Deer in my yard this afternoon right before a thunderstorm

I refuse to look backward

I’m rewatching Big Little Lies and none of the spousal abuse and horrific mother stuff even made me blink this time around but the entitled little girl whose parents are trying to enroll her in college and she says no! she says she wants to go build houses for homeless people! she says no no no fuck college! as her parents implore her     that.   that.      is what set me off in an avalanche of tears and sent me outside searching the forest floor for even the tiniest wood violet but no dice not yet I wanted to go to college my whole life



I do have a mosquito bite however which is highly unusual 

To name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world.
~ Camus

do you believe Camus? I don’t not for one hot second therefore in 2020 I will recommence naming the full moons

Pig and farm report

I began dismantling Christmas in earnest two days ago and plan on finishing entirely this morning there are still sugar cookies in the lewdly winking Santa cookie jar and the two Santas that I put on a tall shelf that I can’t reach but the tree is gone the lights are down (Mary’s idea of winding the lights around a wrapping paper tube is brilliant something I never before considered) all the ornaments back in my closet I took a picture of that beautiful little beat up angel because she is my second oldest ornament hand carved no bigger than my thumb given to me by my friend Diana one of my best friends for years who I eventually lost because I got sober and crazy but my son is still in touch with her husband through his father etcetera it gets complicated as families do but that little angel persists in spite of her trauma she is a fighter my oldest ornaments are the White King and Queen From Alice in Wonderland I found them in the Canyon Way Bookstore in Newport Oregon

I believe and have believed for years that Christmas would be much improved if it occurred in February in that long bleak stretch of unbroken winter where nothing is green and the sky and water jostle for a bit of blue I could really bring the joy in February now we are in that liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s day where everything seems to stop completely except the eating of cheese and chocolates 

yesterday I drove to Mount Vernon to look at the snow geese and the trumpeter swans and hawks and eagles that live there in abundance in the now abandoned cornfields that drive along Old Pioneer Highway is gorgeous to me and teeming with Animal Gods three times now I have seen red foxes standing alert in those fields and great blue heron striding along the storm drains near the road I stopped and looked at the Skagit River which has been near flood levels I got out of my car and slid down the muddy bank and just stood there breathing before I realized that not only were my shoes muddy but so were my legs my entire butt and my hands so I had to get the giant piece of plastic the nursery put in my trunk when I bought my fig tree on my car seat to drive home

I had some upsetting news on Christmas day but I think I have it handled though it involves me having to change my health care provider to a clinic that is 40 minutes away in order to continue seeing New Nurse but I only go to the regulation doctor once a year and that’s only if I’m visibly bleeding New Nurse needs to step up her communications game though to be honest I sent her back a panicky reply and when she still hadn’t written back I sent her another panicky reply asking her to please let me know when she read it then later (this morning) I realized I had saved both of those damned emails as drafts so yeah I also need work I also saw a terrible car accident the same day a car hit a tree was still imbedded in the tree when and there was a head shaped hole perfectly punched through the windshield on the passenger side it was a day of pile ons and panic that would have been much more bearable in February 

maybe

I’m cooking red beans in my tiny slow cooker for New Year’s red beans and rice and cornbread which I have eaten since the dawn of man and I don’t even know why but in such jangled up strangely fast and roller coastery times such traditions count at least for me

Love to you Darklings for muddling through somehow

Here is the art

that accompanied the poem I had published at Burning House Press on Christmas Eve Eve it’s rather perfect given the poem

sometimes I feel like drowning

Migrants at the border wall babies grandmothers gather America the final girl smashes the other crooked fell her obsessive draw America the final girl is Philip who wears a built up shoe his legs different lengths America the final girl is a prostitute on Aurora in pink thigh high pleather boots frantic holds out her cell phone afraid to get shot America the final girl is a six year old boy straddling the wall in white wrinkled cotton he left his bicycle his dog his father he chalks Jesu Christo on the pillar connecting radiating metal bars America the final girl is a red nosed pit bull tearing up lawns and sprinklers hungry and wet eyed dance cages clang with Coca~Cola cans America the final girl is children singing in frightened classrooms America the final girl is spinny and frantic America the final girl moves her feet brushes her hair tangles fortune with prayer cards grows terrible and wild and vain America the final girl crashes into bald a rat tail coiled under one wig or another swims inside her body swims inside her illness swims inside all of it

