I didn't ask for anything. It's a different kind of spellwork that I'm working on. Closer to sex magic. New moon in Scorpio today. Deliberately uncontained, a kind of tension. Intentiomally alter the way I feel. Not like candle work. More like lighting a fire. Which I also do, too. Pulling warmth into me. I am the caldron type deal. The brew is whatever cooks up.

All day long, I am thinking about that chocolate, the YES coin from Trader Joes from that spell cast back in the spring. I fed a chunk to my mother, which might help explain "Sweetie Pie". Since then, it's been turning pale in the fridge, I am sick of looking at it, I am going to transmute it. I am going to break it, subdue it, fold it into More and bake it into lava then eat all of it. I poured myself a hot hot bath, took the gooey thing into the tub on a plate, I am swallowing the first huge hot mouthful of it as I am settling into the steam and my ass is still stinging. Yea I am thinking about him, that I ain't his Mama whatsoever. (Jackie is better!) Then the phone rings, he is ❤️‍🔥 with wins.

His mama. Jeezus fucking christ. What the actual hell. 🤏 close to another parent death spiral?! 😳

Talk about something I never thought I'd have on my bingo card: I fervently want Low Cunning to be fine. For them to be fine, and to look at each other and wonder how each of them went through what probably was one of the worst month(s) of their lives this last month + and did not talk to each other about it really. They fought around it is how they "talked".  👀 Polish still eludes me a lot. 

Lay down, I wanna talk to ya? 

Welp, there is one thing that we certainly agree on and that is we can't have our littles exposed to senselessness / life must be sense-made. And for me, that means my own life must be sense-made. 

I looked at myself just before I climbed into that bath with lots of my hair grown back in soft curls, I thought what a privilege it is to be healthy 👁 

"mecorating" (sense making)

VIRGO Kindness isn't a contract. Your generosity doesn't obligate you to the comfort of others. Protect your energy. Give because it delights you, not because it's expected. And if you're just not sure, hold off until you have a stronger feeling about what to do next.

It isn't about protecting my energy. It's fear of making anything worse. Clumsy as I am. That's why I give my mother when my back is against that wall. Today, for instance, my son-in-law is picking her up after his Dr appointment. I am not bringing her, she will instead ride alone with him to their place. Whatever she will ask about how he is feeling, I would be afraid to ask. And whatever he says would be something he wouldn't say to me. I love them both, so I won't be in the car. And then my daughter will have Ma alone for a spell, and whatever she would say to her grandmother is not something that she would say to me, and whatever help my mother offers her is not something that she could take from me. Sometimes not-me is the best thing I can give. 

Tomorrow I have blocked my calendar with "in court". I'll be just here. Quietly alone. 

I am going to bake a cake.

"jon hamm"

lover please - melissa ethridge 🤷🏻‍♀️

I mean, yea. I made jerk chicken, a little spicy but good. More painting prep, endless prep, endless water stains and problems found along the way, but I have a groove going, a friend showing up 2 days a week, Ears whenever he's needed. It's becoming a nest like only I would make a little more each day. Mostly still just fixing shit, but Couch comes home tomorrow. Comes home. I have been homesick nearly to death. This place is falling apart / seems like a good match.

funny story of the day - note the "this admits ONE" - coworkers been sending it all day gleefully, knowing it is my fault that now nobody can bring their significant others and everybody thinks that I should be proud of it, and I am. Remember, last year I brought the ex-President as my plus 1, just to be an asshole / hoping it'd be fun again like that year we stole the decor at the end of the party. Message: even your parties are a drag. This year, I was trying to do something really bad, but they felt it coming. That's a good thing, tho, I think, situation-wise. My presence is being felt and accurately. 

2nd funny story, not that it matters atm cz the stirring has ebbed again, but my work injury today was to my diddling finger which is now bandaged so even if I wanted to, I couldn't. I feel kind of relieved of the pressure to pull it off, tbh - I have a masturbation prohibitive injury, I am out on disability. Ever wonder about amputees, like from wars, do they have to relearn how to jerk off with a foot or what? (And have you ever wondered why doesn't anyone ever get the urge to cheat on their usual hand with their other hand?) I wear these boyshorts for my mother, who is obsessed. 

