very long day

now it will be another week

fine, I'm 💯 limp, I see him every day once so he eats once (my own standard of care enforced), and we are all VERY POLITE or they will never let him out. it is jail. 

he will never do this again. I know if ever this happens again, he will die because he will never do this again

update: scary how quickly a person can accept a new worse normal - it's not a good trait, specieswide, to be so dory-the-fish. I like being adaptive, but getting used to even-shittier all-the-time, not so much. the quest tech who took my blood yesterday has kids these ages too, "the world is trying to kill us now, that's rough on them." I mean, that's been true long as I can remember, but she's right, not like this. what used to be called "launching" is now more like being blown out of a canon to nowhere. def needs a BIG stop-and-think imo. so I guess that is what we are doing on the micro-level, a kid a time, each their own set of experiments at faceplanting. right now, it's all about this kid, Ears, by far the biggest-hearted one of them all.

yesterday in the car dealership when we finally got to the guy who could fix the problem, he told us that he remembered Ears, such a nice guy, his mom is a professor right? (my sister was doing the talking - at that point I just froze in dontcry dontcry dontcry)

it's going to take a minute for I could have lost him stops stopping me like that, coming over me like a wave, my teeth clamped hard against it until it passes

💣sizzle👁💔😭🖕❤️‍🔥 firing all at once, my brain shooting from the hip like a motherfucker 

my sister is already working while I drink coffee and compatmentalize enough to face all the segmental needs of today

today: guns - lunch w Ears - paperwork - grab bills from his apt - 2nd lunch w baby (Sis hasn't met the newest one) - more preparing here for him to live and one more night w my sister

Ears right now how his day goes: breakfast then free time, lunch then rec room free time, dinner then free time til bed. any group therapy?, any kind of therapy?, nope. Just not-offing yourself until you're not gonna, that is all. 

And now he's not gonna, seems calm and very bored, but being ever like himself, he says nothing all day, doesn't ask questions, just politely waits it out. That can't last. I saw a fuller room of inmates yesterday, including his roommate who is bonafide bonkerinos (poor thing), huge young man clinging to his tiny mother, crying like it's the first day of kindergarten. 

they're gonna need Ear's bed in that unit, and will at least move him to a floor, at which point are we back to voluntarily? nobody there but the damn security guards know/say anything, swamped yesterday with mothers. like Ears, I said nothing. why bother? they are not in charge. we are not in charge. Ears is not in charge. nobody seems to be IN CHARGE of the zoo/daycare-from-hell. so we wait and prepare prepare prepare for the eventuality of his release...

when I called to make my daily lunch appointment, they couldn't find him for like 5 minutes. "oh yea he is still here" finally 🤦🏻‍♀️ wtaf

#nervewrackingaf

meanwhile, the conference call re my mother. god she is suuuuch an ASSHOLE just as much as my dad, lies like a rug about EVERYTHING and deflects questions with jokes / without answering at all. it takes over an hour to get her on zoloft and a knee xray ordered. "I'm FINE!" I hear her bullshitting in the background. fine, except for not being to move your leg or think one thought that isn't something to cry about for A FUCKING YEAR, you are driving the rest of us NUTS! "How's Bruno?!" she deflects again, my sister having none of it, he says to take of yourSELF and your ass is going on zoloft god damn it 🤨...

#caregiving 🫩

welp, best I enjoy a shit shave and shower reset before it alllll gets rolling again 

update: VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). One small improvement will make a real difference. For instance, a loved one's tone of voice can give you a new feeling about the relationship, a belief that you're allied and that beautiful things are possible because of this. I dont have time to read that shit in the a.m. anymore atm and it doesn't matter cz rn nothing is about me. But that 👆 is my sister, currently passed out on my couch with her fancy hotel abandoned and a 7 a.m. meeting awaiting her and she goes like that all morning while I skip work and get rid of guns (and take a shower for the first time in days), then Ears for lunch when he will sign papers to refinance his car  which my sister helped me navigate today. "Honey," she kept advising, but I bite mostly, so I let her do the talking.

Context, Ears bought a car a minute ago and agreed to 5k worth of useless shit extended warranty whatever bc, as it turns out, he was out of his mind. He's driven the car once since, to go to his cat. 

