Happy Holiday, You Bastard! 2025

Jesus fluffing Christ, it's already Thanksgiving? I hate to be all cliche and stuff, but holy guacamole, this year has flown. As you're aware if you're a reader of my blog, this year - along with the two preceding it - has been tumultuous - and trust me when I say you don't know the half - but here I am, regardless, still alive, still kicking, or if not exactly kicking, still putting one foot in front of the other, at least, which I have to tell you, sometimes feels like an accomplishment in itself. Still, despite the difficulty of l-i-v-i-n sometimes, I suppose if I try really, really hard I could muster up a list of things to be thankful for, and while it definitely won't be thirty or anywhere even close, that doesn't make me sad or upset. 

When you've been alive as long as I have and you've acquired the wisdom a half century affords, you come to realize: Some years just be like that. I've had, and I will have, better ones; I've had, and, I will have, worse. If there's one thing I can definitively say I've learned about life, it's that there's absolutely no telling how things will unfold, but wait. Let me stop right now because this blog is starting to turn entirely into something else, something we'll investigate at another time because it's Thanksgiving (or now the day after because time, unlike the ebbs and flows of life, is something that I still haven't been able to figure out) this one is all about 

Things I'm Thankful For, 2025

1. The thing that stands out the most in my mind, the thing I've been thinking about a lot for the past week, is what I've instilled in my sons. My immediate family has a lot of issues - G and K don't talk to each other, Kiwi doesn't talk to his dad - and in a lot of ways, I've felt like I failed (and in a lot of ways, I did). 

A few weeks ago when I was talking to my therapist about it, I mentioned how I tried so hard, doing everything I could to make sure my family was close, but despite my efforts and intentions, we're splintered in ways that can never be smoothed. 

While I was talking to her, though, kvetching about how things went wrong, I mentioned that there was one good thing: on Christmas, G makes the same holiday French toast I've been making every year practically since he was born, which I made because I wanted to establish family traditions since when I was growing up, my family had none. G making the French toast makes me happy, of course, but a few days ago when Kiwi text me a photo of an ornament that he bought at the Hello Kitty Cafe and told me he got it because, and I quote, of how we used to get one every year for the tree, I was so happy, I almost cried. 

2. This one is going to sound like the same thing because it's about G and K again, but I swear it's not. So number 1 is about the things I thought didn't stick actually sticking; number 2 is about our respective relationships. 

Last night at run club, I was telling this guy who's an avid birder about Kiwi texting me a few days ago about birds being dinosaurs, and the guy said it sounded like Kiwi and I are really close, and he hopes when his son is older, he texts him all the time the way Kiwi texts me. We are really close, I said, echoing what I'd said to my therapist during that discussion about all the things I did wrong during which I realized that as much as I did wrong, the bond I have with both of my sons, the frequency with which we talk, means that as much as I did wrong, I did at least a little bit right. Because I know firsthand how awful relationships can be between parents and kids, I'm immensely thankful for our closeness. 

3. God, this sounds so bad, but not being poor. Glenn and I had G and K relatively young which means we had no time to become financially stable before we had kids, and to make things monetarily worse, we sent them to private school plus Kiwi played travel soccer for lots of years, and instruments and amps for G weren't exactly cheap. Now that the kids are gone and I'm an independent adult, I can afford to do things I used to not be able to do. By no means would I say I have a lot of money, but I also wouldn't say I'm in bad shape, and that ties into the next thing I'm thankful for which is

4. travel. Since my last Thanksgiving post, I've been to Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Alaska, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, and I truly can't express to you how much I've loved going to these states, states that if I hadn't gone to I never would have known that New Mexican cuisine was a thing or experienced the sense of accomplishment I experienced after finishing the 22-mile bike ride on Anchorage's Tony Knowles Coastal Trail; I never would have had a huckleberry latte (which unless you like the taste of cough syrup, I don't recommend) or accidentally gone on a 9-mile hike pretty much right into the clouds; I never would have gone to a vegan tea party or run in the Boise foothills; I never would have come face-to-face with a moose. A moose! I never would have known that out West is the place for me. 

5. The reason for all the travel, of course, is fulfilling my goal to run in every state, so I've got to talk about being thankful for my ability to run. This one is a begrudging thanks, though, because, as you know, I injured myself pretty badly at the beginning of the year, an injury that completely sidelined me for months and then put me on a slower-than-slow return-to-run program, and as a result, the turkey trot I ran today was almost two full minutes slower than the turkey trot I ran last Thanksgiving. Still, at least I was able to run it, something that earlier in the year I wouldn't have been able to do, so for that, I am thankful, as well as I'm also thankful for 

6. having run in 49 - 49! - states.

7. My new perspective on movies. When I was younger I liked movies a lot, but for years, that hasn't been the case. Even way before phones turned us all into people who don't know how to concentrate, sitting down and watching a movie was hard, and when I did watch movies, I definitely wasn't a fan of anything remotely artsy or highbrow. 

Over the past year or so, however, all that's changed. G, who has a degree in film and is insanely into movies, would continuously send me reels of clips from films he loves, reels of discussions of films he loves, reels of directors discussing films he loves, and reels of people discussing directors that he loves. I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this or not, but I'm very impressionable - Kiwi, for instance, has pointed out to me that no matter what music he plays around me and no matter how I feel about it at the start, if he plays it enough, I start to like it and listen to it, too - and after enough of G's reels, I was as interested in the movies he loves as he was. 

Now, this moment isn't the exact start of my modern love affair with movies (pre the experience I'm about to fill you in on, my sister and I started semi-regularly going to sneak previews and special showings at Popcorn Frights), but it's the most defining, concrete instance I've got: One day during the summer while he was at work with nothing to do and I was home doing nothing, too, G asked me if I wanted to watch In the Mood for Love at the same time as he did and then talk about it when it was over. I wasn't overly thrilled about doing it because when I'd seen one of the director's other films, Fallen Angels, with the comepinga, I wasn't a fan, but because I say yes to almost anything G asks of me, I queued up the movie, hit play when he did, and while I won't say I was a changed woman then and there - I didn't drop to my knees when the movie ended screaming, Hallelujah, I've seen the light! - or that I've become a cinephile overnight, I will say that I've watched twenty-five movies this year compared to three in 2024, and lots of those are, like, good. Respected. Critically acclaimed. 

