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 ✅️

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)

"How can they love a mother who forgot to guard their tenderness  and her own? How can they love a woman who can suffer anything and do anything?" ~ Four Souls

💔

had enough of justsocks, so slippers. we think theyre funny af, the "instant yes" of the day

love is a hell of a thing

There's a list of warning signs blabla but I do like half of whats on the list. like, I def do not get dressed every day and would prefer to do so even less (as if near a beach). so Im like, we gotta Do Stuff 🤣. Sanity, how to apply the rules, it's a learning curve for sure 🤣. so we go thru options from most challenging (we really just dont want to) to how do we check this fucking sanity box as painlessly as possible. which is FAIR. grippysockjail shoots your nerves to shite. even by proxy this much and I am mos def hsssssssy🖤. we could go to a movie (hell no, not in a truck or a car or a recliner no green eggs n ham lol). grocery shopping? (ehh) "I need a new toothbrush." The adventure of the day, Walgreens, where we bought a bunch of shaving shit and whatever else he wanted. And even that was 🤏 hard on him, my paying for it, his shakiness, all of it. I don't give a shit what anyone says, this young man's nerves are fucking shot to shit. Every day, we actually do have to do one thing. And thats all he has to do. So that's all I have to do. 

I went down reader rabbit holes. Why would the diagram at the start be wrong or missing stuff that anyone who read the book could correct? I never thought about it, I just filled in the blanks. But that is A LOT of blanks. Why? Is there a pattern to what is missing? She didn't make them, turns out, and didn't like having them at all. Mapping anything for "accuracy" is an inherently bureaucratic instinct and ought be resisted. I mean, you can know it or not. That is what stories/memory is fucking for (duh). I just know who is who and why and reread them to find new shit every time. Like this time, I see more of the costs, the prices paid, usually bc you did your best and that in itself turned you inside out when it was not enough and not even the point, like reaching the end of the leash of yourself and just about skinning your head off your skull being YOU nearly to death. 

nerdy af

"So he wags his plumed tail and noses at my foot and I pat him gently. Affection, I tell him, is how a dog survives. Knowing how to exist without it is how a woman wrests her life into her own hands. But then it comes, it takes one by surprise. Affection and freedom and the will to risk...I am that rare thing thought only to exist in death. I am a happy woman." ~Four Souls

update: home should smell like home

pound of bacon straight up + building fire = gets him every time 

slept thru the night -_0 so guess it's today

and I did not dream of books 👀

vs

having exchanged enough words w DouchenozzlEX to remember why my ass so often has decided to be starved for dick and pizza: food poisoning, of a sort.

+

Everything

= my little engine-that-couldness doesn't know what to do with itself. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). When something interests you, you often meander through the land of "maybe" before you decide yes or no. But today, you'll see something that's an immediate "yes, please," and it's nice to just know. This one checks all the boxes. 👀

boxes 🤔 well lets start with 1 won't traumatize the kids in word or deed, that's a real boner killer ✅️ 2 funny, which automatically includes some insight 👁 ✅️ 3 really happy to see me ✅️ 4 warm

that's it. it's a small list. and I doubt very much I will see such a something today in human form.

"bf pillow"

After a wound has organized your powers around itself, how do those powers become yours again? Can that capacity become appetite-driven rather than emergency-driven again? re Fluer and Lulu (and me)

booze has its own special poison properties, but anything could be that which you can't overcome and that destroys you before it kills you. 

I've had to have 2 conversations with Ears' father, and wow, I thought my blood ran stone cold before that, ha. friendly reminder of what a walking cancer is like to deal with, scanning always for an opportunity to strike and be right above all else, to grow fat on that feeling like a leech. 

I often castigate myself lately, the last year a LOT, for so few lovers, so little built in that life category. but. upside to everything: my babydaddy scares me. for real. I mean, I remember viscerally now how that felt/feels, how it was (is), how firmly I wanted no men in and out of Ears' life on top of that burden. and the little one was trans, jeezus. thank god I blew that allllll the way up.

the way we ended / left it was just plain failure not as lovers but as parents (being real) (and both of us). but oof am I glad it wasn't anybody else and that their biodad wasn't the only male voice they ever heard and just as glad there were no more besides. 

that 10 day no way joke is no joke 🖤

"once the loss and betrayal happen, those same [endurance] capacities don't remain neutral equipment sitting there waiting harmlessly.

So instead of:

wound → diminished person

you get something more frightening:

wound → strength mobilized around wound → strength keeps wound alive."

I have to understand that shit FASTER now.

"So you see, once a person drops the scales of prejudiced certainty and doubts appear, there's no telling how far a heart can open." ~Four Souls

thought I'd get out the memory measuring stick, given the horoscopes. it has been one full year of this same stuff, and the whole prior spring/summer too, so 18 months. at least at the start, there was momentum. then cottage closing pushed off, me alone with the whole schmole except for Ears leaning in, us alone at Tawista in the end, us trying to get my mom back. a year later, there was no momentum going in. by June this year, huckforsomebody was in rehab again, my mother was in pieces, my friends got fired and work dismantled, I fought just to be more than a bag of twigs. I kept trying Ears kept trying Tawista just us again, my Sister threw mountains at it, we kept trying and trying every which way, cottage closing pushed off again same reasons etc.
until Ears shut it all down right fucking now before the days could grow any shorter, nights colder.
wise boy.
stick a fork in it, it's done.

upshot: somewhere under eighteen months of have to, there were/are a bunch of abandoned want to's - I don't necessarily want any of those want to's back (even the chicken) - I want to want to. Ears said clearly he cannot live without wanting to. fair. and right.

