmc - we've allll been there. except D-Nozzle, who thinks mental health crises are for sissies. we suspect Ears went off wellbutrin while on that camping trip to hide the fact of an antidepressant from his father. she loves that man, how/why I do not know, but even so she agrees he's terrible. she's gonna try to get the storage unit / shit moved, leaving only one trip back to his apt for Ears and me, "if she can" - that is what it's like, being with him, grown people that dwarf him in a million ways somehow controlled/reduced by him. 

my ice floats could get gangrenous before I would ever miss that son of a bitch. he makes dying alone feel like the best possible life outcome, and it is what I keep choosing (coincidence? doubtful).

her: he thinks if Ears had sex and joined a soccer team, he'd be fine

me: well I've never joined a soccer team, but...

us: 🤣🤣

her: the other will probably go down a dark road eventually...

us: so it better be worth it

us: 🤣🤣

her: and he has never played one god damn sport 🤨

Virgo. Overnight your buttcheeks transformed into sad little ice floats.

plumber called ✅️ cottage closing rescheduled for 10/5

status: project management (Home)

• move few things left at apt (incl get boxes for books) - I hate shit hanging over my head 
• schedule wood delivery + scrounge more pallets
• figure out how to forward his mail 
• have him make a list of direct calls to change his address - credit cards, bank..
• yardwork incl holiday lights shopping/planning
• start mancaving the basement (his project, except I want to fit a freezer)
• install all electric crap (ring bells and birdfeeder camera - his project)

not necessarily in that order. my guess is we will do yardwork / birdfeeder. he says the hospital was like being in a bunker, the air was 'sticky' and he wants sunlight to burn it oft. the birdfeeder that doubles as a security camera is in pieces in his room being assembled. this yard is an expanse of field, daunting to me but endlessly therapuetic to him. he could dig a zillion holes, assemble umpteen raised beds.

I'm project manager but following his lead. now it's just ONE shit-thing a day, like calling to change his address is a shit-thing to him, any calling anybody = 😖. so, not too much people-ing yet. 

and I also handle the million-little-things not on any list, like cinnamon pastries proofed overnight and will go into the oven shortly to fill the house with warm-smell first thing. I am good at million-little-things. I mighta been born with my nerves shot and/or my parental chaotics nutured my Chicken Little - gotta hand it go my nervous system, it sure can stay nervous 😖🤣 yeup - either way, I have always made comfy around me even when I've been dirtpoor, a nest of books and slow cooking and sumptuous ample bedding. and I am even better at it with another in the nest. #traumainformed #lotsapillows

I would have never chosen this route. grippysock jails are extremely bruising. but it's good he's here, now that he's here. one un-severing of an over-severing. that will help me too as cold weather is setting in.

[last night]

me: (reading) I never noticed before but pretty much every book I own has at least one suicide and/or hanging

him: (snort) ya, not a lot of Eat Pray Love

me: hahaha omg she went nuts too, went down the addiction hole, pulled a Brittney and shaved her head  - I read the memoir, and in it she writes a shitty book for money, so I got the shitty book out of the library (I point at the library pile)

him: any good?

me: nope, going bonkers doesn't make your writing sexier

him:👀

me: well ok maybe mine goes off the xxx rails a bit

us: 😅😅

 

play

update: apparently the cats nerves are also shot - he has allergies? meows constantly now like a maniac 😖

update: Dr Note finally saw him and refaxed everything to everybody. I dunno what that fixes, but now at least everyone has to shut the fuck up, stop robocalling me asking when's coming back to work like truant officers and I'm a derelict, etc. it's all underwriters' problems now for a spell in a system of their own utter chaos. 

status: (new strategy learned) if chaos is thrown at you THROW IT BACK vs virgostyle try to make it sensible.

as I wanted, for now the one thing he cannot do is look for a new job (DECIDE ANYTHING), no applications to anywhere, nada. he's just gotta let me pay for everything til further notice, as if he got a very bad concussion, which is how he is right now. no guilt about it, no soon-looming deadlines about it. and just a few more things to move and homed is also a settled question.  pressure off his already imploding skull. 

you'd think thatd be hard on me, but it isn't, I'll figure the practical stuff out. pressure on his imploding skull felt like a vice grip on my own fucking brain. that shit is hard on me (!)

