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. 

Out of Control...

She hadn't intended on starting a cult. It was one of those things that could have happened to anybody. 

Okay, maybe not anybody. It was one of those things that just seemed to happen sometimes. 

Okay, maybe not sometimes. It was one of those things that you look back on and still can't quite figure out what the hell just happened.

It started with an accidental social media post. 

She had woken up in the middle of the night with a thought, that at the time seemed genius so she wrote it down in her notes program and went back to sleep; fully realizing that when she read it in the morning it probably wouldn't be genius at all but at least this way she could get back to sleep. 

But, as it was the middle of the night, she hadn't typed it up in the notes program but had sent it out into the world. Which by the time she woke in the morning had been reposted 2000 times. And she had gained 10,000 new followers. 

And she had been right. What had seemed genius at 2 AM made very little sense in the bright light of morning. 

"If all one sky, why different weather systems?"

When the local news called her to get more information about "the local woman whose post was 'Storming' the world" she debated talking to them. She knew her 15 minutes of fame would end with the interview, as soon as she explained the wacky dream she had been having and how she hadn't meant to share the note at all, but she also knew she was already being memed so she might as well at least try to cut the embarrassment off quickly.

It didn't work out that way. 

She was told later that the whole time she was talking she was getting more and more followers. A friend of hers trademarked "All One Sky" for her while she was on the air, realizing that if she didn't someone else would. She went back to read the transcript and still couldn't really understand what had happened.

"...yes, that's right, I hadn't even meant to send it out in the world. I had been having a dream, and you know how sometimes in dreams you think you have a very profound thought and later realize it was only dream logic? Well in the dream I was trying to understand how, if the world is covered in one sky, we have different weather systems. I mean, it's not like North America is under one bubble, and South America another. I was imagining like clear walls between areas, like the world sectioned off into giant terrariums. But we don't have that. So why can't we move weather around? Why if it's raining in Australia and causing massive flooding, why can't we pull that system to someplace we are having massive drought? Which, I totally get, people have been thinking about for years. But why do we talk about it the way we do? Why if the whole world is under one sky, if we are all sharing this one atmosphere, why do we say it's hurricane season in the Atlantic, or it's Monsoon season in India or there is an Artic Vortex? I mean, isn't it more accurate to just say it's hurricane season without sectioning it off like that? It's all connected."

"Like the butterfly wings theory?"

"Maybe, sort of. But more direct. More like throwing a pebble in a pond and then calling the ripple of waves out something else. Like it's ripple season on Walden Pond, totally ignoring it was rock skipping time on the shore."

"Oh, so this is a climate change argument."

"What? No, I mean, yeah, it is all connected there as well. You can't release pollution in one place and not expect it to drift all over the globe, we've seen it with satellite images of forest fire smoke and volcanic eruptions so of course pollution would be the same thing."

And it kept going like that. The more she seemed to be rambling the more people were following and tagging her in their own posts about interconnectivity. And it became about more than just weather or pollution or butterfly theory or...it became All One Sky.

And everytime she tried to clarify that she hadn't really meant anything except to write down a weird sentence stuck in her head from an every weirder dream it just kept growing. 

All One Sky, now her trademark thanks to her quick thinking friend, started getting donations. So she registered it as a nonprofit. She couldn't see taking people's money that they thought they were sending to do good in the wider world and just living off of it. That was the worst sort of interconnectedness. Which she said out loud in another interview which lead to another round of follows and even more donations and now she was being memed next to Keanu Reeves. And then she was being interviewed next to Keanu Reeves on one of the late night talk shows and her donations and follows skyrocketed even more. 

She was named one of the most influential activists of 2023. But she wasn't an activist. She was just one person trying to do the best with what had been given to her. Trying to do the most good with things she hadn't ever sought to receive. To spread a blanket of kindness under All One Sky. 

And the donations flooded in. 

