What´s left to say about Costco? From where I´m standing, plenty. I think we should be talking more about Costco, especially when it comes to the odd mixture of items a person can find there and the experiences that can happen inside. Even a boring trip to Costco has something to say for itself.

Tonight was a humdinger.

I arrived at 6:30 but first had to fight my way through the interchange on a Friday night. Phew. I expected the place to be empty so I was a bit shocked to find the parking lot crammed full with cars. It was so crammed with cars that I entered a lane and was immediately locked in place for some time….enough time to feel sort of panicky and claustrophobic. I was surprised that this many people were attempting to shop at Costco on a Friday night.

It was no better inside.

There were people packed in everywhere.

I decided to go up and down every isle and there´s the electronics to get through and then we hit beer and wine. I had a quick conflab with myself about whether I should try and buy all the alcohol for my birthday and various upcoming events or just buy what I needed for tomorrow and return later in a week for the rest. I rarely ever come to Costco so maybe I should get it all done.

I paced up and down and when I got wind of the prices I decided to make it a beer run. And, wine, gin, vodka, Paloma drinks, canned mimosas – I snagged it all.

Next I found the salmon I came for and mulled over the expense. I decided to spring for it and found some super cheap shrimp to offset the cost. Five dozen eggs were a bargain.

The rest of what I bought is just a blizzard of wonderful: sesame oil, chili paste, moose poop, popcorn, M and M´s, gogi berries, yerba mate, butter cookies (from France), kimchi, almonds, aluminum foil pre-cut into sheets, vegetarian bouillon, and unbelievably – some Asian treats – waffle fish filled with custard and some cool looking spirits.

A grand. It came to a grand. All in all given what was in my cart, it was a bargain. Cases of wine and beer. Sparkling waters. Topo Chico.

Miraculously, I had enough money in my account. It´s a long story but I worked hard to have the extra funds freed up to do this. I was feeling good.

Until……transaction denied! Contact your bank!

This wasn´t a big surprise because a week ago the same thing happened trying to buy tires for Owen. My account has a fraud alert on it and the bank gets intermittently worried – somewhat randomly – and declines my transactions.

I was able to call the bank and luckily I am immune to the shame of having the cashier glare at me as I stepped aside to make the call. At Costco they won´t pause the line while you figure it out. She voided the transaction and I stood there with my big cart pressing zero like a maniac to talk to an operator.

My card was reset after I answered a few questions and I was told to wait 3-5 minutes before trying to use it. I set a timer for five minutes. I was taking no chances.

I got back in line and the cashier took the receipt and had to enter in all the items again by hand. I gave her major props and appreciation and used humor but the woman did not crack. No smile, nothing. Nothing but mild irritation and her head down. This woman was not going to engage with me in any way other than to get this rung up and me out of her store.

Well guess what. Not so fast because – TRANSACTION DENIED!!!!!!

I stepped aside again to call the bank again but not before she told me that I would have to exit her line and never come back. She actually said that she had rung me up twice and wasn going through it again – K Bye. I didn´t even know that a cashier had that option but she was clear that she was done and I would have to go to another line.

Okay.

I called the bank again but at 8PM our time it was 11PM on the east coast and it turns out that´s when all the Wells Fargo operators close up shop. I was stranded with my card on a fraud hold and a grand worth of groceries (mostly liquor) in my cart.

Here are pictures of items in my cart I sent my friend before it all went to hell.

*

I made the decision to pull out just the items I needed for this weekend´s activities: salmon, eggs, tofu – I´m doing ramen for a crowd – and call it a day.

The new cashier rang up the smaller collection of items and….my card was declined again!

Next I swiped a credit card that had some room on it – and they don´t take mastercard!!!

This cashier was so nice though. She empathized and didn´t shame me for having to walk away from the big cart and the subset of items on her belt. I apologized. We both said we were sorry for things that weren´t our fault. And I left.

Modern banking at it´s finest had bummed my Costco high and left me empty-handed.

I was not in as much of a funk as one might expect. Yes, I was in that store for two hours and left with nothing. Do you know what that means??

First, it meant that I didn´t have to load and unload all that stuff. It was a lot of stuff and I was beat. Oddly enough, that was a perk. I had had it and as everyone else left Costco pushing their heavy over-loaded cart, I walked away unencumbered. I felt light and free.

But second it means I have to go back. With cash this time (I am not taking any chances).

