Hellcat Heart

Remember all those years ago when the band Staind came out with a song called “It’s Been Awhile” and people played it obsessively and then started hating it with the same aplomb? I still play it sometimes. Because sometimes it’s been awhile since I’ve been myself or checked in on this blog or smiled or just felt ok. It’s been awhile.

My second Dad died back in March.

His death uncorked a bloated bottle of putrid shit deep in my chest and the last six or so months have been a blur of not ok, maybe ok, kinda ok, really not ok, really REALLY not ok, maybe ok today, maybe never ok again, and the new normal is hoping for the kind of ok that I used to be. Ok?

I feel like I’ve been saying for the last decade of my life, almost every month: Grief is a motherfucker. When I think about Charma and June and my Dad and both of my Grandpas and my Uncle and my second Dad and layoffs at work and just…all the shit, when I line it all up like that I might have a tiny pinprick of realization that I have been in a constant state of some kind of loss for a decade now. Now, now, now that doesn’t negate any of my happy places at all – because I’ve had them, a LOT of them – but the loss is a slow, humming, melodic lo-fi beat ready to pound out a rhythm with your breathing if you let the happy music fade into the background.

I know how to grieve. I’ve been doing it for over a decade. I’m just tired of doing it.

I took up guitar again after way too many years away and I think my first intention was to just get out some of the feelings by focusing on how bloody my fingertips could get as I strummed and banged and made horrible sounds. Still, Zach Bryan is saving me and lessons with Jamie are saving me and free Youtube guitar lessons are saving me and I guess…at the end of the day…*I* am saving me too.

I had a burst back in May and April and June and read 70+ books in that 90-day span. I escaped into the world of fairy smut and dragon porn and fantasies of women being their own hero and men being sensitive and wonderful and people not being awful and even when they WERE awful, getting their just desserts in the form of forced loneliness or death at the hands of an angry dragon or punishment in a far away prison. I read bad books, really bad books, a few really good books, and long, LONG stories that just took me out of my life for hours at a time. JD was annoyed with me pretty constantly as I ghosted around the house with my giant Apple headphones and didn’t speak for days at a time. Things didn’t just fall through the cracks, I flat out ignored anything but my most basic needs: sleeping, eating sometimes, showering, showing up to work, and going through the motions. She was hurt, thinking I was pulling away from her and I tried tried tried to explain that I was running on empty, coasting into the station on fumes, nothing to give, nothing to feel, nothing nothing nothing and that I was just trying to survive whatever it was I was trying to survive. Hard to tell someone “it’s not about you” when you don’t have any explanation for what it IS actually about. Still, here it is four months later and I’m here so it looks like I am still surviving.

Pinprick of light in my life these days. Secret happy place where I can go in my head and heart and feel ok. Just for me. Just for the me who is raw and too tired to pretend to be ok. Just for the me that wants to heal myself in the way that I know how to do. Mine to covet like one of those red sequins I held in my grubby palm after that car banged into me when I was four. Mine like those nights in bed when the world was asleep and I’d think of “anywhere but here”. Mine like plans and hopes and dreams and desires that I don’t even write down for fear of losing them. Mine to feel. Mine to fear. Mine to just exist with. Mine to believe in. And I do, in spite of everything. And in spite of myself.

Music is bringing up choir for their last song of this protracted little sermon on navel-gazing: “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron.

Lyrics:

I am not the only traveler
Who has not repaid his debt
I’ve been searching for a trail to follow again
Take me back to the night we met

And then I can tell myself
What the hell I’m supposed to do
And then I can tell myself
Not to ride along with you

I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Oh, take me back to the night we met

When the night was full of terrors
And your eyes were filled with tears
When you had not touched me yet
Oh, take me back to the night we met

I had all and then most of you
Some and now none of you
Take me back to the night we met
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do
Haunted by the ghost of you
Take me back to the night we met

Sometimes…ok, almost always…when I hear those lyrics, it doesn’t evoke images of lost love with another person like I think it’s supposed to. It’s a reminder to the me that stopped being me over six months ago:

“I had all and then most of you, some and now none of you”

I don’t know where I read that people reincarnate over and over in their life and that we basically become a hundred different people while we live out our existence. Maybe that song resonates because I miss that girl who was ok all those months ago. Maybe I’m scared that whoever is here now is the new version of ok. Maybe I don’t want to be ok.