"People just want an opportunity to be the good in the world. But no one tells us how. People just scream about how awful everyone is and how scary everyone is and nobody takes a breath and realizes that screaming is what is scary. Being mad at everyone else is what is awful. If we just take a minute and look at the world as one place, All One Sky, we realize we need to stop throwing rocks in the pond and blaming the ripple for flooding the beach. You know?"

They did know. Apparently. 

So now she was holding weekly All One Sky meetings. People would come from all over. First all over the city, then all over the state, now all over the world. She had a guest speaker from Australia talking about the massive flooding and how people could help. She had a guest speaker from the weather station in Antarctica come and talk about how they had discovered smog in the permafrost. She had local teachers talk about books with missing pages. She had politicians and preachers. She had musicians and actors. Her only rule was they had to speak about how to unify, not divide. There was no talk about us vs. them. It could only be All One Sky focused. 

She left the public forums and set up a new space. One that was only focused on All One Sky. She didn't have anything against people making a living working on a troll farm, not really, she hated what they did but understood for a lot of them it was the best way to support their families, but it wasn't part of her messaging and she didn't want it amplified. She got some push back for that. Free speech! You're censoring me! She said she wasn't, that's why she was leaving, not blocking them or forcing them to go. They could say whatever they wanted about her. She just didn't want to stick around and listen. And that was about her, not about them. She couldn't focus on doing the most good if she was feeling hurt over a comment someone posted about her teeth looking so wonky and how she should spend less time on All One Sky and work on All One Direction.

So she left.

People left with her.  

So now she had her own website, her own social media systems, her own in person meeting space, her trademarked catchphrase, her registered nonprofit and a large following of people who waited every day to hear what she had to say and sent her, and others that they had heard about because of her, donations of either time or money, to make good things happen in the world. 

She hadn't intended on starting a cult. But she wasn't mad about it either. 

Obligations...

I picked up my phone and said, "Uh oh." Brent asked me what was wrong, I told him, "I have a family group text waiting. Family group texts first thing in the morning are never a good thing."

And it wasn't. It was my sister letting us know that my Uncle Denny had died the night before. 

He and Aunt Carol were my parent's best friends. Not family by blood, just by choice and years together. We did holidays together, went to the same church, just part of each other's circles. So no blood relation, but closer in contact than any of my parent's siblings. 

Ashley said right away that she would be flying back for the funeral.

I didn't commit. 

I already knew it would depend on when they held the funeral and how much the flights costs. 

Which, of course, started my mother hissing in my ear about family obligations. 

But with the house this year, as I've written about, everything was more expensive than we had planned, everything took longer which then ended up making it all even more, more expensive as prices would climb between first and second estimates. And as some of you might have read about, Intel is doing the cost cutting measures that a lot of other big companies are currently doing. 

Cost cutting measures always sounds less harsh than mass layoffs. Which sounds less harsh than firing a lot of people. 

Now, we should be fine. We've been through this a few times with Intel and we've always weathered it in the past. But always in the past doesn't mean always and forever. And should be fine doesn't mean will positively be fine. So we've put big spending on hold for awhile. There were a few projects we had already started that we will finish but other than that we are going to try and rebuild the reserves a little. 

So price was something I was going to look at before committing. 

And it was really expensive. Just the flight was a lot. Then adding a car and hotel room to that it got to be crazy. And it would just be me. The big cost was only for me, the timing of the funeral didn't work with Brent's schedule, and to be fair he would have moved things around if I had asked him to, but it would have been a struggle and a trade off for already scheduled time off to enjoy a semi-vacation at home when Katie came up for the holiday. 

Also, as a crazy bit of pricing, it was the same price for Ashley AND Ann to come in from Florida as it would have been for me to fly from Portland. Now, granted, I didn't want connecting flights with all of the cancellation issues we've been seeing and they are doing three connections, but still. One ticket vs. two. Florida vs. Oregon. 

But anyway...once the day was set and I saw the prices I made the final call not to go. Which made my mother very unhappy. 

Arguing with a dead woman is always fun. 

