WHO'S THAT GIRL

Our friends, Jenn and Wade, installed a small above-ground pool in their backyard and Friday night was the inaugural pool party. It was a perfectly simple affair, small and intimate. There were five of us in total and two of those were the men we put to work grilling our dinner. Lauren, Jenn and I made the most spectacular whirlpool and then we just floated in circles chatting about all things and no things. Eventually, we made our way to the screened in back porch. I had slathered Jenn’s magic mosquito repelling essential oil lotion on my legs and I mentioned to Lauren, who was sitting next to me, that I couldn’t seem to stop touching my legs after putting that lotion all over them. Then she said “Now say it sultry.” and I opened my mouth to comply, but nothing came out but bubbles of laughter. Then we all proceeded to laugh for a good number of minutes.

I could never pull myself together enough to “say it sultry”.

Later, when it was just Michael and I, he said “You once told me that Chris said your laugh was infectious. I think that I finally heard the infectious laugh tonight.” We’ve been together for twelve years. It feels impossible that in the last twelve years I have not truly laughed, but completely possible that I haven’t done so in his presence or while he was paying attention. I also don’t want to believe that I have not laughed my true infectious laugh since Chris. That possibility is disappointing and more than a bit sad. Without even realizing it, I went from “the girl who knew sadness” to “the girl who is sadness”. Or maybe just “the girl who doesn’t laugh.” I chuckle. I smile at things. I bark out a decent “ha!”. Rarely do I dissolve into the kind of laughing that leaves me breathless.

Those days have passed.

As we sat across the table from one another slurping noodles at one of our favorite Vietnamese places, I took a moment to tell Michael that I really do appreciate the effort he’s been making not just to get us to Paris in December, but in most things. It is his summer break time and he’s taken over all of the grocery shopping. There’s a wall of sticky notes containing tasks that he wants to complete in the summer months. He has been diligently removing those notes. Like every summer break, he has taken on the task of cooking our evening meals and not allowing me to wash the dishes. Though, sometimes I do it anyway. His goal is to make my summer as task free as possible and I let him know that this is appreciated. Then I said “I know that I have not been my best self this year.” but then I was a little surprised by his response. He said “I know that you’ve been really stressed about work.”

This also made me pause. Mostly, he’s not wrong. It’s just that my stress level around work is more complicated than the day to day of running microscopes that cost half a million dollars each and making sure that people feel safe and comfortable using those microscopes. The day to day stress of my job has been compounded by this administration’s war on science and their determination to make this country dumber. But I also know that I can’t blame my lack luster mood solely on what it means for me and my science friends when the budget cuts to the NIH mean less grant money and fewer scientific discoveries. My lack luster mood is more of a layered bean dip and the spiciest layer is probably a result of my changing body. This is the layer that people eat around. The result is that this layer sticks around longer and ferments in spice, just making things hotter…angrier. I tell Michael that I’m trying, but I’m not convinced. Though, in that moment on a porch with friends, I caught a glimpse of “the girl who knew sadness”.

Years ago, there were almost zero fireflies in my backyard. I can remember lamenting over their absence. “What ever happened to fireflies?” I’d ask. Then when I finally saw the blink of light from one, I clapped my hands and squealed like a toddler. I’ve watched each summer as the population of fireflies has increased and it feels like my backyard is nothing but blinking insects. Those glimpses of the girl I used to be, the one who wasn’t sad all the time, are like those fireflies. It might be a rare sighting in this moment. I’m sure that in time, those sightings won’t be so rare. Okay. Maybe I’m not sure, but I know that this is something I want and need. Which is funny because that’s kind of been my shopping mantra lately. I tend to me more likely to say yes to something I want and need or finding a way to get those things.

This time, when I say “I’m trying”, I really truly mean it.

WHERE WE ARE

Last week, there was an incident with Mom at the assisted living center. She’s fine. Everyone is fine. It was just one of those stupid scary moments that had us all going “What the actual Fuck, Mom!” I had already planned to drive down to see her that Friday and of all the things she chatted about, the incident was not on topic. She did say that she was on a ‘bad’ list and can’t go on the outside activities, but she doesn’t know why she’s on the ‘bad’ list. This time, I took Josephine with me and we sat outside for a bit with some of the other people who live there with Mom. Josephine was very popular and drew a bit of crowd. I sat with Mom while she held my hand and we listened to the elder man across from us tell us about his chow dogs. Which he repeated on a loop. I finally declared it to be too hot for Josephine and took us all inside.

I did a lot of head nodding and responding to things with “huh”, “Oh my “, “Is that so?” and “that’s very interesting.” I don’t do the talking on these visits. I let Mom talk about whatever she wants to talk about. My mother thinks she just moved in a couple of weeks ago. She said that she just walked in and people had already moved all of her things in. She said “I’ve been told that this is my home now.” She also told me that my sister starts working there on Monday (she does not). When others ask me about how my mother is, I have to say that she is physically well. This is true. It is her brain that is unwell. There has been some discussions on moving her to a memory care center, but after sitting with her and her cronies, I don’t think she’s any different from them. They’re all on about the same level of dementia.

My mother is just a little more ornery than the others.

We left Mom’s to spend a day or two with my friends Robin and Summer. I hadn’t seen them in a year and we were due for some actual face time. Most of that was spent in the pool and Michael and I came home with sunburns, mine in weird patterns from poorly applied sunscreen. The sky was a blinding blue all weekend with a constant wind that blew away pool floaties and knocked over potted plants. That wind stayed with us as I drove us home through the Flint Hills, struggling to keep the car steady in the lane. I cried while Michael slept in the passenger seat, Josephine sacked out at his feet. Why was I crying? I do this every time I leave that state.

For so many reasons.

My heart and soul are split up into before and afters. Oh, the years I spent plotting and planning my escape from there. I never wanted to stay and yet there is a part of me that never can leave even while everything is so different. Old haunts are now unrecognizable, major streets have even been shifted over in some form or fashion. I built a life there with someone who was truly my best friend and we created our own chosen family there. Nothing came of that plotting and planning for so long. We just settled in and figured that maybe we didn’t truly want to leave. And then we left. We left and it killed part us. Okay, so it wasn’t the move or the transplanting us six hours away from that life we had settled into that killed him. But sometimes it feels like that is the truth.

The wind whispers “if you had stayed, he’d still be alive.”

The hot Oklahoma wind is the devil and it lies.

So I cry as I drive away because I am reluctantly happy in this life and where my planning and plotting has taken me. I cry because of my good fortune. Then the tears fall for the what ifs. What if we had stayed and I no longer had to drive six hours to be with my chosen family? What if staying meant Chris living? If we had stayed, I’d hate my job and be tolerating my daily life, but Chris would still be here. Now, I like my job and I am more than tolerating my daily life, but I’m sharing that life with someone else. When these thoughts come into play, I cry over how stupid I am for thinking such things and for dwelling on the past. I cry for not being strong enough without Chris to hold together the family we created. So I look out the window and cry even more over the stark beauty of the seemingly endless rolling plains. Then just before leaving the Flint Hills, my tears dry up like the sudden downpours that roll through the prairies.

I forgive myself for thinking such ridiculous thoughts. I hold gratitude for the time spent with the chosen family I have managed to hold onto. I let go of my guilt over not spending enough time with every person I could have spent time with, including my mother. I shove away possible regrets and turn my thoughts and focus to the now and my reluctantly happy life.

AVOID

I’m not avoiding you. I am avoiding me. I came back from Woods Hole with a stack of forty-ish pictures to process from my Nikon and every single one of them turned out to be a whole mood. There are many in the stack that I like a lot. They’re the kind of images I’d want to make really large prints of and hang in a minimalist modern house that has more windows than walls. I also came home with four seashells that I hastily threw into my backpack without really cleaning. My backpack now holds all the usual things like wallet, travel Kleenex, Invisalign storage container, a random feather and now four seashells and some sand. Oh…I think I have two protein bars tucked away in an inside pocket for emergencies.

The feather will end up being the thing that saves my life someday.

