Then yesterday I woke up and learned that an insanely fearless despot killed over 100 girls at a school in Iran, so I got out of bed, showered, made some coffee, folded some clothes, worked, and just sort of Saturday’d until I could Saturday no more because this is just how things are, and I really didn’t intend for this paragraph to be so dismal. (I’m rusty. It’s been three months since I’ve typed to you.)

Truth: Fluid Pudding makes me happy, so walking away just because I’m a wet hen/hermit crab hybrid didn’t make sense. (Please know that I do a great impression of a sand crab, which is a totally different crustacean than a hermit crab—and much more difficult to imitate!)

A friend in Denver and I used to send three joys to each other every day. It was a nice exercise to force the eye past all of the horrible shit to focus on things that aren’t so horrible.

Here are three recent joys:

I bought myself a percolator. My grandparents had one, and I remember loving both the sound and the smell of their morning coffee as it brewed in the percolator that sat on their pink kitchen countertop. (If you’re curious, I’ve been drinking Goshen’s Bona Fide coffee for the past year. Medium. Local. Delicious.)

Last week was my semidecennial colonoscopy, and my insides were so clear that a tiny leprechaun somehow found his way inside and exited with a crock of gravy!

Look at the sky and keep muddling along!

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Well, I enjoyed how a subtitle lag can change the vibe of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

I felt a little uncomfortable with the placement of this gingerbread board’s spreader.

I thought about the time when I asked the Gradient app to name my celebrity look-alike.

I also got quite a bit of work done, but I can’t show a photo because of copyright laws and my unwillingness to spend time in jail before Christmas. (After Christmas is fine.) But wait! I do have a photo that was taken on a work trip I took back in 1998…

Imagine ‘going back in time’ music playing right now. Mine has a harp in it and sounds a little like this:

In 1998, I was 28 years old and working as an associate developmental editor on a pharmacology book. The (cranky and scattered) author of the book had missed several deadlines, and I told her that the only way we were going to get things to the printer on time was if I sat with her for a weekend and we came up with a plan for every missing component of the manuscript.

On a Friday afternoon, I rented a car, drove to her town, checked into my hotel room, and threw up. I wasn’t sick, I was just tied in knots knowing that the pressure was on and I needed to spend the weekend being bold and assertive with an unhappy woman who was old enough to be my grandmother.

On Saturday morning I drove to her office at the university, and after we made small talk for a few minutes I pulled the manuscript out of my bag and told her we were going to go chapter by chapter to address the missing parts. For the first chapter in the book, I needed her to approve a photo of a syringe. I showed her the photo, and she said she didn’t like it.

She then pulled a piece of paper and a pencil out of her drawer, and thirty seconds later handed me something that looked like this.

Me (in my mind): You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.

Me (out loud): I’ll have this rendered by an artist to match the style of the other illustrations.

I spent the rest of the day being yelled at—but also constantly interrupted so she could tell me weird stories about her son (incarcerated) and her mother (dead). It was such a worthless and stressful day. When I went back on Sunday morning to finish up, she showed up an hour late and told me she wanted me to finish the rest of the chapters on my own. I told her that we didn’t have much more to get through, and that I marked each page that had missing parts to save us some time. I handed the manuscript to her.

This photograph was taken less than ten seconds later.

In silence, I got down on the floor, picked up all of the pages she had thrown at me, gathered my stuff, walked to my car, drove to a gas station, bought a pack of cigarettes, and performed an activity that I’ve perfected over the years. It’s called Driving and Crying, and it has nothing to do with a Southern rock band from Atlanta.

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Back to the loom! (I’ve named her Weezy, after Isabel Sanford’s character in The Jeffersons. Obviously.)

My first project on Weezy was a Let’s See What Happens when I Do This sort of thing, because I had no idea what I was doing.

The second project was more of the same, but I stepped it up a bit by warping (the long threads) a patterned yarn in a way that zigs and zags, and using black as a weft (the back and forths).

Next up? Dogtooth!

And then a lace scarf for a friend!

After the lace scarf I learned how to use pick-up sticks to add patterns and texture to my projects. For this scarf, I wanted to showcase the multicolored silk yarn my mom gave me, so I used a pick-up stick to create the colored ladders that sit on top of the ivory yarn. I really love how this thing was coming together. (Note the past tense! I just foreshadowed!)

