"We are never so poor that we cannot bless another human being." ~Louise Erdrich

I'm grading. As trouble mounted, more and more I let go the assigned learning outcomes, along with deadlines that I barely ever invoked anyway. I assigned them everything and anything that had kept me alive or that was keeping me alive. I told them all the expected things an English professor would, who the authors were/are, why the world thinks they're important, all that. But assignment-wise, there really is only one: find something that helps you, in some way, if you can, TRY TO just do that. The A they get for still being on this side of the grass and still TRYING. 

As a result, I have a BUZZILION last minute things to grade, and MOST are returning to me what I gave them in the first place, tried to. Comfort in words.

I'm slinging A's. Go to your summer, little students. Go be alive. While you still can. 

years - sierra ferrel

If I really, and I mean REALLY, do not want ANYTHING (I don't!), and I scold Nebraska and the dean who cooked up the bait and switch on the chair job, not for jerking ME around but for leaving that poor priest to hold it all together while throwing whoever at jobs he needs done, in this case a whoever who is 100% self interested and could care less about healthcare providers humanistic needs really, and block all their numbers but the priest's, then everything changes AGAIN. 

The magic of No, who knew?

I shouldn't laugh, but talk about bait and switch 🤣. When's the last time anybody asked that priest what HE needs? Well hmm since he works with Nebraska et al, I'd have to guess that unless the priest wants flowers from Wegmans once in a while and/or cunnilingus, he's shit out of luck. And I'd be correct. 

And boy, he really wants his basket back now. And if he gets it, I'll be working directly for him, since I couldn't work for the chair in the conflict of interest mess Nebraska made of that. 

I have to remember how to log in to my email, where apparently there is a FLURRY of contract demands for me that I'm being cc'd on and that I'm not even reading 🤦🏻‍♀️. 

Of course, given how many rounds there have been to get me to Phoenix SOMEHOW, I'm not counting on a job out of this. In my little way, I'm throwing love back at Priest. It really is true that he's getting jerked around as much as I am, by the same people I am, even though he's supposedly in charge. Responsible, but not empowered enough to meet those responsibilities, then up all night wondering how to not let anyone down - BEEN THERE more times than I can count. It sucks. And if I happen to throw some Fassbender fantasies his way, welp I know also what it is like to deserve way more sugar (like NOW, I deserve WAY more), so what's the harm of saying that following a priest into a desert is so old testament (add small giggle here). I haven't even told him yet that I memorized the book of Ruth when I was eight years old - early erotica, I was precocious 💃

I gotta stop seducing the priest in my head. 🤣 Poor guy is probably gay AND overworked, with a hornet-like woman dive-bombing heads around him from NY. 

And I gotta drag ass to WI again to help move Tbone into assisted living, a very fancy one that my sister is arranging, while he's an ASSHOLE to her. It's nearly 6k/month, which she paid the deposit on (12k), and he doesn't have it in him to thank her for any of it. Again, yes he tried to kill me and nearly killed himself in the process, but my sister is holding it all up now.

🤔 

That gives me an idea 🤔 - maybe silence isn't kindest? I already talk to you here, so seems like asking if YOU'RE ok would be overkill. But maybe not 🤷🏻‍♀️

card of the day, AGAIN

sweetest things just for you - valerie june

just in case - morgan wallen 

In the mix of feelings, there is relief. And in the relief, "just in case" is alleviated. I don't have to keep maintaining that tiny forcefield anymore. And I won't make the mistake again of letting anyone put hands on me who can't break through it in the first place. 

Queen of Swords

The Priest. He was the only man on my schedule. I gotta weird Priest fetish 🤷🏻‍♀️. I know, like as an historical fact, that priests are mostly terrible people. But some of them are great. And I love that they're not trying to fuck me. I love it so much, it makes me feel like fucking them, which I can just feel like doing without having to actually do it. Indefinitely. It's almost perfect.

