Tuesday, June 21, 2022

A tiny celebration (and an 'away' message)


Here's everyone! 


Happy reunion/belated Father's Day/end of current job contract, Big A.


I'm going sans laptop for a week--so I'll do #LaterPosts from my journal next week. 

Monday, June 20, 2022

Trust me, there are fireflies

I haven't seen L in a while so I headed down the street after dinner for a hug and to update her on all the stuff going on. And omigosh--there were just so many fireflies out and about. L said they'd been out for a week now...  I guess I've been such a shut-in, this was my first time seeing them this year. 

So although my picture looks like unrelieved night, there are a few some sparks and sparkles here and there. 

I may have taken that as a sign.

Sunday, June 19, 2022

tiny celebrations

Loved this Louise Erdrich quote; I needed a reminder of sweetness and hope today. Life can be sweet even if it isn't so every minute. My reminders for today, yesterday, and tomorrow:

At UU today I learned that Opal Lee "the grandmother of Juneteenth" was 89 years old when she started the campaign to make Juneteenth (today!) a national holiday.

Last night when I called my dad to wish him for father's day, we talked for longer than usual, because he could hear me better than he has lately. That felt so lovely.

Big A will be back tomorrow, and we'll celebrate his Father's Day the day after that.

Saturday, June 18, 2022

"An Evening In India"

Not sure if that was foolhardy or plain foolish, but in the midst of all the ongoing drama I decided to go ahead and host the "Evening in India" fundraiser anyway.

Honestly, I didn't have the energy to cancel it and communicate with the eight people who bid $80 to sign up, and then have to find another date that worked for everyone, and then I'd have that date looming on the horizon. It seemed easier to just go ahead and make the four-course meal I'd promised for today. 

So I did.

I was on my feet all day and didn't have time to think about anything but taste and temperature and coordinating time. (And unwrapping and arranging the desserts, which I got readymade at Swagath.) 

And then I had a blast writing a menu and talking to a room full of people I don't know very well. 

I'm so weird.

Friday, June 17, 2022

almanac of distress

I worship the day as a daily deity
but why don't we just... sub in 
one summer day for another

                  not think of the end of every day 
                  as completion--simply as 
                  some continuum

                                                    it's no surprise I'm trying to run
                                                    from this everyday exercise--
                                                    in my tired cowardice

                 my fear made entirely of words
                 molested by the logic of how
                 it could be worse

                                                  I contain multitudes--count them 
                                                  tally these heartbeats of loss
                                                  total up my to-dos 

Thursday, June 16, 2022

downer alert

Nu was in the E.R. overnight again. This time Big A was home--I felt so thankful about that. Should I be thankful for anything when my child is in the E.R.? Is that stupid? We're trying all over again to surround Nu with the care and support he needs. 

Along with the roof ruckus, came the quick death of my garden--perennials like lilac, phlox, hydrangeas, hostas have all been squashed flat. All the annuals--coleus, begonias, geraniums--ditto. If they'd asked me to move my precious plants ahead of time, I would have found a way to do that. Somehow the peony bush seems to have survived. Yay? Friends think the perennials will come back next year... Yay, I guess. 

I keep thinking the garden looks like devastation and that I'm devastated. And then of all things, I worry I'm exaggerating my feelings. Things are worse in the world and could be worse here too. There's nothing to do but get through.  

Pic: My flattened garden. Just a few weeks ago, I was so hopeful about starting.

Wednesday, June 15, 2022

"all for freedom and for pleasure/nothing ever lasts forever"

I sang so much Tears For Fears as a kid--I got hooked on "Everybody wants to Rule the World" like everyone else and then got pretty lost in the deep tracks of their discography.

So when KB invited me to go see them in concert, I said yes. It was wonderful! I got to sing along to all my favorites, and Garbage whose song "Stupid Girl" I was near addicted to, once upon a time, opened. 

What I couldn't shake was the surreal sense of time and age--all around me I could see people like myself and I could see us all as kids when the songs first came out. We still loved the same songs, but were different people with different lives all these decades later. Curt Smith looks like an older version of the boy in the video, but Roland Orzabal (whose name I had to look up because he was the one I didn't have a crush on) looks like a completely different person. 

"I'm a weirdo/doofus/nerd/naif" (Part MXVIII)

I realized during my meditation this morning that my energy for contacting so many people yesterday (the "emotional labor" that St...