  

Today, "keep doing it", the "it" of we're doing it. How I feel, aside from physically healthy and mentally appropriate (responses match reality, no catrophizing), is beside the point. For now. 

I stacked the wood. 

good intentions

"Sweetie Pie" is what she called him in her phone contacts. I dunno what she sent him, but I know he didn't respond to her either. 

I downplayed it. That's just modern life, Ma. You wait for people to text you back. Be grateful nobody died today, far as we know. "That is so depressing." It is not a thrill a minute. That is why joy is the most rebellious thing, if you can pull it off. 

I think of that as what it looks like but maybe it's just a stick

But truth is, I thruppled my worry, and it now includes her hurt feelings as well doing what she hasn't learned yet, ie worrying if it's something I said. I am 🤏 close to calling him right now to make sure he is alive...

 

what gave me a happy heart this week (aside from the obvious nobody died) = the legos. I got that right. it was just enough, not too much, not nothing, tangible

I'll drive - bros landreth

"needs happy fat"

VIRGO 

Your liver performs countless functions, including storing vitamins, synthesizing proteins, regulating blood sugar, filtering 1.5 quarts of blood per minute, and detoxifying metabolic wastes. It can regenerate itself from as little as 25 percent of its original tissue. It’s your internal resurrection machine: proof that some damage is reversible, and some second chances come built-in. Many cultures have regarded the liver not just as an organ, but as the seat of the soul and the source of passions. Some practice ritual purification ceremonies that honor the liver’s pivotal role. In accordance with astrological omens, Virgo, I invite you to celebrate this central repository of your life energy. Regard it as an inspiring symbol of your ability to revitalize yourself.

"what you want is attracted to your nonchalance"

🤔

ok there is a difference between NEH grants and milk sales. The former means you have nothing left to prove. 

 

doing it 

If he could go back to being 28 years old, something he has mentioned a couple of times. Welp winning two NEH grants felt no bigger of a WIN than when strawberry milk went on sale. Both were aimed at the same thing, making life sweet while living with caregiving. Not one or the other. Always one or the other. (No.)

Here is what would not have changed, no matter what: the burdens of illness(es) and caregiving would have increased, and both our feet would be nailed to the floor around that and kids even more.  Because, as my mother would put it, "that's the kind of hairpins we are".  Have always been. Will always be. 

We just know now which kids we have (so far) as it turns out, a couple more blondes a clutch more mochas and fucking break-up cats galore 🙄 + and radically increased expertise(s) around the same shit: illness and caregiving. Our increased expertise includes the emotional intelligence that comes from living in the shadow of child-death cz it'd have been Nova or Piper either way if we had known about either. 

Feet. Nailed.  

🤷🏻‍♀️ Welp, we both got better looking if you ask me. No, 🤔 he did. I look as peculiar as I feel, for better to some eyes (maybe).  

I am trying to be better not just flirt better (omg so rusty lol 🤦🏻‍♀️). He didn't go upstairs for the reason I thought and celebrated, to take a relaxed shit. (I'm sorry.) 

And son-in-law did get kicked to the curb out of a hob-ital today. As has happened every few months since the cf baby born in 2020, mid pandemic, when first responders were having their benefits withheld after risking their lives. Good times. 

Seems just inevitable that every round of this leaves him closer to dead, me closer to banktuptcy and raising 3 half-orphaned children that I rarely get to SEE around all this effort to keep them alive. Relentless. But today, somebody at Mercy gave a shit about it. For the very first time in 5 years. It ain't the lottery, but I am stupified grateful. 

So again, strawberry milk. It's the little (big) things. 