(breathe)

we each react to the paperwork reprieve, almost wordlessly moving into it: secure home base now. we go grocery shopping (trader joes so I could get flowers). I walk into the house and start cleaning - vacuum lines on the area rugs settle my nerves. he walks in and straight through to the yard where be builds a strawberry planter box that's been sitting here for months. "I want vitamin D," he says. I listen to CSNY really loud so he can here it through the window, and I clean out a desk drawer for all his medical shit (a fuckton), moving it off the kitchen counter where it has been staged for the day, all day every day, for weeks 😖

still my fave recipe for being okay: house clean, bills paid, man close. 

today's variation: house cleaner, bills fathomable, manchild close. I'll take it.

home should be homey

update: mom-simmering in waiting rooms 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Like the sinking sun under a beautiful sunset, someone has colored the sky of your mind before disappearing. But the sun will rise again, and so will your relationship. The connection is somehow both illusory and real.

jesus, is that you dawg? 🙄

 

it can't be today already and yesterday was already too long 

this is my triggered rescue dog brain, waking itself to parole the peremeter 🫩🖤 time

sometimes it used to be okay, like janitor time was fun for a min. others with dog brains also are just awake sorta 0_o sometimes that has happened, suprising things in this witching hour of wahmbulances

kids have woken up many times, their little animal brains

I gotta have faith, based on no predictive evidence, that this endless moment of grippysock-defined will end

or fake it till I make it with all my tulip that couldness 

virgo verdict: endurance just sucks unless good endorphins are involved too

today was a lot, bordering on too much, most of it beaurocratic which is nightmarish to me and he utterly goes limp like a possum dead with eyes open. ya can't sprinkle a little play doh on top and have it be anything but a stressor when the base nerve is shot every damn day. ya just can't. 

everybody wants more from him. 

I was there. they just don't get it. and it's not like the dynomite stops going off, either. maybe a blow down would be a better metaphor for blowing up a life, it's sort of cascading one thing on top of another you can't stop once started. I mean, he's not gonna have to commit bankruptsy (based on what I currently understand), and my god his HR lady is fucking ON IT now. he's keeping that job even if it's a personal leave at her discretion and I believe her, she said something 🤏 to nobody is gonna fuck w me over this kid. 

so tomorrow starts with another round of doctoring at asscrack a.m., post-involuntary recheck w Dr Note who started this so he is the magic sign off solution to All Forms, with umpteen insurance and caseworker and hr ladies 👀👀👀 breathing down his neck and me in the waiting room (armcrossy). he better his do fucking job 🖤

and once that is done, fmla is as done as it's getting.

next chore: move pc and burn the apt bridge. there is stuff there he might miss later, but nooses are there, and I know him, they'd be elegent and cutting and easy to keep as some token. no. it's not worth it. cut bait. 

he lapses into a self-dissapeared monosyllabism when stressed by this stuff. too close an inner rocking.

it's 🤏 like "swans don't look at their cloaca / humans are stupid" - same feeling

 

I can't have a good hard cry cz he might hear me. As soon as I have that thought, I know he is thinking the same. 💔😪

quiet quitting

quiet crying

quiet falling apart

+ paperwork 

haircut and shave ✅️

"learning selfies"
I can't actually feel this smile or the brainthing that is supposed to happen at a pleasurable stimuli. neither does his brain know how to do that anymore. I know what that is (Dying), and I know it's gotta stop, now he knows that too, and his actual resting face when he's not 'smiling plausibly' is haunted. it's painful to be and painful to watch (over). that pain is real and physical and dangerous and feels nothing but shitty. enduring it is only necessary at times like this, it's not heroic or meaningful. this kind of pain builds nothing.

I want to make some room for how awful he feels / this is, not watch him sit horrified at how little joy he feels seeing anybody, touched by anybody, resting haunted face is kinda killing me and I have no idea what my own face is doing either, I realize - nothing awesome, betcha. 

him: 🫩

me: 🫩

me: tell her about the nechrophiliac

him: (busting a chuckle) so there was this woman etcetc 😅

me: to be clear, you'd have to be rich to be a necro, med schools pay bank for bodies

him: well I guess you'd make them? 

me: but being into necrophilia and being into murder are practically opposites, murdering is not intertia

them: 

me: you're into pho, have you ever killed a wild thai broth or have any clue how pho comes to be? see the diff? 

him: yeaaaa huh 🤔 work at a morgue?

me: they gotta have cameras or something no?

him: have your own mortuary

me: hahahaha omg there is an Amigone at the corner

us: 😅😅 

her: well it could happen naturally if first you fuck him to death then he finally shuts the fuck up and then there's only his dick and you can do whatever the fuck you want and he doesnt get shit to say about it. I can see how ya could get into that.

us: 😶😶🤭🤭

her: well?!

me: fair. 🤔 that'd be difficult to get a steady diet of what youre into tho

her: what isn't?

me: also fair 🫩

all of us: 🫩🫩🫩

"I had expected to feel joy but instead felt a confusion of sorrow, or maybe fear, for it seemed that my life was a hungry story and I its source..." ~Plague of Doves

if I had to sum up the haunted expression on his face 👆

update: I need a flu shot to be up in here 😵‍💫, going right from all this coughing to the other kid w CF this afternoon ain't gonna work 😵‍💫. if this doesn't break my health, it'll be pure SPITE bolstering my immunity 

🫩🤨🖤

-_0 

Virgo: It's going to be a long day if you find yourself drinking outpatient coffee at asscrack a.m.