It just occurred to me that Costco might not take cash. That would be just my luck.

Off I go – salmon or bust! I know where all my items are this time but pray for me that the gods of warehouse pricing are on my side.

And to this first world problem I say – gratitude, and Namaste.

I’m trying to shake things up……again.

I’ve got some gripes with myself. For example, I hate myself for jumping onto Facebook all the time. I like the friend aspect but I am mad at the format which just shows me a few friends then sucks me into reels about cats and such. It shows me a lot of gymnastics too which is better than wrinkle cream and curling irons. Turns out you are what you click on and I am all about back flips and sugar gliders now that I learned to stay away from beauty products and the like. Don’t click – do NOT click or the damn hair products won’t leave you alone.

So I have imposed on myself some new habits I would like to create.

I want to fall asleep earlier and get up earlier.

Yes, we have been down this road before but NEVER GIVE UP is my motto.

Last night I turned off my screens at 9:45 PM. The new me listens to books on tape as I am falling asleep. I have one called Educated by Tara Westover in the cue and I am enjoying it.

But I do get restless so I decided to use a lifeline and call a friend and he sounded drowsy but was kind and tolerant of my loosely-associating bedtime brain as I was expressing some complicated thought about life I’d just discovered.

I wondered how on earth we’ve managed to go from apes grunting at each other to modern day humans watching reels on Facebook and talking about the human condition on our hand-held computers. How?

Then he said he could blow my mind even further and he did. He said: How did we go from apes grunting at each other – to …….bread?

Right?

This did not make me tired enough to fall asleep. It woke me right up and we had at least a fifteen minute exchange about bread and we unpacked the shit out of the whole bread thing.

My first question had to be why eat the little grains? If I was an early human and I looked at a field of wheat I think I would probably think salad, not wheat germ. I would eat the foliage and we wouldn’t be one step closer to bread.

My friend said that we probably watched birds eating the grains and copied them.

When he said this I told him he was a genius and that this was exactly what happened because of course we didn’t just poison ourselves by eating weeds…..we must have let the birds go first and if they survived then we could call it edible. Though I doubt we had the word edible figured out yet.

There was still a lot to explain.

He was stuck on the yeast and feeding the yeast and activating it.

I knew we must have started with crackers that got puffier and puffier until there was bread but I also entertained the idea of the first loaf.

Maybe one day there wasn’t bread and the next day the first loaf appeared.

Did we reverse engineer it or the other way around?

He pointed out that there must be some thesis out there about bread and it’s origins and that kind of killed it because I liked wandering around the topic and using our brains and imagination.

We finally signed off then I woke up this morning earlier than usual thinking about bread so I texted him.

Here’s our texts.

Namaste.

I am not rocking my best life at the moment.

At the moment, it all feels pretty awful. It feels like I’m rolling that ball uphill and darn it if it isn’t rolling back down the mountain and crushing me in the process – at all too regular intervals.

I’m not going to give in to feeling shitty. Yesterday I had to give in because my body only allowed me to buy food at the farmer’s market and plants at the nursery and then it said enough. So I watched the movie Nashville (first time-it’s genius) and lost myself in a bottle of wine.

I know better than to do that two days in a row.

I have three adult children who do not move in straight lines or do anything the easy way. For me that has meant considerable turmoil and angst – for years. And money. LOTS and lots of money. Oh and sometimes they resent me and act out as I am giving them money. Yay.

I am a softie and emotional and those are not a great qualities in a parent. I don’t love telling people what to do, authority – any of that – so I often am very patient then I get outraged and I crumble or maybe I yell a little. I don’t have good boundaries.

I struggle to understand my role at this point. After years of giving it my all with mixed results I am now a ship that’s breaking up in the surf. I’m taking on water and I need to abandon ship and swim for my own life and let them do the same.

I tired. I’m almost too tired to swim but what choice do I have?

My daughter and Maui have been my happy place but the last few trips haven’t been the best because my kid is in transition. She is very good at putting on her own seat belt first and I am not. I planned a trip out and it did not go well.

It went about as bad as it could go, actually.

I can’t go into too many details because i respect other people’s privacy but I can say that the visit was co-opted by a situation that was untenable and she ended up leaving me on Day 2 in a restaurant and now we aren’t really talking.

I had to spend extra renting an Airbnb and I also am having to subsidize another kid so my money situation is all messed up (as usual – who am I kidding?).