I also came home to a dead scooter. The battery on Valerie got zapped by our winter. I did put it on a charger and the battery charged. We had a good month of riding in between bad weather. Then she sat for two weeks because of weather and me being out of town. Michael had to push her up the driveway for me on Saturday because I got to the bottom of the drive and the engine would not turnover. I put her back on the charger and rode to work without incident on Monday. I didn’t ride on Tuesday because of tornados (everyone is fine here). Then on Wednesday, I put the key in the ignition and tried starting the scooter in the garage because I have learned my lesson. But nothing. So this summer, not only am I going to learn to do my own oil changes, but I’m also replacing a battery.

So. Exciting.

This is yet another reminder of how somethings can be very much the same while also very different. And I’m doing my best to not make comparisons, but what I want to say is that V (my original Vespa) wouldn’t be having this issue. I also had a magic battery for V that lasted over ten years. I only replaced it because Michael said I needed to replace it. Something about battery lives and blah blah blah. If I sit to long with the thoughts, V becomes more of an identity than a scooter and I feel myself shifting over into a comparison of losses and founds. We all do it some unintentional way. We can’t help ourselves. It’s part of being in a society of too many choices and the disposability of some of those choices.

Chris used to buy up toiletry bags like candy, each one purchased after the previous failed to meet expectations.

This comparison of losses and founds is not delegated to just things. We apply it to people more often then anyone wants to fess up to. I am so over conscientious of doing this, but I gave V a human identity. She was the first scooter, the one that broke open my soul with joy, the one linked to Chris, the one that held all of those memories of scooter rides with Chris. This scooter, Valerie, is just a new scooter model without all of those memories or links. This scooter is an easy target for my angst and pouts over how my life was better when…fill in the blank. I give myself a few moments to wallow in all of that before shaking it off like a dog. The line from that Natalie Merchant song floats through my brain.

Your mamma is a bitter bride. She’ll never be satisfied. - Natalie Merchant, Life is Sweet

I tell myself "You are not that person.” Except…

Sometimes, I am.

I SHOULD WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN

Saturday morning after my usual breakfast sandwich and journal writing time, I was driving to Trader Joe’s along Ward Parkway. Kansas City is a city of boulevards and parkways. Ward Parkway is particularly lovely, lined with tall trees and old mansions. There is a wide lush median with an the occasional fountain (we’re also the city of fountains). At the intersection of Meyer and Ward there is a large roundabout that circles the Meyer Circle Sea Horse Fountain which was just refinished last year. The stones that make up the fountain now shine a bright white. It’s a really pretty fountain. Any hoo…as I made my way half way around the circle, I noticed the sun reflecting off the water and the people jogging up and down the sidewalks and I sighed with the loveliness of the day. Then something entered my brain and I thought “Ooh…I should write about that thing! That would be something not depressing to write about.”

Now I’ve completely forgotten what it was that entered my brain.

You see? Nice things float around inside my head. It is not all doom and gloom in there. I just seem to be misplacing those thoughts at the moment. I seem to be misplacing a number of things at the moment. Thoughts. Appointments in the calendar. Reasons for why I got up from the couch or why I walked with purpose into the kitchen. Did I feed the dog? I think maybe I did? Josephine got two dinners that night. Lucky dog. It’s like I only have a brain for science and as soon as I step out of the work space, someone blows a thick smoke into my ears. This does sort of happen to me when I’m on two wheels. The number of times I end up behind a car containing heavily pot smoking passengers (new band name?) while I am on my scooter has become immeasurable. I’m more likely to pull into the driveway with a contact high than not.

But no. This fog isn’t pot fog. I know that it is the hazy brain of an aging female mixed in with a brain that tends to be the keeper of the locations of all the things. It is a combination of hormones and just asking too much of my brain. I’m learning French (if you can call it that). I’m reading a book that I checked out digitally from the library which means it will be yanked out of my digital reader when the time is up. I’m learning how to build code to run a slide loading robot. That shit is hard. And all of those reasons above are why I might sit in the driveway in my car, scrolling through Instagram for fifteen minutes before taking the groceries inside or forget to sub that yoga class (yeah..that happened). I have things on my work calendar that I only see in when I have Outlook open. I have things on my google calendar that only see when I have my gmail open. I have stuff on my phone calendar that I never really even look at it.

My calendar situation is a mess.

I spent fifteen minutes this morning fixing all of that and combining my calendars into something that makes more sense. At least for now. I went with combining it all to my google calendar because I have everything color coded and I feel like my brain appreciates this. In fact I just moved a red work block activity scheduled for a previous day to an earlier day because of an unexpected opening on the microscope I need to use for this project. I found great pleasure in this action, but also that red work block was wedged into a full column of other work blocks. It was nice to visually clear that space and now I may be able to actually finish a cup of coffee that morning.

Even still, I forgot to take my Tuesday block of pills and Wednesday morning I stared at my pill box for a long time convincing myself that this day is Wednesday.

Not Tuesday.

DIRECTION

I have this superpower that I genetically inherited from dad. It’s nothing major. I can’t fly or shoot lasers out my eyes (yet). It is a relatively simple little superpower. Heather calls it my party trick. The trick or superpower is the ability to point to north or south under any situation. For instance, if I’m inside a building and someone asks “which way is west?”, I can point them in the right direction. There’s only been one exception and that was in Portland OR. Apparently that place is my kryptonite because every time I visit I lose all sense of direction. Someone told me that it was probably because Portland has two norths, a regular compass one and a magnetic one. Anyway, directions and map reading and the ability to know where I am on the planet was something my dad did very well.

This internal compass might also have something do with life trajectories. Though it felt a little stronger in my youth. I was always heading in a particular life direction. Every extra curricular activity was a stepping stone in that life direction. My inner mantra back then was “must get to college.” It was only once I got to college where I finally allowed myself to ignore the straight line of the compass. I was never completely without direction until Chris died. Then, understandably, I spent some time just wandering around the forest of life. It took some time and making some really dumb (and at times dangerous) choices before I finally had my sense of life direction back. I’ve been thinking about this a lot because of my stagnant nature of late.

Is my compass broken?

Someone sent me a cartoon once depicting how someone in science receives information versus others. The non-science person’s bubble read “Yeah, I saw it on TikTok. It must be true.” while the science person is surrounded by a stacks of journal articles researching the validity behind the TikTok video. It would be funny if it were not true. During the pandemic, a number of people contacted me with questions and I spent a lot of time reading articles about what we knew then and what we know now so I could reply with a clear answer that would include what I knew personally at the time. In a way, we are still experiencing a pandemic. This one threatens the validity of our news sources like NPR and PBS, sources for the public (it says so in their names).

The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. - Mon Mothma, Andor

Trying to shrink that abyss is exhausting.

I read something recently about how we change over the years and the author said something about setting down the things she was not ment to carry or had become too heavy to carry. This made me pause. Who the fuck do I think I am?!? Why on earth do I feel like I need to carry the entire weight of a rebellion? I don’t! I can’t! I learned a long time ago that people will only listen to facts and truth if they are open and willing for listening. I no longer waste my time on such people who are not open for listening. I mean, many of them fell for that whole anti-abortion propaganda that was circulated in the early 70s that claims women use abortion as birth control. I can think of four reasons for why a woman would have an abortion. None. Of. Your. Business. Those are the four reasons, but also abortion as birth control is simply not true. Yet there is no reasoning or argument to persuade them otherwise.

I have been attempting to pull myself out of melancholy for months now and get back into the routine of doing things that I enjoy doing. Winter was hard. My country has been turned to garbage. We’ve had one of our grad students all ready denied for a VISA and some of our other grad students terrified of going home to try to renew their VISAS. I am very busy at work, but in that whole ‘hurry up and wait’ busy that usually happens in science. I’ve felt overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy in aiding the rebellion. I realize that my inability to pull myself out of this funk is directly related to my unwillingness to stop carrying the things that are too heavy or not entirely my thing to carry. There’s so much stuff and the enormity of it all is what has me feeling lost. Where do I put my focus? My time? My energy? Perhaps my compass is not broken and I have not lost my direction. Maybe I don’t need to be heading into anything while carrying heavy things. I’ve never been into the idea of pack-in camping.

My compass is telling me to set some things down so I can move in a direction I want to move into.

