Wrap Up!

I normally do this one on the last day of the year but I don't really need to wait this year so you get it early.

Aren't you so excited?

Looking back at January to see what I even set as goals for the year and...oh yeah, I didn't really. With the move coming up I was going to set quarterly goals. Because the year would break up so nicely. The first quarter preparing for the move, the next moving and settling in, then on to the living our lives as normal with everything all done and settled.

Ha!!

Okay, so it didn't work out that smoothly but we dealt with it, right?

I did have some overarching general goals for the year. I wanted to read 60 books, and I hit that and a few more. Though I was going to work on clearing my Kindle of owned books that keep getting bumped for new and I totally did not do that. Looks like something for 2023.

Writing, I set goals for that in only two months and hit both of those. It was a light year. I did publish the whole series I wrote when Katie came out to us but not to the world. I like that series because I think it helped other people understand a little more what was going on. I know it opened the door for people to ask me questions they might have felt uncomfortable asking other people. So I'm taking that as a big yearly win for writing. Inform, entertain, engage. Those are my writing goals. 

Fitness and weight, so this one is funny. Funny fuck you not funny ha ha. I had posted that I really wanted to lose that last 5 pounds and get really consistent with a good blend of weights and cardio. And I totally nailed it. Weight was staying in that range of comfort in my body and for my knees. I was working out 5 to 6 days a week with good balance between everything. Thinking about adding in some more flexibility work and then came November. I got sick the beginning of November and that was met by the death of a friend and then that cascaded into the worst bout of sciatica I've ever had and I've not been 100% since.  My consistency went out the window and my weight bounced back up. Just in time for the end of year round up. Ha..ha..ha... But I'm still going to take it as a win because I was there for the majority of the year and I will be there again as the sciatica is slowly getting better. Just frustrating for it to fall apart like that. 

I had set a decreased Amazon shopping goal then immediately unset it as soon as I realized that we would need so much more stuff than normal due to the move and how many stores just use Amazon as their storefront now. I need to think about that again for this year. Stores don't make it easy to go direct and Amazon is still a piece of shit so...

There weren't other main goals set. Just a general, "Hey! Let's see how this goes!" sort of vibe. So now that I've covered those bare minimum goals that were set, hey, how did the rest of the year go?

It was a little rough. 

I think this year was the first year I really felt old. Like this isn't a blip or a bump in the road, this is a full scale we are on the other side of the hill and sliding fast. It was the first year I told Brent I should probably revise my "We are Living to 100!" plan. Because for the first time I'm not sure I'm going to make it to 100. Or at least not to 100 living my best, independent life. 

It was a year full of physical breakdowns. As soon as I'd get one issue fixed another would crop up. I've had ankle issues, wrist issues, weird bleeding, the aforementioned sciatica issues. I've had hot flashes that would melt your face if you stood too close to me. I've had mornings where I just felt like I'd been hit by a bus, then a tractor trailer, then dropped from an airplane. What the fuck? 

We have a high deductible health insurance plan. For those of you that don't live in the US that means that there isn't a monthly amount taken out of Brent's check to cover our insurance, we just pay the whole bill until it reaches a certain level. Most years this works out for us quite well. We don't pay a lot for health care. This year we met that level and the past few months have been in the "You don't have to pay more, you poor thing" range. We start over on Monday, and I already have two doctor's appointments scheduled  so we might hit our targets again this year. 

The only other year we've met our high deductible was when Katie broke her ankle and had to have surgery. That's the sort of year this year has been. 

BUT...the good news is I've discovered that I know my own body pretty darn well. The chronic issues that I was hoping to fix don't look like they are fixable but I've learned some great compensating moves. (Ankle and toe issues on the same foot, fix the ankle the toe acts up, fix the toe the ankle acts up, make each work in a wonky way and it's manageable). My wrist issues flared and are now back but I honestly think I might end up cancelling that appointment. I did a little self adjustment of a few carpal bones and it seems to be getting better so... 

I also got on estrogen. The mini-pill. Just a bare hint of estrogen really. But it was enough to knock back the daytime hot flashes to zero and the nighttime ones are only a problem if I don't practice my other self care. Watch the sugar, don't drink hard alcohol, exercise. And even then it's like one a night instead of one all night. 

And here's a bonus kicker...

My food issues are fading. Estrogen gives protection from inflammation. We had soup dumplings for Christmas and it was going to be my quarterly "ouch" meal. But no ouch. So we had Godfathers and I had the barest of itch reaction to the nightshades, like so bare that if I wasn't looking for it I wouldn't have really noticed and nothing to the gluten, even though I'd had gluten just a few days before. I'm going to try some more nightshades on Saturday and see how it goes. But this is amazing right? If it sticks I'll try some chicken next. And bourbon. Oh bourbon, I've missed you. 

Now, what this means for me is that I can be less careful of what I eat. I won't have to study every label and menu like it was the meaning to life. BUT...because I know now that there is an underlying issue going on that the estrogen is protecting me from I won't go back to eating the way I used to. I'll still live mostly gluten free. I'll still really limit my nightshade intake. Chicken would be a sometimes food. But it will mean that I will be able to get a donut at the Timbers matches. I will be able to do a dinner cruise in Hawaii without eating only the lettuce from the salad. I will get a level of freedom back that I have missed terribly. 

And I will also suggest to women who are going through menopause that if they are having digestive and joint pain issues they should try an elimination diet because their estrogen was protecting them before. Though Katie put it best that food reactions due to menopause will never be studied because well, menopause and estrogen and the medical field doesn't view those as areas worthy of study. But let's hope that a more women reach the highest levels of care providers we see more studies in women's health and we start to understand estrogen a little more. But until then I will just be grateful for the push Kate gave me to actually get on it. Serious life changer.

So now with the last few days of 2022 fading quickly I'm looking at 2023. More set goals, more things around the pieces that bring me the greatest joy and sense of accomplishment. 

I hope your year has been a good one overall. I hope the painful times were met with love and support. I hope the joyful times were shared and multiplied. I thank you all for reading these blogs. It really does make me happy to share my life with you all. 

And that's a wrap on 2022. 

See you next year!

The Darkest Days...

Have you ever noticed how depressing Christmas music is? I mean a lot of it is just so gloomy. Everyone wishing they were somewhere else, with someone else. It's the most melancholy time of the year. 

And it really is. I mean for a lot of people the whole holiday season is just the pits. There is nothing like a holiday steeped in family traditions and memories to drive home the point that you've lost a loved one. Even though we stopped going home for Christmas when Katie was a toddler it was still hard the first year we lost Jack, and the first year we lost my dad, and the first we lost my mother, and the first year we lost Ann..firsts are the worst. Though that year we lost Ann was probably the absolute worst. It was only the second Christmas after my mother passed, we lost so many friends that year, and we were still in the middle of the worst of the pandemic, before we all decided to pretend it wasn't a thing anymore...

This year my friends and I are still reeling from Kevin's death. It's only been a month basically. I mean how is it possible it's been a month? How is it possible it hasn't been longer? Both of these feel true. It's been impossible. I hadn't realized how tied we all were to each other on a daily basis. I mean I sort of grasped it, but I wasn't ready for the void that would happen each time I thought about him during the day. It's made me more aware of how often I think of you all.

Which it turns out I think about a lot of you often. 

Songs, times of day, weather, clothes, foods...I have memories tied to each of you around those things and so much more. I saw a cool storm moving in the other day and I was driving so I couldn't take a picture and was really bummed because I knew Faye would love it. There was a show about a housing in Las Vegas and I wondered how close the neighborhood was to Sonnya. It's nothing big usually, but there are little things like that with each of you. 

I didn't realize how many of you keep me company while I am cooking. I think about Nadine when I'm making something fancy I've never tried before, I hear her voice in my head, "eh just try". I think about Chris when the cats decide to help me. Trying to get my latkes to turn out the other night I thought about Naomi and her "so many latkes" that she forgot to take pictures of and of Dana and her adding bacon. And I think about Kevin when I come up with a random concoction that ends up really great. Which is often. 

But now everytime I think "oh Kevin would..." I have to catch myself. Because it's still in that early stage where you forget on one level. It's still not settled in as real. 

And that's why Christmas music often lends itself to being depressing. Because so many of our memories around the holiday are tied to our friends and our families. And they are not always with us. Sometimes temporarily, often permanently. 

You all know I lost my uncle a few weeks before Kevin. I love my aunt dearly and I know she's facing that horrible first Christmas without him and my heart hurts for her. I know how bad it was for Mom when Dad passed. I can picture those photos from that first Christmas and just how tired and done Mom looked. 

While thinking about my aunt and uncle an old Christmas memory popped up. My family is large. For awhile when we were all in New Mexico there could be 30+ people at Christmas. We switched to a White Elephant exchange instead of trying to manage presents for everyone. 

So one year Denny got one of the lowest numbers and unwrapped his gift, it was a piece of wood with a line of nuts glued to it. The nuts all had googly eyes and painted faces, there was a banner on the bottom with something like "My Family is a Bunch of Nuts" and he spent the rest of the game trying to convince people to take it from him. "This is a fine handcrafted piece of art. It's got to be worth something." and no takers. "You know this is probably a valuable piece of folk art." Nothing. End of the game comes, everyone is done making their swaps and Denny is still stuck holding that nuts on a branch. He reaches over to grab the nutcracker and breaks open the walnuts. Inside each one was a $20 bill. "I told you it was probably worth more than you were thinking." 

Oh he got everyone! It was his own gift he brought and he told us all it was valuable. Very funny.

The next year a new piece of art like that showed up. And please believe there was a mad scramble for it. I watched the glee in my uncle's eyes and thought, "Uh oh, he's going to get you again." and sure enough at the end of the game the person who ended up with it broke them open and nothing... He got everyone again. 

I wasn't there the next year to see if it made a reappearance or not. But I would guess it did and that people had to decide if it was worth the chance to take it or not. If I had been there I would have watched him for clues on if it was more than it appeared to be. 

I hope this Christmas comes with pleasant memories of those you can't be with. 

I hope this holiday season is filled with moments that become those pleasant memories. 

I hope we find that Peace on Earth we are all looking for. 

Until that happens I guess we'll have to muddle through somehow...

Hearing Voices...