Good-bye personal trainer.

And…….this weather is not helping. It’s socked in gray fog all morning with a chance of sun later. It throws me off regarding how to dress and what to expect and what sort of vibe to bring to the day. At first I just let it mess with my mojo but it’s been like this all summer so today I am reminding myself that there is a good chance that the fog is temporary and even if it isn’t I have to move myself and get up.

I love sunny mornings and balmy evenings and this is not that. But honestly if the Swedes can practice Hygge then I’d better invent something similar and just deal with things.

Here is an example of the way things go for me – Miss single lady. Sometimes I love being single and other times it sucks. I love it when I get to sleep in and no one bothers me and I hate it when I have to do all the shopping and cleaning and carrying and schlepping and there’s no help.

I am used to the loneliness and I don’t feel it anymore. I have a pretty social job so time alone is restful and nice. But there are times I have something to say and there’s no one to tell it to. And there’s no one infusing my life with their energy or their stuff. Sometimes it’s nice to receive a little life infusion or to have a buddy to read with. It can also be a pain in the ass, but there are upsides to cohabitation.

Even though I can do whatever I want, doing things can be an issue. Here is an example. I saw that Lyle Lovitt tickets were open and I got eight free tickets to see him at Stern Grove. When it’s sunny out the venue is beautiful. It’s not going to be sunny and I am not going to be there because I couldn’t find a sole to go with me.

Normally I do things like this alone but right now for whatever reason I can’t do it.

I also don’t really want to go.

I want to get up and garden and fix up my house and get inside my head until I’m ready to come out of it – again.

I’m old enough to know that things will shift and I just have to keep moving and let the dust settle and be strong and live big and all that.

I also know that it’s not great to complain when so many people have actual real problems.

Still…Life has gotten very heavy and complicated and it takes a lot of work and resilience and attitude to keep things humming. That’s my issue and it feels like a real issue.

I’m going to get off my tush and do the best job of seizing the day that I possibly can.

Please pray for sunshine. Not so much that we scorch and die like in Texas and the hot parts of the country but enough to warm my sad beat-up heart.

And if I can’t have that maybe a clean kitchen and a spruced up garden and a walk around the lake or some dancing in the kitchen will be enough.

Pray for enough to get me back in the groove of life, because not groovin’ on life is a horrible shame when it happens.

Godspeed!

So things were basically hideous today and the weather wasn’t any help and my vision of the day quickly shattered so I made the most of it and did some solitary cleaning and styling and savoring and decided to just be.

Here is my post – my day- in photos. The videos wouldn’t load.

One reason I enjoy getting away from it all – I’m at the Strawberry Music Festival alone – is you can find room to think.

This is how my brain works when I am relaxed and have found space and I am thinking…

I start involuntarily thinking about Ukraine, the destruction of apartment buildings and roads and the cost of rebuilding an entire country.

What do you do if everything is lost? I think about this when my mind starts to let go. How much does it cost and how exactly do you rebuild a country and an economy? I also think about raising the debt ceiling and how I wish our elected officials would cut the drama and just do their jobs.

Before I go much further let me just clarify my brain’s musings . This is not some cost-analysis by an economist or even an armchair Suze Orman. No real discussion of this serious predicament is going to occur because that is not my lane. I am just someone at a music festival under some trees waiting for the music to start and wondering how you rebuild a country from the ground up and why we have to get indigestion over the debt ceiling when it’s not our job to fix it.

This is me, in my son’s 1995 Suburu Impreza, flopped out in the back in a forest, thinking about Ukraine and all the sh*t that’s been blown up and wondering how in the F word this going to get fixed. Ever. And me wondering what I am supposed to do about the threat of economic collapse if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

Countries rebuild so it must be possible. Ceilings are raised. How would I do it if I were in charge? Hmmmm. Let me think think think think think think think.

Reader, you are now in my brain. You aren’t just inside my brain you are inside my festival brain at 8 am with some loud new neighbors. More on them later.

So my brain starts to think about what I would do if someone put me in charge of things.

With the board game Monopoly as my only point of reference, I immediately make myself banker and start printing (in my mind) paper money in Easter egg colors and then give everyone some money and a job and then my brain fizzles a bit and I can’t decide how the next part would work but I know that I will at some point in this hypothetical have to cave and figure out how to use A.I.

