Thinking: 

Tawista. Solo again presumably. The good part of solo is silence. I am going to climb and swim and do things and go places that nobody should do or go alone. It's worth it to me. If that kills me like that poor fucker who died in shallow water, I had to die somehow and I don't see anybody killing themselves any better way(s). 

Things I know: I want to die. I want to die feeling alive af. (All I have to do is finish the sentence, have the whole thought.)

I see it now: why people jump out planes. at least we used a parachute, you can hear them thinking at the rest of us

second morning

It's a new thing I do where I get up really early. And then I do a bunch of virgo shit like make lists and load dishwasher and write to a nun (how do you do this?) and then climb back into bed under dogs and go back to sleep and then wake up around noon and call it today again. Two days for the price of one, the 2nd day is free, so it's to waste (?)

I want to take a drive out to the cabin, but I can't do anything there, my finger will break open and bleed all over the fucking place like it did just taking a shower. I can't make the damn bed.

maybe just take the ride anyway? silence ft country music?

coal - dylan gossett

I haven't sat here alone since

she can't do that anymore, ever again, so I can't sell this place

I forgot about her Nick Cage pillow (facesitting HA HA) 

always let it play whatever - the universe sent me nothin but Marcus the whole way

I am glad I came. It's Tuesday, dump opens @430 and Ears doesn't know MILK GOES BAD DUDE wtf. Gonna hit the dump, then home for meatloaf (my herb garden here is great). I invited Sunshine because she doesn't want to go home, she's on the road back from a travel contract. She probably won't come, but I'll be there anyway. I'm used to that, nbd.

Not that I don't like it because I do, I just never play Mumford&Sons  

I've listened to this so much that I regularly sing the chorus karaoke style. I don't blame anyone for looking me up and down across this room. It's a small room.

typical exchange lately - her: "wanna go?" / me: fuck no (and I am very barely repressing many detailed and explicit elaborations of thats not it no just thinking about it grrr)

Gimme a break. I'm already writing to nuns. How much more sacred otherworldly whatever the fuck could I possibly want or need? I just don't. I am flesh and blood (for now). I've lit all the candles I'm gonna light until they're for ambiance or the power goes out. 

Do you know how much time I've spent in the last year trying to think up a story to make someone who's hurting laugh for just a minute? And I don't mind doing that, I'm pretty good at it. But it is not reciprocal. With any of anybody at all. Not even my mom no more. 

Being there today, I wondered things like if I had known him, would I have called him Bobby? I just wish I could make it understood: it'll happen so fast, you'll think "be nice to hear her voice" but it'll be too late. 

Things I Do Not Know: 

Whether a tiny children's wheelbarrow full of Tito's is an act of friendship, grief, flirtation, performance art, or evidence for future legal proceedings.

Whether Patti would be horrified by current events or delighted to have been proven right.

Whether Sister Denise knows the answer to courage or simply kept showing up long enough that everyone mistook persistence for wisdom.

Whether being "raised by nuns" is a legitimate sociological category or a regional medical condition.

Whether my purpose is dead, mostly dead, undead, or simply wandering around looking for its glasses (on my head prolly).

Whether grief is love with nowhere to go, or love that has gone unibomber feral.

Whether four cats is the clinical threshold where a man officially becomes a cryptid.

If "I love you" is a conversation starter or ender, which more often.

Whether the universe is trying to teach me a lesson, send me a message, or just enjoys watching me overanalyze signs.

Whether I am healing or merely collecting increasingly sophisticated metaphors.

Whether the giant web of relationships I keep mourning is actually broken, or merely changing shape faster than I can recognize it.

What I hope for vs worry about, like re how today unfolds.

What's the real difference between serious and critical, conditionwise

How to line dance (still). 

Things I Do Know:

Patti would have opinions, all of them certain and well organized.

Walter can locate a nun faster than most people can find their car keys.

Sister Denise has attended enough funerals to know some shit.

I was raised by flamoyant lunatics, followed by gray nuns. 

Making Brandon laugh improves my day by approximately 17%.

People are easier to love when they are alive, but not by much!

If I buy a children's wheelbarrow and fill it with vodka, at least two people have to find it funny.

Every year I become slightly more like my mother and slightly less surprised by it, until now.

I do not actually want answers. I want witnesses. (Are you seeing this?👀)

Love is not an emotion as much as an administrative burden.

Someone always needs a ride, a casserole, a letter, a memorial, a recommendation, a prayer, a raffle ticket, a pet, diapers, bail money, a strong hug.

Nobody (worth writing about) is ever really "done." Not with grief. Not with hope. Not with each other.

I am much funnier than most of my problems.

The purpose of life is probably not productivity. If it were, orange cats and shihtzus would have gone extinct.

Despite all available evidence, I remain glad to be breathing.

she misquoted Nietzsche (she's a little kid, how does she know Nietzsche?) in the right direction imo. Shit does not NOT kill ya; it DOES kill you. except you're not dead yet.

I want the living who have survived becoming strangers to themselves to tell me: here's how I crossed over/back; here's what I carried; here's what I bloomed into on the other side.