She pointed out that I should go back for Carol. I countered with Carol's sons would be there. And Susan was there. And she and Susan were the closest. I would just be there out of obligation to my mother's memory. Not really any help at all. And besides, the boys hadn't come back for either her or Dad's funerals so it wasn't even a real obligation. 

Mom pointed out that I should not live my life by what the boys choose to do or not do and that she did notice they weren't there for Dad so did I want Carol to notice I wasn't there?

I countered with she of course would notice, but it wouldn't actually make a difference. I would send a card and make a donation in Denny's name to the VA or something. 

She is still not happy about it, but the good thing about arguing with a dead woman is it is a little easier to win. Not easy, but easier. Eventually you just have to say, Well, you're dead so I'm going to do what I think is right and you'll just have to not live with it. And then you laugh and laugh because you realize you are arguing with a dead woman and making corny jokes about it and aren't exactly sane.

But it was actually more of a challenge than I thought it would be. Not the arguing with a dead woman part, the what I felt was the right thing to do part. 

And here is where things take a turn. 

I didn't like my Uncle Denny. We didn't get along. Growing up I thought he was mean and I didn't like the way he talked to Aunt Carol or to his kids or to me. My mother used to tell me that she thought he liked me best because I would argue with him. I told her I was pretty sure he liked me least because I argued with him. He would tell me that children should respect their elders. I would tell him to be respectful and I would. He was so different than my father and it was jarring to me. I thought for a long time that I was just too sensitive and he was just old school and sort of a crank like everyone else kept saying but then the first time Brent met him he was like, "he's really mean isn't he?" Thank you!

When my Dad died and I was back home we were all sitting in my mother's living room and the TV was on in the background, some home shopping show was on. Denny changed it to Glenn Beck. I just rolled my eyes. My mother actually was the one to say something. Now it wasn't a full throated rebuke or anything, but basically, "You know she doesn't want to watch that" which Denny replied that he did know that and that's why he put it on. 

We had a challenging relationship. 

So you can see that going back for his funeral would be only for Aunt Carol. Because I know she is devastated. I don't understand why she loved him like she did, he wasn't my cup of tea, but she did. They have had to have been married for over 60 years. As challenging as I found him she found him to be adorable. He was her world. And I know funerals are for the living, but they are also to honor the dead. 

And I would be lying if that hadn't figured into my reasoning on if I was going to go or not. 

It's mostly the money and the uncertainty of what is coming down the road for us. But it's also about the relationship and how long I've been away from being the good girl and doing what I was supposed to so the family didn't think badly of me. Or more accurately, about my mother and how she raised me.

I know most of my family already thinks a certain way about me. I made my peace with that a long time ago. 

Mostly. I mean unless you are a psychopath you don't actually want people to think badly of you. I just remind myself that the things they think badly about me are some of my favorite things about me. We're just very different people with very different beliefs.

And I also know that going won't change that. 

All of this is part of being semi-estranged from your family but not fully estranged. Fully estranged means no obligations at all. You don't even get sent the message when someone dies. All ties are cut. In a way it's easier. Or at least it seems like it would be easier. But semi-estranged is different. I'm the outcast and black sheep but how far out am I? Do they have to include me in things or don't they? Do I have to participate or don't I? 

I saw it a lot when Mom was still alive. She would talk about "the kids" and "me." Like plans were being made to see the kids about something and she would be telling me about it. Sometimes I'd say something. Sometimes I wouldn't. I got it. I wasn't there. Everyone else was. So I wasn't going to be included. 

When John and Ann moved to Florida she was fairly bent about it. She told me she understood them wanting to be closer to Ashley but she still didn't like the idea of her kids being so far away. Even as old as they were. I just told her I could imagine it would be hard. I don't know if she realized what she was saying or not. I think sometimes toward the end of her life when she was talking to me she forgot who I was and thought she was talking to her sister Dorothy. I'm not sure if that made it better or not, but I had been gone a long time by that point and though I know my mother always loved me I also know she didn't always understand me and it was probably easier to think of the older four in one way and me in another.

