I found him. he is voluntarily in psych jail. and by his own account, the only reason he took that option over a dirtnap is me. I feel almost guilty making him keep living 

(more than almost)

thank christ it is not still today but now 24/7 is the day. however much for however many hours and however whatever

there is no detox, so no defined tour of worstduty

as soon as I knew where he was, I texted whoevever was/is/seeems in the circle of giving a flying fuck then passed out drooling on my phone exhausted af

this is not about me

but it defines every breath I take like busted ribs

how I keep waking up every few hours like this for well over a year, I dunno. at least atm I know WHY - Ears is my kid. mostly the rest of us are just adults and I should have cared less. in this case, I shoulda cared more/better.

futility + eyedrops 🫩
oddly (?), in this era of lighting candles up the wazoo, I have never once prayed to die.
Ears has.

futility

I don't know where he is.

So I am just sitting here. 

My mind is going in two directions: what happens next and what went wrong.

I remember a time when I used to go to bed and be anxious to wake up again because I was looking forward to the next day. I don't mean as an occasional experience, I remember that being the way I used to be. I think it's been about 8 years since that drained away, outa me, a hole in the bottom of my cup. There have been good days and achievements, certainly. Each new little is a blessing. But. My own life has not been a thing I have looked forward to in a long time. And only my mom really knew that.

Now I am the mom that knows that about an adult child. 

Would I at this moment give a long lost lover back to Ears for an autumn-air kiss, even if that were fleeting and doomed? To remind him of what that felt like? To acutely want to live even for just one minute? Yep. Sure would if I could. Now that her mind is half gone, I understand how that mind worked better.

My sister is coming. It'll take her a few days to get here, but I need another pair of adult hands. Hers. Cz I also need a boss of me so I don't follow my kid down that hole vs lift him out of it. I am right there too 🤏 - I only wish not to wake up, but that is too too close to my son's wish to hang himself. The only thing stopping him is what that would do to me, and that is simply not enough. 

And behind her are both my daughters. Both are moving / just moved, and rather than be able to help them, they will arrange to help me in succession. The younger will take on their utterly shitty father; now that she's grown and so strong in her opinions, she is more than willing to punch that son of a bitch in the face. Ears ALWAYS comes back from that man a MESS and blames only HIMSELF evvvvery time for being the failure his father believes him to be. So whatever I need his shitty ass to do, TJ will make him do it. She is furious at him.

What happens next is Ears moves here with me - that is my best guess. With the clothes on his back and a big pile of medical debt for me to sort out. And TJ delivers the cat to Dickhead's front door for safe keeping, like it or not, or she will shove her fist up his ass to the elbow. As soon as I sort his fmla 😵‍💫, Ears quits that job that depresses and exhausts him. And until he gets another one, waterboarding yoga daily / I don't leave him alone ever. I don't go to kalamazoo...

It is killing me not knowing where that child is rn. 

I'm all he's got but I can't remember the last time I woke up to my actual everyday life and wanted to live it. I just have to, so I make my bed etc. I have to believe that deep down, I'd miss life if it were over so I keep going until a taste for it comes back (🙏) He must believe that too 🤏 or he wouldn't be in a psych ward voluntarily right now. He chased me away after the intake, which was excruciating. He's one of the few reasons I still want to live, and he wants to die very much. It was horribly clear that we are both mostly still breathing for the other one, or we'd both have stopped this summer. So much so that they looked at me like you aren't looking too good either and said a lot of borderline "(don't off yourself ft) keep your phone on" things to me. My primary wanted to put me in the hospital he's going to months ago. But. Not wanting to wake up isn't the same as having a detailed plan to off myself. Miserable doesn't qualify, everybody is miserable, that's just breathing these days. Once he moves in here, which seems inevitable now except for the fucking cat, we'll be a suicide pact waiting to happen. 

Something has to very seriously change IMMEDIATELY. But what? HOW?

Someday, I hope the fact that he walked in there, right down the street from where I work, in the only clean tshirt I had, my new union shirt emblazoned with my employer's name and FACULTY written on the back in HUGE letters - someday, I hope that's funny. Sure isn't funny today 😭

I don't want to wake up anymore either.

But I did.

So I snuck up there and stole his boots (laces) then chased the dogs up there to lay on him. 

72 hours is only going to return us to this in 72 hours. There's no detox for not wanting to wake up anymore. 

If it weren't for the fucking cat, I think I'd drive him to WI, or anywhere. Alaska. 

If it weren't for the fucking cat, I might get him a kitten. 

