The Oracle said we’re not all meant to survive. Show your soul. speak your truth, because that will change not the rotation of the Earth without regard for its substance. It will, however, change the way you vibrate in synchronicity with the motion of all that is. That can be a blessing or a curse, it’s up to you.

I have seen the Galaxy from far away, and it is a flat Edge on the horizon of Forever. Everything that ever was, and ever will be, is contained in that razor thin infinity. It is incomprehensible, but it is reality.

I’ve seen a few things that challenge my grasp of reality, challenge me to define what is real and what is imaginary. How different is reality from imagination? One must dream to be real, in my estimation. It is said that we manifest reality while in it, we manifest our desires while acting as though they are already satisfied. How the hell does that work?

It seems that we are not destined to understand or comprehend how that works, only accept that it does. That is easier said than done, of course, because the bondage of our limitation is woven into the fabric of every moment. If I do not believe that I can have my heart’s desire, then I make that a reality. It will become reality that I don’t believe that I can have it, and so I won’t have it.

Understanding that mechanism isn’t sufficient to alter it. The point at which I cannot alter my belief about the attainment is the point at which I have lost my mind to failure. I suppose that is exactly what failure is – losing my mind. Losing the ability to maintain the integration of mind with body and spirit. That is the point of disintegrationi and dissolution and ultimately failure.

In general, I don’t enjoy articulating failure, but not manifesting what I want is the pith of failure. Failure is not about not measuring up to someone else’s scale of success, but about whether or not I have what I desire. And it starts with desire, a hope, a dream, a wish. A vision for something else.

Right now, my vision for something else is about loosening my inhibition and self-restraint. I have always felt as though I have something to say, something to offer, music to play and songs to sing but I have always been too concerned with how it will be received to really let it out. Always holding things in, always feeling as though I’m not allowed to make too much noise or take up too much space.

The inhibition was given to me, by nature and nurture. By the act of being suppressed by those who loved me and those who didn’t, by those who discounted my words and those who feared them. That makes no sense to me, but I accept that it is part of the reality I have created. Why have I created such a short circuit that fades away into nothing?

These are times that try men’s souls. These are the times that suck our spirits dry. These are the times I came here for, I think. I am supposed to be doing something important, but I have been doing nothing. I don’t quite know what to do, and that is uncomfortable.

I was listening to a MasterClass with Carlos Santana, and he emphasizes having one’s heart in the music. A note is just a note, but with heart it is a melody, it touches another heart. He speaks of emotional dynamics in playing music, and that makes sense to me. Musicians who are mere technicians do not really speak to me. Musicians who cause me to feel something in how they emote speak to me on several levels at once. Santana says when you impart the emotion, and the heart, you will be heard and it will matter.

Right now I am looking at Santana as well as reflecting on my state of reality. I am somewhat restless, but there is fear of moving and fear of not moving. I have to move, though. I have to do something aside from watching videos and nursing resentments against people who have wronged me. Those fine people aren’t spending any time contemplating me, so I am wasting my time contemplating them. I know this.

What becomes of the broken hearted who had love that is now departed? Maybe they become prophets of doom, or embittered souls with little joy to offer. I am broken hearted, but I think I’d rather create something from the pieces that are left. There has to be some kind of cosmic glue, some duct tape, tin foil and chewing gum that will patch me back together enough to hold the water of life. That sounds dramatic, and possibly corny, but I know what I mean.

Where the hell am I these days? I don’t even know. There are places I know I don’t want to be, and other places I can’t be, but I’m not entirely sure about where I am right now. Things still feel a little surreal and a lot ungrounded. The spinning is beginning to make me a bit dizzy, and that’s no good. I stumble into walls and pot holes when I’m dizzy, and that doesn’t do me any good. I need to come in for a landing soon, so I can walk the path I’m supposed to walk.

I don’t know what the point of any of this is, but it does me good to stop running laps inside my head, in silence. Sometimes I have to make noise, sometimes I have to interrupt the silence. Silence is good, but so is noise. Noise is vibration, and vibration is the stuff of creation. Noise is passion, and passion can move all kinds of things.

Off I go, into the wild blue yonder, or at least the darkness of this evening. The weather is changing, and it’s much cooler. It snowed up in the mountains today, and it’s predicted to remain cool in these parts for the duration. It should be in the mid-to upper 30s at night this weekend, which makes me happy. If it snowed, it would be perfect. I’m a winter cycle being, and this is my time.

When I first got sober, I had realized long before that I was numb. Alcohol has an anesthetic effect; in the past a good slug of whiskey was used before surgery on battle wounds. Well, that and biting on a bullet and what not. I haven’t ever heard of alcohol being used to ease the pain of childbirth, but i digress.

Many people in recovery describe using alcohol or drugs specifically for the anesthetic benefit, to ease the non-physical pain that seemed intractable and interminable. The resultant numbing was maddening, though, like having an itch you couldn’t scratch, and the pain never truly disappeared. Welcome to addiction.

If you’ve been numb for a while, coming back to consciousness is uncomfortable and disconcerting. That’s why so any people in early recovery drink or use again. The recovery programs don’t lie, though – if you stick with it, you’re going to fee better. You’re going to feel pain better, grief better, sadness better. You’re also going to feel happiness and joy better, but that usually comes later. You have to bite the bullet while the nerve endings are coming back to life, because sometimes it hurts like nothing you’ve ever felt before. Hell, that’s why most of us drink, to avoid the pain of being alive.

Last Thursday, I lost a friend. A friend who was almost exactly my age, a friend with whom I had many years of history. She was not a call-you-every day kind of friend, or someone I was in regular contact. Her spouse was actually a little closer to me, having been a sponsor of mine when I lived in SC. She was a very good sponsor, and that’s how I met the now-dead friend. Her name is Susan. Susan Worthington Gager. And she lived, and touched people, and did a fine job of living.

Susan had lost her job when I first met her, and was going back to school at 40 on a vocational rehab program. She wanted to become a nurse, and so she did. She recreated herself, but never lost herself. She and my friend Kasey were married in SC a couple of years after she was done with school, in the middle of the tremendous opposition to same-sex marriage. But there was suddenly a federal law that allowed them to formalize their relationship, and so they did. I drove a few hours to witness that with them, and it’s the last time I actually saw Susan in person.

Kasey and Susan became ex-pats not too long after their marriage, and they moved to New Zealand and then Australia, where Susan became a psych nurse. For some twenty years, they lived in the land down under. They became a part of Aussie society and kept in touch with friends here in the U.S. via Facebook and other social media.