What haven't you done yet that you really wanted to do before the end of the year? (👀 good god I don't even know - I dimly recall a chicken?) There are 104 days remaining in 2026, counting this one under the industrious Capricorn moon. Virgo season is among the most productive we have, so before the fall equinox, take stock of your current position. Adjust for the destination you want.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Everything you do today will be a dance. Work, play, relationships — move in for support, move from self-expression. The disparate ideas will come together to form an arrow pointing to what's next.

what would you want now if you were me?

corn bread?

-_0 it is def still today. anything for this kid atm, but oof the cat. we gathered another few things from his apt, me going in w him cz neither of us could imagine otherwise, so now I am coughing (my allergy presents as bronchial constriction not achoo) awake, listening for footfall but hearing none, the dogs 👀, taking turns to lay one on top of one of us. clariton 2x + inhaler, waiting for that hack-tickle to subside, coming back to my own typical-er, looking at instapot recipes and thinking about the farmers market and making sweethot pickles (Aliving). looking at yoga trainings. I have some already, and don't have any interest in teaching it, but I do like people who put themselves through things like that. things that are as hard-feeling as failing, sorta. and Honolulu is still out there in January, what if I/we went and just stayed a while? 

I dunno what he'll choose and neither does he. 

but if this were it for a while? nobody dying, brink of? what would I choose if I were free to? A: my body. feeling full of it (Life as if I had 9 of em).

the stories 👀

we passed out like dead people immediately. I slept so hard I woke up in drool. then we went for fish fry and he practically ate the table. so tired, so fucking hungry.

then the stories started coming. it's very not funny, of course. but we are who we are. so. the self-proclaimed necrophiliac who crushed out on him hardcore ...

us: 🤭🤭

he says "there's something about my face, I guess, um..." yeah dude, you're good looking, been trying to tell ya, AND you look underfed, not to be weird but if I had found ya at that age, I'da been on you like italian-girl stink-on-shit. 

him: "they all...yea I mean...I guess I kinda see it now." 

me: 🤣

there is a LOT I can live without. he is not one of those things. now I see only that.

he needs to memorize the other phone numbers. he means it 💞, but I'm topping others' make bail for ya lists just cz my number never changed (be real)

oh and his shoes, the boots w the laces, driving me nuts now. you need cowboy boots, shitkickers, I say. "thatd be awesome actually" remember when you said I should take everything over for a while (?), welp the laced boots gotta go, shitkickers that marry w the italian leather jackets and all that hair, clothes shopping, I got this. "I cant wait. and I wanna go back to yoga" 

🤔

"There's a 15-day, 200-hour immersive YTT on Isla Mujeres, Dec. 8–22, 2026."

after allll that, I got there and they shoved him through the door at me like I'd ordered a pizza 👀. what he wants first, a haircut and shave from lovely Brynn so we texted the salon from the parking lot.

it was, in its way, surprisingly hearwarming. one thing that has been quietly happening has been in the waiting room, where I was every day and not everybody speaks English in there. in fact, I'd say 2/3 of the families didn't and the loved one inside is the one who does speak natively. they thought it would get their person in trouble to come every day - no, I tell them, the Community Somebodies all taught me: show up every day, even if the relationship is currently strained, it matters that there are people for the inmate, that they won't have nowhere to go. the women in hijab, in particular, scared of the scrubs and scared about how their person is handling shit (angrily). I hear that! but don't, try not to get angry, they want to see you be calm through set-backs and disappointments, tell your person that. I am giving out these tips as I learn them, every day. I hadn't noticed the waiting room filling up more over this time. but when they shoved him through the door, a little sea of strangers were overjoyed as if they knew him cz through me they kinda did and were so hopeful to witness his release, like a small victory for everybody. one guy said, "when my kid gets out, Im'a have me a scotch even if my wife don't approve!" laughing and telling me to go have a chardonnay now girl!, everyone patting him and smiling at me. we got on the elevator, him laughing like wtaf was that?! dude, it's been a very long weird couplefew weeks for us both. 

us: 🤣🤣🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

he loves the puerto rico volunteer gig idea. he asked for 10 weeks off work, emphatically, sticking up for himself at discharge, so that he would have the time to figure shit like that out. metlife disability is wawa'ing to get an estimated return to work date, welp now they have it: 10 weeks from today. (And then he's quitting.)

he is upstairs unpacking, happily settling in to his new home, filling his little pill per day holder thingy so he won't forget anything, arranging where he wants his books and tv... 