🫩

I can't afford the energy it'd take to reread last night's throatpunching mojo, so I took it down. wearing away to smoother stone.

why is this funny? or is it not funny and I have just also finally lost my fucking mind, laughing madly? 

No, I think I know why it's funny.

OMAHA HAS SUMMONED YOU BACK FOR PELVIC HEALTH REHAB.

Of all possible professional-development invitations. Nebraska—site of an entire fucking category in your personal mythology—has apparently looked through its files and said:

You know what Gina needs?
Twenty-one hours of pelvis.

And not metaphorical pelvis. Not humanities pelvis. 7.5 asynchronous hours of preparatory pelvis followed by 13.5 hours of embodied Omaha pelvis.

Plus the bureaucratic specificity is exquisite. "Participants must complete the online material by November 12." Ma'am, you cannot simply arrive in Nebraska with an unprepared pelvis.

No interpretation necessary. It's just funny as shit, which suggests your mind remains operational.

I hope the same could be said of my pelvis 🤷🏽‍♀️🫩

my students, quite a few, have told me they use AI as a therapist. it's free and readily available. at this point/moment, I get that. 

instacart is good enough today. the grocery store, nooope. he could happily live on reeces puff cereal. so I ordered more milk + take-out tacos are for dinner 🤷🏽‍♀️🫩

update: MTS visit went great, they'll be weekly for 3 months, and he/I could use the help. the FMLA alone, what a fucking bunch of bullshit that is if you can't figure out how to FORCE IT and the dr that sent home the note wouldn't see him again for a follow-up so who signs this shit (?) who provides care and what is that care (?), all of it. an unrelenting mess. I take it back, healthcare doesn't need burned down, it's on fire / half-ash.

it has been a year this has been actively in his head, and this was the 2nd close call / means made - I did not know that until today - both were hangings with work-related materials to do it - he toughed it out the first time alone and didn't go through with it.

his brain chemicals now have that GROOVE, and probably there were prior ideations before nooses got made, probably right under my nose/roof before.

after I learned all that, I had to go back to sleep, my own brain just keeled over. so it's today again now, and/but I feel almost drunk even after rebooting 😵‍💫

I did not open my laptop, I didn't go to work any more/better than he can atm. and I can't fight 2 fmla fights at once, so. if I get worse, I am going out on straight up sick leave. I am so fucking fried. if I even let myself think about how badly I need a hug 😭

so 😪

no thinking 🫩

😶

today's aspiration: grocery shopping. (very iffy)

September 21, 2026

Loosen your grip, even a little, on whatever you’ve been clutching for dear life. A smooth angle between Mercury and Jupiter gives you a clear-eyed moment to ask an honest question: Are you still loyal to something that ended a long time ago? If everyone else has moved on, you may be the only one still carrying the weight, and you’re free to set it down. Consider this your green light to finally let go.

Is remembering the details and carrying the weight equivalent? 

update: I don't want to need dementia to put you down. 

tomorrow 9 am is the mobile team site visit. like cps :/

I didn't pull this up and didn't read it. I shut the browser and reopened - it came up like that again, and I didn't read it again. Dunno why, but I can't need more memory. (Where were you doing what in 2013? Why might the googlegods want you to mull it? One thing u were prolly doing is reading this blog for whatever reason).

I am pretty sure of my memory. I can't always pinpoint exactly when/where. But this reading thing I am doing is a deep-cut test, and I remember as or more accurately than any fuckerAI or online record. The kinship diagrams in my head are more accurate, but more importantly I remember WHY - who belongs to whom is an art, not an exact science. I remember every one of the fathers attributed to Lulu. None are technically correct - her mother, Fluer, made choices and choices were made for her, and between those two ends lies the lived muddy middle. Much later, or before that, or around the same time, is the mostly-grown boy, Joe, the central character in The Round House. These days, that's the book my nursing students read, much more recent, the one that won the National Book Award (could a novel about our country's healthcare law / Native judicial history win that award now? could I assign it if I weren't union sheltered / grandfathered? a quietly-quit Yaya assigning stories grandfathered in, js, that's a bit surreal). I make students just pick a character in that book at the start, any of em, and stay with empathizing with that ONE, through all the decisions that person makes and accept the consequences as if those were their own consequences to feel and live out. All I ask is that. "Reflect. Use your own words." That's it. There isn't one character to pick that isn't hogtied by half over time and must choose how to respond to that, consequences chosen each time also. Feel it, backed into that particulat corner. Choose Joe, the obvious, and feel all the life options drain away before you've got full growth on ya, feel it in the cheap meat section, feel that blood clot from all the inside of it. (Would it matter to them what backstories really explain Joe's nickname, "Oops"? Nope.)