I could say to A.I. – hey I have this pastel money and I’d like you to design an economy using this as your currency. My understanding is A.I. could do it in under ten minutes and get this – if you asked it to do it – if you posed the same question to A.I every day for a month, it would, by day eight, be able to design an economy for Ukraine in six seconds flat. Rumor has it that no one wants to know the outcome of 28-30 days of A.I. practice and learning as it ponders the question. By then A.I. will be devising plans to take over the world’s banks.

Scary.

You are still inside my brain which is now sending shivers down my spine contemplating A.I.’s potential to blow up civilization as we know it. This possibility is looming above our heads right this minute IRL

You can commend me for using A.I. for good – for re-building Ukraine and solving the debt crisis as I quietly and humbly in my festival head accept the Nobel Peace prize.

Ok enough of that.

Let’s discuss the couple next door.

They moved in after me and they are a bit close and a bit loud. Unless you like to eavesdrop. For you children who are plugged into so much technology that you can’t hear your neighbors or people at the next table: listening-in is entertainment. It used to be all we had back in the day and you can bet we did it with gusto.

I hadn’t planned on dropping in (eavesdropping) on a twenty something couple in a black rental pop-up van with matching hats and way more gear than they can apparently keep track of. But when they squeezed themselves into the space next to me the listening–in couldn’t be helped.

Most of their chatter falls into one of three categories. Sometimes they tell each other where they are going to put something : “The nail clippers are in the glove box.” Sometimes they are asking the other person where something got put: “Have you seen the pretzels?” And for some really disturbing reason the woman next door seems to need to consult with the guy she came with before she does almost anything .

Clearly they are dating and not married. If they were married they could pull this camping off without nearly as much chit chat. -Instead, because they are dating, the chick has to try and please this guy she doesn’t know that well by consulting about whether or not to pack the cut up fruit (you can bet she’s the one who cut up that fruit).

She has to report that she is packing the sunscreen. That’s actually normal and translates. We report the packing of sunscreen in my family too, to signal that at least one person has sunscreen so we are covered there and we can all stop trying to remember to bring it. Phew. We have packed the sunscreen.

But other things like cheese and blankets we pretty much just pack up silently on our own don’t we? We wing it with a bit of coordinated effort built over years of these little trips and festivals and excursions together. We know what to do.

I guess not if we are dating. Dating, you gotta ask each other everything. You are learning how to fit in with another person. It’s not trivial. It matters. So I get why the woman is asking. She is not so much asking permission as she is gathering information about how he thinks and how he likes his stuff handled. She wants to handle his stuff, and handle it the way he likes it. He needs to ask more questions of her for this model to feel ok. Why isn’t he asking her as much as she is asking him????

When you are eavesdropping you want to tap the woman on the shoulder and say: “Sorry to butt in, but have you noticed how you are asking him what he wants but he’s not asking you how you like it?”

And just when you think the woman could do better she gets kind of controlling and anal about something – cliché. I am listening to her right now correct him about something sort of meaningless. She is right but it doesn’t make me like her very much.

Young me might have had the same unpleasant vibe she has which causes me to say that they are probably evenly matched. He’s self-centered and she is always right.

Brilliant.

So I am at this festival and I’m gonna need to stop thinking and eavesdropping and get grounded in my own day. I love these multi-day festivals but I have to pace myself and plan accordingly.

I can’t hear too much music too early in the day or else I peak too soon and by 9pm when the headliner comes on I could give a bag of kettle corn and head to my car to sleep.

I am writing in my car this morning and it’s just now 10 am and the music I wanna see starts at 1230 so no need to rush this. There is music on a stage right now and I’m doing this….

The couple next to me is doing this…they are on their way with just a bottle of water this time (they discussed it and agreed).

I have always attended these festivals by myself – except when I’ve been able to get my daughter to come.

It’s nice to be in my head just letting the thoughts flow but it gets old, too.

At some point I get tired of all these thoughts in my head and the eavesdropping and the being alone and even the music.

Then I start the car and drive home, another festival in the bag.

Listen, I haven´t written in forever and it´s not like I haven´t experienced anything memorable worth writing about.

Just yesterday I had to do a number one behind my car, in broad daylight, in the Trader Joe´s parking lot.

I had been out all day – first to a charity event for Bobby´s Brigade. Bobby is my patient and he has a very traditional southern Dad and a also a gorgeous southern grandmother who told me that her name, which is Rita Redmond, could be remembered by RR or ¨Railroad.” So whenever I ran into her I called her Railroad Rita Redmond and she and I both got a kick out of that.