I have no fucking idea what to do.

💔

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Success is no longer doing the job you already know you can do. Now it's doing the job that only you can do. Success is reaching for the impossible and expecting to fail gloriously and often.

Well, I'm all that's here, so only I can do whatever it is but all I do is fail at keeping people breathing, often but I don't see any glory. Like there's no detox there's also no clot to suck, and even if there were, I wouldn't know how. 

How did I keep living this long? I had no choice (kids). And lust, probably, as in lust for life - even when life shattered, under was lust for it still somewhere in me. Now there is just life. I honestly don't blame the kid for wanting out of that. So do I. 

💔

= my sister trying to badger her into living which for Jen means blue frosting vs that's the day dad died but somewhere under there, my mother never forgets that = she doesn't want to keep waking up. why should she? to remember? who the fuck wants to remember what's never coming back? for a while, I was like but I am coming back, I am still alive, remember me? but I learned, spent a year learning, that's not enough. there has to be something to look forward to even if all you can do is look back. and there isn't. except more of this, status:quo.

what was in the kool-aid at Jonestown? did they all just go to sleep? could I put it in blue frosting? 

awake listening to him move like he always has (catprowler quiet), wondering if there is anyway to hand yourself up there

I am going to unravel the rest of the way now. so it's hard to blame anybody for just getting there aheada me

that SWERVED around and in front of me, nearly wound up me causing a pile-up on the 90 getting pic of it but how could I not? 

Ears is here. He is like he usually is after time w his father but it was more time and no TJ, so wayyy worse. scary worse.

like Huck-for-Cats was scary sick over the winter.

💔

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You're so generous, though today you can't seem to give anything away without being gifted with new rewards and resources. Don't worry, you don't need to repay every good thing you're gifted. Just enjoy yourself. 👀

um ok, I promise, I'll enjoy any gift that comes my way tday ...

last night, I took a Lulu bath (formerly known as 'girly'). Oiled my curls, slathered myself in a thick layer of "Catnip" butter, wrapped myself in velvet pjs while it soaked in, did a meditation lying still in savasana (receiving pose, spine relaxed flat and palms up). 

tbh, I feel emptied to the dregs. rather than bemoan that, I decided (logically) that when you're out of gas, ya get more (duh), not stand there crying in the Polish Nook parking lot. if anyone else was stranded in a parking lot, I'd go help them out of it if I could. so I tried "tanking me up" 🤷🏽‍♀️

then I streamed The Boys, trying to drown out the storm b4 Disco threw himself into the sump pump over the rain like a wee lunatic

I was drifting just as Soldier Boy said to Firecracker, "Hey, why the hairless pussy? I mean, what's the point of going down there? You're not gonna get a fat face full of fur" - made me laugh + a furless cat is weird. so with hands still damp with curl oil (same kind/smell as ever), I opened that pretty new Dacks journal and pressed my palms into the middle pages til it soaked in and left pawprints. labeled the pages "Catnip Dickbutter" and dated it now. 

dedicated to the Follow The Cat notes/thoughts ft. smells like my hair

song tbd by the day/horoscope

card of the day (again)

https://wretchedwant.blogspot.com/2006/02/self-help-reading-music_27.html?m=1 first Erdrich quote choice on here was the same one as last posted 👇 - unfuckingcanny - and doubly weird is that I'm reading explicitly as self-help (how to be), from the gecko

update

only prob is all that wet is BETWEEN the storm and window 😅 - I shouldn't laugh but ya put it together w the bush thing and steaming up the place is just fucking funny 🤣 (to me) - my whole dwelling is moist hahahaha

awning guy just got here, last name Ott like my mama so I went w this guy, who 

before

"might kind of slay my bush but it will recover," he just informed me, and to my credit I did not even smirk 😏

I'm one of those - billy strings

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Fix your gaze ever-forward toward plans, hopes and even toward what some might consider an impossible future. Let them apply their rules to their own life while you keep believing in your own idea of what's possible. 👀

obviously. 

Marie

Right now, all I want to do is this. Read. 

 

update: both HI proposals submitted ✅️ 

11th hour effort

card of the day

that was a totally shitty year followed by a cold hard summer with a single sugar cube of a kiss last fall as the only magic mote of sweetness

status: leaving 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The doubt: I have overlooked the flaw that will undo everything. The remedy: Look for the next necessary correction, rather than every possible thing that can go wrong. Revision and repair belong inside the plan from the beginning.

the beginning of what?

oh, work - yea what I made out of the shit summer (grit redefined, ai steps, mirror assignments) could light me up again. as in attention on me, not lit up from the inside. one of my work survival strategies: be in such plain site, it's hard to justify shooting me or getting away with it quietly 

Trooper is struggling to keep his head above water. I feel ya, bud.

