Be the change you want to see.

I've been looking at my face in the mirror lately, and, it's not like I don't like what I see! It's just that there are definitely signs of aging showing up, even beyond what I already knew about the wrinkles, and the bits of my face that are sagging, and the little dark hairs that started showing up on my chin about a decade ago and has since spread to my lower cheeks blow my cheekbones and under my chin and all kinds of places. The other thing that I've got going on right now is these little tiny rough patches of skin. They're mostly the same skin color as the rest of my skin which is to say mostly hail pink into light tan. The first one that showed up I asked the dermatologist about and he said it was a normal thing that some people just get and I didn't have to be worried about it. And they're rough and they don't go away when you pick at them.

Now I have an association of myself with my mom, and also with my grandma on the other side It's funny I remember my dad's mom better and in detail in a close-up kind of way, I don't think I saw my mom's mom in full sunlight very often Most of my memories of her have us staying at their mobile home in Aptos which is near Santa Cruz, and everybody sat in the house when we would visit and everybody would smoke all day when we would visit. So aside from Grandma and Nez being a little bit fuzzy around the face I don't really remember and I know she passed on when I was 17 or 18, so it's 30 plus years now. The funny thing is that Grandma Bert passed on when I was 11 or 12 and I just remember her whole look in much more detail. Anyway it's helping me a little bit to verbalize all of this, thank you speech to text! And just yeah thanks to any of you who are reading this I just needed to empty out my head for a minute.

The short post is: my cat is 16 1/2 years old.

Do you ever grieve something in advance?
Like, you know you're going to lose it, the loss is inevitable, and you FEEL SOME FEELINGS ABOUT THAT.

I didn't do that when dad died, we were too busy living the day to day and caring for him, so the grief just sat on us for like, years, one monolithic lump, until a variety of griefquake episodes of varying intensity and duration broke the monolith into more manageable chunks. The chunks are still pretty much around but after 25 years the edges are worn down and don't cut you when you get too close, they don't fall on you and crush you, you can get around them, they don't prevent you from living your life and getting stuff done. They're kinda inconvenient, they twang on heartstrings, but they're not incapacitating.

When Scotty was diagnosed with cancer (fuck cancer!) He died 8 months later (fuck fatphobia in doctor's, a sudden rapid weightloss is TEXTBOOK for cancer, literally), it was 13 years after dad. I'd been doing therapy and writing as well as ritual work around grief, and about Dad and his varied inabilities "to Dad", as a verb. I was more emotionally healthy. I was in a supportive loving and nondramatic relationship (thank you Jeff) and I processes my own various feelings (anger, shame, disappointment and grief) at ten times the speed as I did with Dad. I almost was able to feel them in real-time, quite an accomplishment.

Years ago I gave myself explicit permission to feel my own feelings,even if I was worried or afraid they would be inconvenient or something to the people around me.

Now I'm fifty. I've lost all four grandparents, many friends my own age, people who stood in as adoptive aunts, uncle's, and grandparents. My dad. My little brother. The cousin who was only six months older than me, six months after Scotty died.

And I spent two years doing detailed medical care for our beloved Big Kitty, Otter. He needed daily subcutaneous (sub-Q) fluids, insulin for almost a year, and eventually, bathroom help.

When it was time for him to go, it was really clear. He stopped eating. He couldn't climb up on the bed anymore. He tried to hide, run away, (to die, I was sure) and that terrified me. I'd been pouring effort and love into him so long and so intensely.

He was my first kitty to go. I didn't get to be there for the kitties I had with my ex, when it was their time.

And now My Nose, my Tribble-cat. She's having bathroom problems, of a different kind than she had when we had to put her on anti-crystal food. She's perky and snuggly and affectionate, doesn't seem to be unhealthy other than yowling a lot, pissing in the living room, and hissing at every damn reflective surface in the damn house.

So yeah. I can imagine the end coming.
I have to admit, that it Must Come. That The End Is Unavoidable.

And the world sucks, and I have incompletely grieved the changes from coronavirus, and the California wildfires (so we get to wear TWO kinds of masks); how I miss my family and my friends and my dance community and my new lover, and Jeff and Tribble and J and D and their kids are what makes all of that remotely bearable, and I don't know what I'm going to do if I, when I, lose Tribble. my First Girl, my sweetheart, the yodeler in the hallway, who curls up over my heart when I am sad, and on my lap when she is lonely.