I've talked about it before, how important it is to find your voice when you write. 

I found mine a long time ago. Turns out my writing voice is just my speaking voice. But you know, written. 

It's why I use unconventional punctuation. I talk in fits and starts. A lot of pauses and odd trailing off. My writing style reflects that. 

People who have spent years talking to me off line tell me that they can hear my voice in their head when reading what I've written. So it works. 

Unconventional punctuation, over use of the word so, sentence structure that would have gotten a full bottle of red ink in any of my honors English classes...

This is my voice. 

I have a voice in fiction as well. Though I try to disguise it every little bit. Try and make it sound like a different voice. Sometimes it works and you spend an entire short story waiting for my gotcha moment and it never comes. There's the gotcha!

I have been thinking about this because of a piece that Wil Wheaton wrote, in response to a piece that Neil Gaiman wrote. Basically that as you start writing, fiction especially, you tend to try your hardest to sound like your favorite authors. You might not be doing it on purpose, as in trying to fool people into thinking it's a piece by them, but you do it subconsciously because that is what you associate with good writing. With enjoyable reading. 

Who do you want to sound like?

And I am sure I did it as well. Or even do it now as well. Probably every single author I've read that I thought sounded conversational wove it's way into my brain as "this is enjoyable to me to read" and so I write like that. 

At some point that happened anyway. 

When I was younger I did not write the way I sound. At least not in fiction. I had an idea that it should sound "literary" and I tried hard for that feel. Oh no...

There isn't much worse than a 14 or 15 year old trying to sound impressive.

Funny enough though...most of it was still fairly dark. Though not as funny. That's the difference. I tend to use more humor now than I did then. I think I thought that if I was trying to say something important I had to be serious. Over the years I've found that even when I'm trying to say something important, hell sometimes especially when I'm trying to say something important I will lighten the mood just a bit. 

I am an inappropriate laugher in my day to day life. I am just dragging you all along with me in my writing. 

I like having a strong voice in my writing. I like knowing that if you are reading this it's going to be like having a conversation with me. (I talk too much and expect you to laugh at my jokes)

I also like it because that means when the voices start in my head that don't sound like me I know it means there is a story brewing. And I hope it will be a good one. I'm not sure yet what they are saying, I can just hear them in the background. Fingers and toes crossed for a productive 2023...

And yeah, it'll be dark. I mean, have you met me?

But at least it won't be literary...

Ten Days To Go...

The first thought in her mind was "Ten days to go." The final countdown was on. 

Ten days from now it will be the day AFTER Christmas. Sure, there will be that week of wind down where some people still want to wish you a merry one, but for the most part on Christmas evening, around 6 or 7, society as a collective whole is just over it. For another year. 

Ten more days to go to deal with overly sugared children and overly stressed parents. Ten more days to go to deal with people who are in that midrange relationship space and have no idea if this means they need to get a gift for the person they are dating or if this means the should not at all get a gift because they aren't in that space yet. Ten more days to go of the constant barrage of holiday music. Ten more days to go of crotchy old people being mad at the word holiday.

Ten more days to go.

She remembered when it was all contained in December. December 1 to December 25. Get an advent calendar and eat a piece of chocolate every day as a reward for making it through. Then it started to creep into November. Which, fine, there was a lot to do so maybe spreading it out a bit more was helpful to a lot of people. She couldn't really fault that. 

But then it was October. And this year she saw her first set of decorations up in August. AUGUST. It was still summer vacation for the kids and they were seeing Christmas trees in Wal-Mart? Just not okay at all. 

But she couldn't blame Wal-Mart, as much as she'd like to, if people didn't buy Christmas stuff in August they wouldn't sell it. 

Last year she asked someone who was buying a set of decorations in August why they would do it so early and the response was, "Mind your own fucking business." So...yeah. Merry Christmas to you too!

Ten more days to go. 

She thought about what still needed taken care of, the list was pretty long. Even starting in August that list was going to be long. You had the choice she guessed, stress about it for months or stress about it for a month, either way there was going to be stress. 

Ten more days to go.

She could say 9, since Christmas day people mostly kept to themselves and there was nothing left to do. But sometimes something slipped through the cracks and you'd have to make a last minute dash out and then it was full throttle, you could practically see the extra exclamation marks when people would tell you Merry Christmas. 

Come on, it's not merry. I'm running an errand on Christmas day, you and I both know it's not great. But okay, Merry Fucking Christmas to you too!

Ten more days to go. 

She wasn't sure she hated Christmas, but it was getting that way. 

Which wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't an elf. 

Merry Christmas, ten more days to go...

Inching Closer...

So right now I'm at that phase of goal setting where I am thinking about doing ALL THE THINGS.

The treadmill isn't my friend. 

See, I get on it and my mind starts to wander and instead of coming up with clever Christmas story ideas (though there is one that's been in there as a start for, oh I don't know, a decade now, that keeps bouncing up with ways to make it work) it's been thinking about 2023 goals. 

Today's doozy is around reading. Like I always set a number, sometimes it's high, sometimes it's low. The year I turned 50 I did that fun every year challenge. But usually it's kind of a throw away goal. I wouldn't even bother if Goodreads didn't prompt me and I am not missing a chance at a gold star. But anyway...I was thinking about reading. And this year I think maybe I'll do a reading challenge in a reading challenge. Set my number but then also every month read one biography/autobiography, read one self help book, read the Fantastic Stranglings Book Club pick and then read 2 free choice books. It's a totally doable number of books, except for the fact that nonfiction tends to take longer to read than fiction, but still should be okay.

So, why these choices you might ask yourself. Or you might not, it just depends on how curious you are being today. Or you know you don't need to ask because when have I ever done anything without over explaining it?

I was thinking about self help books the other day (while on the treadmill, not surprisingly) and I realized that they could be grouped in the book store under "Books You Read in Your 20s and Early 30s" Right? I mean, at least in my experience and in watching friends and now their kids. There is an age where we are all searching for something and we make the mistake of thinking someone else has found it. Or maybe not the mistake that they found something but that that something can apply to us. Weight Loss books. Fitness books. Spiritual Books. Look Better. Do Better. Be Better. You but only Better books. I read a ton of them when I was in my 20s. It's probably why I knew who Marianne Williamson was when she ran for president and everyone else was like...Whoah...did she really just say that?

But while I was thinking of how many I've read, and how some of them truly did shape how I see the world I wondered what I would think now. Like I re-read the Four Agreements a few years ago and realized that though I have taken the actual four agreements with me into my life the book itself made me roll my eyes. So what would I think of other self help style books now? What would it look like at 54/55 to read some of these books? Would I be able to get anything out of them or would I find them all to be just so awful I couldn't stand it? And then I saw that there is a book out there called The Fifth Agreement where the author of The Four Agreements revisits the earlier book with his son and they comment on it and add one more agreement. Which is almost exactly what I had been thinking about so... One Self Help Book a month. They don't have to be ones I've read before, and honestly I don't think they will be, but The Fifth Agreement is on the list. 

And because they are experiment books I will blog about each one of them after I read them. Not really a book review, but a life experience review. So you know I love that idea. Anything to add to these numbers without having to think too hard about it. 

The biography/autobiography is just that I enjoy them and I only seem to rarely make room to read them. This is sort of a forcing those books into the rotation. I like hearing about people's stories. Sometimes they don't tell a great story (Sorry, Sincy, you are the GOAT where soccer is concerned but not so introspective) Sometimes they are completely captivating (Becoming was a great story, even if it wasn't about Michelle Obama it would have been a great story). Sometimes they are just flat out hilarious (ANYTHING Mindy Kaling writes you should read). But I enjoy them so I want to make sure I'm making room for them. 

The Fantastic Stranglings one is because I'm horrible about quitting things. You all see how often I go back to Picture of the Day or public gratitude, or you know, Facebook itself. Once I start something if it's even slightly enjoyable it's really hard for me to say, okay, this is now done. I did quit the official book club. I found I was getting the hardcover book from the store but then still getting the digital copy because I read everything on my Kindle now and it seemed so wasteful. So now I'm an "honorary" member of the book club. Which is fine. She started it, and I joined during the pandemic to try and keep her shop from going under before she even got a chance to open the doors, and now that things are opened up again she doesn't depend completely on the book clubs for revenue. She being Jenny Lawson, The Bloggess, for anyone who didn't know what The Fantastic Stranglings Book Club was. Aside from the original reason I joined, the reason I don't want to completely leave is she has recommended books I NEVER would have read on my own. Some of them have not been my cup of tea, but some of them have been so so good. 

And then the two free choice were just to round out my numbers. Three books a month isn't much, even with how much more slowly I read nonfiction. But I don't want to put in too many extras because I do read nonfiction more slowly and I don't want to be scrambling to try and keep up. Those two bonus books a month are also floaters. I'm calling them monthly but if for some reason the nonfiction trips me up on time and I can only fit in one more book, that's okay, I can make it up through the year. 

So I think that's going to be the reading piece this time around. 

And you can help. 

Is there an autobiography or biography that you really enjoyed that you think I should read? 
How about your favorite self help book? Or, here's you chance to subtly "fix" me, one you think I especially should read? 

I'm looking forward to this challenge. I think it's going to be an interesting learning year because of these books. I might even hit 55 with a brand new outlook, you never know!

Okay, we know, but we can pretend together. 

21 Days to Go...

Starting to think about 2023. I know we are in what should be the crunch time of 2022 but...

We don't really do anything for Christmas anymore. We have our small traditions, the meals we eat, the movies we watch...but we don't do gifts. I haven't been doing the big all out decorating since we got the cats, I keep thinking maybe next year, but so far Tig has shown no signs of ever being a calm cat instead of a rowdy kitty. 

We would be doing the Teddy Bear Toss game tonight with the Winterhawks but Brent was one of those who ended up with rebound Covid so a positive test (no matter how faint the line, sweetheart) means that we are home for the weekend. 

We went and looked at Christmas lights, Lightopia, last weekend (when we thought Brent was over Covid since his test was, you know, negative) and it was cute, but really small. Not enough electricity there to jump start a HUGE holiday feeling. 

We've also got a Michigan Bowl Game on New Year's Eve so we won't do anything else (no traditional NYE Hawks game) holiday like there. And since New Year's Day is on a Sunday there won't be the college game feasting there either. 