 

 

first cat pg 83 and it's AS LULU, domesticated but wild at heart, and always appraising the situation would I fuck you (= are you interesting, do I wanna closer look, maybe scratch you, hold still 👁...)

so like,

I am looking for 2 things

Lulu accretion: What is present in 1984 what gets added later when can manuscript evidence show Erdrich imagining/writing the additions?

Cat accretion: first appearance p. 83  whose consciousness/description summons cats what cats are doing when they appear whether that changes across revisions and later novels.

And the first data point is cat and Lulu enter together. When cats appear, I prolly won't read that as symbolic, it'll be literally Lulu in catform. Slinking around many minds.

pg 86

I'll be damned. I wanted to reread The Island just cz Lulu is my girl and she went to a strange place filled with cats and I was trying to wrap my head around cat stuff being in my constant periphery now weirdly ... 

but, Lulu came from that island. she is one, and obviously a witch in almost comically fable fashion. 

there she (I) is (am)

spoken of briefly here and there, but she doesn't show up as herself until pg 74, and she will not have the backstory I know of her before she does here/now in 1984.

you have to understand. this character is my shorthand for, shit, well mos def everything re men. and mothering. I know every word of her, including this bit, where she's thinking so hard she winds up fucking him twice by sheer force of wish of it. once in this timeframe (at the end). and once also back in the day - her remembering it hard - just as I did earlier today. If I posted all the pics of every single person that day, the almost insanity of glee, it'd kill ya. so I blogged it. I don't wanna carry it around, leave it here to be replaced simply by more days.

Lulu does not pull the punch. she makes him remember. not by recounting, but by remembering it in front of him. she makes toast/bread and slathers butter and sugar on it, eating it in small decisive bites, licking a crumb of sugar up. while he talks and she remembers everything, and eats sugar. by the time she's done snacking, he's forgotten why he went over there and is following her into the bedroom. 

she's my kinda witch.

she gets me / I love her. hahahaha everything about this character. most of all her fiercely her-ness. there is only one of her, and she knows it. she gets what she wants if she can, and she isn't sorry. why should she be? you wanted to do whatever that was AND prolly wish you could do it some more whatever it is, so wth. I think I have quoted every word she ever says.

But now I know I quoted everything she would eventually say, but she hasn't yet! That won't get into Edrich's brain until...well, I'd have to look at manuscripts to KNOW when/how that happens. 

Meanwhile, not only does she not show up here until she's middle aged - this novel is about the other one, Marie. The dutiful one, the one who "takes in strays" all through this novel, when Erdrich was newly married with adopted kids and more coming. At what point did she start to take her own stray in, Lulu? who by the next edition is fully half the center stage balanced against Marie, both of em fucking the same dude (who somewhat inconveniently loses his damn mind)

fascinating to nobody but me.

fuuuuuck alllll that, nope lol. I didn't even bother with the competing programming of a zoom drop in. I just downloaded her little PowerPoint at 1:00 she can see that I was presently elsewhere, and then I continued to email co-workers about work through her stupid meeting. So probably their phones were going off if they were there just in a running fuuuuuck you from me

welp I tried funny ish. unblogged it. went wayyyyyy down a rabbit hole cz I have 10k magically backing themselves in clouds that you can look at, say, all Augusts for the last 15 years 😭 if you need a cry. unblogged it. then already before her stupid meeting she's YELLING AT US that we DONT WANNA GET NEAR HER. has anyone ever successfully nagged and threatened someone else into loving them? the best she can get is fear so she'll take it. 

so far today I learned: I actually cant do meetings without Jeff without crying AND TEXTING HIM I cant..

VIRGO: Somebody please bring this girl a playful conversation (with another live human she didn't have to fictionalize) 🎂. The internet says "gemini and virgo adore you" - slim pickings, but noted. This is also "your year of the Golden Decision" - There is no definition of Golden Decision on Urban Dictionary, so use your considerable imagination! Your lucky numbers are (by medical standards): 42-55

card of the year

I was gonna go back tonight. 

I can't make myself do it. 