AT THE CAR WASH

Back in March we had a super horrible cold snap. It was so cold that the windshield washer fluid in my car froze. When I say ‘my car’ I am now referring to the car I inherited from Mom. It came to us from Oklahoma where they can just put any old washer fluid in their vehicles because it never really gets to the level of cold we see here in northern Missouri. So for a week, I drove the car with windows I could barely see out of, occasionally collecting enough thawing snow water from the cars in front to run the wipers and smear the filth across the windshield. What can I say? I like to live dangerously. I had a car once where the windshield washer didn’t work at all. I carried a spray bottle of cleaner with me and would roll down the window while driving. Then I would take the spray bottle and stick my arm out the window and spray my windshield while running the wipers.

I know how to live without fancy things.

By the end of the week, the weather had finally warmed to tolerable and Michael helped me determine that there was nothing wrong with the washer pump. Then he suggested that we go buy new washer blades and get the car washed. The carwash of our choice was too busy to do interiors, but they were offering a special on their monthly pass that included the interior. It was such a good deal, that Michael yelled “Sold!” and handed over his bank card. Now, I was not sold. I had owned my car for over year when I met Michael. The second time we were together in my car, he asked “When’s the last time you washed your car?” I looked at him with my head tilted like a puppy and said “Wash….car?” I had not washed my car since I had purchased it. Car washing is not a thing on my radar. We don’t do that in Oklahoma. I mean, we do but not like people do here. People go once a week to the car wash! Every carwash you drive past is always packed with people and cars. It is one of the craziest things I’d ever seen.

I felt that the carwash membership was unnecessary.

Michael, who currently drives a truck with signs of rust damage from the previous owner, believes that washing your car on the regular saves the car’s life. I get it. There’s a lot of salt that gets thrown around onto our streets. Right now, everything is coated in a thick layer of pollen. I think if I listen closely, I can hear my dad agreeing with Michael. Any way, I agreed to stop at the carwash every Saturday morning after my Trader Joe’s adventures, being sure to include an eye roll while agreeing. The next weekend rolled around and I went through the carwash and then parked in one of the lanes. Then a teenager came over and cleaned the inside of my car while I waited inside with a cup of coffee. They waived me over when they were done and I got into a very clean car to drive home. And something flipped over inside my chest. I honestly am not sure how to describe it other than love.

I love the carwash.

I mean, I love it. I’m a little disgusted with just how much I love it. It feels so wasteful and bougie. It can’t be an environmentally sound action to take and I don’t want to love it. But I love it. The moment I release control of my vehicle and get pulled into the carwash, I drift off into a space of peace and tranquility. I marvel at the psychedelic soap bubbles as they stream down the windows and when I get back into the car after they’ve cleaned the inside, even when I don’t think it’s that dirty, I sigh with pleasure of being inside a clean car. At the end of that month, my carwash subscription was going to double because I’d reached the end of the promotion period. Michael and I had a serious debate about keeping the membership. I argued against it because…Paris. Michael argued for it because of the joy it brought to me. We compromised on keeping a carwash membership but down grading to just the unlimited wash (no extras like interiors). Michael said that once a month I could have the interior cleaned as an add-on.

There was some concern that just going through the automatic carwash would not be enough for me, that I would not experience the same euphoria. On Saturday morning, I released control of the car, picked up my mug of coffee and settled in for the ride. I sipped coffee and drifted off to a lovely Zen garden and when it ended, I just drove off. I was not sad about it, but I do kind of wish I could have stayed inside the carwash a little longer. When I said this to Michael, he reminded me that my membership is unlimited and I could just loop back around and go through again if I wanted to. I gasped at the thought of it. Go through the carwash twice?!? In the same day!?! That’s hedonistic!

I’m totally doing that next week.

DOCTOR, HEAL THYSELF

The New York Times posted an article recently about 10 Simple Ways To Improve Your Brain Health. It was a list compiled by a group of neurologists and I was happy to read that I am already doing most of the things on their list. I always wear my helmet whether it is for the scooter or the bicycle. I floss every day. If I was the one mowing the yard, I’d wear headphones. I take daily walks and mostly stand at my desk. I am doing the things required for managing my cholesterol. Look, I even convinced Michael to eat a tofu meal this week. I am putting so many healthy vegetables and beans into our weekly meal plans. I feel like I’m winning at something. 

There’s like two things on the list that I’m not doing and one of those things is not my fault. The Neurologists recommend masking on smoggy or smoky days. I know I should do this, but I spend so much time inside that it is something that just doesn’t dawn on me to do. But this does bring up a point about how I should be masking when I’m out in public spaces, particularly when tuberculosis cases are increasing in my area. People don’t know this is happening because the government department in charge of public health just got gutted and there’s not one really staying up to speed on daily cases. You have to do an extensive search for the data and since most everyone I know gets their medical advice from TikTok, extensive searching is not happening. Bottom line is that masks save lives and I should be wearing one. 

I’m going to do better.

Number ten on this list is “Sleep Well”. I love how it is so simply stated as if one can just tell another to “sleep well” and it just happens. There are nights when I think I’m sleeping well because I only woke up twice in the middle of it all. I have no idea what it is like to wake up because my alarm clock actually went off and my alarm is set for 5:15 AM. At this point, I set the alarm as a fail safe just in case I don’t wake up in time. On weekends, I sleep in until 6:45. Why 6:45? See me shrug. That just happens to be the time when I look over at the clock and then say to Josephine “Let’s make you breakfast so I can go get my own breakfast.” My Saturday morning breakfast haunt opens at 7:30, so this gives me plenty of time to be there when they are unlocking the door. Is this sleeping well? Maybe, if I’m going to bed at 9 PM on Fridays but I am not. I refuse to go to bed until I have folded the last of the three loads of laundry I start when I get home from work. Doing some basic wine math will tell you that it is well after ten or eleven before I am crawling into bed.

But this is under normal circumstances.

The week before my period should not be considered normal circumstances. During this week, my dreams are vivid and wild. They are cinematic but also make no sense. Rapid hormonal fluctuations are equivalent to tripping on acid. Or what I believe it would be like to trip on acid. I do not know. I did want to try this at some point, but TV has convinced me the fentanyl is in everything and this will kill me. At some point in the night, I get hot and throw off all the blankets only to start shivering two minutes later. I’ll pull the covers back on and in an hour I will wake up because my neck is sweaty. MY NECK. A part of my body that is not even really covered with blankets. Is sweating. 

Finding ways to improve your time spent sleeping, and the quality of that sleep, can go a long way toward helping you stay sharp and fend off dementia, Dr. Feldman said. -Mohana Ravindranath, NY Times

I wonder what my odds are of fending off dementia if I do everything on their list but this one. Because what I’m gathering from the lore of women passed around the witches cauldron on full moon nights is that what is happening to my body in regards to sleep is normal or at least not a unique experience. If anything, these are mild conditions compared to some women's experience. The third witch to the right of the cauldron tells me that I am damn fortunate that my sleeping experiences are not worse. And I will agree with her. I am sleeping and I feel like the times in the night when I am sleeping are quality sleep moments. Just, according to neurologists, I need more of those moments. 

Ugh. Really?!?

The Cabbage and I were having a great discussion on tampons and menstrual flow last weekend. They were complaining about how rough their periods were and how they’re still a bit random. I told them about my nineteen year old self and birth control pills and how modern medicine smoothed out those menstrual wrinkles. Then I told them how they will have years of ‘regular’ cycles and this will lull them into a false sense of reality. Because eventually you will go right back to rough and random. You will look back fondly on all of those years when you could predict to the very hour when the first drop of blood of the month will hit the pad. Those restless nights will come from daily life worries instead of rapidly fluctuating hormones. I tried to end on a positive note, something like it’s great! You’ll be alive to tell the tale and continue passing around the lore of women.

But honest to a god, human bodies are just weird. Actually body weirdness is not limited to humans. I see enough at work to know that structures involved in living any life are just bizarro. Some time maybe I’ll tell you about baby coral and their mucus cells or how I know so much about the planarian manus. Biological life is interesting. We are gross in an interesting way. But I guess the most important takeaway of this ramble is to be a regular flosser of your teeth (not the dance move), always wear a helmet, mask up on smog days, eat your veggies, be little a bit of a social butterfly, take a walk and sit on the floor, have your eyes checked out, make sure you’re getting enough oxygen to your brain. 

