Shrove Tuesday

I have lived in Summer's End for exactly two months and one day

this morning is the first day since I've lived here that I've awakened or awoken or woke or awoke without stomach pain and nausea

I made my bed drank the last of the coffee washed the tablecloth and the other clothes put a fresh tablecloth on the table cleaned the junk out of my beautiful refrigerator Sailor and took the trash out to the bin also I turned off the television

I may be sane today

I'm going to the bakery to buy more coffee beans and to see if the palomino had her foal and to say hi to Sheila and to fill my gas tank so I can take another strange and beautiful road trip and to basically just be okay in the world which is a huge big deal

HUGE BIG DEAL

my son isn't here we had words (again) yesterday when he complained about where I moved the sofa he said it had no feng shui he knows as much about feng shui as I know about soccer which is basically nothing he actually said feng shui three times as I wondered who the heck is this person and where is my boy child? I suspect his new friend taught him the word I've never been concerned about feng shui because I think that throwing away something you love because it's chipped is crazy craycray no and I love the sofa where it is now it's perfect because I thought about where to put it for two months and one day my son and I fixed our words though when he came back and discovered I was gone (to La Conner) he called and asked can we start over which is how we keep the pot from bubbling everywhere our code words for forgiveness and fresh beginnings

Alice comes home on March 10th I can't wait to see her

it's cold outside but not inside

I'll be back

LOVES

little miracle

last December when I was making my last minute dash to escape the ghetto in 18 degree weather and snow I decided to dig up part of my winter flowering jasmine which was just a dry vine and tossed it in a plastic pot with a slim hope that it might survive here I put it on the deck by my bedroom and this is what I found this morning

after that discovery I hopped in my car to force myself to leave my house and I drove to La Conner where I found these noisy snow geese and a most excellent cloud show on Fir Island

this however is how most of my life feels

Sheila my llama has a new horse a young black stallion with a white blaze
the palomino that hangs out with the chocolate Shetland pony was rolling in the grass and I realized she was about to foal her belly huge and distended
I crossed two rivers today the Stillaguamish and the Skagit the snow geese were on the Skagit River and two huge hawks were perched on trees watching I saw a more normal sized hawk there too and one farmhouse had a mailbox painted like a small white church including the steeple
I saw a sturdy stout goat pushing his or her horns hard into a log
there was one hawk and a bald eagle hanging out on the Stillaguamish River bridge the bridge that takes me to my island
I also saw a giant iron elephant in the middle of a meadow

I had lunch in La Conner an amazing fresh winter vegetable sandwich with warm goat cheese on it and baby turnips and red and yellow roasted peppers and spinach but did not run into the composer thank bog yes he lives there no I am not looking for him

well maybe kind of I am





















I totally am

yesterday I stopped at the little Mexican restaurant in the wee strip mall that has the freshest and most delicious Mexican food I've ever tasted Dos Reales Taqueria in the small town that is the largest town across the bridge from my island and I filled up on chips and their amazing salsa and took the rest to go then I went to the do-it-yourself car wash and washed 15 pounds of pine needles off Sweet Lime and to exercise off the hot salty made right when I arrived chips (so good) then I drove to the large grocery store and bought yeast then I came back to the island and went to the new nail salon that just opened next to the IGA slash Ace Hardware slash Thai nook restaurant slash Nail Salon (that's its name) and I got a much needed manicure and I was the only one in the salon with three young women working and they were playing a tape or a radio station of love songs and The Rose came on from that awful Janis Joplin biopic of the same name and I started singing then the woman doing my nails started singing then the woman next to me started singing then we were all just belting it out then the boss lady said DO WE NEED A KARAOKE MACHINE IN HERE? in her outside voice so we all shut up but it was a divine moment and reminded of how we would sometimes sing at My Ex Glamorous Job spontaneous fun singing and the woman doing my nails didn't say a peep at how awful my hands and nails and cuticles looked ratty and torn and broken from moving in 18 degree weather

and not once during all this activity did my panic subside not once but my nails are the palest pink ever and now they're all short (I had only been clipping the nails on my left hand so I could practice my violin because my nails have turned hard have turned truly into goat nails or perhaps entire goats)

panic all the way then all the way home then through the night and this morning my keeper son showed up and we had words because often so much of my stress is from his careful watch over me which at times feels oppressive