I am lying here feeling apx 1000 years older ft gone through a meat grinder. everything kinda hurts. but I'll bounce (if nobody else starts trying to god damn die for a spell 🙏)

update (on my fantasy life):

Puerto Rico enacted Law 102-2025, the Universal Recognition of Occupational and Professional Licenses Act, and the Puerto Rico Board of Nursing now specifically provides a universal-recognition application route.

not that Ears is a nurse of course, but asking about limited-stay do-good work pops nurses first (everywhere on earth needs more nurses). and since the vibe coming off some of those nurses was mos def "just shoot me", thought I'd learn 🤏 bout that 👆

for Ears - they do speak German #andyriskfactor but excellent reviews, 2-6 weeks, 30 hrs/wk, not good $ but breaks even, serves the public good 

where I could be, entertaining visitors, the 5 star villa, pet friendly w high speed internet, not to mention umpteen airbb options specifically for remote workers 

this is kinda like mentally playing w a colorforms set, The Miserables, where could I restick them to the board nearer to a beach 🤔. 

ask fuckerishgpt (I softened 🤏), are there AA meetings anywhere? (cz like half of everybody drank too much, be real). yup, in Spanish and English, including a direct # for that specific little East District: 939-457-5533.

Can I get some yoga? 

fuck yeah

siiigh, back to real life - he is PROBABLY ACTUALLY GETTING OUT TODAY. but until he's in the car, I won't believe it, and "discharge paperwork" is so voluminous it has its own zipcode 😵‍💫

if we are very lucky, we are out in time for the first reverse resolution: more fried food (fish fry fri) 

card of the day 👁

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You won't make the deal because you're now beyond needing to. No more holding out your hand (never) for the handshake, the funds or a key. You are the key and the lock, too. You are the fate, and the fate is you. 👀

with my insomnia, I continued researching escape routes to the safety of high UV destinations. Puerto Rico looks promising. UV be therapeutic, anyway, since they've been giving him v. D for lack of sunlight in the hoozgow.

I want more fried food ft all resolutions reversed.

Four Souls, Erdrich

update: Ears let me call his father. God damn what a fucking a douchenozzle. holy hell. wisely, I called his parents first, gotta ruffle the whole hen house not one mean cock 😖 what an entitled shit, jeezus.  such as: no dude I didn't look into rehab hospitals for gaming addiction 👀 the 90s called and wants their retro pseudoscience conspiracy theories back 👀 uhhh I was wrangling his current med debt load 🙄 - there is no way in hell I could spend 10 days (!) w that twat and not be in some kinda jail, grippysock be apirational hahaha fuuuuuuck

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh 

🤔 Malta. douchenozzlEx hated it, his eyelids burnt kinda like Pringles. me and Ears coffeebean up in the sun. bet my Sis would have ideas how to go Do A Thing in Malta 🤔 anywhere the sun scorches. he wants to be taking a big ol pay cut and working at some doing good shit and not just in the Doom Zone, more upstream, like community building not just disaster response. I know just what he means, teaching used to be that, you could feel ok about it. 🤔 Puerto Rico? Greeeeece hmmm 🤔 welp, we'll see. I shitcanned Michigan. next travel options are cottage rt off, then WI or high peaks or HI in Jan or anyfucking where around his therapy schedule, frankly. I don't much care bout much else. nothing else, we'll go to Fisher Bay Manitoba.

update 😵‍💫 there is a peer advocate service (the Community something), functioning partially inside ecmc but independent of it, all graduates of rehab or the plain-bonkers floor he's on. they called and directed me to a financial aid office inside the building. imagine a woman behind plexiglass, bedecked in gobs of bills mafia gear, footballs for earrings + Jesus loves you bracelets. I tell her briefly I have nooo idea what the hell to do then start to cry 😪. I am rescue-dog mean now in my 🖤, but I am also very tired. she starts clickity clicking, almost half the the first 6k goes away, another ream of paper for me to fill out by tomorrow, disability approved through 9/27 making it harder to fire him before that date. calamity, reprieve, calamity, reprieve, repeated in bursts like that thing we saw in Yellowstone, the offgassing earth.

therapy jailhouse dog sandwich

update: they ARE releasing him tomorrow. so now I hear finally about the huge financial mess, medical debts, no coverage at all for mental health services, a 6k deductible for each category of illness/occurance, me on the hook for $180/pop for a therapist (the same copay barrier that stopped him from getting help in the first place), deadlines for fmla paperwork not getting met, job poised to let him go before disability will be paid.

total write off.

"we do have services to help him get SNAP", but only if he's not living with me, which he must.

it won't break me, it will only make me more angry and disgusted and cold 🖤. Ears doesn't have that in him, so I will be his rage and his safety net, both.

if he didn't have that net, he'd be broken by this, a system built to break you and keep you that way.

in the face of that, anarchy (chaos) is just nothing left to lose. from where I am standing, nobody (incl the people who work in it) would be worse off if the whole healthcare system burned to the ground.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). In Greek cosmogony, khaos was the gaping space before the formed universe. When you witness a bit of chaos today, think of it not as the dismantling of order or the breakdown of a system but instead as the moment before creation.