And if you do all those things, maybe you can wear yourself out enough to sleep well at night.

MONSTERS

The Guilt Monster showed up on Wednesday. Michael and I had originally planned on staying in Oklahoma until Tuesday morning. I had put down on the work calendar that I would not be back into the office until Thursday. But by Sunday evening, the bagster bags were all full. All that was left was to meet with an estate sales agent on Monday at 3:00 PM. I managed to pawn this meeting off onto my siblings. Turns out the meeting was a waste of time anyway. The agent told my brother and sister that the house had to contain $15,000 worth of stuff to make it worth her time. That was disappointing news, since I was hoping to make things easier on all of us by outsourcing the work. 

Nothing about this is going to be easy.

I spent Tuesday recovering and then sorting through the two bins of photos I had brought home from Mom’s. My mom seemed to have duplicates of every developed roll of film. She had pre-sorted one bin and written my name on the lid, but as I sorted through photos I discovered pictures that my brother would like to have, pictures of him and Pepaw, J’s Eagle Scout ceremony. Then there were old photos of Uncle Russel and his kids and some prom pictures for my sister. I started making piles and have a carefully arranged stack of things to send out to various people. Then Wednesday hit and by 10:30 AM, I had cleaned the whole house and opened up my work email to a number of emails that started with “Cindy, can you…?” I told Michael that I probably should have gone back to work. He disagreed, 

The Guilt Monster did not disagree.

As we pulled out of Mom’s driveway on Monday, I told Michael that I was worried that I didn’t do enough or I am not doing enough. The Guilt Monster was already with me, telling me I was leaving too much for my siblings to take care of. I’m leaning too heavily on the excuse that I don’t live there, that I have to take time off work to make the four hour drive down there. Then the Guilt Monster tells me that my excuses are just excuses, just a way for me to wash over my selfishness. We all want to be done with the albatross that is the contents of our mother’s house. I don’t get a free pass here. And the Guilt Monster will not let me forget it.

So, I spent some time Wednesday virtually working, responding to requests and scheduling microscopes for rescanning some slides for this person and training for that person. I narrowed down some travel dates for MBL. I did all of this thinking that this might appease the Guilt Monster but it did not because there is no appeasing of the Guilt Monster. Even when I have done all the things right, the Guilt Monster will find something I missed or did wrong. This isn’t new. I found three report cards, one from first grade, one from fourth and one from fifth. They all basically said “this child does not fuck around, completes tasks in a timely manner and works independently.” 

The Guilt Monster has been with me since day one. 

Forget the whole ‘step on a crack’ superstition. I have the Guilt Monster to keep me in line, always doing the right thing and whatever is needed. My boss has chided me on a number of occasions for saying ‘yes’ too quickly to an ask. I'm a helper bee. How can I make things better for you, easier for you, happier for you? How can I make your life better? Even if I don’t have time in the schedule that day, I will find time. I have one hundred and fifty something hours of vacation time and the Guilt Monster will not let me use them. Look, I know why I am this way and I know paying homage to the monster will not keep bad things from happening. Yet, it sits in my gut anyway, completely unconcerned about eviction notices. Unlike my mother who on two occasions has been convinced she’s being kicked out of assisted living. 

Do what you can with what you have, where you are. - Theodore Roosevelt

This Teddy quote becomes my mantra every time I get overwhelmed with the guilt that comes with not doing enough. I finally, just a few weeks ago, sat down and wrote out my plans for the year, something I usually do before the new year begins.I know January is a shit time to try to start anything. Winter is the sleeping season. Spring is the season for starting new growth. That’s the time of year when everything wakes up and becomes alive with color. This is also the time of year where my calendar fills up with work tasks and social things and end of school events and doctor appointments and vet appointments. It is the time of year when I look out into my messy backyard and try to figure out when I’m going to have enough time and energy to clean up branches and leaves. Maybe even plant something. This year though, reintegration from hibernating is a struggle. The fog of sleep is not so easily shaken off and I am a groggy bear. What I need is to move past groggy bear and straight onto angry bear.

I have a feeling that my inner angry bear could kick my guilt monster’s ass.

THE ARCHIVES

She asked me if I had gotten married. My mother. She has our names and phone numbers written on a piece of paper, taped to her wall above her phone. My sister took away the smart phone months ago, replacing it with a land line. The smart phone became too much to deal with. Mom was answering spam calls, becoming agitated by the telemarketers telling her she owed money. So the phone went away. I was having breakfast with Mom when she asked me about getting married. She didn’t recognize the last name written on her paper. My mother speaks in random riddles and usually I go along with it. I do my best to live in her world when I am with her, but this one threw me off my game. I explained to her that was indeed my married name, with Chris, but that I had not remarried. She seemed to take it well enough, saying something about how she was sure that I would at least tell her I was getting married. Later, as I was leaving, we passed another resident and Mom introduced me as her granddaughter.

This came at the tail end of a long two days. Michael and I along with my siblings and their spouses spent two days clearing garbage from our mother’s house. We sorted through baskets and piles of papers, taking loads and loads out to the dumpster bags. We sorted through trash looking for treasures and deciding what should stay. We’ll have an estate sale at some point, but my goal for this trip was just get rid of the garbage. Michael and I cleared two rooms the evening we arrived. It feels like garbage was the theme. We slept fitfully on mattresses on the floor and ate meals that consisted of shades of brown. We ended each day dehydrated but too tired to lift cup to our dry lips. One night, Michael found me asleep with my book open. I don’t even remember opening the book in the first place.

I brought home two boxes that are sitting in the living room, waiting for me to sort through. The boxes are filled with old photos and newspaper clippings. Among the treasures discovered was a large scroll with a handwritten family tree of my dad’s side of the family. I know close to nothing about his side, the Graham side. The little I know comes from word of mouth, mostly from a grandmother late in her life. We were not close with Dad’s family. Our visits to Mississippi were always centered around my mother’s family with only short visits any one from Dad’s family. My fingers are itching to open the scroll up and pour over the details. Michael joked about having our very own Finding Your Roots moment where we discover some famous relative. To think that scroll was found in a trash pile previously sorted by my mother as if to erase that side of my genetics. One of the items she took with her to the new home is a card, covered with old buttons and her named scrawled at the bottom. As we sat chatting, she pointed it out and said that my father must have made it. She said “I do things right and that was not made right.” while attempting to tie the ribbon that had come loose from the top of the card. Even now, she still finds faults in my dad.

Complicated feelings.

There is nothing simple about these relationships. I want to be forgiving and forgetful. She is not the mother I spent hours with as a child, watching old black and white movies or baking cookies. She’s not the same woman who would lay on the floor of her sewing room while painstakingly attempted to sew a straight seem. She hasn’t been that woman in years. Someone asked me if we were cleaning out her house because she had passed and I had to bite my tongue because as horrible it is to say it, it would be easier it that were the case. The witnessing of her mental decline is torturous. Not remembering my married name stung me more than I would have thought. What else does she not remember about that part of my life? Does she remember attending my wedding in Vegas or the beautiful reception we had at the old house? Does she remember Chris? These are all things I will never ask her.

She’s never been one for silliness or jokes, always playing the straight man to my dad’s goofball shenanigans. There are glimpses of a hint of silly in her now though. She talks about how they never let her out. She’s a flight risk and you can see the delight in her eyes when she says it. I wouldn’t be surprised to get a phone call from my sister frantic because Mom has escaped and gone missing. Just find the nearest junk sale. That’s where she’ll be, rummaging through someone’s yard sale. Yard sales are her heaven.

ACCOMPLISHED

I have a dear friend who works in DC in a federal capacity and he has been sharing what has been happening in his office since the new administration took over. It’s as if they are intentionally making it a more hostile working environment each day because they would rather people quite than to fire them all. My friend’s most recent post was an email from Elon Musk and the HR department stating that all employees must reply to their email with approximately five bullets of what you accomplished last week. If the email is not sent in by 11:59EST Monday the 24th, you should expect to be fired.