It's not always easy to be the black sheep. It's not always easy to know what your obligations are. It's not always easy to decide what the right thing to do is. And I also know that if I asked 10 of my friends I'd probably get a 50/50 split on what the right call would be. So this is the one I made and I'll argue with a dead woman a few more times over it, but I also know it's probably the right one to make. For a few reasons. 

But I do have to say, he got the last laugh. 

When I asked if Carol had an in lieu of flowers preference she said..."Make a donation to Ridgecrest."

The church I grew up in. 

The one I left.

Well played, Denny, well played...

The Worst Timeline...

"Ugh. We are living in the worst timeline."

"Why does everyone say that? I mean there are so many worse timelines. What about the timeline where the South won the Civil War? In that one slavery became the default in the entire United States and spread to Canada and Mexico."

"What?"

"Or how about the one where Ronald Reagan's Alzheimer's wasn't discovered by his inner circle until after he had launched a nuclear war? By now there are parts of the world that are recovering a little bit from the fallout but there are other parts that are still completely desolate and destroyed. Not even Mother Nature could recover from the destruction."

"Okay, wait, what? Reagan had Alzheimer's disease while he was in the White House in your imagined worse timeline?"

"No. I mean yes. Reagan had Alzheimer while in the White House in all of the timelines. Or at least all of them where he was elected president and the assassination attempt failed. Obviously in the ones where he was never elected it wasn't an issue. And the ones where Hinkley killed him it didn't matter, he wasn't president long enough to know."

"Okay, this seems like you've thought about it a lot."

"And I mean, those are just recent examples. There are plenty of timelines where we wouldn't be living at all. The primordial ooze didn't ooze, it just kind of solidified. Or it dried up. Or it created something entirely different. But I'm not sure if those timelines count as living in the worst timeline because we wouldn't technically be living at all."

"Is this part of book series or something?"

"Oh, now I will give you that one, that's part of a pretty good timeline. The one where Rothfuss and Martin were able to finish their series in a really timely manner. A lot less strife in that one. But it still has its issues. Everyone thinks they want no problems, but a few problems are actually better than none."

"There is timeline specifically devoted to authors writing books?"

"Well no, not to that specifically but it does stick out when you are in this one and go looking for book 6 and realize it doesn't exist."

"So is this the only timeline where it's not finished?"

"Oh no, there are a few. Some get to book 6 and stop but there are also a couple that never had him at all so there can be gratitude for the 5 you have right?"

"What about Rothfuss? Any timelines where he finishes?"

"Yeah, no."

"Figures."

"So see? This isn't the worst timeline at all. There are at least 8 that are worse than this one."

"At least eight?"

"At least."

"Any of them where you aren't a weirdo?"

"Four."

Just Write

Today as I came in to write Brent asked me about a charge on the credit card. I didn't recognize it. He didn't recognize it. Started down the what could it be rabbit hole that ended up leading to freezing the card for fraud and we will have to start the process of changing over all of our automatic payments and thinking we have them all when we don't and something getting declined and being embarrassed when we get that call even though we didn't do anything wrong. 

Ugh.

Hate that. 

We've had to get new cards like 5 times over the past few years. Breaches in other companies that lead to the banks just shutting down all the cards, remember when Target was breached and EVERYONE had to get new cards? I can still remember the look on the customer service greeter's face at the credit union. So many new cards that had to be issued and so much mayhem while automatic payments were snarled. 

Life is super convenient when it's all set up to run automatically. Right up until something stops working. Then it's just a cascade of mess. 

And so the writing I was going to do got squashed. I can still sort of feel the edges of the story, but it's a weird one anyway so holding on to it has been a challenge under the best of circumstances. This morning wasn't the best. Along with still feeling under the weather the hassles of the fraud are not really conducive to creative writing. 

I'd like to be able to figure out how make the real world the part that gets tossed to the back of my brain so the creative writing gets to take up the front space. It would be so much more fun. Probably not all that great for Brent who already has to carry the majority of the practical space, but at least I'd have more fiction to print. (not thinking that would be a good balm for him)

So instead of a weird little fiction piece today you are going to get snippets of things playing around in my head. 

