I started sniffling after I got home from dinner tonight. I better not be getting sick. I have a two year old's birthday party this weekend and I can't miss it. She kept asking to sit in my lap and asking me to read her books to her at my sister's baby shower. She is also having a moment with cats. She gets so excited when she knows there's a cat in the house and she will go to to the door to the room the cats are in and beg to see the "kit-ty." So for her birthday I plan on cementing both of those bonds with books about cats. One has glitter. The other had stickers. Auntie J for the win!  

Quintus is acting like an electric blanket tonight. When I'm upset he tries to pin me down with purrs to calm me down. Or so it seems. He's pretty good about doing it when I'm feeling sick too. Fitz will only do that if I'm reading a book and not paying him any attention. They are two of my best decisions. Stigmas are wrong, being a cat lady is the best.

I finally got my copy of Turtles All The Way Down by John Green and it's not what I expected.  There's so much hype around it and I'm still waiting to see why.  It does have a lot of truth in it, it's just buried in all of this chatter.  I really hope I get to this need-to-tell-everyone-it's-so-good part.

Some truths I appreciated:

What I really need when I read is a notebook to write down all those parts that jump out at me and to keep track of all of the music references that I want to dig into at a later time. At this point I think I just need to add Samantha Irby on Spotify because I don't have the time to flip through her book again looking for artist references and getting easily distracted by her humor instead.

Yep, she has like 6,000 playlists. (Read 62 public ones.)

I needed this weekend to really relax, so this morning I slept in and then read, and then read the next short story, and the next much longer one.  Next thing you know I've spent my whole morning quietly reading, not talking to anyone, and still feeling extremely pissy about a dream.  The dreams I have are so emotion driven. 



This dream though.  Curiosity killed the dreamer.  I mean, I didn't die in the dream, other than in the sense of that "I'm about to die of humiliation" feeling.  Just in the sense that curiosity often times fucks with your secret day dreams and any bit of happiness that was hidden away pinned to a dream that can easily be popped by an actual dream.


This dream was not the most painful one I've ever had, but when I woke up I felt so gross. I acted like a crazy and sick individual in this dream. I was insanely jealous, I was possibly insane. I know the only reason I did that shit was because it was a dream and I was not actually in control.

I felt: like crap about myself, check; jealous, check; uncomfortable, check; upset, check; crazy, check; pissed off, check.  Just because you have feelings for someone does not mean anything will ever come of them.  Just because you care about someone does not mean you're in love with them. Right?

Sometimes I just want what I can't have.  Sometimes words can't always describe a feeling.  That's why I prefer mixtapes.

Edit: Sometimes I talk too much.

Labels: all the feelings, dreams

Coming home tonight, I received true smiles from both dogs.  I was told Tess moped by the front door but did not believe she missed me this much.  Following me from room to room, she casually looks over at me and smiles this open mouth, teethy, child's smile.  Like her eyes are pure love and they just say, I'm sleeping in the big bed tonight!

She's actually kind of nodding off.  I think she's exhausted from waiting up for me all these nights.

Quintus has tracked me down and made sure I rubbed his face ten times in a row. 

I would not be home without my pets.  They make me feel more like myself instantly.  They cheer me up and they love me like I'm worth a damn.

My grandmother passed on Monday afternoon.  She was a month and a day shy of 84.  She came from the kind of scary I could not dream up.  Always in danger of her mother, which usually put her in danger of a man.  She survived. She persisted.  She built a family that would never have to suffer for love or peace or a place to rest their head.

Her love was better than anything that could be taken from that house.  Except maybe her cooking.  Her cooking was love and heaven and strength all in one.

I hopefully won't be traveling anymore for a while.  I will have a chance instead to visit my best friend to belatedly celebrate her son's birthday and belatedly hug her until her boys have to pull me off of her because there's no other reason to separate. And a chance to visit my dear friend and her family and have baby time again.  And a chance to go shopping to find the perfect books a 2 year old needs to build the radest library. However, she did just receive If You Give A Cat A Cupcake and she immediately asked me to read it to her. Like brought it straight to me.  My heart melted when she sat in my lap and laid her head back on my chest and said "hiya!" when we read the karate page.

Family, and the friends that mean as much as family, that is how I plan to soften this loss. 

