I'll turn these babies into breakfast foods tomorrow

 

The Dip was showing off enough for today

-_0 ☕️

my horoscopes say to lay low, aim high, show off, touch base with friends, keep to myself, take the day off, get something done 😵‍💫

SAMPLER: November 14, 2026 You’re ready for your close-up this Saturday, as the Sun and moon form a dynamic connection, and you’ll command attention wherever you go. Flaunt your one-of-a-kind look with a mirror selfie .. . As fitness aficionados know, those moments of rest between sets give muscles a chance to recover and help prevent injury. Mercury and Venus ended their retrograde journeys yesterday, but a lunar square to Venus suggests caution... VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You're tempted to fill an opening in your schedule before anyone else claims it. What if you kept it? You'll find a wonderful use for those free hours, and it may involve doing absolutely nothing ....

hahahaha ok I am going to the farmers markets to see what is still there and then come home and cook whatever that is unless the stove knocks out the power again, and either way use a couple "free hours" to "involve nothing" which I spose means rub one out and read obscure shit, which is just SATURDAY (like trauma is just time). BUT Crouton did give me an inspiration for a new batch of butter: since I am going for #gofuckfarmgirls (equanimity, which does not come easily to me) I was trying to think of a kumbaya batch, (but kumbaya also doesn't come easily) -  🤔 - then it popped into my head, into my MOUTH actually, the taste of the jingle "I'd like to buy the world a coke..." and the ingredients I would need to make a tasteless smell of that taste. I am garhering ingredients. Let's say a prayer for the stove 🙏 

I am going to call this batch "Rock a Yacht"

🤭

wiping fog off the mirror

everything is warm, you can feel all of you and nothing hurts, you lie on your mat sweating a bit like you played, your breathing sped up slows down finds steady

work hard rest completely. it works

you watch your thoughts float by, like different kinds of clouds in a sky, let em be whatever they are

☁️I do not give a flying fuck about next year's schedule - I have no control over it and I'll think about next in July, like I always do, fuck a duck it

for instance

🌬🌦other stuff 👁

the breeze - jj cale

Erdrich wisdom / working on my thesis-free paper

yup

everyone assured me this was not true. in fact, it's the reverse, they said. real love grows slowly, it doesn't knock you outa your skull like touching a wired fence

FALSE RATHER ALERT! the dude in the book is a bit of a hot mess, but the right answer is both not rather nonethless

"Erdrich's fiction makes room for experiences whose contradictions are constitutive rather than problems."

thats☝️conferencespeak for "tells you everything except what will happen" and sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes you find that good thing during a trauma-time (which, if you're living out historical trauma, is just time)

needs something 🤔 

update: ohhh around $4-5k for the electrical panel prolly afterall  ("don't lick it" another one of my sayings) days old guy. and Sis agrees, no kids go to Hawaii, they're just gonna have to keep themselves alive for 1 damn week. now it's time for yoga, which I want as much of as I can get before I am lying on my tummy. I want one of those crochet bathing suits

the yacht rock

SandInMyBootsFest.com 

next year's punitive teaching schedule has given me TODAY cz I closed my laptop immediately, 🖕 work. I put an apple tarte in the oven and climbed back in bed with my novel til the electrician / yoga-time. I am stretched out under dogs, swiping at cowboy pop-ups like they're laser dots on the floor

update: it's Friday so of course firingsfriday yay! - today's version is my new schedule for next academic year, on campus 5 days a week 9-5. lucky me, I get to stop worrying about making sure my current students don't flunk, cz they're all working already and not coming back for class schedules like that. they literally cannot. so, run freeee students, go online, go to ecc, go anywhere both more convenient and cheaper, while I cheerfully wear boots n skirts on this sinking ship then go home to my pond-or-whatever, my life, whatever I have made of it ...

"house sparrows"

I added a massive amount pepper to the seed. I don't hate the squirrels but birds gotta make a living too.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There are no wrong turns, only detours of discovery that teach you the lay of the land. Your sense of direction will recover after your sense of adventure gets a wonderful workout.

lay it on me, man. I love a good workout and love an adventuhr! my current range is staycation and I don't drink, so I am, as my mother would put it, "a wonderfully cheap date" at this current moment.

it is verrry lightly snowing. I like snow, I can see all the animal comings and goings, fresh tracks in the early mornings, the drama of their lives, of life. 

I am putting up xmas lights to further vex my electrical panel while the master electrician is here this afternoon, offsetting inevitably bad news with bright colors.

it is a Fri the 13th, like black cats walking cross your path, today is lucky for me. like a jasper stone in my pocket. 