I want to spy on bereavement groups. 👀 That isn't the sanest sentence I've ever written.

 

fathers, wish you were here - jj cale

me: we are crossing into the apocalypse officially
ears: (snicker)
me: it starts with tomatoes
ears: then...
me: then we'll be like that lovely gay couple on Last Of Us
ears: (snicker)

no I do not have a pomeranian's worth of pubes, that's E's dog hiding the only place she stops growling ft ancient tshirt left from the nuns, appropriately holey

 

"fishing w dad"

It's summer soltice, longest day of the year, under a Virgo moon (try again).

One last request. Please, please, please be happy. Try. You’re going to die, you know. Trust me on that one. Called in Dead

Think: the reverse of this day is the longest night of the year coming. 

When someone writes your obituary, you will like it because you will have laughed a lot during your life and you had friends and a dog and went to parties with balloons and to the beach and so many things that at night, each night, when you go to bed, you will think, "Wasn’t that a great day.” 

And, it is Father's Day 💔. Have a nice one if that applies to you. Remember, if you can, the rest of us, who are mourning. Bleeding in my case ('fuck a duck'). And trying to fill my dad's shoes while wearing my own boots.

At some point, I will have to call my mother.

I don’t understand death. The biology of it, yes, but not what remains for the living. Pain and memory and an empty place. I think to fully get it, you have to feel it so profoundly that it upsets your sense of the world. It has to make you a little crazy. But it also has to make you love this miracle of existence to the point of bursting. If it doesn’t, well, then you don’t get it yet. Life prevails. How strange and wondrous. In the midst of death, life prevails, calls to us, begs us, says, Come, please, don’t you dare waste this precious gift.

Self help crap tells you 'try one new thing a day' - so stupid - I've never eaten raw pork or smoked crack 🙄. Try it Virgo Way: create one new thing. 

These days, all that would have to be is a genuine laugh for just about anyone. 

Sex is largely about contact. Flesh helps. The look of it, the curve of it, roundness. Breast, hip, inner forearm. But also breath, irregular and hurried breath, partially open mouth, the newness of this experience that you’ve had many times, renewed, made fresh, made alive, the urgency that begs for slowness, the seeing someone so closely, just a few inches from a freckle. The slow jazzlike rhythm of it, unplanned movements somehow seamless, intuitive, bodies moving in a kind of slow dance, as if they had met long ago, a feeling so exquisite, Don’t end, don’t move, and yet the movement itself a kind of sublime pleasure. This feeling of wanting to laugh, to cry, to say things that in this moment you know you feel without a doubt. This act has nothing to do with sex. This is something different. This was what you had been looking for. This feeling of being fully alive, connected, emotionally, with someone else. 

It has been a decade since I have felt that. (except S.O.S.) This bit, fully alive, connected emotionally, with someone else. I looked it up, hair rising all over my body as I read it (incorrectly then) - I felt the bourbon watching, waiting.

1, 2, 3. 

He reached over, without looking, and I felt his little paw of a hand take mine. We sat, looking out at the street, waiting for life to continue, holding hands, holding on.

So what could-ought I do today? One-handed?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your summer superpower is magnetism. You'll draw people, opportunities and revelations toward you without forcing a thing. Keep the passion, lose the suspicion and remember that vulnerability creates stronger bonds than control ever could.

That's "handy" cz all I've got is vulnerability and (so far) the stamina to live with it. 

be cheaper next week (v. life is short)

Butterknife update - better there (ass up) - I can hope, but the odds are very iffy re her ever returning to NY

😭

 

she's 💯 right

omg painpainpainpainpainpain 😭 

fuck.

puckering like a butthole, filling itself in from below, thinking about festering, exploding in white hot complaint with every alchohol sanitizing pour over. I have done this to multiple fingers (TJ, aka Correct Opinions, calls it "the mandolin manuever"), over the years, at times like these, when it feels as if I have (do have) a deep existential groin cyst (I wonder what ever happened w that?) that's wantin-poppin - I am in constant pain / fed up with the boredom of pain. for my pistol permit, they were sooo irritated w the fingerprint reader thing, unable to vouch for half my damn fingers ("you a chef professor?"🤨). if this were a murder mystery = heavy handed foreshadowing. I am in fucking physical agony right now (walgreens, cvs, and amazon all failed to ease my pain with lidocain and second skin and anti stick gauze IS NOT A REAL THING). and bored with being in pain, too. life can't be boring, it's too short. life is painful, pain gets boring. 
see what I mean? 

so I read a very long book about a Bored To Death (Almost!!) man. stage 4 tetris. *abruptly fired* / unstable unhappy loved-ones network, post-mid-breakup-divorce (intimacy tossed salad, not in a good way), you get the idea. 

sitting shiva, in my way

great book. super funny. almost nothing "happens" (just pain) so that what does emerge from that can be foregrounded. 

what I find almost unbearably sad (thud) is that I know (trust) everybody on my 💔 list is Aliving out there somehow. but they're all not mine enough to share how they're doing it (holding on) = on my own to figure it out without comic relief.

so. maybe I do the mandolin on purpose unconsciously. "throbbing" feels like an apt description of what I am doing, been doing, finger or not. tiny sharply painful identity obliterations. 