At some point within the last decade, Susan was diagnosed with cancer. I think it was breast cancer, which affects people the world over at near epidemic rates. She had the necessary treatments, and recovered. The experience of cancer recovery is never quite that simple, of course, but she did what she had to do and survived. Life went on, and she and Kasey went back to the life they had created so lovingly.

Kasey and Susan announced they’d be coming to the U.S. a few months ago, and those of us who’d known them here were excited. Susan had one daughter, who lived in TN, and they were excited to see her. A big get-together was planned for the SC/NC friends, and I was ecstatic, marking the time with memories and anecdotes.

Just before the date for the reunion arrived, Susan reported that she’d developed severe pain, so intense that she could barely stand at one point. Her Facebook post described the agony, and the reunion event was called off because she was told not to travel. Less than one month later, she was dead.

I wonder when she knew. I wonder if she came here to say goodbye to old friends and family, because she knew before she left Australia that she wouldn’t be going back there. They’d explained to friends there that it would be around six months before they returned, which I found curious since even the UK doesn’t give you six months of vacation time. I think she knew, and this was planned as a farewell tour.

For a variety of reasons, Susan’s death has knocked me off balance. Maybe it was because she was almost exactly the same age, maybe it was because I never think my friends are going to die. Maybe it’s because I wish I’d been a lot better about keeping in touch, more intentional about keeping the relationship alive. Maybe it’s because death scares the crap out of me, and this one feels so close.

I know very well that whatever I do, in a given trip around the sun, I never know when that will be the last time I take that action. Whoever I see, interact with, however I move through space and time cannot be duplicated. I create some bizarre work of art each and every day that I live, and it is unique no matter how routine it may seem. Accordingly, whatever I do each day should be intentional if it’s to mean anything at all.

No matter how much I may believe that my life is meaningless, or has no impact on the rest of the world, that’s just a fallacy. Whatever I do today has some impact somewhere, whether I realize it or not. I have the ability to change the energy that emanates from me in some way, and who knows what else may be impacted. I don’t know why that’s so difficult to remember.

Susan gave me a great gift in her death, because I realized that I need to be intentional about whatever the hell I do in a given day, a given moment. People in addiction recovery frequently describe their previous way of walking through the world as similar to a tornado, a great mass of impersonal and destructive energy that upended everything in its path with little regard for anyone or anything affected. That’s what happens when you live without accepting that you’re not the only person on the planet and that what you do has some impact somewhere.

When I turned 50, a friend gave me a novelty book that was titled something like “Aging Is Not For Cissies” or something like that. More than ten years later, I agree with that. No matter how much you know about human life cycles, you’re never prepared for the fact that you can’t prepare for change. You never know exactly how it’s going to be, or how it’s going to feel, or how you’re going to handle things when parts of your body no longer work as they once did.

You never know whether you’re going to be a good sport about receiving a terminal diagnosis and knowing that you are going to die in a finite period of time. When you’re told to get your affairs in order, will you do that or will you rage, rage against the dying of the light? Will your thoughts be focused on a proverbial bucket list, or will you see out meaningful interactions and be intentional about how you touch other people? I certainly don’t know what I would do. I hope I would be kind and true and go out with some kind of grace and dignity, but who knows.

Perhaps what scares me the most about dying is the possibility that it comes suddenly nad unexpectedly, with ho time to prepare or plan an exit. I could step off a curb today, fall and hit my head on the asphalt and that could be it. It’s more or less a crap shoot (although I believe the spirit has some choice in things, but I don’t know how that works). You pay your quarter and you take your chances every day. so I understand that every day should be lived intentionally.

What I understand and what I have the strength to do are two entirely different things. It’s not for cissies. It takes bravery and courage to live, especially these days. Bravery is not the absence of fear, it’s acting in spite of the fear. Courage is doing that over and over, I think. Living takes courage. Doing the right thing takes courage. Being kind takes courage. Courage takes bravery and just a smidge of “fuck it all” and running headlong into the breach. I am beginning to believe that every opportunity for courage is a crack in the universe, an open door to another world. Things will never be the same once you’ve passed through, and you can’t go home again. It’s a brand new day.

Dark nights of the soul are fodder for crossing the threshold of new life, I think. And I think way too much. When you come out the other side of a spiritual trial, there is new growth and fresh soil, and you can’t let the grass grow beneath your feet or you’ll be stuck there. I suppose we are meant to grow, because like a seed it’s just what we do. We have to split open and blindly send out a shoot into the void, and take our chances. That’s how it goes, unless it doesn’t.

Right this moment, I want it to go…I want to have the experience of living. Actual living, and not just surviving. Godspeed Susan, and thank you for reminding me that death is not the end of life as long as you’ve taken the risk of creation in the first place. I wish you well, my friend.

…about…things. Like absolutes, and extremes, and gray areas. And stuff.

I have been told that I’m a 1 and 10 kind of girl, going from off to maximum with no stops in between. That could be true, but over the years I feel as though I’ve become a little more oriented to the side of “maybe”. Gray areas can be difficult, since they often paralyze me into inaction while contemplating all of the “what if” and “perhaps” facets of the situation. That makes me tired.

What I’m getting out of that lately is that perhaps I don’t trust myself enough to be sure about much of anything. I’m always trying to mitigate damage before I’ve even taken the shot or incurred any negative consequence. WTF? More life in the fantasy zone, I suppose…imagine, if you will, that that you’ve made a bad decision that has resulted in catastrophe. Wait, there’s no imaginary aspect to this – because it hasn’t even happened yet.

That may be somewhat nonsensical, but it’s my zone so I suppose I can be as nonsensical as I please. Nonsense may actually be a good thing for someone like me who is obsessed with making sense. Life doesn’t always make sense, and so why should I?

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do bad things happen to bad people? Why do bad things happen? I suppose my current take on that is that justice exists on an infinitely larger scale than I am capable of comprehending. Who is to say unequivocally that justice does not exist?

My obsession with justice causes me some dark days, because I can only focus on the immediate circumstances, what I can see and feel and touch. In many ways, that’s all I can be expected to do because I’m a puny human with visual acuity in the range of a muppet and brain infarctions in the range of a minor deity. And yeah, I want fries with that.

When I look at the Karens on video, they aren’t questioning whether their viewpoint is correct or not, or whether there’s another way to look at things. They act, and behave badly in most cases, and don’t really look back even when there are negative consequences. I suppose I don’t know whether or not that’s a good thing or not. Do they get what they want? I am not sure. When you are motivated by that much rage, I suppose it’s not supposed to make sense.