Students can have AI fake all that, the reading of it and responding too, but I know the stories I assign better than AI's. Erdrich herself helped me throw everyone off every trail. Delightful as a secret affair. And if students fake all of it, now I let them. Whole heartedly miss the point if ya need to just NOT right now - for the time it took to get an AI to tackle it (try), B+

Try it. Tell chatgpt or whoever is your Wall-E to help say something you don't know how - boil down into a declarative sentence. If that doesn't feel right, try asking it to help you write a question. etc until you have what you wanna say. Submit only that. 

I know what I would do if somebody'd ask me for any such thing. But that's just me.

tops my list of best short (micro) stories, up there with Cash's building on a bevel. (could AI catch that referent on its own?) I am sure I've blogged this before because Solo is the name of my first dog, based on some pbs-ish documentary of a dingo puppy. my dad disappeared that pup cz of linoleum. I bet I could stump any AI on where/why LINOLEUM is a BIG FUCKING THING in these novels (like Fleur's card games, I betcha)

"How can they love a mother who forgot to guard their tenderness  and her own? How can they love a woman who can suffer anything and do anything?" ~ Four Souls

💔

had enough of justsocks, so slippers. we think theyre funny af, the "instant yes" of the day

love is a hell of a thing

There's a list of warning signs blabla but I do like half of whats on the list. like, I def do not get dressed every day and would prefer to do so even less (as if near a beach). so Im like, we gotta Do Stuff 🤣. Sanity, how to apply the rules, it's a learning curve for sure 🤣. so we go thru options from most challenging (we really just dont want to) to how do we check this fucking sanity box as painlessly as possible. which is FAIR. grippysockjail shoots your nerves to shite. even by proxy this much and I am mos def hsssssssy🖤. we could go to a movie (hell no, not in a truck or a car or a recliner no green eggs n ham lol). grocery shopping? (ehh) "I need a new toothbrush." The adventure of the day, Walgreens, where we bought a bunch of shaving shit and whatever else he wanted. And even that was 🤏 hard on him, my paying for it, his shakiness, all of it. I don't give a shit what anyone says, this young man's nerves are fucking shot to shit. Every day, we actually do have to do one thing. And thats all he has to do. So that's all I have to do. 

I went down reader rabbit holes. Why would the diagram at the start be wrong or missing stuff that anyone who read the book could correct? I never thought about it, I just filled in the blanks. But that is A LOT of blanks. Why? Is there a pattern to what is missing? She didn't make them, turns out, and didn't like having them at all. Mapping anything for "accuracy" is an inherently bureaucratic instinct and ought be resisted. I mean, you can know it or not. That is what stories/memory is fucking for (duh). I just know who is who and why and reread them to find new shit every time. Like this time, I see more of the costs, the prices paid, usually bc you did your best and that in itself turned you inside out when it was not enough and not even the point, like reaching the end of the leash of yourself and just about skinning your head off your skull being YOU nearly to death. 

nerdy af

"So he wags his plumed tail and noses at my foot and I pat him gently. Affection, I tell him, is how a dog survives. Knowing how to exist without it is how a woman wrests her life into her own hands. But then it comes, it takes one by surprise. Affection and freedom and the will to risk...I am that rare thing thought only to exist in death. I am a happy woman." ~Four Souls

update: home should smell like home

pound of bacon straight up + building fire = gets him every time 

slept thru the night -_0 so guess it's today

and I did not dream of books 👀

vs

having exchanged enough words w DouchenozzlEX to remember why my ass so often has decided to be starved for dick and pizza: food poisoning, of a sort.

+

Everything

= my little engine-that-couldness doesn't know what to do with itself. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). When something interests you, you often meander through the land of "maybe" before you decide yes or no. But today, you'll see something that's an immediate "yes, please," and it's nice to just know. This one checks all the boxes. 👀

boxes 🤔 well lets start with 1 won't traumatize the kids in word or deed, that's a real boner killer ✅️ 2 funny, which automatically includes some insight 👁 ✅️ 3 really happy to see me ✅️ 4 warm

that's it. it's a small list. and I doubt very much I will see such a something today in human form.

"bf pillow"

After a wound has organized your powers around itself, how do those powers become yours again? Can that capacity become appetite-driven rather than emergency-driven again? re Fluer and Lulu (and me)

booze has its own special poison properties, but anything could be that which you can't overcome and that destroys you before it kills you. 

I've had to have 2 conversations with Ears' father, and wow, I thought my blood ran stone cold before that, ha. friendly reminder of what a walking cancer is like to deal with, scanning always for an opportunity to strike and be right above all else, to grow fat on that feeling like a leech. 

I often castigate myself lately, the last year a LOT, for so few lovers, so little built in that life category. but. upside to everything: my babydaddy scares me. for real. I mean, I remember viscerally now how that felt/feels, how it was (is), how firmly I wanted no men in and out of Ears' life on top of that burden. and the little one was trans, jeezus. thank god I blew that allllll the way up.

the way we ended / left it was just plain failure not as lovers but as parents (being real) (and both of us). but oof am I glad it wasn't anybody else and that their biodad wasn't the only male voice they ever heard and just as glad there were no more besides. 

that 10 day no way joke is no joke 🖤

"once the loss and betrayal happen, those same [endurance] capacities don't remain neutral equipment sitting there waiting harmlessly.