(breathe)

that vomitty revulsion aphasia thing

another example, right now

fb chatter says it's somebody's grandson, rescue angencies adamant everyone stay away

private thread, IGNORE IT! all theyre talking about is the raffle sales for the booze, for real. they won't even post the emergency advisories on their website cz some vague sense that EMTs are ....what? ON YOUR LAWN??

what the fuck is wrong with you

I dont want to pretend to be outside that, whatever that is

in the face of it I feel 🤮 and wordless and visceral recoil and go wordless. slo mo stunned. stood there like a fencepost lalala

Ears says, of moments like these, change the channel. so I quick, try to think of something else. And then I realize how much my finger hurts and I don't wanna unwrap this fucker then I think it would be kinda funny if I died of finger sepsis by bagel. Only kinda, though. 

my life is this long road trip. I thought I was doing okay. Things felt pretty good. Job, wife, future. And then it was like someone changed the script on me. Changed where I lived and who I lived with and what the future looked like. This new script was crap. I had a very bad part in this script. I was cast as middle-aged lonely guy. I don’t want that role. But here I am. And I feel like somewhere along the drive I passed a marker, a signpost, a spot along the road. I didn’t notice the spot. It was a nothing spot. But once I passed it, I crossed into the second part of my life, the part where youth and a fair bit of possibility are in the rearview mirror. And this voice, this person who told me about the signpost, I ask him where it’s all gone, and he says, Oh, it’s at the last rest stop. You drove away, thinking there was nothing but time. And I say, why the hell didn’t you tell me?! And he says, I tried. Like, a million times. Every day. Every word you wrote for your work. Every fucking moment that passed that you let go without doing something to make it matter. Every season that passed, every holiday you didn’t spend with anyone. A million times I tried. But you didn’t listen.” I was breathing heavily and staring at the carpet. I looked up at her and she stared at me. “Important women in your life leave you.” “Yes.” “And you blame yourself.” “No. Maybe. Yes.” “You ask, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ Worse. You doubt yourself. You no longer try.” I watched her. I refused to nod. I didn’t have to. She seemed to know what I was thinking. “The story forms,” she continued. “The women leave. You’re to blame. So you retreat, don’t trust, perhaps begin to loathe yourself like they must have. The story hardens. What was once merely a thought, a fleeting, fact-less notion, is now a bedrock truth.” 

“Let’s stop for today maybe,” I said to the floor. 

“This is where the fear comes from.” 

“The fear comes from opening my eyes in the morning.”

(replace "fear" with ❤️‍🔥onfire - only lately have I been stupified)

dickbutter batch idea: nap (got a better idea?) 

 “Cognitively I know that life is precious and beautiful and blah blah blah. Can we agree on that?”

“Absolutely,” I said. 

“But I no longer feel it. The Hallmark cards and TikTok posts and insipid beer commercials tell me to feel it, plead with me to feel it. Do I most days? Alas, no. Freud spoke of ordinary unhappiness as something to hope for. I understand this completely now. An evening under the duvet, with a pint of Häagen-Dazs, watching reruns of Law & Order? I’ll take it.” He was drunk, bonkers, and made complete sense to me.

my finger ooooouch 😢 but I ordered liquid skin and gel finger sock bandages, determined not to pass out (gonna put sugar under my tongue and sit on the floor), trying to stay home (!)

Tarot Bot recommended collaging The Hermit thus - impractical advice and I already did that one, with a double meaning inscription from The Wasteland (a cover of Canterbury Tales prologue)

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halve cours yronne, And smale foweles maken melodye, That slepen al the nyght with open ye 👁

"April is the Cruelest Month ft Looking Forward to It"

It’s a strange thing to have your life upended, to go to lawyers and pay a lot of money and not speak to this person you were once married to. To part with half of your life savings. To become bitter and angry and no longer trusting of people.

Not strange even 🤏. When I was talking with the union lawyer, I joked that in jobs like ours eh you get divorced a couple few times 🤷🏻‍♀️ - he didn't laugh, but my coworker did. It's the (still) Alive (again) part, as inevitable as April, painful cold sloppy muddy shitty. And the why? A: Because. 

(Got a better idea?)

“Do you think this is a male problem?” I asked. 

“Absolutely. Women are vastly more intelligent emotionally and frankly that’s the only intelligence that matters. I can list every world capital and details of America’s involvement in the Pacific Theater during World War II but can’t mention to the occasional lady friend why I weep when I watch a Subaru commercial.” 

“The one with the dad and the school bus.” 

“You know the one.”

