Category: Thoughts

I’m celebrating my birthday with my family out in the country when I get a newsbreak about a string of robberies at various 7/11 convenience stores in southern Cali that result in multiple deaths and widespread chain closure. For some reason I feel it’s my fault, even though I would never dirty my hands with such actions.
I move on with my day anyway. Mom takes grandma, my husband, daughter and myself out for Mexican food for lunch. Then later, after my brother gets off work, we all head out to my brother and his partners farm so the kid can have her first legit horseback ride. The horse Rambler is a beautiful white sweetheart, and he treats my lady with care as she walks him around the grounds, she absolutely radiates happiness and I’m so grateful that my family was able to facilitate this experience for her, and having the day turn out so beautifully somewhat eases my existential dread that everything is my fault.

After spending the bulk of the day removing furniture and carpet from the bedroom, at 3 I’m able to extricate myself to get an early start towards my birthday tattoo.

The girl I was visiting I’d actually been drawn to her prints early on, I had even purchased one for our friends wedding a few years back. Now I get to meet her in person over a different medium in her studio of residence at Mashroom.

The space is very open, once you finally find it anyway. Some wild murals decorate the space with various can do quotes. And as I walk in a small pixie girl younger than me ,wearing an Iron Maiden shirt and long skirt immediately greets me. She compliments the chameleon on my left shoulder before handing me the paperwork to get started. We discuss the Stranger Things finale, and she tells me her theory on Eddie, based on her experiences with D&D when a character fiting his description dies by bats but returns as a vampire to Slay the dark wizard later on. I admit though I find Eddie charming I felt the role as more of a dark mirror. As my 17 year old self that was dating the 23 year old metal head navy vet that played in pharma just because I thought he was charming and had a good voice. I felt the space of Chrissy a bit differently but I tell her I enjoy her version better.
Unlike my other guy, this lady is a silent worker. She puts on Stephen Kings It for her audiobook of choice on earbuds while I listen to the pop playing in the background and the various studio conversations.

There’s some nervousness when a man shows up at the door that they don’t recognize, but he’s just lost.
The girls bring up one of their coworkers quite a bit who sat for a six hour session yesterday and was fine until after hour 5 when she started asperating and later threw up . They talk about the handfuls of clients that cancelled last minute recently , another girl is talking about how she wants to set up her spider web.

My lady works on my forearm for about an hour and a half before revealing a lovely little mushroom with some kodama buddies from Spirited Away around it.

As we’re chatting before I depart, I show her a picture of my back piece and she calls over the lady that’s been training her to show here. I get a brief interrogation on the time that it took total, the number of sessions, and how long I sat. My longest sitting for that one was 5 hours just for the outline.

After they’re done asking about my other artist, I exchange payment for services. For me, this was a great deal, her flash for 175 and I knew ahead of time she’d perform quality work, plus it just felt like a good season to play around with some fungis.

A futile text exchange occurs.

I used to need concrete evidence

To dispell the rumors in my brain.

You stocked all the evidence in shelfs

And I went through each bin six hundred thousand times

Only to want more proof, more candid examples

More overarching themes.

But one day, my lips quivered and my heart plummeted

And I saw my truth shatter around me and awaken

A sad little girl.

Now that sad girl is just thankful

To have been blessed with good friends and

Staggering and sometimes hurtful

Proof.

Now that small girl closes the door.

Now she doesn’t look back.

Tonight was full of fistfuls of difficult, sullen, and hard to swallow conversations.

The dance doesn’t involve tip toes like it usually does.

Instead it is comprised of two alcohol infused lovers prancing into the ballroom

Majestically arguing while sashaying to a Donna Summer track.

The thought makes the lines of my face wrinkle from laughter

But does not seem to help the sore from forming on my tongue..

If we were a dance, we’d be the most tumultuous kind,

Full of changing of partners, nights where the kisses weren’t so sweet and

The laugh track and applause from the audience were on almost silent.

You tell me your broken promises and the mantras you’ve lived by.

You tell me “you are very loved”

“I feel too fucked up to feel anything,” I summarize, not noting its not just the alcohol.

Two hours later we are rinsing our truths and laughing comfortably, piled on the bed

Tangled up in the blue.

I tell you my wishes to depart.

You comfort me and mumble “hang on love.”

We slumber in our chaos,

Unraveling together.

After spending the bulk of the day removing furniture and carpet from the bedroom, at 3 I’m able to extricate myself to get an early start towards my birthday tattoo.

The girl I was visiting I’d actually been drawn to her prints early on, I had even purchased one for our friends wedding a few years back. Now I get to meet her in person over a different medium in her studio of residence at Mashroom.

The space is very open, once you finally find it anyway. Some wild murals decorate the space with various can do quotes. And as I walk in a small pixie girl younger than me ,wearing an Iron Maiden shirt and long skirt immediately greets me. She compliments the chameleon on my left shoulder before handing me the paperwork to get started. We discuss the Stranger Things finale, and she tells me her theory on Eddie, based on her experiences with D&D when a character fiting his description dies by bats but returns as a vampire to Slay the dark wizard later on. I admit though I find Eddie charming I felt the role as more of a dark mirror. As my 17 year old self that was dating the 23 year old metal head navy vet that played in pharma just because I thought he was charming and had a good voice. I felt the space of Chrissy a bit differently but I tell her I enjoy her version better.
Unlike my other guy, this lady is a silent worker. She puts on Stephen Kings It for her audiobook of choice on earbuds while I listen to the pop playing in the background and the various studio conversations.