Labels: family

Waiting for death is nauseating. The uncertainty can churn your stomach. Not knowing if death will come in a few hours or a few days, if death slipped in while all was quiet and slipped back out equally unnoticed. The Book Thief did a great job of personifying death for me. It was an unplanned preparation for dealing with death. It's not death I'm afraid of. It's everything in between and after. And not knowing. And then knowing. I'm afraid of knowing.

Every text message from my cousin churns my stomach again. Heart stopping, remember to breathe, all for him to share he's cooking dinner. That's also scary, and the humor of my eldest paternal cousin cooking dinner, that deserves a chuckle. And a small smile.

The doctor's think it'll be tonight. I want to hold her soft hand before she's gone. There's no funeral. There's death and then ashes.

I want to hold her hand one more time before I pick up his hand.

It has been 3 weeks since I've seen my grandma.  I had plans to go up next weekend, but now I don't know what for.  She's not eating and the doctors won't give her a feeding tube because of her DNR. My dad returned home tonight, but I'm not sure why.  I have to think it's because he doesn't want to see her physically die in front of him.  I'm sure he'll be back up in a day or two.  I think I might be with him.

My therapist didn't have another evening session available for two weeks, and I told her it would be fine because I thought by then I would have seen my grandmother and would still have time.  Now I'm wondering if I'll have to cancel for a funeral.  I feel guilty, confused, wrong.  I wanted to start before things got worse so that I could deal with it in a healthy way.  So that I could still manage the other parts of my life.  So that I could have more clarity in the other parts of my life before this happened.

This is why I threw myself into my work.  To prepare for the moment when emotion overtakes logic and I can't do my work, can't be around people without crying.  I just keep thinking I'm going to disappoint them.  They're good people, but I don't want to burden them with my work, with my groups.

This feels like another one of those posts that I want to delete later.  Replace it with "death was coming and I was sad. and not ready.  and  afraid."

Labels: death, emotions, family

It is such a strange concept to me that people can wake up and not remember their dreams.  They can have such positive and negative impacts on my days.  They inspire me.  They can fill me with rage and motivation and ass kicking certainty.

I think this song speaks to my dreams.  You wake up and you feel one way.  You do all these things and you still feel that way. 

When I was younger I hated waking up when I was having a really good dream.  I would tell my mom I had to finish it and then I would fall back asleep and attempt to finish it.  I had a lot of dreams where I could fly, so clearly that was better than SAT prep first thing in the morning.

In college I had dreams about these perfect guys, maybe not perfect, but perfect for me.  The dreams had all that initial fall in love montage of feelings, that feeling when "are we going to kiss?" is the most exciting question in the world and your heart beats faster and you can't wipe that dumb smile off your face and you just feel warmer.  Like love is a feature you wear.  Those dreams put me in such great moods.  I was in college, I was young, I could have that glance across North Campus moment with anyone.

These days my dreams all center around my current doubt.  My cats show up in my dreams sometimes.  It's so odd, but it calms me in the dream too.  Unless they're in danger and then I am the angriest mama bear you've ever seen.  Some times Tess shows up in my dreams, but she's never in danger.  She's always just that smiling silent type. :)


One thing about my dreams - they make me so fucking vulnerable. The other night I dreamed that my two front teeth cracked halfway up and I was going to lose both teeth and I felt so ugly.  I was working from home and I still put makeup on to fight that feeling.

I'm not going to let these dreams keep me down.  I am not going to succumb a whole day's mood to them.  I'm not going to focus on the negative or try to investigate the negative possibilities.  I am, you guessed it, going to do my best to stay in the light.

Labels: be positive, dreams, emotions, I miss you., stay in the light

My head is not in the right space this week.  I have two modes - workaholic and confused, hopeless romantic.

I kind of really need to be a workaholic this week though.  There is so much that needs to be done and I don't want to fall behind.  I get to balance that a little with a celebration of new life this weekend, i.e. a chance for me to oogle cute baby clothes and continue my search for boy baby clothes that embrace cats.  Yes, I am that kind of aunt.  Yes, the best kind of aunt.

It's so weird to think in two months I'll have another baby in my life.  I was actually excited for my neice to become a toddler so that she could talk and we could become best friends.  Maybe having a sibling will bond us faster.

I should be able to hold a cute little baby in April.  I mean, they are really tiny in the beginning so it should work out.