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your sense of humor will help you handle frustration. You'll laugh at the weirdness of life, and annoying moments lose their power. Finding the funny side of things keeps small frustrations in their proper perspective — tiny enough to blow off.

a lot of it, 🤏 close to funny

a lot, 🤏 close to tiny enough (big picture) to let go of (reverse blink)

"don't operate bagels while crying"

now it is today. forunately (?) I left the scene of the crime ('cat my witness'). a lil slice of my finger is in the bagel ☝️, and thus neither Ears nor I can go to the lake (I can go to Urgent myself but might as well let Ears close ranks w me). we are, in fact, closing ranks he and I, details to follow...

Today, we should just NOT be there:

Assisting agencies include the New York State Police, New York State Police Aviation Unit, North Java Fire Department, Wyoming County Office of Emergency Management, Mercy Flight and Arcade Fire Department.

Public asked to avoid area

and yet

re old people, it is allll about what's for dinner

It'd be further disrespectful to the dead to make a fuss today. But, I quit. (And you can't have my flag, even tho I don't personally care about it, I'ma bringing that baby to the nearest olde timey pollack VFW, I should be able to spit and hit one round here.)

It's father's day weekend - having lost mine, I'm hyperattentive to the fact that no one I know, NOBODY, incl me!, needs another painful memory in the fathers day column. 💔 full stop. 

So it's not just that these people are selfish to the core like many old people are because they can't help it like babies, these people are also just plain fucking too stupid to turn a corner in their heads (THINK ABOUT IT 💔). And that I just can't take any more. 

For the record, the only one who said maybe we should think about how people feel is the dude with the plumbers crack that nobody likes 👁 (called it)

----------------

-_0 hand throb wakes me, OUUUCH - I aint even unwrapping this bloody fucker 🤢 - holiday weekend - how nuts would urgent care be by sat? 

resume thread

it's not today yet 

try not to be awake

reassess after Wellnow opens 

fuck.

drownings only happened 2x b4 said my relentless phone, I have no idea who just died. it's an interesting (odd) feeling (do nurses feel this?), freerange dread (faceless / raw) 

no body 

way too poetic cmon give me a fucking break 

(search for it [he/she/them anybody everybody] resumes in the a.m.)

turn the page, next ch of the book I am reading (I'm not making this up)

someone drowned in the lake. tonight, now, where I was supposed to be

....

.... that had to sink in a sec ...

I swim like a motherfucker, everyone knows that, that is literally the only thing they know about me there, I'da maybe gone right into that way too cold water. (probably)

wow

(throb throb throb, my heartbeat in my finger)

The thing is, though, when you listen too carefully, too closely, day after day, to that pain, to that keening, it can take a toll. Because to really listen is to feel it, isn’t it? Therapists are taught not to own the pain, not to take on the pain, but instead to simply observe it, at a distance. And you do, for a time. And then you don’t. Then you begin to let it in, to live it, if only for a moment. How can you not feel it some days? There’s a person and you’re asking them to talk about the most painful thing that’s ever happened. Do that day after day and tell me you might not want to walk outside and bum a cigarette off someone, a thing you kicked long ago, taking deep drags, feeling the thick smoke in your lungs, the instant nicotine buzz, while trying to let go of someone else’s death, wondering why the world doesn’t stop ...

there it is, a small desire: I want a cigarette. if loose tobacco were a thing you could still buy 

I tried to eat a bagel and just lopped off a chunk of finger instead. my phone is blowing up over that stupid picnic flag shit and I just can't. and I am not making Ears do it for me, he picked the table off the ground already and I am just STOPPING TRYING that just makes everything worse and worse and worse. I can't any more I just end up bleeding all over fuck and in even more pain. I have to just be in pain. full time until I get that done. that's it. back to naked reading except for the now bloody bandage throbbing like fuck

cryin shame - ransom bros

.. she said to me, ‘Do you want to live?’ Doesn’t say her name. Doesn’t say hello. Just said, in this weirdly calm voice, ‘Do you want to live?’ “And I said, ‘No.’ “She nodded and said, ‘Okay. Then there’s nothing else for us to talk about.’ “She stood up, walked to the door, opened it. It was strange, the effect. I panicked. I thought, They’ve given up on me. She’s going to walk out that door… I said, ‘What if I did?’ And she stopped at the door and looked at me. Didn’t say anything for a minute but just looked and then said, ‘Well, that would give us a lot more to talk about, wouldn’t it.’ I don’t know why, but I started laughing. I laughed until I was sobbing. I wanted to die. I really did. But I also wanted to live, by just the tiniest fraction more. I just didn’t know how. You remind me of that guy. This … person who refuses to step into his life, watching, commenting. Maybe we’re all obituary writers. And our job is to write the best story we can now.”

that sounds like something I would say/write

but

"plop" has been replaced by "thud" inside me. it's not her fault (!!) but my mother just about killed me, and now that she's outa here, I don't must stand up. hell, I don't even have to sit up

"Private equity now. I want to make a difference in people’s lives.” 

when I do get fired, that's totally what I'm going to say

I think, and it’s just a guess, but I think we let go of everything and the true nature of experience falls over us. This … miracle that is existence. Which we layer with so much. With anxiety and fear and greed and smallness and what’s next and hurry up and I’ve got a meeting and all the … stuff … that gets in the way. I’m not saying we should all go live like a monk. I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. 