For that - the worlds that I'm now experiencing and the art I'm now appreciating, and yes, for the additional discourse and shared interest I have with G - I am grateful.

8. The new Buffy show. Okay, so this one is totally premature, and I might soon be changing my tune, but for now, I am so, so, so excited that a new BtVS is in the works. Yes, the show being awful is a risk, but an opportunity for a chance to re-enter the Buffyverse in something for which I must give thanks. I mean, even bad Buffy is Buffy, right?

9. And now here we are, down to the last what-I'm-thankful-for, and that what-I'm-thankful-for is that I now get along with Glenn. For years after we divorced, we didn't talk at all, but we're now, at least in my opinion, while maybe not in the strictest sense friends, at least friendish or, to be more accurate, familyish, on my end at least, and I'm very grateful for that. It makes things so much easier for G that his parents could not-in-an-uncomfortable-way be in the same place, and I'd be lying if I said that after twenty years, two kids, and three dogs with Glenn, I didn't feel a familial bond. I'm very grateful that instead of a chalk outline on my floor this morning, I have a family photo I never would have expected that I can't show you because Florida is crazier than what goes on in my head (but you should know that everyone in it looks splendid. Especially me). 

And there, people who read my blog, you have it. 2025's What I'm Thankful For: An Abbreviated List. I hope you, too, are thankful for some things in your life, and as always, unless you're the comepinga or his puta, I wish you an eternity of love and peace. 

I'm Not as Sad as I Let Myself Believe Sometimes

The most amazing thing has happened, and when I say amazing, I mean amazing, like hallelujah, get-down-on-your-knees, praise-the-figurative-lord amazing. Something bad happened to me, and I had no desire to tell Jonathan. At all. He wasn't even a thought. Not an inkling. Not a blip. (I'm dancing on my butt (to Carr, if you're curious) while I think about it right now.) I'd say that might not seem like a very big deal to you, especially not a hallelujah, get-down-on-your-knees, praise-the-figurative-lord, amazingly big deal, but if you read my blog - and well, if you're here, you obviously do - you know that it is. Just in case you need reinforcement for that, though, let's look at some different something-bad-that-happened-to-me situations, the first one from about two years back.

Something-bad-that-happened-to-me, situation one: It's August of 2023. I get upsetting news, news that in retrospect was mildly upsetting although at the time, seemed devastating, devastating enough that all I could do was sob from the time I got the news at about 1:30 in the afternoon until I went to bed that night with intermittent lulls of sniffles here and there (yet further proof that hallelujah, I am healed because this current bad thing is for all intents and purposes way worse but it's made me about a-thousand-and-one-times less upset. Maybe even a thousand and two). The second I got that news, all I wanted was Jonathan. I wanted him to listen to me, I wanted him to comfort me, I wanted him to play the role he'd played for the previous three years, which, to an extent he did because when I text him, he FaceTimed me and after talking for hours, I was less of a mess than I'd been before the call. 

Something-bad-that-happened-to-me, situation two: December, a few months later. As you all know, my father passed away. Immediately I wanted Jonathan again, for the same reasons listed above. This time instead of FaceTiming me, he came to my house to help with a few things, making me feel better once again.

Something-bad-that-happened-to-me, non-specific situations: Periodically over the next year until I decided to not return his last text, it was more of the same. Something bad would happen, something would make me upset, and Jonathan was the first thing I'd want. I'd text him, he'd calm me down. After last September, though - or I guess if you want to get technical, a year ago from the September that just passed - that pattern stopped or at least the me-reaching-out-to-Jonathan part. He'd still be the first thing that came to mind when something bad happened, when something would make me upset, but I'd just sit with my sadness, missing Jonathan and the security-blanket effect he used to have, compounding the initial sadness I felt. 

Well. 

That longing for Jonathan? That compounded sadness? That, people who read my blog, is a thing of the past. 

Although this development, this realization that I'm completely over Jonathan came as a surprise, it shouldn't have. The signs were there. 

On his birthday, my present to myself was deleting our thread of texts. I also did away with the traces of him I was holding in this house: The mail addressed to him from nursing programs that had been sitting on my little bar cart? In the trash. The open Japanese curry block that had been sitting in the fridge and the unopened box on the pantry shelf? Same place. The I will always love you! he wrote on the whiteboard in my kitchen at some point after we broke up and the It's true! he added to that message when he came to my house after my father's death? Erased. The Jonathan box that used to sit on the nightstand in my closet so it would be accessible if I needed it? Relegated to the top shelf of my closet next to the Glenn and Louie boxes I need a chair to reach. 

And the most telling of all? The bewilderment I feel when a picture of him pops up in my memories. I look at him, and I think, Really? How? 

I was about to say I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but I think that's wrong. Although I've been moving through life as if it hadn't happened, telling myself I'm stuck in a quagmire of hopelessness and loneliness with no branch to grasp, that was much more due to my proclivity for the dramatic than the truth. The truth is that somewhere between here

and here

the change began. 

I'm thinking it was here 

and can pretty much definitively say by here

it was complete.

Between Salt Lake City and Montana, something in me changed. Unfortunately, until now I was too enmeshed in the story about myself I tell myself (along with anyone who will listen) to realize it, which means, of course, the universe did what it deemed necessary to make me see what I couldn't see by myself. 

