(breathe the weirdness)

I cannot keep doing this, the managing my ex's head popping off thing - for Ears' dad, I mean - it's makin me crazy

🤔

when I say things like that now -  ex "it'll make crazy" - I mean like how close does Thing X move you/me towards or away from grippysock jail(s) (?)

so actually 🤔 tbh I could keep it up indefinitely, D-Nozl could never move me a cunthair closer to welp anyfeelingthing (unless his being obtuse cost me a kid). I don't give a shit about him at all, he's just a deductible to me, something my mind needs to move around like a passive aggressive furniture arrangement ft air fresheners. That's prolly a fact the kids'll discuss with durable therapists over time. 

I am very literal and material and embodied n shit atm. About well being. Does it feel well or not?  

song wanted, but music mostly left my kitchen with the migrating birds and troubles moving through 

funny fact: desperocity of pleaseshutupness drove me to suggest top-tier unlimited yoga fitness access and he bit! Ears, "he just really wants me to do a thing, like soccer or WHATEVER" - ha!, duh, of course, ANY sport-thing is the same! we can each go anytime to any sweaty thing we prefer 💖

buttprint wellness test

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). As Venus slows down, you begin noticing the labor inside affection: who remembers the details, who makes the reservation, who checks that everyone got home. This is useful information that may influence how you distribute your energy going forward.

😵‍💫

welp, that ain't schmitzful for damn sure. all they show up with is worry needing assuaged hourly (note to self: try not to do that) and reminders of it's HIS BIRTHDAY (the 7th) so WHEN IS THE BLUE FROSTING AHHH 🙄 jeezus christ

me: it's your birthday 

him: today? 

me: right? 😵‍💫 no, like in a few days or whatever. uh don't spose we could ask for a few car payments? 

him: oh, they want to know 🫩

me: ya and Bug already claimed your bday as hers remember? 

him: RIGHT so no problem

me: yes but there's no cake, no "party" per se, we were going with putting up a fuckton of holiday lights and a giant bowl of funsize candy bars for the cake

him: but I ate the candy already

me: you did

him: have them send a cake, that one from Wegmans

me: do you have any idea how much more work it is for me to assist them in buying a wegmans cake than it would be just to bake you a cake?

him: you're baking a cake?

me: today? no, I was going with brownies today

him: awesome!

me: you've lost the thread

him: 😅 ya sorry - what's the problem? 

me: pork chops for dinner tonight sound good? 

him: awesome!

it's like that, while I work from home, showing up at meetings w deans this morning (high impact sightings, so fewer needed), taking care of this that and the other thing(s), like spinning plates on (slap)sticks. today on my list is tackling the landlord/lease/utility shutoffs...🫩

having to do endless emotional labor for the schmitz clan is wearing me down. 

"ya dont have to count me among the things you have to mentally MOVE AROUND" - try thinking like that towards Ears, I finally suggest, exasperated. AND TOWARDS ME, I don't say, but I'm thinking it.

Ears and I did have one laugh today - the waiting room + Sams Club slice of life ft and the hair thing is so absurd even Ears was giggling cz there's just no NICE way to handle it - insane people are mesmerized by my dumb hair and then the guy who spoke zero English in the Sams Club (got a freezer, leaning in) except "beautiful beautiful" pointing at his head my head his head - at least that guy was kinda hot, color of onyx, but still, as Ears put it, giggling like hell, "I don't see how ya work that (🤭) unless you're headed to ecmc or getting deported (🤭)" I'm pretty sure that's ableist and racist jeezuschrist🤦🏻‍♀️ - at this point we're unhinged a bit - I definitely don't know how to socially navigate one word in common, to which I nod or shake my head (?) while Ears snickers 🙄. the woman with the drawn on whiskers was easier, we could briefly chat about her passion for origami at least.

I gained 4 pounds, right along with Ears. I figured it was about that much based on tit bounce-density, which I had tested today while he was at horizon for a while. mamos always fill me with raw terror, not the cancer part as much as the test itself, being trapped in the machine, clenched down on, I fucking hate it, so it felt like pricking my mental finger on purpose. a fearpain neutralizes a fearpain, short circuit, can't feel both at once. I didn't stay for results and won't go looking for them.

I am dragging us to yoga tomorrow no matter what.

fires

and food

all I want is you - the decemberists  coming out w a double lp tomorrow

there's a whole to-do list again today. we try to keep his to-do list short as possible atm. his care team agrees. we wrote together the polite "do not disturb" text(s) to his father last night. 

I told Ears the story of when I left EX, I sat in a chair one day and didn't move until I actually WANTED to do a thing - not cz it was next on a list or cz I had to or outa habit - looking for my self, what does it want really, even next right now? and I just sat there for hours til I had to pee / I really wanted to pee. sometimes you've forgotten yourself. he said (mostly to himself, as to a stranger) "what does it feel like to be bruno 🤔" and stared out the window.