So instead of:

wound → diminished person

you get something more frightening:

wound → strength mobilized around wound → strength keeps wound alive."

I have to understand that shit FASTER now.

"So you see, once a person drops the scales of prejudiced certainty and doubts appear, there's no telling how far a heart can open." ~Four Souls

thought I'd get out the memory measuring stick, given the horoscopes. it has been one full year of this same stuff, and the whole prior spring/summer too, so 18 months. at least at the start, there was momentum. then cottage closing pushed off, me alone with the whole schmole except for Ears leaning in, us alone at Tawista in the end, us trying to get my mom back. a year later, there was no momentum going in. by June this year, huckforsomebody was in rehab again, my mother was in pieces, my friends got fired and work dismantled, I fought just to be more than a bag of twigs. I kept trying Ears kept trying Tawista just us again, my Sister threw mountains at it, we kept trying and trying every which way, cottage closing pushed off again same reasons etc.
until Ears shut it all down right fucking now before the days could grow any shorter, nights colder.
wise boy.
stick a fork in it, it's done.

upshot: somewhere under eighteen months of have to, there were/are a bunch of abandoned want to's - I don't necessarily want any of those want to's back (even the chicken) - I want to want to. Ears said clearly he cannot live without wanting to. fair. and right.

What haven't you done yet that you really wanted to do before the end of the year? (👀 good god I don't even know - I dimly recall a chicken?) There are 104 days remaining in 2026, counting this one under the industrious Capricorn moon. Virgo season is among the most productive we have, so before the fall equinox, take stock of your current position. Adjust for the destination you want.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Everything you do today will be a dance. Work, play, relationships — move in for support, move from self-expression. The disparate ideas will come together to form an arrow pointing to what's next.

what would you want now if you were me?

corn bread?

-_0 it is def still today. anything for this kid atm, but oof the cat. we gathered another few things from his apt, me going in w him cz neither of us could imagine otherwise, so now I am coughing (my allergy presents as bronchial constriction not achoo) awake, listening for footfall but hearing none, the dogs 👀, taking turns to lay one on top of one of us. clariton 2x + inhaler, waiting for that hack-tickle to subside, coming back to my own typical-er, looking at instapot recipes and thinking about the farmers market and making sweethot pickles (Aliving). looking at yoga trainings. I have some already, and don't have any interest in teaching it, but I do like people who put themselves through things like that. things that are as hard-feeling as failing, sorta. and Honolulu is still out there in January, what if I/we went and just stayed a while? 

I dunno what he'll choose and neither does he. 

but if this were it for a while? nobody dying, brink of? what would I choose if I were free to? A: my body. feeling full of it (Life as if I had 9 of em).

the stories 👀

we passed out like dead people immediately. I slept so hard I woke up in drool. then we went for fish fry and he practically ate the table. so tired, so fucking hungry.

then the stories started coming. it's very not funny, of course. but we are who we are. so. the self-proclaimed necrophiliac who crushed out on him hardcore ...

us: 🤭🤭

he says "there's something about my face, I guess, um..." yeah dude, you're good looking, been trying to tell ya, AND you look underfed, not to be weird but if I had found ya at that age, I'da been on you like italian-girl stink-on-shit. 

him: "they all...yea I mean...I guess I kinda see it now." 

me: 🤣

there is a LOT I can live without. he is not one of those things. now I see only that.

he needs to memorize the other phone numbers. he means it 💞, but I'm topping others' make bail for ya lists just cz my number never changed (be real)

oh and his shoes, the boots w the laces, driving me nuts now. you need cowboy boots, shitkickers, I say. "thatd be awesome actually" remember when you said I should take everything over for a while (?), welp the laced boots gotta go, shitkickers that marry w the italian leather jackets and all that hair, clothes shopping, I got this. "I cant wait. and I wanna go back to yoga" 

🤔

"There's a 15-day, 200-hour immersive YTT on Isla Mujeres, Dec. 8–22, 2026."

after allll that, I got there and they shoved him through the door at me like I'd ordered a pizza 👀. what he wants first, a haircut and shave from lovely Brynn so we texted the salon from the parking lot.