🤔 That would be my guess as well. Maybe why my mom is relentlessly remembering (missing) all the best parts and making that shit up where necessary.

I am living an enviable life - I have a jobby job, shelter only insecure to weather, food if only I wanted to eat it, healthy kids who all love each other and me 💞💯, friends close enough that loss of them is killing me (cf to Phoenix, where I miss no body), a trusty little body. I am wanted more places than I am willing to go be, such as in Java tonight setting up for the big annual picnic tomorrow (no) or Fri weekend- warrior yoga (mayyybe). In a way, my mom is right. I am better than fine. ✅️✅️✅️

I am just not fine enough anymore to feel that at all. 

Of course I do not wish that I was an alcoholic, but I cannot count not drinking today as an achievement (I never even finish a beer). I can't even want weed enough to go one block to buy a joint.  

If I could stop main-lining nothing but sadness, now that'd be something. But I am on a "self-help" strike. Gratitude journal my scrawny ass, no. Like telling your lazy partner I AM NOT COOKING TONIGHT DAMMIT except I am talking to myself. And not cooking tonight.

Thunderstorms are starting. I should go get that joint. It'd make the coming plopplop less annoying. (I won't.)

#bangbang 

🥱 tried a reboot, back to sleep now 2nd morning - good part, nothing happened; bad part, same

 ☕️📖

“I know how to live,” I said. “I’m just … I’m in a transitional phase, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Called in Dead (snort)

"4 dog life"

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The body, mind and spirit all work together. You think better when you eat better, and when your heart is filled with love, you feel like expressing yourself through movement. Anything you improve through joy will affect all parts of you.

True!! But. Given alllll the contexts, I am recalibrating. I am at pancakes (or equivalently innocuous). 

It's firing Friday, as every Friday is. I could always get fired but will probably get back overtime pay instead as they try to sanitize the battlefield. 

I am supposed to go to the cottage tomorrow a.m. I probably will because I am supposed to (virgo ocd), it's the opening annual picnic, I donated a WW2 flag to hoist and all. But nobody will die if I just don't. And I cant help thinking about how a year ago there a new season began - ya know? 

(plopplopplop) 

and thats finefine, most of us Lived to see this day, which turned out to be All Of It, all anybody could hope for.

but now I am laying here, not going towards anything or away either. waiting for someone (not me) to do anything surprising (in a good-trying way), like looking with periphery vision cz I have looked Dead-on aplenty ...

leak is worse if all the furniture 20 ft from it goes flying (I do not understand physics)

critter highway patrol

okay

cartoons ft read

You've moved from: "How do I save everyone?" to "Can somebody sit on the porch with me and laugh for ten fucking minutes?" That isn't regression. That's wisdom.

wisdom is overstatement, but re scale desired, yup. doesn't mean I'm gonna get it. which doesn't mean I'm gonna move much again today.

song tbd (if I move)

plopplopplop 💧💧💧... ok that really is annoying -_0 ugh

"It was too easy to decry it, to say it was ruined. But was it better now because of it?" (right question)

“You know who cares when you die?” he asked to the bustling street. “Almost no one. Your spouse. Your kids. Your best friend. The rest? After about two weeks … hell … a few days … and you know what they’re talking about? The new truffle-and-mushroom frozen pizza at Trader Joe’s. Which is fucking delicious, by the way. Which is why there’s you. To make it matter.” I See You've Called in Dead

it took both of them to deal with mom today, my sis calling bro for back-up; I was alone with her and this "episode" for weeks unless a kid was available, as my world got burned down again with people in it 💔, and I was already full-ugh 🫩 

so. reading naked all day and chocolate for dinner, both relatively pleasant. not the most thrilling version of that combo, but had the benefit of needing nothing.

now listening to plopplopplop of the (new yet) leaking roof, as if my inner plopplop is summoning it somehow. I think at it: okay be a shitty roof, your choice 🤷🏻‍♀️

“There are these nuns..We ran this story a while back. They practice something called memento mori. Latin for remember that you die. They sit and pray, meditating on this notion, that in every action we should remember, have to remember, that we die. When they were asked if it was depressing, they said no, quite the opposite. They said it makes life so … almost impossibly beautiful.”

I want to feel that, the impossible beautiful in stuff, not despite but because of this mess. the defiance instinct. defy how this feels shitty all the time, somehow, bc how could it not?! right?! but that is the right question: how could it not, as-is? how do you live after a broken heart, with one, more beautifully? I dunno

hey, can something not-shitty happen ever? just a surprise that isn't shitty, it could be pancakes, anything. "send me a sign" typa deal 🙏

a: no

update: it's the kind of thing that I would hesitate to blog or have the urge to unblog later. But. I don't think I should do that because this is the kind of thing I know to be pathological, so I feel shame about it. But I don't know what to do about anything unless it's write about it, so I should. 