***

My sister is a huge believer of things happen for a reason. I'm not. There are too many horrible things in this world for me to think there's a reason they occur. As you know, however, I do believe there are certain things that the universe, for one reason or another, can't ignore. Why? I have no idea. I can't pretend to know how the universe works or why some things matter more than others to it. But I do know many years ago, I blogged these exact words: 

It felt like this stupid cliche my dad sent me in an email once that read, "When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane." At least I think that's what it said. Or maybe it was about a fish? Something about swimming against the current maybe? I don't know, but either way, the message was the same:

Signs. Heed the signs. I personally try to ignore them, but it never works out. I just can't make my way through the oncoming traffic. Or all the damn fish.

***

And so, here I am. After failing to see what I couldn't, the universe did what it had to do to make me see what I was blind to on my own. 

The situation? Muy malo, for sure.

Closing the cover on Bug Warrior and Kelligralamb, the Early Years: What Happens When a Video Game Virtuoso and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fanatic Fall in Love?

Priceless. 

This Is War. Every Line Is about Who I Don't Wanna Write about Anymore

About twelve million years ago, I committed to writing a blog every night, which, at the time, didn't seem like a crazy departure from the norm since I had already been writing fairly regularly, and yet despite that pretty regular writing, it wasn't easy at all. Still, save missing a blog once or twice, I managed to do it. Now if I were to make a commitment like that? I'd fail on my first night. 

I don't know what's happened to me, why if it came down to having to write to save my life, you'd all be reading my obit, or for that matter, when I became either such a humongous liar or such a little bitch, afraid to tell the truth, because clearly I know what happened: I know what happened, you know what happened, everyone who's spoken to me for more than two minutes in the past two years knows what's happened along with strangers who've read the sordid details from every rounded corner of the Earth. The only mystery to what's happened is why the aftermath of the complete and utter betrayal I experienced is still aftermathing when at this point, two years and a little change down the road, I should have cobbled myself back together. I guess when something or someone is decimated, it takes longer than I realized to fix somehow create a semblance of what used to exist. 

Let's pretend for a second, though. Let's pretend I did have it in me to write. Let's pretend that I didn't write in my journal last night for the first time since a year ago May, disturbing its resting place in my nightstand right next to one of Jonathan's old shirts or that I didn't have lots of little fragments of blogs written that, unable to focus, I abandoned a few paragraphs in. Let's pretend I still had the writing oomph that until recently, had characterized me since sixth grade. 

What do I have to write about? 

That's what I asked in return when someone recently asked me if I'd updated my blog after first answering that all I ever want to write about is Jonathan --

case in point, after the Turnover concert on June 2, I had a whole blog planned out in my head called I Would Hate You If I Could. In that in-my-head blog, I talked about how fitting it was that on the two-year anniversary of the night that he lied about Carla being with Juanky, which led to us fighting all night and him breaking up with me the next day (did I mention it was over text? The ending of our three-year relationship? Of course I did. As if such a thing would go unmentioned), not only did I go alone to see Turnover, a band that we had seen together, but they played Peripheral Vision in its entirety, an album that, at least to me, held a special meaning in the novella of Jonathan and Kel, and as if that wasn't enough, the opening band was none other than Citizen, the band that I wrote about Jonathan listening to because of Carla despite never wanting to listen to the bands that I like. 

I planned to write that blog and how I stood alone at that show, screaming along with the lyrics, snippets of songs making me teary, snippets like 

You might be a stranger now and I just wanted to let you know . . .  losing you is like cutting my fingers off and even with that summer, without you, I'd rather cut my fingers off and Without you, I won't make it out, I don't think I'll make it out alive and It's a long way down when you fall and you're missing cloud nine and Would you come here and spin with me? I've been dying to make you dizzy and It was always a dream just to know you, sometimes I find I can hardly speak your name and I closed my eyes and suddenly we were attached, you stayed with me after the moment passed, I felt you and It's the worst in the summer, those happy songs on the radio 

until I Would Hate You If I Could started, and I was an all out mess as I sang along with Can I erase from my mind anything that you said or any time that we spent with each other? I don't want to waste another cell on a memory when you're just another meaningless lover. Forget the nights that we spent laughing until the morning on your bedroom floor without a thought about your roommate asleep down the hall. Forget the days we'd waste in bed, tangled, the smoke still on your breath, undressed and pinning you up to the wall. And I swore I heard you talking when I was tossing in my sleep. You were always trying to walk in circles around me. I was out one night when I saw you, and you froze me where I stood. I would hate you. I would hate you if I could--

but at this point, two years after our breakup, it's ridiculous. It's pathetic at this point, I told the person who asked me, and yes, I'm well-aware it was ridiculous and pathetic well before this point, but I feel like certain time markers escalate the patheticness and ridiculousness, two years being a big time marker if ever a big time marker there was. 

But I'm interested in the story, the person said. I want to read about it, the person said, at which point the other person in the conversation asked me if I still love Jonathan, and when I quickly answered no--she answered too quickly, the narrator would have said were the phone call to have happened in a book--I was asked why I want to write about him then leading to the adage Write what you know popping into my head. 

I know how to be sad. 

I know how to be heartbroken.

I know how to take something that should no longer affect me--So what if you see Carla and Jonathan at the Turnover show? G asked when I told him I was afraid I'd run into them there. He's just some guy you broke up with two years ago--and make it the center of my life. 

I know how to not be able to stand the thought of being romantically involved with anybody else.

I know how to be pathetic and ridiculous and after that talk plus a little bit of time to mull it over, to own up to the pathetic and ridiculous girl that I am. 

And as surprising as I find it, it looks like I still know how to write. 

Mrs. Highway's Thinking About the Present

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

                                                                 -Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

On the first day of 2022, I tweeted one of those the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-new-year-with pics, a pic I'd love to show you, but since I can't, I'll instead ask you to imagine a super cute girl, a little nerdy, a little not, skin the color of snow accentuated by the juxtaposition of her black-framed glasses as well as the "for Jonathan" scrawled across her chest in red lipstick, perfect near-black, silky curls grazing her prominent collar bones, just a little bit mussed. Actually, you know what? Think Jewish Snow White but alternative. 