Well…the email address got out into the world and the internet is having a heyday, sending emails of accomplishments to hr@opm.gov. People have been emailing in their own bullet point lists of accomplishments and when I heard this, I laughed out loud at what a delightful form protest this is. IT’s like the very definition of joyful protest. So last night, I sat down and compiled my own email of accomplishments:

In the past week, I have successfully completed an over night time lapse of Zika virus infected Hela cells, troubleshot issues with the Phenix screening microscope and completed laser power checks on all microscopes. I trained a new user on the slide scanner and then imaged a batch of slides on the Nikon spinning disk. Those images were then processed for further analysis.

On a personal note, I maintained the health of my sourdough starter. I also completed section five on French lessons with Duolingo. I swept, vacuumed and mopped. Food was prepped for weeknight meals and I brushed my teeth.

I hope this satisfies the five accomplishments requirement for the week. I look forward to updating this again for the next week.
Thank you,
Cindy Maddera

I sent the email and then realized that I forgot to mention that I had also trimmed my toenails, which feels like a pretty good personal accomplishment. This was my only regret here because the minute I hit the little send button, I felt giddy and elated. First of all, this is such an easy protest against that fascist idiot, but after sitting down and thinking about the things I did accomplish last week, I felt pretty dang good about myself. Far too often, I get to an end of a week (the actual end, like Sunday night knowing I have to start all over again the next day) and I feel like I’ve accomplished very little. Except now I’m realizing that I could have added so much more to that accomplishments email.

I didn’t mention that I troubleshot issues with my windshield washer. I’ve been driving practically blind most of all last week because every time I hit the washer button, nothing would come out. And yes, for the jerk face in the back, I made sure I had windshield washer fluid. What I could not determine on my own was if the pump for the washer was actually running. I couldn’t hear it from inside the vehicle and needed Michael to stick his head under the hood while I engaged the washer. Of course, this is when the washer miraculously started working again. We believe it had something to do with above freezing temps and washer fluid designed for warmer climate. I’m still going to say that we fixed the windshield washer and I learned a whole lot about the inside of my car. Like how the car was low on brake fluid. And that feels a little more important than the windshield washer.

The more I think about it, them more accomplishments I can come up with and I can’t wait to send in my report for this current week. For the first time this year, I feel motivated and this is such a lovely way to start out the week. I spend a lot of time on Sundays preparing for the week ahead. I chop veggies for the week. We start the week with clean floors and organized lunches. Now I feel like I’ve discovered one more thing to add to my list for preparing for a week. Each Sunday evening, I’m going to sit down and compile my five bullet points of accomplishments, maybe even add more than five, and then I’m going to send that email off to Elon.

In case you want to email Elon about your accomplishments, you can do so at hr@opm.gov.

AM I HUNGRY?

Am I the only one around here that’s struggling to keep up with their usual schedule? I’ll have a few days where I feel like I am on track and then there will be a Monday holiday or a snow day, and it al goes to Hell in a hand basket. And any hand basket I own, which is one…I own one actual hand basket, right now is full of fire and brimstone. I take zero advantage of those days when I am not at work. In fact, I’m down right lazy, spending hours on the couch watching nonsense TV (has anyone watched Younger? I have love and hate feelings but I’ve made it to season 5). Then once I’m at work, I am AT WORK, scrambling to catch up on the things I missed while I was out. I’ve read some other musings on struggling to be motivated in tackling New Year resolutions. I’ve writing encouraging comments of having grace and going easy on yourself, which is really easy for me to type out for someone other than myself.

Tuesday morning, I peeled my body out of bed and went through my usual routine of getting ready for work. I did this almost forty five minutes earlier than usual because Michael’s school had declared Tuesday a snow day. This also meant that I had to go out and clean off my car and shovel the driveway. The snow was light and powdery, like sugar which made for easy shoveling. Basically I just pushed the shovel across the driveway from one side to the next while my car warmed up. I slowly drove my car to work on white roads. It wasn’t the worse conditions I’ve driven in, but it wasn’t great. It turned out that only me and one other person in my department had not marked themselves as “working from home” on the calendar. I did not mind. I have been trying to find time to do laser power checks on our microscopes for weeks and I keep having to reschedule because of snow or holiday or the microscope’s schedule is booked. The schedules for the microscopes on Tuesday was wide open. I managed to get a number of things accomplished and even spent an hour on my yoga mat.

The problem would be my drive home.

A steady shower of white sugar fell from the sky all afternoon. Every time I looked out my desk window, the world outside resembled a recently shaken snow globe. Every twenty minutes or so, the groundsmen in two golf cart sized snowplows would plow around the circle drive and the driveway into the parking garage. Traffic remained light to nonexistent. I know I should not have risked the drive into work, but the thought of yet another day stuck inside my tiny house was more than I could bear. One of the things that make my relationship work with Michael is that we don’t spend all day every day together. The pandemic nearly ended us or me in prison for murder. I need brain space or I get twitchy and stabby. There is something to be said about my need for this brain space if I am willing to drive through a blizzard.

I can’t handle another winter.

I say this every year. Chris and I moved here at the end of February but the weather was tolerable. We could see that this was a place that had seen snow. Piles of it were shoved into corners of parking lots, but it did not snow again after our move. The winter Chris died we only saw a dusting of snow, but the winter a year later required shoveling. This was when I was able to barely squeeze my Kia Soul into the garage which left the full length of my long driveway for me to clear all by myself. I did it! And I was so proud of myself! I woke up the next morning sore and achy but ready to go to work. Except the snowplow had blocked the end of my driveway with a two foot tall icy slush wall. And that was the year I started saying that I could not handle another winter. Yet I have. Over and over again. This year in particular feels worse and I keep getting bombarded with things regarding my favorite city where I know it is warmer. Damn the hurricane seasons. I’d take a hurricane over minus degrees. Michael just shakes his head when I mention it because the summers would be unbearable for him. Also, right now is a terrible time for a scientist to find a job (psst…Federal Funding cuts means unemployment rates increase for a whole lot of Americans).

Each day I keep reminding myself that I am not stalled out or spinning wheels going no where. I am doing things. I am no longer waiting for my kitchen sink to look gross before giving it a scrub. I’m mopping the floors once a week instead of twice a year or whenever I could no longer stand the overlaying paw print pattern on the hardwood floors. My house is clean and I have even managed to get oils for the diffuser my brother and sister-in-law gave me for my birthday. My house is clean and smells like springtime mountain air. All this snow shoveling is making me stronger. It combines cardio with weight training. People pay money for those kinds of workouts. Who cares if it took me more than hour this morning for my toes and finger tips to thaw enough to get the feeling back into them?

No, but seriously…I really don’t think I can handle another winter.

I'M LEARNING FRENCH BUT DREAMING IN JAPANESE

Ever since Michael said that we were going to try to make Paris happen this year, I’ve been channeling Yoda and saying “there is no try!” I have committed myself to learning enough French so as not to be the stupide americain in Paris. Michael tried to get through the very first Duolingo lesson and then immediately gave up. He says that he just can’t hear what is being said. I will admit that I struggled through the first three or four lessons for the very same reason, but the more I stick with it, the easier it’s getting. Now I’m trying to use phrases I’ve learned in conversation. I’ve also been listening to a lot of French pop music. I am sure my pronunciation is utter garbage, but I can read French pretty well. 

Sort of.

Meanwhile, I keep waking up at one AM from a recurring dream about a young pregnant Japanese woman who is the only survivor of a bloody assassination attack on her gang lord husband. I think it’s something I’m co-writing with Quentin Terentino because then I lay awake for the next two or so hours mentally writing out what happens to her after she flees the house and all the bloody dead bodies. I have lots of ideas, like this one: Yuri tentatively makes her way into the main living room. Gore and death surrounds her, but she feels a hand grasp her ankle. Yuri struggles to not scream but looks down to see her husband Isamu covered in blood but still gasping for air. She leans down and he draws a bloody finger tip down her cheek, lays his hand on her round full belly before letting the hand drop limply to the floor. Then he rips the chain holding a small silver key from his neck. Isamu places the key in the palm of Yuri’s hand and closes her fingers tight around it. “You are free” Isamu whispers with his last breath.