Anger is a wonderful motivator, and rage amplifies that by exponential increments. I have been that angry, and I’m sure my head spun around 360-degrees and my eyes were neon green. It wasn’t pleasant for me, and I don’t recall ever having a second thought about my actions while in the moment. I suppose I can empathize with the Karens on that level because it’s about power. When you feel that you have no power, you’re going to act out in the extreme because anger makes you feel alive and not powerless. I get that.

Right this moment I am feeling rather powerless over many things, but I’m not looking for a fight. Maybe it’s an age thing because there were times in my younger (and more energetic) years when I was always looking for a fight. Just having an excuse to rage at some unsuspecting fellow human or break something or say, “No, I’m not going to do what you are asking and I don’t care what the consequences may be.”

At what point do I stop going along with the system, do I stop obeying rules that are not my own, or at least not for my own benefit? At what point do I make the conscious choice to not be a good girl? I guess I’ve made that point many, many times when I’ve felt beaten down by powers that I couldn’t even name. Desperation takes many forms, and when a person feels as though they are fighting for their life the situation can get ugly to say the least.

I don’t want to feel desperate these days, but I recognize the pre-requisites to feeling that way. Depression. Feeling as though it doesn’t matter what I do, right or wrong, because nothing will change. Feeling as though you have some target on your back that warns others to understand that I’m an imposter and don’t really know a damned thing about any damned thing.

Can I do anything about those feelings? Are they real? What is my responsibility to ascertain whether the feelings are merited, or whether I am truly inadequate?

I must be doing something right because I’m still here. I haven’t caused irreparable harm to anyone else, and I’ve managed to do a few good things along the way. Am I entitled to feel better than I do? I have no answer for that, but I also have no answer for why I feel the way I do.

Today it’s somewhat overcast, and rain is expected for the next couple of days. However, we are assured that Halloween will be a very nice day. The insistence that October 31st is a major holiday amuses me since half the people here don’t let their kids trick-or-treat on the 31st for religious reasons (which make no sense to me) and…there’s a pandemic. For some people in these parts the former is far more important than the latter, which is absurd in my book.

Somewhere on the planet, there is sunshine. In another part of the globe, there is darkness. I presume that one cannot exist without the other, but when I cannot wait for it to end. When my hair is curly I grieve that it’s not straight. When my belly is large I cannot understand why it’s not thin. We always want what we don’t have. Sometimes that is comical, but sometimes it’s tragic. Wanting food when you are starving makes people do extreme things, and often that doesn’t end well.

I don’t want to be desperate for money, or a job, or to be thinner or prettier. Desperation will cause me to do things that are ill-advised and may result in bigger problems than the original issue. That’s when things make less sense than ever before. Karma may be a real thing, although it’s not punitive, just a statement of cause and effect. A friend in recovery said frequently, “To build esteem, do esteemable acts.” Simple, but not easy.

It’s going to be OK, but as I keep saying I don’t know what OK looks like. Having expectation of what OK should look like sets me up for disappointment, and blocks things beyond my wildest dreams. That concept also makes my head hurt, but that could be just my sinuses or lack of sleep. I slept fairly well for close to six hours, but woke up a little tired so I ight do a radical thing and take a nap today. It can’t be that easy, though. Can it?

Yeah, I’m trying. I have not yet elevated my thinking to “no try, just do” or even “just do it”. But I am trying to counter my brain chemicals and keep my snout above water. Today I didn’t do a helluva lot, but did manage to walk the dog twice, for almost a mile each time. It was an effort, but I made it, she’s happy (or something akin to happy for her neurotic little self) and now we’re back in our little cavern. Such is life.

For some bizarre reason, unknown to me on a cognitive level, I have been watching YouTube videos of “Karens” behaving badly. I’ve discovered that not all “Karens” are male, not all of them are white, and they come in all ages and sizes. They are, however, all incandescently pissed off. They do not want to be told about rules or guidelines and they really want to argue with people about the law and their rights.

When grown adult people scream so loudly that veins stand out on their foreheads I am intrigued. When I find they’ve been triggered by sitting too long in a drive-through at McDonald’s or being told they must wear a mask in a retail store, I’m befuddled. Watching these folks waving their copies of the ADA law and alleged medical exemption to mask mandates is amusing. They do not enjoy being told that a privately owned business can make their own policies and rules concerning masking, and Karen is free to shop elsewhere.

This is about power, plain and simple. Don’t tell me what to do – who are you to be able to tell me what to do if I don’t want to do that? When the entire rest of a person’s world is out of their control, a mask seems like a perfect opportunity to vent their spleen. Even better, when a teenager at Taco Bell fails to provide sauce for your tacos, that seems like the perfect opportunity to make that hapless worker the recipient of every ounce of rage you have, about anything and everything.

The “Karen” mentality says you will do what I say, you will serve me without error, you will greet me with a smile even when I’ve insulted every hair on your head, and you’re going to like it. Um, hate to tell these folks…that’s not how it works. It’s often gratifying to see a minimum wage fast-food worker bark back at these folks, who seem to take great delight in explaining how they will have “corporate” fire the insolent and incompetent worker. A couple of these kids have told the nice folks, “Hey, I don’t give a @T#D about this job, and I don’t give a @T#D about you. You can take your attitude and bring THAT to corporate, but I don’t really give a damn.” Therein lies the dream of every worker who wants to tell “the man” hey – take this job and shove it.

I have certainly had more than my fair share of abuse from both “customers” and “the man”, and it’s not pleasant. It’s even more unpleasant because it is simply not necessary. Going toe-to-toe with somebody about something stupid like a hamburger or a 3×5 scrap of fabric across your face is not doing a thing to help get us through the day. What a waste of time.

Back in the day, I can remember being that angry over something inconsequential. The anger was never about the matter at hand, it was always about “respect” or wanting to feel as though I could get my way. That never worked. Maybe for a minute or so out of time, but when it was all said and done, I still had none of the power I was craving. Usually, I had a headache from screaming and hollering and sometimes punching the wall. That was not at all helpful to me, or anyone else involved.

It seems that power is addictive. We humans seem to be born addicted to it, and attempts to divest us of it results in severe withdrawal symptoms. We’ll kill for it, we’ll go to war for it, we’ll lie and cheat for it. We’ll toss every ounce of moral turpitude in the sewer to maintain control over circumstances or people, and we’ve talked ourselves into believing that’s the right way to live. If that was the correct way to go through life, we wouldn’t be in such turmoil over acquiring and maintaining power over…things and people.

Ah, well. Power in the natural world is really just a way to get work done. Ultimately that’s all it is anywhere, but I suppose the question becomes what becomes of the work. Work for what purpose? Work to accomplish what? I don’t mind working, but if I feel I’ve been made a fool of and worked breathlessly for an invalid cause, I am slightly less motivated to continue. Unfortunately, the systems we’ve built are now a perverse game of Jenga, and trying to move any one piece will topple the entire structure you’ve just built.