It's just the way it goes now. Once your kids aren't kids you have a lull. And since Katie isn't planning on having kids of her own we won't be doing it all again with grandkids. Though, who knows, next year if they are all still together maybe we will have her whole crew up and have a major holiday. Or maybe Brent and I start traveling down there and celebrating with them. If they get a big enough place that I don't freak out over the number of people breathing my air...

But anyway...all of this together means I'm already looking toward 2023.

I found a way to transfer my pictures off of Facebook and maintain them in their albums. Or at least I found something that said that it will do that. I haven't tried yet. That will be a massive project, and I won't be able to capture all of the comments and conversations around them, but at least I'll have the photos themselves someplace orderly. So I will be working on getting that done. 

Though, honestly, I'm torn again on my reasoning for doing it. I had been planning to leave Facebook within the first quarter of 2023. I'm just over it. Too many ads, too many just really dumb people spouting off really dumb ideas. And I know I shouldn't think they are dumb just because they think differently than I do but some of them are just so fucking dumb. I mean the reason we think differently is because they, well, from what I can tell, they don't. So I was out. 

But then Kevin died.

I texted a couple of people who had pretty much left Facebook to let them know and then connected with a few more who are on Facebook sporadically. And was reminded again of the great community and social network and all of those things that Facebook was supposed to be, that we actually built. I thought about the kids I've known who now have actual kids of their own. The friends I have all over the world that I would not have if I had never gone on Facebook. The people I miss daily because they aren't online anymore. And do I want to lose even more of that?

So I don't know. I think I will still transfer all of the photos off and then see what I am feeling when I'm done.

I'll keep cultivating my list, dropping people off that don't need to be there anymore. And I am doing that more freely. I used to feel like I should explain to someone why I was dropping them. I would say, hey, this is the reason, this is what you posted that crossed my line, that hurt my heart. But now? I figure if you've been "friends" with me for even a brief amount of time it should come as no surprise that if you post a meme that is racist, sexist, transphobic, homophobic or just plain assholish you are out of here. And to be perfectly honest and self aware, I don't expect most of those people to notice I'm gone, I assume they have tired of my hectoring and lecturing and have hidden me already. 

So 2023 I'll figure out my relationship with social media. 

I also think I'm going to lean back into creativity. Now that my estrogen levels are back up and I'm back to being dark and stormy but with sparkles I'm feeling the urge to write a bit more. Which is kind of a relief. I feel like I've been living in a drought and finally getting some rain. I had sort of convinced myself I didn't miss it at all, but when you've lived with the voices in your head for so long and they all go quiet it gets kind of lonely. 

And there will be some health related things. This year has been brutal. We have a high deductible plan, and this is the first year since Katie broke her ankle in college that we met it and the past two months have been FREE! ALL YOU CAN VISIT! medical trips. To be fair, it was me trying to correct a few long term things and I discovered that really they are just part of me now and if I try to fix one thing the wheels are falling off another. That's just the way it goes. And then with my sciatica being omnipresent for the past month or so I just feel old. So I'm looking at 2023 to find some sort of health balance. I want to live to 100, but not if it's living in pain. 

So that's the framework. Creative, healthy, socialish. Not socialist. That part's already taken care of..
I just need to fill in the particulars. 

How about you all? How is your holiday season going? Are you living the full 2022 experience or ready to move on to 2023 and see what new fresh hell it is going to bring? I mean...what fabulous things are in store!

Standing When You'd Rather Sit...

Last night I went in to my Facebook messages and read all of them that Kevin and I had exchanged over the years. There weren't many on his current account. A swapping of phone numbers. A check in to make sure everything was okay. But then I went to his old account. And the last exchange on it was a tense one. 

I'm not sure what he posted on his wall to trigger it, but apparently I had taken offense and snapped back at the post. I can tell you it was a meme. Because part of our discussion was that he didn't find it offensive and it was just a meme. BUT...he had taken it down because it had bothered me. And then he sent me a long message that was part apology, part defense, part anger, and all love. It was Kevin.

I replied that it was fine that he was angry with me. But that I had made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to let things like that (wish I could remember what "that" was) slide. Even when it was hard. And how much harder it was to say something to family than it was to anyone else. 

Because that's who he was. Family. I used to tell him he was one of mine. That's what I tell my people. You are one of mine. You might not have come from me physically, but you are part of me now. And he would say it back. That we were his. He opened it to me and Brent and Katie and the kitties. We were his. He would always have my back. We were part of our own family. Degenerate or Wanderer or Escapee from the boards. We (and so many others of us) had somehow found each other and we were now tied. 

But that exchange was the last one on that account. If you were to stumble on it you would think it ended the friendship. That we never recovered. 

He lost control of his account shortly thereafter. Somehow logged himself out and couldn't remember the password or the email account that the password was tied to. After a few weeks trying to get back in to his account he gave up and started over. 

Even, obviously, knowing all of that it gave me pause last night as I read that last exchange. The cap to a few years of messages. I was grateful on one hand that I hadn't ever deleted the message. I was grateful I hadn't unfriended the old account since I knew it wasn't active anymore. I had even thought about it once, clearing it out since I knew it was a ghost account, but I didn't. I wanted to keep access to it incase I wanted to find a post or exchange. I'm glad I had it. 

But it also made me feel so sad. Because as some of you know, I've talked about it before, there is another account out there that the last messages we exchanged were tense. But there was no recovery point. There was no reconciliation. There was no coming back together. Death separates both of those people from me. With Kevin I grieve the recent loss, with Rex I lost him long before he died. 

Looking back I had to think for a moment if I would change what I did. If I would, knowing the Kevin would be gone if just a few short years, if I still would have called him out on the meme. And I would have. I promised myself, afterall. 

With Rex the last fight was about how he was killing himself and I wouldn't stick around to watch and I sure as fuck wouldn't send him the money to do it. Would I still have sent that message? Still have had that fight? 

Yeah, I would have. 

I'd done the more supportive how can I help? I'd done the I'll listen but I'm not sending money. It had just progressed. I knew where that road ended and I could either stay silent while he walked it or try and get him to change course. Even though you cannot want someone's sobriety for them more than they want it for themselves. It doesn't work. 

But I still had to say something. 

Standing up to the people who are important to you is much harder than shouting at strangers. Because it matters. What they think of you matters. What you think of them matters. What the cost to the relationship could be matters. If it's someone you either don't know, or don't care that deeply about it's easy. You know cutting and running is always an option.

When Kevin sent me the message about deleting the meme, tucked in there he said he'd understand if after reading all that he sent I wanted to dump him. He knew the potential cost for standing up for what he felt. He just forgot for a moment that he was one of mine, and this was just a disagreement. He didn't have to agree with me. He never had to agree with me. He just needed to understand that if I felt he was wrong I was going to say something. 

It was a hard discussion but we made it through just fine. And as you can tell by me not remembering what it was that he posted, what it was that I said to him on that post to get the reaction I did, and that I wouldn't have been able to tell you that message was even in our DMs, it ended up not mattering at all in the course of our friendship. 

Except of course it did matter. 

It always matters that you stand up for what you believe. Even when you'd rather sit it out.  

Childhood Memories...

Her first memory of meeting Baba was when she was five years old. She was sitting on a rock by a stream in the woods. She doesn't remember anymore where the woods were located. Just that they were near her house. She used to "run away" to live in the woods at least once a week.

Her parents told people she was a wild child. A stubborn one. Incorrigible. 

She was a bad kid. 

That was the message she got over and over again. At five she already knew that people looked at her differently. Made judgements about her before they ever got to know her. She knew she got in trouble at school more often than other kids did, for doing the same things. She didn't realize until she was older that it was because people expected her to be trouble, so they looked for her to be trouble, and they treated her like she was trouble. Because her parents told everyone she was a bad kid.

But really she was just a kid. 

Baba sat quietly with her while she threw pebbles into the stream. 

She knew if you threw them in the right way they would skip across. But she didn't know what that way was so she just threw them harder and harder.

"It's all about how you throw them, not how hard you throw them."

 
She stopped throwing her pebbles. 

"Did you want me to show you?"

She sighed, "Fine. If you want to."

Baba had smiled at her. "It's okay to get help from people when you need it."

She had narrowed her eyes at Baba then, wary of the trap. Nobody ever just helped her. 

"First you want to find the right kind of stone. Not everyone stone is right for the job."

Oh now she got it, it was the start of a lecture. "Some are bad stones."

Baba shook her head, "No, there are no bad stones, just ones that aren't made for skipping. You want one that's kind of flat, smoother, a circle shape. Like this one."

Then Baba showed her how to hold the stone and how to flick her wrist as she threw the stone. Baba's rock skipped all the way across the stream and landed on the other bank. 

"I'll never be able to do that."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But you can try."

They found a few more skipping stones and practiced. She got all the way to three skips.

She was laughing then. "I might be able to beat your skip! Maybe I could skip a stone all the way across and it would keep skipping right into the woods!"

Baba smiled at her, "Maybe." then she nodded to the backpack at her feet, "What is in your bag?"

She got quiet again. Here is where she was going to get in trouble. Baba would drag her back home and her parents would thank her and tell her how bad she was. How much trouble. Then Baba would go home and...she clenched her jaw and willed the tears not to come. 

"Child? I asked you a question. What is in your bag?"

She squared her shoulders and stood up straight scraping her hand against her eyes and sniffing, "I'm running away from home."

"Oh? And why?"

"Because. I'm a bad kid. And it will be easier for everyone if I just leave."

"I see. And where are you going to go?"

Now the tears really did come."I don't know. This is as far as I ever get." she sobbed then, "I'm only five, I don't know where bad kids can go!"

"Can I tell you a little secret?"

She tried pulling herself together a little. "Sh--sh--sure."

"It's December 5th."

"That's not a secret. That's on the calendar."

"But do you know what December 5th is?"

"Monday?"

Baba laughed, "Well, yes, this year it's Monday. But every year it's Krampusnacht. Have you ever heard of Krampus?"

Her eyes got wide then. "My parents told me Krampus takes away the bad kids and either eats them if they look tasty or makes them his slaves if they don't. I stayed up all night last year watching for him!"