Maybe.

This time of year always feels so fucking Bipolar to me – that dormant energy that’s yawned its way through Winter finally just popping its head up from the snow one day like a little crazed Daffodil, and then proceeding to zip and zoom manically back and forth through lists and “shouldas” and plans and ideas and I fucking LIVE for it.

All my partners have looked at me at one point or another in our time together and said some version of, “Are you SURE you’re an ‘Autumn’ person?”, with the implication that I get good and charged and manic when there is one hint of sunshine in February because SPRING IS COMING BITCHES AND THERE IS SHIT TO DO AND DO AND DO AND DO AND DOOOOO.

I’m writing. A LOT. A LOT a lot. Stories and poems and letters and lists and words flooding through me like a banshee living inside my head – all spewing her latest wisdom with no brakes and no floodgates and no chance in hell that I will get it all out before one of us is exhausted by the other. That voice is just “The “Muse”. Her name is “Josephine”, after that Tori Amos song “Not tonight, Josephine”, and she’s been visiting my thoughts for probably thirty-ish years now in this form. When I was a kid and scribbling all my weird little stories in the back of old notebooks, I just thought of her as myself. I’m older now and I know better. That shit is divinity and I am nothing but the fucking conduit. I’m fine with that as long as she keeps on talking because the buzz that comes with it is orgasmic and special and magic and oh-so-decadent.

That one publisher loves my idea for the Medusa book but Goddess, I am exhausted by the thought of having to do it in such a structured way and even more exhausted by the thought of doing it as “me” and not letting the made-up version of me handle it all. We are talking and luckily she’s a great therapist and keeps telling me how great for my imposter syndrome it will be and and and…and I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s not imposter syndrome keeping me from editing it and releasing it out into the wild. It’s ADHfuckingD and being so busy with my “real job” that I’m braindead by 6pm most days.

Speaking of braindead, I’m in school again this semester and creeping up on ridiculousness with 2 more classes centered on writing. Like, what am I doing with this. Where is it going? And I guess it isn’t cute to play coy with myself because I know *exactly* what I’m doing with this – Hear ye, hear ye – “To be legit, one must have CREDENTIALS!” Yeah, bullshit. It’s legit with or without the paper so I guess the truth is that…this is my way of delaying and avoiding the inevitable judgement of releasing a piece of my writing into the world and just letting it be what it is.

I’m still ruminating on my Dad’s death. Micro-moments of “oh, he would have said this”…or just things I would want to tell him. I was sitting down to look at my taxes the other night and pulled my W2 form from my steady and thought about what his reaction would have been to my yearly income and how I would have never, ever even remotely alluded to my net, lest he immediately set about trying to get his hands on some of it. God bless the man but money did put stars in his eyes. I told JD about that time when I was barely twenty and had bought a garden tiller that I absolutely could not afford and that while it still had the tags hanging off it, Dad wanted to use it but didn’t check to see if the factory had put oil in it and he immediately locked up the motor on my brand new garden tiller that I absolutely could not afford and then proceeded to lie to me about what happened with it. It’s such a small thing in the grand scheme of things and I haven’t been mad about it in decades, but what a perfect illustration of why we just stopped working as a relationship unit. I require 100% honesty and he required 100% adoration and in his world, you cannot have one if you have the other because, at his core, imperfection was not acceptable, so he hid his while shining a light on all of mine. His way of “trying to get me to do better” helped me plunge headlong into all kinds of unhealthy dynamics and trying to be accepted and loved and good GOD, did I have a homing beacon on the “Absolutely WRONG Motherfuckers” to do that. I haven’t been mad about that in decades either, but it’s in the appendix.