I don't know that 👆, obviously. but I'm in charge of him right now, so we do it my way until he has a way: come back to your body first. the mind is weak, as smart as we all are that can be confusing, but it's true imo - it breaks, it lies to you, it is often helpless in the face of strong negative emotions, contrary evidence, brick walls - your mind is like the permanent child you have to raise, throwing itself to the floor in hissyfits when your body needs some apple juice and a nap. your spirit, let's assume it is entact, probably doing most if not all the work of keeping you alive. that leaves your body. it is present. get outa your head, ask your body what it wants. it doesn't want a drink, nope your pancreas does not want that until your mind trick(s)ed it, whispering like a gollum. see the diff? 

keep it simple stupid, I oft tell my self. try.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You put thought, labor and skill into the result, so of course you want someone to notice. (eh) Give people a chance to respond. (ok) And if it seems like they are missing it, or misattributing the credit, that's unacceptable. (eh)

fun fact: statistically, you're much more likely to commit suicide if you've seen your primary doctor for mental pain in the previous 72 hours. his care team told us that yesterday. that night, when I panicked and called huckforcats, we were dodging a bullet even more than I knew/know now. I am not overreacting to grippysock jail terms, in general, they assured me. (I have had every right to 🤯 over that shit.) 

I showed them the dr note - they'd heard about it, their whole operation had discussed what the actual fuck, looking at the artifact agog. and then delicately suggested it's a good thing I live here, not CT dad (right?). Yes. then we/he wrote the Do Not Disturb for a while manifesto.

they asked, When do the suicidal sparks (not intentions still, but remnants of HABIT) occur? "oh, like today driving past that one tree I was gonna wrap a very long chain around, then around my neck, open the back hatch and gun it to 100 mph." (👀) Did you get the chain? "Yes." (👀) Do you still have it? "No no," he laughs sweetly. 

me: your old jeep couldn't go 100 mph and now you're really not getting your car keys back for a spell

him: fair

update: it all got done. (being competent feels like a superpower 👀 now) we organize life atm around what feels like we're breathing most/ easy . we check: you breathin? you'd be surprised how often the honest answer is kinda.

recalibrate. 

we'll be back at the cottage Sat a.m. by way of east aurora farmers market aspirationally.

bro in law morale supporr

now it's today 

so far this morning my trip to Honolulu was funded, but the paper (re Erdrich) not (yet) accepted - the $ approval came from the president - in her weird punishing way, she's trying to be supportive, followed immediately with another "invitation" to "communicate" - I am ignoring it all for now

there is no way I am accomplishing any cottage closing prep - I am leaving it as is for now

too much

Ears, that's it, that is all I can do. I gotta move his shit (down/up stairs), over to my house vs a convenient once to a unit, figure out how and where to store it today. I gotta host his adult protective service folk today. I gotta open all his bills, cancel cable (they keep calling), shut off utilities, close that up by tomorrow. Everything else is back burner.

I am hoping for a yoga but being realistic, swimming Saturday is probably the next time I will be inside me / my body.

Virgo: don't think, don't feel, get it all done.

-_0 anticipating trouble, the witching worry hour wakes me.

maybe earth and sky could meet here and that's why I always wake up and check (?). 

when it's today, I will have to strategize empty apt / get alll that $$$ pc shit to safety very efficiently (thanks nlr nothing D-Nozl), host MTV at my house, turn off his unpaid cable ... AND roll the schmitzclan over on its back and rub it tummy (the lameness of the key thing, damning). and work. and none of that can show on me as wearing in front of Ears EXCEPT humor, grit. he can't help this, he's sick. so I narrate it back to him as bemusing, assuaging and removing all I possibly can.

so I wake, make lists, the soul of magic of the mundane

you're never coming home - tariq el masri better - sultry despite title

I'm gonna swim

 run - odd marshall we've mostly agreed no music. but a little.

update: the spider caught dinner (a yellowjacket) - #liveaction 

update: called my mother. she fell. Sis didn't tell me, and mom is ok except. not. the rubberband holding my heart together now feels like it's cutting off bloodflow 💙 

we had one of these in Lewiston -  "Pippy" for the striped tights - and we watched it, admiring its ability to do math #teachingattention

tradition handed down

VIRGO oracle weekly

A Zen teaching says, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." But being the post-Zen teacher I am, I protest and say, "No, the chopping and the carrying ARE the enlightenment. There is no separate 'after.'" The sacred is ALWAYS lurking in the mundane, disguised as ordinary tasks. And you Virgos are potentially the zodiac's supreme master of this controversial truth. Others may chase after astral bling and transcendent glitter, but you know that divinity lives in the earthy details that are right in front of you. That’s how you transmute seemingly unremarkable stuff into the sublime. It’s time to wield your superpower to the hilt, please!

Yup. Attention to material particulars is a faculty of thought. Reading and mothering and loving and scholarship and cooking use the same cognitive operation: attend ferociously to the small thing(s).