it was, in its way, surprisingly hearwarming. one thing that has been quietly happening has been in the waiting room, where I was every day and not everybody speaks English in there. in fact, I'd say 2/3 of the families didn't and the loved one inside is the one who does speak natively. they thought it would get their person in trouble to come every day - no, I tell them, the Community Somebodies all taught me: show up every day, even if the relationship is currently strained, it matters that there are people for the inmate, that they won't have nowhere to go. the women in hijab, in particular, scared of the scrubs and scared about how their person is handling shit (angrily). I hear that! but don't, try not to get angry, they want to see you be calm through set-backs and disappointments, tell your person that. I am giving out these tips as I learn them, every day. I hadn't noticed the waiting room filling up more over this time. but when they shoved him through the door, a little sea of strangers were overjoyed as if they knew him cz through me they kinda did and were so hopeful to witness his release, like a small victory for everybody. one guy said, "when my kid gets out, Im'a have me a scotch even if my wife don't approve!" laughing and telling me to go have a chardonnay now girl!, everyone patting him and smiling at me. we got on the elevator, him laughing like wtaf was that?! dude, it's been a very long weird couplefew weeks for us both. 

us: 🤣🤣🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

he loves the puerto rico volunteer gig idea. he asked for 10 weeks off work, emphatically, sticking up for himself at discharge, so that he would have the time to figure shit like that out. metlife disability is wawa'ing to get an estimated return to work date, welp now they have it: 10 weeks from today. (And then he's quitting.)

he is upstairs unpacking, happily settling in to his new home, filling his little pill per day holder thingy so he won't forget anything, arranging where he wants his books and tv... 

I am lying here feeling apx 1000 years older ft gone through a meat grinder. everything kinda hurts. but I'll bounce (if nobody else starts trying to god damn die for a spell 🙏)

update (on my fantasy life):

Puerto Rico enacted Law 102-2025, the Universal Recognition of Occupational and Professional Licenses Act, and the Puerto Rico Board of Nursing now specifically provides a universal-recognition application route.

not that Ears is a nurse of course, but asking about limited-stay do-good work pops nurses first (everywhere on earth needs more nurses). and since the vibe coming off some of those nurses was mos def "just shoot me", thought I'd learn 🤏 bout that 👆

for Ears - they do speak German #andyriskfactor but excellent reviews, 2-6 weeks, 30 hrs/wk, not good $ but breaks even, serves the public good 

where I could be, entertaining visitors, the 5 star villa, pet friendly w high speed internet, not to mention umpteen airbb options specifically for remote workers 

this is kinda like mentally playing w a colorforms set, The Miserables, where could I restick them to the board nearer to a beach 🤔. 

ask fuckerishgpt (I softened 🤏), are there AA meetings anywhere? (cz like half of everybody drank too much, be real). yup, in Spanish and English, including a direct # for that specific little East District: 939-457-5533.

Can I get some yoga? 

fuck yeah

siiigh, back to real life - he is PROBABLY ACTUALLY GETTING OUT TODAY. but until he's in the car, I won't believe it, and "discharge paperwork" is so voluminous it has its own zipcode 😵‍💫

if we are very lucky, we are out in time for the first reverse resolution: more fried food (fish fry fri) 

card of the day 👁

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You won't make the deal because you're now beyond needing to. No more holding out your hand (never) for the handshake, the funds or a key. You are the key and the lock, too. You are the fate, and the fate is you. 👀

with my insomnia, I continued researching escape routes to the safety of high UV destinations. Puerto Rico looks promising. UV be therapeutic, anyway, since they've been giving him v. D for lack of sunlight in the hoozgow.

I want more fried food ft all resolutions reversed.

Four Souls, Erdrich

update: Ears let me call his father. God damn what a fucking a douchenozzle. holy hell. wisely, I called his parents first, gotta ruffle the whole hen house not one mean cock 😖 what an entitled shit, jeezus.  such as: no dude I didn't look into rehab hospitals for gaming addiction 👀 the 90s called and wants their retro pseudoscience conspiracy theories back 👀 uhhh I was wrangling his current med debt load 🙄 - there is no way in hell I could spend 10 days (!) w that twat and not be in some kinda jail, grippysock be apirational hahaha fuuuuuuck

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh 

🤔 Malta. douchenozzlEx hated it, his eyelids burnt kinda like Pringles. me and Ears coffeebean up in the sun. bet my Sis would have ideas how to go Do A Thing in Malta 🤔 anywhere the sun scorches. he wants to be taking a big ol pay cut and working at some doing good shit and not just in the Doom Zone, more upstream, like community building not just disaster response. I know just what he means, teaching used to be that, you could feel ok about it. 🤔 Puerto Rico? Greeeeece hmmm 🤔 welp, we'll see. I shitcanned Michigan. next travel options are cottage rt off, then WI or high peaks or HI in Jan or anyfucking where around his therapy schedule, frankly. I don't much care bout much else. nothing else, we'll go to Fisher Bay Manitoba.