In other news I’ve lost 60 pounds and I meant to. This has kicked off one of my marathon “let’s get rid of all our shit” sessions that has ended up lasting a few months and I might be seeing some light at the end of the tunnel on my knees hurting every day and just being in pain in general. Oh, and I cut my hair. And I re-pierced my nose. And I might go ahead and get that tattoo I’ve been planning for 5 years now. Decoration all around, eh?

Gratitude: JD, always. My cuddly wife who is smart and sensitive and who openly cries during “Coco”. She sits in her recliner and pets Craig every night and often, I’m just happy she has that bald little dog to coo at. She’s not fully out of her grieving but she’s so much better than she was a year ago, when I never thought I’d see my favorite version of her again. I had to get real with myself and remember that my favorite version of her is when she’s happy and when she feels safe and when she feels loved and good GOD, that shit changes year over year, especially through grief and aging and growing and just being human. She’s going to retire this year or early next and we’ve got plans to travel. I can’t wait.

March comes quickly. Flowers are peeking out. My marrow is humming. All of the pots are bubbling.

I hope I don’t vagal to death <3

My Dad died back in September. Four days before my birthday.

It was still hot, well over 100 degrees most days. I don’t know why it seems important to mention the heat during that time but I think there must be a metaphor floating around in there somewhere about being uncomfortable and unable to escape the suffocation of it all.

Ashlee and I cried through it together. Processed a lot. Rolled it over in our hands between us, trying to make sense of it. The few takeaways we had were “this sucks”, “this is awful”, and “now what?” The occasional “Goddammit” peppered conversations between us and more “Jesus Christ”‘s than I’d like to admit.

Dad and I had time alone together there at the end and we were able to get right with one another. He said he loved us…and I think that might have been the first time he’s ever said it. He said, “Y’all are my babies…” and his voice cracked and I think that, in that moment, it might have broken my spine in about a million places.

I’ve never understood that hard exterior. The sheer assholishness of it. Protecting ego and fragility and pretending as if nothing penetrates and yet, I look at my sister, with her hard and cool exterior that barely contains a river of tears and I see her coping with shit the best way she can. Dad was the same. Both of them damaged and hurt and in need of love they did not get. The fixer in me standing by wanting to give everything I have to make them feel loved and feel better and feel whole and yet knowing that I can’t fix what is not healed.

His death brought up a lot of things for me and yet, I am not broken. I grieved a long time ago. Got angry. Raged. Therapied all of it for years.

I am mostly ok…and I feel guilty for being ok.

I’ve been driving without a windshield for so long that I no longer think it odd when boulders crash through the space where my protective shield would have been. You just keep batting shit aside and checking yourself for bloody spots and nodding when you find that you are “mostly ok”. And then you lean into the road, press the gas harder, and…just keep going.

What else is there to do?

Surviving is the one thing I am good at. Getting through it. Being the last ember in the fire. The zombie girl who just…will…not…die. Some people would call that stubbornness – the kind of chin-jerking grit that comes from Gaelic folks who have lived through fighting and famine for hundreds of years – but what looks like stubbornness on an ordinary day is a sheer, burning engine of life. Life that refuses to be anything else until it is done living. Life that does not understand giving up or giving in. The animal nature of fight and flight and faun and freeze all rolled into a redheaded, gnashing, partially insane creature who really just has no other way to exist.

They call it stubbornness…I call it permanence.

It’s July and I could’ve sworn I had been here since April but alas, another few months have passed and I’m once again shaking my head at all the things I could have written but I’ll be honest…I’m not in the habit lately of finger-waggling myself over shit that doesn’t matter and in the grand scheme of things, how many times I update a personal blog just…doesn’t matter.