So today I was scrubbing up a pee-lake, and I blew up at Jeff a little bit. Because between not wanting to do that task, wishing SO HARD it wasn't necessary, actually breaking down the steps needed to do the task without spilling pee across the living room and or the kitchen, and Feeling the FEELINGS ABOUT THAT... And then he asked me ... SOMETHING, I got overwhelmed, and a bit of stuff blew past the gasket I guess I'd sealed over the Everything Going On.

A thing I've been encouraging myself to do is let myself cry whenever I feel the need. Intellectually I have figured out that shedding the salts and chemicals will help balance the stress and the FEELINGS.

So right now I am finishing up this post with her on my lap, the tears are drying up. My floor is clean (or as clean as I personally ever get it, though now I need to do laundry). I have a bowl of strawberries and the new Animal Crossing update waiting for me, and Jeff made us lunch and made sure I ate it.

This equilibrium is not horrible.

And I will continue to try and let out the safety valve on the FEELINGS bottle every so often so I don't hurt myself or anyone else, I hope.

My sister-in-law is in a pretty strapped situation right now. She's got a month old brand new baby. The father of the baby has turned out to be a pretty s***** person: untrustworthy and abusive enough that the cops actually put a Stay Away order on him. Her 18-year-old has moved out, and is now sending her abusive messages. She has depression and other issues that have put her on disability. And she's overwhelmed. Because of course her landlord wants to sell the house she's been living in, now in this covid-drenched pandemic hellscape.

*Measured breathing*

I want to help and don't know really sure how to. I know what I would do in her shoes. I actually DID a lot of the things I would recommend to her, when I was her age.

Our life experience is really similar on multiple axes, main difference being I didn't have kids (thank goodness, and no offense to anyone with kids or who wanted kids) Life is easier without having to wrangle, raise and educate kids... And my body being what it is, I'm even more glad that I didn't.

Okay.

Here's where I say the things I can't say elsewhere, and especially not to her.
I feel like she's been bullied all her life. By her birth family, by men she hoped to build a life with. Her mom was bullied by HER birth family. Her mom is COWED. Her dad is an *asshole*, to put it bluntly. (Yes it's personal. No I'm not getting into it, except to say that he fucked up, so it's on him to fix it, it's emphatically Not My Job.)

I wanna help. But I just fuckin' feel sorry for her (and for her mom) and wanna wave my magic wand and Fix It All. But I know she has to build it herself.

My focus is to A) hold my own boundaries. B) encourage her to make conscious choices. C) encourage her to discover healthy boundaries and healthy relationships and seek them out.

I haven't priested like this in a long time. I'm out of the habit (haha) and I'm going to need to practice balancing my own needs and not overextending myself, with offering the kinds of help I can afford to offer.

Not sure what I'm asking for, except maybe support and validation of any of y'all have worked before with women struggling in an abusive situation who feel overwhelmed and trapped.

At least she's not living with the current asshole. But she was still trying to propitiate him with her baby name choice, so ... *Throws hands up in the air*

Our families hurt us.

For some lucky bastards this isn't true... And this is an insomnia-post, where it's the middle of the night and I feel like I'm having some great insight...

One. Our families hurt us by actually lashing out, actually setting out to hurt us.

Two. Our families hurt us by not providing what we need to thrive, at a young enough age where we can't actually express what we need, or to ask for it.

Three. There's as many reasons why as there are suffering families.

Four. Whatever we don't find healing for, we continue to propagate outwards, in our sibling relationships, intimate and romantic relationships, work and friend relationships. In our political opinions.

Five. Once we start recognizing and healing that wound, we can recognize that wounding in others. Sometimes that means we can help someone else to start healing or continue healing. Sometimes...Not. Sometimes the best that knowledge can do for us is to help us avoid people who will make our original suffering worse.

Six. It's complicated. Smarter people than me have studied this EXTENSIVELY.

And it's stupid o'clock in the morning, and I'm going back to bed now.

Something about the smell of sunwarmed star Jasmine turns me into an 8 year old, lips and fingers blue with cold, and warming myself next to my brother and sister on the sunny wall of the garage.
I mean. That's how you survive hours of Marco Polo (my sister Jen cheated! :) ) and dares for how long you can swim under water (Becky) and learning how to do flips off the diving board (my brother Scott, I was too chicken but I loved the "Nestea plunge" and sitting at the bottom of the deep end as long as I could!)

Happy birthday Scott. Lots of love and happy memories of sunburns and rolling down the back lawn, of your baseball games and helping you with your math homework (and that was when I decide to go into teaching: he had a "lightbulb moment" when I explained something, and I got addicted).
Shit. He'd have been 46 today... As always, #fuckcancer

very quick post
as I need to breakfast and then hit the gym
...sigh

it's uncomfortable to admit the difference between what I thought I was doing and what I was actually doing.
what I was trying to do and what my brain basically had me HAVE to do.