Can we talk about my mental health for a sec? It’s no secret that I deal with a half-bucket of anxiety and depression. Also, my relationship with food is very complicated. A few years ago I was evaluated and diagnosed with ADHD (along with everyone else and their brother’s friend’s cousin’s sister-in-law and her kids). All of these things are super manageable (Pills! Pills! Pills! Therapy!), and I’m super lucky to have resources (an intentionally vague term!) to get through this thing called Life.

But I’m here to tell you, there’s something else.

When I get upset or angry about something that I have no idea how to fix, I’ll feel an intense and uncontrollable urge to ruin something that’s completely unrelated to the thing that upset me. Specifically, I feel the urge to destroy projects I’ve been working on. I once unraveled a cardigan that was close to being finished. I’ve ripped up drawings, I’ve removed yarn from my spinning wheel and tossed it into the trash, AND a few weeks ago I cut that silk scarf off of my loom. I immediately felt better (I always do!), but the next day I was full of shits, damnits, and fucks. (Note: No need for concern. These moments of impulse control occur maybe once a year and I never mess up anyone else’s stuff.) Hhhhhhhh. It would have been a really great scarf.

Ack. Let’s get back to Weezy, who is currently holding a blend of yarns that I purchased in Denver several years back.

Although the yarn is brittle (because it was recycled and overdyed incorrectly), I’m digging the plaid.

Let’s just hope the world doesn’t get shittier for the next few weeks so I don’t feel the need to rage-harvest the scarf immaturely. (Let’s also hope the world doesn’t get shittier after the next few weeks, regardless of what your definition of Shittier might be.)

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It arrived about an hour ago and although I’m still feeling sick and cranky, I’m now feeling sick and cranky in a fresh jacket.

It’s white with black stripes after Easter and black with white stripes after Labor Day and it will serve me well as I crystallize my dream of orchestrating a major career change during the final 25% of my life.

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Is it still NaBloPoMo if I post only 2-3 times each week? It is! There are no laws and there are no checks and there are no balances and I AM THE KING.

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I’ve been listening to a lot of Sigur Rós lately. Their music is really beautiful, and although I don’t normally dig a falsetto, the singer’s falsetto hits me just right.

To me, this song is perfect. Give it nine minutes of your time, knowing that the build that begins near the 6:30 mark and culminates at around 7:50 is one of my top three favorite musical moments. It wads my heart up, tosses it onto the floor, stomps it into a forensic analyst’s wet dream, and then scrapes it up with a spatula and flips it towards the sky where it becomes a functional heart again right as it reaches the apex and drops back down to oomph! between my lungs just in time for a tragic infarct near the 8:32 mark.

Back to this: I’ve been listening to a lot of Sigur Rós lately. Their lyrics are a mixture of Icelandic and Hopelandic (a made up language that fits the music phonetically), and I could look up the English translations but I would much rather take a cue from Yoshitomo Nara and create my own.

It’s been a rough summer—for everyone, I’m sure, but also for me. I’ll spare you the details (have you forgotten that I share only 17% of my life with you?), but please know that to me, this particular song is saying something like, “I said goodbye to the greatest boy dog last week and my life is at sixes and sevens right now. Last weekend was great with cold drinks and old friends, but today I am nothing but bullamacou, and my left eye won’t stop twitching.”

Also, this was 14 years ago, and it was yesterday.

(He really was the greatest boy dog.)

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Earlier today, I received the following:

This neighbor wants everyone to know that about a half hour ago she went to KFC, where she was given the worst chicken.

Here are my favorite two sentences from her emotional report:
“…I told her chicken was not fresh, old, cooked in old grease, something is wrong, you need to check it. Both my hubby and my dinners were terrible!”

(I believe that everyone gets the chicken they deserve. I also believe that more details need to be provided on the terrible husband just in case someone needs to pay a visit.)

A friend and I have designated July as an accountability month. During our accountability months, we establish personal goals and then check in with each other a few times each week to make sure progress is being made. Our past accountability months led to me writing each day (November) and spinning yarn each day (April). I haven’t been able to commit to a singular goal for July, so I decided to go with the theme of Spirited Sporadicisms.

I was surprised to see that sporadicism is not a standard word. To me, it is the very thing that is done sporadically.

Use it in a sentence? Okay!

“Creating a mugshot of The Worst Chicken is one of the many sporadicisms you’ll find me engaged in during the month of July.”

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I always play music while I’m getting ready in the morning, mostly from a playlist I created titled May I Have Some?, which holds 665 songs and is 42 hours and 17 minutes long. (Please don’t tell me how playlists are supposed to be curated. Everything I do is done deliberately.) I have never been a person who dances, but if I was required to dance, I would be okay with dancing to any of the 665 songs from May I Have Some?.

