• Diaries,  facebook,  slice of life

    Annie’s Retirement Years

    I am now nursing a fourth pet through her end of life…the first three in 2019, 2020, and 2021, all in a row. I guess the thing that strikes me about the death process is how it *is* a process. For two of my animals who took longer to fade (the others were very ill and went quickly in the end), it’s a lot of slow up and down. Good pain days, bad pain days. Sometimes foggier than others.

    It was really hard going through this with my dog Ichabod because he had dementia, too. He mentally slipped away from us quite a while before he actually died. I kept nursing him as long as he was enjoying food, but even petting became uncomfortable for him, and he started having seizures.

    His death was my last relapse on alcohol. It was soooo bad. I abruptly quit nicotine and the mix of grief/withdrawal just sent me straight into clear liquor, and I got my own seizure when I realized that was stupid and stopped abruptly. (Don’t do that.) God, I was an absolute mess that winter. (Don’t feel too bad for me; I am okay, I immediately picked myself up and went to college for a couple semesters. Like I’m super rugged and committed to being gentler with myself.)

    I’ve had two years to chew on the enormity of my feelings about Ichabod’s death, and everything I learned/felt taking care of a canine dementia patient. It was truly just a time of such utter love and grief. Intimacy. Raw loss.

    Little sweet old Annie is taking me back, though. She’s been my obnoxious drooly best friend for sixteen years. This cat, she has never known the word “no” to mean anything. And everything she wants is affection. Human affection, to be clear. When she had more energy, she would not stay out of my face/hands for HOURS, no matter how many times I set her aside, and she has this dreadful drooling thing so it was MESSY.

    Annie’s also a big poo-starter with other cats. I don’t know why, since we watch all our cats closely, we’re literate in body language, we seldom saw actual conflicts between them. But something about Annie was so loathsome to the other cats when she was younger. She was the outsider of the household colony, firmly glued to humans. The sassiest little tortoiseshell with a crispy dragon-baby meow.

    Nowadays she has a Retirement Room. The spare bedroom has everything she needs, and she doesn’t have to compete for resources anymore. Her unpopularity paired with her growing weakness means she gets whatever she wants in a hundred square feet of cat luxury.

    Her body aches so she can’t clean herself well, but I brush her gently with a boar’s hair brush and wipe her greasy face. She has a gigantic tumor on her shoulder we decided not to remove because she’s been fading a while anyway (although I have doubts about this a lot), so I try to wash that and keep it clean too. She gets daily visits from the family. It’s a pretty nice retirement.

    This is one of her low weeks, though. I can see she is more uncomfortable. She loves cuddling, but her mood isn’t as…warm? I can just see the edge to it, and cats don’t really show pain, so she must be feeling it. All the heating pads and cbd in the cat food can only do so much. It is getting cold. I will keep brushing her for now.

    I don’t think I want her to have to stick it out as long as Ichabod did, but it’s a hard choice when she’s still very much mentally Annie.

  • Diaries,  facebook

    Changing, Again – Always

    You know what surprises me about crochet? The way it works muscles I forgot I had.

    It’s improved my grip strength enormously (I think it’s better than when I was heavy lifting—I needed help from straps—and I wasn’t good at rock climbing) and that’s the obvious benefit. I’ve never seen my hands like this. The muscles coming up around my thumbs are so cool!

    But also, crochet works my deltoids a ton. Probably more than any of the standard compound lifts, too. I had to add accessory lifts to get this feeling in my deltoids as a bodybuilder.

    Deltoids are kind of like the muscle caps on the top of your arms, partially controlling the rotation of that complex shoulder joint. Sawing my arms through tight stitches with stiff fabric is *difficult,* and I will do it for *hours* when I’m working on something bulky (a purse, a blanket).

    Even though nothing I’m handling is heavy, I’m watching my arm muscles go crazy and laughing in disbelief like “what??”

    But it also works my chest muscles! I’ve had zero chest development since I quit bodybuilding in early 2020. For me, nothing works like a good chest press, and I just don’t have the stuff around to do that as easily as weighted squats. (Pick something up, squat. You’re done.) So there is only one place that I can be getting aching pectorals from.

    Again, it’s a different kind of development than bodybuilding. It’s less mass, less swelling. I feel like I’m developing *cables* under the skin.

    I am crocheting with a hook, creating fabrics in my hands, and somehow this is also making my body crochet muscle in this whole new fascinating functional way. I have never had a functional hobby in my life. It’s weird learning my body is meant to DO THINGS.