I do not like shame as a feeling. In fact, it is my least favorite feeling I think. I try to avoid it by being sex positive and always right. But uhhh, being Cruella in my mother's hysteria? there is no right way to do/be that. that's not even endurable 😭

They're ruling out a clot cz of a swollen foot, blood count low, needs iron and is dehydrated - her usual down-the-tubes events minus the vodka thank god. but here's the kicker. it's the NUTS that she is. the dark side of her joy magic is she'll go off the rails in a reality that is too joyless. she will go insane or whatever the diagnostic language is, it's gone off her rocker (again). 

she does that. and it looks very frightening. almost as bad as something like detox. do not forget, SHE SCREAMED AT ME when she first got here AND COULD NOT READ babblecrying. I have seen this my whole life, serially, most often at times related to my father's behavior (he's violent:she's checked out) (this time he fucking died). at her age, it's impossible to tell her nutsness from dementia, which is what my sister is concerned about understandably. But experientially it's the same right now: She's nuts. 

And my heart feels in my throat pounding right now because she told my sister Aaron was here, that he said her heart was sad and needed a pill, that he and I had discussed all this, together here, and on and on like that, a wholly imagined reality that she prefered, full blown A-Bone pathology. AND that I was going to get to decide who got fired from now on because they realize I'm a genius, so there was nothing to worry about. Everything worked out great. "A party every day." I feel mortified. 😭 just. Mutually debriefing, my sister and I were both speechless finally. (her: he was never even there? she made it sound like a housecall party, me: no there was a photo of a party on my phone, us: 😳) We figure that at home her behavior is so rote and Jen isn't a self-reflector type, she can not notice that mom went quietly insane sitting there watching television non fucking stop. no tv here 🤯 

I don't have a "welp" left in me for that shit. I know I am catastrophizing, vulnerable to that atm. but it feels like some kind of psychological warfare, raining fucking frogs or some shit

"Best to table that thought. Time to butter the toast now, to make a list, to begin another day with the assumption, the hope, please God, that there will be so many more, that they won’t just end. So your mind, on overload, thinks of the day to come, the errands to run, the meetings, so much to do. Too early for existential dread. But then your wife, your husband, your partner enters the kitchen, heading for the coffee, and doesn’t understand the hug, the intensity of it this early, doesn’t understand"

dogs don't understand either, but unlike people it doesnt matter to them that you are too dread-ful to get dressed today, that although it does nobody any good you'd rather feel awful if awful is where your people all went away to, they have no idea why you're just lying around naked bc Alive is what you're holding on to today, down to that, and your body is where that Lives, so that you're not alone exactly, your body is still there with you, your oldest beleaguered friend. 

my mother is in an ER with my sister rn. the pattern holds. my parents tell me allllllll about how they're Dying Inside (emotional labor), then Jen has to deal with their compression sock compliance (practicalities) and is rightfully annoyed but I SAID SHE WAS DYING what did ya think I meant?? 🤦🏻‍♀️

siiiiiiiiiiiiigh

roof is leaking like a bitch, same spot, I will hire Craig if he will let me as soon as he knows - if I did it now, it would increase his pain, my knowing first - if I wait, he'll know I knew and even argued for someone else over him (he's not as @atrisk) - so anywhich way even tho we know we had NO MORE CONTROL, the severence was a union miracle, we know it might hurt too much to be around each other for his choosing how long 

and the therapist canceled

painfully earnest 💔

and the weather is shit

so

wake n bake and stay in bed, I figure. all day. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Creative growth depends upon showing up repeatedly. (aka breaking)

the final list is 8 names dropped, 6 of them ours 🫂 💔 

there might be a word for this feeling in another language. I can only describe it situationally: you've done an impossible job really well, and no one else could have done it, practically a miracle you figured out how to pull it off. It's your magic that did it. It took every kind of art you had. And because of you, people were seen, something saved or harmed less, and it mattered (that always matters). 

in every fairy tale, without exception, magic comes at a cost.

the cost to that kind of magic is that you only feel what you couldn't do. everyone congratulating you while you just want to crawl into a quiet corner and lick your wounds alone to death.

in every fairy tale, without exception, magic comes at a cost.

the cost of that kind of magic is that you only feel what you could not do 💔

I know Brandon (a "he", Union) is feeling only that, is what I mean. not me. I am remembering it (or rendering it). thinking

thunderstorm = count the dogs piled up my ass a mile, everybody shaking like leaf 

important clarification as I turn off this day with bad tv and try to eat:

Aaron did not fail to show up for The Knife, I dont want to leave that impression. first of all, it wasnt a test it was a wish of hers. 2nd of all, he sent the photo she wanted of him and the kids, and the asstat is a gift that keeps giving. 

but most importantly to note about ALL OF THIS is that some WISHES can't be granted. my mother wishes for many many many many many many utterly impossible things. not just Time Back, and my dad undead, but also stuff like the illusion that hard work guarantees safety, she'd like that illusion restored. I don't blame her, so do I. but she nearly killed me in the last 6 weeks with her bottomless wishes for Different Realities as I had to drag her ass back to THIS ONE every hour of every day that she was here.