That tweet was a year and a half before Jonathan and I broke up, but if I had to pinpoint a beginning to our end, that was it. Clearly when he not only neither liked nor acknowledged the tweet but, once pressed, admitted it made him feel uncomfortable, I should have known that things weren't right because what kind of guy in an almost-two-year relationship is uncomfortable because his girlfriend tweeted a picture like the one I described? It's not like I was spread eagle on the bed with "for Jonathan" written in lipstick on my inner thigh. I'd say as far as quote-unquote sexy photos go, and if you want to talk uncomfortable, you can't imagine how very uncomfortable it makes me to publicly call it that, this photo is extremely tame. It shows my shoulders and collarbones and nothing else (and lest you think he was uncomfortable because there's more to the photo than this - or less, if you know what I mean - that's also not the case). So, again, I ask you - what kind of guy in an almost-two-year relationship is uncomfortable because his girlfriend tweeted a photo like the one above? A guy who's uncomfortable with the relationship, that's what kind, or at least a guy who's uncomfortable with certain people on Twitter seeing evidence of it. 

But I digress. I digress because none of this matters anymore. 2022 was three years ago, Jonathan is not only no longer my boyfriend but also no longer my friend, not even like the kind you talk to every once in a while and no matter how long you go in between, they'll always be a part of your life (go ahead, ask me all about how I completely ignored the happy-birthday, he-hopes-I-have-an-amazing-day-:) birthday tweet he sent me at 7:33 in the morning on January 17), and the point of this very late New Year's post has nothing to do with Jonathan at all despite how what I've written so far may make it seem and, well, also what I'm about to write next, which is that

retrospective realizations aside, that photo (you know, the one my then boyfriend of a-year-and-a-half completely ignored and was made uncomfortable by) really was an accurate depiction of the way I felt. Do you see how happy I looked? That's not pretend. Do you see what it says on my chest? Not exaggeration. Every bit and piece of me belonged to Jonathan; people who read my blog, you think I've been so focused on him because of our breakup and everything that went along with it, but for three years I was entirely focused on him; Jonathan was, quite simply, my sun, and I was happy with that. Actually, scratch happy. Jesus, Mary, and the wee donkey, I was fucking thrilled. 

But that was then and - fucking duh - this is now, so let's stop looking behind us and look at the present or at least the much-more-recent past, a bridge to the present if you will, or better yet, a stepping stone, since we're about to go back a mere thirty-one days to New Year's Eve. 

When I tell you I came into 2025 on my ass and on my knees, that I scooted and hobbled and crawled my way toward the beginning of this year not only figuratively, but literally, I tell no tales. The Vegan Picadillo Debacle of '24 reinforced the tone that was set forth not only by the Sobbing-on-the-Kitchen-Floor Incident of New Year's Eve '23 but also by the new reality of having my mother living nearby, cemented by the more than six months of bathroom-and-bathroom-related fiascos so unbelievable, if the chain of events were depicted in fiction, the book would be criticized for being too unrealistic - that many horrible things couldn't possibly happen to one person! people would say to which I'd say, yeah, right (as I thought to myself that the possibility that I'd soon be standing in the ocean and washing myself with a live fish was seeming more and more likely) - and maintained through a work schedule so rigorous, I'm pretty sure I could stack up all the papers I graded last semester and take a nap on them Princess-and-the-Pea style if I had the time (which I don't because who has the time to stack two hundred thousand papers when they're busy grading them?)

and so (!!), if I were I to have tweeted one of those the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-new-year-with pics on the first day of 2025, boy would it be different from the one from 2022. For this one, I'd like you to imagine that alternative Snow White you pictured earlier but this time, her brow is furrowed, her hazel eyes are squinted, her perfect curls are not so perfect at all, her skin is shiny sweat, and truth be told, she looks like she's been through the mill. More than once.

Did you imagine it? Well, I'm here to tell you that however horrible you imagined me, however exhausted, however beaten, battered, and just plain miserable you imagined I looked, trust that I feel worse. 

I won't go into the story because it's getting a post of its very own, but I will say that that photo, taken at 1:42 pm on December 31, is the aftermath of an 8.5-mile run with a pulled calf muscle in the scorching sun, a run so brutally painful, I had to scoot up the stairs on my butt when I got home, RICE for two days, and for almost a week, I could barely walk. I'll also say that as I was hobbling along on that run, refusing to quit, nearly crying from pain, I thought to myself that this was the perfect way to end the year, the culmination of everything I'd experienced throughout the year, the physical manifestation of the anguish I'd felt, still felt, and as bad as that pain felt, it felt justified, it felt right, like the way sometimes I really want to go to a show just to get pushed around. 

In the same vein that if my life were a novel, people would say it's not realistic, if my life were a novel, I'd be writing right now that after that run, after the turning of the calendar that midnight, I woke up a new person, ready to move on, to finally leave my past in the past. Poetic as that would be, it wouldn't be true. What is true is that I woke up just as miserable as I'd been waking up, maybe even more miserable since two-and-a-half weeks down the line I had to go on a trip I no longer wanted to go on that I'd scheduled months earlier both so I could run in a new state and also so I could run away, albeit briefly, from my life. 

Yes, I know. We established in this post that chasing happiness doesn't work. I wasn't exactly doing that - chasing happiness - when I scheduled the trip, just hoping to avoid what I knew decidedly would not be happiness, and that, people who read my blog, was spending the weekend of my fiftieth birthday in this house. For months leading up to it, starting right after Jonathan's birthday, really, because I had become used to shifting from Jonathan's-birthday-is-approaching mode to a now-my-birthday-is-coming-up frame of mind when we were together, and as you're aware, that didn't end when we broke up, I was dreading it. I wasn't dreading it because I was dreading turning fifty; I was dreading it because I was turning fifty and my life is my life. As a result, at some point in October, I decided I'd take a break from it; I'd get away from this place where I knew I'd spend my birthday sitting around feeling sorry for myself thinking about ghosts. 