The family all had on yellow shirts with a Bobby´s Brigade logo and the CHP was there in their gorgeous uniforms celebrating Bobby´s charity. The uniforms are impressive when you aren´t worried about getting a ticket. The CHP was in a good mood but if they had checked my registration that might have changed. I am currently driving my son´s old Suburu and it needs a smog and new registration now that it´s back on the road. That´s on the schedule for next week.

Bobby´s Brigade makes Teddy Bear gift packs to give to children who find themselves by the side of the road and frightened. The packages have a coloring book and crayons and a Teddy Bear and a special note. I helped to color in the notes. In fact many of the adults were doing the coloring and it was the kids who were running around saying ¨faster¨ and assembling the kits. The kids were taskmasters and over 1200 kits were assembled.

I had planned on making a cameo but it was so much fun that I stayed for the whole thing and won the raffle (I always win raffles) and walked off with a 100 dollar pair of Tom Ford sunglasses which was perfect because I bought 40 tickets for a hundred dollars.

Win-win!!

Then I visited my mom and Colin on a whim and next I did a newborn house call and by the time I left Trader Joe´s with my shopping, I really had to GO. Suddenly all the coffee and iced tea needed out and by suddenly I mean one minute I was unloading groceries and the next I had to cross my legs and pray. Usually you just wait out the urge for a minute or so then get to a bathroom lickity-split but I couldn´t hold back the flood waters. I tried VERY hard but knew I could not make it half across the store to the bathroom with any kind of natural gait. AND, if I hopped holding my crotch I decided that would probably gather more attention than if I ducked behind my car.

So I did it right there in broad daylight behind my son´s 1995 Suburu Impreza that I had fixed to run so I could drive it while I wait the two weeks to six months it´s going to take to get a new catalytic converter. Oh right – mine was stolen from my Prius a couple of weeks ago along with several others on my block. Then just for fun, when I went to rent a car I discovered that the insurance agent at Farmer´s dropped my rental car coverage (and isn´t taking responsibility for the error) – so I am driving an antique clunker that smells of mold but runs great.

So the upshot is I was peeing behind a junky Suburu for what seemed like a good half hour and no one noticed. But it did occur to me that with material this good, I need to get back to blogging. Especially since this comes on the tail of me having a number two in Briones last week when I miscalculated things and set off for a hike carrying a load. OMG I can´t believe I just typed that.

Getting old is a lot about this sort of thing, so bring it. I am not afraid of my ones and my twos.

What I AM currently concerned about is finding time to do all I want and need to do while simultaneously working in enough down time that I don´t burn out and have to take to my bed.

I have two speeds – on and off – and I am trying to work in speeds like ¨slower but still productive¨ and ¨chill and relaxing but not horizontal.¨

Timer went off so I need to change the laundry, do some dishes and do a session with the fiddle. Be back soon.

I wrote this last weekend and never got back to finishing the post. I had a Sunday at home and wanted to blog, do laundry, work on some music, read and straighten up the house.

So I set a timer. Every time I switched out the laundry I moved to another item on my list – and by doing this I managed to avoid cleaning all day and my habit of never getting to the music and other fun things I always want to do but rarely seem to find time for.

It worked pretty well but I had to accept that though everything got some attention, nothing got done, exactly.

Let´s face it – our time on earth is brief. You get to a point where if there´s something you want to make happen, you´d best make it happen soon. Chop chop the clock is ticking.

So the only pearl here is this: it´s fine to go down a cleaning rabbit hole and important to do laundry but don´t put off all the other stuff…work it in and don´t wait for the sudden gift of enough time.

I´m going to end this post. It´s not really finished but I need to take my own advice and let it be good enough so I can get to the next activity. The next activity is feed all the animals and then get some shopping done for Mother´s Day brunch….but I will also play my violin and sing and stretch my hamstrings and read a bit and hang out with family and make some attempt to spend the minutes and hours and days on all the things that matter to me the most without losing myself in the grind and forgetting the things that should really be top priority.

Hint: a perfect home and a floor you can eat off may have to make room for other things.

Here´s to other things!

From the looks of it my daily posts ended January 8th. That sounds about right. I have seemed to slow down and I am unable to breeze through activities the way I used to.

Age. It’s a getting older thing.