SUCH AS, I have recovered my ability to find (or make) something hilarious in every day. Today included the endo. Most patients seek this care for shit like ED or vaginal atrophy. Here starts the hilarious part - explaining vaginal atrophy to The Knife. "Every single day the Lord gives me something to be grateful for!" 🤭😅 

Momism of the day (so far): "Time will tell. On just about everything." 

At a certain point you can't do this by case study, and that's why you assign novels to medical students, healthcare students, because you need density of perspectives. But they can't read more than 250 words without losing patients/patience. They never have any time. So you have to cram everything in to have a page at most. So how do you cram it in? 

There are two mothers in the room, let's just try to take one. The one was born to a woman who had munchousins by proxy because of untreated traumatic stress around the near stillborn birth of a baby boy the year prior. The "near" means heart wrenching gasping attempts to cry. As a result, that woman's earliest memories are all of hospitals and procedures that were unnecessary, and injections of antibiotics that she became subsequently allergic to nearly to death, and her baby teeth rotted out of her head before anybody thought to maybe treat the mother, The Knife. And so a medical humanist was born and grew up in the seventies when secondary sex characteristics were valued prominantly.

That is just one character, and not the important one, in the room.

Everybody's backstory is more important than that one's. Her only importance is she's wallpaper 👁

The guy in the bed who could have died and left a family completely unprotected and unprovided for is most essential to this story. But he could easily be occluded by an entire floor of patients, all black, all who are very similar to him. So similar it's hard to see them as individuals for many of the people who keep them alive. And unbelievably, the people who keep him alive are often threatened with death of the same kind that he's threatened with: bad health insurance; bad debt to income ratio; bad work/life balance - suffering and gritting their teeth and grinding through, same same same. 

The wallpaper has given her entire life to this. She has been a patient as long as she can remember. She has been a parent almost as long as she can remember. She has been hellbent to be a storytelling-teacher for healers for almost as long as she's been a parent. All the lives in the room circle her like pesky cats trying to dominate the narrative. 

She knows what she wants right now, but she can't have it even if she could figure out how to give everybody else what it is they need. So what's the point of all this trying?, she often laments, as she keeps it up.

This was an utterly typical day. It just showed for a minute. Blink and you'd miss it. 

first lake effect snow day

welp, horoscope sure panned out, the honeymoon was brief, as it should be #reallife

At some point, Daughter 1 calls, son-in-law has been taken by ambulance to Mercy. She has no idea why or where their car is. I gotta think a minute. I call him, just I dunno, it seems a his wheelhouse thing (?). It has the word mercy in it.

We have been through this countless times, some version of it, with him or one of the girls, not to mention the extended clan, which if you count them then it's chronic. And lately, both my parents, one never to return. I passed Patti's house, looking for a place to park and think/talk it through again with him. He understands, the "intersectionality of social determinants of health" playing out in K's body, by extension rippling through my family, by extension the obligations that it has exacted from me and always will. 

That's a lot. 

Ok, we have a plan. He takes my mom for the evening. I grab Ears and extra car and head to Irving. Then snow slams that plan, the same fucking storm the son-in-law was plowing when he could no longer breathe earlier in the day. 

Plan B, hunker down, eat whatever he is making for my mom, I haven't eaten anything, and now tomorrow still has this logistical nightmare to figure out with meetings I can't miss too, so calories would be good. But plan B is out of the blue, and he doesn't love getting nzl'd when he is girding his loins for battle(s) grim. I'm not taking that personally at all. Well, maybe as a personal challenge, all in good time. Today I feel warm and grateful. That sausage, it tasted so good it kinda almost hurt.

There is no way to get around it that I can see. Life's a losing battle if you love anything. What's the fucking remedy for that again? 

first snow

I was 💯 convinced before I laid eyes on him that has gonna look half dead, or worse that he wouldn't show at all, leaving his near-death level to be guessed at ahhhhhhhh 😱. My mother was on search and rescue.

And then he kissed me. 