I finished the hellishly compact Summer semester class that I thought would be an easy ‘A’ and another tick-mark on my resume. I did get the ‘A’ but it was way, WAY more tedious than I am accustomed to and I’ve decided to give myself the Fall off to take a class called “Whatever the Fuck I Want 301” where I DON’T go to school to stack my already-bloated education resume and I DO write more and paint more and take lots of baths and lunch with my friends and vacation and pour over the dusty tomes of antique books in my office that want studying.

There’s work with the theatre and I’ve found myself as their Social Media Director ad locum. There’s more work with both of my side-hustles and I am hell-bent to work down my to-do list because FUCCCCKKKK that voice in my head who keeps reminding me that I’m ignoring it. There’s work at work and I have no idea how I’ll tie up all my projects before year’s end but I will because it’s what I do. There’s work at the house. Work in the yard. Work in my head. Work on my body. And I’m here for all of it. Jazzed and ready, gassed up, and a proper rebel without a clue.

I’m down another 20 pounds since April and it’s opened a LOT of my older wardrobe back up to me which is both exhilarating and sad because I get to wear really cute things I loved 5 years ago but I also need to let go of things that I really love that are now too big. Bittersweet symphony. I want to lose another 40 pounds or so and get back to yoga and toning so that I will feel strong and graceful again…and be able to get in bed without throwing my back out.

With the weight loss, I look more and more like my Momma. She’s always been such a pretty woman and even now with age and lines and wrinkles and every bit of her 67 years sitting on her like a coat, she is still that same scrappy little being with huge dark eyes and a chin you could cut glass with. Something magical in her tiny-ness while inhabiting the world in such a huge way. And still, in all her magic, the absolute WORST self-image I’ve ever seen and God DAMN those men and fucked up world messages for feeding her that bullshit all her life.

I’m content these days. With pretty much everything in my personal sphere. Oh to be able to fix all the “big” stuff in the world but existing in love and beauty is sure the hell a good start. <3

For the rest of the year and to begin again with love at the midyear point for my resolutions: an exercise plan to include erotic dance, weights, yoga, and balance. The book. The book. The book. That funky wallpaper and paint combo I want for the front entry. Sewing projects galore that will shred the universe with a vibe of “House of Harlow” meets McQueen meets vintage goblin witch. That tea party group I’ve always dreamed of. That witchy working group that Fiver and I cooked up at the con. All the things. Always all the things.

I’m well. How about you?

It’s been a minute, dear reader, and I’m sure you know by now that I had grand notions of pouring my heart’s desires out onto these electronic pages more frequently but life has a way of snatching you baldheaded, so here we are 6 months later.

What’s changed? I’m 6 months older. 30 pounds lighter. Surrounded by puppy love. We have a new pool and deck. I saw my Momma and Brother finally. I’m working down a list of “things to try…” Oh, and we went to New York and spent an insane amount of cash on Broadway shows, shopping, food, and galavanting and I don’t regret a single bit of it.

Things I’m trying: I auditioned for a role in “Steel Magnolias” and got the part. I’m in my second week of live performance as we speak and it’s fun and exhilarating and creative and so much more work than I ever knew but I am having the time of my life. Oh, and I’m also trying that thing where I let go of perfectionism and I’m inviting people to the house even though we have unfinished projects everywhere. Oh, and I’m taking better care of my body and mental health.

I’m well. I still drink too many Monster energy drinks and still spend too much time on social media (although less and less these days) and I still work too many hours but…baby steps.

Dreams: Things I’d do if I had unlimited time and money? I’d write a lot more than I do. I’d read a lot more than I do. I’d travel more. I’d buy my Momma her Louis Vuitton (although I’m planning on making that one happen for Christmas). I’d probably spend a lot more time dreaming away in the sun with a hot puppy on my lap and a breeze sending me into other worlds in my mind.

Gratitude: That some of my favorite perfume doesn’t give me a headache like others do. That people freely talk about the good things I’ve done even if I don’t remember doing them – and this is much less about meeeee per se, but more about how it is nice to know that other people experience me as a kind person who does nice things for others. That my knee is still mostly cooperating. That my career is paying my bills plus some.