    Most of my core maintenance is actually using a standing desk and picking things up, which also helps my legs a bit. I’m often hauling 40lbs bags of cat litter around, which is nearly the weight of an unweighted Olympic barbell. I pick up and move a lot of plants and heavy water containers.

    Like I’m the chubbiest I’ve ever been, the most body fat no doubt, biggest dress size, but I’m kind of turning into lowkey homesteader farmb0tch strongk? Just DOING THINGS instead of sitting at a computer writing all day? WILD.

  • Diaries,  facebook

    lemon, baby

    Behold my MIGHTY LEMON TREE! In summer ‘22, I was gifted a gigundo lemon that I didn’t remember to eat. When I cut it open, I found a seed already germinating. Zut alors! I took that seed and a couple others and put them into tiny cups. I don’t know which survived, but only one survived, and I moved it into a cup in mossy organic substrate. It *exploded* this summer.

    I’ve been trying to prune it in a tree shape (obv the lower leaves need trimming) so it looks like a proper little tree in my kitchen windowsill. Did you know lemon trees wanna stab you? They bite! It’s made me bleed several times from those majestic, citrusy thorns. I think I’m going to turn into citrus at this point, like the werewolf curse, but lemons.

    There is some common street moss in there (like pulled off the side of the road, that’s not actually what it’s called) and a couple little succulent florets so it also looks like a forest in the cup. The grass grows out of the sphagnum moss. I keep trying to pull it out but that shit is ROOTED so now I just mow it with kitchen scissors.

    Yesterday I moved my tree from the McDonald’s cup to a bigger maverick gas station cup. The roots had wrapped all around the bottom of the cup and much of the inside, too. It didn’t stay damp long. Do you know where the soil goes when you’ve had a plant for a while? THE PLANT EATS IT AND TURNS IT INTO MORE PLANT. All these big bushy leaves are like 90% substrate probably. Anyway, they’ve got more substrate now.

    I get to visit with this bad boy in my kitchen every day and it makes me happy, even if I do get bitten a lot.

  • Diaries

    another walk in darkness

    had a really nice walk this morning before sunrise. it was warmish despite being late-October and very dark, pitch black but maybe 45f with barely a breeze. i could actually feel the knots inside my skull coming undone bit by bit. walking through utter darkness in autumn is a purgative act.

    my head’s been messy lately. nothing is meaningfully wrong. i am struggling with isolation. i’m homeschooling, parenting, crocheting, writing, drawing, programming, gardening, and therefore always busy, but almost never leave the house. it is painful somehow.

    i’m far from idle in this idyll, no wordplay intended, but even when i’m doing a lot of really happy fulfilling stuff, it is psychologically difficult to be confined. i am immune compromised. i’ve been socially distanced a long time. haven’t really traveled. just at home, being domestic/artistic.

    it feels like there should be absolutely nothing to complain about, and yet my head gets twisted up in all the ugliest knots anyway unless i actually physically move my body around, go outside, walk, exchange casual greetings with neighbors. I don’t even need that much! but I get so agoraphobic.

    i like walking in the dark. it eases my agoraphobia. i didn’t even wear my glasses. there wasn’t anything to see except some distant street lights. just kept to the sidewalks/paved trails and moved through space, unseen and unseeing, under blurry starlight

    a couple livestock guardian dogs heard me and came to bark at the fence along one part of the trail. they were VERY BIGUNDO SCARY BARKS. but i used my soothing baby voice to say good morning and praise them for being such good guards and then they got quiet and followed me to the end of the farm lol

    i love dogs!!!! they are so good to their goat friends. those goats have nothing to worry about with such great big scary shaggy protectors.

    it is those small moments that break up my day that my soul absolutely *needs* and yet i often find so hard to get ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • Diaries,  facebook

    small sources of wisdom

    Ahhhh I miss having little kids. Tonight I sat outside while kids were playing with my youngest, and a couple of the wee ones came over to check me out. One was so tiny I could cry, with his tiny bicycle. Smaller than our pumpkin.