Bada nodded, "I know. He tried to come last year but there are so many who need him sometimes he can't. And it makes him feel awful."

"He was going to come take me last year?"

"Oh no dear, your parents have that part wrong. Krampus doesn't come for the children. He comes for the parents who ill treat them. And you, my darling, have parents who have ill treated you." Baba looked at the darkening sky, "As soon as the sun sets he will get to work. And your parents were top of the list this year."

"So if he takes them, what happens to me?"

Baba smiled, "You come live with me. I have a big house, with a lot of children, unfortunately."

"You don't want a lot of children?"

"Oh no, child, I mean it's unfortunate that there is a need for me to have so many. I love all of them, I just wish that there wasn't a need for so many to live with their grandmother. But until that time, Krampus and I work together."

She thought about what Baba was telling her. She knew that she should probably be scared. That something bad was going to happen to her parents. Then she thought of all the times she was punished for running, or yelling, or getting her clothes dirty, or looking at them "that way" or just being nearby when they felt like hitting someone. She realized she was less scared to leave with Baba than she was to go home. 

She doesn't remember exactly where those woods were, but they were close enough to her house that she heard Krampus' chains jingle when he walked up the driveway and she heard her parents cussing him and threatening him. Then Baba had held out her hand and they had walked away before she heard anything else. 

She was five when Krampus came to visit her parents and she came to live with Baba Yaga, it was the best Christmas ever. 

Last Push...

Well here we go. Last day and I am short 2,350 words. That's actually a lot of words. Holy smokes. 

But then again it's not an unreachable amount of words so I'm going to try and get them in. 

I don't have a single post in mind to make that push though so I'm going to do a collection of random rants. 

I can't decide if I should do them each as a separate post or just one long massive blog. I think separate posts would be easier for later. And maybe easier on all of you who do read these. You don't have to commit to one long read that way. But then again it's not like you have to commit to finishing anything I post. Or even starting so maybe one long post is easier after all. 

Okay. That settles it. I've managed to pad a few more words in there by planning "out loud" and I've settled on one long post, with subheads so those will count as well. Ha!

That's In The Story...

I wrote yesterday (and I have before) about how it sucks to be friends with someone who writes because you end up in the story. Or you end up being the subject of a ranting blog. But sometimes it sucks to be friends with someone who writes because you are sure you are the inspiration for a story and well, you aren't. 

Quite a few years ago I wrote a short piece and right after posting I got a message from a then friend of mine who was pissed. Like genuinely livid about it. They couldn't believe I had written that about them. I told them it wasn't. They told me that they had sent it to a friend of theirs to read and that friend had agreed that the story was about them. 

Well, okay then, I mean if you read it and he read it and you both decided it was about you then who am I, the person who wrote it, to disagree? 

And for a bit they honestly thought that answer was me agreeing it was about them. 

Except I pointed out that the person in the story wasn't a great person. They had done something fairly awful to someone else. So why would they think it was their story? (I'm not linking the story because I don't want to embarass them if someone figures out who it is who thought it was them by reading it now) They told me it was clearly them because that's what they had done to their partner and again, how dare I turn that into a story. 

Well, okay, I could see how that would make them really mad. Except I didn't know until right then that they had done something like that. 

Whoops. 

In fact it had been inspired by someone else and their shitty partner, but I didn't tell them who, even though the person who inspired it I had cleared the story idea with. Because it had been a shitty thing, and yet, it inspired a pretty solid story. And for the record she was cool with it as long as it was clear the partner in the story was a shitty shitty person. 

The person who was mad at me? Their response? They unfriended me and I haven't heard from them since. My guess is they either didn't believe me that they had never told me about the shitty thing, or they realized that now I knew they had done a really shitty thing to someone. Any sort of sympathy I had felt for them around their split was gone. If they had done something similar to what I wrote about then they deserved the ugly break up. 

Be careful when you assume the story is about you. 

I've also had people who really wanted me to write about them. And I've done that too. Usually in nonfiction posts. I did write one kind of tongue in cheek fiction piece about someone who wanted me to write a fiction piece with them as the main character. They also weren't really happy about what I wrote, but it could have been worse. They could have been dead all along. 

But normally when you show up in a post it's not by request. And I'd caution you from assuming that anything you read is about you. Or at least don't tell me it's about you. Because it might not have been. But next time it will be...

I'm Not a Racist But...

Short quick rant here. I've written about this exact same thing before. There is no way to end a sentence that starts with "I'm not a racist but..." and have it go well. It's either that everything following the but is completely racist or it will be innocuous but because you prefaced it with I'm not a racist but it will leave people trying to figure out why what you said could ever be construed as racist. 

This applies to any term like that. I'm not a bigot but...I'm not a homophobe but...I'm not a transphobe but...I'm not a misogynist but...I'm not a complete asshole but...

There is no where to go from that start that is good. You are trying to absolve yourself in the same way that "no offense" is used. It does the opposite. It's a bright yellow sticky note on your words. PAY ATTENTION TO THIS SHITTY POINT OF VIEW

If you find yourself tempted to use the expression, stop, and consider why you would. Why do you think what you are about to say could be construed as racist? (Or any of the other things mentioned) And then take that apart and figure out where you are wrong. Because you are. I can pretty much guarantee it. 

Speaking Of Assholes...

Can we all just agree to stop even mentioning cancel culture as if it were a real thing that happens? I mean what do you need to see? Louis CK and Dave Chappelle getting Grammy nominations for Comedy Albums? Or Dave Chappelle selling out arenas on his latest tour? Or hosting Saturday Night Live where he started his opening monolog with the equivalent of "I'm not anti semitic but.." (see previous subsection) Or Kevin Spacey just getting hired for a new movie? You know the list goes on and on. 

Cancel culture is not a real thing. Nobody gets cancelled. The worst that happens to them is they get paused. Or in Chappelle's case people say they don't like him. (Everybody gasp) and NOTHING changes for him. 

It's not a thing. 

Stop acting like it is. 

Me saying I don't like Chappelle because he's a transphobe who also does a lot of anti semitic rants that he calls jokes doesn't make him cancelled. It makes him not for me. It makes him someone that if you promote him you are not for me. That's not cancelled, that's choosing who you spend your time with.

I used to say it should be called consequences culture. That you can't just be an asshole without repercussions anymore. But there are not real consequences either so that doesn't even work. I mean, I get it, if you've never had to deal with someone telling you that you are an asshole and you actually have scores of people around you telling you how awesome you are, that lone voice coming at you saying you're an asshole can be really shocking. But oh the fuck well. 

If you care about the fact that you're being an asshole change. If you don't then don't. But don't clutch your pearls and wail about cancel culture. NOBODY GETS CANCELLED. 

Ugh.

Speaking Of Pains in the Ass...

My sciatica has been acting up. It's so bad I can't get a full night's sleep. Which led to me seeing all but one game of the early round stages in the World Cup. Now that they are showing two at once I am missing more, but I think at this point I've seen each team play at least once. So that's a bright side. 

Being up at 4 AM every day because I can't stand it anymore (if I make it to 4 it's actually a decent night, yesterday it was 2) is the sucky part. 

I have been prone to it since I was pregnant with Katie. She would do this neat trick where she would stretch out and stomp on the nerve, my leg would collapse, and down I would go. Which honestly that was a lot better than what it turned into as I aged. Where when it's inflamed it pinches off and I get pain from my ass to my ankle. Okay, I won't exaggerate, mid calf, it just didn't have as nice of a flow. 

I have a really high pain threshold but this just overrides it all. What a lousy design decision to put a thick nerve in an area so prone to pinching. Another reason why I question the existence of an intelligent designer.

Because Brent has had Covid I haven't gone to the chiropractor to see if an adjustment would help. But today he tested negative so I've called and left a message for them. Fingers crossed (but not legs) that they can fit me in soon! 

And Speaking of Being Well Adjusted...

Reading my past on this day posts and I have to say it's no wonder some of my friends are waiting for me to start my cult already. I swear over the years I've posted some grade A bullshit. Okay, maybe not bullshit. Because I really do believe in what I say, but at times I'm pretty good at weaving together a positive out of a negative. A life lesson out of a normal drive across town. Meaning from the mundane.

I'm a ray of fucking sunshine. 

Even though I am pretty sarcastic and dark. Not like absence of all light dark, but a really lovely black sequined dress dark. Dark but with sparkles!

I do feel really lucky that I can manage my swings with food and exercise and writing to get the ghosts out of my head and reading to put them back in. I am really lucky that I have people in my life that notice when those things aren't working and keep an eye on me. 

I lean toward the positive.
I prefer to be happy. 

I would consider myself well adjusted. 

Ish.

I mean, I take pretty good care of my health. But I would eat nothing but junk food if I could get away with it and if there was a health pill you could take I would never step foot in another gym. Ever. I love everyone. But I'd rather not hang out if you don't mind. I am open to hearing about your life. But I'm really quick to sniff out a scam and honestly I don't really trust you in general. I like to look on the bright side. But I'm not terribly surprised when things go to shit. 

But maybe all of that is why I'm well adjusted? I'm balanced. I teeter between Pollyanna and Wednesday Addams and it works for me. 

And my chiropractor just called and can see me tomorrow so maybe I'll really be well adjusted then!

Christmas Is Coming...

We haven't really decorated for the past two years. We had just gotten the kittens in 2020 and Tig was still recovering from his broken leg. Just seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. We would do it in 2021 when they had calmed down a little. 

Yeah, no. We put out a couple of things, a ceramic Christmas tree with plastic lights, you've seen them. And we spent a month with the very festive, "Tig! No! Don't chew on the lights!" wishes tripping from our tongues. We'd for sure decorate again in 2022, in the new house, once the cats had calmed down.

And here we are. 

Feliway percolating from multiple plugs with the spray on hand for emergencies. CBD gel to rub in his ears to get him to settle down and stop LITERALLY climbing the curtains. He chews on everything. He climbs everything. He is a one cat wrecking crew that is apparently never going to stop being a destruction machine. 

So...decorating. Brent is all for doing it anyway. "we can't live our lives hostage to a cat" Oh can't we? I mean we kind of do. 