I'll be dropping bits here as I continue to read the adhd book from the library. But one thing I learned today is that the kinds of self-talk I've been slowly training myself out of? have NAMES. Like, you can categorize them into disasterizing, binary thinking... I wish I had the book here, I'll have to edit this later.

I'm kind of in the grief stage. Realizing how different things might have been if adhd in girls was something that they knew about when I was still in primary school or high school. But in the 80's, they had only just begun to recognize add/adhd as a thing.

it wasn't. It didn't. They didn't. I didn't.

it's so damn hard to see the back of your own head.

Not like all my work towards self knowledge is wasted, it's the foundation of the work I'm going to continue doing.

AND I think I may have helped my niece, who is my beloved magpie girl. She's showing all the signs and more of my own distraction, difficulty scheduling, keeping on task, good intentions and poor execution. Pile of failing progress report grades on recent reports from school, her parents are going YIKES

so I told my sister I'd been recently diagnosed with adhd and what I remembered from high school sounded like how I've observed my magpie girl when we've gotten to hang out. That her academic results, same=same. I just covered better, I think.

so my sister and my brother in law are looking into testing for my niece.
it's like, I'm over here Feeling All The Things about my own wasted opportunities but maybe? maybe Ainslee can be spared a lot of what I suffered through, all the shitty self-talk and self-blame.

so I'm feeling optimistic, and I have several courses of action laid out for me to follow, and that feels good.

I woke up this morning to sweet cuddles and caresses from a warm sleepy husband. Nothing more than cuddles this time, as he read his newspaper with one hand and ran the other absent mindedly over my head. I felt like a cat in a lap, warm and contented and loved. When he rose to wash up, I worked on my morning stretches. It feels so good to move the body, the First Home, to have it respond so sweetly to my requests. Bodies are wonderful, they soak up the sunlight and warmth, they feel the touch of loved ones, they can work, kiss, write, interpret for the brain. Bodies are the filters through which we experience pleasure, all the pleasures. Sex and food and running and tickling, laughter and back scratches and massage, intoxication of love or of good wine. I am in good health, able to accomplish what I set out to do of a day without more than slight pains or discomfort. Doing pretty well for a middle-aged woman whose favorite activities are writing, gardening, and cooking.
I am thankful for my body.

When I finished my stretches and my morning meditation, my husband had begun preparing breakfast. I always boil a pot of black tea for myself, as he doesn’t care for it. We had crepes with ham and cheese and apple, and a dash of maple syrup. Then he got on the computer to book hotel reservations and make other arrangements for our upcoming trip, and then we worked together on preparing the Thanksgiving duck. Last night he was working for hours, between research on a project for our house, fine tuning a home improvement project (this required a skill saw that lets him cut a tidy hole in the wall for a new electrical outlet). Before that, he had been supervising the final stages of some work being done in our yard.
I am thankful for my husband.

My life is very abundant. The loving husband and friends and chosen family and biological family are all blessings to me. Though I have never carried to term, I am a beloved auntie and sister-mom to many children, I have worked in schools with many children, I have loved many children. I am surrounded by friends who seek my company. I am surrounded by people who speak and write to me with supportive and kind words, who encourage my artistic endeavors, who inspire me with how they work and play and strive to build a better world.
I am thankful for my community, and the connections within it.

My home is colorful and comfortable. We have quilts on the beds, clothes in the closets, warm curtains against the chill. We have an outdoor space that is green and lovely, with water and earth and space to grow food. We have a kitchen and a living room with space to entertain comfortably, and food enough in the pantry and refrigerator to feed people we like and love. Our soft and lazy felines nap in the sunshine, on our laps, atop stereo speakers and under the kitchen table. They love us, rub against us, talk to us, chide us when the food is late or the box unscooped, and their antics continue to make us laugh down the years.
I am thankful for our lovely house, and for our sweet cats.

Recently I have been writing very prolifically. The ideas and images have been flowing easily to my pen and my screen, and releasing them and arranging them has been giving me great joy. For many years now, I seek the printed word for comfort, whether reading them or writing them. I feel like I am hitting “the zone”, as runners do, as other artists do. The words are friendly and flirty and I handle them comfortably, even when they zip and zing and burn, even when they are as cold and mean as dry ice.
I am so very thankful for the words and for my muse, and for the privilege of crafting with words.

So that thing I just posted about feeling my feelings, and it feeling weird because I wasn't like, judging myself for feeling them?