VIRGO oracle

If I were writing this horoscope for the Gun Lovers' Gambling Porn website, I might counsel my Virgo readers to maintain strict control over their wickedness, debauchery, and decadence. Why? Because now is a time when vices and sins are even more likely than usual to sow chaos and spawn big messes. However, since you are reading my oracle in a more genteel publication and are almost certainly a refined person of high integrity, I’m confident there will be minimal uproar if I dare you to tap into your raw animal energy and unruly instinctual nature. I believe it’s time to at least experiment with wilder aspects of your deep self.

that's a lot of chaos. welp. all that can be done for me right now is righting my body to maintain its sanity. my ass is full of new pellets and more vitamin shots and whatever they stick back there so I don't keep dropping weight and revving my worry engine while I sleep. it'll take another couple days for that to be fully on board, returning me to my natural tulip-y engine-that-couldness, and thus returned to the problem(s) of my self being very-not-dead, wandering through this current life bereft and half-starved. and I found in me a strong readiness to desert this life entirely, on my toes poised to run like hell. what does that say about me? I'm still too in this moment to really know.

alls I know it, I stopped meeting peoples' eyes a week ago at least. sparks fly out mine and for what? to be met with casual cruelty faces in scrubs, or (worse) half-marblized disappearedness in the eyes of inmates whom I assume traded a piece of themselves in hopes of saving the rest (and lost that bet). 

gonna be god knows how long before the 2:30ish a.m. fire alarm doesn't go off my in head again as if my sleeping brain notices it is asleep and thinks OMG WAKE UP THE SKY COULD BE FALLING

update - Bru called, the social worker came back - she was actually pissed so she went back at it (!) - now he's getting out Friday, she's trying for Fri like hell - then some patient advocate (of the zillion I've called) stopped by - so yea, that guy Community something will be calling you to come by too

me: okay (theyre all called Community something haha) 

now that I know this isn't crushing him - he seems almost bemused at this point - then it stops crushing me. instantly. even if they queef again and it turns into Monday, I'll be fine if he's fine..

but 🖤 remains and I can tell it'll stay that way, a faceless grudge I'll be holding like hell. I was instinctively allergic to custodial authority but confused by it as well through the various partial stays and whatever and my feelings were/are irrelevant. but this is EARS, my experience is direct and relevant, I am the one on site for this every single day. and I was initially grateful / trusting... 

trust is fragile and a punched gut remembers it more each time.

guarded extreme caution flies in the face of the edgy truth-joke. so: dead quiet arts.

verdict: grippysockjail is mostly hell and horseshit. 

"it's a mandolin" 😭

update: Ears weathered it better than I did. he's seen what anything else but "okay" gets you, so when they told him he said "okay" and smiled. then he decided maybe it's because he reads all the time, so he went to 'crafts time' and made me a kindergarten ornament👆 ironically then he took up sudoku in the rec room. when the (good) social worker came to tell him yesterday, he said "her hair was pulled back in a ponytail so tight it's a wonder she could blink," and seemed angry for him and he felt bad for her (as did I, so I just cried quietly and told her it wasn't her fault and hung up). 

one person told him maybe Friday, another person told him at least another week, the hall monitor at lunch says he saw discharge papers with Bru's name on today's pile. we don't clock anything as true at all. he says the best approach to not losing it is counting on 6 weeks, so any shorter is gravy. at 6 weels, though, he will have lost his job / insurance. he said the other patients talk about that too, medicaid patients get released fast even if they're nut af, and the insured don't get out until their insurance won't pay anymore or they lose coverage. he shrugs, "I am getting really good at sudoku."

that's good. best he keep his spirits up. I can carry the hate for both of us. they hassled me for my work clothes today, the inmate visit sticker doesn't like to stay on suit jackets might get covered by the lapel blabla, as if they don't me there every fucking day. I stuck it my chest without a word.

hurt like duct tape coming off

"There is a girl in here obsessed with me, Celeste," he says aplogetically. she follows him around and tries to play with his hair every time he leaves his room, so that's why he hasn't wanted to leave it. sexual harassment isn't cool regardless of gender, if anyone asks again why you're being standoffish, tell them. "I don't want to get her in more trouble." 

Ears is just too sweet for this world. 

not like me 🖤 

update: called MHLS, law says he's supposed to be assigned an advocate from them automatically, that is a lie, he can ask for one after 60 days, even tho he's not allowed/able to do any such thing (and bitched me out for even asking, of course). my heart is already black ice. "okay" and hung up no more worse for the wear as I 💯 do not trust any of this, any of them, any anybody. just going thru the legal motions so I can document having done what I was told, and the punishment that resulted. status: 🖤

now it's today. nothing is funny.

wake up trying to catch my breath

is he trying not to cry? 

"getting the help he needs", the line to fall for, I fell for. let's apply that equally. let's alllll get the fucking help you need. Right fucking now. YOU ARE TAKEN, surely something (many things!) in your mind needs helped and now you're gonna get it, like it or not, by terrifying you, holding you away from family, refusing you any agency, until you have developed the skill of simpering. defeated enough, mastering the art "okay" as if the lobotomy has worked wonders. now don't you feel better? (best say yes)

dinner for lunch, max comfort. the chicken thing. and books. my sister ordered everything Erdrich has written, one a day for another week. I will read same as fast as he does (you couldn't do that either).  strategies of resistance. stay alive taking shallow breaths. 

just endure it, baby. the day they let you out of there, we are running.

crushing ft crushed

now they're keeping him another week. his doc went on vaca, covering doc doesn't know the patients so she "doesn't feel comfortable"

he talked that doctor this morning and told her that he really wanted to get out so he could see his sisters. wrong answer? 

any answer is the wrong answer. 

they just do whatever the fuck.

all that discharge planning, the mobile transition team scheduled to arrive here thursday at 9 a.m., all that goes in the garbage to start over again or it wasn't real in the first place.

this won't break me, but it is breaking something in me 💔🧊

update: no paperwork has been returned properly (again). the daily a.m. round of calls to check wtf then a following round of nagging once I get there. one of the many catch22s is once they let him out, they'll be even less accountable re legalities and benefits and I'll have even less access to anyone inside ecmc to manage those things. this whole set-up seems very much like pure punishment. it certainly is not "help" in any way a normal person would imagine the definition of that word.