I know it isn't good to speak this way of my son who I adore but there it is

this morning we went to the state park and drove around then he took me to the store so I could buy another 9 inch cake pan because I am in the mood to bake the panic still roiling in my belly and when I came out of the store the sky was dark charcoal gray to black  it's supposed to snow tonight

still panic still roiling belly and I can smell star lilies good afternoon Darklings

I haven't left Summer's End by myself since the beginning of February and that was to see DOGNURSE

I promised myself I'd drive to the store today now actually and once I made up my mind panic settled over me like winter

this is ridiculous because I am so happy when I am spending money which is still new to me even spending it on food and honestly I only need to buy yeast

this is PURE CRAZY

in other more interesting news Queer Wing-ed is assembling itself most of my edits are simply making sure the fonts are all the same and easypeasy writing stuff the poems arranged themselves became in their writing their own narrative arc I am excited and also excited to be working on my new project as I send Henry out into the whole wide world and this is how I wrote all my books one beginning as the other tied itself up I am excited it has been a very long journey

I spent the past 6 weeks attempting to get my elderly printer which worked in the old house to talk to my computer and internet provider in this house and I failed repeatedly so I went to The Dread Costco on Friday and bought a new printer a good one this time with a sturdy scanner a printer that holds 250 pieces of paper not 12 like the old printer I also got on the phone with M$ tech support because my computer would not allow me access to Office 2016™ so I could not create any new Word™ document and it has been very frustrating and my depression and stress have kept me from even sitting here at the grownup computer I ended up spending several hours on the phone with M$ tech support in fact lucky for me I found my orange card with the scratch off number that I used to first install Office 2016™ when I was packing THE BEST PART OF MOVING IS FINDING STUFF YOU'VE LOST the M$ tech asked me several billion ridiculous questions the most ridiculous being what day did you purchase Office Home & Student 2016 what exact day did you purchase it and where

I knew I purchased it at Office Depot which I told him then I put him on hold and searched my blog to find out what day because FUCK YOU DOGNURSE FOR TELLING ME I'M OCD I had actually written about it on my blog the exact day June 16, 2016 HA! take that M$! and HA! take that DOGNURSE for telling me my creative output is the same as my crazy

I do need to go about finding myself a new DOGNURSE seriously soon she is nuts

okay thank you Darklings for reading this far it became a very cursey post but now you all have given me the psychic energy I need to put on my pants and shoes and take a drive into town

LOVE


mockingbird wish me luck

pulling the corner threads on eight years of work Queer Wing-ed update

for this I kiss the urpy sea

for this I bleed my knees

for this I eat sugar through holes in my teeth

for this I fatten on ripe peaches

for this I untie my globes

for this I wax my sloppy tongue

for this I pour

for this I empty

for this I cathedral

for this I suck

for this I plump

for this I bitter

for this I yeast

zero post

navigating Sunday is easier now that I've moved out of the ghetto and into the forest

1. Lie still and take an honest mental health inventory
2. Make coffee
3. Feed The Evil Orlando
4. Run up the hill and fetch the New York Times
5. Look into the forest and breathe mindfully
6. Read the paper and drink coffee in bed
7. Everything else

I want to dig in the dirt today

ps. I washed the screens on my above the stove fan in the dishwasher with great success now every inch of my kitchen is My Sparkle Pony clean

I don't have a single curtain in this house Summer's End is shrouded by a green canopy of trees when I lived in the ghetto I never opened the curtains ever because it felt dangerous and I felt exposed to danger this danger was not imagined

I love it here so much

Good Sunday Darklings we barrel toward summer (I tend to ignore savage spring) and summer's warm and lush bounty

Love

the two middle Alices are from Barbara who understands my Alice needs Thank you Barbara!!!
today I went to the Big City with my son all we did was drive around he is going to a party tonight and needed to find the place other than that another zero day though I did get my hands in the dirt and brightened up my deck with these spectacular primroses

we ate breakfast at the table like humans I had a cinnamon roll heart and a tiny bowl of chili and my son had a cinnamon roll with icing