Tomorrow: Alls there is the lawn to mow (no!, Ears is doing that shit when his ass surfaces back from offgrid) and a "listening session" w the president. So I decided to have a "listening session" here (but I'd actually listen) same time as hers. I have it planned out in front of my fire, feet up, fireside chat zoom drop-in for students in any of my classes. I'm not just not-going, I'm creating an on-the-spot (isn't there a contemporary term for that?)  competing event (optional v compulsary is a really important distinction [to me]).

Will spend the morning making sure zoom works - they took away the obvious button to "personal meeting room" and moved it somewhere under "schedule meeting" so they can track my time LIKE I WORK FOR BURGERKING + THEY ARE SOCIOPATHS 👀 fine, track my using it right then (I am sure I've got liptint around here somewhere)

Storms tomorrow. If the power goes out, fuckergpt will have to talk me through the know-how of using Fancyass Phone as a hot spot. 

I am not opening my email tomorrow til noon, by which point it'll be too late. Meeting starts at 1. I am too far (gone).

of that 15 are dean, my chair ("boss), and 2 co-chairs - 26% of persons attending are paid at gunpoint, the rest are terrified); Union is the one red X. I wanted an "Other" button, maybe purple.

AND I coteach with my boss, so he'll know I just pulled a 🖕 in his name too. 

(Say. When.)

I treat my person better here

Sunshine made it. She wants me to go to some mediumship gathering Wed, told her no too (Death can have meetings without me also)

listening to lotsa music here in the rain and I cook and watch birdTV and dance around - hard to pick - I might change this out but currently: 

no springtime - allison russel

stray thoughts 

here, there are more of em 🐈‍⬛️

such as: my next lover(s) will hear about my mother - there's almost no way to get through a day without quoting her or seeing evidence of her in all our lives - but they will never have known her. there are deathspiral conundrums you don't see coming, like that, ya know? how could anyone know me if they never met her? it's too weird to imagine.

moon over Java

infinite love - goldie boutilier

fini

Virgo: you almost punched the dean in the dick yesterday, but didn't, 2 a.m. brainrot not withstanding. #goodenough

sinnerman - nina simone sofi tukker remix

all fall courses opened ✅️

I call him "Trooper"

having opened Monday classes early, I retreated

lawn HERE mowed ✅️

in process, needs touch-ups before the rain ⛈️

a bright blue door facing north "Acts as a welcoming 'Mouth of Chi,' inviting beneficial life-force energy to cross your threshold." my mom didn't even get to see the cottage this year, but I can send her a picture

I used to think that there was an art to everything, any/every waking living moment. #strawberrymilk. and I was much happier, every little minute of my fleeting days. I wanted to fly with those days like a gazelle, fish, raven, water on rock. gone in a blink.

but somewhere along the way, enduring the moment (after moment after moment) became all I was doing and now it's HABITs. living itself can't be just a habit

status: migratin prep -> cottage / sans Labor Day 

off to the picnic ft I could kill you with a thought (with all my heart)

 

with all the care in the world, still, survivor cake just gotta cave in a lil bit 🤏 - fitting offering

I just need you - riley green ft hannah mcfarland from the "I don't need nothin' almost" kitchen playlist

blooming his little head oft

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). What if you lost preconceived notions of what people expect from you? You're a generous giver. Someone wants to love you, not for what you do, but just for the person you are when you're not doing anything at all.

are you 👆 my horoscope or my shrink or my primary or my tarot deck or, uh, God? yaaaaa, so I have been told a GUZZZZZZILION times all summer, and yet 🤔 not much evidence lmao

Janis, be honest, do you love me for  A. who I am? or is it more B. the expensive kibble, sleeping on the silk pillow, my cleaning it up whenever you feel like pissing on the rug?
Is it even a 🤏 column A column B? 

Vegas leans in hard on light pollution - I can see the moon being bitten with my naked eye but hard get the bite in a pic

creatures of the night - all I see all day are webs, I've never met these folks til tnite 😬

 

river flow - dylan I let alexa pick the tunes (#radiogame). I'm calling this batch "Catnip" acknowledging all the 🐈‍⬛️🐈🐈‍⬛️🐈s lately

virgo stomping status (migrated beyond plodding): 

conference funding proposal for Honolulu HI January 7-12th, submitted ✅️

(I delegated the god damn lawn mowing) ✅️

the How to Huckleberry cake, adapted from a "surviving the holocaust" (oral tradition) recipe but using huckleberry honey, kinda caved in - that's why I made it today so I would have time to make another one, knowing survival recipes often need another try

updide: holy hell delicious 
learning oucome: do not try to "fluff it" - fold ingredients in gently - give it no space to collapse and then it won't - it is meant to be dense (like my tits)

grit class assignment (grad level)

doesn't have to be done near a full moon / lunar eclipse, but it doesn't hurt (especially if you're Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius or Pisces - the signs targeted by this one)

WHAT FAILS THE LOTTO TEST?