I decided to plan a trip. I made a list of all the states I hadn't run and started doing research. Since my birthday is in the middle of January, it couldn't be somewhere with freezing cold winters which left three states: Hawaii, Arizona, and New Mexico. Although I almost ended up going to Hawaii, after looking up a lot a lot a lot of things from vegan food options to official runs to coffee shops and taking travel time versus the amount of time I'd get to spend wherever I ended up into consideration, I ended up choosing Arizona. I then invited some people to go, got the yeses I was looking for, and thought I'd achieved what I set out to achieve. Something big. Something fun. Something that would make me forget that I was turning fifty by myself. 

Well. One of my favorite sayings isn't about the best laid plans of mice and men for nothing; alas, the big, fun trip I planned was turning out to be the opposite. We'll skip all the details of what went wrong with the trip in the months leading up to it, why I was dreading it, and what went wrong on it (although maybe we'll revisit it later) because I'm really not in the mood to go into it. What we'll talk about instead is the psychic.

So there was this psychic. There's a little bit more to the story that maybe one day I'll go into if I ever feel like talking about the whole Arizona thing, but for now, what's relevant is that there was this psychic but when I say there was this psychic, what I mean is there were two psychics because they, they being the psychics my friend found, worked in a pair. My sister, my friend, and I talked to these psychics for an hour, but since it was my birthday trip, they mostly focused on me. While we sat with them eating the blandest Thai food known to man, trying to avoid the twenty-seven degree weather on the coldest day in Sedona (did I mention I chose Arizona to avoid the cold?), many things were said, but the three most important were that I had a fear monger on me, which they removed, that my ex-boyfriend's mother had done some dark stuff to me, which they did as much as they could to remove but weren't completely able (this is where the fish-as-soap comes in), and that while my friend and my sister each had their soul, spirit, and heart, I didn't have my spirit or my soul, both of which they restored. 

Now, I don't know how valid these psychics were, and I'm sure some of you are thinking, I know how valid, but valid psychics or not, they gave some really good advice, and if anything, I got $220 worth of pretty helpful therapy. Also, valid psychics or not, I don't question their validity because whether through power of suggestion/ placebo effect, that hour of counsel, or something else, the things they said and the things they did worked. 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I went from Angelus to Angel once my spirit and soul were "restored," but since my trip - my miserable, miserable trip - I feel different. I feel less lonely, and I feel less lovelorn, and I feel like I'm finally seeing things with a clarity that for so long I'd been unable to achieve. I also, and God, it's so embarrassing to admit this but you know me - it's all humiliation all the time around these parts - haven't looked at any of their socials since that night (except when I had to a few days ago when I blocked their Instagram accounts). This might not sound like a big deal to you, but to say I had a sick fascination with their accounts - especially the puta's - that's mild. 

That psychic session was on a Monday (January 20). Afterward, I felt exactly the same. Sad, frustrated, lonely; agitated about my trip. The next morning, too. Agitation abounded. The day after I got back, though, that was a Wednesday, and Wednesday means run club. It was drizzly and cold, I was exhausted from traveling and from the time change, and for the first time ever, I didn't want to go. But I did. 

The drizzle turned to rain as I ran, and as hackneyed and dramatic as it sounds, when I ran through that cold rain, it felt like a baptism, the cleansing rivulets ushering in a rebirth (and a horrible chest cold, but we won't talk about that). I smiled and I laughed as I bounded down the street (I bounded slowly because of my calf, but I would still say I bounded instead of ran). It was a spiritual experience, and for this girl who has regularly eschewed spirituality, even saying that says a lot). And now? Now, post-baptism run? Post-psychic meeting? Post-the blocking of the socials? Now, if I were to tweet a the-energy-I'm-coming-into-the-second-month-of-the-new-year-with pic? This time it would be me, standing in Sedona, Cathedral Rock behind me. My curls are more than a little bit mussed, but in a good way. I'm staring at the camera, a tentative smile on my face, and I look content. Maybe not thrilled like I looked in that "for Jonathan" photo, but not like I'm ready to pick up a razor blade, either. 

I'm not elated or ready to jump for joy like I was in 2022, but I'm also not battered and broken. For the first time in a long time, instead of bits and pieces of the one I used to be, I feel like an entire  human being. A vastly different human being than I used to be, for sure, but complete - a little older, a little rougher, a little more worn. A little more velveteen rabbit. And I suppose I can live with that. 

Happy(ish) Holiday, You Bastard! 2024

2024, where have you gone? It's not quite the end of the year yet, but blink and it will be, and how? How is it the end of November? How is it time for the writing of this somewhat-problematic post, the one I have to dig deep to write, so deep I might as well call it an excavation because that's really what it is, the attempted unearthing of my former self or at least what's left of her (and I have to be honest with you, it's not very much. A bone here, a tooth there, a faint desire to maybe possibly get close to another human being again at some point before I die)? How did this year pass me by? Like always when time is involved, I just don't understand, but understand or not, here we are, Thanksgiving 2024, and before this post goes completely awry while I discuss time - and in effect, life - passing, let me get to what I came here for, which as you know is 

Things That I'm Thankful For, 2024

1. It doesn't really feel like something to be thankful for since I'm still so not in a good place, but I don't cry every day anymore, so I suppose I'm thankful for that. I mentioned in one of my last posts, maybe even my actual last, that I pulled up my big girl pants, and I'm happy to report that I haven't taken them off. I cry sometimes, sure (and just to be clear, we're talking about Jonathan-related crying. I cry all the time about everything else), but the tears come much farther between and are far fewer when they do.

2. To add to that, I guess what I'll say is despite how far I still have to go, over the last year, I've come a long, long way. I don't want this to turn into a Jonathan blog, so number two is the last I'll mention in regard to him, but after my birthday debacle when he came here, got into bed with me "to cuddle" for the second time in a few weeks, told me to do whatever I wanted, and burst out crying about a minute later because, and with changes for fluency, I quote, he never did this to me when we were together (although I would argue that what he did to me was much worse than what he did to a "girlfriend" he hadn't even yet French kissed after having been her "boyfriend" for six months), things started to shift, and while I can't say they've completely shifted to where they should be (whatever that means) and have to admit they might not ever, they've admittedly shifted to a much better place.