I swept the deck and cleaned my toilet and did a load of laundry and watered my plants and farted

tomorrow who knows?

it took me literally six weeks to move out of my bedroom and the kitchen to the living room I mean to feel comfortable in the living room and now I am in the other living room which I suppose is an office my son's junk is scattered around which makes me anxious and he has a lot more of his junk in the library which I keep stealthily moving into his closet and he moves it right back into the library I crave the company of my books which after all keep me mostly sane

I was going to get my taxes done Monday but apparently it's So Called Insane Orange Clown Day so there won't be mail or anything else

I scrubbed my stove and discovered how to remove the screens from the up blower (surely there is a correct word here fan?) above the burners I had already brushed them with a wire brush removing 20 years of dust and sticky grease and grime now I'm wondering if I can put them in my dishwasher any ideas?

this makes me so happy (out my kitchen window) I'm sorry for the fuzzy photo it reflects my state of mind

I finally brought the sock I rubbed all over Orlando and the lost kitty's blanket in from the porch and washed them and threw away the litter box that I left on the porch for him to smell it's been a long time now and I have to forgive myself someday which has not happened

baby steps, Bob, baby steps

I went to the State Park just down the road for breakfast and met the Bee Guy and a rather strange looking couple who were friendly as all get out then I came home and made chili because Mary Moon inspired me yesterday then I baked my very first maiden voyage of baking at Summer's End I made these giant yeasty cinnamon rolls with butter cream cheese frosting they are seriously gigantic and even seriouslyer delicious but even I could not eat more than one

1.

2.

I am putting the finishing touches on Queer Wing-ed the easy part and I have started a new manuscript titled Becoming Timothy Treadwell

honesty I thought I was done with writing after I resolved the Henry Problem to my satisfaction but I guess I just had to give myself a creative break while I dealt with illness and The Crazy the tiny signs of savage spring I find in my yard make me hopeful I have been outside every every day pulling the ivy off the madronas and kicking the stupid rocks the former owners left every where out of the mud and watching the snow geese and hawks and trumpeter swans and flickers and vireos and dogs who run free here and coyotes and owls and the wee darters that fill the trees and the trees themselves who sustain me

hello Darklings come on over for a spot of tea and a cinnamon roll the size of a Buick

Love

The light ate too much of me

I gave smallest permissions
ants streamed and valved
set about their destiny
with precision and very little cursing
wanting to make it happen

like in the movies then you catapulted
under what spell
I hung from the dock on orange bungees
counted jellyfish a child in the back seat
on the way to her first drive-in The Ice Queen

waved my hands in phosphor
bright ambulance doors
kelp tangled my ankles
cried a nuisance did you see my did you
an empty syringe refuse the lush grass

reeled undressed barefoot gardenias
smashed their mouths against glass
a fox alight along the edge
of my animal face sweat on my palms
pooled on my belly your most terrible

tongue in the sugar box slow and quick and slow
I killed my chest’s engine
what I mean is gardenias your mother’s braid
her foxtail coat your voice
inside the pink clock

February smelled of heartland and prairies
battered in the infantry
let my lippy me be stolen by a witch
nothing was more private than our pink
pink your breath pure in half air

I saw my first ever in my life Short-Eared Owl (caps? no caps? I put the caps in because the sighting felt holy) two days ago coming home from dinner at barely dusk I was driving into my yard when the owl swooped right past my windshield this crazy huge wingspan I thought at first it was the Great Blue Heron who lounges on my deck carrying a white paper bag in its beak but when the owl flew away it turned and looked at me so close I saw his eyes...heart stopping. I have been hearing him for days and scouting around I have discovered several mouse-sized owl pellets but to see him finally was a door opening into ancient and thrilling wild. The Great Blue Heron is a peeping Tom I keep catching him looking in he startles me in the most spectacular way. I posted this also on FB sorry for repeating it here so much easier than retyping.