I suppose we forget that we have built this place. These days, many of us are trying to convince others that we need to “deconstruct” the parts of the colossus that aren’t working, but as someone wiser than me once said – people don’t want to be constantly tearing down things. They want to be building new things. That’s where the energy is, that’s where the motivation lives. Building, not destroying. That sounds like a sound plan.

For whatever it’s worth, I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired of the battle, tired of the never ending plans and strategies and games to be played. Life is not a game, I don’t think so why I need to learn to play a game to live it is beyond me. I applied for a couple of jobs that would be ideal for me, and for the employers, but I suppose I didn’t play the game right…the right key words weren’t in my resume’ and my cover letter didn’t say the right things. Fuck all that. I’m done. I’ll get a job doing something I don’t like and probably overqualified for, but I won’t have to give it a second thought. I won’t need to be a problem solver, won’t need to try and make anything better, just do what they tell me to do and then leave. Just send the paycheck and go straight to hell. Do not pass go, but you’d better give me the $200. What a sorry state of affairs to have a brain and be penalized for using it.

Anyway, that is my rant on corporate America and the state of the gross national product and the hierarchy of greed. Greed seems to be the clever disguise of power, and the more of it you satisfy the more of it you want. More, more, more. The sad part is that no matter how much of “it” (whatever “it” is) that you get, you then have to spend even more effort to keep it. Those at the top of the heap spend all their time making sure nobody is going to topple them, and those at the bottom spend all their time figuring out a way to get to the top. Some days that just seems like such an empty hole in the cosmos.

I am trying. I’m not trying to get rich, I’m not trying to achieve power, I’m not trying to control anything or anybody (except maybe the psycho dog, for her own good). I just want to be better than I was a minute ago, for no other reason than I can be. I don’t want to get to the end of my time here knowing that I gave up, or let crap set up by somebody else beat me. A Janis Ian song that I’ve always liked is “Me To You”, and it says, “I hate to see a friend go down in flames without a song, so I’m waiting by the doorway but I will not linger long.” Sometimes you have to write your own song, and I suppose that’s what I’m doing now. It really sucks to have lost your beat, but it sucks even more to be marching to someone else’s beat. I will not linger long…got shit to do.

I had a random memory yesterday…it wasn’t a memory so far removed that it came as a great surprise or anything. I have remembered it in the past, but I suppose the emotion wasn’t firmly attached, or at least not connected to anything larger.

This particular memory was probably triggered by something I ran across on YouTube earlier, about a 14-year old boy whose parents were divorced, apparently not amicably, and he was due to return from a visit with his biological father back to his mother’s house. He didn’t want to go back. He said all he did in that house was fight with his mother, and the step-father wasn’t particularly welcoming or tolerant, either. He wanted to stay with his father.

Dad was returning all of the kids back to mom’s house, as per the court order governing his visitation. The younger kids had gone in, but the 14-year old refused to get out of the truck. Mom stood outside the vehicle and alternately blamed the dad for fueling the kid’s rebellion, and telling the kid that he needed to get his butt out of the truck and come inside to discuss his issues with her. The kid said no, we can either discuss that here or not at all. I do not want to live here any longer.

Mom resorted to bad-mouthing dad, who was in the driver’s seat and filming the entire thing and getting emotional about “losing her baby”. She told the step-dad to call the police and waved the court order granting her full custody of all the kids. When the police finally came (it was a non-emergency), they listened to everything but mommy could not strong-arm them into “making” the kid go back into her house. They said that was a civil matter, but they were called out to resolve a disturbance and that was easily resolved by allowing the kid to stay with his dad. The rest of it was a civil issue of custody, and she needed to handle that in family court.

Mommy, of course, turned on the tears and screamed about the custody order…step-dad stood there like a statue, and the officers told dad he was free to leave with the kid. The kid was allowed to bolt inside to get his things for school, and later said mommy had tried to lock him in his room to prevent him from leaving. That didn’t work, since the police were still outside, and the kid ran out a minute later with a duffel bag and got back into the truck. He and his dad left a moment later.

I could relate entirely to being split between parents, feeling as though my needs were not taken into account. The constant fighting, the constant feeling of being discounted because I was “only a child”. That was the whole point, y’all – I was only a child but I was being hauled into adult matters and expected to handle that like an adult…but wait…you’re only a child, so know your place…but be mature and handle things reasonably…but wait….

OK, no more “but, wait” moments. The part of the whole YouTube saga that got to me was that the kid had some place to go. His dad wanted take custody of him, supported him in the decision to leave the mom’s house. During the confrontation with mom, dad never spoke ill of her. He filmed the encounter, because he wanted to document it, and the police officers never told him to stop. His support for his son was impeccable.

I never got that. The memory that came up was having fought violently with my mother one day, and deciding that I wanted out and wanted to live with my father. They were not officially divorced yet, just legally separated, and he was living in an apartment. I called him and said I wanted to come and live with him, but I didn’t get unequivocal support of that decision. What I got was well, um, I would have to make arrangements…and talk to the apartment management…and get some things in order…blah, blah, blah.

At that moment, I realized I had no place to go. I was stuck, and I’ve really never felt otherwise. I did not want to be in my mother’s house, but at least it was a roof over my head and my basic physical needs were met (food, shelter, school, doctor). I was alternately afraid of her and hated her. I knew she was wrong, but any conflict was turned back on me so that I was the villain. “If you wouldn’t <whatever> I wouldn’t have to <whatever>.” That’s usually what abusers say, and emotionally/spiritually/sometimes physically she was abusive. Full stop.

I no longer hate my mother. There are a lot of things I understand now that I couldn’t understand then. I don’t hate my father, either. Not hating them doesn’t mean that I don’t remember, and that I don’t hold them responsible for all the ways they caused me to feel as though I had no home, no family, and was the worst kid in the entire world. It’s not a question of forgiving them or not forgiving them, but as with all of it, I have to clean up the mess. Am I angry about that? You bet.

I was afraid of my mother until her last breath. It was impossible for me to touch her…I had tried to hold her hand when she was in the hospital, right before she entered hospice, but she drew back her hand. That was directly tied, at least for me, to the day of my grandmother’s funeral when she wanted me to hold her hand walking down the aisle in the church, and I didn’t want to because I was afraid. She looked at me and said, “I’m going to remember that.” Those were words she frequently uttered that meant she would get me back later, there would be revenge, there would be punishment. I have never forgotten that.

I’ve never forgotten that day when my father didn’t immediately open his arms to me and say, “Come on. Come right now, I’ll come and get you, you always have a place with me.”