I love her dearly and we are determined to keep her above the grass, but that wish of ours might not be granted. that's it 😪

thinking

deciding this is funny 🤏, enough that if I gave it a spin towards funny story I could probably land it, wondering if cerebral guerella erotica has an ethical problem of consent, cz my mind will write whatever it wants unless I shoot it, and at least one of the coworker plotlines could be funnier if there was an unexpected upbeat in their breaking apart

and in the end tho I really hate a looot of this, if you never really break then you're boring (to me)

but I didn't know it can actually kill ya, which is killin me anymore (no fun 🫩)

I instinctively go down the list, rank them by SEEMSfine (virgo, will hold on cz they cant help it) to reallynotfine, then imagine flipped outcomes for the craziest ones (🕯), and my repertoire of cheering people up is: bossing them into better health and monetary choices (lol everyone loves that), feeding them, being furious on their behalf (nobody loves that incl me), fucking/holding them, telling them dark jokes. and making them cry, of course.

🤔

if you had those tools to choose from, which would you pick? see what I mean? I can't imagine darkly funny porn for everyone in my head to cheer them up (I don't have their consent) and in real life only cry also 😭 🤣 

see how that's almost funny 🤏

add the mother and the ex's ass thing, and you're getting there. my mind on its own just does this, writes and writes until it kinda breaks into a "she" who is funnier, ever more darkly funny than I am, until I am 

"plop"

directly under me

the Knife has sailed. I took down the tat photo (not new!) not out of an urge to obliterate but because the only thing I won't miss is the "A-bone" thing - her closuregrief issues so outsized mine that I had to just put up with it (endure), at every turn "wouldnt it be nice if(s)" men weren't dead 😵‍💫, and today she couldn't ✅️ the box. the only thing that could cheer her up was looking at Aaron's ass again.

think about that, as an experience for me - can you imagine having to cheer up a living parent after the death of the other one using a photo of your ex's ass? 

that does not happen to anyone else but me, right? 👀

at least it's my fave of the ex asses, but still 🤦🏻‍♀️

I honestly don't know what to do now that the circus has left town and nothing more to do about coworker death(s) but wait. I should clean my house, I should eat ... I ain't doing jackshit 

the downside of care: when need of it stops, you don't know what to do with yourself at all #husk

I can't quit my job (doubt very much that voluntary separation is going to be in the offing) because these decisions are being made by numbers that I have now seen, and the math is what it is.

My own numbers are bananas. 💔 💔💔 is absurdly popular. Unnaturally so, frankly. There is nobody teaching more "seats", ie producing more credit hour $ for them than I am now that all I do is teach.

To be clear, I make people cry, catharsis for healthcare Littles is my job, and jeeeeezus christ 👀 uhh those waitlists, no matter how many sections / different subjects, might be why on the home front it would be nice once in a while to not that. 

Evoking tears at hello at every turn in every body kinda makes me feel bad. That isn't the only kind of me in particular there is, ya know?

And with these incoming students, I gotta think in reverse somehow. I am not trying "get to them" like the before days. Now I could trigger a suicide with a compelling short story 😵‍💫 while teaching them grit ("tough shit") 😵‍💫 uhhhm let's start by surviving a story ...

Last day with my mom. Sis and bro-in-law are picking her up together from the airport tonight. My mom is mentally back, can read a novel in a day again - emotionally and physically frail but 👀 on it. As soon as she sees them both in the car at the same time, she'll know something is wrong. This is her last day of "everything is okay", and ironic or not, that's here.  

It's a complex and fast-moving astral day ahead, a grab bag including a trine, a square, conjunctions and oppositions. As it goes with grab-bags, we may blindly stick our hand in, though our fingers seem to have a sense of their own, intuitively feeling for what's right to hold onto and pull out. Reach first, analyze later.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There's nobility in how you choose to place your focus. You have already decided what matters to you, and that's half the battle. Today, you'll tend to what matters and let nothing shake you from your purpose. #unbreakage plain and simple

"So round, so firm, so fully packed, so free and easy on the draw." her meme for Janis, I had to look it up 🤣

"gonna miss me??" she asks the dog 🙄

I don't know what happened today, entirely. 

The negotiation meeting was 2 hours long exactly. As instructed, I stayed silent this round (there to listen). For 1:55 minutes. Then I did The Stare and spoke for 5 minutes. I want the fantasy version of the outcome (minus what I come home to, of course). I won't know the impact of that 5 minutes until the ink is dry on the final settlement.

But. Everyone fired is going to get a full year's salary. That part is settled unless gunfire breaks out (someone gets on social media). As a private matter, the most important thing is that nobody is broken. It is worth it to give a year's salary to Practically Useless Guy (I was their boss, I know who's useless, a luxury She can't afford) to avoid hurting Someone's Favorite Teacher Ever.

If you fire someone who was excellent at their job, students still think about their classes for years typa deal, you could kill them (Patti). And alumni get bent. And everyone remaining are worth shit while wallowing in survivor guilt. A mess.