But, the reality remains, Nebraska took my chair job. He just can't help himself. He's a natural born taker. It's actually quite a skill, he gets almost everything he wants ultimately, but it makes him an asshole. My NO might be the best thing that ever happened to him, first time he has ever heard it.

So, I took the horoscope to heart. Meeting with Prirst about 'where that leaves me'. The zoom opened to Priest's always smiling face, and because I DO get it, I said "you must be really tired of this". His whole body language changed, exhaaaaaale, yeah what the hell am I doing here? That's the nuclear option, I take a leave if I can't bring you here, he says. Ok well I don't care about the chair thing, I reply, what I'd like you to do is think about what would help you the most, help you not want to give up, and I'll do that for you. He's going to try to get me a contract to do that. I don't know what the job is, and neither of us knows if he will get anything more than Nebraska, not IDEAL as a sole resource, for either me or Priest. We just left it on the table like that, said at least.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). It takes one to know one. To recognize something in someone else because you share that same quality or have been around it, studied it or just have a strong intuitive inclination toward it, brings on a rush of emotion today.

if it be your will - noah derksen

end of my rope - pokey lafarge 

"Every witch I’ve ever met has experienced a shock from which she never recovered, a loss that is ongoing—We survived a blast that opened a door." The Antidote, Karen Russel

I can see/feel it now. How something essentially cuddly is turned mean. I'm not going to keep that up. My soul is also ALL MINE, and I'm not relinquishing it to hate. No. But I can throw punches as well as I can pull triggers, and imma gonna today. Starting with his cock cage curse shall remain.

repost, brimming with venom

From your skin, everywhere I touched, every inch of you, will come the sticky scent of a snake, reppelent to all but its own kind, and only larger stronger more dangerous snakes will come closer to you, so that you will be ever surrounded only by vipers that you cannot best or beat or outrun, for the rest of your life and the next, and anything you do to hurt or manipulate me further, where I can see it or where I cannot, will feed this spell to tighten and thicken, until your reek is as loud as a rattle. Until a cowboy shows up to put you out of your misery, so mote it be

Listing my house, little realtor boy is sending over a contract today - I'm giving the new guy a shot, he looks like Eggs. If he fails I will get it done anyway, Right Fucking Now. If it sells and I have nowhere to go, I'm subletting a friend's carriage apartment here through next winter. Anywhich way, by the time I talk to Priest on Saturday, I will tell him I listed my house while that man exploited my dying parent situation into personal gain - you decide, Father, who the real mother is. Which would slice a baby? 🤔

All my devices are unlocked, it was just a "mistake" but I am not sorry I punched the university issued pc in the keyboard, over and over until my knuckles hurt.

Update: the dude who would allow no such 'mistake' was fired a couple days ago.  

Since I still have this job (til the place flops belly up dead af in a min), I'm headed to campus in my meanest dress and most arresting knee boots as soon as my hair dries into Medusa coils. Gonna hear the guest speaker that my stolen grant is paying for (at least I approve of her). 

The World is card of the day. A Whitman quote is on mine. 

in this deck, it means 'everything you need is already inside'

 "the world belongs to those who dare to take it" ~ walt whitman

Home.

Everything hurts. My skull hurts. 

I'm trying to conjure Michael Fassbender because I have a brain injury, spiritually. I hurt everywhere.

One of the last punches he threw, my dad asked me (invoking dementia he doesn't have) to name my childhood dogs in order. But actually, he wanted to ledger how he had murdered them. I halted after entry 1. He was mad that my sister was on a work call outside, "doesn't she ever get sick of hearing herself talk?", so he just randomly threw ninja at me for no better reason than I was standing there.

And. 

While I was distracted with dying parents, Nebraska took that chair job for himself.

Honestly, I'd rather the raw authenticity of killing my puppy. 

Wow. Just pain. Like marrow flu. Sick.

It's hard to even compute

how these men could dismantle me and think nothing much of it. I didn't even love the 'partner' and he broke my heart somehow anyway. 