Be still my heart.  A new soul is coming.

Labels: aunt life, family, meeting planner, meetings, work

It's my humble opinion that Kings of Leon started out as true southern rock and album, by album, pressed themselves to create something more mainstream and less raw.  Youth and Young Manhood, however, is more sex on fire than Sex on Fire.  It's sexual tension and literally youth, and young manhood in music form.  As far as my female perspective is concerned.

Although, the video for Wasted Time seems like some pretty good supporting evidence.

There was this time that my friend Sebastian and I would fight over the better album, Aha Shake Heartbreak (my choice) and Youth and Young Manhood (his).  ASH has remained my choice for several years, over a decade actually.  It takes me to this place inside my head that is pure joy, except for Velvet Snow which will always be a taste of hell in my heaven.  Later though, when I assume my hormones caught up to Seb's,  I began to see the greater appeal of Y&YM.  That frenzied energy can boost moods, distract you from a bland day, and shake a short dance party out of you.  It also just feels sexier.  What can I say, I like a good accent.

Labels: Kings of Leon

Yesterday I was freed...and reborn, and a bundle of nerves, and totally pissed off.  It was the big day for getting my last cast taken off and then for a very stressful game of football.

I will be in my brace for a few weeks and then my doctors think the bone should be healed fairly soon after.  The thing is, the brace feels like putting a band-aid on a large gash.  I feel so vulnerable and under-protected.  I could do things in the brace because there was absolutely no ability to move my wrist the wrong way, but with the brace, even when it's tight it feels like I can pull my wrist.  Just trying to put the wrist cuff on to do my bone growth treatment strains my wrist.  It actually feels like a two person job, but I'm too embarrassed to ask my coworkers to help so I just try to prep everything separately and go very slowly.

This has inspired some interesting poetry.  Alas, no fiction.

I've crossed my t's and dotted my i's to finalize everything for my therapy session.  The only thing left is to figure out where to start.  Do you start from the beginning?  What if this is the beginning? Do you tell the back story?  Do you first have to present yourself?

Find peace, find strength, find happiness, find love.

Labels: be positive, brace, cast, new beginnings, therapy

My fitbit goals were off the charts (for me) for most of last year between working at Nordstrom and working in the garden. I started off taking Tess on a lot of walks, but it was hard to drag her out of the yard after the fence was built.

There was this point after I had been in casts for over a month that I was like, "No fuck this, I can still work out my core & my legs and I'm not going to let this stupid cast hold me back!"  I cannot stress how hard it is not to move your arms when you move.* So then my whole body was heated up, and I couldn't really cool down my arm, and it was sweaty and trapped in a cast I was stuck with for another week.   That part was inconvenient, sure, but the smell!  Oh, the smell made my stomach turn.**

So when I get out of this wretched cast I am going to start my home workouts again. I still have both of my braces, so as soon as my doctor gives me the okay to go into the lighter one, I am going to start using the more structured one for my workouts.  I was so much healthier last year.  I even reached my weight goal.  I want to get back there.  It's impossible to weigh yourself with a cast and get an accurate reading, so I have no clear idea how far off I am.  I just want to be a healthier me.  All around.  Healthy, happy, doing what I love.

 *I actually had a nerve block in my arm for this surgery.  One of the worst decisions of my life.  When you start to regain feeling, it's not all at once and not all in the same area.+   It took quite a few hours for all of the feeling to come back to me, I want to say it was double the time that the Anesthesiologist had said.  I am still missing some feeling in my hand, which is hard to tell with the cast on and they do think I will feel more when it's off, BUT there is a little path up my pointer finger that just feels cold and I do not think the cast is causing that.  I think they nicked another nerve.  And I think that I would have realized all of this a lot faster if I had not gone with the nerve block.

+ Funny thing about getting a nerve block for your wrist is that they numb your whole arm from a nerve in your shoulder.  While it is numb, it is completely dead weight, and you have to carry it/support it with your other arm or it will dangle and hit things and that is a really easy way to injure something you just had operated on.  I also realized how heavy an arm is.  It's not as light as I thought it was.