"Our trouble came from living, from liquor and the dollar bill. We stumbled toward the government bait..." ~Tracks, Erdrich

bad night. it's like my body held it off until there was light, then gave in/out. spent half the night dumping calories outa both ends, napping between bouts of it on the bathroom floor. 

it's not about me. huckforcats said that at the start. and he was right. good advice for the state of mind I have needed. 

but this is happening to me too. my body is taking the brunt of that, mind and spirit being otherwise occupied. there is no way I'm still 104 pounds. I am swimming in my skinny clothes. if I can today, if discharge is tomorrow, I will sneak in a dr appt (bloodwork came back as expected) and I had extra shrink visit last night, trying to not ignore my body's burden (incl my brain chems) until I am sicksick. Ears can't afford "not about me" until I am physically weak. I can't weaken.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Don't be overly concerned with making everything easy for others today. Some need it, sure. But if you make yourself too useful to entitled types, you could be doing yourself a disservice, as they will never stop taking.

I will make anything easier for any Dr Asshat to mainsplain mental hygiene to me or whatever, just let the kid out.

Once he's out, I am imposing Martial Law of Reciprocity. 

I have made it my business to intervene and try to keep nursing students on track for forever, and I'm just not gonna do that anymore. No more methods of "grit," if you wanna quit, QUIT (run). Across the personal board, I'm not gonna care more that I'm cared for and I'm not gonna love more than I'm loved. I don't like transactional relationships, I do not like thinking that way, but I gotta reBALANCE. 

A lot of people showed up for me for this. My sister, thank god for her. But friends too, which I have felt bereft of but that's not entirely true. I don't get to see them like I used to, I don't get to have fun with anyone anymore. But they've been with me while I carried this and doing whatever they can for Ears practically. Friends who are left on site here, my boss and Union, have been going out of their way to protect me from work reprisals. Without all that, I dunno that I could have held up. And Ears would suffer a lot more if I failed to do so. 

"These systems are designed to break us not build us." ~ quote from public health friend yesterday. ECMC is brutal. Fact.

Everything changed today, and I don't know why or how. I made a lot of phone calls and pulled a lot of triggers, so 🤷🏽‍♀️. Best guesses are the friend of mine who is a patient advocate in Memphis now making phone calls (and offering to fly here, today on a dime), or it was the nurse over the weekend who is not part of that unit normally and who gave me a side eye kinda thumbs up today so it could have been her. I honestly have no idea. The opacity and brutality of this system is gobsmacking, even to me who's been writing grants to fucking make it better for forever. 

As of now, the projected date of release for him to me and my custody of care is Wednesday. 

I hold my breath a lot. 

I hope I do not feel this stone cold forever. But maybe I should.

so long - the lumineers

I look like I've been nothing but crying for a year. 

It could always be Worse. I wish the Worse Gods could be appeased, I totally get it, Everything could be Worse. Ok? Do you need a 🕯 or some shit? 

VIRGO September 14, 2026

Opening up to people who aren’t equipped to handle it rarely goes well. (no shit, hence "okay") And today, that brush-off could tip you straight into fury as the Sun catches a hit from testy Mars. (I will hide all feeling; frankly nobody is entitled to what I'm feeling anymore, that ship sailed.) Dig into what’s actually driving the reaction. (I know all the reasons and do not care any more; frankly, nobody deserves care from me more except the kids/family.) Odds are you’ve been carrying more than your share and nobody’s stepped up to match it. (my sister did.) Rather than boiling over, propose a different arrangement going forward. (Put calls out this morning to hire Ears a patient advocate, they can bitch out another nurse [presumably they have some respect for each other] as soon as I find one for hire.) And before you conclude that you’re “invisible,” try telling people outright that you’d like some recognition. (No.) You’ll probably get more enthusiasm than you bargained for. There’s nothing embarrassing about wanting credit, Virgo, especially since it’s well-deserved! (I don't give a shit.)

(funny) update: the insurance people called me not the other way around this time, to ask the same questions of the nurse that I did. I told her if you ask those questions (diagnosis? care plan?) they royally bitch you out, excuse my french. she laughed out loud, I see, well send another form etcetcetc. already have that form, already sent that form, but ok send it again so THEY can ask then tell me cz ecmc ain't gonna tell me jackshit at all and I don't need another bitching out. "I can try," she says. good luck with that, at least they won't tell you you're a lousy mother. 

my answer to every question now: "okay." that's it.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You'll make something intricate with your own hands, and one tiny detail will have people leaning closer to ask how you did it. There will be praise from someone hard to impress.

doubtful 👆 I make things fairly often, but not lately and I don't want to impress anyone. I'm back to not wanting anyone to remember I'm alive or know where I am, an invisible island, move Ears to here, pray trouble stops finding us for a while. 

I am cancelling Kalamazoo today. writing off the rest September. 