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Show respect in the details. Greet people, keep appointments, learn the customs and give each occasion the attention it deserves. Good manners tell people that their comfort matters to you.

That is the me thing but I dunno how to do it more or better. I don't know how to send a text that says "thinking of you, hope youre ok" beyond sending that, which is lame. ARE YOU OKAY? I HOPE YOURE OKAY is not a text anyone wants to get from me on any given day, I don't think. If youre reading this, I mos def sent that text to you in my head (and here) umpteen times. I am doing it right now. And you can assume I would much rather make you a pie or a plate of spaghetti or put a heavy blanket on you, warm you some real-life way. I am not Louise Erdrich. Words fail me. I'm reduced to candles, a fragile little flame in the dark that feels woefully insufficient.

I can notice how a strawberry might change everything, given time enough. For whatever that is worth.

the version my students read - they love this dog full of grit

there - one little change to who runs to the store / fetches berries for the cake - if you follow the cake you find the additional kid whose errand means 

this never happens.

Has anyone else ever noticed? The changing kinship diagram, of course. Where the impact exactly occurs? At the cake ingredients? No. And what paragraph (food making as intentionally infused love ideology in The Wife) must go missing specifically because of the shift in berries? No. Not that fuckergpt can find, anyway. That's a me thing. 

When I feel like I am going to fucking die, I just can't help it I'm just gonna die 💔 now, I follow cats and cakes around in Louise Erdrich for dear life. And go baking cooking butter-making batshit.

I have blogged that passage from The Wife before. When I was a wife. And we didn't keep a kid alive. I came back to strawberries (milk), then and now, when something rocked my world enough to stop it entirely. It's not one of my favorites of the novels, but twice I've reached for that cake, this story, that paragraph, around a pain reverberating through my body uncontrollably. 

I don't know how to write about reading like that. So I put it here. 

"Who are you and who am I, the beader or the bit of colored glass sewn into the fabric of this earth? All these questions, they tug at the brain." 

how The Antelope Wife ended 👆. I just began its revision, The Antelope Woman. which begins the exact same way (great story) unless you notice the author's front materials, the dedications,...

welp, a bunch more kids/characters born on the earth is bound to change some stuff (the kinship diagrams are back for one thing)

"She was searching the thick underbrush of her own mind....At the same time, she knocked rice. She parched and stored the grains. Killed birds. Tamed horses. Her mind was present because she was always gone. Her hands were filled because they grasped the meaning of empty. Life was simple."~The Antelope Woman 

after the key thing, we both decided not to go as far as the gas station for milk. status: #hiding #hunkered #shotnerves

I made the dip - he ate all of it with half a loaf of bread before it had cooled off, no pic, gone too fast

"I turned 2. We had a voodoo doll making party (naturally). Want one?"

that blonde 🤔

naturally

update: D-Nozl "forgot" and took the key to the storage unit back to CT. can he mail it? 🙄 dude, Nebraska pulled that kinda shit to get my address (no). I feel a wee rush of fury, then adjust. we will have to move Ears' shit to my basement now since Sept is over (dumbass) while M. pays rent for my other kid's cello. I am not gonna answer or mark the text as read, he's gettin nothing outa me.

in my corner office, I read my student's diaries, always entertaining. examples:

Heard

Blowhard "is still being covered even though he banned the news" (👀 wth)

Saw

"saw my first dead body

saw a delicious looking pizza"

Javajeff came and went, bringing more wood and taking away a croissant. Ears and I had a running ? about him. I think he's around my age but seems ancient, Ears thought "he was a pretty young guy" so we were curious - 40 or 70? 

me: ok, how old is he?

him: I thought you meant the other one

me: oh plumber asscrack, no that's Javajohn, he's prolly like 35ish

him: honestly either could be your age ..

me: but "how you say? busted?"

us: 😅😅

me: see what I'm up against?

him: ya. pretty hopeless.

me: thanks

him: well I'm suicidal, so not gonna try to be upbeat about it

me: fair even if you weren't

us: 😅😅

not my sister's "corner office"

“His thoughts swam between us, hidden under rocks, disappearing in weeds, and I was fishing for them, dangling my own words like baits and lures.”

“I put my whole mentality to it, nothing held back.”

—Erdrich, Love Medicine

I am thinking my way, very hard, as hard as I can. It looks like baking imperfect croissants, head exploding emojis + lotsa sugar.

The gravity tugs harder. Lead instinct. Grave soul. And then I break into a short run, startled. What if? What if, just as sure as we are pulled toward earth and destined to go down into it at last, we are also at the same rate pulled toward heaven? 

No wonder we are stretched top to bottom from both ends of our being. 