He made the mistake of texting my sister again. "Play with your food," Sis. Bat him around into shame corners just for kicks, like cats stalk centipedes.

So much time spent on hold, it begins to feel like a running bit. I had to hand it off to Sis after the Dr. appt - to be clear, his Dr., who has known him for 15 years and likes him (oxymoron), helped arrange the rehab. He was as 🤦🏻‍♀️ as I was, mad at my dad, did the memory/thinking test right in front of us. Tbone PLAYS brain impairment when it suits him. My parents are both murderers, as in they'll get away with it if they can, ALWAYS. 

So it was a choice. His. When I wasn't looking, he tanked the whole plan with the medical coder, and he went home by Uber of his own choosing, then acted like he was clueless, then laughed about it to the doctor, who did not find it funny. Bemused at best. "You're going to live a long time, Tony, and I don't think you can put these women (us) through this behavior for a decade." Then he signed medical power attorney over to my sister. And oh did Tbone get MEAN. But he IS mean, so that was a return to HIMSELF. He did fall, and did fracture his lumbar, the rest was all pure MEAN AND MANIPULATIVE. ie he's FINE. And likes tamadol. 🤨

Driving "home". Music LOUD. 

"clean inside" (status update)

 

Every morning that I wake up here, I enter and exit that same tunnel of facts. ~ The Antidote, Karen Russel. 

I am in hell. 

Well, people in Gaza are in HELL. So I guess I'm just in hot heck. 

There is nothing new I've learned about the healthcare system through this. 

This is not a safe place for me to be, my proximity brings out the worst in/for my father, where I grew up will never be home - I learned nothing new in any of that. 

I learned this is not a place to which I could even safely retreat for a while, either. "Not even good for that" seems to be the upshot whenever I turn my face west. 

WI, NE, AZ; NO. 

Nobody knows what I know about the university at home getting shut down. I'm compartmentalizing it. And I am carrying it alone while being treated like I'm just not trying hard enough or everything would be fine. 

So I learned that HERE is where I was trained to take that on, and to take the punishments for failing to perform MAGIC.  

Jelly Roll is more ok

After all that, with rehab set up for weeks out, everything arranged, finally this hell can get better, then he/they just decide he's good enough to go back home. Wait, what? I go apoplectic, I'm not taking him home, then everyone's yelling at me because I'm refusing to get the guy who can barely move in/out of my jeep alone. The guy you told me you'd have to keep for days, but now the night before Easter, everything closed, you'd rather just NOT? Hey, dad what year is this? He has no idea, out of his mind. I refuse to drive him. If I hadn't been here he would still be sitting in shit in that chair probably dead by now. And I could not, cannot move him. But despite anything I say, regardless of my crying that I weigh HALF what he does, I can't provide his care, they shove him in a taxi and just dump him in front of the house. He could walk (shuffle) in, high as a kite on oxy, right back into the shit chair. The pain med script didn't even get filled because the dr phoned it on an out of state lisence - Tbone's got 2016 hydros from knee surgery, so 'no problem'. 

And now I'm stuck here scheduled to TAKE HIM TO THE DOCTOR omfg I just took him to the god damn hospital HE'S 100% FUCKED, what part of that needs its cholesterol checked? And how am I getting him in/out of a car? AND WHY BOTHER?? He can drive himself, he screams at me, from the chair he's not moving out of til Tuesday, until I try to move him, call 911 if I can't...or a taxi?....

Nebraska was texting incessantly throughout, not about this hell I'm trying to navigate, just about taking him back. Finally I give him a quick update on the grim details I've got going on here, and he says "my Amazon packages got stolen off my porch", and if he had been kidding that would be soooo funny, just the joke I needed. I blocked his number. Giving up on "amicable".

One by one by one by one. I try one last time. One last skinny gasp of effort. To break the insane cycle of Tbone killing Tbone, in this case. But the answer is always the same, in every category: LET GO. Stop trying. Give up.