update 😵‍💫 there is a peer advocate service (the Community something), functioning partially inside ecmc but independent of it, all graduates of rehab or the plain-bonkers floor he's on. they called and directed me to a financial aid office inside the building. imagine a woman behind plexiglass, bedecked in gobs of bills mafia gear, footballs for earrings + Jesus loves you bracelets. I tell her briefly I have nooo idea what the hell to do then start to cry 😪. I am rescue-dog mean now in my 🖤, but I am also very tired. she starts clickity clicking, almost half the the first 6k goes away, another ream of paper for me to fill out by tomorrow, disability approved through 9/27 making it harder to fire him before that date. calamity, reprieve, calamity, reprieve, repeated in bursts like that thing we saw in Yellowstone, the offgassing earth.

therapy jailhouse dog sandwich

update: they ARE releasing him tomorrow. so now I hear finally about the huge financial mess, medical debts, no coverage at all for mental health services, a 6k deductible for each category of illness/occurance, me on the hook for $180/pop for a therapist (the same copay barrier that stopped him from getting help in the first place), deadlines for fmla paperwork not getting met, job poised to let him go before disability will be paid.

total write off.

"we do have services to help him get SNAP", but only if he's not living with me, which he must.

it won't break me, it will only make me more angry and disgusted and cold 🖤. Ears doesn't have that in him, so I will be his rage and his safety net, both.

if he didn't have that net, he'd be broken by this, a system built to break you and keep you that way.

in the face of that, anarchy (chaos) is just nothing left to lose. from where I am standing, nobody (incl the people who work in it) would be worse off if the whole healthcare system burned to the ground.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). In Greek cosmogony, khaos was the gaping space before the formed universe. When you witness a bit of chaos today, think of it not as the dismantling of order or the breakdown of a system but instead as the moment before creation.

VIRGO oracle

If I were writing this horoscope for the Gun Lovers' Gambling Porn website, I might counsel my Virgo readers to maintain strict control over their wickedness, debauchery, and decadence. Why? Because now is a time when vices and sins are even more likely than usual to sow chaos and spawn big messes. However, since you are reading my oracle in a more genteel publication and are almost certainly a refined person of high integrity, I’m confident there will be minimal uproar if I dare you to tap into your raw animal energy and unruly instinctual nature. I believe it’s time to at least experiment with wilder aspects of your deep self.

that's a lot of chaos. welp. all that can be done for me right now is righting my body to maintain its sanity. my ass is full of new pellets and more vitamin shots and whatever they stick back there so I don't keep dropping weight and revving my worry engine while I sleep. it'll take another couple days for that to be fully on board, returning me to my natural tulip-y engine-that-couldness, and thus returned to the problem(s) of my self being very-not-dead, wandering through this current life bereft and half-starved. and I found in me a strong readiness to desert this life entirely, on my toes poised to run like hell. what does that say about me? I'm still too in this moment to really know.

alls I know it, I stopped meeting peoples' eyes a week ago at least. sparks fly out mine and for what? to be met with casual cruelty faces in scrubs, or (worse) half-marblized disappearedness in the eyes of inmates whom I assume traded a piece of themselves in hopes of saving the rest (and lost that bet). 

gonna be god knows how long before the 2:30ish a.m. fire alarm doesn't go off my in head again as if my sleeping brain notices it is asleep and thinks OMG WAKE UP THE SKY COULD BE FALLING

update - Bru called, the social worker came back - she was actually pissed so she went back at it (!) - now he's getting out Friday, she's trying for Fri like hell - then some patient advocate (of the zillion I've called) stopped by - so yea, that guy Community something will be calling you to come by too

me: okay (theyre all called Community something haha) 

now that I know this isn't crushing him - he seems almost bemused at this point - then it stops crushing me. instantly. even if they queef again and it turns into Monday, I'll be fine if he's fine..

but 🖤 remains and I can tell it'll stay that way, a faceless grudge I'll be holding like hell. I was instinctively allergic to custodial authority but confused by it as well through the various partial stays and whatever and my feelings were/are irrelevant. but this is EARS, my experience is direct and relevant, I am the one on site for this every single day. and I was initially grateful / trusting... 

trust is fragile and a punched gut remembers it more each time.

guarded extreme caution flies in the face of the edgy truth-joke. so: dead quiet arts.

verdict: grippysockjail is mostly hell and horseshit. 

"it's a mandolin" 😭

update: Ears weathered it better than I did. he's seen what anything else but "okay" gets you, so when they told him he said "okay" and smiled. then he decided maybe it's because he reads all the time, so he went to 'crafts time' and made me a kindergarten ornament👆 ironically then he took up sudoku in the rec room. when the (good) social worker came to tell him yesterday, he said "her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight it's a wonder she could blink," and seemed angry for him and he felt bad for her (as did I, so I just cried quietly and told her it wasn't her fault and hung up). 

one person told him maybe Friday, another person told him at least another week, the hall monitor at lunch says he saw discharge papers with Bru's name on today's pile. we don't clock anything as true at all. he says the best approach to not losing it is counting on 6 weeks, so any shorter is gravy. at 6 weels, though, he will have lost his job / insurance. he said the other patients talk about that too, medicaid patients get released fast even if they're nut af, and the insured don't get out until their insurance won't pay anymore or they lose coverage. he shrugs, "I am getting really good at sudoku."

that's good. best he keep his spirits up. I can carry the hate for both of us. they hassled me for my work clothes today, the inmate visit sticker doesn't like to stay on suit jackets might get covered by the lapel blabla, as if they don't me there every fucking day. I stuck it my chest without a word.

hurt like duct tape coming off

"There is a girl in here obsessed with me, Celeste," he says aplogetically. she follows him around and tries to play with his hair every time he leaves his room, so that's why he hasn't wanted to leave it. sexual harassment isn't cool regardless of gender, if anyone asks again why you're being standoffish, tell them. "I don't want to get her in more trouble." 