Don't get me wrong, he's the sweetest boy. He really is. Cuddles and purrs so loudly you can feel it not just hear it. He loves to be carried around (remnants of the broken leg we think) and snuggle and play. 

But oh my god he's a mess. 

So I'm in that zone of trying to decide what to put out for Christmas. What would make me really sad if he ruined it? What would be least likely to be broken? And what fits where? We never did finish buying furniture and shelves so I don't really even have places to put out the dozens of Santas I own, even if I trusted Tig to stay off the naughty list. 

Hmm...For sure 2023 will be a decorating year again!

Speaking of Christmas Miracles...

I'm not sure if this writing exercise helped loosen up the words again. I'm hopeful that it did. Especially since it was such a rough month and I still sat down to write more days than I didn't. I still was able to pull out a few fiction pieces, even if one of them was fictionish. 

But here we are, a wrap on WriSoMoNo. It was the most random of Totally Random But...finishes but I'm giving myself grace. November ended up being a mess of a month. My cold, Brent's Covid, losing Kevin, not sleeping due to grief and physical pain. World Cup marathon watches... It's been a lot. 

But we made it. Goooooaaalllll!!!

That totally would have been a perfect place to end this, but I was still 14 words short so...

What the...

 READ THIS FIRST!

She remembered when she had seen the notification. Gooseflesh raised on her arms and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. 

Dana had texted Denise: "Wtf is this?"

There was a screenshot attached that Kevin had liked a post of hers. It wouldn't have been out of the ordinary for him to do so, except he had been dead for a week and the post he liked was the memorial she had done. 

Dana read Denise's first response, clearly she hadn't noticed that the picture of the post was the memorial because her first answer was about timelines. But she also saw the three dots meaning Denise was doing her normal, respond, think, then clarify, way of texting. One of these days she might start thinking first but Dana wasn't going to hold her breath. 

Denise: I think his brother must be using his account. 

Then a few seconds later she sent a screenshot of Kevin liking her post as well. 

Denise: Yeah, that has to be it. 

She had been relieved for an explanation that made sense and even if it wasn't that at least they were both being haunted at the same time. 

A little while later Kevin's brother posted from Kevin's account. He wanted to reach out to all of his friends and let them know how much they were all appreciated. How much the family had taken comfort from seeing how many people had loved him. So that was it.

It had been a really hard time. None of them knew exactly how to process what happened. Where to put the loss. He had been young. He had been so very alive. For it to happen suddenly on one hand and also for it to have taken a few days before they all found out made it even more surreal. 

It was a sneaky grief too. Since they were all so far apart there wasn't a funeral or memorial service for them all to put closure on. There was no gravesite for them to pour out a beer on or leave some wrapping papers and an impossible to open plastic clamshell. Just random thoughts of "oh Kevin would like this" or pictures of kittens that looked like Murph. 

Moments where you would just have to sit down and wait for the wave to wash over you. 

It had been a hard stretch. But at least that one piece had a simple explanation. 

Kevin wasn't really on Facebook. He wasn't there anymore. It was his brother. 

Simple explanation. Even if Denise had to answer, think, clarify, to get there. 

Dana wasn't sure if the voicemails she had started to get would be as simple. 

WARNING

Okay, you all know I don't usually give trigger warnings. In fact you know I don't like them at all. I've talked about it a lot. That for the style of writing I do a trigger warning could absolutely wreck the story. Ruin the twist. Give away the ending. They don't work for how I write. 

I also don't like them because I think they can make anxiety worse. For instance we saw Jagged Little Pill last week and there was a trigger warning (quite a few warnings actually) about sexual assault. So I knew it was coming. And I worried in almost every scene, was this it? What this the person who was assaulted? Was this the person who assaults someone? Are they going to show the assault or just talk about it? How traumatic will it be? Did I bring tissues? Is it going to trigger a new round of nightmares?

So not only was there the actual event and fall out there was the added bonus of knowing it was coming and laying that over everything else. 

And I get it for a lot of people they don't want to be reminded of trauma and a trigger warning would save them. But for me? It just makes it worse. 

So I tend to not use them. 

Except today I am.

I told you all that I write to process and that I would be writing about Kevin for a long time. Today is no exception. Except it is. 

The problem with being friends with a writer is that they write. Every situation that you are in with them gets tucked away and used. It could be something as simple as an expression on your face or how you order your coffee, but it all becomes something else. The short story I'm writing today could not have been more tailor made for me as a writing prompt if someone had tried. I'm not even going to change Dana and my names. I mean, partly because I fucking hate making up names, but partly because she's going to recognize the conversation anyway so why try to pretend? I mean, honestly when we were having it she was probably thinking, "oh this is a Denise writing prompt for sure."

And it's not going to be the last time this happens. 

Another mutual friend of ours wrote about Kevin that he had inspired a character in one of her books. I could see that. I've written characters that had a lot of his traits as well. I am sure that he will pop up in a lot of my future stories. And probably Dana's as well. He would fit in her fictional universes perfectly. Because Kevin was the best character in real life. He just was. And the Kevin Architype will live on in the fiction of his friends.

But this piece? This coming short story? It's probably too soon. And it's fictionish. I mean it's going to start with an actual event and I will be filling in people's feelings and thoughts. Like anything I credit to Dana thinking is just me living in her head for a bit. So don't blame her. 

I could save it for later. I could tuck it away for a more appropriate time. I could try not to offend people who will think it's too soon to turn an aspect of his death into fodder for fiction. But anyone who is worried about other people being too soft and easily offended didn't really understand him anyway. So...

Or I could just be justifying it. 

Or I could believe in a part of my brain that he gifted me this. I needed one last fiction piece to reach my goal. This is in my wheelhouse so firmly that if you know what I am talking about you already know how it ends before I've even written a word. (the problem with trigger warnings) I know it's not logical at all but it feels right. 

It feels like as I was debating it a gravel throated voice said, "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. We think we're fucking hilarious."

And we do. 

It won't be the last time he shows up. But next time I'll change his name. Maybe he'll become Mac. Nobody would get that connection right? 

Reconsider...

The saying is that when you die your life flashes before your eyes. I'm not sure about that. I've had a couple of near death experiences and that didn't happen for me. Maybe because it wasn't my time? But I think maybe because people have gotten the experience wrong. 

I think when someone else dies your life starts to play out in your head. I think, especially if the person was young, or you were close, or it was unexpected, or all of those things, you start to take stock of your own life. 

That's where the whole bucket list idea came from right? People realizing they aren't going to live forever and there were things they wanted to do. That movie of their life wasn't complete. They wanted some more scenes.

Or more peace. 

Or more love.

Or less stress. 

I think when someone else dies you get really reflective and cannot help but look at your own life. If you died tomorrow what would you regret?

What can you change right now to make it better?

I re-evaluate all of the time. It's not really a new thing for me. You all know that. I do not live an unexamined life. But even so there are things that I put on the back burner, or I let slide, or I talk myself into or out of. Either doing them or not doing them. 

But death changes things. 

Especially when it's unexpected. 
And the person is young.
And you were close. 

It makes you stop and look at what you are doing. 

Partly because grief is like molasses. It slows everything down. Giant chunks of time just ooze by while you sit and stare at a wall. 

And all of that slowed down time makes you think about what you are happy about breaking you out of your ruminations and what you are pissed about doing the same. 

So I've been thinking about things. 

The people who light up my soul. And the people who make my stomach burn with acid. 

Things that make my face open up and soften. Things that make my face do that my face thing.

I have known for awhile that I was craving a change to my routines. That I needed to let some things go, and to embrace some others. 

I just got a brutal reminder that it would be a good idea to live the life I want while I have the chance. 

Looking ahead at 2023. Maybe not so much goals as just changes. 

More of this. 
Less of that.

Life is short. Sometimes it's much shorter than we had planned. 

Time to get moving. 

Home Cooking...

She checked her spice rack. She had read that if you couldn't remember when you bought a spice you should throw it out. Even if technically they didn't really go bad. They were dried, would keep forever, but they lost their potency. Her mother used to go by the "if you can't smell it you can't taste it" rule for what she kept and used. Her grandmother grew everything in her garden and just picked it fresh to use or dry for later in the season. She had always wondered who had time for that anymore?

Okay well, some people had time for it. They made time for it. Treated it as a hobby. So many of the things her grandmother did to just run the house were now hobbies for her friends. Quilting, knitting, gardening, sewing. Her mother had learned how to do all of those things growing up and had abandoned them as quickly as she could. If you could buy it she didn't make it. From clothes to food.

Except for the big holiday meals. Those she had still done from scratch. Some things she felt were too important to leave to strangers. 

But the rest she had stopped doing and had never bothered to teach her daughters. 

Much to her grandmother's consternation. 

What would happen if they needed to make an outfit? Or knit a blanket? Or tend a garden? If they didn't know how then how would they survive?

She had finally explained to her grandmother that it just wasn't practical anymore to do everything from scratch. Even if she had the time, she didn't have the money. What her grandmother had always done to be frugal was now the indulgent way. She could buy an entire outfit, a few outfits from H&M for less than the price as the material to make one. That was without even taking in to consideration the cost of a sewing machine, and the time to do it. Her grandmother had just shaken her head. 

But she had still kept up cooking the big holiday meals. She had helped her mother, and her grandmother. She knew how to make a turkey and dressing. She knew the secret blend of herbs and spices that had been handed down for generations. She knew better than to suggest that they change even a single side dish. Their family dinners were steeped in tradition. Her grandmother had once shown her the original recipe books. The list of seasonings the same that they used now. 

Rosemary
Sage
Garlic
Salt

The handwriting was old. Clearly a fountain pen. Or maybe a quill. Ink spots in places. Areas that had gotten wet and run. Things that were added at different times. The original writing just had the lists of herbs and seasonings. Rofemary. The next bit was amounts. Then a few more notes. Finally came the re-copied recipe cards her grandmother still used to this day. Not that she didn't have them memorized but she said she liked seeing her mother's handwriting every holiday, it made it feel like she was still there with them. 

That was who copied them down in to their current format. Her great grandmother. When her great great grandmother was still doing the cooking she still used the original lists. It was her grandmother's mother who brought them into the days of modern spelling and full recipes. 