this is what he looks like

this is maybe only the third day since I moved here that I have felt okay as in not sick as in both mentally stable and able to eat and drink water without pain what a relief to wake and feel alright perfectly fine in my body I heated up some red beans and rice for breakfast and drank actual coffee then I put the dishes in the dishwasher then I mopped the floors with vinegar then I did a load of laundry then I set Bobbie the Robot on the cat's room (formerly known as The Library) and shook out the big rubber mat on which her litter boxes rest and moved stuff around then I cleaned  and resealed my granite counters and I'm going to polish them here in a minute and I have not felt sick once this morning not one single time

I discovered an amazing Thai "restaurant" more like a Thai "nook" inside the IGA on the island where only the elderly and the townies shop with the occasional tourist thrown in especially now with the big bird festival which has been canceled not sure why but I suspect it's lack of funding but he who shall not be named or as they called him in the Harry Potter books YOU KNOW WHO but the birders flock in nevertheless (hahahaha flock) you can spot them by their giant binoculars and expensive cameras and vests-of-many-pockets and their salon styled hair 

my house smells delicious by the way

I finally feel like baking

*

I had to get cable teevee in order to have any teevee and also to watch Twin Peaks when it finally returns to television after 25 years this May I find it odd that cable teevee is mostly cooking shows and shows about 600 pound people overcoming the odds and the cooking shows bore me because they are mostly meat-centric unless it's children cooking and the 600 pound people make me so proud and so full of love for humans that I can barely contain it I have struggled with weight most of my life and I understand this deeply

mostly cable teevee has caused me to become a reader again after a year of reading almost nothing right now I'm reading The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu it is actually three gigantic books that won the Hugo Award and the reason I'm reading them is because I read that it was what Obama was reading his last day in the White House superb books and how I loved finding out that My President loves science fiction

Love to you on this winter Sunday my Darklings here is the beach I visited yesterday in my pajamas and my fancy pink winter wool coat and my moccasin slippers

three days ago I drove up to Deception Pass (pictured up top) and walked to the middle of the terrifying bridge in the wind to get that photo because the water was such a spectacular color and the rocks with trees growing on them have always looked like giant paws resting in shallow water to me though the water is not shallow at all and it was very cold here are my feets on the extreme edge of the bridge as I took a picture of the madronas growing below me I admit that I have zero fear of heights in spite of all my neurosesessess

here's the bridge it's kind of nervy because the big rigs go across it at a billion miles per hour and the walkway for foot traffic is only about six inches wide or so it feels


after that I drove to Whidbey Island and around and then back where I saw a pink bicycle that I think I want it is in the style of old school girls' Schwinn bikes I hope I can find the place again when I have money

this morning I drove to the beach but it got so windy that I didn't get out of my car (now the wind is at 50 mph and the trees are making the most delicious noise) then I walked the perimeter of my land out into the forest deep where I found more madronas and a gorgeous stand of birches and some juniper bushes and all manner of conifers and more owl pellets and wild blackberries and my hat blew away but I captured it

then I trudged back home holding onto my hat and my hair and when I got in the house I smelled something bad a terrible sweet smell the smell of death and I wandered all over the damned house opening every closet cupboard drawer and closet sniffing everything and I couldn't locate the smell so I lit a vanilla scented candle in last ditch attempt at concealment but the smell stayed and eventually I discovered the smell was me IT WAS MY SHIRT which I must have packed with some food or something but I tossed it in the laundry hamper and now the terrible smell is gone

EMBARRASSING

*
my life is incredibly tiny

*
the brilliant poet Maryrose Larkin sent me here Roomba Robot because she moved away from her carpet and I have miles and miles of it and I am besotted with the robot who says ERROR PLEASE PICK ME UP PUT ME IN A ROOM AND PRESS CLEAN every day at 11:15 AM and I can watch her for the entire hour she circles around the house in whichever room I choose to place her