I need skirt that flairs easily. I want him kiss me again where I can straddle him, wherever he is completely relaxed sitting. Could I do it again/still? Soak his lap with all our clothes still on? The tops of my thighs were damp with my feet bare on the freezing concrete.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Everything has a price — dollars, energy, emotion. Something must be exchanged. Today, you will linger in the innocent moment before you learn the cost of a thing. For that childlike bubble of time, life feels wild and free.

relax - freeland

"not everything's worth a candle" 🤣
I fed a chunk of the YES chocolate to my mother, the candle just smells nice

"he makes me more delightfull"

looking at the world from the bottom of a well - mike doughty

I am not, but I have. From playlist "Shit's Been Worse" 

you can leave your hat on

Dball is a sensualist lol

 

full moon 🙏

all the contents are still in plastic, the case itself is pretty cool #slowburn

They told us a LOT about holsters in the class. So many opinions! But those guys don't wear skirts.

VIRGO There's something you're trying to express, heal or understand. 👁 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Not everyone needs the same kind of love. What feels good to one feels smothering or awkward to another. Your empathy is flexible. You sense what people need, or you ask them so you can love the way they'll actually feel it.

(Consider yourself asked. My witchguess is "loved by my mom" no matter whom I'm askin.) 

wait no more - scott helman

"Couch"

collage in process (5 of Cups reimagined)

you never can tell - elise legrow (chuck berry cover)

The entire little house has become an art therapy project. It took several weeks to nail the sink and dishwasher, not just the plumbing with the usual headaches like where the hell are the shut offs, but the carpentry to retrofit into old wooden cabinets. Almost every day now, we work on something. Today, I went to get another specialty piece of wood, and we got it working! So satisfying, like a puzzle. 

While I was out, I quickly perused the post halloween sales, scoring a crescent moon wreath of black and purple plumage, there is some little plastic spiders and whatnot hidden in there, to which we added Christmas glitter florals. We spread a sheet out on the floor in front of the fire to catch the glitter, cutting and weaving the wires together. Our first Cheektovegas xmas decor, darkly enchanting motif. And we laughed. We laughed so hard, we were all crying dying laughing gasping. You'd be suprised what can break loose like that. When is the last time you giggled madly until you had to catch your breath? If not lately, it might be trapped just beneath the surface. Right there. 

I'm okay. I'm not healed, that takes time, but I am playing my way back to sound of mind and body, at least. Reminding myself why I want to be alive in the first place. Because a lot of things are very funny, for one. And little pleasures are great. 

And now the tables turn a bit. My mother wants to tat worries. I have not found that to be a worthwhile activity much. Unless there is an action step, maybe glitter in it, I DUNNO. It's not that I disagree with her approach, far from it. Most of the time, what people need is someone to listen and to not try to solve anything or do anything at all. I suck not-doing. (And it is less likely to be what I need as well, perhaps.) That's why, for the most part, everybody needs/wants my mom.

("I ain't everybody's cup of tea." lol)

"Be Like That" - Kane Brown with Swae Lee and Khalid

 

I don't need to read my horoscope. I don't need to pull a tarot card. 👁 I can see.

I can see clearly now - bobby mcfarland live, demonstrating what you can do with just your body if you know the words (which I sure do)

And my mother can both hear and listen🦻(if she cares to).

Funny story: She can barely handle listening to music yet. She confessed that Chris Stapleton has sounded to her like 'a big black lady belting something out', and now her brain has to get used to the fact that he is not Mavis Staples. 

how many times - mavis ft the math 

Samhain is like the ok corral of the year, a with-me or against-me type deal. 

Like magic. I restored my mother's hearing. She was stone deaf in one ear, almost deaf in the other, using $50 bullshit hearing boosters from amazon that I could sometimes hear squealing but she couldn't hear shit. My sister is 🤯 over her getting demented, that is what we fought about. My mother's mind is fine, she was selectively increasingly deliberately deaf. She herself wasn't aware of it anymore, it had become her way of life.

I thought, No. These ways of life that cost brain function or that of any other vital appendage can fuck all the way off. 