I woke up thinking about the little old ladies who sell knickknack gifts and books in the lobby - a charity of some kind gets the proceeds - they're hardcover books, fat stupid myster thrillers and histories. hardcovers aren't allowed on behavioral health floors. if the ladies are there today, I'll ask how to donate some paperbacks. 

probably we are atypical, having wee English Lit classes by half at every visit, me bringing him new books, him passing back ones he's finished, him folding down pages for me to reread later. but he can't be the only person on those 4 floors who reads. and there are no books up there, just air hockey. though obviously (to me now) people live there, indefinitely held, nobody would describe those floors as human habitat. maybe we can leave behind books when he finally gets out, enough for there to be one good one to find on those floors/units. 

Ears says the nurses put up with crazy bullshit all fucking day. a million dollars wouldn't be enough to make him want that job, he says, and that's why they're so mean to families. and the doctors are people nobody ever wants to see now or again ever, like Grim Reapers. it can't be awesome to be in those jobs, the universal reaction to you being aversion every day of your life. my own quickly formed fear-revulsion, despite my years-long ingrained allegiance to nurses in particular, is another 💔. they are positively hateful, but I am sure they weren't back when I would have met them and given them a book. it's all a crying shame. 

back at it all today, of course. paperwork 🫩, jeezus. reams of paperwork, a buzzilion calls and 45-min holds, all to get I am not sure what benefit(s) at the end of the day, just tossed around at sea. I honestly cannot imagine how anyone's regular life survives this. I suppose those lives sucked anyway or they wouldn't have wound up there, but still.

it is going to be very hard to break the habit of thinking like that, i.e. systemically. to think instead only about the one, Ears, not the many anymore.

They do call minds like mine one track.

One track is all you need

to understand

their loneliness, then bite the hand that feeds

upon you, in a terrible blind grief.

"Unexpected Dangers", Erdrich

 -_0 dreamt I wrote a book then frantically looked all over in a hospital for it

After yesterday, I dressed as if for work to visit him, suit jacket and all. Will do from now on. And I go early so they can't "have me down" for a time that is already past (they change visiting hours at will - today, there are no 5-7 because there's a football game). I am learning all the ways in which the rights and privileges are completely arbitrary. And we are powerless. And they really get off on stressing that point, our powerlessness, like fetish-level. Just take it. "And be grateful," adds Ears. Yeup, smart boy. 

Dressed like a professor, they don't swing the door back in my face irritated to have to monitor the visiting room. The situation remains, but the microagressions are less.

Mean sheeple are very simple beings. One note instruments.

Overnight and all morning, from other (former) coworkers, other friends in other hospital systems, I get the information that I need and was legally supposed to be given when he was moved out of CPEP. I understand what 2pc'd means and would adjust my questions accordingly (such as who is the assigned legal advocate?), but I won't bother. I've learned my lessons from ecmc. 

I do not want him just set loose like this was "nothing", I want him to be safe, I want him protected by fmla, I want for him all the care and protections he is entitled to, that he's been paying for, all time-sensitive paperwork out the wazoo. It would be good if he got THERAPY, I'm advocating MORE not less mental health treatment. But that ship sailed. Now that they have him, that's all there is, the fact that they can do whatever the fuck they want and really dig that.

To Ears, I say be patient, we don't want you to to be unsafe, we want the doctor to be honestly comfortable that you are not in danger. You made a noose dude, the diagnosis (now that I know it) ain't wrong, it's just that you need to get outa here to get BETTERbetter cz this place is not built to provide that. So. Keep your area tidy, keep your clothes folded, make sure to shower every day, go to the rec room and watch the stupid football game so that you're not considered antisocial, etc. This isn't forever. He should be himself, an utter sweetheart, nice to everyone. Say you're "feeling better, but it's really more important what the doctor thinks" because he's the expert. Memorize that response. "And be grateful," he adds again. Yes.

I am colder than I have ever been, The Wall to The North 💯

(Who would say to a mom who could have just lost her kid last week and who took him in that she's a neglectful lousy parent? Then yell a detailed rant about his suicide plan as if I didn't know it and didn't just live that? I silently let that nurse unload on me. It's the primary who just turned him away, not me. But twatever. I can take it.) 

Ears needs someone they can't just treat like utter shit for asking any question (like, what is his diagnosis? that shouldn't stump ya). So before I call a family meeting, if I must, I have to hire someone to speak for us in their language and who isn't just a piece of shit(ty mother) to them.

It isn't about me. It just continues to kinda smack me in the face that I have spent so much of my life being a mental wellbeing advocate for providers. I am on their fucking side. 

Was.

2026 the year healthcare work(ers) and I broke up forever finally over umpteen trips to grippysock jail, none of them mine. No more grit class(es), no more me for them. 

in my time of dying - dylan

in Sunset Bay this morning - pretty but means nothing

my sister said at lunch yesterday that there's gotta be a screenplay at least outa this. he and I talking about Kafka and "Waiting for Godot" and Erdrich tricksters (Nanapush medicine is what we need now, how to slip the noose), as wailing continues around us, retraint gurneys carried in and out, staff glaring at us because glaring is all they do, ready to pounce and restrain while we do nothing but eat lunch. they seem increasingly annoyed that he doesn't act nuts, like why the fuck are you here, and we wonder that as well but not out loud. shrinking into ourselves. appear defeated. the screenplay for that has been written a million times. 