*
incredibly very extremely tiny life
The Surfer named the robot Roberta

*

Sheila the llama was right against the fence this morning and her horse companions were all in the barn shunning her there is a lot of Holy Names High School games going on between those snooty horses and Sheila she is highly sensitive and has long elegant eyelashes and a dirty bum (yesterday I waved at her and said hi and she turned and showed me her bum thinking perhaps I was a horse come to pick on her) I have now met a palomino and the palomino's friend a chocolate brown Shetland pony who is as wide as she is tall like a little box like a spectacular package delivered to your doorstep

wild chickens continue to roam the island and there was just a warning on the television about ferry service being discontinued on all the ferrys on account of the wind and I'm heading out for dinner heading straight into it I do love rude weather when I get back I'll answer your comments if I have power

Love

100% full

This is the Sara Crewe Bespoke Before Spring moon

Waist deep in the big muddy

Hello?
Hello?
Is this thing on?

I don't know how to crawl out of this hole of dead air so I will begin by writing that I have been sick (pancreatitis a doozy too for weeks) and this morning I cooked and ate the first thing I have eaten since I had a veggie burger (at the Dari-Delite in the header photo in Mount Vernon 17 miles away the only veggie burger I've found between here and Seattle but a damned delicious burger made with their own burgers with real vegetables in them) that came with a giant sized bag of fries and a tart horseradishy tartar sauce) also I puked so violently and so many times that tiny blood vessels popped on both sides of my face so it looked like a child poked me all over my face with a red pen I didn't even know until my son came home and asked me what the hell happened fortunately the broken skin horror has disappeared I don't know why and I don't want an explanation all the while though I dragged myself out of bed every damned day in my jammies in order to stay human and drove 8 minutes from my house to this beach at the state park that looks out at Whidbey Island and The Saratoga Passage

my feets and yes I'm still wearing the old man sitting at a bus stop shoes the same damn shoes I've had since I went to Chicago in 2011

what I eat for elevenses (not really)

yesterday I forced myself to sweep and mop and do laundry and stuff though everything has remained clean since I sequestered myself to my bedroom during my ill and also I have been extremely depressed but I could not write it here because I was depressed enough to hurt myself to do great damage to myself and once several years ago I wrote about such a depression and someone far away called 911 and an emergency vehicle filled with lovely strong young men arrove at my house the old house and it was awful and distressing the depression was much much fiercer this time than the pancreatitis and of course the pancreatitis which is directly related to stress and all those stupid ulcers etc the depression has been getting weirdly better each day weirdly because instead of going away overnight as per usual it is going away the way a cold goes away incrementally which I suppose is the way of the Ninja with bipolar disease which is of course degenerative

Oh to be mentally disabled in current America good crispy christ but this line of writing makes me want to puke my hearty breakfast of red beans and rice which already feel like a mistake inside me

here are my feets this morning this time in my moccirunners standing on the deck there is a great deal more snow now than there was then yikes and it's still coming down

I have discovered a lot of the island like the wilderness "adventure camp" which is not a camp at all but a place where they send bad children to scare the shit out of them in the woods just minutes from Summer's End! and I finally met the companion llama who told me her name was Sheila the horses she is supposed to companion are snooty though the other day in the sun I saw one of the horses rolling around in the grass with a look of sheer glee and the amazing birds all over the place including swans out of nowhere and owls hooting through the night so loudly that I went out and hunted around for signs of them and found several of these umm--mouse sized pellets if you don't know what an owl pellet is you must Google because it's fascinating and now I know at least two trees in my yard house owls

owl pellet Nature's Own Trash Masher

around the house because I'm all writ out

a man standing on a snail on the south side of the house I will soon soon soon be digging out that rhododendron and planting tomatoes in its toothy hole

in the kitchen

my son had a birthday

in one of the living rooms (? yes) Sally yes I'm too elderly for stuffed Animal Gods but hey it is what it is which is one of those trite sayings that mean absolutely zero of nothing

and in the bathroom the place where I put the shells I pick up everyday on the beach yes that's a gargoyle holding his nose

I know I know too many photos but I am still trying to find words and now I have to stretch out on my bed and wait to see if the beans are going to stay in

thank you if you've read this far my Darklings and thank you for staying with me through one of the longest nights of my soul

Love