I have decided that whatever my sister has already decided re HI is fine - I just want my own room, my minimum requirement (non-negotiable) - she complains she's always in charge but she must have control, so I am just gonna GO LIMP as she often advises - whatever is fine as long as there is a door I can shut.

across the board today, I am rolling with "sure!" at whatever comes my way, assuming it is lucky somehow.

We never do know what counts as bad luck, but this Friday the 13th features Mercury and Venus both ending their retrograde journeys, making this the luckiest unlucky day we've had in years.

years. 

card of the day
.. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..-

it's not today yet but when it is, it'll be Fri the 13th 🐈‍⬛️

devil woman - cliff richard

the yacht rock psycho-adventure of long car rides has been delightful. "woooooow" those videos (my mother's voice) 

update: every one of those union general membership meetings is a fucking funeral. it's an emotional labor union. 

I email-confirmed my tattoo appointment for the same day/time as our next union "mixer" (B-knife right again, there are mixers - but they're a total drag) during the meeting, a month from now. it'll be potluck. I said I'll bring my new ass tattoo if the party holds up long enough, my only sidechat quip. 

why the tat? I needed to manifest a different version. I wanted to do a cover of the orginal tattoo vignette, dry with a more kundalini material outcome. 

I never am quieted exactly, I simmer down. simmer til it falls off the bone.

how much pot should we smoke for this meeting, Janis? 

update: dr cancelled, all kinda stressed out about that / this life is paperwork assault I swear to christ. we stategize how to deal w that, paperwork spread all over one counter again. then there's nothing more to be done re that so QUICK, STOP FEELING ANYTHING ABOUT IT as fast as we can (it is just papework - the real work is sanity). how? 🤔🤔

him: what's for dinner?

me: meatloaf. good question. I lost the potatoes, thats why we didnt have meatloaf last night

him: lost?

me: (opening and shutting all cabinets) they're gone and I used them in pot roast last weekend so they're here

him: (opening up-high cabinets, as if I could reach) did you just throw them out? you throw out everything and call it cleaning

me: sometimes I wonder if I dissociate and throw out potatoes then come back and don't remember

him: I think we all have always done that and now we call it dissociating 

me: 🤔 - omg they're right here in line with our boots

him: as in "staples" ? 

me: 🤭maybe! ok, the secret to meatloaf is soaking dried out too-hostile-to-swallow bread hunks (like croutons) in milk (I demonstrate) 

him: cool! so much of good cooling is knowing one simple fucking thing like that

me: poor people sadsack hacks are the best. such as, build me a fire this afternoon so I can take today's 'we're all getting fired!' meeting fireside, please. 

him: martha stewart

me: jeff or no jeff, damn straight

playcave progress - rugs and table on which to play games (again)

it's def today 0_0

what was my horoscope 👀

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You've been putting up with an inconvenience for so long that you barely notice it anymore. Today you'll remember how things used to work and realize you can restore that arrangement. One adjustment will improve your everyday life.

welp. not that it'a any of my business (very not) but the endless divorce of Crouton (he picked it! he chose Huckleberry too, he's free to pick his own blog aliases), from all the things he's been needing free from for an epoch (samanthonys + lowcunnings) has impeded my access to his sense of humor. I know very few people with a lightening fast eye for what is absurd, and most of those people are blood related (I made them or they made me). so the simple end of that divorce, end the fighting and default to easy-law (court friendly law = here's the rules, no grandparents don't have rights so be nice, he/she get assigned days and virtually no contact = THE COURT NEVER SEES YOU AGAIN. family courts never want to see your ass) would so radically improve the shape of his time that he might laugh again. he'll have all kinds of time for it. alone-time with a new SINGLE parent role, which he hasn't experienced the awesomeness of yet. singleparent time is the shit imo. good lord, if he got that AND shut-up-gossip time at work (tho he'll fuck it up eventually by fucking another hen but still, a reprieve)....well I dunno who he is at that point, but fun again will come back to him. I can hear it in his voice, trying to come back, laughing familiar enough of a feeling that it doesn't make him cough. 

thing is, although I miss that (terribly sometimes) FOR ME, what was 💔 was giving up on it for HIM. 

and now turn that around: Ears driving again. 

Ears can go do what he wants, without me there to monitor the guardrails for deliberate suicidal aims off cliffs. without any control of what he does. and hoping for his sake that he's too busy being happy in his own life to be laughing with me in painful waiting rooms. 

I don't want Crouton to be stuck forever in the equivalent of a shitty waiting room.