It all just swamped him. We are draining the swamp. 

I gave up on ECMC, no social worker is going to fucking call me back, called his HR rep instead, who is new so not yet an asshole, and informed me that the company he works for is FRENCH. Do you have any idea how hard it is to fire someone in France? My sister does. The HR lady is great, though it is also often the case that the frontline workers are overruled by Money Personnel (fuckers), so I hope she can keep the promise to send all the paperwork /every option + process tomorrow a.m. It is all handled through an outsourced process that the French owner corp uses. Sounds like unpaid but insured is easypeasy, paid leave depends (context: he is never going back there - we are milking this cow for all it's worth). If the timing is ideal, all that comes into my inbox to forward to my sister for analysis before lunch. 

Or the HR lady betrays us, he gets shafted, and ECMC kicks him to the curb as "good nough" which they seemed to totally leaned towards today. Wow. Yesterday was a holiday, nobody was there. Today, a total fucking zoo. So it could totally go that way too. Just ✅️ you're not blowing ur brains out currently, so out ya go.

Give me 1 more day and I'll be ready for anything again.

My sister here helps me much more than just logistics and love, both HUGE - but we also understand each other. We know the Thing we both have that makes us uniquely capable in very specific ways. Her boss (remember Dave?) calls it "sizzle" and she makes gobs of money flying all over hell just to be in the same room with people. She is flying to New Zealand (which takes 2 days) to be "in the room" for 7 hours of meetings. And I completely understand what she is talking about, what she does for those engineers, how much she half hates half of them, but. It feels addictively good to be uniquely good at doing it. Especially the almost-transgressive all-the-time humor. We seek and find your spit-take (if you've got one), your giggle, and yank it mostly just because we can. And she is also getting rich with it.

I quit selling that part of me, for now at least, so it revs in a whirl, writing writing writing, chasing my own self (the cat). I would go to North Dakota just because, then Fisher Bay Manitoba for even less reason, Pure BECAUSE. I know I could fill back up my life with shit I am doing because I fucking want to. And if I just do that, actively not just opting out, but do stuff because I want to, everything is generally better for everyone.

I sleep so little that it feels like today all the time. my mind cannot quiet, it just keeps going and going running over thoughts as if it's doing a rosary 🫩

lunch w Ears again at 1

mom at doctor on conference call at 4

both Sis and I work on laptops at opposite ends of the couch, but I am done by 10 a.m. (perks of a blown apart life) 

I ordered a bed for Ears and so needed to get rid of mom's power recliner. I gave it away on craigslist, and the guy showed at 8 a.m. for it. he's probably not yet 42 (I would guess 35), hot as hell. he's deaf, he told me by email, and had a moving company in Alaska for a few years. so I was expecting an older dude. he can read lips and I can read eyes, he has 👁 also, so it was kind of a stare down 👁 - as he was leaving he made a point of getting my name right, pronouncing carefully, asking how it is spelled, I made the sign for G, and he said "you know where to find me if you need anything else 👁" 👀 noted

it's the hair. I look like an exhausted piece of shit. I sweep my hair outa my way every day, but that makes it worse/more bc then everyone can see what I can't, all the saltypepper ringlets on the back of my neck. and for whatever reason, people want to touch it A LOT. the vibe the dude threw at me isn't cz I look "younger" - it's the opposite - I look exactly like what I am and for whatever reason that draws omgIloveyourhair onceovers allllll the fucking time. I've given up trying to complement people back, that'd require too much talking. deaf dude doesn't talk at all 👌 and I will email him for the dresser ... and might lose my chill to fuck that guy if he's got 5 hours (5 min ain't gonna cut it / too far gone).

that's the lust for life thing in me, which I very rarely express/manifest as lust itself, but the revving engine in me simply revs. I bite and I rev. that's it.

Ears does not bite, and his rev is MIA.

after moving dude, I got a blood draw bc I can feel it, the adrenal cortisol freakout that my brain imposes on my body until I am dropping pounds like a motherfucker. I can't stop that, I can treat it, and I will have to for the rest of my life. luckily, I can do that, I know how to live with my brain. 

