I also fall off (word)wagons. I will get back on after this.

Everyone gets sick. Everyone dies. In sickness and in health until death is not a promise, it's just an accurate description of love.

straight talk, I said Mary would no longer be MY go-to about THIS and next I'd pray to the devil. and here we are. my father is not the devil, he never was, he is the little boy with Ears' ears in that photo taken just after his mother died. all his life, he hurt himself most, and every day I feel him right there now and I cry 💔. Tbone is not the Devil, but boy could he be one, and he's with me I have no doubt. so.
🙏 the Twatever Prayer: remember in FL when he took care of you when you were drunk, Dad? when you set your trailer on fire with the grill? he flew there and we rented a car just to see you for a night, and so much feeling you had about seeing us that you drank your face off before we even got there, remember? I am invoking the right of hospitality - what went around has come around, Dad. take your angel wings and go wrap him up. all that dark energy that was fear-fury used to hurt you/me, wrap it like black smoke feathers all around him now, summoning the crows to whom you owe an apology (!) anyway, fucking off anything/one that tries to get through with a zombie death booze bite. light blue frosting on fucking fire if needed, "twatever". use your furious angel self for good to help him through and out of this. for me. please and I love you and I'm sorry.  smib

lent starts 2/23 (orthodox calendar - ie if you needed the weekend). 

I didn't plan on doing anything, there's been so much focus on stopping shit already.

Then it came to me, locked outside St Caz - what if I stopped blabla'ing words HERE for a spell. the good thing about saying anything here is nobody has to read it or respond, it's less than a text. but only I word HERE, I don't gotta listen. 

"light's always on"
just in case the phone stops working permacandle collage 

St. Casimir

it's half a block from belly dancing, by complete chance. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The way you're feeling is so nuanced, there's no emoticon for it. And you don't owe yourself immediate clarity, tidy labels or a polished takeaway. Not knowing how you feel is part of feeling.

Yes.

Meanwhile, the mall 👀 

I barely saw the kid party (Bug's buddy), it was a drop off situtation. My daughter and I wandered the weirdness and had lunch. Laughed a lot. Cried of course. Every conversation is kind of a pantry scan: who died, who is struggling with what, how is so-in-so. We talked about Kerri, and both cried. We talked about my mother's wish to die (join my father), and strategized how to get her to spring (selfishly). We talked about Huck, my mom's 'pantry of stuff to live to worry about' includes him. We talked about Sam, who just buried a new husband, we talked about Emily whose sister is sick, we talked about Jeremy's stress-skinny now that all the money-need is on him for his family. She told me that I am by far the youngest mother of that entire friend group, age squeezed down into categorical over time, and how jealous they all are that she has a middle aged mother not even close to dying. We laughed about that because no one knows that I hit 92 pounds last spring, or how much she was taking for granted that I couldn't die cz I'm always fine; my being alive to her friends illuminated my death for her, ironically. I cried 🤏 about my dad, struggling with how badly I'm taking that still.  

"Don't die." That seems to be what everybody is sure that they want for/from everybody else. It might be a safe assumption that anyone reading this blog doesn't want me dead (usually).

After the party, I took both girls to Hot Topic, nostalgia for my kid, and Bug understood all the t-shirt  cultural significance(s) of South Korea (🤷🏻‍♀️). We all love "pick one thing" - no occasion, no reason, no worries, you can have any one thing here/now, just choose it.

Just Cuz is my favorite holiday. It can be celebrated any time in any little/big way you (I) want. 

love a little bigger - steve poltz this guy is kinda nutty, but life is too short to be sick and then sicker #catchy

 big pot of chives, a couple sprouting too soon and shivering. even chives have to learn everything the hard way ft. they'll be a'right / need a minute

 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). New locations open to you and you aim to go as a traveler and not a tourist, experiencing what is, not the front that's presented to newcomers in exchange for top dollar. Take the same approach to new relationships, and you're golden.

Welp, I am not going to baskin robbins, but I am going to the mall today for the first time in I dunno. Apparently, the food court is where you hold little girl birthday parties now if you are smart enough to avoid chucky fucking cheese (the hentavirus whatever). I am sure I have been in the mall since then, but my last clear memory is of  sending photos from the fredericks of hollywood dressing room. I'm gonna go a little early and check out what's still even in that place, but I am eating not one bit of food court food. So not sampling the bourbon chicken! Hell naw.

"Sunshine"

Tomorrow, Sunshine signed us up for a beginners belly dancing class 👀🙄

Yesterday I went to early yoga but found that it was the HOT vinyasa vs my usual. I am hurting in muscles I didn't know I had right now, in a good way. I like feeling in my body. That's what it's there for. (You're not supposed to walk into a temple just to feel like shit, right?)

song tbd - meantime Prizefighter - full lp in track order, a story 

"sanctuary - revision needed"

When it sticks the landing: "Writing the eulogy for Toughie brought these lessons together. I had to take scientific fact, the extinction of the Rabbs’ fringe-limbed treefrog, and shape it into a form traditionally reserved for human loss. In doing so, I realized how rhetoric shapes value. By calling Toughie “more than a frog,” I was not denying biology; I was acknowledging interconnectedness, echoing Carson. By referencing extinction as part of a larger pattern, I was thinking like Kolbert. By allowing myself to feel grief, I was writing in the spirit of Williams. I also became aware of an assumption I hold: that emotion weakens academic writing. This unit challenged that belief. When grounded in evidence, emotion clarifies rather than distorts."

HERE - mumford and sons ft. chris stapleton I said it'd be the new theme song when it dropped, and here we are. it sounds like a goodbye but it's the first song. reckoning before proceeding.

"not mine"

weighing down - julian taylor 

This event-filled day features a solar eclipse, a new moon, Lunar New Year, Fat Tuesday and the start of Ramadan. If you needed another shot at starting fresh, this precipice of the new era is all yours. Celebrate and meditate. Wave goodbye with one hand and hello with the other. The Fire Horse rides.

well shit. 

seems worth a candle

my shadow - why do I fall in love with what I cannot have? a: because she loves me, I can feel it - she's killin me 😵‍💫🤧😵‍💫

 

me: czy mówisz po angielsku?

her: Not often.

me: you're Black 🤭

her: Yes.

me: sorry, I mean you're Black on the sign too, I just wasn't expecting 🤭🤭 sorry, I am actually pretty sad about a lot of stuff

her: We know.

me: I haven't seen Mary where I live yet, I should go see if Cheektovegas Mary is fucking Black

her: See for yourself, that is your way.

me: ... ... ... ...😭 ... ... ...😪 ... ... 

her: We will meet you there. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The long story and the short story are essentially the same, except one is harder to follow as it meanders, repeats and requires a nearly saintly level of patience. 

There was more. But that covers it.

And I am an angel, not a saint.