2 Novembers ago, TWO SOLID YEARS, he texted me that flirt photo of him w the socks in the hotel room, and an offer to perform an unrequited sexual service that I rejected (🤔 🤭 maybe it's a voucher!🤞 hahaha). that night he told me he was getting divorced, couldn't wait (!), then maybe he would find a farmgirl and maybe make another baby (!). at the time, I rejected the 'favor' bc was like 🤨 have fun w the disneyprincess farmgirls wtfever 🙄. but now, after all the hell and grippysocks and meanness insanity, I say little prayers for him like yes go fuck farmgirls go be freeee....

I have no control. I had to remember that, to live it again, and again. when and if the cage door of addiction(s) opens, the decision to walk out of it belongs to the person in the cage. 

and they might run hell for leather away from the world you yourself occupy. Ears might disappear in a new way, into his own life rather than into his death. 

and that is the new crux for me. having had what little was left of my life completely eaten by the Ears crisis, on top of what had to feel like a possible-hospice bedside tour of detox/rehabs (inevitably - how could I possibly get to I dont give a shit without ever having achieved I don't care anymore in the first place?), with a couple funerals thrown in, and ALL MY FUNNIEST PEOPLE GONE from work omg horrible work/function conditions for a lifetime workaholic, now I am kind of  ...  🤔 ... uncomfortably undefined / just waiting for the next shock. 

so, when/if that cage door opens, can I walk out? 

already my sister wants to bring our kids to HI. I can't say no, not sure if I want to say no and can't get the words out of my mouth if I do, don't know how to manage feeling "of course thatd be great but also no" I just stay quiet, push off the decision, stop answering my sister's calls, until finally "for HI, I am going to buy condoms for the first time in a decade." nothing about the kids or not the kids, just me. I am def not going to actually do that. and my sister gets that. she doesn't know how to respond to a sentence that is just about me, is my point. what would/could it mean if all I think about are 1 writing this paper about reading Louise Erdrich while traumatized and 2 my own self's voicing its wants - ? 

my sister, ever level headed, "ok well let's let it rest a minute and talk again Friday" 

all the careworker teams are now warning me of this, my impending caregiver crisis. which is an oxymoronic position: for the other person's sake, I have to imagine that person gone (in a good way for them). I know that's a dangerous time for me too, Titos is right there in the face of loneliness without end. my stance regarding others has to be #gofuckfarmgirls and I gotta figure out how to be actually fine even if unneeded or whatever. in my own right. (not just look good hahaha)

I keep being able to put off pulling that ☝️ off because another piano falls on someone standing next to me.

what happens when the sky runs out of pianos and everybody's either dead or not, final answer?

siiiigh, well time to juggle a doctor's waiting room and a long online union mtg at the same time, during which I cannot make myself feel better sidechatting 'I feel like both of us would be happier if I was performing fellatio right now' because Jeff is a tree. but Crouton graciously agreed to take that text if it comes down to it, like #breakincaseofemergency

song tbd

Tales of Burning Love

in interviews, she says this one is a rom com 👀 maybe she needs to look up what that is lol

I pulished an empty post at 4:20 to amuse myself 

amusing myself 

my kids are passing it ☝️ around. I noticed it's made by chatgpt in the link. so, is fuckergpt the AI interviewer or is fuckergpt helping someone (probably 420'd) make that vid? 

🤔 another false rather, it's both

"Getting old is the second-biggest surprise of my life, but the first, by a mile, is our unceasing need for deep attachment and intimate love." This Old Man - my students are reading it, the point of view from 90 years old. What does he see, and not see, from there (93 years old in America). I'm reading the student reflections.  Overwhelmingly, they are choosing that quote ☝️ in their reflections as being proof of leveling, that some things are true for every human regardless of race, class, etc. My students are 20 and expect that ☝️ to be unfortunately always true.

update: electrician is coming back Friday, they're sending "the old guy", that's always the big guns, the old guy. ultimately, even though it is more that can break, I am glad I have this set up with a generator. the ancient dude who lived here before me tried his best to protect his independence in this house. I ain't gonna cry to have to fix what I value. that seems wise ☝️, as a rule. applicable grampa saying: "don't ride a free horse to death"

restocked ✅️

it is def today - the generator is on again - sumtimgwong, for sure - so run the kids back to Sunset Bay - it's veterans day tho so no electrician / limited electricity / LOUD ass generator til tomorrow - can't go to yoga cz Andys check bounced .... it's not even noon lol 🤦🏻‍♀️ fuuuuuck me 

🫣 what's my horoscope? "you're fuuuuucked"? 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There's someone whose advice you still hear in your head. Today, you'll face a situation that calls for exactly what they taught you. You'll handle it beautifully and perhaps pass the wisdom along to someone who needs it.