I’ve never felt as though I have a home with anyone, anywhere. Whatever constitutes “home” for me is what I make for myself. I suppose I could live with that, but what I make for myself is so inadequate, so non-homelike, so barren. It’s great that I have a stable roof over my head and all that stuff, but it doesn’t feel like what I always thought “home” should be…with the warmth and the happiness and the safety. It feels like the necessities, like what is required. It’s where my stuff is, where my toilet is, where my clothes and my guitar and my dog are. I’m not entirely sure it’s where I am. I’m not entirely sure it’s where I live.

I just watched most of the plea hearing for Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland FL school shooter. This kid is 23 years old now and seems fully in control of his faculties. He affirmed that he understood all of the implications of his guilty pleas (18 for murder, 17 for attempted murder, and 4 for battery against police officers). He seemed entirely non-threatening, not intimidating, meek, and humble.

He answered the judge “yes, ma’am” or “no, ma’am” when she queried him about his ability to understand the proceedings and technical aspects of his plea. Bespectacled defendant, and of slight build, he affirmed softly when asked if he understood that the maximum penalty for each of the murder charges was the death penalty.

Mr. Cruz requested to address the victims/families present and was allowed to do so. He did not face those present, but uttered a short and tearful apology for what he had done, and stated his aversion to drugs. He said that he understood the victims might not believe him, but he loved them and was very sorry, and felt they were ultimately in control of whether he lived or died when the sentence was rendered.

Welp, alrighty then. Color me underwhelmed.

The prosecution read a detailed account of this kid’s movements on the day of the killings at the Marjorie Stone Douglas school in Parkland FL in 2018, and it was chilling. The shooter took an Uber to the school, carrying an AR-15 style gun and several magazines of ammunition along with a utility vest in a bag. Since he is a former student of the school, he knew exactly where to go, and proceeded to a 3-story campus building where he began loading and assembling his weapon in a stairwell. He encountered one student there, who he warned that “something bad was about to happen” and returned to girding himself for a self-imposed war.

The shooting rampage took only a few moments, leaving eighteen people dead – students, teachers, athletic coaches. Some seventeen students and teachers were wounded. The rampage might have gone on a bit longer, but some of the bullets disrupted ceiling tiles blowing dust into the smoke detectors. That set off fire alarms all over the campus. Students and teachers across the multiple school buildings began evacuating because the alarms sounded.

The shooter calmly took off his vest, dropped his weapon, and calmly mingled in with the crowd of people flowing out of the buildings. He was captured nearly 3 miles away after an extensive search that relied on eyewitness accounts of the events.

Listening to the prosecutor’s account of that day’s activities was akin to a viewing a horror movie. Several of the victims’ family members cried silently while each count of the charges was read, including the names and how many times each victim had been shot. Each account concluded with the words “the victim died of their wounds” or “the victim survived their wounds”. All of the victims were shot multiple times, some after the shooter had wounded them and then returned to shoot them again as they lay dying.

How can a society that claims to be responsible and moral possibly continue to champion the rights of every citizen to own firearms, particularly assault weapons with large capacity and easily reloadable magazines?

The Parkland shooting is only one in a long list of mass shootings, some with fewer victims and some with more. The Pulse Nightclub shooting, and the Las Vegas music concert shooting both claimed upward of 50 victims. If this is not war, then what is it? If this is not insanity, then what in the world is it? Anyone who continues to argue the illogic of “well, if there had been more armed people to resist these shooters, it would have been a lower death toll” is patently insane, and unequivocally incorrect. If there had been teachers or other students armed in the school shooting incidents, there would have been far more victims, not fewer.

Something is very wrong in this country, but we already knew that. When a 23-year old can procure a military-grade assault weapon, calmly take a ride-share to a densely populated public school, and shoot to his heart’s content that should be incomprehensible in a civilized society. But it’s not. It’s defended and justified and rationalized, and in some cases belligerently defended.

There seem to be no solutions. People can read all the books they care to on habits of highly successful people and negotiating skills and conflict resolution, but until we have some kind of massive paradigm shift none of that will matter.

Until we manage to escape the pugilistic dance seemingly inspired by Calvinist roots that exhort us to devise new and better ways of punishment, rather than prevention and discouragement of crime, we’re going to be stuck right here killing people to show other people that killing people is wrong. The death penalty is no longer a deterrent. It doesn’t grant closure to the survivors of crime. It doesn’t tp the balance of good and evil.

I have no answers, but it takes something out of the collective energy of my world to see the incredible toll that we inflict upon each other. The Parkland shooter is intelligent, and aware, and knows full well what he has done. He has not offered much in the way of motive, and he may not know himself why he chose to do what he did. I don’t need him to understand, but the rest of us need to understand how we can quell the rising tide of people like him.

To fix this mess, we can’t start at the point of penalty for past actions, we have to start well before the action is taken. Ignoring mental health crises, and building on the foundations of inequity and lies and the avoidance of responsibility does not get us any closer to peace, and that’s ultimately what everyone is begging for – peace.

I feel horribly for anyone who has ever lost someone to violence or war of any kind. It takes a brief suspension of one’s moral agency to commit a murder, and it can happen in a split second. Nobody is immune to that moment in time when they are lost and balancing on the imperceptible fixed point that separates right from wrong. That is the point that can destroy the world, or give birth to the future of humanity, and it may be about something as simple as a spicy chicken sandwich at a fast-food restaurant.

This IS the fire next time, and we are burning. It’s painful, and we need a way out. What are we going to do?

I don’t feel as though I am really here. I feel as though I have been dropped from some great height and my parts spread out haphazardly and disconnected upon the ground. I never knew how this machine worked in the first place, so trying to reassemble it is the stuff sitcoms are made of.

Part of me says this is good, because I can re-create myself however I would like. That’s great, except that I still have only the original raw materials to use. There’s been nothing added, nothing optimized, nothing changed but ligaments and connectors may be more fragile and less elastic. But, I will do the best I can do, as always.

Maybe this is a good thing. Perhaps I don’t need to reassemble myself in the rigid binary in which I existed before – short vs. tall, fat vs, thin, ugly vs. pretty. I suppose the goal is more about acceptance of the inherent reality, but damn, if that wasn’t satisfactory to begin with it probably won’t be acceptable now.

My recovery program talks about a necessary psychic change in order to effect true change. I feel as though I’ve had many psychic changes, many deviations from the original default position, although what hasn’t changed is the nature of the unacceptability of that reality. How do I make peace with that reality when I don’t like it? I can accept it, but I don’t like it, and I don’t know that I will ever like it.