Granted I do have more on my plate than the average bear and I keep piling it on because that’s the way I am. I am also lazy like a sloth and I like nothing better than to do nothing so it’s a constant push and pull.

Yin and Yang, Trial and Error, Reach For the Stars, Grab the Brass Ring – you understand.

I’m okay with it, sort of. I’ve accepted that a full life involves a certain amount of triage and some days writing doesn’t rank.

The problem is that old saying – jack of all trades, master of none.

And so I press on.

I’m trying very hard to master my life and every small mess up like the wine I’ve had during what Galby has christened my moist January – every little mess up or step outside my list of life goals – it adds up.

I am smart enough to know that it can add up to running in place but also forgiving enough to understand that sometimes it is just like this and squeezing a bit of joy out of life is also good enough – and that is always available to me because I have learned how to be happy and how to live well with what’s available to me.

Basically, no matter what foolery swirls around, I’m happy. I’m happy to be alive and happy I can take care of myself and happy with where I live and with what I do every day. It’s like I won some medal called happy and I get to wear it even if I’m in my pajamas watching bad T.V. and eating peanut butter with a spoon.

Actually I don’t do the peanut butter thing, that’s Rachel. I just sort of start grazing at night and if there are any crackers and dip around, watch out. At night is when I lose it. I enter some time warp continuum where I have no motivation and can not recall any promises to myself especially the one to go to bed early and to not snack. I want to play music then go to bed but sometimes I just scroll Facebook eating nuts because it’s all I can muster.

Right now both of my boys are home and they eat late. So I’m smelling food at 11pm when I should be asleep.

No wonder I haven’t written. Truth be told with both boys here my main goal is to Keep Calm and Carry On. Adult children at home is no joke difficult for everyone involved. Only it’s my house so kids gotta man up and make their own house if they don’t like it.

But I am serene. I have earned this serenity and relative peace and I am holding on as bravely as I know how to.

Excuse me if I haven’t written or played my banjo and fiddle as much as I wanted to this week or made my bed and folded the laundry. Excuse me if my charts have built up to piles inside my office that both amaze and shame me.

I’ll get to it.

I’ll get to all of it and maybe there will be a little progress or maybe I’ll do just enough to hold everything together – with scotch tape. But I WILL GET TO IT DAMMIT!

Last night I had dinner with someone I’ve known since medical school. The night I got together with my husband I went to a party where I would have loved to have ended up with him instead. Instead we both dated other people in medical school and in life both married and divorced and then dated more other people and he is remarried now and I am not and it’s been thirty-five years of loosely knowing each other with a few tight moments thrown in just to confuse things.

He has always made me swoon and always been something of a dorky enigma.

We have gotten together a couple of times, talked frankly about our lives, flirted with more, been happy with less and gone through long periods of not talking. His current wife hates hates hates me because before I knew they were going to marry I was suspicious of her based on what little I knew and when early in the relationship she seemed to be sinking her claws into my boy deep and fast I said she was pissing all over his Facebook page and she must have stalked his private messages because that did not go over well. I said it because that woman was marking her territory like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I saw some huge red flags but all that got me is kicked off his Facebook forever, banned from his private life and the eventual consolation prize that’s called being right.

I don’t know who texted whom first recently but it was out of the blue and unexpected and probably only happened the way it did because he travels for business and has been in the Bay Area recently.

So we had dinner.

Leading up to it I had moments of feeling sad about my neck. I felt the way people do when they attend reunions and wish they could wow everyone by streaming in looking like J-Lo but instead realize that at almost sixty all we have is a big smile and our accomplishments to bowl folks over. We focus on our sagging neck and expanding middle. It’s dumb but we all do it. I tried not to do it but first I got long pink extensions and then I realized that at certain angles I looked like a drag queen or whatever happened to baby Jane and the maintenance was insane so I took them out, cut my hair short again, bleached it up blonde and showed up looking like Sharon Stone made a baby with an overweight Q-Tip.

As you can tell by all these photos taken within a two week period: the struggle is real but/and I’m trying!!!!!! Too hard probably so it’s a no to the extensions.

My hair needs to be whiter but instead it has some leftover brassy yellow from having been pink. Corrective color is on the books but our dinner was last night and all I could do about the hair was smile big.

Same with my middle. My gut has really gotten away from me. I have always been a round girl but now my weight – the same weight I’ve mostly been all my life – is centered around my mid-section. I profess to be working on losing it and I often am making efforts in that direction but I’m not consistent enough to do anything but prevent it from getting worse. I guess that’s an accomplishment?