🤔

Erdrich? "loving harder and smarter IS the current so don't swim against it" is the upshot 

grandma: "fuck em"; "you could kick the whole world's ass if ya had to"

grandpa: "lay down I wanna talk to you"; "talk around it til it falls through"

dad: "twatever"; "fuck a duck"

sister: "go limp, if that doesn't work go limper"; "it is what it is"

mom: "fuck em" (but only rich [white] guys in power); "wooooow, look!, it's so beautiful" (about every/any little thing)

let's go with Butterknife wisdom for now and hope the second half of the day is less of a pain in the dick 

hydrangea, one of B-Knife's faves. I just planted it last week, and in the face of hard freezes, its leaves already wearing fall color, it decided to bloom anyway.
"wooooow"

it's not today yet, just an email notification 🙄 (fucker)
 

Bug's syrius channel is "yacht rock", which I didn't know there was a name for this stuff = what was on the radio in the car when I was a little kid, so my parents didn't own it cz it was too cheasy but the radio was always on so I know all the words to all the songs, and we heard a ton of em driving all over hell from Silver Creek to N Tonowanda. Ears shaking his head every so often when a really good/horrible one came on. he was in pain almost to this one, laughing like hell as I sang the whole damn thing. the ending aria, every note, he was just like 

o

my

god

hahahaha

"song tbd" goes to afternoon delight - starland vocal band what kinda name is that (?) and holy hell that vid is a bonus delight of fentynol (sp) level cringe wooow

"Redoctober"

watching the aquascaping

(thinking as I go thru my day, wth are my "shiny" talents? 🤔 seriously, paperwork competence can't be all I got 🤔🫤)

Ears drove yesterday, first time. I have much to say about the implications of that upshift for both of us. But my words can wait. 

The sun is about to burn through the fall morning clouds. We are gathering up the girls, setting up the aquarium, then heading to The Fish Place, which they have never seen and once they do 🤯🐟🐠🐡🦈🐙🦑🌿🤯 betcha we are going to be spending even more time there. Which I am quietly letting evolve toward what I want: a pond by way of all Littles voting for it loudly until the all the Bigger-Littles help dig the big hole. I will be sure to show them the koi...

"waiting rooms"

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). "Discretion is the better part of valor." You'll have an opinion about something that's none of your business. What a luxury to keep it to yourself! 

🤫 let's be really quiet

card of the day

him: (eating a pommegranite) we doing anything?

me: (eating more pie) Morning All Day, it's like "we serve breakfast all day" only it's everything

him:

me: what?

him: well like maybe you don't remember, like dementia a little or whatever, bc that's just Wake and Bake

me: it's wake and bake with me baking not just me being baked

him: I see. but you are a little baked

me: true

us: 🤣🤣

me: this is a pothead conversation if ever there was one

us: 🤣🤣

me: look, I need some soft time. seriously. bubble bath butter bakery time.

him: gotcha, like prison for martha stewart

me: she was on the cover of sports illustrated when she was 80

him: I could see you doing that

me: would you rather have a cat that shoots bullets or a gun that purrs when you pet it?

him: I'd rather ... wait, let me think ...

0_o I'm on 3rd morning. Ears is in permanent morning unless I call it for 'It Is Today Now' hahaha sooo I could probably just stick with morning all day, or at least until that aquarium chews a hole in his pocket and I gotta go paint the wall behind it. Meanwhile, me and THC are cooking (have the munchies). I ate a huckleberry gummy last night before bed. There are all these new strains, sillyhappywhatever, dispensaries are starting to look like Costco. Weed is not very strong or stronger imo, that's it - like a scovil score. But that little gummy is proving me wrong by leaving me lightly but steadily stoned indefintely, seems like. 

My preference is breakfast in bed all day. 

still not today yet

 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Everyone assumes you enjoy it. That's quite a leap! You'll get a chance to admit what you'd rather be doing. Your preference will be taken seriously, and a better arrangement follows.

isn't that a game? "would you rather"? I'd play 🤷‍♀️

oh I know what to 🕯ha. good time for a wee bit of fire, getting chilly. I love this weather. I love how autumn smells. 