And now it was her turn to bring them all into the digital age. She was going to transfer all of those recipes into her online files, that way she could pull them up on her kitchen iPad with the rest of her recipes and YouTube videos on things like how to spatchcock a chicken, if she had ever actually decided to do that, that is. She had thought she might someday. Maybe brave the ire of her mother and grandmother and make chicken instead of turkey for Thanksgiving. Or a steak instead of salt rubbed ham on Christmas. That's what she had thought.

But either way she had decided to digitize the recipe cards. First she tried just scanning them in but the ink was so light on some of them that they wouldn't transfer so she was hand typing them in. 

Or she had been.

She had started with the list of ingredients. The seasoning blend. She had somehow gotten distracted and instead of filling in the blank note card section on her recipe program she had typed them into the search field. And instead of returning recipes with those ingredients Google had taken her to a site on witchcraft and given her the instructions for the spell she had just started. 

Apparently the seasoning blend her family used for their turkey was also the ingredient list for a spell of protection from ill health. 

When she decided to enter the list for the salt rubbed ham she got back a warding spell to protect the perimeter of a household.

The seasoning used for apple pies was for peace in the house. 

Pumpkin pie blend was for strength of character.

These weren't originally recipes for cooks, these were spells for witches. 

Her great great great grandmother was a witch. 

From grandmother to grandmother. Mother to daughter those spells had been passed down.

And eventually her grandmothers had turned those spells into recipes.

Every generation creating the same recipes, following the same spells as the one before.

Her grandmother was a witch.

Her mother was a witch.

She was a witch.

She Googled Kitchen Witch and got 51 million results. 

Apparently this was not new information.

That's what had led her to her spice rack. She was going to be more careful where she bought her ingredients from here on out. Imagine if an unscrupulous company used the wrong plant just because it was less expensive. The whole family could suffer, and not just from dinner not tasting good. 

As she looked over her spices her mind started to wander. 

Oh. 

She called her grandmother, "Will you teach me how to tend to an herb garden? I think I'd like to grow my own seasonings. And do more of my own cooking."

She listened to her grandmother. 

"Oh no real reason, just thought maybe it was important to know what I was eating a little more than I can in a restaurant. You know, just good health stuff."

Her grandmother did know. She had always tried to impress upon her own children the importance of knowing who was cooking for you. Who was sewing what patterns into your quilts. Who was creating knots in the threads of your clothes. This new generation was starting to get back to the old ways. A few of them starting to understand that there were a lot of ways to measure costs. 

And that witchcraft was a mighty fine hobby indeed. 

We Had Plans...

A friend of mine died earlier this week. I didn't find out until yesterday. Another friend went to his facebook page because he hadn't posted anything in a few days and that was odd. She found the post from his brother letting people know what had happened and then posted on her own page that he was gone. 

When I first saw her post, the picture of the two of them and the message that she would always miss him I didn't quite put it together. That always part. 

See when you have friends all over the world you do always miss them. The physical presence of them. Like the holiday yesterday (even though 80% of my list doesn't celebrate that one) there was no big communal meal. No dessert train house party. Just the virtual check ins that we are all really used to. And it works for all of us. I've held hands with someone from thousands of miles away. I've hugged people on Monday who were already on Tuesday. But not the physical touch. 

Not the warmth of a body in your house. 

The peaceful feeling of breathing the same air. Hearts beating in sync as you sit together. 

So you see, missing someone is a thing we all do a lot. 

But this was always. 

I read it a few more times trying to get it to sink in. My subscious was getting it long before my "logical" brain could work it out. Because I was already sobbing. I went and found the post from his brother and read that a few times as well. Trying to absorb the impossible. 

He couldn't be dead because we had plans. 

We were going to watch hockey together. Or skaty icy punch as he called it. We were going to cook together. Or I was going to watch while he cooked for me. He was going to count the number of words he could get Brent to say and try to break 100. We were going to get a beer together and since I don't like beer that meant he could have two and of course we would need to do this for a few rounds. And next year was the perfect year for it all. There would be a stretch were I was 55 and he was 44 and he knew I'd really dig that, so it was perfect. 

Because that was his way. What do you dig? Let me share that with you. He would send videos that made him think of you. He would send messages when the clock hit a time that made him think of you. And he didn't just do this for me. He did this for everyone. He had that sort of personal, you are important to me in ways no one else is, connection with everyone. Everyone felt like they were special to him. 

And everyone was. 

And he was to everyone.

He told great stories about his day to day life. You all know I appreciate a picture with words. He could do that. And a lot of his stories were my favorite kind. The kind with a good twist. Even though I already knew the twist I still loved these stories. See, he was a long haired, steel toed boot, wallet on a chain, voice like a throat full of gravel scary looking guy. Who made sure old ladies got groceries when it was snowing. Who helped people when they were short a few dollars at the register. Who gave up half of his lunch so the homeless guy in the alley could eat. He was the good in the world. That was the twist. 

Don't judge a book by its cover. You don't know the depths of love that can be held in a skinny as fuck frame. 

So many of us were concerned about what would happen when Murphy died. She was his 20 year old cat. Named after the Dropkick Murphys (another point on the line that let me know early on that we were going to be great friends).Murphy and George had been close to the same age. And Murph was the only grown cat that could make him look huge. She is a tiny little thing. Perpetual kitten. And when we lost George 7 years ago Kevin would send me messages with close up concerned face photos of Murph to check in. That's Kevin. He would tell you what an asshole he was while being just the sweetest person you could imagine. 

A few years ago a woman broke his heart. Twice. The second time she did it I was talking to him via PM and Brent looked at me and said, "No." I hadn't been talking about loud so I wasn't sure what he was telling me no about. He said, "You are not driving to Canada to kick her ass." Seems though I wasn't using my outside my head voice my face was speaking loudly. And yes, I was feeling like I needed to take a road trip. I wasn't going to kick her ass, I was just going to have a conversation with her about what would happen if she ever fucked with him again. It would be her call what happened next. 

He was one of mine. 

He was one of ours. 

But we had plans so it couldn't be true. 

And that's where my head keeps going back to. We had plans. Like that should matter. Like somehow if you have plans you cannot die. You cannot leave until they are completed.

But we all know that's not true. 

So many of us are going to miss his so very deeply. He had a bigger impact on so many lives than I think he had any idea about. I asked a friend of ours if she thought he knew, and she said that even if we had told him he wouldn't have believed it. 

You never know what your presence in someone's life means to them. 
You never know how important you really are in the world. 
You never know how deeply you will be missed. 

He was the good in the world. 
He was the help in the cold. 
He was the food for the hungry. 
He was the thinking of you and hope you are well post. 

A friend of ours said "We should all go out and be Kevin."

I think that's the best legacy he could have left. 

Be more Kevin. 
The world needs more Kevin.

I love you, Kev. I'll miss you for always. 

And I love you all as well. 

Couldn't Hide Forever...

It's been a long time since I had an installment of the Pandemic Diaries. 

We had thought we might be the odd ones out. Neither Brent nor I had ever tested positive. Even with him travelling during the peak of it all. Katie had a telemed diagnosis early on in 2020 but never actually had a test (there weren't ones yet) and thinks she probably didn't actually have it considering what else we learned about symptoms and duration later. 

People all around us caught it. We lost family and friends at the beginning to it. Our friends who hadn't caught it before started catching it this summer as the new variants hit. We know a few people who have had it repeatedly, but not us. Still Covid free heading into 2023!

And then...

I was sick a couple of weeks ago. Nasty head cold. Congestion and some lethargy. A little touch of laryngitis. Brent never caught my cold and I tested a few times with no Covid. Then Sunday he started to get a pull in his throat. We were trying to figure out if it was my cold. It would have been about 14 days after I first got symptoms but maybe it was that long of a gestation? But then his symptoms started to progress in a different way. Fever when I didn't have one. Really intense congestion where I had a congestion but also a runny nose. And I felt bad the first day of full blown symptoms then progressively better each day after whereas he's felt progressively worse each day. 

And then this morning he had a fever of 102. 

Took his third Covid test since Sunday and this one came back positive. 

Well hell. 

We did not escape the germs. 

Got Dr. McCormick on the phone and did a telehealth visit and she called in a Paxlovid prescription for him. He'll start that tonight and hopefully by tomorrow night will feel much better. 

And hopefully Katie and I don't catch it. 

We aren't doing the isolation thing. Figure he was probably the most contagious Sunday and Monday before he really got cooking on symptoms and we have all been around each other the whole time. The house is also all one floor, all one ventilation system so it's not like we have someplace to go where germs won't drift. We are fully vaxxed and fairly healthy so if we get it, we get it. 

It would be a bummer considering we are heading into a holiday weekend so she and I might not be able to get the Paxlovid, but that's the way the nose runs sometimes. 

I'm also glad that Katie and I chose to wear our masks this week as we ran errands everywhere. With Brent having a cold we figured even though he was at home we could be contagious so it was the polite thing to do. Now that I know he has Covid not a cold I'm really glad we went with polite. 

Which, honestly, it bums me out that more people aren't following that rule. We hear people out now all the time just coughing and snuffling and no masks in sight. We learned nothing from the past few years. Except that protecting people from your germs is somehow not your job?

I don't get it. I don't think I ever will get it. 

Not like Covid...which it looks like I'm totally going to get. 

Nothing like finishing the challenge writing fever dream fiction! 

Good luck to us all... 

Straight Hate...

We used to live in Colorado Springs. I hated it there. From almost the moment we arrived until we left. I've written about it before. That there were some really good things that happened because we were in Colorado Springs and even with those positives I hated it there. 

When we got back to Portland I was walking to lunch with a co-worker who had been at a friend of his going away party the night before. He said that it was funny and a weird coincidence considering we had just moved back but she was moving to Colorado Springs. I told him that I knew it was probably too late but that he should tell her that if she liked it in Portland she was going to hate it in Colorado Springs. She did. And she moved back as well.

I knew I would love our realtor down there when she pulled up in a car that had a bumper sticker reading "Focus On Your Own Family" She knew that it would actually limit her customer base and put it on there anyway. Outstanding. 