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You don't expect things you want to come to come to you easily. You'll do the work that's uncomfortable, but not unsafe. Avoiding some kinds of pain keeps life good, while avoiding other kinds keeps it small. You know the difference.

now it's today, and that 👆 is what I thought overnight 👇. this pain means stay small. stay quiet. stay safe. 

like a prey animal, be still as a stone. 

until he gets out, there is nothing else. I do nothing else but orbit this. he does nothing but wait in mounting fear. our lives are held captive. it is illegal (unsafe) to ask for this kind of help. and once you've made that ask, you are a goner caught in legal hell, going dead behind your eyes, submitted to whatever. I am watching that dead hopelessness sink in behind eyes in the waiting room; behind the eyes of the visted it's usually already there. behind Huckforcat's eyes when I signed over the guns, I saw an exhausted wary worn similar. 

do not make eye contact; if you must, smile (lie).

🫩 

exhausted always on alert -_0 

not fight, flight flight flight flight against the trap around snapped shut on my ankle, my mind flailing not fighting

remember how you get out of a violent situation. silent, agree with whatever, go ice cold until it's not you (dissociate), leave just enough awareness to be ready to run as soon as there is opportunity. that's what you have to do when you are small and they are big and you are terrified. bide time.

like that. and that, over time, fills you with a snarling distrust of anyone getting anywhere near you. that's just a fact. it hardens your heart to stone. and I gotta get to stoney faster, my mind working nonstop 

🫩

update: theyre shortstaffed today so it a new nurse from the chronic ward was hall monitor for lunch. and she told me more about my rights and what I can ask when I call and that I can request a family meeting..."I understand, I just unfortunately work here." I tried one thing at her suggestion, calling the nurse's desk to get an update on diagnosis and if there is any discharge planning occuring at all, which was a mistake, that just pissed her off. she called me nonchalant about my son's safety by asking anything. I can see through the door a hallway full of screaming, rocking, frantic mumbling - it's a fucking zoo he hides from in his room, but that might mean he's antisocial so go to the rec room and play airhockey with a nutjob. the doctor told him that suicide attempts that fail leave you worse off - soooo next time do it right? etc. my sister is gone now. I am alone now. and my son is in jail for having admitted he was depressed. any question asked of any of it will only result in more of it. which, I can see on his face today, is returning him to the hopeless that made him seek care in the first place. somehow, I have to "buck up" and stay silent both, and coach him to do so as well, the opposite of what we both assumed. he must fake fine til he makes it to always fine, and agree to anything to get the fuck outa there. straight up. 

act very sane.

and 🤔 I do not want to teacher-help anyone to become a nurse or doctor; that was a great career and now it can be over by my own choice. 

I don't want to get any harder hearted than I am at this moment.  

🙏🕯

-_0 ugh it can't be today yet. my brain feels sandblasted

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). You are like the universal key that can, with a certain amount of jiggling, fit into a lot of different situations today, so you can afford to be choosy. There's that one that will click like it's made for you.

bullshit 🫩 like me and security guards really hit it oft 🫩

VIRGO September 12, 2026 Conversations about money go surprisingly well this weekend.

ok that made me laugh 🤏 - highly doubtful - I haven't even gotten to the money parts except finding and paying his car payment - good thing I used to own his building so I know my way around it to fetch stuff out today (ugh) - I am not paying the rent cz he's not going back. in his case, I will catch all the fallout of this mess in the short term. the medical debt itself, no idea but it can't be good. and if I weren't ON THEM LIKE STINK ON SHIT his employer would surely prefer not to deal with fmla and he'd be uninsured then, really hard to get a FUCKING THERAPIST if that happened. I knew all this, I teach all this shit, how illness has to be contextualized in LIFE or you could easily MAKE IT WORSE, which is what they are doing and I am the body in the way of that like a speed hump. they wreck the person's outside-of-there life = a huge part of our homelessness population, leading people right back to ecmc but this time on medicaid / nowhere to go. 

and they very very very very much do not give the slightest shit. that's the part I didn't fully grasp until I was on this side of it. "educating" anybody about all this was a giant waste of my time. everyone knows and nobody cares.

upside: knowing that makes losing the teaching vocation easier. now I just want to get as far from all this as humanly possible. scrubs are the new police uniform (run)

color: bruised

update: finished every "step" before reaching fed the fuck up, then called the patient advocate that helped navigate the cf clinic (recap: constantly threatening incarceration until I got the patient advocate) - she doesn't live here anymore (of course, who does?) but at wits end, I called her, she made a few calls, an HOUR later the pissy little shit of a social worker called me and faxed the required fmla motherfucking forms (no proof of her actually doing that but said she did) and she talked to Ears FOR THE FIRST TIME. she's going on vaca Monday, so, doesn't much matter. he's okay, reading a lot, as of today getting motherfucking Ensure also suddenly. He still cannot get out. I still have no idea what the criteria is, the diagnoses, nothing. What they said to him was this was an "unual excelleration of care" as in you don't normally wind up in ecmc as a prisoner cz you tell your primary you wanna hang yourself with shoe laces despite access to both guns and rolls of electrical cord. Maybe a solid therapist referal woulda been good, eh? Or better yet, I shouldn't have told him to be expressive and honest. 