So when the day arrived and I hadn’t lost thirty pounds or had a face lift I was excited but there was also a bit of trepidation in having to meet up old. Not older – OLD.

I’ve never minded older and I did older well for ages because basically I didn’t show any signs of aging until fifty-six or so. Now in just the last three years it’s like someone took a pin and popped me like a balloon and all the bits that are supposed to be full and plump like my butt are deflated. Same time my skin is stretched out so that it no longer holds in my vital organs and fat as tightly and well as before so I’m loose and I jiggle and I have straight up jowls. I could go on but I’m already disgusting myself by being both accurate and by even caring.

I know that to live a good life from here on out I need to care enough to get dressed in the morning but not care so much that obsess about how I look. It is what it is and one must make peace with life in a way that honors the struggle.

It turns out none of my shame and angst needed to happen. The minute I saw Jim I felt pure joy and happiness in reconnecting with my old friend. He was funnier and cuter and smarter than I remember and I fell in love with him all over again. I did not think once about my aging form until we stood up to leave and we both did a little creaky thing trying to stand up straight. It was adorable.

I fell in love with him enough that I felt a pang of sadness when it was time to leave. Our days of talking on the phone nearly every day are over. It’s unlikely we’ll see each other again soon, though I know we will meet up eventually. I am still not allowed on his Facebook page even though I offered to post my ugliest picture (and y’all know I do fugly super well because I’m not just a pretty face!). There is no path for us despite our excellent connection and the fact that our natural rapport and intimacy are undeniable.

I feel like last night life gave me an unexpected big hug and I am grateful.

I’m not gong to lie and say things are easy right now. I’m getting up every day and shouldering an amazing amount with all the grace I can muster. My heart is trampled but triumphant.

And I am keeping on keeping on the best I can.

I still prefer being single and my affinity for Jim is just one of those wistful things in life that is both a big deal and completely meaningless. I can admire and adore him without ever have really gotten entangled in the muck of living and that’s fine with me at this point, even when I’m left wanting more of him.

I had a few things happen this week that brought me to tears but Jim wasn’t one of them. The tears thing happens when I skin my knee out of the blue and there’s no one to kiss my boo boo or lend a helping hand.

Thing number one that happened is that I was out on a hike and dropped my car fob/key and I had to pay 650 bucks for a locksmith to come out and make me a replacement. I can rant all I want to about this insane scammy practice of engineering everything that was already fine and not broken like a KEY in to some impossible to operate and likely to break and expensive to replace upgrade. Fug the FOB. A key used to cost $1.25 to duplicate and replace but now you need to replace your FOB’s battery and if you lose it you need a new FOB and reprogramming and its super costly. How do poor people deal with a key that costs more than a month’s rent? I need to stop talking about this because I get really worked up about FOBs but I need to finish by saying that despite scouring my hiking route the day I lost my key, I went back to hike yesterday and walked right up to my lost FOB. I happened to look down found it on the grass and it’s some kind of cosmic joke and whatever.

The second thing that happened is my new exuberant husky-lab-pit puppy Rayna ran into me full speed as I was feeding everyone a few mornings ago and knocked me down. I was carrying pig scratch and dog kibble in both hands and she ran up from in front of me so hard that she knocked me off my feet and everything went flying. I had to fall over her and so it happened in ultra slow motion with kibble and hay dust flying everywhere. Being single is sad when there’s no one to hug you and you have to clean up after your spill all by yourself. In this case all the dogs and the pig tried to help clean the mess which only added to the morning pandemonium.

I had a really full week. Every night there was something going on and now it’s the weekend and the boys want to hit the farmer’s market so we’ll do that. As crazy as things are with these two, food is a uniting endeavor we can all enjoy. I have to go into work and deal with piles of charting and I have my animals to attend and music to work on.

I also joined 24 Hour Fitness several weeks ago and after a good first few days have not gone back. Maybe I’ll get to that too. Paws crossed.

That’s me and all the reasons why I haven’t written.

I’ll try and do better but will forgive myself if I don’t because that’s the way life works.

Namaste.

I got my fanny to the gym and here are some pics to prove it.

It wasn’t fun.

I also made some music and here’s a funny recording of me singing with the pig. Aaand Colter Wall.

That part was fun.