The number of times I got to answer the question "And where do you all go to church?" lead me to come up with more and more creative answers depending on my mood. The quick one was "We don't." the I'm already tired of you one was "God and I have a deal, he doesn't come in to my house and I don't go into his." And then there was the Boy Scouts discussion as to why my child wasn't going to join. Everyone was in the Boy Scouts. Well, everyone who wasn't gay that is and as long as they were going to discriminate I was going to be discriminating. 

We were living in Colorado Springs on 9/11. I did not immediately run out and buy a giant flag magnet to put on my car. I didn't get the window flags. I didn't put multiple flags out on my lawn. I didn't put on a flag lapel pin. I didn't start singing "God Bless the USA" while in line for groceries. And I got called a few names because of it. Even though I come from a multi-generational military family. But, you know, buy the flags or the terrorists win. 

What I'm saying is that Colorado Springs was so conservative it chaffed. I was never comfortable there. I was always on edge. Waiting for the conversation to turn to an area where I was going to be the lone voice in the room saying, "Well...no." The home of the Air Force Academy. The home of Focus on the Family. Which at the time was really pushing gay conversion therapy. 

I mean right up until one of their lead ministers was found in a hotel room in Denver with a young man. 

Which is so fucking typical it's almost expected now. The harder, louder, and more passionate they are about preaching against homosexuality the more you are pretty sure they are deep in the closet. Or not so deep. Only in the closet on Sunday mornings, but oh those Saturday nights...

If you talk to a trans person who is political they will let you know that the end game of the conservative agenda is their death. And the first time you hear that you sort of balk. Like, "no, that's not right they just..." and then you break it down. What do they just, exactly?

Like Texas. When they passed their trans exclusion laws for school sports they didn't have enough votes to override a veto. Which Abbot did. He made a speech about the high suicide rate among trans kids. About how if they have someplace they can feel safe and like they belong those rates plummet. And that school sports is one of those spaces. Even just knowing they could play makes a difference though he had looked into it and it was going to target something like 3 students in their whole school system. Three kids in all of Texas. And he felt the damage, the potential for higher numbers of suicides was much higher than the potential damage of a cis girl missing a spot on a team because a trans girl got it. Once he laid out the compassionate, this will cause the deaths of trans kids arguments the Republicans gained enough votes to override the veto. 

Just excluding kids from sports wasn't quite enough. Being told it might actually cause a few of them to kill themselves? Well that was great. 

And I mean, it's not just sports. It's also about bathrooms right? And safety concerns. Which, you know what? I totally get it. Yesterday Katie and I went to the movies. Long movie and we both needed the restroom after it was over. One of us went pee, washed their hands and then took the measure of everyone else in the bathroom at that moment. Sizing up everyone. Who would be a challenge in a physical confrontation and who would go down easily? Which person would be the one who needed taken down first? One of us was ready just incase yesterday someone chose violence. I mean, it wasn't Katie. She did something so weird, according to conservatives, she went pee, washed her hands and left. Didn't even consider for a second if the younger woman or the older woman with the big purse would be more of a challenge. Hunh...

And Republicans aren't even happy with just excluding trans kids from sports and monitoring where they pee they want to make sure that they are denied medical care. Again, study after study shows that gender affirming care saves lives. Even just something as simple as calling someone by the name they prefer and using the pronouns they prefer can make a difference. That's without any medical intervention at all. Which a lot of trans kids don't do any sort of physical intervention, but the laws that are being passed prevent any and all treatment. Not just the very scary sounding surgeries, but all gender affirming care. Which would include counseling, unless, of course it was conversion therapy style counseling. 

I was reading a "very concerned" article yesterday about people de-transitioning. And how we need to make sure our kids aren't becoming trans as a trend. Which, you know, if it were a sincere concern I'd entertain a discussion on it. But they tell on themselves when you read their arguments. This was about a trend upward in numbers of AFBs transitioning. And top surgery in particular. They had their poster child for regretting it, she had transitioned as a teen and her problems did not go away once she changed her name and pronouns and has de-transitioned and now regretted getting top surgery. She was never going to be able to breastfeed a child should she have one now. 

But the problem with their won't someone think of the children argument is she had her top surgery at 18. 

She wouldn't have been "saved" from these laws making it illegal for parents and doctors and kids to make their own choices. 

So weird that they are so concerned about top surgery for an 18 year old but not out protesting a 16 year old getting a boob job for her birthday. Or a 17 year getting one for high school graduation. I mean, talk about sexualizing our kids. Where is your outrage here? 

And, again, I'm sorry she regrets her choice. But it was her choice. And she's alive to regret it. 

When you trot out a story about someone who regrets their transition but ignore that people who feel they cannot transition are more likely to take their own lives you are telling me that are more worried about a cis kid with regrets than a dead trans kid. 

The end game of the Republican Conservative Trans Agenda is the death of trans people. 

And when they constantly trot out the "groomer" lines about trans and gay people, when they clutch their pearls and fret over drag queen story hours, when they bang the drum about how the LGBTQ+ community is COMING FOR YOUR CHILDREN they get the death they so crave. 

They get people with guns going to gay clubs and shooting the place up. 

They get kids who are so scared about telling their conservative parents that they are the thing they hate that they choose death.

I was a teenager in the 80s. I heard, in my own church, the almost gleeful tones of AIDS being God's punishment for the gays. Better dead. I've read and heard speeches by today's GOP of groomers and molesters and men in dresses hiding in bathrooms. Better dead. I've seen the "thoughts and prayers" posts after the shooting on Saturday but not the "I will search my heart and change my rhetoric"ones. Better dead.

Pay attention to what is being said. To what the end game is. It will make you sick to your stomach. Or it should anyway. 

I hated living in Colorado Springs. I wish it was only Colorado Springs that was this hateful. 

That's Tight...

Okay, I swear this isn't an advertisement. 

For those of you that follow me on Facebook or Instagram or talk to me in the offline world you know I love Snag tights. When I was working in advertising I wore skirts and tights all winter and skirts and fishnets all summer. So I know from uncomfortable tights. But Snags are super comfy. Soft and stretchy and they don't tend to roll down like other brands. And they come in multiple thicknesses and colors and patterns. 

I post about them a lot. 

They also have a couple of groups for people who buy their tights to post outfits they've put together and I love those groups. Everyone in them is just lovely to each other. Really supportive and amazing. It's almost like it's not even on the internet. 

This morning a woman who posts semi-regularly posted a shot of what she wore last night on stage. She had some pictures of her outfit, then of her dressed up and one of her sitting on stage. In the outfit shot she included her book bag she was taking on stage with her because she loved how it matched the pattern in her skirt. So I thought, wait...and googled her name. She's a published author. Like multiple books. She also makes a living writing book reviews for The Guardian and The New York Times (among other publications). Wow... 

Now it's not actually all that shocking to see a performer posting in either of the groups. There are a lot of singers and stage actors and quite a few Drag Queens. But the thing that kind of shocked me is that when this woman started posting she was incredibly self conscious. She still does the semi-apology half the time. "Liked this color combination forgive the hairstyle" She is doing something, that to me, seems beyond brave and she's still self conscious about how the world sees her. 

There is nothing harder (again for me) than to unleash your words on the world. Fiction for me is harder than nonfiction, but it's all difficult. If I bake something and it doesn't turn out well I can blame the recipe or the ingredients or even the oven. If I sing a song and it doesn't sound perfect I can blame the music, or the acoustics. But when I write? That's all me. Every word on the page is there because I put it there. When I write nonfiction it's because something moved me to the point where I had to share it. When I write fiction I have created an entire slice of a world and put it out there. 

It's hard to press publish. Or send in the work to a contest. Or to an editor. Or to an open call at a publisher. It's hard to put that out in the world. It's part of why I stopped submitting. When I write these blogs and publish them I know that a small handful of people are going to read them. I also know that that small handful is here by choice. They understand me more than the world in general does. I also know that even with that, some of what I write is met with an "I don't get it" or worse, silence. 

But this woman has written multiple books. She was on a stage in a theater last night talking about her work. She writes for major news publications where other people seek out her opinion and trust what she tells them. She is the pinnacle of bravery for me and yet...she still worries about how the world sees her in her brightly colored tights and skirts. 

Aint that something?

Brent talks about how I am the oddest blend of supremely confident and insecure. Sometimes about the exact same thing in the space of a single sentence. And it's true. I can absolutely come across that way. But the real truth is I'm not all that confident about anything, well, except for the things I'm completely secure in. So yeah...

I just thought it was a great moment to remember that you don't know what other people are feeling or going through. Like I am sure the audience last night that paid to hear this woman talk about her latest book saw her on stage with a cute skirt, and fun tights with hearts on them and her book bag that matched everything had no idea that she felt a little insecure about how she looked. I bet that at least one person who saw her up there thought about how much they liked her fun style and wished they had the guts to do it too. 

And if she can fake it, so can you. Get the fun tights. Or the cute skirt. Or the sweater that fits like a cloud is hugging you. Wear what makes you happy. Wear what makes you feel good. And then wear that shit out into the world. Project that level of self love all damn day. 

And, even though this wasn't an advertisement, Snag tights, seriously the best fitting tights and fishnets I've ever worn. 

Stalling...

I'm writing right now instead of working on other things I want to get done today. Because I'm at a time crossroads. The things I need to still do are each going to take a chunk of time to complete. And once I start I don't want to stop. But the patio people are here working on finishing the back porch and I think, hope, assume they will be done soonish. I mean they had 45 minutes or so of work to finish and it's getting close to 3 hours that they've been here so...

I honestly feel really good about myself that I didn't actually laugh at the guy yesterday evening when he said that they had about 45 minutes more work to do to finish up but it was close. 

The work was supposed to be done back in October, but the system comes from Florida and the company that produces it got hit by the hurricane before it was shipped out so it got pushed. Now the original push was to December so when the guy contacted me and was so excited to let me know that it was now going to be November I almost laughed. Yay only a month later than you originally said, not two! But still, good news. They would come Tuesday and it should take about 4 hours or so. 

So Tuesday comes and they aren't here. And they aren't here. And they aren't here. Finally I get a text that they will be here around 11:30. Okay, fine I'd have started first thing in the morning but I guess other work took priority. They finally got here around noon, after a few breaks and lunch and some work getting the framing started, the sun set and it was too dark to finish. They let me know that they had had a few hiccups but would come back first thing Wednesday to finish up. Great. Fine. 