Finished a book yesterday that was supposed to be about persuading people. How to be more persuasive instead of argumentative in today's polarized world. It was interesting, in parts, but also not really what it was billed as. Two of the people they highlighted, for instance, were Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Now, don't get me wrong, I agree with most everything they both stand for, but they aren't really bringing anyone around to their points of view that wasn't already mostly there. Both of them have been successful in various ways of moving the left off of the center platform and getting them slightly more to the left. But neither of them budged the right from the right, except maybe to entrench them more as AOC has been made in to their new boogeywoman. 

There was also a section in there about deprogramming from cults and how we might really need to figure out a way to inoculate people from cult like thinking instead. Which is true, but they didn't really have any ideas as to how to accomplish that. So we are not going to find a way out of this Qanon world for awhile. 

And then to reinforce that I hadn't really picked up any new skills from the book I stumbled across a post on a friend's page this morning (it was a few days old so the conversations had all already finished, Facebook has taken to not showing me things until they are weeks old, including sending me notifications on my own page, it's just the Universe talking to me) ANYWAY...

So in this post my friend had a friend come in who was very pro-Trump. And they did the Pro-Trump talking point about how they get their news from a variety of places so they are better informed. It is a standard one for the right. "Oh I get my news from a variety of places not just what the main stream media wants me to see" like that's somehow better? Getting your "news" from three or four places that have no tie to reality makes it better. But if you show them that what they have been told is made up out of whole cloth they discount all of your sources as well. Even if you have people who testified under oath at the January 6th hearings and they have a blogger who likes to stir shit. Somehow you're the one who is being deceived.

And I get it, I do, we all have news sources we trust more than others, but part of what makes me distrust a news source is if I find they have either pushed an agenda or been flat out dishonest in the past. For instance, I don't read the New York Times. There have been enough times that they've pushed a narrative (for instance, their hatred for the Clintons) that has caused severe damage (reviewing Clinton Cash as if it weren't made up nonsense and posting that on the front page) at times that could do the most damage (posting that the FBI was reopening the case against HRC right before the election even though it was nothing). If you show me who you are, I'm going to believe you. 

But you have people who follow Fox News (who has had multiple times in court where they've used the "no reasonable person would believe this" as THEIR defense) or Alex Jones (he said it's just a character he plays and that nobody should believe him in his divorce case) or Dinesh D'Souza (had his book pulled at the last minute so the publisher wouldn't be sued by the people in it but people are still out there thinking his Mules movie is fact based). And when you show them that the things they are saying aren't true they wrap it up into the whole conspiracy theory and won't believe you anyway. 

Which was one of the points in the book. That you can't use facts to convince people they are wrong because they just dig in. Which I already knew. I've seen it in my own life and I've read other studies about it. But it didn't really leave me with what do you do answers. 

And I think that's because nobody knows what to do. Not all the time. 

Sometimes just giving another point of view starts the work. But only if people are really able to hear you. 

Sometimes giving a person face to what they have felt is an abstract argument helps. I've done that one with LGBTQ+ arguments for ages. 

Sometimes reframing what they are arguing against helps. Like often you hear their argument and it's not at all what anyone wants. Going to back to LGBTQ+ issues for instance. I used to have to reframe all the time when people would say that they weren't in favor of giving special rights to people. Nobody is looking for special rights, just equal rights. You, straight person, can't be discriminated at work for who you are married to, I want the same for everyone. You, straight person, can marry whatever consenting adult you want to. I want the same for everyone. You, straight/cis person, get to decide the medical care for you and for your cis children without the government stepping in. I want the same for everyone. 

It's not special rights, it's equal rights. And that has worked. Sometimes. Sometimes people think if it doesn't directly apply to them then it is special not equal. And I can't help with that. 

The person arguing with my friend doesn't believe anything that she doesn't already believe. She thinks the fact checkers are part of the conspiracy. She thinks the last election was stolen and that anyone who can't see that is just not paying attention. And there isn't a way to really move that needle. Not until something she sees doesn't make sense to her. She'll have to have a moment of doubt that starts the cards falling. But most of those people, when doubt creeps in, will go to the comfort of other people who think the same way they do and wrap themselves in that cocoon of "you're right and everyone else is wrong".

