Tuesday, September 08, 2026
Monday, September 07, 2026
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).
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| 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
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| 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
Sunday, September 06, 2026
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 🤲
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| flashdance ft fat brittney spears |
Saturday, September 05, 2026
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| 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 |
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 😭
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| 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.
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| futility + eyedrops oddly (?), in this era of lighting candles up the wazoo, I have never once prayed to die. Ears has. |
Friday, September 04, 2026
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| 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 😭
Thursday, September 03, 2026
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.
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| dedicated to the Follow The Cat notes/thoughts ft. smells like my hair |
song tbd by the day/horoscope
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| card of the day (again) |
Wednesday, September 02, 2026
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
awning guy just got here, last name Ott like my mama so I went w this guy, who
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| 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.
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
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| 11th hour effort |
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| 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?
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| Trooper is struggling to keep his head above water. I feel ya, bud. |
Monday, August 31, 2026
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| pg 86 |
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| 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.
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.
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
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| card of the year |
Sunday, August 30, 2026
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).
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| 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.)
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| I treat my person better here |
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| 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:
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.
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| moon over Java |
Saturday, August 29, 2026
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| 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 ✅️
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| I call him "Trooper" |
having opened Monday classes early, I retreated
Friday, August 28, 2026
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| off to the picnic ft I could kill you with a thought (with all my heart) |
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| 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














