isanyonereadingthis isanyonereadingthisis isanyonereadingthisis isanyonereadingthis

isanyone

right after or right before Christmas day my son’s cousin got arrested and thrown in jail for two days for pulling a knife on her abusive boyfriend he had been abusing her for years her 12 year old son is out of the house now living with his grandmother the cycle of abuse and shitty Christmases continues and my son’s cousin has to pay a hefty fine and go to anger management classes

for protecting herself and her son

welcome to America where the patriarchy is stronger than ever

the battery on my car is dead again the hilarious part is that my jumper cables are in my trunk which only opens when the car’s battery is live because everything is electronic these days faulty design if you ask me which you didn’t I called my son for a jump and he’s not happy about having to leave the city and drive two hours to get me rolling again too bad





yes a rare mood but who cares no one is reading here

Mood check

Merry Prankster

Till Eulenspiegel 

Ken Kesey

Rider-Waite Fool

The other Fool

What I did on Christmas Eve Eve

I have a new poem here at Burning House Press







Christmas Actual Eve :: zipping between ribbon crinkling deep rooted joy and threat level 1 crabbypants meltdown


Christmas Actual Eve update :: this morning I accidentally folded a fitted sheet correctly almost


Christmas Actual Eve update :: this morning I had to look all the way to the bottom of my bedside dresser drawer for an emery board because every time I use one Hal steals it sharpens his teeth with it then hides it somewhere while rummaging about my hand discovered a melted then hardened piece of salt water taffy that has been in there since two summers ago the last time I went to the Oregon coast I just put everything back where I found it and left the offending candy

Christmas Actual Eve update :: micro dosed equal amounts of thc/cbd oil because I feel myself spiking and I fear the crash because no amount of good clean living and holiday cheer is ever going to scrub away the stain of Christmas Suicide Mommy and Christmas Drunk High Waving A Gun Around Daddy

Christmas Actual Eve update :: successfully made a pumpkin pie after my major Thanksgiving pie fail I used a pie crust I had put in the freezer then made two more perfect pie crusts and popped them in the fridge after making 17,894 of them I have discovered the secret of making perfect pie crust every time practice

Christmas Actual Eve update :: I am hyper emotional but not manic or depressed I can’t even look at images that might be sad or sentimental I’ve already accidentally cried at least nine times today I don’t think I will ever escape this labyrinth I had steel cut oats for breakfast a banana for elevenses and an apple for lunch because tomorrow I cheese

Three years

Three years ago today we loaded up the last boxes threw our house keys on the floor of that awful house and locked it behind us forever

This night three years ago I held a terrible secret a blood sacrifice to the forest the sky I cannot write about it further I have been grieving all day tears on and off through the morning and now again but we made it out alive my brave son and I we made it out alive and are better people for our journey I hope three years ago I slipped into the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in after spending most of the night calling into the dark woods the trees the still unknown forest the blackest night the utter dark pressing in and strangely wide open different alien

I am working on forgiving myself

Right now I’m fighting the almost irresistible urge to eat as much fat and protein and sugar and wheat as possible then sleeping for five to seven months

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve we are almost through it almost