That won't happen as far as money helps. Breathing room for pain. 

Pain eats time. 

forgot I was babysitting E's dogs while she goes camping with her ex mid-divorce bc everything is crazy af so why not

me: has time softened my temper?
 TJ: no lol
me: can I write back "nothing whatsoever about me has softened except maybe my tits a little"?
TJ: 🤣

2 new trees = 🤯 + on sale

"pent up"

Helen Mirren Mean Lipstick, my union negotiator "wardrobe" hahaha - my mom loves it - problem is this shit stays on FOREVER even through dinner and a bath - such an absurd problem to have

 VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Your kindness is felt — not in the moments when you mean to be or are supposed to be kind, but in the moments when you don't have to be kind at all and yet you are.

(moon sign) PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Today brings exchanges of mutual benefit. How do you know this will be the case? You ask questions and really listen to the answers. You share your needs openly without worrying about appearing too vulnerable. You are, after all, among friends.

(weely oracle) VIRGO (August 23-September 22)

Architects who design concert halls know that perfect sound isn't achieved through perfect smoothness. The best acoustics come from strategic irregularities, textured walls, and angled surfaces that distribute vibrations in pleasing ways. Too much uniformity creates dead zones and echoes; too much chaos creates muddle. Pleasing resonance arises from organized complexity. In my estimation, Virgo, your life is currently too smooth in some areas and too haphazard in others. You may need more strategic irregularity.

card of the day, 3 wands.

..... figured I could use all the help I can get today (plopplopplop) so

1 be kind (I really try, believe it or not)

2 share my needs (tricky, which ones would you like to know about? today they're ALL on the table)

3 mix it up! (no idea how to do that

fantasy: we get jobs back for 2; severence pkgs of 1 year pay for the others; a VOLUNTARY separation option that I could take if I CHOSE (I could think it over vs feel it like I been spearfished); I come home to find Aaron here and the sound of my mom laughing her ass off 

reality: (likely barf hued): if I am lucky, this round will be over by noon so I can paint the garage while mom watches after it warms up, and nothing has gotten WORSE 

worse case: there is only a pic of a tree here by the end of the day 😶

what I really want to do right now is delete every post working backwards to ... not sure ... a month? 6 months? until it feels better / less lousy / innocuous. I want to go mute backwards like other people describe wanting a drink. urge to obliterate. the only thing restraining me is I'd have to look at it again. do not care to.

at 12:12 today, all bets were off, how many etcetc. no idea what I am walking into tomorrow a.m. except it will be painful. 

I liked the way 12:12 looked. symmetrical. 

sell all you have - zacharay lucky (cough it up 🤮)

it's about 7:30 a.m. when my phone started bowing up in raw worry about what is going to happen for people's families, COBRA wtf, kids already in programs partly thru will they get kicked out??, etc.etc. 

I don't know yet! I haven't even finished NYT word games, waking up 

-_0 

thank god TJ is here 1 more day to babysit my mom. tomorrow I will be in closed session 8-noon, no idea how I am juggling that yet at all 😵‍💫 

it soooooo often feels like this now, like I'm an underweight (very) little girl and the world is HUGE and I am not afraid, I just am thinking 'how the fuck is this doable?!?'

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You're especially persuasive right now. Today shows you reading people with great accuracy, working rooms and leading situations toward the outcome you want. You never push because you don't have to. Charm and emotional intelligence do the work for you. 👀

the card of the day is The Devil - under these circumstances, a very specific card

The healthiest Devil interpretation is consent. For that to occur, there must be full disclosure. And I can (should) assume that disclosure will not be given freely.






















(Why?)

Aaron gets out of the hoozgow tomorrow, 6/15 is the date he gave me anyway tho it feels like way longer than 6 days since he said it was 6 days to go. I guess I could go back through all of these tangled up in pain posts to find where he said that but I can't do that any more than I can do anything. except writing writhing reacting. "you really whizzed that thing." I could unblog it all or at least sanitize it but I cant do that either. bc I really cant reread it all, I cant feel it again right now yet 😭

last month was a year long ✍️

my mother will want to see Aaron, she has little understanding of what all is crumbling around her, no idea yet about Nick. I care she sees him if possible, theyre each other's markers somehow, touchstones. as far as I am concerned, he's made it (no more need of me in particular presumably)

TJ goes home early Tues then union negotiation round one. tomorrow is Monday - work (union) and trying to bracket some time for TJ whose mood has understably cratered. I'll come back up for air sometime Tuesday afternoon - a big planter arrives that day for Ears to put together to make mom happy which I am desperate to do 😭.  then mom leaves late Wed afternoon ....

all I am doing is breathing in and out, but of course I do adult stuff during that. it's like in a horror movie, I am hiding inside myself under the stairs thinking obsessively about about strawberry plants to save a corner of my tattered mind from assault 😭

as soon as she is on that fucking plane, I want raw endorphins, I wanna dig a pit 💔 

card of the day - 7 swords - that's too many, you're carrying too many