Extra double gratitude: JD is coming out of her funk and its’s mostly due to the new pups. She’s worked so hard to get through the grief of her parents and has never let go of my hand even through her worst days but there are things that even my love cannot heal. These pups…and specifically CRAIG, have reminded her heart that love is available and she is back to her cuddly, smiling, wonderful self. How I missed my wife. It wasn’t every day or even every week but her struggling through all the grief made her more insular and God, it’s hard not to want to fix fix fix fix fix fix, even if I knew it wasn’t mine to fix. Craig is magic and his little yum-yum bottom lip is the fairy dust that binds it all.

How are you, dear reader? How is your world?

My Papaw died a few weeks ago. He was almost 90.

I’ve written his memorial a few times over the last few years, mostly not realizing that’s what I was doing. It just kinda leaks out when you are reminiscing about the times when he remembered who everyone was and how to move around in the world. He was sick for a long, long time – lived way longer than the doctors said he would – and blipped out like a birthday candle one morning after my Mother stepped out of the room for a brief second to catch her breath. And that was that. After months of yelling for my Uncle Bo, who died last year, and more months of trying to scramble out of bed while his body refused to cooperate.

This was the punctuation on the paragraph after JD and I returned from our cruise to Alaska and were plunged headlong into selling her parent’s home up North, tying up about a dozen loose ends around the house, and introducing 2 brand new Xolo puppies to the household.

Everything always uncorks like that with us. It will be months of absolute humming drollery and then in the space of 30 days EVERYTHING. HAPPENS. Literally EVERYTHING.

We are planning a huge trip to Iceland at about this time next year so I’ve already told my wife that we probably need to prepare for another cork-popping when we return from that one.

I seem so boring these days. It’s work – school – work – home projects – family stuff – more work – grind – and work. Adulting. Nothing glamorous, just the every day life stuff that happens when you are maintaining a life. And I’m good with it – I don’t need a lot of excitement because I feel pretty alive even when everything is beige. Happy. Content. Still open for whatever but absolutely fine if the whatever comes in the form of a new dish soap or a new program to bingewatch on Netflix. I know so many folks who struggle against the rocks of “it all needs to be exciting” and they wear themselves out with looking for the Next Big Thing. Meanwhile the ocean tide that is their life keep flowing in and out and they miss the treasure brought to them by the surf.

I’ve been guilty of that too at times but I’m practicing a LOT of being present.

And look what it’s done.

There’s a shitty, awful part of me that looks at my life today and thinks about all the hell my ex put me through. How she wanted to “prove” to herself and everyone else that I was “nothing” without her and was capable of nothing…and I never really felt the need to answer to that because her existence speaks for itself. And the shitty part of me that hasn’t risen above the “I told you so…” looks at her tiny little life in a trailer in a field somewhere in North Carolina where she sits, mostly alone, smoking her weed and plotting her anger-spew and I think to myself “yeah, that’s about right”. And I don’t need her to know how well I am doing with my career or business or home or love or family to grind my heel into her face because life is doing that on its own. Still, I wish I could stop thinking “you are exactly where you belong, bitch” when anyone mentions her to me but maybe that’s Mama Morrigan reminding me that everything isn’t all glitter-shitting kittens and evolution.

I have no grand plans for the rest of the year. We are going to some wonderful events and I am going to be seeing some people I love. I’ll write a bit and tie up some loose ends on personal projects but no major movements – that’s ok too.

It all shakes out into a big October something.

Pumpkin spice flavors, even.

I know it’s only been a few days but this blog was never meant to be only a monthly check-in.

I’ve had something on my mind for a bit and I think it’s amplified by all the death that has happened in the last couple of years. First JD’s parents, and then Killer, and June, and my Paternal Grandfather, and acquaintances, and now my Maternal Grandfather will be making his exit any day now. All of the death brings forward conversations about all the…STUFF…for lack of a better word.