Baba Ram Dass is dead

This feels like the end of an era to me

Pig and farm report

Animal God visitation at Summer’s End yesterday a Solstice gift

I woke at 2:30 am and could not get back to sleep I woke before the owls and accidentally alerted all three cats to jump on my bed and Busby Berkeley dance their way across my legs then my face I turned on the fire and waited for the echoing owl calls through the forest canopy and listened to the rain which is poundy and biblical in nature nonstop thunderstorms windstorms flood level rivers

yesterday I went to the beach the sharp narrow hairpin road still slick with the last of the leaves and I was glad for good old fashioned rubber boots that held me steady as I walked to the end of the dock where white water crashed and a crab man with three pots and ten Dungeness crabs (over his limit sure but he was gathering food for his family) kept giggling and trying to say good fortune good fortune while the crabs upside down skittered their claws in the air clicking for help maybe release back into the tumble the crab man and I couldn't stop laughing this is the way wind pulls words out of your mouth this is the way wind makes speaking ridiculous a flock of black oystercatchers pecked flickers out of the shallows with their dangerous red beaks they rarely show up unless they've been invited to a feast and it was a feast as the sea dumped her welcome basket close to the shore I watched a raven hop around with an entire sodden baguette in his beak he couldn't fly and he couldn't put it down because of the voracious and rude glaucous winged gulls there are floods down the road bigger floods in all the parking lots

I need to go to the grocery store in town this morning and I am fearing it with deep and abiding stomach clutching dread Christmas shoppers tend to be pushy and aggressive I only need to get broccoli and avocados and fruit and cheese for my Christmas dinner which over the years has become mostly a day of grazing a quiche a pumpkin pie some guacamole and chips I figure one giant meal a year that I am expected to cook is enough for me now that my life is so much smaller and so much larger ( my son asked what’s for Christmas breakfast waffles? and I burned a hole into him with my blazing eyebulbs)

I want to run a hot bath but I hear the breathing of more than one adult child I don't know who is here I might have to tippy toe into the kitchen to make coffee and get my oatmeal going before we can all be our most beautiful selves one day into winter and I'm already longing for summer I will always be a summer girl

Solstice baking

Za’atar oregano and feta chili bread plus honey olive oil and cardamom challah I also made a smaller three braid challah that mysteriously disappeared

SOLSTICE

don’t mess with it.

“Your girlfriend stabbed me in the back with lefty scissors”

I went to breakfast with my son at The Overlook Hotel in the middle of a giant wind and rain storm early this morning he took a photo of this startling giant hawk at the beach seriously this is the largest hawk I’ve ever seen and she was clearly fishing low down like that because all the best fishermen know that fish rise in the rain after that he drove back to Seattle but he called to tell me there were state patrol officers and the fire department and coast guard and an ambulance on the bridge that connects our island to the mainland and that divers were hitting the water where the Stillaguamish River meets Possession Sound that salty fast body of confused water is running high almost up to the road in this storm tidelines have been extremely high all week probably a boat capsized I hope everyone is okay it’s cold out there

I love that I know the servers and the chef’s names at the cafe now and again they all came out to talk and gossip about the other patrons I always go early enough to be alone in that gorgeous empty lodge with its spectacular view of The Saratoga Passage and the old growth forest all around sitting at my own table up close to the kitchen I had the vegetarian hash again red jacket potatoes with fresh spinach roasted red bell peppers onions zucchini mushrooms and feta along with a home baked English muffin and two poached eggs that they get from Jack The Egg Man as usual I ate the poached egg on a muffin half two bites of the hash then brought everything else home in a little cardboard box 

my depression left the building almost as quickly as it entered and I was straight away just as obnoxiously Christmassy as I've been since the first of December yesterday I drove out to Mount Vernon to see the now shorn cornfields which are full of Snow Geese white white handkerchiefs flung against the gray sky and dun earth they are stunning here early because it’s been so oddly warm as it is everywhere that or oddly cold

today I made a double batch of sugar cookie dough which is in the refrigerator so I can roll them out and cut them tomorrow and I’m also baking more challah then I will take a little welcome parcel to my new neighbors who are actually a half mile away but this is the time of year that I moved in and I remember how cold moving was and how new and often desolate and how without my stuff just overwhelming boxes everywhere out here in the forest all my Christmas presents are wrapped except for the gorgeous German lefty scissors I bought my son which arrived by UPS as I was typing this he will be back on Christmas eve I watched the debates last night and after the wine cave vs wind cave talking points were made and all the candidates started down bragging about who was getting the least amount of money in donations I gave up that’s it for me for politics for now I’m going to go read a book

be well Darklings hold on to good cheer and hope if you even only find the smallest spark tomorrow is the Solstice my high holy day and the days will grow longer and nothing can stop them