Mainly because it's hard to admit when you're wrong. It makes you feel dumb. Like how in the world could you not have seen it for so long? How did you buy into it at all? Instead of seeing that there are people out there working really hard to keep you believing. Is it easier to you to say, yeah I was wrong or no, you all are wrong?

Where do you feel most comfortable?

Because changing your mind is uncomfortable. You have to change everything to go along with it. 

Sort of like when your credit card gets frozen because of someone else's fraud. You didn't do anything wrong, but you are still left with the responsibility of getting it all fixed.

Just a Little Hiccup...

It's actually kind of funny. I mean I should have planned for it really. 

I have a cold. It used to be (looking back at past Novembers and NaNos) that I got a cold every stinking year. That I would be blazing along on my word count and then BOOM! Stopped. But it's been so long since I've done a November writing challenge and so long since I've had any sort of real cold that I just didn't bank in the time. 

Since the start of the pandemic I've been sick, like actually sick, only after vaccines and boosters. Reaction to the shot, wiped out for a day, day and half, back at it like nothing happened. I've had a couple of times where I thought maybe I was getting sick but it didn't last long, or turned out to be allergies. But this week? Full on head cold. 

I've taken a couple of covid tests just to make sure...which made me think, when will that stop being the norm? Get sick, take a covid test just incase. I mean, covid is going to be with us forever it looks like. Will it always be your first thought when you get sick? Will we always test to just make sure? Or will it become like the flu, only test if you get REALLY sick?

I kind of knew I was screwed last weekend. Everywhere we went we could hear people hacking and snuffling. And we've stopped wearing masks unless we are going to be packed in someplace with little airflow. We figure the whole reason we were vaccinated and boosted was to be able to go out again. But people did not learn the "if you are sick stay home, or at least wear a mask in public" lesson. And then the final topper was the adorable little germ factory in front of us at the hockey game on Sunday. 

Nose running, phlegmy cough, adorable little germ factory. He was turned around in his seat playing peek a boo with us as much as watching the game (I mean he wasn't even two yet, the fact that he was entertained by the crowd for over two hours without a melt down was impressive). But yeah, I thought, it's going to be amazing if I make it without a cold. 

It was not amazing. 

But it was interesting. Like I said, it's been awhile. Monday started with a headache, Tuesday I had a little pull in my throat. Wednesday I felt proper sick, run down, headache, throat pull, runny nose starting. Thursday when I woke up and said something to Brent he said, "Woah, you're sick." Well, yeah, I've been telling you I was sick. But I get what he meant, I had the raspy voice thing going. Today is the I feel better but sound worse. We are in that stage. So a couple more days, hopefully, and it will all be gone. 

I do have a few things I have to do today so I will be masking up and taking care of them. That's the big change for me from the pandemic times. I will wear a mask if I have to go in public even if I'm on the mend from a cold. I wish everyone had taken that lesson. 

The other thing that sort of made me laugh was the realization that I haven't bought tissues in almost three years. I bought a multipack when they were restocked from being totally out at the beginning of the pandemic and I haven't since. If you aren't getting colds you don't go through a ton of tissue. Though I'm making up for it now and if Brent ends up catching this then he will need some as well. Time to restock. 

But the bummer is that it does put me quite behind on writing goals. I was starting to find a daily groove and then took a couple days off. And today's is just a "I have a code in my node" post so it won't be too many words at all. But at least it's some. And I will work on getting back into the groove. Hopefully I will remember the things I had in my head to write about before my head got too sore to write...

I know there were two fiction lines that were trying to become full stories and there was a bitching about the videos on Facebook and Instagram post..hopefully there will be more. As always, I'm open to suggestions. 

But there you go. Feeling snotty but not in my normal way...hopefully that will pass quickly and we can get back to our normal snotty posts.