"for inside jokes"

We watched Red October. I thought about that watching Tombstone assignment, kinda doing it in my head, then the 🕯 thing came to me ☝️, ridiculous and endearing 

REfi finally went thru off Ears' debt. they realllly dragged their feet but ✅️

Christmas tree bought used $25 off craigslist for playcave ✅️ 

Aquarium aquired ✅️ 

hell, I might even light a candle 🕯

rainbow shark babies

cool cat

any way you want it - clem snide journey cover, repost

🦬 thinking about bison. there are a lot of those but they're all mostly dead. in the novels, I mean. and their being dead / deminished is obviously a "them problem" - the ones left alive bellow in grief and tend to kill themselves (stop eating). but every thing/body that RElies on them suffers the same. bison magic would be about going back to go forward, I think. REplenish, REcover, REsume, REstore. it's easy to get into that groove in Vegas right now. it hasn't snowed, but the lights are going up. lotsa lawn nativity scenes. very often you can tell the people have had this stuff for years and/or inherited it. inside, I bet they've got shit like this. which gives me an idea - put an xmas tree in the playcave! inaugural REdux.

I don't have the xmas tree anymore. I was going to give it to its co-owner but wound up beqeathing it to one of the kids for a new life. the trains weren't mine. point is, I have to start over from scratch with what I thought I was done with entirely. xmaswise.

bison magic. REstart by RE turning. so used stuff, nifty hunting. nobody uses craigslist anymore / why I like it.

“The bison were taking leave of the earth and all they loved,” said the old chiefs and hunters after years had passed and they could tell what split their hearts. “The bison went crazy with grief to see the end of things. Like us, they saw the end of things and like many of us, many today, they did not care to live.” Last Report From Little No Horse 

(I care to.)

little fucker just turns around and shows the camera alarm its ass and keeps eating 🤨🤣

 https://www.craigslist.org/view/d/buffalo-cool-old-ge-fridge/xj6ZkFvbJXv7ALQuuhqqDZ

-_0 ☕️ we slept like the reconciled dead. I am not awake yet, but it's today. trying to be productive while not moving one sore muscle quite yet, hoping the cute deaf guy is still around, tho he did not seem like the stick around type 

Before the North American horizon was crossed by telephone poles and railroad tracks, it was crossed by bison — tens of millions of bison. But by the late 1800s, fewer than 1,000 remained. Today there are roughly half a million, which is proof of what people can accomplish when they care to. On the eve of the new moon, set an intention: What do you care to?

that sounds good, set a bisony intention, let's do that. after (lotsa) more coffee ☕️

👀

getting into the truck, he turns and says "two hot yoga classes and a fish fry. I'm so lucky. thank you." with 100% sincerity, I shit you not. 

this was/is the same twofer, we take two classes in a row every Friday, hitt then 26+2, both hot af, brimming with others, teachers included. last week he barfed into the lobby wastecan barely missing Lisa, who was there again where she always is, to my right behind me. 

two hot yoga classes and a fish fry. I'm so lucky 

surviving Seriously Shitty strategy: grab the lowest hanging fruit, but grab something. climb a mountain (actually). kiss somebody. get a yoga certification, the kind(s) for recovery. in other words, kick yourself in the head with a good for your oxytocin Thing. like the side of an old tv, smack it to change the channel / tune way in to something Else. 

I like doing this
getting better

machismo - gomez

update: beware of snoring cats - and wait for it (!) - all good things come to those who wait so they say - the story discussed ☝️is one I remember reading 12 years later, in 2026, bound in a book called Python's Kiss

got him! little bugger
 

Disco trying to figure out how to take a shit between raindrops ☝️🤭

This is long morning, my fave kind, just one of them, starts around 9 a.m. and nobody has to be anywhere, we kill a whole pot of coffee or two doing word puzzles, dicking around, planning our day (separately then comparing notes). I want #barflevel yoga, he will want fish fry for dinner, I want to go to Whole Foods but might blow it off (we need milk ft. Fairlife slaughters my food budget), we both want to buy stuff for the playcave but he needs to run outlets (momentum) and I need to call the car dealer again (douchebag patience). My employer is "upgrading" alllllll our systems, emails and clouds and whatnot, so it's gonna be lights out for work til Monday (💃). We still have cookies but I am in the mood for sweet potato pie. Think I might stuff cornish hens w wild rice - close as I can get to autumn game meat atm. 

I want to have exactly the kind of days that I like best this weekend. Nesty, introverted, homecooky, simple and playful. At naptimes, the dogs form a psuedo-spoon, warming my butt and feet - in loo of deep breathing pollackmusk, I'll send a little 🤏 textflirt. If fish or game board stores come into the offing, so much the better.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Creativity without rules is the rule. Make something with no customer, deadline or practical use attached. It's fine to waste materials or change direction halfway through. It's all about experimentation. #👀🤭 #theartofnaps

maybe I'll write that, "The Art of Naps" a brief manifesto. rule 1, someone has to start? rule 2, play means play (don't overthink it). rule 3, eat with your fingers and leave crumbs in the bed - etc.  I'll probably just write more shit about Erdrich in real life, but she is pro-nap 🤔, note to self: ask fuckergpt to see if there is any scholarship on Erdrich naps. 

now it's (long) morning

"pseudospoon"

not first morning yet

 

by your side - sade

update: basement cleaned. 