**That's another difference with this surgery.  I have been so nauseous since then.  It was like 2 or 3 weeks after my surgery that I started getting car sickness and would get to work just in time to puke.  Sometimes in the morning I have to delay getting ready because continuous movement can make me nauseous.  Brushing my teeth/mouthwash, nauseous.  And my stomach turns now, over several things, not infrequently.  Feels like it's being wrung out.  And all of this started after I had finished all of the additional medication from the surgery.

Labels: be more positive, healthy decision making, new cast blues, stay in the light, surgery

I know I said 50 books in a year was ridiculous, but some of my favorite parts of this past year were discovering new authors and books.  So I kept my reading challenge at 50 books for new year.

I thought about what I said about being more social and lowering it to like 40 books, but I figured I would get upset with myself when I pass 40 for not believing in myself.  So I am believing in myself....and my obsession with books.

I have not picked up my newest book on tape yet, but I am reading three books this week.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  A really short book that really makes you think.  A very slow read because it is so thought provoking.

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor.  YA Fantasy about a book loving guy in another world (?)  (to be determined) that goes after a lost city.  It's pretty thick, hoping it's a good page turner for the weekend!

Bonfire by Krysten Ritter.  I like her as an actress so I want to see how her mind works creating characters in print.  Girl has to face past when she returns home. Has potential but I put it down after the first or second page because I wasn't connecting with the language.  I just don't think it's best after a long work day.  If I have any more trouble I might just check out the book on tape.

Labels: be positive, books, books on tape, Krysten Ritter, Laini Taylor, reading, reading challenge, reading list, Ta-Nehisi Coates

There's been a lot on my mind lately.  Best way to start the new year is to take my own advice and get a mental health "check-up."  I went to my friend with the sunshine disposition and got the information for her therapist.  The practice offers evening hours that are perfect for going after work, so I don't have to miss work or go on my lunch hour.

I've been processing something these past few weeks that's been weighing on me, other than my grandmother's health struggles.  

After my accident and the first surgery, I felt so numb.  I had just lost my other grandmother.  I waked away from someone I really loved.  I left a job that I had come to hate.  I had money problems.  I was going to be an aunt.  -   I wasn't depressed in a way I could recognize.  All of my reactions were muted and discolored.  Then they all came flooding back and I was absolutely paralyzed in fear.  The anxiety was so bad that I had to leave my new job.  The job was not what I had expected, and there were several signs that I wouldn't want to stay there for too long.  But that wasn't my main reason for quitting.  All the colors and emotions came back to me and I could not hold them, could not hold myself together in front of those people, could not go a day without feeling the anxieties swell in my chest.

This time loop thing, I don't understand it.  Same surgery. I'm going to be an aunt again.  My grandmother is dying of cancer.  I don't have money problems, but most of my savings have been sucked into my surgery.  I just started a new job, and it does feel right for me and it makes me happy.  There is no correlation for the love part. I am just me right now.

My life surrounding these surgeries is so similar and so different.  I have this feeling now that's hard to explain.  It's not necessarily a "I feel so alive" feeling, but maybe a cousin of it.  It's more like, I am doing so much living right now.  I don't know if that makes sense.  That's where the "I am just me right now" comes in.  I would rather be in a relationship, sure, but that's not what I had been focusing on this past year.  I spent it finding my way back to happiness. I was happy with myself, with what I was doing and what I was creating.  Then I came out of the surgery and I was so lonely.

I don't want to be passive anymore.  I don't want to watch love pass me by.  I want love back in my life.

Love is the light I want to be in.  Be more positive.  Be the good.  Be the light for someone else. 

Labels: anxiety, be more positive, be the good, find the good, love, stay in the light, therapy, time loop

2018 is going to be a magical mystery tour year of my life, I can feel it. Not like the movie with the drugs and the weird shenanigans. This year is going to bring a lot of change for me. Loss of one of my favorite loved ones, birth of one of my new favorite loved ones, the final phase of my twenties, a year of firsts for my green initiative, and (God willing) a time for love to come back into my life.

I am writing small pieces for my new site, hoping to launch it later this month. I hate naming my writing. There is so much in a name - so much value, meaning, artistry. With Libby I pair my posts to the music that's playing, the song that replays in my heart and on my speakers. I don't like to do that with my poetry and fiction work though. So I'm going to struggle through it and make each piece, and then share my mood playlists separately.

I would not be surprised if a third of it included songs by The Beatles.

Labels: be more positive, be the good, find the good, new year, The Beatles, writing