3. Okay, so I know I said this last year, but I'd be remiss to not mention being thankful for the results of all the hard work I put into my physical self. I cannot express how thankful I am to look like this 

 

instead of like this 

 

and before anyone gets up in arms about how I'm not nice or says it's what's on the inside that counts, I'd like to point out that setting your sights on the life partner of someone else is as douchy and cunty as it gets, and therefore, this (albeit possibly formerly) frigid bitch is getting nothing less than she deserves. Also, the idea that people are supposed to be nice is really nothing more than a way to keep people in line, particularly women, so fuck that noise up its misogynistic ass. 

4. We're going backward a little, back up to number three where I mentioned the hard work I've put into my physical self, but that's because I have to express gratitude for what it does for not just the way I look but also for my actual physical health. My father's death could easily have been avoided if he'd eaten better and been more physically active, and my mother is, without exaggeration, probably in the worst physical and mental shape out of anybody I've ever met, and her deterioration - if you could call it that since she's never, ever been in good shape - is self-inflicted, one-hundred percent. I look at my parents and the price of neglecting health, and I'm thankful that I have the drive and determination to be as healthy as I possibly can, and well, not to milk this workout thing, but that brings me to number

5. because not only does my hard work equal looking good and feeling good physically, I couldn't possibly overstate how much it helps my mental health, something for which I'm thankful for all the time.

6. My 28:03 5k PR and along with that

7. the realization that my limitations are my limitations only because I believe them to be so. I am capable of so much more than I've realized. 

8. Crystal. As you may know from a recent post, this summer I went to eight states to run. I almost didn't, though, because I didn't want to go by myself hence why I'm thankful for Crystal. Crystal is a former student, a formerly extremely good friend, someone I've probably written about in the past, and although we rarely talk anymore for no reason other than life, I follow her Instagram. At some point this year, she posted a story about how she flew to London by herself to go see Adele, and she posted highlights of all the things she did by herself on her trip. Now, I'm no stranger to doing things alone, but traveling alone is something I hadn't really done. After seeing Crystal's post, though, I decided I wasn't going to let being by myself stop me from going places I wanted to go. If Crystal could go to England alone, I told myself, I could go to New England and the Midwest, and, with that in mind, I bought plane tickets, rented cars, booked hotels, and did a whole lot of things I otherwise wouldn't have done. 

9. My bathroom. Praise God, hallelujah, I have a whole bathroom in my house! It seems like an odd thing to be thankful for, I know, but this August I started getting my bathroom remodeled, and what was supposed to be a simple remodel became an utter fiasco, taking three months. What that means is from the second week of August until about two weeks ago, I had no shower in my house, and no, I didn't have a bathtub, either. I had a half bath downstairs and nothing more. For almost three months - three months! - I had to wake up every weekday at 5 am to go to the gym to take a shower before work and also, of course, take a shower there on the weekends. There are still some odds and ends that have to be taken care of, but let me tell you something: being able to take a shower in my own house is something I took for granted and never thought I'd be thankful for, but holy shit, I fucking am. 

(Also, my bathroom might just be the prettiest bathroom I've ever seen, and after all the stress, depression, and anxiety this bathroom has caused me, I'm extremely thankful for that.) 

 

10. Sour beer that somehow also is sweet

11. and stouts

12. Thinking about it now, I suppose that in light of the whole bathroom thing, I'm also grateful for the gym because what the fuck would I have done if I didn't have that? Where would I have showered for those three months? 

13. Curt. For at least a year, this poor man patiently listened to me sob, cry, and whine nonstop, sometimes for hours in one phone call. He never once complained or asked me to stop, something I completely (read: selfishly) took for granted but now realize is rare, even among close friends. 

14. Zoom. I have a pretty good friend - my oldest friend - who lives in Oregon, which is pretty much as far away as you could get from me and still be in this country. Thanks to Zoom, which I guess is really sort of thanks to Covid because if it weren't for Covid, Zoom wold barely be a thing, she and I meet virtually every few weeks to hang out and have a drink which has been really nice.

15. Solitude. After I got out of that sort-of relationship I found myself in with that guy this summer, I deleted all my dating apps and stayed completely away from guys, and talk about something doing wonders. I had no business being on those apps when I was still so desperately in love with Jonathan and so emotionally fragile, and deleting them was the best thing I could have done not only for myself but also for any guy who might have come along (like the guy I accidentally found myself seeing). 

16. And in a complete contrast to solitude, run club. I know I mentioned run club last year, but when I tell you it's run club for the win, jumping Jesus on a pogo stick is it run club for the win. Between the time of my ex-Glenn and Jonathan, I found that I'd somehow exhausted all of my (local) friends and spent a lot of time being lonely. A lot. While with Jonathan, I had him and pretty much no one else, so when we broke up, I found myself alone. For so long, I wanted to make friends, both before, during, and after Jonathan, but didn't know how. Enter run club. What started out as just weekly runs and an awkward after-run drink has become a place where I've found friends, like actual ones, not just running related, and a place where I feel like I belong. I won't go so far as to say run club saved my life because I'd never kill myself (although I did think seriously about not wanting to be alive this year a lot), but it saved something that really needed to be saved, that's for sure. 

And, with that, I think I'll end. Sixteen is more than halfway to my pre-Jonathan list of thirty, after all, and with my recent past, I'm honestly surprised I'm thankful for as many things as I am (although since one of them might be a little mean spirited, maybe not). Before I disappear to make an ungodly amount of food for just Kiwi and me, I bid a Happy Thanksgiving to you, people who read my blog, and as always, a day, a year, a life of love and peace. 