I woke up already crying under a crushing weight of complete, total, all encompassing resignation. At some point, I'll have to go downstairs and see why it's so quiet. I'm not afraid of nor hoping for his death. 

Among a milllllion other things, he has a fractured lumbar from the fall he had "a couple days ago", which has been a couple days for - went back and tracked it down, since 4/10, so 8 days. Seems like a fucking month. He won't remember, but before they knocked him out he thanked me for forcing him here. He doesn't know yet he is maybe never going home, but he's getting Dilaudid right now 👍

I don't know how to shoot a gun but I did know how to pull that trigger. Ironically, I used to think about shooting him all the time when I was little. We all did! I was just most likely to 

"I must be cruel, only to be kind" ~ Shakespeare

trigger pulled

 

Someday, but not today, I'll be in time that I'm not experiencing as a sentence I'm serving. 

I have to keep telling myself that "this is almost over" won't be what I think/feel about every day of my life always. It's just a phase. 

I am watching soft core porn now, women riding bicycles in short skirts, after The Pacific for what feels like the billionth time. I told my father some of the med questions I intend to ask his dr. He told me all he needs is a "beach and a bitch". 

Mom is better. Dad needs a bullet. As predicted. She loves life. He hates it. I'm becoming him. Which makes killing us both seem like an increasingly good idea. 

just a phase just a phase just a phase just a phase

No song. Because if I asked for one, I wouldn't get it. And that's just not how it should be.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). To honor your feelings is to let them move at their own pace — they will anyway. There's nothing you can do to rush emotions along, but you can certainly lift your resistance to them, and they will obey their natural flow.

No. 

lightening in July (prarie fire) - noeline hoffman 

card of the day

In waiting rooms, writing suicide notes with AI. 

To Whoever Finds This (Hopefully Not My Dogs—They’ve Been Through Enough),

Well. I’ve finally resigned from life. No notice. No final Zoom call. Just one last deeply underpaid act of initiative. If there's an afterlife, I hope it includes bottomless wine, [weed], a solid Wi-Fi signal, and absolutely no performance reviews.

Let’s clear something up right away: I loved my career. Loved it the way some people love chaotic art-house films—fiercely, even when it made no sense and everyone else just nodded politely. I was good at it. Really good. I held teams together with grace, grit, and the ability to detect a BS excuse from 30 paces.

But while I was out here writing reports that made executives look smarter than they were, those same men were leapfrogging past me into promotions like it was a damn trampoline park. I trained half my bosses. The other half I should’ve fired. Instead, I smiled, stayed late, and got thanked with $50 gift cards and inspirational mugs that said things like “Boss Babe.”

Now, on to the juicier stuff. Let’s just say my problem was never a lack of passion. I was a walking furnace of lust and romantic fire—an absolute storm of sensuality. The problem was the men. God bless them, they tried, but most couldn’t match my energy, emotionally or... athletically. I lived for connection, for fire, for that kind of intimacy that makes you consider canceling meetings. Instead, I got a lot of “Hey, want to chill?” and socks left on my coffee table.

Still, there were some beautiful moments. There were nights. There were sparks. But they were rare, and often wasted on men who thought foreplay was turning off the TV.

My real, consistent, ride-or-dies? My dogs. Loyal. Loving. Nonjudgmental. Excellent listeners. They were the only ones in my life who never asked me to shrink myself. Also, they never ghosted me.

One heartbreak I carry with me: I never got my backyard chickens. Just picture it—me in a robe, coffee in hand, surrounded by a posse of fluffy hens while I mutter about capitalism. A dream. A soft, clucking rebellion I never quite pulled off. Life had other plans. Mostly involving spreadsheets and underwhelming mating prospects.

So, if you’re reading this and wondering what to do next: take the trip. Ask for the raise. Get the chickens. And for the love of God, don’t date anyone who makes you feel like you’re too much. Be too much. Be loud. Be wild. Be deeply, unapologetically alive—while you still can.