This is the source of the great unrest, the conflict within, the dissastisfaction of that which is. There are certain things I don’t mind, but certain other things I find nearly impossible to reconcile. I don’t mind being short, but I mind tremendously being fat and having all of the usual causal factors that make that condition a reality. Life shouldn’t have to be that bloody difficult, require that much effort, necessitate a divorce from every intuitive machination that I have. That pretyt much sucks and I don’t have the energy for it any longer.

It’s not just the weight, though – it’s not being able to keep my mouth shut in the face of some deeply held conviction, it’s not being able to read people and know instictually who I shouldn’t trust. It’s not understanding how life amongst people works.

My father was not a happy man, and I am convinced that caused him to sign up for an early departure. My mother was not a happy woman, but she lasted for more than 20 years after he was gone. My grandmother seemed to be happy – she had a lot of things going for her in the early 70s – but she also departed before her time (or at least my estimate of that). Is there a decision, on some esoteric plane? I don’t know, but I suspect that unhappiness makes for a certain mind-body-spirit connection that says time is short and I’m ready to go.

I am not a happy person, and I wonder if that means I will be taking an earlier flight out of here. That is not a conscious ask, but periodically I think it wouldn’t be such a horrible deal. My hesitance, though, comes from the big question mark of what lies beyond. What if this pain doesn’t end when I shake this mortal coil, and it simply continues under different circumstances. What if there really is a punishment for not wanting to continue under these circumstances. The prospect of this unpleasantness continuing is like cold water in the face.

Earlier today, I was listening to someone else try making sense out of a group process that she didn’t particularly like. The group opted to be very fluid, and be open to changing details about how we choose to be with one another. She was more rigid about us conforming to what we say, and how we communicate with the larger community. MOst of us found that we didn’t care much about definition, or at least about it being true to defining wors and concepts. We choose to make it up as we go along, have our covenant be responsive to our needs at any given time.

Watching this other person trying very hard to make things “make sense” gave me a glimpse of what it looks like when I am trying to do that. She could not understand why the rest of us didn’t feel conflicted about our self-definition as compared with how our definition was described. She felt as though existed no space between self-definition and self-description, and that essentially referenced a conflict.

Rigidity does not serve me well, and I don’t think it serves anyone well. What I thought when I was 10 is not unchanged more than 50 years later, but may be tempered by having more information. I still believe that people shouldn’t be left out and left alone in the world, to fend for themselves, but I understand how that is more complicated than people being mean spirited. There are nuances, there is choice, there are circumstances that I can’t alter. That’s the reality I know – sometimes it sucks, but it’s usually more complicated than I can understand and I cannot control that.

Trying to control stuff that I cannot control, and/or which is none of my business in the first place, is difficult. I wrestle with my relative power all the time, often out of arrogance but more likely out of empathy. I don’t want anyone else to hurt, but I have to understand that hurting may be the only way for them to learn, and grow. Whichever it is, that path is none of my business.

Boundaries, the dreaded boundaries again. There’s a 5-year old part of me that wants to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. I don’t think having that feeling is a bad thing, but refusing to accept the reality that having all of my wants realized is more frequently not a good thing can be soul numbing. If everything was exactly the way I wanted it, I would have no way to build up any musculature by resisting that which I don’t want.

Maybe that’s what is wrong now, maybe I have nothing to resist, nothing to struggle against. I don’t have everything that i want, but I’m not sure I’m truly resisting anything. There are lots of things I don’t like, but that’s mostly just a statement, and not an action (unless flipping the bird in the general direction of corporate America and the 1% counts as action).

Maybe this vague feeling of disconnection and discombobulation could be mitigated with intentional action. I had the notion that I wanted to get in better shape, lose a few pounds, and i figured time was right to join a gym once again and start working on that. But, I have to be cautious about that since we’re still in the middle of pandemic response. It’s one thing to be having lunch with a couple of people in a nearly empty restaurant, and an other to be rolling around and sweating with people who are touching things you will use moments later. The gym claims to be utilizing extreme methods of cleansing, and has ensured as much social distancing as possible, but I am the first to acknowledge that if people want to do the wrong thing, there’s always a way. People iz stoopit.

I’ll figure out something to do with the gym shortly. I will probably need to start walking first, hopefully with the dog. She is actually fairly good company on a walk, especially when I have chose a time and place optimal for low population density. We’ll get there. The weather is starting to get really nice, so it’s a good time.

And so it goes. On and on, another day, another lack of a dollar, more goofiness from some of the other billions of my neighbors on the planet. William Shatner was just given the opportunity to go up for a 10-minute trip into sub-orbital space where he could experience weightlessness and an external view of our great blue marble. I am happy for Captain Kirk to boldly go to the final frontier…at 80 years of age. He will still be speaking with exclamation points following most of his words, and that will be just dandy. Some things will never change, and I suppose that is the reality we all need to accept.

It occurs to me that when I want to hide, there are hundreds of places to go. Maybe infinite numbers of places I can go. All within the confines of my tiny little mind. I guess if I lap myself running around my brain cavity, I can pass go and pic up the $200. One would hope. Or at least a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

Anyhow…I am trying to feel slightly better the past couple of days. The FedEx dufus who can’t seem to comprehend that my apartment is on the 3rd Floor and not the 1st is not helping. I am going to have to stake out the next delivery and figure out which driver is doing that, because every 2nd or 3rd delivery makes it correctly to my front door. It’s got to be a single driver who is…difficult. Or lazy. Or something. It’s a first world problem, but annoying nonetheless.

I had a great session with my BIPOC small group last night, talking about how some of us (regardless of color) take care of other folks far more than we care for ourselves. Where it sometimes has an ethnic/racial slant is when we feel the need to be better than everyone else, please everyone else so as not to rock the boat. I acknowledge there are people pleasers who are of dominant culture, but I don’t know if they feel the pressure of having to represent “their kind” the way POC do. I’m not sure about that, and it could be good fodder for a discussion with dominant culture folks. We’ll see.

My meal delivery menu for this week included a beef/dill/cream sauce thing, with peas (kind of an odd choice, but it worked). I ate on that for two days, and it wasn’t half bad. Today I will not have anything from my delivery since the other selections include meat, and I will be immediately thrust into the pits of Hell if I eat meat on Friday. Old habits die really hard.

Speaking of old habits, I had the idea that I should do some work on my shadow self. Nothing formal or even organized, but I’m doing some meditations on YouTube that are designed to help one get in touch with the shadow, and work to make peace with it. That, of course, is easier said than done.