Pig and farm report :: impeachment edition

I increased my Doxepin from 3mgs to 6mgs last night as New Nurse has wanted and had bad swimmy dreams all night which has always happened to me with tricyclic antidepressants in the past hopefully I can go back to 3mgs and avoid that doorway I’m putting this here as a placeholder a reminder

hohoho

this morning my son arrived and we watched the impeachment hearings then after a while we drove to the beach and I wept in his truck about something awful my horror of a mother did to me when I was in 6th grade I couldn’t even fathom why it came into my brain except that watching the broken dangerous republican party pay religious service to the most vile president ever to enter office may have trip wired me back to living through Nixon who now in light of this new nightmare government seems pathetic and tame

hohoho

we came back watched some more went out for more coffee (his) and hot cocoa with extra extra whipped cream (mine) I also bought two black coffees for the two 7th Day Adventists who sometimes set up their stand of Watchtowers outside the library and stand there silently because she had on a longish skirt in high cold wind and she was visibly shivering

hohoho

we came backed watched some more and I wrapped Christmas presents and put them under the tree then continued watching but by this time I was muting the republican speakers especially the clown prince from Georgia whose voice is hideous and whose lies are especially egregious to my ear we went back to the beach

hohoho

last Sunday I noticed that the four people I know who are living in the state park including the people in the red truck were parked together I don’t know why they came together but it gladdened my heart to see them perhaps supporting each other perhaps even watching the football game together in the only rv among them now two of the tents have moved deeper into the forest but the red truck and the rv are still parked side by side when I was homeless I came together with other homeless people we came together to protect each other to lift each other up humans are sometimes good

hohoho

I’m still listening to the impeachment and they are booing the remarkable Adam Schiff shame on them I think they’re getting close to the actual vote now

5:09 pm Pacific time

hohoho

here’s a feral kitten against the dark

It’s Beethoven’s Birthday I don’t want you to think I forgot I’m just bobbing about in my little boat

now my boat has stopped rocking I should have known when my right eyelid started twitching yesterday that my brain was on the fritz my eyelid is still twitching but I smacked myself hard in the head the way we used to smack our old fashioned televisions and the picture stopped rolling

A Sunday Sunday I wouldn’t read this if I were you

dark in all the ways Sunday can be I read this somewhere today loneliness and light despair what even the fuck is light despair? is it despair with cheese melted on top? maybe a cup of despair with whipped cream or Disney Despair On Ice perhaps light despair are the button eyes of your most beloved plush animal ripped out and placed on a doily maybe it’s reading your favorite book on a comfy chair in front of your house which is literally on fire or how about baking chocolate chip cookies and using a child’s tears in place of salt?

I appear to have fallen into a hole between early this morning and getting back from the beach yes there was a trigger there is always a trigger

waving from the muddy bottom



👋 

Falling

last night I finished reading Patti Smith’s Year of the Monkey it will surely be the last book I finish this year I was in my bathtub filled with with too much very hot water in order to ease my knees which have taken many blows over the years my knees which are so scarred from falling off bicycles and horses and swings as a girl that when I had the shredded meniscus vacuumed out in my right knee the surgeon told me I had already had surgery there no I said I certainly would remember and he said they’re full of scars well there you go I have also fallen so many times and I was going to catalog the times I remember here this morning but I feel too quiet inside to do it now but I seem to always have been falling crashing down pitching my body off the earth’s uncertain skin which is perhaps why bodies of water even the motion of my bath always feels more steady than terra I also feel my age in my knees more than any other place especially in winter in Patti’s book she is hitching rides from strangers down Pacific Coast Highway I used to hitchhike there but I was very young and homeless not a famous elder woman with plenty of money this question skewed the book for me but only for a moment once I figured out how dreamy the book was how memory filled and aching it was a remembrance of the deaths of her lifelong friends Sam Shepard and Sandy Pearlman the first time I started reading it in my very hot tub I fell into a waking dream state and when I picked up the book later to read again I fell into that same dream state where my words along with Patti Smith’s were tumbling through my brain in a gorgeous music