There’s some nervousness when a man shows up at the door that they don’t recognize, but he’s just lost.
The girls bring up one of their coworkers quite a bit who sat for a six hour session yesterday and was fine until after hour 5 when she started asperating and later threw up . They talk about the handfuls of clients that cancelled last minute recently , another girl is talking about how she wants to set up her spider web.

My lady works on my forearm for about an hour and a half before revealing a lovely little mushroom with some kodama buddies from Spirited Away around it.

As we’re chatting before I depart, I show her a picture of my back piece and she calls over the lady that’s been training her to show here. I get a brief interrogation on the time that it took total, the number of sessions, and how long I sat. My longest sitting for that one was 5 hours just for the outline.

After they’re done asking about my other artist, I exchange payment for services. For me, this was a great deal, her flash for 175 and I knew ahead of time she’d perform quality work, plus it just felt like a good season for this piece.

I’m sitting in the under construction chaos of what was once my living room. My thighs are screaming from all the down low work I’ve been doing pulling up nails and staples to prime the floor for the new material. I swept up bags of dust from years gone by and make the not so far fetched connection that perhaps this is the reason I haven’t been able to sleep in my own bed without allergy meds for awhile.

This morning was particularly brutal in that as I was ripping out the carpet from the hallway by myself, our kitten Ingrid snuck out and zoomed up the tree in our yard. It’s a tall tree too, not easy for me to get access to climb. I spend about an hour trying to talk her down from a step ladder and filling the family in, before resorting to messaging my neighbors. One lady offers me her taller ladder on her way to work, and another one holds me steady the two few kids troubleshoot how to lure her lower. They get long pieces of construction wood and smear it with cat food to get her to the lower branches, laughing about how much fun this was ( I was not having fun) but the do manage to get Ingrid to a spot I can nudge her into the cat backpack and relief! We rescued her without calling in an emergency.
I promised the kids to treat them to ice cream later as a thank you before returning to face the looming project of ripping out more staples from the hallway and carrying up more cases of material to lay down for when the guy helping us heads this way.
Making progress even with the detour, but much relieved I didn’t lose my husband’s kitten.

My old lady kitty hadn’t eaten in 3 days. Dita was a little older than fifteen and from what I’d read was on the upper end of her age group, I couldn’t tell if this were age or something else. On the third night she started losing control of her functions and we immediately made an appointment with her vet.

Everything all at once is what it felt like, I was still on the mend from my cough but at least I had been insured, my cat was not.

I wrapped my baby up in a soft blanket, got her in the catpack and drove her down to Fox Hollow. The team got us into a room and into problem solving mode pretty swiftly. They take Dita who is now 2 lbsto do some blood work and the handsome vet brings her back and he tells me it looks like it’s not all doom and gloom, she had gotten a virus that had given her pancreatitis but is perfectly treatable. They administer fluids, antibiotics, and antinausea meds and send me on my way within the hour. The vet gives me a atta girl hand on the shoulder for handling things well.

At home there is deep relief when the little lady immediately wants food. I give her a warm bath and am satisfied to see her back out in the open being social, but still weak , she keeps to the bed. The day ended so much better than it could have, eventually I will have to say a final goodbye to my little kitty love but not today.

Day 4 of antibiotics after bronchitis absolutely lays waste to me and I’m doing a little better, still coughing up the occasional flecks of blood but I don’t feel a hairs breath away going to the ER anymore. My covid test was negative, however I later hear from my neighbor that she got tested shortly after me and hers came put positive.
In response I take some health initiative and sign up for one of those custom vitamin programs.

When my husband gets home, we settle in to Stranger Things. This seasons dark wizard baddie is giving his monologs on his fascination with spiders , when my husband spots a big arachnid crawling down the wall behind the TV by the stairs. He catches it under glass and sets it loose out in the garden, it looks like a brown recluse or wolf spider.. I’ll need to google pictures later. He remarks on the timing and I tell him a dad joke that they make about the guy earlier on.

I’m drowning…
Like in my own abyss of debt.
I don’t even know when it started to get bad.
I mishandled credit.
I’ve made terrible decisions and got my ass handed to me every single time.
Im disappointed in myself too.
Left several jobs, relied on credit, and recklessly bought things unnecessarily.

I fucked myself.

I can’t even begin to think about paying student loans when I graduate. I’ve put off graduating for years and failed classes. Racked up over 90k in debt and I’m not even 30.

I keep thinking to myself that maybe I’ll catch a check from music or maybe get rich somehow.

Like, “oh I’ll just pay that later.”

Then I think that maybe I could just OD to escape when the time is right.

I know it’s completely psycho and I realize I have issues…

Im honestly just…

Lying to myself.

I

My precious little boy doesn’t understand why all the other kids have daddies and he does not. How can I tell him what happened? How can I look into his sweet little face and let him know the truth? How can I explain it to him in a way that makes sense to him, when it doesn’t even make sense to me? How can I sit him down and tell him that in the months before he was born, his daddy started wearing a rooster costume every day and insisting that I call him Grappler the rooster? That he made me throw candy corn on the floor so he could pretend to peck it up like Grappler the rooster? That the last thing he ever did was screaming “Grappler loves tidbits!” into my face before he ran off cackling into the woods, never to be seen again?