Wednesday they finally showed up around 2 or so. They worked again until dark. This time working about an hour after the sunset. Then let me know that they would be back first thing today to finish up and it would take only about 45 more minutes. Sure...

I guess they've never actually installed one of these systems before and it's a little different than the normal work they do but holy cow has this taken awhile. So I didn't laugh at them but I also didn't expect it would take about 45 minutes more. 

Though over three hours more is a little bit on the outside of even my estimate. 

I've done a few things around the house that were easy enough to stop when they finished but now I'm stuck waiting on them. Which is what happened yesterday. I waited around in the morning instead of going out and running errands so Brent wouldn't have to deal with them while trying to work. It didn't end up working out that way. I ran out of things that I could do here and keep moving forward and really needed to get those errands done so I decided to head out. Then they texted letting me know they were on the way. Fine, I let them know they could just let themselves in to the back yard and if they finished before I got back to knock on the front door and Brent would help them. Not ideal but I figured the odds were I'd get back before they were completely done. 

I mean, I did. And then some.

So here I sit taking the time to waste some time and get in a few words for my day while also trying desperately to hold on to the motivation to get back to cleaning the house when they finally leave. 

Hopefully before it gets dark outside...

Watch Me!

I keep getting sucked into the little videos on Facebook and on Instagram. I have clumsy fingers when I'm scrolling and end up playing them. Which I think they designed it that way. To catch you and then you end up watching. I also watched a few before I realized they weren't friends posting videos, they were random videos Facebook thought I would like. 

And then once you watch one they are like, OH you like this type of video let me show you more!

No. No, I don't. 

I like cute pets doing funny things. But like legit cute and funny, not just oh look my pet is a pet. And I don't need those remixed twenty different times and posted by other people making money off of someone else's videos. That makes me a little cranky too. 

I also have found I like the hairstyling videos. There is something kind of relaxing about watching someone do their hair. Except when it's tense, like someone at home is trying something they saw on a video and you can see it's going to go bad. But I do admire them for their bravery. Even though it's "just hair" and it "will grow back" I am extremely vain about my hair and would never risk it. Though sometimes it's amazing what those home stylists can do.

And then I found out from my friend and stylist Sara that a lot of those home stylists who are like, "Oh let's see what happens!" are actually professionals. She can tell by how they hold their scissors and part their hair. Tricks of the trade and years of experience showing in their videos. But I wouldn't have known because, as I said, I would NEVER.

And some of the little kid videos are cute. But again, so many times someone else lifts that and remixes it and your kid is now being splashed across the internet and you've lost control of their image which means they've lost control of their image and it's a little unsettling. 

But there are huge chunks of them that I hate. That I don't understand why they are out there. Aside from all of the filter ones, I mean like regular people talking on camera about something with their filters running that are changing their faces entirely, and they don't mention it. It was hard enough growing up in the 80s with magazines and advertisement photoshop presenting unattainable bodies, this? This is awful. Like, nobody has a face that smooth and even with "perfectly" applied makeup and a ton of conture you aren't going to ever achieve that. 

But past that and the remixing of other people's work for your own clicks there are ones I hate. 

"Once You See It!" ones. I love a hidden puzzle. Or an optical illusion. I like that sometimes we just flat out don't see something obvious until someone points it out. So I watched a couple of these. And you watch over and over looking for the "once you see it" portion and I could never find it. I was starting to think I was the most unobservant person in the world. Then I finally started reading the comments to find out what I had missed. 

Nothing. 

I had missed nothing. People post random clips of videos with those types of captions and there is nothing there. Just to be dicks. So I hate those. But because I watched like 3 of them before I figured out that they were just dicks Facebook keeps saying, "Here! Look! Once you see it!" Ugh.

And then the ones I really hate. Like a deep personal loathing. Like if I ever see one of these people doing this in public I will say something to them. 

The random acts of kindness videos. 

Shocked? I mean random acts of kindness are my thing. I love giving the compliment or paying the bill or giving the gift. Those are all things I dig. I love the way they make people feel when they receive something out of the blue and that feeling radiates on to me and makes me feel a warm and cuddly. But don't record that shit so other people can watch how great you are. 

I'm going to side trip here for a little bit, so bear with me. 

I think I've written before about paying part of a co-workers phone bill right? She was a single mother who aside from working for D/D (which shared an office space with us before we bought them out) built websites in her spare time. Now this was a long time ago when it was really complicated to build websites so you hired someone to do it instead of plug and play that you do now. It also was in the stone ages when we used to have to do dial up connections for the internet and the phone company charged you long distance for that. Back when the phone company charged you long distance. A long time ago is what I'm saying. 

Well she had mentioned a few times that she was really worried they were going to cut her phone off because she couldn't pay the bill. But if they cut her phone off she couldn't do the work she was doing to make ends meet. Which of course meant she would never get the phone bill paid off to make the money she needed to pay all of the bills. I talked to Brent about it to see what we could afford to help. This was in a time where we were barely making ends meet ourselves. But we were better off than she was. 

I went to phone company to pay what I could. Which ended up being a huge to do and much harder than I thought necessary. I had her name and phone number and address and I only wanted to pay part of her bill. I didn't want to know how much she owed, or when she'd last paid, I just wanted to pay part of her bill, anonymously. Seemed like a simple thing and it really wasn't. Took almost my whole lunch hour and two levels of supervisors to get it done. But I got it done. Paid down what she owed, I couldn't pay it all but I figured any amount would help.

And then I waited for her to tell me all about the great surprise she had when she saw the credit on her bill. And I waited and I waited. She never said anything. And I got a little pissed off. And I was a little pissed off for a good long while until I realized that I was the asshole. You don't do something like that for someone and then expect them to be grateful to you for it. You do something like that for someone because you can. 

Years later I worked through even more complex feelings around it. I had done it anonymously partly because I wanted it to be a surprise and partly because I didn't want her to expect me to do more. I hadn't yet gotten past my religious upbringing mixed with conservative politics. See, that mixture battles itself all the time. The religious part calls you to acts of charity and to help people when they need it. The conservative politics says things like, "if you feed a stray it will keep showing up" which you should know that as soon as you are comparing people to animals you've lost the moral high ground, and yet...

When my sister went on Food Stamps my dad took it as a personal embarrassment. He had barely been able to stand when she got WIC. But that at least was for women and babies so it seemed a little better in his head. Full on benefits was for lazy people who didn't want to work. (Conservative political philosophy) And in our house we fucking worked. 

I know people who know me now as the lady of leisure that I am have a hard time imagining it but I started working at age 6. My father was managing a gas station at the time and my job was to clean the bathrooms. Yep, at 6 years old I was expected to pitch in and help and I got the lovely job of cleaning gas station bathrooms (I'm still making the face even as I write this) by the time I was 10-12 my brother was a district manager for the local paper. So every Sunday morning I was up in the middle of the night in the back seat of Jeff's car surrounded by bundles of newspapers wrapping them for Jeff to deliver. I still hate the smell of newsprint.

I worked through high school at over the table jobs instead of just helping Mom and Dad and Jeff with theirs. My Dad worked two jobs for a good chunk of my life. My Mom worked full time, Jeff worked full time. We worked in my house. And so when Susan needed to go on benefits to make it it was a shock to the system. We knew we weren't lazy. So how did this happen? Instead of changing a viewpoint on the type of people who ended up needing help it was easier to be ashamed. 

It reminded me of a time in middle school when I was spending the night with my friend Evie. It was Christmas and her church had just delivered a food box to their doorstep.  As Evie, her brother and I, sorted through the things and put them away her mother said, "I didn't think when I donated to the drive that we were the people who they thought needed help." She was embarassed. They did need help though. She was a single mother with two kids who was barely getting by. But taking help? That was embarrassing. 

So when I paid what I could on her phone bill I still had a lot of those old ideas in my head. That I would help because it was the right thing to do. But I wouldn't tell her it was me because I didn't want to encourage her dependance on help. And I wanted some fucking credit because...well...because. 

I cringe at that now. I hadn't yet fully formed my current ideas around helping people. That you help because it's the right thing to do and it's okay that it also makes you feel good, but the feeling good is based around the doing good, not any sort of recognition. I also know that there are a lot of reasons she might not have said anything about the credit on her bill. One it didn't pay it all off, they let me know that much, and it might not have made all that much difference depending on what she owed. Like how $10,000 seems like a lot of money for debt relief but if you owe over $100,000 it's not nothing, but it's also not all that great. And she could also have been embarrassed. I have no way of knowing if she mentioned her outstanding bill to anyone else. So even though I did it anonymously, it might have been anonymous at all. And she might have been embarassed that sharing a hard time with me made it seem like she was begging for help. 

I don't know. I don't know at all. But I do know that I did something nice and then wiped it out with expecting something back. 

So..random acts of kindness videos. I hate them. When you, the person making the video, pick out some "poor unfortunate soul" to receive your kindness and then film them for a reaction you are being such a dick. Like a gigantic asshole. The good thing you are doing does not outweigh the fact that you are potentially embarrassing a stranger. That you are making someone a prop in your life. Oh look as I shower kindness on this person like and subscribe!

I love random acts of kindness. I love helping people out when you can. I love that the world can sometimes be a much kinder place than we give it credit for. I love all of that. But I do not love when people do it for the clicks. Or for the recognition. 

When you read about someone's generosity it should inspire you to do great things. But not because people will tell you that you are great, because it's the right thing to do. Give silently. Give behind the scenes. Help when you can and know that the feeling you get from helping someone is what you get from it. Not adoration from others. Not indebtedness from the person you are helping. They owe you nothing. Not even a thank you, though that's just polite. 

Think about how much more impressed you are when you find out that someone rich has given away a lot of money privately than you are when they set up a foundation and give away comically large paper checks with a lot of fanfare. Both things do good for people, but one of them still feels selfish and self serving.

It ceases to be an act of kindness if you are doing it for the recognition. Then it becomes performance art and you are an asshole for making someone else's misery your background. 

Keep doing kind things. But for fuck's sake if I ever catch you recording it for the likes...well let's just say my face is doing a whole other thing right now and you should never want to see that in person.

Now off to watch someone make rainbow colors in the layers of their hair...I could use some soothing.