Not just the papers involved in dying, but the actual detritus from life: the mementos, the clothing, the pictures, the tchotchkes you buy while on vacation, that extra Dutch oven you got for cheap, the books, the furniture, those embarrassing old ratty blankets you keep thinking you might need, and even the important stuff like your wedding ring or your house.

Where is it all supposed to go? And who is supposed to keep the story around it? My Mom informed me on the phone last week that she’s been doing a little Swedish Death Cleaning (look it up if you aren’t familiar, it’s fascinating!) up at my Grandmother’s rural country house and has encountered all manner of oddly-infuriating things: a collection of ancient paper sacks neatly tucked on the top shelf of a coat closet, about a bazillion stained Tupperware containers, a water-bath canning pot that belonged to my Great Grandmother that my Grandmother has literally NEVER used, and at least one card that I wrote to my Papaw for Father’s Day when I must have been 4 or 5 years old.

And that card was neatly tucked away in what I am sure was a pile of random papers, photos, and old bank statements. That fact that my Grandmother saved it is bittersweet; on one hand you want to say “Aww, that’s so adorable that she’s sentimental” but on the other hand you know there are probably 500 other random cards like that laying around in boxes and piles and *someone* is going to have to make decisions on what to do with all of it when my Grandmother dies.

It’s exhausting to decide where someone else’s things should go – especially while grieving. I know this because, two years after losing JD’s parents, we are still wading through things in their house and financial affairs.

Jd’s Mom was a “saver” as well. Papers, mostly…but a lot of them. A LOT.

Cards from JD from when she was a teenager. Cards from JD’s Dad to JD’s Mom. Tax statements dating back to the 1970s. Church bulletins. Funeral programs. Bank statements. Genealogy research. And a metric ton of recipes, neatly clipped from magazines and newspapers and stored in envelopes, photo albums, and shoe boxes.

It’s easier now almost 2 years later to donate the old Christmas decorations and books but in the beginning, turning loose of even a single scrap of paper with Mom’s handwriting on it was part of the “undoable” list of things that become impossible once grief takes root.

All of this is to say that I’ve had a bit of an epiphany lately – not just about the stuff we leave behind when we die but the idea of memory in general…and in particular, how we leave our mark in the world. I am not quite sure what to do with that yet but it boils down to the idea that most of the people who live on in the collective memory of humankind have either written something amazing or painted something amazing or built something amazing. That’s not to say that actresses and sex symbols like Marilyn Monroe won’t forever be remembered, or even Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson but I’m thinking in the long term – the Picasso for the ages. The Tolstoys and Orwells. The Frank Lloyd Wrights.

I was laying in bed earlier thinking about how I want to be remembered and that lead me down the path of thinking how we really are only remembered for one generation, maybe two if we have children, but for the most part our lives are a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things and nobody will remember a thing about us in 50 years.

Maybe someday, someone will find this blog and think, “My, this woman loved to dig in her mental belly button”, but more than likely this will all blip into oblivion roughly 6 months after I die because I’ve made no provision for anyone to pay the bill on this server. And hell, do I *want* to be remembered through this or any other thing I’ve written? Do I want people to know my name in 50 years? Not really. I just want to live now and be happy and make my days count and I feel like I could be doing a much, MUCH better job of that in all honesty.

I have more thoughts on the stuff but It’s almost 6am and I’ve had no sleep. Suffice it to say, I sacked up for donation about 8 more garbage bags today of everything from clothing to kitchen stuff and another 2 bags of trash. I’m purging – Not the little purges I do all the time, deep cuts. It feels like progress and that’s what matters.

/fin

It’s been a few months since I’ve had the time or inclination to sit down and spew. Or navelgaze. Or contemplate my Daddy issues. Or make a list.

So here I am, ready to do all of that and more.