3 hours with an audiologist and $2k, that's all it took + No, the secret ingredient. Now she is struggling. She really was DEAF this morning, and now she can hear FINE. And she misses being deaf. There is a whole body of scholarship about grieving that loss when it's cured. She has cried over it a couple times today, not sure how to feel. (Welcome back to the land of the living, Ma.)

Like magic. Then I scored the black Italian leather couch. Like a really great bed fucked a hot leather boot and its demi-god child is this couch. (The whole safe thing taught me: ask to buy the display. #workthetariffs)

"things around you are not what you think"

has nothing to do with Halloween and it's some kind of true 👁

It comes across my mind like a memo: Whatever you are taking for granted / as a given / in the bag, don't. 

she is turning dirt years old this year 😒 

strategies for surviving more virgo days

https://www.westherr.com/inventory/used-2024-hyundai-santa-cruz-limited-awd-4d-crew-cab-5ntjeddf9rh103477/ #girltruck

The subaru that I am inheriting is older than my dad said it was by two years and 30k miles, so I've just added another vehicle that's got an expiration date into my driveway w leased jeep. If I can get the car all the way home illegally and in one piece, of course. Thankfully, my brother in law could spend an hour last night pairing its "smart screen" (looks like atari level tech) to sirius x m so I can have cowboys helping me stay vertical for the time being. But what IF, just for shits and giggles, I imagine that THE HORIZON IS LOOKING FOR ME 👀. I think that means living in time that's not just "for the time being" which is the kinda time I have been living in for .... well, a long time now. Though I do appreciate having gobs of any kinda time, which is far better than being out of time, I'm getting a bit impatient with "the time being". 

My mother can live in magic time.  Time that she can create with her mind both future and past. So I'm gonna show her pictures of girl trucks until one materializes in the driveway. If that works, the possibilities might be endless ...

song, hell the whole soundtrack, TBD

I don't pull a card of the day until the end of the day now because

the future is someplace you've never been before even if it's just the day in front of you. So maybe I should look back on the day instead 

feelings did flow that is true

Landing in love and laughter and planning and existentialism, which is where my sister and I always land and find common ground. A truck by the end of this year for me. 💕smib 

When life has handed you yet another existential catastrophe and you've come apart again, you realize, unlike during earlier crises when you thought 'if you got through this one, then it'll be easy street' , that no - this never stops. We learned that this round. Life is a process of catastrophe, constantly stirring the pot just to stir up more Alive Trying. So, you know, do/be you. And that's it, all you can do, and try to laugh as much as possible and eat better, drink more water and do a better job of keeping the house plants alive. 

I'm going to get on this broom soon, it's time to go home.

I love you I'm sorry - Mumford&Sons (gracie abrams cover) 

I love that you can read that song title umpteen ways, all at once. 

And I love the way he sings covers especially, eyes closed then closed-er the deeper he reachs into someone else's feels. Enteric thinking.

what's on, the array of numbing liquids, the recliner 3 ft from the screen in which sits my mother too small to see, all of it - it's apx 8 a.m. here and the dog is still hiding in the crate pretending the day hasn't started yet (wise creature)

"sunrise"

was gonna unblog this but decided it's a poem

"Survive"

survive - louis capaldi new song, I heard today,

another echoing voice from something, 

posted when Huck crossed my mind a few years ago ,

I wonder what was happening then.

Then, I 

bought a gun, the last glock in the case

and bullets ("ammo" they call it, like fodder for an argument), last box

and a safe, 2nd to last one he is holding 

(I love nice to me, it's unsettling) 

"Good feelings are the real value added. Even when something is paid for as a commodity, the gift of relationship is still attached to it." ~The Serviceberry

and new deadlocks installed on every door

and checked in for my flight, upgrading the seat 

(to be left alone)

funny, pulling this particular card means "you are never alone / angels walk with you"

 

VIRGO Even if you understood why people behave the way they do, it wouldn't change what's happening. Sometimes people are just plain confusing. Don't worry if you can't figure them out; you don't need to. Today's situation will smooth over on its own.