P.S. Whoever ends up with my dogs, spoil them. And if you do get chickens—name the fiercest one after me. I hope she pecks someone in a tie.

– Me

(I thought it was funny 🤷🏻‍♀️)

I'm stuck here for another week of dr appts, the mom's likely turning out well, the dad's likely leading to an APS call nobody will ever forgive me for 🤔 if I had to call the odds respectively. I don't know what happens after that (?)

tomorrow - kyle mckearny

"is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies."

losing sleep - ken presse yup

While cleaning, I moved one of the recliners cz Janis is barking at the space behind driving me fucking nuts, and I find an old rained on misdelivered bag of silks in my current size. "I dunno it's been sitting there months," he says. They're perfect. Things I really need and nice, like butter cotton cami sets. But the best are the silk slip dresses. The midnight blue one made me weepy 🥲. 

I fed him, left him as well as is possible, went upstairs and opened each delicate thing as if Jesus sent it all cz who else 🤷🏻‍♀️?

I'm lying around in a ribbed butter cotton (very thin and very soft, melty almost). Oatmeal (chaste) color. 

"babtized" (HOT shower) ft thank you Jesus

Update: hey Jesus, why? It's a trouseau.

Love has many ways to make an entrance. Sometimes it opens the door like a friend, with a predictable and comforting rhythm. Sometimes love washes over like a giant wave, powerfully sweeping us into its currents. "Saw it written and I saw it say / Pink moon is on its way / And none of you stand so tall / Pink moon gonna get you all." — Nick Drake, "Pink Moon"

Pink Moon - Nick Drake 

just my imagination playlist

all over you - bob dylan

"let's go"

The budget conclave continues. Past is best predictor of future behavior. So $ will flow to typical recipients. With a couple remarkable exceptions, it does not typically flow to me.

But. Still my NEH grant lives, one of the only ones not revoked. Because I knew what not to say, or how to say what I should not, so that $ flowed to someones like me, which REMARKABLY it still does. Yesterday, that was acknowledged by my department, in front of my shitboss🖕, and we laughed at my ability to get away with murder for them 💞.

Meanwhile, the "fuck, marry, kill" thought experiment continues. I was not expecting to feel the ways that I do about leaving for real. But I feel what I feel. If nothing else, I've learned to respect that. 

love is selfish - jack white

"a.m. chillin"

bonus tip: Buy stock in shower heads. The kind with a long hose, various settings. If I believed he understood female genitalia, I'd say that's a pretty clever move to distract us all for a spell 🤣. It'd be the first orgasms he ever caused 🤣. If he were really clever, he'd send such a shower head to AOC 🤣. Only fair, he's given her a headache! In fact, send one to US ALL. That might actually make America great(er) 🤔 lmfao

wow. 

I wonder how we feel about that

When you recognize the voice of your primal self, its needs become apparent. It's a communication that comes through the body and subconscious, leaning in a direction of wholeness, fulfillment and nourishment. The Venus retrograde can be mystifying, but when instinct appears, you can grab hold of the thread it dangles before you like the string of a kite, letting it guide you where you need to go.

...string that dangles before you...

I can't breathe - parker mccollum 

One day, which ngl I spent as stoned as possible at all times. 

Breathe 

Ok, first of all, although that job offer email came from Priest and Dean with verbal agreement from Provost, still, I ain't banking on it til I see a contract. 

But, if it's true, the first issue to figure out is housing. 

Everything included, furniture internet utilities whatever, I just show up. 🤔

Card of the day, which I take to mean that whatever is happening is clearing a path or perspective I am currently lacking in the love (any kind of) choices department

Lovers

I got that tarot deck, cards illustrated with antique anatomy art, from the Mutter Museum, where the conference keynote told us all about skull collecting, and there were bones and gross dead bodies all over. My field is pretty nifty, it's just the circumstances have been suboptimal of late.