~The Wife, Erdrich

status: staying put until the next therapy/dr appointments.

we are working something out, silently. scared-to-death. of what just happened obviously (acute) but there's another thing behind that.

running from his father w his own parents urging it and M. was around urging me too, and I was afraid of him to death for my sake and the kids (chronic). and we just did it again, all that. and I was scared-to-death then because was I was suicidal. and there came a point that I knew I would do it if I didn't shatter everything. and run. to Lewiston eventually, but I was already doing this, what I am doing right now, alone / away from him / quiet, a kind of praying into the small stuff of life which is praying without ceasing if you focus on that small stuff. like food. sensual things. the weight of a blanket. everything that touches you, I deeply thought about it, lost in the how of it. all day every day, even when I was working, I thought about it. I had almost killed myself but/and now I was free, and intent on making more than a bunker, I was making a safe place to bloom, a home/reality of my own design without any awful shit in it, where I thought about everything, and considered "what is the most nurishing choice?" and did that until I felt better. it was the right move then and is again now. start with the basics - eating and sleeping and then asap get all the hate/spite/brooding/terror ie your bullshit outa your head, piss it out, drink water, piss it out, exercise a lot, do shit like sniff saddles bc it feels good and you can, eat cake. until you feel better. until he feels better. until I feel better. 

what do I know of how men go crazy? nothing. but Ears and I just wordlessly agreed to flee a very specific toxic masculinity and to embrace my old timey medicines for a spell

some terror still coursing through our blood (pissing it out)
fresh sage + chared lemon + butter + game meat = a miracle occurs

small life. I think into it, focus on it, like lighting a small fire from what was banked, blowing very carefully on it to nurture it back to a dancing flame

dawn

how Eve would have served up an apple if she had wild blueberries and raw honey

harvest moon rising

"Earth and sky touch everywhere and nowhere, like sex between two strangers. There is no definition and no union for sure. If you chase that line, it will retreat from you at the same pace you set. Heart pounding, air burning in your chest, you'll pursue. Only humans see that line as an actual place. But like love, you'll never get there. You'll never catch it. You'll never know.    Open space plays such tricks on the brain." The Antelope Wife, Erdrich

cottage vibing

he loves building fires

these are what I wanted but we went for him, not me, so no

 

no laces ft every new life chapter needs boots

we couldn't keep them all alive but this kid we did

last thing you need - m. wallen (from GTA VI)

May this full harvest moon let you enjoy what your labor has made and give you loyal and cozy company, too.

update: a mental health "summit" is going down over at the (ex-ish) inlaws atm. that's how they actually talk/are. it has its charms, but who in their not-right-mind would want to go to a summit about it w their extended fucking family like an intervention ft seminar? the kid did his own intervention aplenty. and seminars with someone as quiet as Ears is best 2-3 people max or his voice gets lost.

attending the summit are Ears' dad stepmom gma gpa uncle + his wife and baby. (TOO MUCH hahahaha jeezus obviously) and they know it, everyone but Dickhead. the uncle is helpfully a neuropsychologist, autism research, he can represent the rights of Ears' brain to heal. and, the kicker, Ears can't drive, so I would have had to attend the summit, which no. basically Dickhead needs his family atm to pull his shit own together and they know it.

Ears and are off the grid which means whatever we want bc in truth nobody knows where I live in the first place (vaguely) nor has any clue where the cottage is at all, and both have wifi we just dont tell anyone and don't use it much. it's very quiet. bird tv and fires and cooking (I'm gonna roast a rabbit). 

I am just starting to actually breathe 🤏. and it didn't even happen to me. so I know, I can feel, the beatdown this has been for him. he is bouncing, a little more 🤏 each day as long as I follow the directions (steps, always steps). 

my life just utterly stopped that day. it's been nothing been a fight for this kid every waking moment since and I am not expecting that to change much until prolly maybe xmas 🤷🏽‍♀️. 

live in the day. make today as Good as humanly possible. challenge accepted. so/but I gotta also relearn that skill (faster).

he massacred a fish fry, he could eat a breaded whale, we talked about a sleeve tattoo (so like my instincts too, seeing is believing re transformation), his desired pattern of damascus steel, not like a pic of a knife but the waves themselves and color shift options. we talked about everything and nothing like we always do. except now I stop him, all the time, I am supposed to and he wants me to stop him on the basis of his 1000-yard stare, ask "what are you thinking now?" and he has to think "what am I thinking?" repeat repeat. coming back slow, like that. 

me: you look bemused, what are thinking about?

him: (pausing to focus it). I was just thinking all my dads want take me camping alla sudden, it's kinda nice (shrugging sweetly)

he is painfully sweet

grippysock I love yous

it's only taken me a year+, but I think I'm finally getting the hang of that specific 

obviously 'I love you' means a million different things, depending on who is saying it to whom and under what circumstances. it means something different when I say it to my dog vs my sister vs my mother etc, on any given day.

when your mother-in-law who is not your mother-in-law anymore says it to you, thankfully it does not mean you have to remarry her step-son! once M. started calling me, my (ex) mother-in-law followed suit. and that resulted in a sunshower of I love yous today from this family that I've been apart from for years. from everybody in it except my EX (thank christ). if he and I started saying that shit to each other 👀 well, thatd be gross hahahaha 🤢