Ears does not know how to live with his brain yet. And he currently weighs exactly what I do, 104 pounds. 

there's gonna be a lot more cooking going on here. we both need fattening up. I know what to do - yoga, eat, read, write - until the rev is restored. and with Ears to do it for too, I will get better (fatter) too. we just need to get there. before anybody gets a face tattoo 🤦🏻‍♀️

update again: (taking deep breaths) - I brought him charlie the butcher, one of our favorites, and books but they wouldn't let him keep the hardcovers 😪 - the staff were very nice, the look on their faces = I was out of my depth and him out of water CLEARLY and they tried the best they could to be soft a little, give us extra time. the other inmate who got a visit at that time (so he got extra too) was a young man around same age as Ears (maybe even younger) who had every kind of gun I could quickly identify - sarahconnor, AK, etc - very freshly tattooed on his face all over it. he was being visited by his uncle who did not bring him lunch. I'll go back tomorrow hopefully at the same time w Sis in tow bc Ears very much wants to SEE EVERYBODY (!) and hates the food, has to scarf down whatever he can in that 30 min window I can have only one of in a day. 

Tomorrow it's hardcore comfort for lunch: pbj & Intense milk.

Ears hates the life he's living, not his life, and his brain can't find the diff and god I know exactly what that is, how that feels, your own being alive feels like the addiction you have to kick somehow but it's your way of living you gotta blow the fuck up. so that is what we are gonna do 💣. 

and btw, he met a "wise girl" in there, she's been in about a month, he can't quite pronounce her name properly (chalupa is certainly nqr 🤣)

I know how to blow up a life, my sis knows how, you/we/all know about the dynamite set up all around your whole damn life and you press down like roadrunner blowing up the coyote. I will always adore my sister for putting us through a year long excruciating wedding planning - the party WAS great, to be fair - then landing after her honeymoon and fucking my CURRENT brother-in-law almost IMMEDIATELY. it was terrible, of course, but. it had to be done 💣

This continued to be topic of conversation once we are reconvened (i.e. "NO", discuss). My sister cleaned his apartment. My daughter cleaned his bathroom in particular and also delivered his cat to my closest friend, who lovingly took his cat. I told Ears, and it's true, this is the kinda time that women like us do this thing like an inward flocking and clucking in a closed protective circle.

NO continued to be the subject of conversation in the henhouse because my sister is still fully faithful in grit, which she says (with great gravity) that I taught to her (and has made her rich). People are attracted to that and I should monetize it ...

No. 

Just no. 

Grit is not relentlessly open sesame at walls, it is not always just doubling down, it is not autonomic Yes. 

stop and think. #lotto-test

I've changed my mind, not once, but many times and had currently come to the conclusion that 1 too much grit will lead you to suicide 2 there is not much that anyone else can do to stop ya if that's what you're going to do. 

Obviously I'm rethinking conclusion #2. I don't think I come to that same conclusion where a child is concerned. I'm not thrilled maybe but okay non-acute atm is good enuff re the middleaged #doyouboo. But re my kids, I'm gonna try to stop ur suicide all day long relentlessly, snarl at me or not, slow or fast NO!, you can't have cookies before dinner (no dirtnap before you live the whole time allotted 🙏🕯 on this earth). 

And re me no, I am not going to hustle my streetcred in academia again, no to linkedin, fuck all that, I would rather breed axolotls. 

A different grit is required for no-more-hostilities living. It is a reverse fierceness to hold the higher ground (Eggs' instincts were excellent imo, if u feel shitty go to high ground and hissssssss).

preggers w TJ @ Sis first wedding - by the time that kid was born, both our marriages were burnt toast

update: I get to bring him lunch later, so I got dressed ... I didn't plan this, the dog already had his new fall shirt on, I just have very consistent taste in things - the look on my sister's face was priceless

the jail motiff was just absurd enough to cut the gloom

hopelessly early I sit in the hospital parking lot savoring his voice "Hi, I'm calling from the loonie bin." it's hoozgow, I told him, The Knife's word for grippysockjail

my sister has become the type of person too busy to type a text, and so she sends audio texts first thing in the morning with to-do lists

I do really appreciate it, but it's a good thing she's not a virgo on top of that 👀 oof

WARNING serious side effects of only as good as what I provide

Tiz better w my sister her. And kinda everybody converging, leaning in for a piece of the elephant needs chewing. 

