date he's expected back to work is now the 4th of Dec. 

after these intense rounds of eval and suicide safety planning 😵‍💫 we take a field trip. otherwise, I get him back here and his nerves are shot and he's a lump, so we gotta BALANCE that, I figure. today was Reid's cheeseburgers and Pets Plus in Lockport, both surprisingly delightful dives. so many bad decisions are to be had at the exotic pet store - good thing it's all expensive! even so, if we keep this up there will be tiny shark, inevitably. 

weirdest toad ever

it's a rock that's alive

 

softshell Chinese turtle had a big personality

birdfeeders make a mess but the birds remind me - they never look like they're wondering if life is worth it 

(but I do really want a cigarette already today)

my daughter

That's everyone's horoscope every day: You cannot kill yourself; think of something else.

(Everyone's horoscope has a semi-colon and nobody knows how to use those. Maybe that's part of the problem? 🤔)

I try not to forget what it felt like to love life. I want to jump into its arms, thrilled to see it again. As imperfect as it is.

But today, I have to report to the first dr what started all this: Ears has threatened suicide. He was 'joking sort of' but nope, he doesn't get to do that. So now what happens? 

I mean this as robustly as 100 pounds can muster: lay it on me. Try me, unless you're swinging from rafters or painting walls with your brains, I hear Nova's little assurance in my head: "Okay." Whatever it is.

parachute - cs

"snacks 👍"

weeping willow baby

Bug oddly loves the 1970s XM channel, we drive around listening to Butterknife tunes and scooping up trees (and now bushes) marked down to nuthin, and watch the yard take shape through birdseyes

Monday, drs allll day, no Fish Place yet. paperwork. he is expected to return to work next Mon. he has dr appts all day, at which he said today that he would rather kill himself than return. so. how's that supposed to work? dunno. if he just doesn't show, he owes them a ton of money somehow. so, another dr tomorrow. "please god let this be over" over and over

I miss my mom

funny Ears story

me: so what do you think? you live here too now

him: looks ok

me: looks like you have to trim them, they're green hedge balls or whatever

him: right

me: I mean, otherwise we have to kill them 

him: right

next: vvvvvvrrrroooom he mows them down to the ground. all. of. them. the house looks like you can see its underpants alla sudden lol 🤦🏻‍♀️ I mean, that's one way to do it, meet me at my crazy and up me a project. hahaha. he said it was the little new chainsaw - once he killed the first one like slicing butter, he just wanted to keep going and going....

 

~Bodymagic, Sebrina Scott

good question cz that was ourselves who did (do?) that 
 

Only the candles and the penises changed. The hearts of women were the same. I dropped my coins into the little brass box. I lighted a taper off the flame of a votive. ~Shadow Tag, Erdrich

No, she didn't, she's lying, she's writing what never happened. 

update: iv bp meds and script + steroids and painkiller for back. he's been discharged. they (MTS) told me that for 90 days, there is only one goal: stay out of the hospital. so although Ears has passed out facedown on his online aquarium shopping (he self-protectively just passes out when stressed, which even my vacuuming can trigger), the goal continues to be met for us all (as far as I know).

son-in-law back in the hospital - drove himself south afraid of the bills left behind at Mercy and all of us afraid of Erie Co by half - back pain that might be a heart attack. my daughter is losing her shit, about him and over Everything

they already hang by a thin thread. they can't do what Ears is doing (not functioning at all lifewise and functioning little thoughtwise, unless we talk about aquariums, about which I know little). they are past the window of allowable break-downs and must function, broken or not.

there's also nothing I can do but stay on my feet. truly nothing. and staying on my feet gets harder and harder

I decided to deep clean. especially my witchshit. it's been nearly a year of near constant candlework and other old school hoodoo + prayer, trying to pull protection and light at the end of tunnels, anything and everything I could think of. and everyone is still alive, far as I know. 

but there is always a price. I feel like a helium balloon let go of into the winds. 

the candles, all the oils and feathers and enchanted momentos, they're mostly all used up now, and what is left is in disarray. I'm cleaning the magic pantry, looking over what is left. like the ashes of the dead. scattered medicine cards. luckystep drops for your shoes. a lock of hair, a knotted ribbon, blood ink. liptint and a dirty sock tossed in haste onto it all. I am hoping to reset by cleaning it up, organizing again. putting cards back into their boxes.

until Mark died, he was the person I expected would always let me in if I showed up at his door. if I offered no explanation, he wouldn't ask for one. I just knew that.

it is a luxury to have a person you think of that way, aside from your mother, who will leave the earth ahead of you and before you're ready. Mark left too before I was ready to have no such person like that. I was thinking about that when I pulled the card.

within my power, I have done what I could. for anything else/more/better, a miracle would need to occur. i.e. something out of the clear blue. 

my security system - the alarm is manual and only works on squirrels, but I don't have a gun anymore so what could I do except "shoo!" anyways? besides, nobody knows where/how to find me except Craig (don't believe me? try sending me a greeting card [dare]) who never does anything unexpected whatsoever. he stops for lunch at exactly noon, every day, for exactly 30 minutes. we are both mildly astounded at his implacable habits, each in our hidey holes, watching the birds and the deck-making through the birdfeeder camera