I inhabit that delicious space between a book just finished and choosing a new book with plenty of time and comfort and all the words in the whole wide world right there within reach

I am going to be as small as possible today I’ll go to the beach soon as I do every morning then at 1:00 pm I’m going to make some hot chocolate turn on the little fire finish decorating the tree and binge watch HBO’s Watchmen because the finale is tonight and I don’t want it to end

tomorrow is Beethoven’s birthday 

An advent calendar plus Christmas 
 ~  With thanks to Rosemarie Robotham

Day 1
Get drunk make a baby bark like a dog.

Day 2
Absorb your neighbor's lunatic desire.

 Day 3
Read a book about new girls and old girls.

Day 4

You will never be either.

Day 5
Give thanks with your mouth.

Day 6
Grow tentacles and a tail.

Day 7
Make noise when you walk.

Day 8
Sooth your tenders with 5 star curry.

Day 9
Sleep naked in nettles.

Day 10
Distend your furry fuselage.

Day 11
Your machine is animal.

Day 12
Pretend a cure.

Day 13
Unlace everything.

Panic baking in the redrum kitchen part 2

Shameless Love Apple Fig Tart Tart

Let us stop for a moment

Let us stop for a moment and consider the fact that I have owned this cookie jar for 45 years which means she’s older than almost every person I have connected with on twitter she’s a little beat up but who isn’t her lid is still intact and her spirit is strong







I keep my pie weights i.e. beans in her isn’t she gorgeous?

panic baking in the redrum kitchen

Friday 13

Draw a line around your body—this is what you can control


The poet Kelli Russell Agodon sent that out today in her tiny letter and it has stayed with me in fact it has become my mantra for right now when I feel the whole world swallowing me up in its red wolf mouth

I went to breakfast at the beach cafe that looked more cheery than usual with eight Christmas trees (which gives you an idea of how huge that lodge is) and because there is going to be a wedding reception there later I was the only customer there and the server and the chef and the espresso person came over three dark haired young women all artists and we talked and drank coffee before the morning push of tourists here for the whatever Christmas crap is happening on the island it’s not usually a good place to go if I’m lonely but it was today it’s hard right now not to feel hammered by the current news cycle by the reckless loud mouth ignorant republicans who are controlling the country and are controlled by their tiny evil king

I came home made two pie crusts stuck them in the fridge and disappeared into the sludge of my own crazy decided to make a rustic apple tart because when life hands you lemons squeeze them in someone’s eyes because it’s my son’s favorite he just doesn’t know it yet

Pig and farm report

It was freezing cold with high wind warnings for large and small craft on the Salish Sea I have named this driftwood The Finger Of God the high tide left her with quite the kelpy hairdo including a knotted ponytail no one else was there not a single crabber even though it is wide open Dungeness crab season throughout December I now know the real crabbers those who exist on the sea’s bounty those who feed their families those who sell to the fancypants local fine dining establishments from the fake weekend crabbers who tend to have shiny new boats and spotless crab pots and salt free boots who don’t have the patience to wait the real crabbers wave to me and I wave back they know my car they even know my sad men’s pajamas from Sears which I was wearing this morning as I collected shells and sea glass from the storm debris

I came home and drank an entire pot of peppermint tea with honey

Jupiter remains unimpressed with the Christmas tree

The enormous baby.