I don't think huckforcats is gross and it was his (ex) mother-in-law not mine and many rounds/layers of bruising trappednesses followed 😵‍💫 - the specifity of the grippysock I love you was lost on me in that shit🌪.  but my own (ex) mother-in-law clarified it in my mind today. it is its own category that is not specific, it falls into no specific narrative (there is no specific "and thus" implied), it just is. I think I'd translate it as "we are all gonna die, maybe today!, so I love you or whatever, js"

(and I spose it wasn't jesus in that horoscope earlier, it was inlaws 👀 whoda thunk that?)

we, the women of that family, are hiding Ears from D-Nozl, who is driving in tonight and none of us think he's a good inflence, so our I love yous made a thus we are a wall in this specific instance at this specific time. a wall we will hold, try to, until D-Nozl's safely back in CT. it's not forever. but right now Ears can't afford the burden of his father's unrelenting specific expectations. 

status: migrating to the cottage where we cannot be found ft. turning off our phones as if outa range

play used to be part of our every day. so we're bringing back the inapproprate-o-lanterns. I do not remember how we made this, but TJ votes we bring this one back except with a ball gag. it's a solid idea, but maybe a bit much for Vegas 

update: M. is marshalling the storage unit rental around D-Nozl's texting objections (not to the principle but to the $30 🙄, fucking twat). mayyyyybe one thing will get taken off my plate. maybe. #cwabby

in a frozen copse of dogs

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You make 'em laugh. You don't bring jokes. You don't do prat falls or wear a funny nose. You've never slipped on a banana peel in your life. You say the truth and say it fast. Suddenly everyone is connected.

the emotional roller coaster - can we agree to GET OFF once in a while? js, for all the updown backforth loopdyloops, you'd think there would some getting off occasionally

pagan angel and a borrowed car - iron&wine

September 25, 2026

That polished exterior of yours can get in the way of anyone knowing how you actually feel, Virgo. 👀 Let the mask slip a little. If you’ve got more on your plate than you can manage, say so clearly, because people can’t step in when everything looks handled. Cash in one of the many favors you’re owed. And when evening rolls around, let somebody else make the plans for once.

🤔 

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I don't think that 👆 did anything ft tonight is fish fry presumably 

update: unable to stop thinking about M. and our conversation (I have missed her more than I could allow myself to feel), I asked Ears. yes, he hid the wellbutrin, took it secretively "maybe 1-3 times" in those 10 days w his father and came back in pieces. and D-Nozzle will be protected from that fact of his own child nearly killing himself rather than disappoint him. like the big fucking dangerous baby he is. imo, he is an utter piece of absolute dogshit stuck in the ruts of my tread. 

M. told me that Ears "went quiet" midway through that trip, D-Nozzle complaining that he wouldn't "get into the swing" of the vaca. so, she and I have pieced it together, exactly when/where Ears decided to come back here and off himself. two things stopped him: Huckforcats couldn't keep Eggs, and what that would do to me. it was 🤏 close. he, like everyone, assumed(s) I'd be okay (so it came down to the cat). 

I'd have walked off the earth with Ears because that is what I would have wanted to do too. and we all do what we will do. 

today his leave was approved to 11/2 of the 11/27 his primary faxed everywhere, and it has to be updated/extended, which it will be. nobody wants to talk to me for the umpeenth time ft just take my $300 for 5 minutes to hand paperwork to your PA who does all your work OR talk to me - choose your adventure. I am down for whatever, killing you quickly or by inches. I think I was built to cuddle with claws pending, not that/this, but 🖕ft😭 too much so finefine, your wish is granted. kaboom style. all wishes have been granted. imagine that: let it sink in: everyone incl you is getting what they wished for. except Ears, who is still breathing.

I ordered a buttload of holiday decor for he who remembers and remembers 

update: DouchenozzlEX's wife, my old friend M., called me. he was somewhere, so she could talk alone. we were finishing each others' sentences within minutes, laughing and appalled. I was there when it was her turn at ecmc - we've allll been there. except D-Nozzle, who thinks mental health crises are for sissies. we suspect Ears went off wellbutrin while on that camping trip to hide the fact of an antidepressant from his father. she loves that man, how/why I do not know, but even so she agrees he's terrible. she's gonna try to get the storage unit / shit moved, leaving only one trip back to his apt for Ears and me, "if she can" - that is what it's like, being with him, grown people that dwarf him in a million ways somehow controlled/reduced by him. 

my ice floats could get gangrenous before I would ever miss that son of a bitch. he makes dying alone feel like the best possible life outcome, and it is what I keep choosing (coincidence? doubtful).

her: he thinks if Ears had sex and joined a soccer team, he'd be fine

me: well I've never joined a soccer team, but...