Ears is just too sweet for this world. 

not like me 🖤 

update: called MHLS, law says he's supposed to be assigned an advocate from them automatically, that is a lie, he can ask for one after 60 days, even tho he's not allowed/able to do any such thing (and bitched me out for even asking, of course). my heart is already black ice. "okay" and hung up no more worse for the wear as I 💯 do not trust any of this, any of them, any anybody. just going thru the legal motions so I can document having done what I was told, and the punishment that resulted. status: 🖤

now it's today. nothing is funny.

wake up trying to catch my breath

is he trying not to cry? 

"getting the help he needs", the line to fall for, I fell for. let's apply that equally. let's alllll get the fucking help you need. Right fucking now. YOU ARE TAKEN, surely something (many things!) in your mind needs helped and now you're gonna get it, like it or not, by terrifying you, holding you away from family, refusing you any agency, until you have developed the skill of simpering. defeated enough, mastering the art "okay" as if the lobotomy has worked wonders. now don't you feel better? (best say yes)

dinner for lunch, max comfort. the chicken thing. and books. my sister ordered everything Erdrich has written, one a day for another week. I will read same as fast as he does (you couldn't do that either).  strategies of resistance. stay alive taking shallow breaths. 

just endure it, baby. the day they let you out of there, we are running.

crushing ft crushed

now they're keeping him another week. his doc went on vaca, covering doc doesn't know the patients so she "doesn't feel comfortable"

he talked that doctor this morning and told her that he really wanted to get out so he could see his sisters. wrong answer? 

any answer is the wrong answer. 

they just do whatever the fuck.

all that discharge planning, the mobile transition team scheduled to arrive here thursday at 9 a.m., all that goes in the garbage to start over again or it wasn't real in the first place.

this won't break me, but it is breaking something in me 💔🧊

update: no paperwork has been returned properly (again). the daily a.m. round of calls to check wtf then a following round of nagging once I get there. one of the many catch22s is once they let him out, they'll be even less accountable re legalities and benefits and I'll have even less access to anyone inside ecmc to manage those things. this whole set-up seems very much like pure punishment. it certainly is not "help" in any way a normal person would imagine the definition of that word.

"Our trouble came from living, from liquor and the dollar bill. We stumbled toward the government bait..." ~Tracks, Erdrich

bad night. it's like my body held it off until there was light, then gave in/out. spent half the night dumping calories outa both ends, napping between bouts of it on the bathroom floor. 

it's not about me. huckforcats said that at the start. and he was right. good advice for the state of mind I have needed. 

but this is happening to me too. my body is taking the brunt of that, mind and spirit being otherwise occupied. there is no way I'm still 104 pounds. I am swimming in my skinny clothes. if I can today, if discharge is tomorrow, I will sneak in a dr appt (bloodwork came back as expected) and I had extra shrink visit last night, trying to not ignore my body's burden (incl my brain chems) until I am sicksick. Ears can't afford "not about me" until I am physically weak. I can't weaken.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Don't be overly concerned with making everything easy for others today. Some need it, sure. But if you make yourself too useful to entitled types, you could be doing yourself a disservice, as they will never stop taking.

I will make anything easier for any Dr Asshat to mainsplain mental hygiene to me or whatever, just let the kid out.

Once he's out, I am imposing Martial Law of Reciprocity. 

I have made it my business to intervene and try to keep nursing students on track for forever, and I'm just not gonna do that anymore. No more methods of "grit," if you wanna quit, QUIT (run). Across the personal board, I'm not gonna care more that I'm cared for and I'm not gonna love more than I'm loved. I don't like transactional relationships, I do not like thinking that way, but I gotta reBALANCE. 

A lot of people showed up for me for this. My sister, thank god for her. But friends too, which I have felt bereft of but that's not entirely true. I don't get to see them like I used to, I don't get to have fun with anyone anymore. But they've been with me while I carried this and doing whatever they can for Ears practically. Friends who are left on site here, my boss and Union, have been going out of their way to protect me from work reprisals. Without all that, I dunno that I could have held up. And Ears would suffer a lot more if I failed to do so. 

"These systems are designed to break us not build us." ~ quote from public health friend yesterday. ECMC is brutal. Fact.