The shadow involves what is best left in the past, but shades the present and even hope for the future. Sometimes it’s just not wanting to revisit those issues or events, constantly batting them down into the void, refusing to give them voice. This doesn’t really work, at least not for me, and only serves to raise a lot of noise inside my head. I hate when it’s noisy in there, because I have no peace. No peace of mind or peace in the body or peace in the spirit. No peace anywhere. No justice, no peace. I suppose it’s not justice to refuse acknowledgement of those root causes for so much of my persistent distress.

The other part of the shadow work is the self-forgiveness part, which is magnanimously difficult for me. I suppose my ego dictates the fantasy that I am, or at least can be, perfect. That I don’t make mistakes. That I’ve got everything under control. That’s more or less a lie. More, actually. A big fat lie. Nobody can be perfect. Me believing that I can be perfect is an egotistical delusion.

I suppose the other significant portion of the work I’m doing with shadow is the change in how to keep the light on and not bury more stuff in the back, in the dark, down in the hole. I feel as though my shadow self has somewhat overwhelmed me, and once I’ve gotten it cut down to size I don’t want it back. Live and learn, I suppose.

A few minutes ago, I was out with the psycho dog, and she was in rare form. It’s a rather nice morning, and we both enjoyed the low humidity and moderate temperature. She literally howled at a passing dog, and could not be persuaded to hush. Then, a neighbor lady came by with her chihuahua, and gave us a bag of treats. She said their other dog was allergic to them, or at least her daughter thought so. These are pretty high-quality jerky treats, so I offered one to the manic dog to get just a couple of seconds of quiet…and it worked. She couldn’t bark while chewing, so I was able to hear myself think for just a bit.

I wonder how I came to be here, in this particular reality. It’s a futile process, because of course I will never really know, but I definitely believe I made some kind of sentient choice to come here, under these circumstances, at this time, with these conditions. I wish that I could know when I’ve learned some lesson I’m supposed to learn, or rounded some corner of ethics or morality so that I could make a point of retaining the learning. I would hate to have repeating this class over and over again. I have the feeling that it’s a lower elementary class, too so I would like to feel that I’m moving up to middle school or high school. Being stuck in the 4th grade feels like a defeat.

Today I am going to have lunch with a friend, and her mother. I really like her mother, and she has been gold in getting my friend back to her usual self. The self that I first knew, the jovial and fun-loving friend who was not so consumed with anger at everything and everyone. She had gotten to be embittered and caustic, and it was really no fun being around her. I understand how that can happen, when everything in the world seems wrong no matter how much you try to make it right, and you take it out on everyone who’s not nailed down. I had to keep her a bit at a distance, but I was still there. That’s how I roll in a friendship. It’s not always what I get in return, but it’s still my choice to operate that way.

Last night we talked a little about work, working, having work, our relationship to work. I have been coming to realize that I am still thinking of myself as somewhat of a lesser being because I have taken on the label of “unemployed”, as though I have less value and worth than someone who is working. That is just crap. I am working on unlearning that, and assigning myself worth and value according to how I move through the world. Why isn’t that enough? I am enjoying what I do in terms of social justice work and building community, and wasn’t during my working years. That counts for something. At the end of the day, that counts for everything.

I am resigning myself to not finding a job for which I have spent many years developing skills. It will be fine. I am thinking some of it is my age, and some of it possibly the gap in work history. Whatever. It’s not what I know, it’s who I know, and I’ve known that for a very long time. If there was someone inside a company who vouched for me, I would have a job for which I’m only minimally qualified tomorrow, even with a criminal history. That’s the American way.

Right now, I am more inclined to work on myself. Again. Lately I’ve been doing a little work on my shadow side. Of course I have no idea what I’m doing, or at least how to do it correctly, but I am willing. There are a few meditations that I’m doing, ones that encourage me to explore things I’m ashamed of, lies I’ve told, stuff I really don’t want to think about. It’s almost like making amends to myself, I guess. One of the meditations urges me to remember these unpleasant things, and then say to myself, “I love you. I’m sorry. PLease forgive me. Thank you.”

Hmmm. That’s not how I roll. Not at all. I reallly don’t know what I’m doing…about much of anything. My sleep study was totally a goose egg, because I didn’t sleep long enough to make a diagnosis. Lovely. All that anxiety for nothing. The doctor said she could get me a CPAP if I wanted it, but I don’t. So, I told her I felt that I needed to figure out why I couldn”t sleep. The last time this happened was right after my mother died, when I woke up every few hours, if I fell asleep at all. It’s kind of like that now, but I don’t exactly know what’s triggering the sleep interruptions.

I suppose the anxiety these days could be about not being able to find a job, staring down the barrel of having to pay for my health insurance premiums outright next year, without the ACA subsidy. That’s directly related to being unemployed, since I can’t demonstrate that I have an income equal to the poverty level. If I had an income, I wouldn’t need assistance from the ACA, now would I? I suppose it makes sense in government logic (yes, that’s an oxymoron, sue me).

So, people are irritating me lately. I liked it better when we all stayed inside and there weren’t so many cars on the road. It was quieter, and if you needed to go somewhere, you could get there effortlessly in just a few minutes. People weren’t quite so snarky and cranky, and nobody was fighting over fabric squares and shots. How far we’ve come.

There has to be more to life than being outraged about…stuff. Stuff we can’t do anything about. There is a lot we can’t do anything about, but there is still a lot we can do. Frustratingly, the yield is not immediate or sometimes, not even perceptible. We are not patient beings, but that is what is called for at times like these.

I’m tired of hearing about “resiliency”. It’s not resiliency if you have no choice but to take another breath, no choice but to survive. It might be resilience if you make a conscious choice to bounce back from disaster, but not if there is no other choice except death. Except mere survival, by instinct alone.

What choice do I have but to breathe, unless I have taken some chemical that paralyzes that function. If I do not make the other choice, to intentionally end my life, how resilient am I if my involuntary functions do what they are meant to do?

People talk about how resilient people of color are to survive even in the face of myriad circumstances that are designed to kill us. We are not bouncing back from disaster, we are surviving. I believe there is more to life than mere survival, and that’s where the rubber meets the road. Survival and living are not equivalent. If I am born again to a new life following near decomposition from disaster, then perhaps I might claim resilience. Merely breathing when someone has tried to beat the life of me is not resilience, it is survival. To survive in the face of disaster is not resilience, it’s strength.

I am strong. That’s a blessing and a curse. When others perceive of you as being strong, they don’t always handle you with care. They assume you’ll be just fine, and that you’ll go on no matter what they do. On a certain level, that’s true, but I have come to believe that I deserve far more than surviving callous disregard for my well being.

I don’t really want to be strong, or resilient. I want to be alive, I want to be worthy of life, I want to be capable of joy and happiness and beauty and love. I want to thrive. What good is resilience if you return to the same unsatisfying incarnation?