WildOnes blueprints

When I first looked at those blueprints, I thought, well, I can do some of that. But the longer I look at them, I think nothing is stopping me from doing all of it. And more. This little quarter acre could serve hundreds of species of birds and pollinators, a little island for them where there is literally nothing now except shitty grass covering fantastic loamy soil that goes down as far as we could dig, four feet at least. Did you know that cheektowaga means place of crab apple trees? Even the nativists didn't mention that. The kind of soil I have is made only one way, by the death of many things that have turned themselves and history into nutrients, quietly waiting and churning and waiting some more, becoming richer in themselves as men paid no attention except to the airport. 

Maybe it wasn't my mother who put me here at all. She just heard it through the grapevine 🙏. I have tried to puzzle it out. But I have no eathly idea why I am here. I can make myself useful, though. Maybe that is the only reason, to be useful to a butterfly. A beautiful tiny reason of no obvious importance.

keep them on they toes

 

GONE day

 

"status: gone"

As soon as I could legally do so, I registered my forwarding address as a po box in the middle of absolute nowhere on sovereign territory, a Dead End. It's just dust, easily seen through, but buys time.

closing day

I should be elated or at least relieved. But, what changed really? 

just a kiss - lady A cover (8 year old kid rapping it) inspired interpretation of the original lyrics

full on English prof 👓👢 mojo: future present tense - ariel posen I am weirdly turned on by grammar. I just like knowing it even as I break every rule in practice. future present tense, drove me fucking crazy learning it in Latin, but that's how I learned it (backwards) in English = obscure af knowledge lol. Use value: How you would project past (a thing that happened or exists) which cannot be changed, into the future (which is unconstrained, 'somewhere you have never been') and speak of that as being created/experienced presently. Usually used aspirationally. ex "The dam breaks tomorrow." Not will break - it already has done, tomorrow. If ever you need that verb tense, fyi.

reference feel this way too - ariel posen posted for Huck on May 22nd, 6 months ago tomorrow, every  single  wordnote  of  it, and since then soooo much talk of couches that they must be symbolic, but of what

I had a great day. Nothing special happened except people were nice to me. Really nice, starting with roofing lady calling me "honey". I could do a whole post just on the lock guy, a safe nerd, and how today's failure of ring doorbells proves the worth of his analog approach to my safety. I walked into the wrong meeting (no boots needed til Wed lol), but since I was there I ran to the front and tackled my boss with a bear hug 🥰 if he he weren't married, I might marry that one. Then I heard a great new song that I'll post after it's sunk in a little more. (You ever do that? Are drawn to something instinctively but then gotta figure out why?) The shrink was last, she likes it when I am her last appt because I make her laugh and we can chit chat for extra precious unbillable minutes, hell I can have two appointments worth of time shooting the shit about how crazy Everything is. I just really like it when someone is genuinely nice to me. Like if the shrink is cracking up on her own time, she ain't getting anything outa that but nice back, ya know? 

I am in recovery from the meangirl factor of this whole tribe, what I thought was mine but. Wow. No. Now I know there is a smell called "physician". Even if not in white coat, even if currently serving in an academic capacity whatever, the smell lingers. It's sort of a phermone they give off with notes of 'I don't give a shit' and 'I can have/do whatever I want' and money. It's offputting to me, though many are drawn to it. The whole tribe has traces of physician education stink, but they're not all like that, especially the physicians themselves, the ones who are genuinely kind, they give off a counter-chemical. It's always war, though, at best an uphill battle for decency all the time, a losing bruising battle. But I still like the work / my original job. I won't submit anything this year or moderate, nothing that would put me on the program. If I go at all, it'd talking to no one, listening keenly. No name tag. But. I mean. Where who why will I even be next April? I can't really think of that far away as real. 