Naamah_darling took a similar headspace several notches further. (and more completely explored, and better written than I did, but then she always does. Go read it, please.)

I *get this*. What she's saying? I get this. This makes sense. It wasn't safe to feel-feelings in my house, and especially not in front of my dad. (it's not to say we were ever physically abused... but verbally? and did we get our emotional needs met?... that'd be "yes" and "no", in order.)

that's as much as I can handle talking about tonight. Just some shit I am gonna have to think more about.

morlith had a good piece on the 9th about manifesting what he wants in his life.

Therefore, this:

I manifest in my life a rich and vibrant social network with people who think both as I do and as I /don't/. Plenty of opportunities to be with neat people who stir me up, mentally, emotionally, and physically. Friends and acquaintances challenge me to be the best I can be. Plans, are carefully considered and laid, and are carried out with casual flair (and flexibility)... I spend more time in real life with people than I do connecting with people through a computer terminal.

I manifest in my life a healthy, inclusive attitude toward health and wellness, and I attract opportunities to help me become more fit, stronger, more flexible, while having a ton of fun!

I show my thankfulness daily for the abundance in my life, in large part by sharing the abundance I have. I have an abundance of security and an abundance of resources, and an abundance of calm and love. I draw friends and loved ones who help me develop my learning-edge places, and I accept that I won't always be comfortable or happy during the process. I trust that I can ask for what I need and have it manifest for me in some form, and I am willing to work toward those needs (and some wants) getting filled.

I find plenteous opportunities to make beautiful things manifest in the world - art, dance, jewelry, meals, hospitality, and word-creations are just the beginning, as my imagination cannot contain all the potential my future may hold!

I seek relationship with bio-family, including warm, comfortable, frequent connection. I try to do nice things for my nieces and nephew at least three times a year, including random non-birthday non-holiday things.

I continue the welcome trend of playful, respectful, romantic connection in my love life and I am patient, (PATIENT I TELL YOU) about new adventures unfolding as they need to. I prioritize healthy over titillating and friendship over fucking (mostly). =) New relationships need to nourish brain and spirit as well as connecting to astrality, and will come with good interpersonal boundaries and priorities. New partners will understand their own responsibility to their own selves and will be wanting to develop communication skills and real, deep honest vulnerability (if those skills don't already come in their toolbox).

I manifest in my life a variety of chances to do meaningful work. I manifest the opportunity to explore the world and a myriad of its joys and challenges. I manifest heart-connected sincere relationships with people who matter and who want to build connection with me.

I did Two Hard Things That Were Hard today.

One was to wake up after a night of almost no sleep to initiate an emotionally difficult conversation.

Two was to keep my mouth shut at a time later on when responding as my first impulse demanded, would've made things worse.

Here is where I say the thing that may get me in trouble : I fucking DO want a cookie. After doing Hard Things That are Hard? Yes, I want to hear a "good job" or a "thank you" or "I appreciate your efforts" BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I NEVER GOT AS A KID.

Similarly I will never get tired of hearing someone I respect tell me I'm pretty, they love me, they're proud of me, I said something that made them think or laugh, BECAUSE THAT also IS WHAT I NEVER GOT AS A KID.

*snarl*

I give myself EXPLICIT PERMISSION to want that cookie. Explicit permission to attract that cookie, to find safe people whom I might ask for a cookie, to feel my sadness and my rage about growing up without any fucking cookies.

Because also I was taught growing up, both directly and by example, that there Are. No. Cookies! for you, and no matter how hard you try to be worthy of one, to work for one, to ask or to suffer because you want (or need!) a 'cookie'? You get NOTHING.

Fuck that shit.
I'm in charge. Y'all, I grew up, and now I make a choice.

I make cookies every fucking day, you know? and I give them out to friends and lovers and strangers I have just met. I make them by the bushel. There ARE enough cookies.

Sometimes I make cookies just because i can. I have what i need to make them and i just do it. Other times i know I am wanting to please people because I still crave approval and a smile is as good as a cookie. I'm okay with that.

And sometimes? Sometimes, (I am *such* a subversive! ) sometimes I *actually* make cookies that are just for me. Exactly what I want and need in that moment.

And then I have what I need.

Some days I run out of cookie ingredients altogether. Days like that suck horribly because it's scary and flattening. I'd say I'm lucky because that happens pretty rarely, after 11 years of learning how to make and share and ask for a cookie. I have good cookie makers around me all the time now. There's a reason for that.

I. Am. Allowed. To. Want. A. Cookie.

So, for that matter, are you.

Here endeth the lesson.

Posted via LjBeetle