This morning while getting ready, I took a left turn and listened to an Apple Music playlist titled ‘80s Soft Rock Essentials. As the music played, I started thinking about the room filled with my people, and I began to dance (because you should always be prepared, and you never know, and better safe than sorry, and don’t get caught with your pants down).

Here is a list of the ‘80s soft rock essentials to which I danced while getting ready this morning:
The Best of Times by Styx: I felt a little awkward dancing to this song, because I was including shoulder rolls that I don’t believe conveyed what Styx had in mind when they performed the song back in 1981. (Did you know that Dennis DeYoung wrote the song as an expression of the fear felt in America after Reagan was elected in 1980? Forty five years later, I still know all of the words and HOLY SHIT I CAN RELATE TO THE FEAR! GAH! I, too, wish the summer winds could bring back paradise, Dennis DeYoung!)

The Way It Is by Bruce Hornsby & The Range: I’ve hated this song since the first time I heard it back in 1986, but I can dance to it if you make me. (If you’re curious, other songs I hate from the ‘80s include You Belong to the City by Glenn Frey, Lady in Red by Chris de Burgh, and Into the Night by Benny Mardones—a song about a man in his 30s who wants to have sex with a minor.)

Time out. Have you seen the video of Tonight’s the Night by Rod Stewart? Yeesh.

True Colors by Cyndi Lauper (Most of the movements during this dance came from my eyes instead of my arms, which I believe was a very effective decision. When my arms DID move, it was surprising. Eye-catching. Impactful.)

In the Air Tonight by Phil Collins (If you want to humiliate me, make me dance to this song. The tempo is impossible, so I found myself acting out the lyrics instead of cutting the rug. If anyone had seen my interpretation, they might assume I was making light of Phil Collins’s painfully heavy situation. Very inappropriate.)

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I know you don’t wonder what I’m up to when I’m not here, and that’s the way it should be. But I feel the need to tell you. Let’s work backwards.

Today I met a cat named Milkshake, and I fell in love with him. (He’s wearing a red collar because he’s feisty and mouthy—two qualities I’ve always admired.)

Several months ago I ate breakfast tacos while sitting at a table with a friend and his mom. One thing led to another and now I have a loom. (My friend’s mom is a weaver and a knitter and a writer and a traveler and an artist and an inspiration.)

I turned 55, which is really fucking dumb. So I conclaved.

I took a photo of myself being 55 on the day I turned 55 and I posted it to Instagram using Ol’ 55 by Tom Waits as accompaniment because the alternative doesn’t suit my style.

I spun some yarn and stitched some notebooks.

(The bottom one isn’t finished. Her sweater needs a sweater.)

Finally, I went to a thing at a church and I thought this would be an appropriate thing to wear, but once I got there I felt like maybe it wasn’t. (Honestly, I feel that way every time I put on clothes and go to a place, so it really doesn’t matter what I pull over my head. Plus: This shirt. It’s a good one.)

I’m in between jobs right now, so maybe you’ll see more of me.
I have so much to share with you.
Here’s an example. In the sixth grade we were asked to memorize a list of 20 being verbs, and because brains are so weird: Am Are Be Been Being Can Could Has Have Had Is May Might Must Shall Should Was Were Will Would.

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The past several weeks have been filled with highs  and lows. Sadly, my baseline is down a few notches because I have eczema on my eyelid—meaning I’m hyperaware of every blink made by Left Eye. I blink roughly 15 times per minute and I get about five hours of sleep at night. That comes out to 17,100 blinks that carry me into a state of morbid unhappiness until I allow Mr. Sandman to turn on his magic beam.

Let’s not talk about the lows. Here are some of the highs:
I tabbed my Chicago Manual of Style. Black as the night may be, I will always be able to quickly find information about subsidiary rights, along with confirmation that I’d’ve is an existing (and perhaps my favorite) contraction!

It is not death and war that make life a tragedy. What makes life a tragedy is NOT experiencing what it is like to struggle against the whims of a purple tulle robe on a windy day in below freezing temperatures! Forsooth!

I met this little guy a few days ago. I told him he was handsome. He just nodded and said, “I’m the cockatiel of the rockatiel.”

I wore pants that look like corn to a musical about corn! I sort of assumed everyone there would be wearing yellow and green, and I was completely wrong.

On February 12, I celebrated my 20,000th day on Earth. 20,000 days of eyes blinking and tongue tasting and kidneys filtering and hair growing.

Here’s to 6,000 more!

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