From inception, when I posted a song by Ariel Posen for Huck, we are almost exactly half way through a if-it-lasts-a-year's worth of whatever this is/was. Trippy thought 🤔🤷🏻‍♀️🥱

Relationships are like feelings: none is more or less correct than another. Each is a unique, unfolding dynamic. Some people are easier to be around, but that doesn't determine the value of the bond.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). People are confusing and confused. 

tree day

“Serviceberries show us another model, one based upon reciprocity, where wealth comes from the quality of your relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” Robin Kimmerer, The Serviceberry

good tired ft naptime

three trees, pear elm and tulip poplar, two serviceberry bushes, one new neighborhood friend, 3rd little tree in the middle, a tulip poplar 🥰 came from his nursery up the road & 150 members locally 

everybody wants to rule the world - tears for fears "help me make the most of freedom and of pleasure la la laaaaa" not bad actually #retrowise

The Tears for Fears song suggests, "Everybody wants to rule the world," though the mess is bigger than one person could clean up. How does your corner look? Since this existence is built out of small, human-scale moments, micro decency just might count toward macro justice. What if world peace strongly correlates to how you treat the person pouring your coffee? 

I say that allllllll the time. In every class evvver. And it is my stance re why I don't march around yelling about Blowhard or even engage with that shit. In my opinion, grand gestures of heroics are fine, but in the everyday is where it's at. In the shallots, so to speak. 

card of the day, and we are literally planting trees. they have root balls the size of small cars (I didn't realize!) so everybody is coming, lots of "fuuuuuuck!"s and kids will be rolling in dirt (shit where am I gonna put all that dirt?) but by the end, two trees shall have joined our little cheektovegas community

When I got home with the dogs yesterday, I felt like Nebraska had been in here. It's just that cortisol tripwire in my head, I know this. Tea bags next to the bed (wtf? I didn't..) could have been any kid in the chaos. But I am not going to argue with my brain unless it goes overboard and wants a moat. Ring doorbells will also be installed and all locks changed to harder ones. Today. Those are reasonable things, just in a virgo timeframe. 

time is of the essence

hold me - teskey brothers love his voice, these soulful cracker types really do it for me

Hold someone but not hold them down. I think about this a lot. How to? With my kids too. "I want you to be happy for me" lifted a weight off my chest, permission to feel that at all. I mean, think about that, I'm supposedly (very supposedly lol) in the role of woman wanting to fuck this guy and yet I haven't felt a mote of happiness for his divorce since it became real. That's funny to me. (I sure felt happy about it the first time 🤭) Welp, with permission, the more divorced he is the happier (for him) I'll be. And I hope he gets fired, quits, whatever, a serious break from death all  of  the  time. Both, the partner and the job gotta go. He's right, blowing everything up hurts. DUH. It kicked my ass for well over a year. And I ain't plumped back up a bit yet.

Loving somebody is itself a weight, a grounding comforting one is what you're going for, I think, but sometimes there's grief(s) that weighs on you. seems unavoidable, doesn't it? like that saying, love is grief backwards. In the end, you'll be out of do-overs and lose everything so you should love as if time is of the essence.

time is of the essence - that's a beautiful phrase, now that I'm looking at it ....

....so I looked it up, and lo and behold, that thing passed on Oct 3rd for my little can't quite pull it off (yet) buyer 🤨 good thing I always allow late work out of everyday decency 🙄

The saying "time is of the essence" originated in English contract law as a legal term to emphasize that a deadline is a critical part of an agreement. If a contract contains a "time is of the essence" clause, failing to meet the deadline can be considered a breach of contract, potentially leading to penalties. The phrase has since expanded to be used more generally to mean that a situation is urgent. 

Legal origin

• Contract law: The phrase first appeared in legal contracts to stress the importance of meeting specified deadlines.