Last night on the way to the clinic I accidentally fumbled my phone and the 🆘 911 alert sounded and I pulled over in true panic because I had never heard it before and I thought we’re getting bombed   I have not thought that at any time since the air raid sirens that sent us scurrying away from school in the 1950s and for a few years after when jets were still allowed to break the sound barrier I canceled the alert quick enough but that underlying fear stayed in my mouth all the way to the clinic

the clinic doctor lady listened to my lungs and rammed a thing down my throat and peeked into my earbobs and assured me I was not about to die she told me to drink liquids and take more mucinex and ibuprofen to take the swelling out of my esophaguses I did not even know I had heartburn did you know you can have heartburn and not feel burnt? I just knew I really didn’t feel that bad just the weird coughing thing she told me to not take the liquid version of mucinex because it’s hideous and not fit for human consumption and to go home and eat lots of carbs then she explained what carbs were you know bread and potatoes stuff like that she probably assumed that because I didn’t know I had heartburn when I clearly did that maybe I wasn’t all that bright    maybe    but she was wearing a hideously cheery Christmas sweater and had just told me to go home and eat a bunch of carbs then her helper monkey flew in and gave me the super duper over 65 flu vaccination in my left arm and a pneumonia vaccination in my right arm they are vaccinations right we should start calling them that it still hurts like a good curse word

I headed back home on the darkest road I’ve ever traveled I don’t know what I was thinking when I made an appointment for 4 pm I have crappy elderly eyes and seeing in the dark is just not a good idea no matter how many festive Christmas lights are strung about the place and there were a lot I went to bed and slept very soundly on my right arm i.e. the pneumonia vaccination arm and I woke at 3:30 am in rather screamy pain and I couldn’t move my arm at all not even to get dressed so I just lay in bed and watched the government shitshow until I could move my arm a bit

here I am looking ghostly ghastly and gray skinned and like someone just ran over my dog in my luscious soft first time ever cashmere sweater I should really scribble out my face here I cut my bangs myself with my cuticle scissors

 

Around 2 pm today my son came back from the city and walked down the hill to the house carrying a bushy medium height perfect evergreen tree in his arms like an enormous baby

Pig and farm report

I went outside to walk in the woods as I do every morning then I turned around and came right back in because the fog was so deep I was also to going to go to the store but the fog still hangs there and I don’t want to drive in it inside is just as oppressive as out I cannot watch any more of the clown car that is our entire government and got about two minutes in when the hearings started and then I was finished I will read whatever news there is to read online I’m sure as it is constantly hammered into us

waiting for my son to get here in the past few weeks I have realized how much my stress and anxious disappears when he is gone and how that anxious builds its house inside my head and my body when he is on his way here does that make me a terrible person a bad mother I don’t think so he of course hasn’t needed me in decades but he feels he had to get in my head like a guide dog so I won’t misstep or I don’t know arrange the pantry in ways that don’t fit his logic it’s not my place to write about his personal life here I’ve always respected his privacy but he too has his demons passed down genetically through his father and me and our families he too has generational trauma to live through and process and sometimes I just need a break from carrying all of it I feel my leathery wings folding back in I feel my light freedom fleeing through the foggy woods

I made an appointment to see a random doctor at the clinic tomorrow at 4 pm because I can’t seem to shake this smoker’s cough and I haven’t smoked for 30 years that too worries me I’m curled up in a soft blanket with Jupiter for now for now I think tomorrow will be brighter

mockingbird wish me luck

A post that turns dark

Sometimes if I’ve been in another room for too long Hal starts distress meowing very loudly and terrified and pitiful and I always tear into my bedroom to make sure he’s okay because he’s still a feral kitten who gets into stuff but he’s always at the foot of my bed marching back and forth like Napoleon wanting a scritch this happens at least twice a day and bog knows what he sounds like when I actually leave I keep telling him that one of these days I am going to stop falling for his trick and then if he truly does get into trouble I won’t be there to rescue him he doesn’t believe a word I say sometimes when I scritch his chest he wraps his very muscular front legs around my hand and arm and squeezes with ecstasy purring like I’m a raw salmon and it’s his his first day off a fast when those front legs and exceedingly sharp quick claws start kneading I just let him have at it because if I pull away too fast there will be blood