If I just start and steady-on. Start with whatever makes the biggest difference fastest (splash). Seeing is believing. If he can see it, touch it, he finds his own velocity toward it. He just has trouble on steps. Like

him: I want the pc in this corner 

(Pause)

me: ok move the boxes of it and monitors all over to that corner.

him: ok

Like that. It's. Everything is a process. I am not used to slowing down or speeding up or any making room for someone else daily, and he doesn't know how to take up any room. But we got it done. Space cleaned, a rug ordered, outlets planned, it'll be pretty nice we think ... by the time we were shutting down for the night, he was happily imagining a 55 gallon fishtank. 

He needs to land on wanting something and then be walked through the step by steps towards it. It's a bit exhausting, but it's mostly nesting like an animal's den thing rn. which I can do (make bunker den - verb) to death so fine cool

we had a philosophical discussion about bedding. I insist: make your bed. I always insist that of myself, it's a sane grounding habit. when he makes his bed, it looks like a body is in it shitty. there are choices. my giving up on him making his bed is not one of the choices. so. do we change the man or the bed? if he cannot teach himself to make the bed, he's going to come home and find all his bedding replaced with a hodgepodge of textured throws in wild colors and a bunch of different pillows so that even unmade it looks made, like it's supposed to be that way. I'll make it so that he can't not make the fucking bed even if he tries. I remind him I used to sew all their bedding to be like that when they were little (prolly why they never make a fucking bed now 🤦🏻‍♀️). his eyes light up, I remember that!, it was and he rubs his fingers together. yours was corduroys. right!! I didn't want to change the kid(s) much, I'd rather sew.

we found it down there with other retro everyday shit. he loves it. it's his new (humungo) yoga water bottle, it's hilarious

update: accomodation letter process via psych started ✅️ I have developed a coping mechanism called 2nd morning: I drag my ass outa bed to drag his ass to wherever then go back home, new pot of coffee, start again on my own day. there's only one horoscope though, so I have to forget it to read it again (it's still stupid). no fish, he's cooled on it because Meow gets too big, so ok

me: how about ___?

him:

me: ok then what about ___? 

him:

me: are you hungry?

him: not really

me: (patience/breathe) we are driving by the art museum and we are 🤏 close to that being our day unless you can WANT something else

him: ok then let's work on the mancave / clean the basement 

me: ok

we go home via shitty wok (aka tim hortons) cz I need a GALLON more coffee. we pull in the driveway...

him: let's have second morning first 

me: (sigh) I do like that. ok. come and get me when you're ready

him: ok! (he's never gonna lol 🫩 - his BUTTERKNIFE genes are emerging 🤦🏻‍♀️🫩) 

-_0 the thought flitted through my mind of wishing I could drop him off at an excellent pre-k then go slowly grocery shopping alone, slowly anything anywhere alone, knowing he's safe so my arms could be empty for just a min 

I blogged and unblogged a pic of what I can't see but felt like my body registering all this by developing outsized shoulders. and it was true. from the back, it looks like I lift and lift and lift weight. not weightS, weight. like a human fulcrum. like a mother 

odd how what makes a child relies, at least for a minute, on feeling in your own skin enough to want someone else to touch you. then you might not be able to feel that way again 

#rawhoneyeffort ft. Grit Assignment: Reductio ad Absurdum of American Individualism (in situ)

"She loved him with the secret, wild, despairing love that mothers bear their boy children, an ardor bound up in loss and foreignness and fury." Tales of Burning Love

update: then we went to yoga and on the way home he had a meltdown, which in him is wow talk about deathly quiet. he "had a rage ball" as he put it. I know what triggered we were talking about sleep, I am supposed to monitor his at least loosely and he wants me to. but the rageball kind of took him over anyway, it just    ..     I guess he hates being this way / how the world works (such as sleeping at night and working during the day). 

a meltdown had to happen and there'll be more. stay out of the hospital as the only goal is about to expire along with his fmla. I know this. he knows this. but even the fish, the desire/fire for it crashes and burns. I will have to drag him back to enthusiasm until it catches on in him again. and that goes for staying alive at all, by extension. we run mostly on my desire for it. he alone would sit down in the middle of a busy road after a short while. 