Comet Will Be Visible Tonight In Western New York  *unless you live next to a fucking airport

welp at least that pesky simmer has sputtered
 

happiness isn't one fell swoop

it sparkles with gold flecks that catch the light, and it makes me happy to look at it when I pee #eyetalian

I talked to my mother today and I can't really ever capture the nuances of The Knife in writing. You always had to be there. But. She was on speaker phone with Ears here for dinner. She's deaf as a post, yelling into the phone as if I am deaf. She asked a rather explicit question about Huck 🙄, and Ears died laughing as I was like NO! (shouting cz she's deaf), he's BUSY 🙄. Then she said something like "fine, I'm keeping him" cz he's always SMILING and FUN and IF YOURE NOT GONNA USE HIM, HE CAN BE ANOTHER GRANDSON. (There it is, the juicy butterknifing, there's always a doozy lol.) Now I'm laughing and Ears is like NO! 🤨 No, Ma it's more like 2nd cousin. WHAT? Ears and I both, COUSIN! 🤣🤣

Rereading this, I am noticing the 'always smiling and fun' part. She went on, gap smile etc "happy". If that is true, if he has been that way in recent memory, that's a HER thing. God, if only I could make him feel any better. She's like a human stiff drink. 

Update: One "opening" prayer granted, after much hell, through which they / we hung tight. Daughter 1 & Co. landed a $30/hr job, overtime $50 - for them that is life changing money, and a loooong overdue opportunity for that hardworking black man, who has been busting his ass without earning dignity or security since the pandemic. 

At this moment, I truly believe that being okay (for real) is a significant act of resistance ✊️. 

-------------- 

a.m. finding songs to which my ass moves of its own accord. because unlike me, my ass is still delightful (and cold as ice).

ice ice baby - fake music labs soul cover 💃 (everybody I sent this to today is ❤️ losing it, asses a.m. shaking all over WNY lol)

life to fix - the record company bonus track🕺

one for the closing, one for opening(s) up

margaritaville (sp) - jimmy buffet

I just danced. hahahaha Remember when I always danced as soon as I heard the store music, wherever we went? I couldn't help it, I was delightful 

on second thought, gonna reblog this bit (for you). he says a lot there must be a reason my name is on his ass, but he doesn't know/say what it is. I asked myself that question before he turned up again (sorta), not to make any sense of him but to find me again:

'Other than my ma and my kids, there was never anyone more delightABLE than he was. (A rare thing in a man - they're hopelessly dangerously miserable mostly, like Tbone 💔.)  That included his body (all of it, not just his dick) and his mind (quick to laugh), in every way. I could delight him all damn day (= I could be delightful all day every day)...'

of course I didn't anticipate that he had anything like this shitstorm in front of him - the rehab, his parents re his divorces, the stages of grief, this playing in the sandbox situation - none of it. he mighta misplaced delightABLE in all that while I was misplacing delightful, z'all I'm sayin

it's soo soft

"I love a good throw"

word of the day

leave me be - landon wilks 

"The word is hubris. And while I am all in favour of using precision to describe something, might I suggest that you would be better off not doing something so dangerous so often that you need a specific word for it? Perhaps develop your self-control, rather than your vocabulary."~Stone Blind

That he wants to be bothered, engaged with, invited here (out of his manden), etc  - that is not operationally true. If I keep inviting him in, and he keeps refusing, it just sets a pattern of giving him another reason to feel bad. I do not want to be another reason for him to feel bad. So logically, I should leave him alone.

I'll try again after my mother is here.  

There are no lower stakes than a bowl of soup, but I have refused it too. #glasshouse

aloner than I want, but ok

A straight up proposition (like, 'you would maybe be happier licking my pussy right now') might be better than soup. But, I wouldn't bet on that. I am leaving him be.

"It’s often hard to say with men, isn’t it?" ~ Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes

gumbo, first me-made-meal

The Trustfall Test

By Holiday Mathis

October 11, 2025  

To release the grip, whether in emotions, creativity, intimacy or other, signals a belief that there's something to cradle the fall or, ultimately, there's something better to surrender to. Trustfalls only end well with trustworthy people and circumstances. The Venus and Jupiter opposition warns against lazy investments of faith and calls for strategies based on observable patterns.

 no song