A Lunar Eclipse Exercise in Desire, Constraint & Choice

Take the Lotto Test

Imagine you win the lottery—don't quibble about how much that might really be after taxes. Just accept this: you now have enough money that you don't have to work for money.

Now look at the life you are living. If money were no obstacle, what would you keep exactly as it is? What would you change? What would you leave behind? What would you want that even winning the lottery couldn't give you?

Choose four parts of your life that matter to you: school/work, relationships, home, family, friendships, how you spend your time, future plans, etc.

For each, choose:

KEEP — I'd choose this again.
CHANGE — I want it, but differently.
LEAVE — I'd walk away.
CAN'T BUY — I want something that money or freedom can't produce for me.

OPTIONAL: Dogfood the AI

Choose one of your answers and give it to chatgpt or whatever AI. Say:

Don't tell me what to do. Help me test my reasoning. What do I seem to want? What do I think is stopping me? What might I be treating as inevitable that actually isn't? What is genuinely outside my control? Challenge one assumption I'm making, then ask me three questions, one at a time.

Answer its questions.

You get the final word: What fails the Lotto Test? What survives it?

Learning Outcome: 

What's Really in the Way?

Pick one thing you said you would change, leave, or want.

Would winning the lottery actually make that possible?

Now imagine that other people's expectations and your own fear of failure disappeared too. Does your answer change?

What's actually standing between you and what you want: money, fear, expectations, obligation, habit, another person's choices, something else—or some combination?

woops or meant?

full (Sturgeon) moon in virgo, partial lunar eclipse in pisces (my moon sign) - my horoscopes today are elaborate

something does feel like it has shifted/shifting, for sure, since I lit that candle. I mean, it might be partly that a label in Polish I can't read says that vodka was 180 proof, but still, the answer to "could I fall in love with a woman I've known almost 30 years?" was not no 👀. for instance

to be clear, I don't think lighting a witchwish 🕯 DOES a new thing, it's more like - (sigh) how do I explain it (?), something is already there. like any flame, it consumes stuff (02, wax, intention kindling) and gives off stuff (warmth/light). the power of that, the smell of it and duration etc, depends. and any multiplication makes it stronger, the whole "if two people pray in my name" phenom is in every spiritual tradition I can think of, including the bible (matthew 18:19 if ur interested). 3 witches be ideal. I am always solitary, but I know my mother is praying too at the same cluster of wish: for more. (pull pull) so I know at least 2 witches are pulling

This eclipse is the sixth of a total of seven on the Virgo-Pisces axis. The cycle has been underway since September 17, 2024, and will end in February 2027. This makes this full moon less of an isolated event and more like another chapter in a story that’s been unfolding for some time.

ok welp, let's take a peek at Sept 16-18 ish in '24. a lunar eclipse, I watched it rise then kept an eye on it, filling with "fuck no" in every life category, failing my own "if you won the lotto" assignment ; a cat (black, on glider, look close); followed by a signal ("for you version")

my body had decided right then, before I fully knew it. I was leaving (pulling AWAY from) Nebraska. and I pretty explicitly invited Huck-for-Cats towards me to "say something" which by November, he had (the "something" undefined)

by this coming February, what will have happened? no clue. maybe Hawaii, closing a loop. maybe the school will close / go under. either or both, off the top of my head, are entirely possible. but more importantly are the possibilities I can't yet see.

by the end of that month in '24, "she" of a novel I hadn't yet imagined in my wildest dreams had shown up

today is the "fall faculty forum", thankfully on zoom. while I listen with camera off, laptop on the kitchen counter, I am going to bake a How to Huckleberry Honey Cake to bring to Union's picnic tomorrow

when the moon rises later, a new batch of dickbutter 

c'mon Janis, we gotta get up

update - I got the time wrong - got all set up to bake my gunslinger honey cake and ran to Tops quick for a missing ingredient, racing back just in time ...  to have missed the faculty forum by 2 hours. nobody texted "where are you" which is a clear sign: not missed/needed there

instead, I heard a new obscure song on a Canadian station in the truck

youre the kind of trouble - (paul kennerly) the wrights

and got a greeting 

first Vegas lotus
(better late than never)

not there yesterday, not even a bud, but there he is turning his face towards the sun