us: 🤣🤣

her: the other will probably go down a dark road eventually...

us: so it better be worth it

us: 🤣🤣

her: and he has never played one god damn sport 🤨

Virgo. Overnight your buttcheeks transformed into sad little ice floats.

plumber called ✅️ cottage closing rescheduled for 10/5

status: project management (Home)

• move few things left at apt (incl get boxes for books) - I hate shit hanging over my head 
• schedule wood delivery + scrounge more pallets
• figure out how to forward his mail 
• have him make a list of direct calls to change his address - credit cards, bank..
• yardwork incl holiday lights shopping/planning
• start mancaving the basement (his project, except I want to fit a freezer)
• install all electric crap (ring bells and birdfeeder camera - his project)

not necessarily in that order. my guess is we will do yardwork / birdfeeder. he says the hospital was like being in a bunker, the air was 'sticky' and he wants sunlight to burn it oft. the birdfeeder that doubles as a security camera is in pieces in his room being assembled. this yard is an expanse of field, daunting to me but endlessly therapuetic to him. he could dig a zillion holes, assemble umpteen raised beds.

I'm project manager but following his lead. now it's just ONE shit-thing a day, like calling to change his address is a shit-thing to him, any calling anybody = 😖. so, not too much people-ing yet. 

and I also handle the million-little-things not on any list, like cinnamon pastries proofed overnight and will go into the oven shortly to fill the house with warm-smell first thing. I am good at million-little-things. I mighta been born with my nerves shot and/or my parental chaotics nutured my Chicken Little - gotta hand it go my nervous system, it sure can stay nervous 😖🤣 yeup - either way, I have always made comfy around me even when I've been dirtpoor, a nest of books and slow cooking and sumptuous ample bedding. and I am even better at it with another in the nest. #traumainformed #lotsapillows

I would have never chosen this route. grippysock jails are extremely bruising. but it's good he's here, now that he's here. one un-severing of an over-severing. that will help me too as cold weather is setting in.

[last night]

me: (reading) I never noticed before but pretty much every book I own has at least one suicide and/or hanging

him: (snort) ya, not a lot of Eat Pray Love

me: hahaha omg she went nuts too, went down the addiction hole, pulled a Brittney and shaved her head  - I read the memoir, and in it she writes a shitty book for money, so I got the shitty book out of the library (I point at the library pile)

him: any good?

me: nope, going bonkers doesn't make your writing sexier

him:👀

me: well ok maybe mine goes off the xxx rails a bit

us: 😅😅

 

play

update: apparently the cats nerves are also shot - he has allergies? meows constantly now like a maniac 😖

update: Dr Note finally saw him and refaxed everything to everybody. I dunno what that fixes, but now at least everyone has to shut the fuck up, stop robocalling me asking when's coming back to work like truant officers and I'm a derelict, etc. it's all underwriters' problems now for a spell in a system of their own utter chaos. 

status: (new strategy learned) if chaos is thrown at you THROW IT BACK vs virgostyle try to make it sensible.

as I wanted, for now the one thing he cannot do is look for a new job (DECIDE ANYTHING), no applications to anywhere, nada. he's just gotta let me pay for everything til further notice, as if he got a very bad concussion, which is how he is right now. no guilt about it, no soon-looming deadlines about it. and just a few more things to move and homed is also a settled question.  pressure off his already imploding skull. 

you'd think thatd be hard on me, but it isn't, I'll figure the practical stuff out. pressure on his imploding skull felt like a vice grip on my own fucking brain. that shit is hard on me (!)

(breathe)

we each react to the paperwork reprieve, almost wordlessly moving into it: secure home base now. we go grocery shopping (trader joes so I could get flowers). I walk into the house and start cleaning - vacuum lines on the area rugs settle my nerves. he walks in and straight through to the yard where be builds a strawberry planter box that's been sitting here for months. "I want vitamin D," he says. I listen to CSNY really loud so he can here it through the window, and I clean out a desk drawer for all his medical shit (a fuckton), moving it off the kitchen counter where it has been staged for the day, all day every day, for weeks 😖

still my fave recipe for being okay: house clean, bills paid, man close. 

today's variation: house cleaner, bills fathomable, manchild close. I'll take it.

home should be homey

update: mom-simmering in waiting rooms 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Like the sinking sun under a beautiful sunset, someone has colored the sky of your mind before disappearing. But the sun will rise again, and so will your relationship. The connection is somehow both illusory and real.

jesus, is that you dawg? 🙄

 

it can't be today already and yesterday was already too long 

this is my triggered rescue dog brain, waking itself to parole the peremeter 🫩🖤 time

sometimes it used to be okay, like janitor time was fun for a min. others with dog brains also are just awake sorta 0_o sometimes that has happened, suprising things in this witching hour of wahmbulances

kids have woken up many times, their little animal brains

I gotta have faith, based on no predictive evidence, that this endless moment of grippysock-defined will end

or fake it till I make it with all my tulip that couldness 

virgo verdict: endurance just sucks unless good endorphins are involved too

today was a lot, bordering on too much, most of it beaurocratic which is nightmarish to me and he utterly goes limp like a possum dead with eyes open. ya can't sprinkle a little play doh on top and have it be anything but a stressor when the base nerve is shot every damn day. ya just can't. 

everybody wants more from him. 