I didn't bother reading my funding letter til now - they're gonna give me $2500 which is really just 2k bc it's 500 to register at the conference - but I can't turn down 2k just to write a paper. I'll just blog the fucking thing and bore y'all to tears. I will mos def spend way more than 2k but it'll be kinda trophy-wife-lite, which is fine, because as I said, I only have to write a paper. Not that it matters, (but it feels like it might matter somehow) but this is the conference that Nebraska was at when I was in New Orleans getting up to whatever and while telling Nebraska what to say to the Exec D of MLA - i.e. I scripted his response to her asking "what kind of good trouble could we get into?" and I tell him to tell her HEALTH HUMANITIES, right now, it's where the humanities actually live already (all my students wanna be healthcare something, not fucking English majors ever so where do I live? I work at a nursing college. TELL HER WE ALL WORK IN HEALTHCARE DUH you fucking privileged idiot with your fucking English majors god damn it, bossy af. That was Jan 2020. He loved to retell that story as the start of something big (cz now he'd heard of it 🙄). I'd been saying that for about 5 solid years by then, medical humanities = all we do is teach medical students...WHAT? A: ways to think (oddly/differently/whatever)
this Erdrich trip I'm on makes me feel like a person can teach a way to think by being that waytothink.
I got my way with him, he hotvhis way with all the big hitters like the MLA and even the AMA ("other side") bought in, and evvvverything was about health / medical humanities by March 2020, and I looked like a genius all'a sudden. But I was broken, was what I was saying, because for one thing our healthcare system is kinda killing its workers and we, their "talk to's" (?) like Eng professors were their witness and we were the ones who were not told what to do (not accredited) so we could respond to healthcare workers' work and make that central to our work. A lot of us got damaged over time by the moral injuries to our frontline providers. Like everything felt very urgent and critically under recourced to us too. The dwindling of them we could plainly see. I was already down a nurse and down a nun, drinking too much, doing ... well, and then a pandemic and sure why not believe I might be a genius for a while and get every very expensive drink given to me for free? who wouldn't do that, despite and because they were past a breaking point already? anybody would try that ride, right? 
and yet, I can hardly believe it all happened at all. ya know? I dunno. Alls I know is here I am now, having broken up with chatgpt forever! (god damn it now I'll have to take her stupid ass back, she's in the damn paper title lol fuck), having to figure out how to make 2k go as far as possible (which is maybe the flights? if I take Ears, which I/he's gotta, even tho the other kids be like wtf but fundamentally the paper is about Ears at this point, he read Little No Horse in jail and marked the cats with a "meow" in margin for me - that is going into the paper) and I'd be a nervous wreck to leave him alone (fretfret), and write/give a lit paper on something I pulled outa my ass to get 🤏 $ to go somewhere (like Malta, which my ex made a miserable trip by being a relentless twat, and we both had to give bullshit papers about beasts in literature hahaha), then go there. Boston. like none of anything other than that kind of life ever happened. like that kind of life isn't being extingished for people like me. the only teaching I do has been here just like cats have been and the fireds and grit and more grit has only lived here, really.
but this time, something I wrote here is gonna help get me outa here maybe

update: between appointments, we hit another pet store, me naming every possible fish / reptile option "Cat"

"Neko" (Japanese for "cat") -

he's not the fanciest one, and he's been sitting on the shelf long enough to be marked down, and he has a white streak - 

I know what all of that feels like

a bad decision waiting to happen

update: welp, fuck. is this a deliciously bad decision in hiding in work?

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Let go of proving that you earned every pleasure. In this life of cycles, we must seize joy when it's available, knowing that it won't always be. Buy the flowers. Lollygag. Eat up. You made enough sensible choices.

the last thing I posted needed earning was my right to die in peace 

the horoscope's idea sounds better, so

I promise to make a joyously bad decision as soon as I possibly can, as soon as I meet one I will lolly gag all afternoon 🙏🕯

fun fact: I gave Sunshine's # to D-Nozl. she wants to keep the cat and get child support from him for it. not from me, she would not take it from me, "woman, you are taking care of his sick baby and wtf is he even doing?! he don't even know 🤨 stupidfucker bullshit.." 

I have a long day of appts in front of me today, his new psychiatry meds manager dr and then the mts team, etcetc. I will think of this horoscope, think "IF ONLY 🤨" - but, it will give me a little cheer to imagine that 👆 phone call 🤭

whats a woman called who doesnt pay her bills? a: bernadette (Craig joke - he's here daily working on the house, happier that he lost his job every day he that watches me living the alternative)

today was bad

some days are bad

I feel bad when it's my day that has to be bad because I need to be okay but sometimes 

it's not as if there's anyone to talk me down ever (noted)

my therapist has been on maternity leave this whole time. by the time she comes back I won't want to talk to her either

it won't matter, it doesn't matter, I have to keep my kid okay and he is very barely okay and it's a lot of work to keep him that way, that's it

I am very fortunate 🙏🕯 it could be much worse 

I made up something funny that happened today (nothing funny happened) so I could text one of the fireds (like this would be more fun with you here type deal), he laughed and asked about how it's going (onward as if this is perfectly normal, like Orwell or some shit). I told him that my role at work atm is ironically A WIFE, my employer's trophy wife who doesn't do much but look good and go to yoga classes a lot (which has truth in it). drama queens are outward, so not that.

then of course, we went and killed ourselves with sweat and heat. running on or off frightfuel. killedwise, we prefer DIY vs motherfuckers

 

💔 I feel sick

"Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink."

"Cat"

I got an axolotl head-to-toe and filled it with a kid

my daughters are passing that 👆 around today. it's funny but maybe I am not anymore a lot. of all things to be slipping away, I will miss my own laugh. maybe I will do like my mom and retreat into my mind where the fun was, hang out with the ghosts of funny stories nobody remembers anymore. 

what is the one thing I would/could/might do to make life better? A: a 4-day 32-hour work week with no overtime option for republicans, martians, I don't give a shit, everybody make room for a cup of coffee. 

 I'm looking for something else.

 A kiss is an efficacious drug.