this morning the newscaster on a local station was talking about how to do Christmas with small children and she said instead of running around like a crazy person  and it struck me as off as insulting and it made me ask myself exactly what does that look like in fact? is that how I look when I’m depressed certainly not most days I don’t move is it what a panic attack looks like?  indeed not how about mania? PTSD? full throttle anxiety? I can’t speak to the mental illnesses that aren’t mine I have heard this expression countless times since I became self aware and since I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 and it never affected me this way in fact I use the term crazy  about myself all the time though I didn’t pay attention to it until I edited my manuscript and realized I had used it 17 times to describe myself or Henry Darger or my mother maybe that’s when my ear tuned itself to hear

I’ve been rewatching the first season of The Affair  because because it deals so honestly with the aftermath of the death of a child what happens to the parents what happens to the family structure what happens to faith how everything breaks apart and not a single structure mental emotional or physical is left standing I have my own family and the death of my sister Lark who died at three from drinking weed killer as a powerful lens and my entire manuscript was my way of digging backward to find out what happened

what happened

I’ll never really know the truth of it just the family version or versions of it the history and fable of it my mother’s and my father’s stories that warped and changed with each telling and the terrible truth of my brother and me barely old enough to know what we were looking at passing Lark’s pink baby book back and forth to each other trying to crush her molecules into our already troubled and damaged bodies the birthday cards then the obituary and sympathy cards this memory is real though over the years I’ve come to doubt it at times I know it’s real because that baby book came back to me after my mother’s death along with the missing photos of my brother and Lark and me as children photos I never saw or only dreamed seeing I kept Lark’s obituary and our childhood photos and nothing else the stink of death and grief was too deep and rotted into its water stained satin cover it is gone

my book my manuscript helped me dig through the ashes of that tragedy and answer the questions to satisfy myself and my life I was never able to answer the why of how my mother treated us but I came close as close as I will ever come to finding an understanding of her rage and grief and of my father’s terrible distance from me

I dedicated the book to Lark but it is indeed for all the missing children and to all the families who live through this

Peace

Pig and farm report

my son left early this morning and I like being here alone a way of ratcheting down everything I cooked steel cut oats with a cut up apple and cinnamon in my slow cooker and had it for breakfast then I washed the oatmeal bowl and my spoon and the slow cooker and spent the rest of the day cooking black beans in it so tomorrow I can have one of my favorite dinners corn tortilla with a spoonful of black beans topped by one scrambled egg topped by a spoonful of plain Greek yogurt with a wee bit of restaurant hot salsa I had some Gouda and 3 Ritz crackers and three dill pickles for dinner tonight the laundry washed and folded and put away the kitchen clean coffee made for tomorrow I thought about baking bread but I am still too exhausted from whatever fuckery is inhabiting my lungs actually I know what it is I just have to be careful it doesn’t turn really evil

the rest of the day I read delicious solitary superb reading the way I read as a child lost in the story

typing into the void here is my way of pushing back the intense dark of winter even though I clearly don’t have much to say

so is this

today I bought new spices as many as I had on my list and some apples and some pears and that’s all I could do because I get tired quickly when I opened the spices I was amazed by their fragrance I know we’re supposed to swap out our spices every year but does anybody actually do this I am really curious my son is leaving for what used to be the orchard tomorrow which reminds me I saw a tower of the gleaming new perfectly round Snow White poison apple red non perishable Cosmic Crisp apples the apples that are going to kill us all the the King Monsanto square watermelon of apples the apples that are eating the profits of smaller orchards in my state and maybe yours please don’t buy them

tiny hitler has declared war on SNAP recipients by insisting everyone get a job something that is either impossible for people who are receiving them or people who are just trying to get by on jobs that don’t pay enough as it is and he’s also tightening the reins on people with SSDI now demanding they get interviewed four or five or six times a year instead of every three years to make sure they aren’t faking it for fun because you know poor people are responsible for the financial wasteland that is this shameful country