Sometimes less hitting home is more. Sadly for all of us who can articulate. This was one of those times.

So it'll start all over Monday w a new social worker who has to be also the discharge planner, she'll prolly sound just like the other one (overworked and resentful). Normally I wouldn't blame her. Normally I'd be helping credential community health workers with giant grants. Normally, there would be some semblance of nonshitty normal (?)

One call and something moves. It has nothing to do with Ears. Nothing. Today is the first time he has ever met his case worker despite all law of 72 or 72+72 whatever hours, under ANY circumstance, even if he were a homicidal maniac, he had a right to advocacy by now. No. Such. Thing. 

I should have taken him to the cottage that night, that would have calmed him down as much as the one night he needed from BestSelf and got thrown in jail instead.

He's fine. I bring him lunch every day. I can't visit twice so one scarfed meal. Sis and I shoulda divided it, lunch and dinner, but we were too exhausted to even think of it till today. But also now suddenly Ensure is in his diet, which makes him much less dazed deadish fishwhite starved seeming. 

He literally needed one safe night, sugar, and a THERAPIST. 

It takes a lot to find a therapist. His doc certainly don't give a shit enough to put in that effort etc, so I arranged his discharge receiving end plan to Evergreen (puck in front of the net) for them. Evergreen lady says, "this happens all the time, somebody asks for help voluntarily, and then they find they can't get out. That is what e c m c does." 

And the worst thing you can do is say you feel better, because they'll assume you're lying. And. You also can't leave until you feel better. Indefinitely. 

I just got to wonder how many thousands of dollars they're making a day off me by doing this. They won't tell me that either.

So the one phone call today somehow shook loose the elusive social worker who is no longer working as of Monday and informed me that no discharges happen on the weekend because there are no discharge planners on the weekend. Very odd cz you'd think they would need the beds. But maybe they don't want to be able to take any more. Ears is very easy company. And again, I normally wouldn't blame them. I would just make a case study out of it. 

But this is my kid. 

I think it'll be at least Monday. Maybe a week from Monday till I see that kid walking out that door and every day, thank God I have the privilege it takes to have lunch hour of my choosing and length every single day. 

His roommate, the one who cried all over his mother because she's some kinda lowlevel (prolly healthcare) 12 hour shift worker (ie can't get there every day), it's been 3 weeks, not one call not one word, nothing.  I got A call and only cz I had one string to pull. The waiting room sagas - if I were in the mood to really write anything - but I am really not in the mood to make this amusing. 

Ears doesn't read my blog. It doesn't matter if there is 💯 lack of trust expressed here.  

He gave us a list of things he wants out of the apartment and we'll go get them tomorrow, all except the big computer that'll go into storage w some boxes of books. I refuse to take any of his furniture or any of TJ's crap stored there, nope. Even the older kid has crap just left there on his hands. All of that, all if this, gonna get goned now. 

update: nothing has changed

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). As for the thing you weren't able to accomplish back there, it just wasn't time yet. Keep at it in whatever small way is currently possible, and more will be possible in the future. The key is simply knowing that this isn't over.

It feels interminably over. 

I just need my kid back.

Friday. A week. I didn't imagine 72 hours of voluntary could become involuntary and indefininate with no explanations and no justifications, no diagnosis, no therapy session. Just fear of asking for any of those things or the "punishment" will be longer. 

I should have imagined that and & trusted noone

They have successfully turned him into someone who will never admit to being anything other than fine to any seemingly nice healthcare anybody, or any anybody, ever again. They are turning him into a me. Always fine. And skinny beyond what a body should ever be. 

Friday. They're too lazy and dontgiveashit to sign any form on any day, so nobody is going to give a shit enough to let him out or step him down or do anything before they get to their weekend. 

Day by day by day, I get better at smiling my way past the security guard(s), handing Ears pens (sharp objects) to sign things, a hippa release today if I break into his email w his swiped phone successfully. And every day I witness to this utter bullshit, my heart fills with black tar. 

Been reading law. To keep him much longer, they should be getting a court order. They might be working on that, but I see little evidence that they give him much thought at all. Change wellbutrin to lexipro, impressive lifesaving technology. They had one "group" occupational therapy session, during which Ears said nothing. And they keep getting paid for a hospital stay. So. Today I get one more form signed so everybody can get eyes on everything. Then I am calling a patient advocate and my lawyer.

If these poor inmates had any kind of life before, had apartments and jobs and cars, that will be taken from them with nobody making sure their bills are paid and living arrangements made. When they are released, it's to a life in tatters like a natural disaster hit a trailer park. Ears is very lucky to have a me and Sis to have been doing all that for him, to keep doing it. The other young men I have seen are being visited by folks who have become jaded and resigned to their kids' lives being over, expecting incarceration like this is now all there is going to be. They break everyone, the inmates and their people. It is sickening to watch, day after day. And I sure as fuck am not joining that collective.

Next, Sis and I will go to the cottage. I will close it soon, and prep it for that tonight, empty the fridge etc. but am very glad I didn't sell it because that is not Erie County. Wyoming county is a healthcare desert, which sounds great. I used to try to solve those; now I want an address in one. Far as I'm concerned- this is the last we'll ever see those motherfuckers asap.