Then what happens?!?! Who was the assassin? Why was Yuri spared? Is Isamu really the father of the child she’s carrying?

I don’t know! I mean I know, but I don’t know!

Oh, hey…did you know that perimenopausal induced hives are a thing? I do. Also, I’ve been bleeding from my vagina since January 19th. 

The crazy dreaming and sleep habits are partly due to my body, but I have to admit that I’m also doing a lot of worrying. Last week was a doozy. So many things happened! One of those things was that the NIH was told to put a hard pass hold on grant reviews. For those of you who do not know, the NIH funds a lot of basic medical research. Some of you may also not realize that while I am a scientist, research facilities like mine employ a number of nonscience people (maybe even more because it takes a lot to keep a building running). Less, or in this case no grant, money means less jobs for EVERYONE. Putting people out of work doesn’t seem like a smart way to boost an economy, but maybe I just need to be patient and wait it out…

The White House budget office ordered a pause in all federal loans and grants. The directive could upend funding for local governments, disaster relief and education. -The New York Times

Anyway, I’m worried about not having a job in the future and I’m worried about my friends who are in similar situations. I’m worried about the safety of my friends who have been receiving extra amounts of bigotry and just plain hatefulness thrown at them (at times, literally). This administration hit the ground running to make this country more discriminative and are taking off their bigotry filters (if they even had any to begin with). There’s a woman I have followed in the blog community for years. She’s wonderful, writes books on being kind and spreading joy. She’s a beacon of light. Her elderly parents have been accosted multiple times in the last few months. One of those times, her father could have been seriously injured because a man pushed him off his bike. The other time, a white woman angrily yelled the n-word at both of her parents and then threatened to beat them over a parking situation. 

Is this the country that we are now? What does “Make America Great Again” truly mean? Because if this, straight up encouraging hatefulness and taking away funding that supports low and middle class citizens is the way to “make America great”, I’m not sure I want any part of being an American. And I am struggling to understand how anyone who claims to be a follower of Christ can support any of this. Leaving the country, which is something Michael and I have discussed in regards to our retirement, is becoming a more appealing idea. Chris and I, years ago, started doing this thing where we’d take vacations to where we thought we might want to live someday. We’d pretty much settled on Portland,OR and Kansas City wasn’t even on our list, but we ended up very happy with our move. Nine blissfully happy months. Anyway, maybe this is how Michael and I should consider our travel adventures, start vacationing in places we might want to retire to one day. Except Paris. I know Paris is an unsustainable retirement option. 

Especially if my retirement is fucked because I lose my job next year. 

THE STATE OF THINGS

It snowed all day on Sunday. All. Day. Monday morning, we awoke to blue skies and blinding sunlight. The snow is taller than Josephine and when she finally jumped off the top step to go outside, she had to tunnel her way to her favorite potty spot. Now, if she goes out it’s because she’s desperate. She comes back in covered in snow with balls of it clumping to her legs. She stands stock still and expresses the tiniest saddest whimper while I grab a towel. At ten o’clock this morning, I finally bundled up and cleared a path at the backdoor to make Josephine’s life a little easier. While I was up and bundled, I started tackling the front steps and path. I shoveled a path from our steps to about half way down the drive when I paused and thought there had to be a better way to do this.

We do have a snowblower.

And that’s where Michael found me, in the garage untangling a power cord and wrestling the snowblower out of the garage. Now I’ve never used the snowblower before, but I figured it had to be better than a shovel. So today I learned that the snowblower is only slightly better than a shovel when there’s almost fifteen inches of snow on the ground. Michael and I spent the next two hours clearing the end of our driveway and unburying my car so I can go to work tomorrow. We are still uncertain if Michael will be going to work tomorrow. If school is not cancelled again tomorrow, we’ll need to go back out and unearth his truck and then swap cars in the drive. My toes finally have feeling again, so I’m hoping they cancel school because I do not want to go back out there.

Okay January. I see you. You are coming in cold and furious. This is the most snow Kansas City has seen since 1993 or something like that. That means we are starting the year overachieving. I mean, I feel like I accomplished a lot this weekend. I made a decent loaf of bread, wiped down everything in the house with Clorox wipes, wrote up a class for a couples yoga class I’m offering up in February and while I only did six sun salutations on Saturday, that’s still six more than what I did last Saturday. I have several out of state family and friends who have messaged me about the weather and asking if we were okay and I can honestly say that we are. We have electricity and food. We’re safe and warm. We might be a little bit broken from clearing the driveway, but we’re surviving.

UNDECLARED

It’s New Year’s Day and I’m currently sitting on my bed with a dog and a cat at my feet, nursing an honest to Gods hangover. Michael told me that he didn’t think I had too many more gin and tonics that normal, but he’s the bartender in the house and sometimes he can’t be trusted. All I know is that I made it to midnight and then went to bed where I spent a good twenty minutes trying to decide if I was going to throw up.

I did not.

I disagree with Michael about the ‘normal’ amount of gin and tonics and can say that last night was a rare occasion, one I will most definitely not be repeating for a really long time. While I haven’t made any actual lists or vision boards for what I want for myself in 2025, I have been thinking long and hard about it. At least one of those wants is health related and I’ve been thinking a lot about my (declining) yoga practice. A common Solstice celebration in yoga is to have a practice of one hundred. Usually it’s one hundred rounds of a sun salutation. Back during the lock down times, I was probably close to doing one hundred rounds of sun salutations a day. Like a hamster on a wheel, I’d be on my mat doing loops and loops of surya namaskara variations because I very much felt like a caged animal. So I’ve been thinking about starting that up again, working my way up to one hundred salutes to the sun every day. This is something that is holding center stage in my mental vision board.

In fact, right now that’s the only thing I’ve got for 2025.

That’s not entirely true. Of course I’d like to work harder at being a better person in 2025 and all that usual blah blah blah. Michael and I would really like to spend Christmas in Paris this year. Frugality is a reasonable thing to paste into a vision board so we can make that Christmas wish come true. I’d also really like to volunteer at a local charity and maybe finally get around to teaching another yoga workshop. The thing is, putting these things down on paper in January, especially when next week’s high is expected to be twenty degrees, feels impossible. I truly believe I was made for hibernation and the time I spend curled up under soft, cozy blankets and pets is time well spent. It’s contemplation time where I think about how to fill in my vision board around one hundred sun salutations.

January is being very January this year. The Cabbage spent most of the week with us with a bad cold. Fever, sore throat, all of the icks. We’ve managed to keep them caged up in their room and they go back to their mom’s today, but winter is coming this weekend. That means Michael and I will be caged up in our house with left over kid germs. I didn’t plan on putting ‘get more colds’ on my board for 2025, nor did I have ‘fumigate the house’ on my board, but here we are. This is how we’re jumping into this new strange year. We’re jumping in with shields and swords, fighting microscopic invaders. Perhaps I should include ‘drink more orange juice’ to the board.

Maybe leave out the vodka.

THE GREAT SANDWICH

In my most recent newsletter from Karen Walrond, she talked bout the origins and the state of limbo. And I read it while nodding my head and agreeing completely. Limbo aptly describes how I am feeling right now. There are two weeks left to this year. Just two! And once again, I’m sitting here gobsmacked that we are on the cusp of a brand new year. Yes, I know we haven’t even gotten to Christmas, but that’s NEXT WEEK! I spent some time on Saturday wrapping the few gifts I have for the Cabbage and hanging our stockings. They have two more gifts coming, but those probably will not get here until after Christmas. The Cabbage was a little late in providing me with a want list. They’re okay with the state of things. Any way, my tasks are mostly complete.

I am very much feeling in between, hovering in the moment of just before.

I’ve thrown all usual habits into a dumpster, poured lighter fluid in and threw in a lit match. Dog walks and yoga time have become distant foggy memories. But today is the first day in weeks where I have not had large amounts mucus flowing like hot lava from my nose. I can’t even try to form a snot bubble from one of my nostrils and no longer have the red scaly nose of a toddler. I finally feel well and spent the weekend scrubbing my grimy house. I also made a very successful batch of sourdough ciabatta rolls. The successful loaf of bread is in reach. I might actually do that next.