I think everyone has some kind of influence on others if they want to be influenced. It’s always a choice. The idiot that I fought with the other day in the Walmart parking lot influenced me – I was in a foul mood for the rest of the afternoon, and it still crosses my mind. I could meditate on the whole thing and probably force it out of my head, but it’s no longer about him. It’s about me. I let his anger tilt my sails a bit, and I could have made another choice. That’s a really little thing, but sometimes I’m easily influenced to do more significant things.

I think about people like Dylan Roof, or Timothy McVeigh, or any of the insurrectionists on January 6th. On some level they allowed themselves to be influenced by rhetoric, or the energy of the crowd, or their own pre-existing feelings of powerlessness. When I am not grounded firmly in my Self, that can be what happens.

Because I don’t want to be on somebody else’s path, I am staying on some kind of wandering course to somewhere I don’t yet know, but the steps are mine. My mind works differently than a lot of other folks, and I’m just beginning to accept that. That’s fine. At this point in my life, I am weary of fighting anyone, including myself.

The other day I was having a discussion with some UU people about social activism. We all agreed there has to be some kind of grounding in faith. Some of those folks are ministers, so that’s where they live, but I agree. My take on it is we could be doing our social activism work anywhere – in the Sierra Club, or in the ACLU, or the GLBT Pride network – but we have chosen to do it here, inside the UU container. Accordingly, what needs to bind us is faith, and not necessarily religious faith. Faith in our common view of how to make things better. Simple to me.

My neighbor’s 14-year old cat had to be euthanized over the weekend. Kitty had been fading in recent months. First, she lost her purr and her meow and had to have several teeth extracted. That brought her sounds back, but she was still a little subdued. They brought her back to the vet recently because she was coughing and wheezing. The first visit rendered no clue about the cause, but they prescribe antibiotics and sent her home. She went down a bit further and returned to the vet. This time they felt a lump in her chest and did an exploratory surgery to see what it was. When they got in there, it was a malignancy that had metastasized, and the vet called to say it would be best to put her down before she woke up. They felt she had probably begun to suffer from the pain the growth was likely to have caused. And so it was.

I know that pain, I know that silence when a tiny creature with a brain the size of plum leaves you. The male half of the couple is sad, but the female half is devastated. She cleared out all of the kitty’s food, toys, bedding, and dishes and threw them out. I understand that. When I had to put my last dog down, I did the same thing. The neighbor lady says no more pets. I said the same thing after I put that dog down, and less than six months later I got this little monster. So, we’ll see.

I bought a drone. I’ve been interested in doing that for a while and got a friend to recommend a good beginner device. I found it at Walmart for less than $100, so I ordered it online. It arrived, and I did my due diligence and viewed YouTube videos about how to set it up and fly it. I did all that, but…the damned thing wouldn’t fly. I couldn’t get the propellers to activate, and eventually, I decided it was the remote control unit that wouldn’t charge. I contacted the 3rd party that sold it for Walmart, and they were just a hot mess, so I decided to return it and start over. I bought another one – it’s set to arrive on Tuesday. I returned the old one after several fits and starts, but it’s done.

The most nonsensical thing about the entire drone acquisition was part of the return process. After I began the process online, they sent a bar code that I needed to show the customer service folks in any Walmart store. OK, that’s easy enough, so off I went.

Got to the store, with the drone firmly in hand in its original packaging, and found a lengthy line at the customer service counter. Hmm. Then I spied a sign that said “Express online returns here”. I charged in that direction, only to find there were no instructions for what to do when I arrived there. There was a huge lawnmower that seemed to be somewhat off-kilter, but no indication of what to do. There was a monitor behind the lawnmower that said “Press here for help”. So I pressed there. The monitor said that someone was coming to assist me. Tap tap. After a few minutes, with nobody in sight that looked as though they could even begin to help me, I went back to the email with the barcode. To my shock, there was a second page that I had not read. The second page said I needed to make the return merchandise shipping read – packed in a suitable box and sealed with packing tape.

I dejectedly left the store and returned home somewhat later to find an appropriate box. I did, and deposited the drone into the box, sealed it up with duct tape (it was all I had), and went back to Walmart today. I went to another store, not a superstore, and there was no crowd there. A very nice lady began to assist me with the return. To my amazement, the first thing she did was pull the tape off the box. I was stunned, and she must get that look all the time, because before I could utter a sound she said, “They make us look inside the boxes to make sure the item it says you are returning is in there. We don’t know why they tell everybody to seal their packages before they bring them here, but they get really mad at us if we don’t look inside.”

Hmmm. That’s just groovy. The box will have been sealed, unsealed, and then re-sealed before it gets thrown around on a truck somewhere for shipment to who knows where. My transaction got a little hinky because something was wrong with their computers (Mercury is in retrograde is all I’m going to say) and it took several tries to get me a receipt. But finally, it spits out of the printer and I was done. It is a story in several parts, and that just made me tired.

Before I went on the last stage of the drone adventure, I went to get my hair cut. It gets really kinked up when it gets too long, so it was all that and more. I felt like I had shrubbery on my head. I had a good time with the lady who cuts my hair; she is now going through a divorce and a new boyfriend. I enjoy her tremendously. She has two kids under the age of 15, and both of them have cystic fibrosis. She’s a good mom. Her soon-to-be ex-husband is a drunk, so the divorce will be better for all concerned. Life during wartime – this ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco, this ain’t no foolin’ around. But my hair is perfect and I can feel the wind on my scalp now.

So, adventure over, and it’s time to gear down. I bought some wi-fi headphones, and they are entirely awesome. The sound is incredible, and they are comfortable. I can do my Zoom calls in more comfort now, and listening to music is really satisfying. That was a good purchase – it makes me happy. I’m really not a terribly high-maintenance kind of girl, contrary to popular opinion.

The weather is beginning to be slightly less hot than a nuclear reactor, and that’s nice. Today it was close to 80 but the humidity was low, and there was a nice breeze. I sat outside with the dog a little while ago, until she started screaming at people walking by and another dog who was walking a good ways away.

I am fortunate to be able to do everything I did today, even the annoying things. I can do hard things, but when do I get to easy things? When do I get to have what I want, and not what I need? I am brought to a grinding halt on this train of thought when I remember that one of my favorite authors/bloggers is recuperating from brain surgery, and a friend of mine has just been referred to a urologist for a suspicious growth in his bladder. I suppose if I got what I thought I deserved, I wouldn’t even be here – I’d have killed my sill self doing something that seemed like a good idea at the time. So, I will be right here, being grateful for what I have. Full stop.