I was there. they just don't get it. and it's not like the dynomite stops going off, either. maybe a blow down would be a better metaphor for blowing up a life, it's sort of cascading one thing on top of another you can't stop once started. I mean, he's not gonna have to commit bankruptsy (based on what I currently understand), and my god his HR lady is fucking ON IT now. he's keeping that job even if it's a personal leave at her discretion and I believe her, she said something 🤏 to nobody is gonna fuck w me over this kid. 

so tomorrow starts with another round of doctoring at asscrack a.m., post-involuntary recheck w Dr Note who started this so he is the magic sign off solution to All Forms, with umpteen insurance and caseworker and hr ladies 👀👀👀 breathing down his neck and me in the waiting room (armcrossy). he better his do fucking job 🖤

and once that is done, fmla is as done as it's getting.

next chore: move pc and burn the apt bridge. there is stuff there he might miss later, but nooses are there, and I know him, they'd be elegent and cutting and easy to keep as some token. no. it's not worth it. cut bait. 

he lapses into a self-dissapeared monosyllabism when stressed by this stuff. too close an inner rocking.

it's 🤏 like "swans don't look at their cloaca / humans are stupid" - same feeling

 

I can't have a good hard cry cz he might hear me. As soon as I have that thought, I know he is thinking the same. 💔😪

quiet quitting

quiet crying

quiet falling apart

+ paperwork 

haircut and shave ✅️

"learning selfies"
I can't actually feel this smile or the brainthing that is supposed to happen at a pleasurable stimuli. neither does his brain know how to do that anymore. I know what that is (Dying), and I know it's gotta stop, now he knows that too, and his actual resting face when he's not 'smiling plausibly' is haunted. it's painful to be and painful to watch (over). that pain is real and physical and dangerous and feels nothing but shitty. enduring it is only necessary at times like this, it's not heroic or meaningful. this kind of pain builds nothing.

I want to make some room for how awful he feels / this is, not watch him sit horrified at how little joy he feels seeing anybody, touched by anybody, resting haunted face is kinda killing me and I have no idea what my own face is doing either, I realize - nothing awesome, betcha. 

him: 🫩

me: 🫩

me: tell her about the nechrophiliac

him: (busting a chuckle) so there was this woman etcetc 😅

me: to be clear, you'd have to be rich to be a necro, med schools pay bank for bodies

him: well I guess you'd make them? 

me: but being into necrophilia and being into murder are practically opposites, murdering is not intertia

them: 

me: you're into pho, have you ever killed a wild thai broth or have any clue how pho comes to be? see the diff? 

him: yeaaaa huh 🤔 work at a morgue?

me: they gotta have cameras or something no?

him: have your own mortuary

me: hahahaha omg there is an Amigone at the corner

us: 😅😅 

her: well it could happen naturally if first you fuck him to death then he finally shuts the fuck up and then there's only his dick and you can do whatever the fuck you want and he doesnt get shit to say about it. I can see how ya could get into that.

us: 😶😶🤭🤭

her: well?!

me: fair. 🤔 that'd be difficult to get a steady diet of what youre into tho

her: what isn't?

me: also fair 🫩

all of us: 🫩🫩🫩

"I had expected to feel joy but instead felt a confusion of sorrow, or maybe fear, for it seemed that my life was a hungry story and I its source..." ~Plague of Doves

if I had to sum up the haunted expression on his face 👆

update: I need a flu shot to be up in here 😵‍💫, going right from all this coughing to the other kid w CF this afternoon ain't gonna work 😵‍💫. if this doesn't break my health, it'll be pure SPITE bolstering my immunity 

🫩🤨🖤

-_0 

Virgo: It's going to be a long day if you find yourself drinking outpatient coffee at asscrack a.m.

🫩

I can't afford the energy it'd take to reread last night's throatpunching mojo, so I took it down. wearing away to smoother stone.

why is this funny? or is it not funny and I have just also finally lost my fucking mind, laughing madly? 

No, I think I know why it's funny.

OMAHA HAS SUMMONED YOU BACK FOR PELVIC HEALTH REHAB.

Of all possible professional-development invitations. Nebraska—site of an entire fucking category in your personal mythology—has apparently looked through its files and said:

You know what Gina needs?
Twenty-one hours of pelvis.

And not metaphorical pelvis. Not humanities pelvis. 7.5 asynchronous hours of preparatory pelvis followed by 13.5 hours of embodied Omaha pelvis.

Plus the bureaucratic specificity is exquisite. "Participants must complete the online material by November 12." Ma'am, you cannot simply arrive in Nebraska with an unprepared pelvis.