This time of year is never a great time for my brain. It’s the beginning of dark times and mean reds. Being organized and efficient does not work in my favor as it frees up empty swaths of time. Last week, I used some of that time to work on a writing project that’s been sitting idle in my docs. I was writing about something from the past and how I was manipulated by a loved one and I got so angry. I just sat there fuming at this thing that I couldn’t change and had no control over to begin with. I do not have the time to waste on being angry with this person, nor would it change anything. The only benefit of writing this event down and rekindling this anger is knowing that this is something I can consider whenever that same person tries to guilt me in some fashion.

So you can see…empty swaths of time for me means picking and probing at long passed events like a tongue with a mouth sore. I dissect old moments to find out how I could have handled them better or handled them at all. When I’m not picking at old scabs, I’m scratching in new wounds of belligerence for falling off the exercise horse. “Fatty Fat Fat” I say as I stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror. As if my little hiatus on exercise has anything to do with the size of my waistline. My lack of usual movement is causing me to hallucinate and see a reflection that is not necessarily true. Some of you are thinking “Cindy, this is an easy fix. You feel better, so start moving your body more.” But those people who think that do not know how tired I am all the time. I could lay down on the floor under my desk and take a nap right now. Except I wouldn’t sleep because the Catch 22 here is that I’m not a napper.

I am in a time sandwich, meaning this is the filling between two slices of bread and it is a terrible sandwich. Worse than the one Talaura thought I’d left her when went to that camping music festival in Guthrie. Look… it’s a complicated story made funny only by too much heat and probably too much booze. It’s a ‘you had to be there’ thing. I can make a good sandwich. Hell, just the other day, I whipped up a tuna salad to put on a ciabatta roll that Michael said was the best tuna salad he’d ever tasted in his life. That’s saying something because when ever I suggest tuna salad as an option, he makes the face of someone who just smelled a bag of rotten farts. I have good sandwich making skills; I could make a better, less self destructive time sandwich.

I think that I am going to focus on being a better sandwich. Do less brain picking and have more dance parties at my desk. I’ll be back later next week with a Year in Pictures post.

Happy Holidays!

BAH HUM

I’m not saying that I’m anti-holidays this year. It may look that way because I have yet to put up our Christmas tree and I am opting out of Christmas cards this year. I did buy us a new dinosaur menorah that we’ve been calling the Menorasaurus and my lovely holiday wreath is hanging on the front door. I will get our stocking out of storage, but I’m skipping the tree this year. Here’s what happened. The distance between Thanksgiving and Christmas got shortened. I spent Thanksgiving driving to Oklahoma and back. I got sick again and I’m now on antibiotics. I figured that by the time I had enough energy to clean the house and set up the tree, it would be time to take it all down. The idea of it did not spark joy.

Instead, I’ve decided that I am celebrating the holiday season in a more selective way.

Years ago, my family started a new Christmas Day tradition. Instead of turkey or ham for the big holiday meal, we picked something that we all really loved that we didn’t get to eat as often as we liked and that was fried oysters. Randy and Katrina would buy the oysters from the White River Fish Market and then Katrina and Mom would cook the oysters all while fending off anyone walking into the kitchen trying to snag a fried oyster before sitting down to dinner. Eventually other things got added like shrimp cocktail and then there was that hilariously fun year we had a fondue pot. This is Christmas for me. My head is filled with visions of all of us gathering in the old family house, crowding the kitchen or setting the table. It took four of us to make the cocktail sauce, each of us contemplating flavors and always agreeing that we needed more horseradish. That cocktail sauce is the only reason my parents always had a bottle of gin in the house. Yes..put gin in your cocktail sauce, heavy on the horseradish, light on the ketchup, some lemon and a dash of Worcestershire sauce. Do not buy a pre-made cocktail sauce.

This kind of Christmas has been lost to me for many years.

Once my dad was placed into a memory care facility and my mom quickly sold our house to move into a much smaller house, we have failed to maintain this tradition. I think we tried it once or twice but I never felt comfortable in the new kitchen space and we gave up trying, opting instead to just eat at White River Fish Market where they cook the oysters and clean up the mess. It’s fine. I’ve told myself (keep telling myself) that the food is not important. It is the gathering together in one space that is important. This year, I’ve been having a much harder time believing this. I have felt untethered from my home in Oklahoma for some time and after moving our mom into assisted living, I completely lost an anchor. At Thanksgiving, I slept on my brother’s couch so I could have Thanksgiving dinner with my family at the Cracker Barrel. While standing in the storefront with Mom, waiting for a table, Mom said “it doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving.” I couldn’t disagree with her. There was something slightly depressing about the whole thing and I knew this going in. I was already scheming up a new plan for Christmas.

Michael and I booked an Airbnb in a neighborhood near my mom for the weekend before Christmas. My idea is to create a comfortable space for us all to gather. We’ll cook oysters and have shrimp cocktail. We’ll spend a day just being in a comfortable living room together without the chaos of restaurants. I am not delusional. I know this will not be like old times. We’re missing some very important players from the old times. One might even say that at least one of those players was the cornmeal to this fried oyster tradition. But part of celebrating the holiday in a more selective way is making choices for comfort and choosing something familiar to all of us. A large kitchen and comfortable living room for gathering. Fried oysters and cocktail shrimp. These are familiar things.

We’re two weeks away from this and I am already anxiously hoping for perfection. I’ve been compiling a list of things to take with us like extra chairs, throw blankets and pillows. Plus food. I’ve put siblings in charge of specific tasks. And it already feels brighter than Thanksgiving. I am coming to terms with the fact that my family is no longer growing as much as it is aging. In some ways that makes things easier. We no longer do physical gifts. Instead we gift each other time. The aging part is made more difficult when we try to hold onto the way things were, desperately grasping to a life that is no longer the same. So, what if instead of desperately grasping to the past, we just remember the past while being in our present? Any way…this is my Christmas wish for this season and I don’t need a tree lit up with lights to make that wish come true.

I’m choosing to be bah hum….not full strength bah humbug.

I WENT TO FUNKY TOWN

Right off the highway in a little bit of a sketchy run-down area is this place called Funky Town. Shortly after moving here, Chris and I drove by the place in the daylight and really all that is visible from the highway is the sign for the place, but we both started singing Funky Town and asking questions. In all of that time between then and now, no one has ever given me a straight answer about this place. I have been told all kinds of vague stories that range from retro Disco club to swinger’s club. In fact, most people have told me that Funky Town is a swinger’s club. While I was telling Heather that I visited Funky Town, she asked me at least two different times if “I was a swinger now”.

That’s none of your business.

Anyway, since no one has ever given me a straight answer about this place, my brain built one inside my head. This is something my brain is very good at doing. In this case, my brain took every Disco related thing I have ever seen and smashed them into one rainbow gold version of Studio 54 with a table in a dark corner piled high with cocaine. So when my friend Sarah texted me that she was going for her birthday and included an invitation, I did not hesitate. Well…I hesitated slightly. They were not going until 9 PM (my bedtime) and it was freezing degrees with snow on the ground. Then I shook myself out of my hesitation and took a nap. This was my chance to find out what exactly happens at Funky Town.

My brain turned out to be not entirely inaccurate. The place is very much like a rainbow gold Studio 54, but a rainbow gold Studio 54 plopped down inside of a Molly Murphy’s (is that even a reference any one is going to get?). There was a tiki lounge section, a psychedelic VW bus making up part of one of the bars, and a car wash on the dance floor. We had tables situated in a forest area under some fake trees. The place was packed with people dressed in bellbottoms and gogo boots, afros and porn mustaches. I saw four different guys wearing the same rainbow sequined suit. The clientele ranged from barely legal enough to get in to old enough to have invented this party. I didn’t visually witness any sort of ‘swinging’ but I can’t say for certain that there were not couples there looking for other couples to swing with. It was very busy and very loud and I spent about two hours on the dance floor, dancing my heart out.

It was fabulous.

The one regret, the thing I couldn’t shake the entire time, was my want for my big camera and flash. I wanted to take pictures of people and for people. I wanted to photograph the whole scene and hand out little cards with my name and contact information. I’m not good at costuming myself. I wore pink baby doll dress and legging. There was mascara on my eyelashes and gold hoops in my ears. That’s about as fancy I get, but I could put together 70s photo journalist costume if it would get me camera access.