I will wake up tomorrow and take him to the med psych, then just drive to fish without even discussion first (it will take him at least 10 miles to notice or care where we're going). if that doesn't work, if he gets frustrated, I'll try something else, a board game store, places where neuro atypicals can be found during the afternoon in real life (vs overnight dwellers). and keep doing that, over and over. he wants me to do this, he's relying on me to, explicitly, but it's still not easy. 

welp. he wants a mancave. he will not actually make one unless I start it and then need help. so that's probably next. 

meanwhile, seriquil (like it or not), hearty beef soup w crusty bread and churned butter, and more South Park. laughter is good. we decided South Park is how I'm going to catch up on all the news I've missed (who Pete Hegsweth is, for instance). We are just going to keep watching seasons backwards until it gets to the election night 2 years ago, by then South Park will have covered the highlights.

Bullshit Cowboy us: 🤣🤣 omg I love bullshit cowboys 🥰 

update: the case worker (Mary) was lovely. Nov 30, we have date to apply for medicaid and all other services (food stamps, cash support, etc.). he was turned down for any more private or NYS disability payments just today, so we are right on schedule for the dregs of that job/life drying up, and now begins his transition to "vulnerable population" status. the social workers all love me, and the feeling is mutual, just because none of us are treating Ears like some kind of bum (seriously). topping my priority list is allowing him TIME, to think to heal to reconsider to want to step back in[else] (not just "get a job"). 

grading papers in the kitchen
no worries
(ha)

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22) Stay open to another round when you’re ready. Meanwhile, striking up a chat with someone outside your usual circle could point you toward an even better solution. (👀 okay)

Today is the case worker. She's new. Ears met her once on intake, but I haven't and he was out of his head. So I am not sure what to expect. I mean, I feel like I am his "case worker" and am trying hard to be qualified, but remembering Betty Crocker recipes for stale raisin bran would be a perfect skillset if we were on WIC and Ears were constipated. Navigating medicaid is a very different animal. 

That is the crisis looming just outside the current one. After he goes back to work with an accomodation letter, he'll work into the first week of 2027, but his major medical deduction is renewed on the 1st and I'd have to cough up another 6k for him to keep a job he doesn't want BUT also keep all these caregivers he does want. So how do we get and stay unemployed for a spell (and still get a shrink)? I have been poor af, but always working-poor, and that was back when there was WIC (and pell grants). Today I find out first hand what remains of the social net. For a single able-seeming man 👀 uhmm welp I'm going to need a real case worker. 

Can he just be nuts for a while? Until he isn't? Is that allowed? That should be allowed for everyone. We should all get "American nuts vouchers" like people in France get proper vacations. I mean, it's one or the other - we either get saner and get some rest and get laid and eat bread and cheese OR be ignorant and belligerent and monosyllabic and lonely and go fucking insane. 

Objectively speaking, based on your own behavior history, what's it (likely) gonna be? 

And that is why I vote but don't actually give a shit anymore. No matter what, Americans are going to be lucky if they are still able to jerk off while keeping a roof over their heads. That is what they are doing, how they are living, and I see no light at the end of that tunnel because that is what they want. 

Grit assignment: For argument's sake, let's assume free will. And thus, how you are living must be what you want. Write two sentences. 1. sum up how you live - where, with whom, who do you talk to, who hugs you, what do you eat, what/who do you love of any of that? 2. Explain why you want sentence #1.

Ground rule: It's not temporary (!), that can't be the basis of the second sentence, no excuses / means-to-an-end crap, this is it and you want it. 

It's just two sentences (armscrossy), that shouldn't be too hard. 

this is it - kenny loggins

After/around work (5 classes now, that's about 2 sentences from me x 150 students today) and the case worker, it will be in the 70s again so I will wear myself out in the yard. Because I want to all that, and more. 

I will not do all that I want to do today but I want to do all that I will do. How bout you?  

cheeky lil shit

mines more

I didn't underline a single sentence in this, not one marginal note - strange

let your love flow - the belemy bros

I just planted trees and bushes allllll day (+cookies). Got a wee sunburn even. I moved Mary and gave her a new view. Rediverted the front gutter drainage field. Wrapped most of the trees in fiber skirts and mulch, moved all the dirt bare handed...

When I stood back after at the end of the day, I saw: the land / our material context has been completely transformed - without any planning ahead or duscussion - by Ears chopping every fucking thing down to the ground + my taking the bait to replace it all and adding another tree. It looks like a different house almost. All the grim formality of ancient box hedges has been replaced by a fern garden, a hydrangea bush cluster (4 different, 2 oakleaf), daylillies called "blood and tears", forsynthia and a big butterfly bush with dark bluepurple blooms, a columnar juniper. 