    Apparently the kids think our house is scary. I think we have a bit of a mystique for a couple reasons… My eldest used to play with kids on the street but no longer does (just not interested anymore, kinda grew out of it) so they’ve ascended to myth. youngest seldom goes outside to play. i keep some halloween stuff up year round. big barky dog. black cats in every window. etcetera.

    the kids don’t even know about most of the creepy shit in my house, but they definitely caught our vibe. i love it. i can’t help being sweet with kids tho, i probs ruined my dreams of being the scary neighborhood witch.

    they were sooooo cute, on their bicycles, just climbing over my porch like it belongs to them. no boundaries!!! boogery and wearing very small shoes. then they ran home and weren’t my problem anymore, which is kind of even better than having little kids of my own honestly

    i also always think it’s so funny how neighborhood kids swarm me every time i go outside. i am not sure if it’s Just a Me Thing or if they do this to all grownups but it’s like, they want to hold entire conversations with me, directly. about random kid things like roblox.

    i’m like, this is adorable, but also you’re all frolicking out here to play with each other. go forth. frolic with humans similar in mass and cognitive development to you. (but of course i cannot stop them when they are giving me all their best prison escape tycoon tips)

  • Diaries,  facebook

    tabula rasa

    I think if I ever interviewed for a job again, and they asked me, “What’s your greatest weakness?” It would be, “I get so excited about a particular project that it fills me up and pushes everything out, until suddenly I get excited about another project, and in order to finish the first project I will someday have to collapse sobbing over my work to figure out wtf I was doing, relearn everything, and wrap it up.”

    Just saying, I left the worldbuilding guide to my epic fantasy book unfinished – and I haven’t finished editing the second half of the book, either. I decided to set them aside because I wanted to grow a little before revisiting. But also I got *really* excited about crochet. And then interactive novels.

    I have to fully reread the worldbuilding guide (and realistically the book itself) to finish it off at some point, so I’m going to have to study myself to figure it out, lol. I was just poking around in there again going, “Wow, this is incredible, and incredibly esoteric, I sure Made Some Decisions that I no longer recall.”

    Also I spent a couple days away from my interactive novel because I’ve been going hog over crochet again, PLUS I had to repot/replant a bunch of plants for the shift from summer to winter conditions. Now I’ve come back to code chapter 7, and I’m like, holy crap, what was I doing? Where do I put the autosaves? How do I determine the location of journal entries? Whaaaat monstrous abomination of a logic chain have I crammed into the end of every chapter in order to track character development for a dynamic narrative?

    I spent my twenties furiously writing fiction, and it got hard in the end because it felt too repetitive – like I wasn’t learning anything anymore – like there were no more surprises. Trying to Just Write a Book got to be excruciating because it was understimulating and too easy, as weird as that sounds. I made Mood Management my problem in that case (working even though routine murders me). Now I’ve thrown routine out the window so I can focus on having fun, but oh boy if it doesn’t spawn about a thousand different problems.

  • Diaries,  slice of life

    Seven Ways to be Stoned

    One.

    You’re in New York City for the first time. Your friend’s walk-up is cluttered and cozy, as homey as it should be, and it smells like weed. She smokes a lot. She eats even more. You haven’t done much before, but she offers a bowl to you, so you clumsily navigate lighter and pipe.

    Truthfully, you’re scared to have a lighter that close to your face. But you’re in your twenties, your friend is in her thirties, she’s like your big sister. You want to look like you know what you’re doing. So you light it–flick–and your nose gets warm while you touch the flame to a corner of the herb. You inhale as it smolders. You get a little smoke. You think.

    You go out on her balcony, which is small and made of wood so wobbly you’re not sure it can hold your weight, much less a charcoal barbecue. Neither of you know how to use a charcoal barbecue. You laugh a lot trying to get it to light in the wind. You keep a fire extinguisher on hand just in case.

    You feel the warmth after another hit on the pipe. The vegetables you grilled with your best friend taste better. You laugh a little louder.

     

    Two.

    It’s cold outside, but you don’t want to smoke inside. You put on a balaclava. You wrap yourself in a bathrobe. You put on slipper socks. You huddle under a blanket on your balcony and light your bong, hands cupped around the pipe to shelter it from the wind. It still won’t light and your fingers are getting stiff. Grab the plasma lighter. It’s not as good, somehow, but it will make your herb burn even when the wind is blasting.

    You take a couple deep hits that make you cough plumes into the chilly night, and the smoke is sucked away to disperse against the crystalline starlight. The harsh hits are bad for your lungs. You go inside, take a shot of Pepto to soothe your throat, puff on the inhaler to open your lungs. You settle into bed with a cold nose, cold fingers, and a dizziness that makes the room sway in the wind with you comfortable in its womb.

     

    Three.

    You’ve gotten good at baking with cannabis. People like your cookies–some of them say you can’t taste the weed on it, which isn’t true, because your husband cringes to nibble. But many people like the skunky taste. You like the skunky taste.

    You’re careful with the cookies. You can’t have children getting into them, so you entomb them in a bag, carefully label it with contents and date, and stash it in the very back of the deep freezer. Since you’ve filled it with almond slivers, oats, and raisins, your kids won’t eat them even if they find them. But you want to be sure. You want to be responsible.