I did see Nancy Pelosi send fire lightning bolts at a reporter who had the gall to ask her if she was trying to impeach tiny hitler because she “hates him” and it was awe some to see to witness I stood up and saluted her

I have been eyeballing a perfectly shaped baby Douglas fir in the back forest I’d love to string some lights on it maybe fairy lights unless anyone knows about other lights that don’t require an extension cord self powered lights the tree is about 20 tall maybe taller I would just throw the lights up as far as they reach we are at the point where night seems forever out here

Pig and farm report

I literally turned my body inside out by snuggling up with two purple caps full of the hideous  Mucinex today and tonight

I had seven olives for dinner

I’m going to bed to see if I can hack up my other lung

Pig and farm report part B

The girl from whom I bought my son’s phone yesterday casually mentioned to us that glitter is the herpes of the art world

I wanted to ask her to amend her statement to the craft world  but I honestly don’t know much about the craft world and her statement while eyebrow raising kind of made me love her and give her a five star review on her store

strangely today I have been considering how much fun it would be to start inviting people over to hang out like in the olden days you know when animals could talk maybe start a salon of like minded folk or a writing group or just have a tea party with fancy hats I have no idea why I’ve been considering this but I suspect that it’s because I got my tall lace up boots out of my closet and I’ve been striding around my forest in them like some kind of deranged elderly hippy general

Also today I proved something that I already knew which is if it smells bad it tastes bad  even if it’s just an onion and you decide to go ahead and make a quick little pico no matter the stink a bad onion can taste bad for miles and no amount of peppermint flavored gum is going to help

I had to steal the gum from my son’s room because I do not normally partake

This post contains far too many italics and that makes me tired

This is the most important thing I saw today

Give to the Aurelia Foundation for Elizabeth and Sophie

Pig and farm report part A

Last night after watching episode 7 of WATCHMEN I ran around the house screaming WHAT THE FUCK WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK WHAT DID I JUST SEE then my head exploded and I couldn’t sleep I am not making this up

I went to the telephone store this morning it took two hours and when I came back I saw three white vans surrounding my neighbor’s trailer my neighbor about whom I wrote here   I had noticed that her very bad and dangerous boyfriend had been there for over two weeks and usually he only appears for a night then disappears for long stretches of time but he was gone and I didn’t see her

all her belongings were being dragged out of the trailer in giant black garbage bags and dumped in the yard the men doing the job wore boots and dust masks I had not seen her since her two visits last year though I would have welcomed her in she is clearly getting evicted in a terrible invasive and humiliating way I was evicted that way once and it was awful and even though I only had one small box of stuff it was heart wrenching and part of me is still broken from the mess and shame of it

I am sick sick for her and so is my tender son there is nothing we can do except light a candle against the dark

friends if you have drunk or addicted people in your life remember how tremulous this time of year is for them and care for them as best you can without putting yourself in danger

Are any of you following HBO’s series Watchmen if not please do I admit when I first glanced at it I thought it was basically more of the usual comic book superhero claptrap but it is not that not by a long shot it is a careful and heartbreaking and deep incision of American racism and generational trauma absolutely stunning thanks to my darling son for insisting that I watch

Three years ago today

I started moving in and I have never loved this house more many of you were with me from the beginning many of you found me during the extremely bad times and some of you during the Very Bad Times when I got forcefully retired and some of you found me at the beginning of my comfort which started when I was given social security and finally took my pension thank you each and every one of you for your outstanding generosity and your incredibly delicious hearts

we had three big flakes of snow this morning but it was enough for me to get excited and put out the Christmas Cow and to fill my advent calendar with Adventists chocolates and to start cooking beans for chili in case the power goes out

Happy December Darklings