No interpretation necessary. It's just funny as shit, which suggests your mind remains operational.

I hope the same could be said of my pelvis 🤷🏽‍♀️🫩

my students, quite a few, have told me they use AI as a therapist. it's free and readily available. at this point/moment, I get that. 

instacart is good enough today. the grocery store, nooope. he could happily live on reeces puff cereal. so I ordered more milk + take-out tacos are for dinner 🤷🏽‍♀️🫩

update: MTS visit went great, they'll be weekly for 3 months, and he/I could use the help. the FMLA alone, what a fucking bunch of bullshit that is if you can't figure out how to FORCE IT and the dr that sent home the note wouldn't see him again for a follow-up so who signs this shit (?) who provides care and what is that care (?), all of it. an unrelenting mess. I take it back, healthcare doesn't need burned down, it's on fire / half-ash.

it has been a year this has been actively in his head, and this was the 2nd close call / means made - I did not know that until today - both were hangings with work-related materials to do it - he toughed it out the first time alone and didn't go through with it.

his brain chemicals now have that GROOVE, and probably there were prior ideations before nooses got made, probably right under my nose/roof before.

after I learned all that, I had to go back to sleep, my own brain just keeled over. so it's today again now, and/but I feel almost drunk even after rebooting 😵‍💫

I did not open my laptop, I didn't go to work any more/better than he can atm. and I can't fight 2 fmla fights at once, so. if I get worse, I am going out on straight up sick leave. I am so fucking fried. if I even let myself think about how badly I need a hug 😭

so 😪

no thinking 🫩

😶

today's aspiration: grocery shopping. (very iffy)

September 21, 2026

Loosen your grip, even a little, on whatever you’ve been clutching for dear life. A smooth angle between Mercury and Jupiter gives you a clear-eyed moment to ask an honest question: Are you still loyal to something that ended a long time ago? If everyone else has moved on, you may be the only one still carrying the weight, and you’re free to set it down. Consider this your green light to finally let go.

Is remembering the details and carrying the weight equivalent? 

update: I don't want to need dementia to put you down. 

tomorrow 9 am is the mobile team site visit. like cps :/

I didn't pull this up and didn't read it. I shut the browser and reopened - it came up like that again, and I didn't read it again. Dunno why, but I can't need more memory. (Where were you doing what in 2013? Why might the googlegods want you to mull it? One thing u were prolly doing is reading this blog for whatever reason).

I am pretty sure of my memory. I can't always pinpoint exactly when/where. But this reading thing I am doing is a deep-cut test, and I remember as or more accurately than any fuckerAI or online record. The kinship diagrams in my head are more accurate, but more importantly I remember WHY - who belongs to whom is an art, not an exact science. I remember every one of the fathers attributed to Lulu. None are technically correct - her mother, Fluer, made choices and choices were made for her, and between those two ends lies the lived muddy middle. Much later, or before that, or around the same time, is the mostly-grown boy, Joe, the central character in The Round House. These days, that's the book my nursing students read, much more recent, the one that won the National Book Award (could a novel about our country's healthcare law / Native judicial history win that award now? could I assign it if I weren't union sheltered / grandfathered? a quietly-quit Yaya assigning stories grandfathered in, js, that's a bit surreal). I make students just pick a character in that book at the start, any of em, and stay with empathizing with that ONE, through all the decisions that person makes and accept the consequences as if those were their own consequences to feel and live out. All I ask is that. "Reflect. Use your own words." That's it. There isn't one character to pick that isn't hogtied by half over time and must choose how to respond to that, consequences chosen each time also. Feel it, backed into that particulat corner. Choose Joe, the obvious, and feel all the life options drain away before you've got full growth on ya, feel it in the cheap meat section, feel that blood clot from all the inside of it. (Would it matter to them what backstories really explain Joe's nickname, "Oops"? Nope.)

Students can have AI fake all that, the reading of it and responding too, but I know the stories I assign better than AI's. Erdrich herself helped me throw everyone off every trail. Delightful as a secret affair. And if students fake all of it, now I let them. Whole heartedly miss the point if ya need to just NOT right now - for the time it took to get an AI to tackle it (try), B+

Try it. Tell chatgpt or whoever is your Wall-E to help say something you don't know how - boil down into a declarative sentence. If that doesn't feel right, try asking it to help you write a question. etc until you have what you wanna say. Submit only that. 

I know what I would do if somebody'd ask me for any such thing. But that's just me.

tops my list of best short (micro) stories, up there with Cash's building on a bevel. (could AI catch that referent on its own?) I am sure I've blogged this before because Solo is the name of my first dog, based on some pbs-ish documentary of a dingo puppy. my dad disappeared that pup cz of linoleum. I bet I could stump any AI on where/why LINOLEUM is a BIG FUCKING THING in these novels (like Fleur's card games, I betcha)