And Does Your Wifey Know the Way that the Sunshine Gleams from Your Wedding Band?

Can we please, just for a second, talk about the grossness of men? 

And to do that, can we use some props? And then after, can I talk about something that's been on my mind a lot? Like a lot a lot? 

Yes, yes, and yes? 

Cool, cool. Onward with 

The Plot

Last night after I'd just finished running, I was watching Gilmore Girls, lazing about, when I noticed a notification on my phone. I'd tell you what it said, but instead I'll just show you what I saw. 

Gross, right? Wait until I show you 

The Background

Last year while I was doing who knows what since how the hell am I supposed to remember exactly what I was doing at a random moment a year ago, I got a message on Instagram. I'd tell you what it said, but instead I'll just show you what I saw. 

Normally I'd insert some sort of commentary here, but I think that's unnecessary; the conversation speaks for itself. For the next few months, I got a spate of heart eyes responses to my stories along with the occasional flame, some so deliciouses, and a lil snack. Nothing super noteworthy until January 25 when I got

I realize, yes, that those January 25 messages may not seem particularly noteworthy; that's because what's noteworthy is what's now gone. After that last message on January 25, this dude messaged me like mad. Like mad! He was leaving his wife, he told me. It was over, he said. It was over for so many reasons, and she was fully aware. The dude went on and on, sending messages and then taking them back and then sending reworded ones. I went to bed while this was still going on, and the next morning when I woke up, all the messages were gone. Later that night, he sent the message offering an explanation, which I didn't respond to, along with his phone number, which I didn't use. 

You'd think that would have stopped the messages from coming. You'd think wrong. 

After that last message, I got a few more heart eyes responses to stories, and then last night,

The Creme de la Creme

Now, I repeat: Can we please, just for a second, talk about the grossness of men?

I refrained from the commentary like I said I would, but I do feel the need to add that I'm friends with this guy on Facebook, and he posts photos of himself with his wife a lot. If the two of them have a bad marriage - well, obviously they have a bad marriage, so let me rephrase that - the fact that the two of them have a bad marriage? She doesn't know. This poor lady has no earthly idea. None. 

This poor lady is sitting here living her life, loving her husband, thinking everything is just fucking fine while he's been busy messaging me for over a year, telling me not just that he wants to hook up which would be bad in itself but that he loves me - that he loves me! - and that he'll leave her for me. 

Fucking what? 

I just - 

Could we just, for a second, Idk, explore? Talk this out? Bear with me while I think on screen.

Let's pretend I could potentially have any interest in this comepinga at all. He seriously thinks that pursuing me while he has a wife is the way to go? That I would ever ever ever in a million years cross a boundary like that?

Who am I, the goth version of Miss Piggy who posted a photo of herself talking about wanting what's forbidden the night she had her friend repeatedly text my then boyfriend because she so desperately wanted him? 

In case you didn't get that that was a rhetorical question, the answer is no, I am in no way, shape - especially in shape - or form the Miss-Piggy-looking puta who, at least in photos, doesn't seem to know how to close her mouth, and if ever there was a time that I was, maybe when I was super young and insecure, like before I was even twenty years old and a gordita myself (what is it with gorditas? Why does being a fat girl cause such shitty behavior?), it's not something I ever would have done in my entire adult life, and it's certainly not something I would do after the events of the last few years. 

El Wray himself could knock on my door, and because of Cherry Darling, I'd leave it closed. 

El Wray!

And this motherfucker thinks what? He's going to win me over by telling me he loves me and offering to leave his wife? The same way that six months into our relationship, Jonathan was telling some girl on Twitter to rail him; two years into it, he was messaging the puta in the morning before sending his daily Good-morning-baby-I-love-you text to me; and six months into his new relationship with her, he was in my bed with his face between my thighs?

God, I'm tired. 

I'm so fucking tired. 

I'm tired of it, and I'm tired of them, so please, for just one little second, can we talk about 

The Fucking Grossness of Men? 

Your Little Blogs Are Getting Way Too Literal. How About Some Goddamn Subtlety for a Change?

It occurred to me two nights ago while I was running that I haven't told you about my toilet situation, a perfectly natural thing to not write about what with everything else that's been going on in my life. Over the course of the last week, though, when my longtime toilet issue graduated first from mild annoyance to major inconvenience and then from major inconvenience to life lesson, I realized it was high time for the toilet to be discussed. To discuss it, though, we have to go back to the start.

The Start

January 17, 1975, twelve days after the day I was due - wait, no, not that beginning. While I'm sure you'd love to hear the story of my birth, let's flash forward forty-eight-and-a-half years to last June when my toilet woes began. The toilet upstairs, which is the only toilet upstairs, had been running intermittently for a while, but in the middle of June, it started running more and more. A handyman who was at my house doing some other stuff tried to fix it but couldn't, so I looked on Yelp and called a plumber, like a real live actual one. He came, did whatever it is a plumber does, said he fixed it, and left. 

A little while after the plumber left, I went upstairs to go to the bathroom and noticed that when I flushed the toilet, the flush was off. What I mean by this is when I flushed the toilet, it didn't feel like the handle was quite connecting with whatever it was supposed to connect with inside. The sound and feel was, I don't know, hollow? I'm not sure if that makes sense, but that's the best word I can come up with to describe how it felt. Not only did the flush feel hollow - if that had been the only issue, who would have given a fuck? Not me, that's for sure - but upon flushing the toilet, the water didn't fill up the bowl; instead, it just barely covered the little hole. In order to make it fill more, I had to stand there and hold the handle down because going to the bathroom in a toilet with such a small amount of water would have led to nothing but a dirty toilet bowl and things that are gross. 

I called the plumber back as soon as I noticed the issue, he came back the next day, he spent about four hours in my bathroom, and unable to fix it, he gave me my money back in exchange for my promise to not leave him a review on Yelp. As he left, he commented on how I really made out because I didn't have to pay anything, but he fixed the issue that I originally called him about. Well, you know what? Fuck that guy because no, he certainly did not. While before I called him back, yes, my toilet had stopped running, when he came back to fix whatever it was he broke, he made my toilet run again.