My friend died back in February. She was murdered and it was violent and it was public (and continues to be so) and it makes no sense and has brought up a swirl of People Who Claimed To Know Her and weird, politically-glued rantings from people who were in any kind of proximity to her. I felt really muffled in my heart around that time because any death is complicated but this one was especially so. I’ve made myself dig out from all the feels so I can get back to some kind of normalcy and that has included the following:

1. My Papaw is dying and I’ll be making another trip to Arkansas any day now to help with those arrangements and hug my Momma. This death, too, will be complicated because my poor Granny doesn’t have the tools to effectively deal with this and my Mom has been shouldering almost 100% of the emotional, physical, and spiritual load. I am not there so all I can do is send money, much to my Mom’s protest. I told her if I lived there I would be spending it anyway on gas or supplies or paying someone to mow the yard but still, she protests. I send checks anyway and hope that it will ease some of the burden from her already-stretched-thin pursestrings.
2. We had half of the back acreage mowed down and it looks like a park back there and I can’t wait to make a coven circle out of the old tree stump and lone dogwood that is still standing somewhat strong.
3. I didn’t go to school for the Summer semester and it was the best decision I’ve made in a long time.
4. I got a huge promotion…like, seriously HUGE. I know it’s shitty and trashy to talk about money but it was a $12,000 raise and a bump in my bonus percentage so I am ALLLLL about that. My work hours have elongated a bit since getting the promotion but it’s worth it because I’m feeling strong and creative and valued and that’s kinda what matter right now.
5. JD and I are tearing out the closets and flower beds and getting rid of shit together. We changed the light fixture in the bar area and hung a ton of vintage lights on the back deck. The party pad is slowly coming togehter and we both love it.
6. I caught a baby possum and kept it for a couple of days. It was one of the sweetest experiences ever.
7. That’s all I can think of for now.

end list.

Ok, so I’m sewing.

And going to school.

And working 60+ hours a week.

And making huge, giant leaps in the house with projects and delayering and just…nesting.

My Brother visited and brought Natalie and they were fun and delightful and we spent hours in the dining room with them playing cards and eating and laughing and doing all the things I imagined would happen in that dining room.

And now that dining room is full of sewing projects and “paint with diamonds” projects and the accessories and accoutrements that go with both.

We’ve hired someone to come to the house and give us private sewing lessons. That feels decadent and amazing and I am so GOT-DAYUM excited that I can’t stand it. I feel a tiny bit guilty that we’ve become this bougie – just hiring folks to come and give us lessons, but hell, we hire people for other shit, right? Besides, this woman is funny and fun and knows everything and I’m sure I’ll be on Project Runway in just a few months with all I will learn.

My head is full again. Design ideas. Book ideas. Commerce ideas. Projects. Letters. People. I don’t know how it happens but I suspect I haven’t been journaling enough to release the pressure-valve so here we are spastic and dreaming of DOING ALL THE THINGS ALL THE TIME AND ALL AT ONCE.

I am thinking of my Father a lot. The urge to pick up the phone and check on him comes…and eventually goes. I know the cost of contact. Right now, my mental boundaries are holding. Still, the part of me that is not scabbed over with all that has happened between us whispers to me every now and then, “You need him…” but the adult woman in me puts a firm hand on that girl’s shoulder and says, “No, you don’t.” and the girl in me mostly believes her. I am going to get a call one day that he has died. It will both destroy me and release me. I hate both sides of knowing that with a burning passion but I am also resolute that it just is what it is.

My hair is longer. My face has more lines. I’m fatter. I’m aging. I don’t hate it.

I sometimes wonder why I am both exhausted by and exhilarated by contact with others. I suspect connection does that but people don’t like to say it out loud, lest we seem ungrateful for it.

I’ve met a new friend. She’s coming next Sunday for tea. She’s the Dianna to my Anne. I’ve had a Dianna before but that Dianna couldn’t love my Anne exactly where she was so she had to go. I don’t *need* a Dianna but this new friend seems like she could be a kindred. She’s beautiful and charming and smart and funny and I kinda love her from afar. We shall see. <3