Maybe next time.

RETROGRADE

Apparently Mercury is going into retrograde right this very minute and according to my Yoga Journal weekly horoscope email (that I usually ignore) this is a great time to finish projects. The number of times I’ve heard people go on about retrograding Mercury, one would think that I had some sort of clue of what ‘retrograde’ means. I don’t hate physics and earth sciences; I just don’t love them. Anything biological, I’m all in. Quantum physics makes me hyperventilate. Last week on NOVA, I watched as some guy talked about gravity’s effect on time and I had to go throw up. All of that is to say that I now know that retrograde motion has to do with how planets orbit the Sun and the speeds of those orbits. Sometimes, like three or four times a year, Mercury looks like it’s moving backwards. This is Mercury in retrograde.

Every thing is an illusion.

The planet Mercury has a lot in common with the Roman god, Mercury…probably because they named the planet after the god. The god Mercury (or the Greek version, Hermes) does a lot of stuff. He’s a messenger, a guide for the dead, a god of commerce and good fortune and fertility, but I’m pretty sure most of those ancient gods had something to do with fertility. He can be called upon to protect travelers and also known for communication and writing. I’m sure the whole ‘messenger’ thing is part of the communication and if you tend to lean into woo-woo whatever the planet Mercury is doing reflects whatever the god is up to. This, depending on star signs, matters to us humans in a woo-woo kind of way.

I’m some sort of Capricorn-Aquarius hybrid that I don’t understand and my horoscope told the Capricorn me to “schedule more naps”. Isn’t that lovely?!? It also told me to dedicate space and time for my own passions. It told the Aquarius me to figure out my desires. My takeaway is that I should dedicate time and space for figuring out what my passions are and what I truly desire. Actually… the Aquarius horoscope is garbage. The one for Capricorn gave me permission to sleep more and be a hermit crab. The Capricorn me is zip tying up the Aquarius me and hiding her way down deep in the soul basement. Or wherever those things live.

Obviously, I’m not a woo-woo kind of person.

Let’s talk more about how this is a great time to finish projects. Last weekend…was it last weekend?….wreath making day, Salem was talking about diligently working on her novel and I looked at her said “I will never finish writing a book.” They denied that this is true, but they haven’t seen the (growing) list of started writing ideas sitting in my Google Docs. They also, for some weirdo reason, love me and think I’m pretty great, which I’m like ‘okay…whatever’. They’re young with an old soul and super cool. This makes me feel like I am also super cool. I don’t even know where I’m going with this….I guess the tiniest woo-woo version of me really likes the idea of more naps, any naps really, but finishing something I started would be neat too.

This is a very rambley post.

Happy Thanksgiving.

FOOD DREAMS

The last few nights, my dreams have been filled with food. They are almost feverish in nature and often slightly gruesome. It started with a friendsgiving I was attending, except I didn’t really know any of these people. The table was filled with people I know through the internet, people I have never spoken with face to face. We are ‘friends’ because we like the content we each bring to social media. We are like minded humans. Our dinner plates each held a large whole fish and I watched as everyone at the table picked up the fish with their hands and tear into the flesh with their teeth like wolves or bears. I realized the fish wasn’t even cooked and in many cases, still a little bit alive. Yet, the whole time, I held meaningful conversations with those seated around me while they ripped and chewed on a raw whole fish. I awoke with clear memories of a candle lit table covered in a beautiful cornucopia of dishes and people picking fish skin from their teeth.

The second night of fever food dreams had something to do with werewolves eating Doritos, which at first sounds like something Chris made up. In fact, if I looked hard enough through his files, I wouldn’t be surprised to find a screenplay about werewolves who like to snack on Doritos in between meals of human flesh. The floor of where ever I was in this dreamland was littered with human body parts and bags of Doritos. I stood before a werewolf as he casually pulled perfect orange triangle chips from the bag. He offered me one, said “Want a Dorito before I rip off your arm?” I snorted and rolled my eyes. “You want my last meal to be a fucking Dorito?!? Just rip off my arm already and get on with it.” Thankfully I woke up before the ripping started, but my left shoulder was a bit achey the next morning.

Now, after writing this all down, I’m sitting here attempting to decipher the meaning of all of this. What is my brain really trying to say to me or warn me about? We are entering the season of overindulgence. This usually means I just end up adding more kale to my diet. I over indulge in kale. Last weekend, I bought two things of soup: one tomato feta from the refrigerated section and one jar of garden vegetable. When I presented them to Michael as lunch choices, he asked “Why did you buy the tomato soup?” I told him I bought it for the day’s lunch. Then he asked “Then why did you buy the garden vegetable?” I replied “That was my impulse buy.” Michael snorted and replied “No one impulse buys vegetable soup. That is not an impulse buy.” I believe he was implying that impulse buys were things like the various candies on display at checkout, not jars of soup.

Not so secret: I have on occasion purchased an extra bag of kale. I consider this an impulse purchase, a just in case we run out of kale purchase (we never run out of kale).

Maybe these dreams are my subconscious telling me to dig into a more primal side of life, a life of more decadent pleasures like eating a whole jar of caviar with a spoon made of pearl. Maybe that werewolf is just telling me to live a little and eat some junk food. I don’t know what any one at that dinner table could be saying. I’m not eating a raw live fish…but I’ll eat raw fish(?). Maybe eating something that is still moving is the next decadent adventure? I don’t know if I want that adventure and I am pretty sure I have reached an age were I can fully live a “Choose Your Own Adventure” life. Perhaps I will just start out by making an impulsive candy bar purchase.

A fish shaped candy bar.

THE PARABLE OF THE WREATH MAKER

Last year, my favorite store was selling a Christmas wreath for almost $500 and I got so mad that I yelled out some expletives. First of all I immediately fell in love the wreath. Of course I fell in love the wreath. It was adorable and whimsical and sophisticated. It represented everything I want to be in life. But that price tag made me furious. Now, to be fair, my favorite store is known for ridiculous price tags. I only shop there when they’re having 50% of already sale item sales. Even then, I am meticulous about my purchase choices. This Christmas wreath sold out before it even had chance to go on sale and once again I was outraged that someone was wiling to fork over that much money for a holiday wreath.

The second thing that made me mad about this wreath was that I knew I could make it. I could make it for way less than their selling price. Knowing that I could make the wreath was annoying because while I can do crafty, I don’t go out of my way to be or do crafty. If someone dumps a bunch of craft supplies out in front of me and tells to create, I will do so, but I don’t want to purchase the supplies, store the supplies or deal with any kind of mess. Crafts are messy. This is why my holiday wreath remains the same for two or three years before I decide it is time for something new.

By the time I saw the store wreath, it was already too close to the holiday to bother. So instead, I started doing the thing that I usually avoid. I started hoarding holiday craft supplies so I could make this wreath for this year. I told Nurse Jenn about the wreath while we were out at the zoo and she mentioned that she wanted to make Yule wreaths with dried orange slices and greenery. Then she suggested we gather at her place on Sunday to make wreaths. Sunday afternoon, I sat at Jenn’s table with a group of lovely people and we chatted about all kinds of things while we built wreaths. It was lovely and I left so much glitter at Jenn’s house. I wanted to build a live wreath, but I’m allergic to all of the things. I did make a small live wreath when I had finished assembling my own, but gave it to Jenn because I can’t hang it in my house. My eyes and hands were itching by the time I left.

It was all worth it and I am so proud of my wreath. It is not identical to the store one. I accidentally bought two church like houses, but went with them anyway. And I think mine turned out better than the store version. I bought a wreath off the sales rack for $5. I found multicolored bottle brush trees 6 for a dollar. I went a little overboard with those trees. I did not ten boxes (I left a whole bunch at Jenn’s).Two. I needed two boxes, but whatever. The most money I spent was on the little houses and I purchased all three for $15. Maybe $2 for snow. The lights I already had. So for $32, I made a wreath that some hoity toity store wanted to sell me for $500. It would have cost me $24 if I hadn’t gone overboard with the bottle brush trees.

I love a good deal and I love my current distractions from reality.