A couple days later, my ex-Glenn, who was a plumber's apprentice about a million years ago, came over to fix the toilet. Apparently fixing my toilet is some sort of impossible task, though, because he couldn't fix it, either. He got it to flush the right way, at least, but as for the running? It didn't stop. I decided I had enough going on in my life to worry about a running toilet and moved on.

Okay, so that was July (the plumber dude came in June, Glenn in the middle of July). I lived with the running toilet; it got more and more frequent but whatever. I had things to do, things like cry and stalk and belittle, go back and forth with an ex-boyfriend who had as hard a time letting me go as I had letting go of him. In the meantime, though, while I focused on the falling apart of my internal world, my external world was doing the same, and come January, my toilet tank stopped filling up.

Here's what would happen: Nothing. Like, literally nothing. I'd flush my toilet, and nothing. Well, that's not true. The toilet would flush, and then the nothing would come, nothing being no water coming into the bowl or into the tank. I tried playing with the handle, and I tried working with the chain, but the only thing that would make the toilet fill up was taking the top off and pulling up what I'm pretty sure is called the canister flush valve. I'd pull that thing up, the toilet would fill up, and I'd put the top back on. 

For about a month and a half, maybe two, I did that every time I went to the bathroom: took the top of the toilet off, set it down on the bathmat, pulled up the top of the canister thing, waited for the water to fill up, and put the top back on. I loved doing that two or three times a day. It was awesome. Actually, in retrospect, it was awesome. I wish I could still do it, but alas, I cannot, for one day, pulling up the canister valve thing no longer worked. I pulled it up, but instead of going back flush with the bottom part where the little seal is when I let it go, the water instead trickled out. It would stop when I pushed down on it, but once I stopped pushing and, in effect, the pressure stopped, the trickling began. At that point, I had no choice but to turn the toilet water off. 

Now, the toilet water was turned off, yes, but that didn't mean I no longer used it. What I did was use the toilet downstairs during the day and the one upstairs, the broken one, the only other one in the house, in the middle of the night and in the morning when I woke up. When I went in the middle of the night, I wouldn't flush, and then when I went in the morning, I'd turn the water valve on, let the toilet fill up, flush the toilet, and then turn the water off. Barely an inconvenience. In fact, not only was it barely an inconvenience, it was better than what I'd been dealing with in the past. The toilet was no longer running practically nonstop, and I didn't have to keep taking the tank top on and off and playing with my toilet's insides. I even thought to myself that I was dumb not to have turned the toilet water off sooner. 

Well, I'll tell you what was dumb, and that's thinking I outsmarted my diabolical toilet whose mission, it's become clear, is to defeat me. At this point in my story, the point when I started turning the toilet off and on every day, it was, I believe, the middle of March. And I know what you're thinking. I know! Kelly, you're thinking, you crazy bitch, why the fuck didn't you call a plumber? Well, mean people who read my blog, I did that once, and it didn't work. Excuse me for being a little wary. My best course of action, I decided, would be getting a whole new toilet, but I plan to redo my bathroom this summer, so getting a new one just a few months before the entire bathroom is ripped apart seemed dumb and like an unnecessary expense. The way I looked at it, I'd been dealing with toilet problems for so long, how big a deal was it to turn it off and on every day for a few months? 

lol

I'll tell you how big a deal it is. A few weeks in, I started noticing that the floor was a tiny bit wet under the valve. Just a few drops, though, so I didn't think much of it. A couple weeks after that - we're now up to last week - I woke up in the morning, peed, turned the valve on, flushed the toilet, and turned the valve off. I then got in the shower, and while in there I kept hearing an intermittent noise. Wondering what it was, I turned off the water only to hear nothing. Turning the water back on, I finished my shower, got out, dried off, and began to brush my teeth. Again, the noise. I turned my toothbrush off. This time the noise didn't stop. My toilet - my toilet with the water valve turned off - was running, and it was running a lot. 

After playing with the valve for a few minutes, I grabbed my phone. I Googled. I YouTubed. I wanted to cry. Apparently there's this screw in the valve, and after the valve gets turned off and on enough times, it starts to loosen. Grabbing a screwdriver from my handy dandy Ikea toolkit, I tried doing what the YouTube video instructed me to do, but it didn't quite work. I was, however, able to mostly control the running so that now, a few days later, I sometimes hear an itty bitty trickle but it's nothing compared to what previously had been a nearly constant gush. 

Those good old days of waking up and turning my toilet water off and on? Those are over now because fuck if I'm going to tempt fate by turning the water on again. This happened Thursday, so for the past three nights, I've had to trek downstairs to pee in the middle of the night which let me tell you, is the opposite of fun, and as for the mornings? Well, the very first thing I do when I wake up is pee, and on the weekends, that's followed immediately by applying sunscreen, waiting fifteen minutes, and then walking my dogs. Yesterday and today being weekend days, and me not wanting to rile up my dogs by going downstairs, I did the only thing I could. I sat on the edge of my bathtub, let my butt hang over the inside, and Jesus God I can't believe I'm about to type this, I peed. In my bathtub, and yes, I'm well aware I brought this on myself.

And so the moral of my story? The epiphany I had while I was running, the life lesson I learned? When something is wrong, you can ignore it at first because maybe it's not that big a deal, a minor annoyance is all, and then when you can't quite ignore it anymore, you can find ways to sort of patch it up - jerry rig it as Jonathan used to call it, a much nicer and more acceptable term than the one I grew up hearing - and just go on as if everything is fine, hoping the issue will disappear, but problems don't go away on their own. If you don't actually address what's wrong, what's really wrong, before you know it, there you are, sitting naked on the edge of your bathtub, butt suspended in thin air, peeing and praying you've scooted far enough back that you don't accidentally pee on your bathroom floor.