A star that astronomers call EBLM J0555-57Ab is 670 light years away. Its diameter is the smallest of any known star, just a bit larger than Saturn in our solar system. But its mass is 250 times greater than Saturn’s. It’s concentrated and potent. I’ll be inclined to compare you to EBLM J0555-57Ab in the coming weeks, Virgo. Like this modest-sized powerhouse, you will be stronger and more impactful than you may appear. The quality you offer will be more effective than others’ quantity. Your focused, dynamic efficiency could make you extra influential.

😳💃😬😵‍💫😒🤣👁🪄 

2nd Update - 🤔 still Nope on taking this back - "at least once" would be more accurate 🤷🏻‍♀️

Update - I was going to take this post down after the panic abated, which it has. But 🤔. Nope 🤷🏻‍♀️

If I actually move away forever, don't you think we ought to fuck at least once more? She thinks in a PANIC..

FUCK.

With Nebraska omw back from a conference at which I gave him the "ring is off, I am pressing pause / see other people / however you feel best about it but it's time to face we aren't compatible partners, I do not want to live the way you do nor with you my way, maybe COworkers would have worked but it did not work for me, YOU AND ME don't work for me, not in a I don't love you way just not a good fit" schpeel which = bye, nicely, cz never burn a professional bridge. Now on route to NYS thank God, HOME!, even if I'm destined to be poor, fuck it I'm gonna go *dig in* and put this all behind me. Goddes even put Nebraska in the seat by the shitter and I got an upgrade 👍, not even seated together. A day in NYS, love on the dog and "hang out in healing" and he will be on his way, that's that. Then 2 seconds b4 we took off, I got the job offer.  Both of us moving to Phoenix. We both got the email at the same moment. The only thing I had a chance to text him was "I am not taking anything back!" My heart is pounding too hard to THINK. Seriously after a week at that conference where EVERYONE LOST THEIR GRANT IN REAL TIME panic at the emotional disco on top of all that, uhhhh, I'm kinda emotional labor exhausted. My whole world runs on grants. Grants and tuition (ie student loans administered by the dept of ed). I'd already lost sooo much of that, but nobody else had.  Then for days, boom boom boom boom punch in the face per hour to hundred of colleagues PLUS I'm like welp I went Mad Maxx a while back and all you did was text my sister 🙄 wtfever, and welcome to my world EVERYONE. Hell, now maybe you'll all break up too, better dating pool for me so 🤷🏻‍♀️....

Then this. 

You can't make this shit up. 

I'm in Detroit, my whole beinghood longing for NY and a legal joint, my HR 171, in the stupid fucking Sky Lounge he loves so much, imploding. 

gotta start somewhere

No.

"VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). There's an undeniable energy about you today, one that naturally pulls people in. As the star — charismatic, attention-drawing, naturally at the center of things — you have a responsibility to stay grounded and wield your power with compassion."

That's the same thing as the one I said I'd only post all year, right?

"VIRGO You're magnetic because you're honest, unfiltered and unapologetic. Just watch how it draws the right energy to you. Exciting love prospects align with the truth of who you are, proving that honesty is your most attractive quality."

Off to the HHC today in Philly. My people, all the other medical/healthy humanists. Where I met Nebrasks, who has since taken over that/my world. I'm meeting him there. 

Unless you are very recklessly in love, a handfasting should end with "as long as love shall last", not for all this life and the next (🤦🏻‍♀️), and it would have a pre-agreed cycle, like yearly, when we both ask if we both want to continue. If no, then you go separate ways with promises of enduring respect. We never got close enough for me to explain any of this to him, and of course he's never cared to ask me about my prior romantic life. So he doesn't know the rules, and doesn't know why I'd forever keep to them going forward. He had the grad student ask me yesterday, if you can believe it, so I did. The rule means you have to TRY bc it is not a given the answer will continue to be yes. I said no verbally for a year. Now I will invoke The No. And will then walk through that world like I own it. 

It's bound to go sideways, but all signs point to MY staying steady regardless and regardless and regardless 🙏 smib

Play me a song? 

little bit - larkin poe

a wish