    You’re so responsible that you don’t try the dough or the cookies. The butter must be infused, and the cookies baked, cooled, and stored, before your kids come home from school. You don’t want to be stoned when they get here.

    Once they’re safe, you clean the skillet where you made cannabis ghee and prepare an omelet. It doesn’t taste like weed. Only when you’re sprawled on the couch in awe of the music melting through your muscles do you realize you didn’t clean the pan enough, and now you’re very, very stoned despite your naive efforts. On the bright side, while your cookies do taste like weed, your omelet did not.

     

    Four.

    It’s a cold, windy night on the Pacific coast. It’s so dark that the beach and the ocean are indistinguishable from each other. You’re in love with the woman at your side, sneaking onto the boardwalk amid the dunes. You haven’t told her about this big warm secret coiled in your belly. Your bodies hold warmth between them while you shelter the pipe. It’s the second pipe you bought on this vacation. The first one wasn’t properly drilled with holes, and it weighs down your pocket. It’s pressing against her thigh. She smells like coconut oil and she’s beaming at you when flickering lighter shines gold on her face.

    You both inhale. You take all the smoke inside of you and breathe with each other, seated on the sandy steps. The ocean roars slower than your breath. There’s a dark shape on the shore. You can’t be sure if it’s a signpost or a man coming to bust you for getting stoned on the beach in the middle of the night. It’s scary. But being scared is funny.

    Her skin is so soft, so smooth. You don’t know it yet but six months later, you won’t be talking. This moment that makes you giddy with the joy and desire will be only a memory. The shape on the beach is a signpost. Nobody cares you’re smoking in the dunes. You’ll still have the pipe without a hole drilled properly, and sometimes you’ll hold it in your hand and remember how her braids felt against your lips.

     

    Five.

    This morning, your cat died. She was in your arms, swaddled in a towel, while a gentle veterinarian injected the medicine to stop her heart. You carried your kitty to the car so she could be cremated. You set her in the back seat on the towel. That pile of fluff is all that remains of a life you loved and cherished and tended your entire adult life. When the car drives away, she’s gone.

    There are cannabis cookies in the freezer, carefully labeled and stored out of reach. Each one has about fifteen milligrams of THC, you estimate based on how they make you feel. You eat two, three, four. You keep eating them until you feel nothing but dizzy warmth. Until your eyes are too dry to cry. It’s not healthy, you’re not coping, but maybe you don’t have to cope right now.

    A couple of days later, your baby is brought back in an urn. You hold her. She weighs nothing. She no longer purrs and rolls over to get belly rubs. She doesn’t put a paw on your arm while you’re using the computer mouse. You make a shrine to her because she’s so big inside you, some of that feeling has to be set down somewhere else.

    Two more cookies, three more, four. The months pass and you’re always stoned. But by the end of it, you can hold her urn and cry. You stop taking so much weed. The emotions come back and you live in a life without your cat. Somehow you handle it. You have to. Grief doesn’t feel better when you’re stoned, not the way that love and music do.

     

    Six.

    It’s an afternoon on the weekend. Your kids want to play LEGO. You popped a chocolate earlier, so you’re mellow, and life’s stresses have faded away. The house needs to be cleaned. The yard’s a mess. You haven’t showered. But now you’re on the couch, cozy and floating, so it’s easy to give yourself permission to fuck off and play LEGO.

    Your son gives you the broken minifig without arms. He plays the one with long hair. You climb walls and jump off with silly cries and your children laugh and laugh and laugh. It feels good and simple, the way childhood felt. Anything can happen. The couch can become canyons. The pillows are trampolines. When your kids bounce, you bounce too, and their kisses feel like going to heaven. If only they could always be this happy. If only you could always let yourself be this happy.

     

    Seven.

    It’s raining. It doesn’t do that much around there. You grab the papers, the grinder, the funnel, a lighter. You settle under a blanket on the couch in your gazebo. Rain dribbles off the edges while you pack a joint.

    Life’s been hard, and you’re tempted demolish that joint in one go. Suck it down until there’s nothing but a roach too annoying to smoke.

    But you take it slow. A couple good hits and you stub it out. Then you lay back on the couch, close your eyes, and listen to the rain, knowing that there’s nothing to do today. The rain is like music. It feels good when you hear it. Sometimes the wind blows drops against your cheek. Your husband is with the children, your dogs are warm on your legs, and there’s nothing but you and a few puffs of smoke on a wet gray day.