I can't go up those stairs and not see the whole plan, and if I do that I know I will get that vasovegal whatever then pass out then wake up barfing. That is not something I can help having; I can avoid triggering it or medicate it.

So it just can't be me who does the apt part. I am trying as much as I can to bounce within what my own brain chemicals are capable of (how badly my own nerves shot). My brain has simply had too many rounds of EMERGENCY MODE and that for me includes people I love even with that circle shrunk down like one of those applehead things and still they are seemingly snipered (how it seems to me). I can't help that. I can manage it but I cannot just decide (use grit) to not be (over)reactive to Death Near. 

I can suspend some of my own medical maintenance, as I am doing now for days, skipping the at-night (as needed) dose of antipanic attack in my sleep meds, which I am skipping again atm because the phone might ring. I have no choice. I often feel like I have no choice, but I do, but with a kid (or mother) I really do not. 

So my sister is here, we do that (use the batphones). She looks at the apt (not as bad as my dad's, can clean it w Daughter 1), Sunshine surfaces for the cat (grateful it got nursing care, as am I), Huckforguns will take guns, by Tues both living spaces secure, cat secure, my sister will find any bills, insurance, carwhatever paperwork trail of mess to begin tackling 😵‍💫 tiz the plan currently.

It'll be okay. Except I am not okay because I simply can't be. No more than an alcoholic can't just be suddenly not that bc they didn't used to be. I didn't used to be dropping 50 pounds and dissociating in a runaway panic attack until I was. I can be fine for an unnaturally long time, and act it longer, I can win most games of chicken. My lust for life is strong. But my brain will always have a groove of trauma. A flight of wine at Olive Garden wouldn't take me down (although the date I was on might 😵‍💫 oof lol bytm). But any loved one's emergency Death Spiral mos def could take me down a dark road if I am not careful. When I say I could be half of a suicide pact 🤏 too easily, it's not funny. So I am slowly stepping back from that edge as if trying not to step on any landmine. I am not running away but I gotta send up flares, get some others to lean in too because I need help now. I am the one who needs help cz Ears needs help more than me. Next 24-48 is secure both abodes, secure cat, get rid of risk factors, try to be ready to catch the kid falling outa the sky cz that is what it feels like: he's on a scary alien spaceship of grippy socks and electroshock and at some point they'll toss him out of that ship 🤲

flashdance ft fat brittney spears 

I dreamt we opened an axolotls store. I didn't want to wake up even more than usual, I wanted to stay there, water gurgling in tanks, kids going crazy for everything axolotls. I fought waking but my mind knew it was today and dragged me already-crying into it 😪

"eventually"
💔

 

published the year that 👆 one was born. I remember writing this down 

how many times have I wasted away under the weight of a heartache and a crying headache while reading these novels for comfort? too many to count. I went upstairs to grab the next one, going in order, trying to do anything. it's where he slept last, we sadly laughed that this place isn't sturdy enough anywhere to hang yourself in here, it still smells like him, I just laid there a long time staring at the row of books coincidentally lined up right where his head last was on a noninstitutional pillow. thought: I need to get rid of the guns

2 years later - 👆 the trail of stories has exploded to track down, he's inching toward criminality-ish in that wording, and there's an neh grant is at the bottom of the cup 

"He was his island, he was me, he was his cats."

terror and grief have shrunken my heart to a stone cold fist

just when I was gonna work on getting a little nicer-feeling-ish, ha. Ears would find that funny 😭

I tried praying but failed. I don't believe in anything I don't give the slightest shit about anything else, I just want my kid back 😭

how did Huckforcats say it? something like what is the point of being sober where is the comfort I am a human being everybody needs warmth, something like that. he was right, there is no point to this, it never gets better, it only ever gets harder and colder 😭

💔 I am heartbroken

half a sandwich yesterday

just the thought of food makes me sick even tho shaking weak from empty now

that is how I die

not gonna move from this bed, gonna read myself to death until my sister gets here 😭

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