Jeff, the ersatz bftree
🤔
I think I have the first phallusueous stone burial site, and I have a perfect candidate. To do plantwork is very different than 🕯. And to plant an object, it has to be something you like and want to keep and/but you will give to the tree/spot because here you are.

Then we went to vote - my current events literacy is watching South Park - Ears also, we're pretty checked out - but we'd feel guilty if we didn't at least go vote for the Working Families candidates; we don't know why it was a zoo at both our polling places. I was in line behind my nextdoor neighbor, the single mom w the 2 boys, Rebekkah. I like her, I like her stage of life so I like being near it. One of her kids was with her (18 now). She always calls them "my boys" so I can never remember their damn names. Every other house in our hood has either got ancient elderly folks living there, or people like us who buy houses that need new everything bc the prior owners were ancient. The inground pool in her yard is fucked, oooold, pretty gross but the boys rigged it up with an above ground pool plumbing system, diy brokeart 👍. 

I got my first string of xmas lights.

I have an longsliverworry of too quiet. But I am quiet too.

raisin bran chocolate chip

The Buffalo Miracle 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Relieving someone's suffering or annoyance, making things work better — it's what you're all about today. You'll under-promise and over-deliver. 

Sounds like any Tuesday ☝️ might.

Not much is up today, unless 💣 of some kind goes off, always possible. Reading/writing, cleaning, yoga, planting the last shrubs, making a new cake or cookies, maybe beef barley soup (dash of Greek nostalgia). Craig is already here, sanding drywall, telling me about South Park  (Ears and I are definitely catching up on that, I gotta see the devil's buttbaby for myself). He didn't bring the right primer, so can't finish today - maybe he likes it here - we all do miss each other still, that didn't magically poof when new troubles overlayed it. Ears is hot for The Fish Place. We decided fish people are one of our kind because their stores don't open til noon (potheads 👍). Ears'll maybe begin this. And/or, today he drives for the first time, to The Fish Place, up Colvin to Robinson, a known route - hunter/gatherer brain chems, harvesting aquarium plants.

oh yeah, and I gotta find where I vote now (here). Ears is currently disenfranchised, I believe 🤔

OH AND how could I forget? The mts therapy team was here today, and the woman, when she heard the "invigorated" thing re D-Nozl, you shoulda seen her face 😳

us:🤣🤣🤣🤣

"so we are going to really need to work on boundary setting skills!" 

update: got a 2nd opinion re electricical. I am stupified by the normalization of greed. at the normalization of Shitty in just about every category of "normal" life. I think what I thunk before: then don't lead a normal life. Lead whatever life (in each category, make a list, stay on task, start with whatever it worst and kill that, just upend it completely, hopelessly wreck it and don't try to fix it) feels healthiest for you. It is an odd thing to have to be at odds with life if you wanna live. I was not gonna lose my shit either way, but this taught me (again) the rules (of no). In addition to disengagement from ways of thinking imposed on me (nothing framed for me, not even npr now), no more dealing with anything but real people. I hate to say it, but I might need to see (other) people Amazon. And mos def nothing but family run businesses, trucks solid but not showy. I did a localvore winter once. I did stuff like that after. Me and the kids would go on little spiritual awareness experiments/staycations. We would try A Thing and see what we got out of it (become wiser together). Bringing this back but updated. We are going try try no AI-assisted purchasing. If it has a helpbot, go further down the list of options until you get the wife who runs the place. That could be funtionally impossible (as is localvorism, no coffee? seriously? chicory root my ass). But ... 🧐 there is a level of optout/intoelse that we either haven't hit yet or we haven't hit enough crucial categories yet 🧐. We need to find it. 

I read that whole thought process out to him. He concurs. 

update: "The Beet Queen"
I am in the "waiting room" (parking lot) of Horizon, working from my phone, juggling electricians, holding my pee for an extra hour because Ears cannot remember any appt time or do ANYTHING requiring deadlines/timethoughts. This appt was supposed to be over now, but nope, another hour, then race to the next one. Not complaining! Cz nobody is in the hospital (far as I know)! And even if they were, lament wouldn't help. Only a book might. maybe 🕯
#keepbreathing

VIRGO ..bla bla...Your assignment? Accept a home-cooked meal or a shoulder rub without offering anything in return. from the angel who ghosted me yesterday? I honestly can't remember the last time I was offered either

today: drs, electricians (estimates), social workers. that's it. 

unless some new shitty thing happens. it is Monday so odds are on a new shitty thing. I'll take the over on an underdog lotta times, but the odds on a homecooked shoulder rub is a million to one