Just wanted to acknowledge, I know three beautiful women who are either terminally ill or receiving chemo for very aggressive forms of cancer. I have lost so many friends and family members, I think this sort of thing becomes triggering, after a while. I bought cards for all of them today, but I don't have their mailing addresses. I will figure out how to ask, maybe in a couple of days I will try.

I am so grateful for what I have. I wish I could find a way to be at peace with this life, as it is, in this moment.

Maybe the stars will help.

Natasha made me a slideshow of Avalanche's kitten photos, I love it so much.



Things I'd love to do today: ( things to do list )

had an okay rest of the day. made josh some pizza. got henna on my hair and finally took a shower. walked back to the mechanic to pick up my car which now has new brakes and rotors. A little stressed about the potentially leaking newly replaced battery but I will check in a few times over the next couple weeks and call the battery place I got it from if it looks suspect to me. sigh.

was misty rainy cloudy all day, was really nice actually. was almost cool enough to bake cookies, but I refrained. this time. It will be 100 degrees again next week, so, enjoying this while i can.

failed to do any website work or fold my laundry or cull anything, but I'm also in a lot of pain and happy with what I did accomplish. ate reasonably well. got some cat food after I got my car back.

They washed my car! Bless them. This is literally the 4th time it has been washed in the 8 years that I've owned it.

The inside still needs cleaned, I might take it to the coin-op vacuum place and do that tomorrow while it is still empty. Then I can wipe it down and replace whatever I feel like should be in there. There are certain things I like to always keep in my car: spare scissors and gloves and pens, charging cords, hair ties, umbrella, deodorant, a clean jar for drinks or coffee (I have a pet peeve about disposable coffee cups), water, pillow and wool blanket (for emergency strandedness - this has never happened to me and I hope it never will), packaged snacks, napkins, ice scraper, a little bag for wrappers and such, hand sanitizer. Usually I have a spare hoodie floating around in the back.

I need to re-do my earthquake emergency bin but I should clean out the storage closet before I do that.

I think I might go to bed early again. Back and feet are hurting after 4 miles of urban walking, today.

But hey, my hair is dyed, my car can stop safely, and Josh and Avalanche are fed. All is relatively well.

I started taking collagen consistently after a second doctor insisted I do so, and for the first time, I can see a visible difference, in my fingernails. I am hopeful it might help my joints and other physical areas, too (skin and hair, etc). I am so grateful that Cynthia gave me some in pill form, for the days when I'm not able to do my 2nd morning hot drink to consume the powder form. I found the Vital Proteins Marine Collagen powder at Natural Grocers for a full $12 less than the cost at the other grocery store - it is still $2 more than the fullscript price but comes out to be less overall since I'm not paying for shipping. Grateful. I would take gelatin instead but I can't find the Knott's gelatin anywhere? Except in little individual 5g packets, which doesn't work if I need to take 30g a day.

At least during this phase of perimenopause, it has become clear that I cannot do anything meaningful or serious or important after 8pm. I'm not up for folding laundry, so. Might as well just sleep.

I think the cleaning videos are overwhelming me a little bit, because they sort of are forcing me to remove my blinders around my own clutter piles. or DOOM piles as they are affectionately called in the ADHD community. ("Didn't Organize Only Moved.") My entire apartment is pretty much a collection of DOOM piles, oops. I do not think I have ADHD. I think I have Attention Deficit, but due to screen usage, not as an actual neural type. It's not a disorder, it's an appropriate and expected symptom of staring at screens too much.

Took my car in to get the brakes fixed, walked home from the shop. It's in an unpleasant area so the walk is mostly unpleasant, but the weather is so lovely. It's this soft grey summer light rain overcast morning, there was not enough rain to use my umbrella. I couldn't pass up walking in that.

But my ankle and back were twinging a mile in. (It was maybe a two mile walk.) So I will skip silks again, today. I have Friday off so I can go then hopefully. The Friday open gym host plays generic lo-fi music which is unbearable to try to work out to, everything in that "music" screams "plz sit idle and mindlessly scroll the internet and do nothing else," to me, but I will try to push through and just ignore it. I can bring my earbuds maybe.

I am so sad. My body hurts, my heart hearts, my tummy hurts, I had to just pause and sit with my face in my hands for a minute. I cried on the way home. Walking past the mall that I grew up in and seeing what pandemic did to it can be emotionally crushing. I can't wait to move away from this area.

But so grateful for the soft summer rain.

So far we have been spared wildfire smoke. I know it's coming, so I am just so thankful for every day that goes by that I'm not inhaling smoke.

...

I cleaned out my car entirely before taking it to the shop. I am totally wiped out from doing that. I pulled out enough blankets and sheets and clothing to do four loads of laundry. (Stuff leftover from camping and hiking.) I might try to work through that pile, today.

I also want to do more culling, it is just so difficult and slow-going. I'd like to tackle the bathroom. It seems like there are always more important things to do, but it would feel really good to have one room entirely cleaned out.

I have so many more to tackle, I can't think about it or I get paralyzed with anxiety and overwhelm.

..

I would also love to work on my website, we'll see if I can motivate at all toward that, today.

...

While walking through the neighborhood where we do Thriller flashmob practices every year, I thought really hard about whether I want to do that again. I've been teaching for 12 years at this point, and I just don't want to anymore. I am in so much physical pain, I probably have no business dancing on concrete at all. But also, practicing at the park is awful. Most of my classes only had 3-5 people in them, so we were not enough of a presence to deter aggressive basket ball players from shooting baskets near us (the basketball courts are where we perform every year, so we have been using this as practice space), and I got hit with a ball last year. I don't want to risk a hit that results in injury, for me or for anyone else trying to learn. I hate the sound of the balls too, it hurts my ears, I have tinnitus now and that will make it worse.

We do all of this for free, we have no budget, there is nowhere I wouldn't be embarrassed asking to use space to practice in, since Michael Jackson is such an unsavory character in general. It isn't a celebration of Michael, it's just a troupe of zombies and an appreciation for the song itself and the dance, but many people would view that as condoning child abuse or whatever. I am a child sex abuse victim myself so I just don't feel comfortable even asking.

So, I need to talk to our fearless organizer about this. I am the last of the instructors left, so if I go, the entire thing will most likely fall apart. I feel bad but I can't hold it up by myself, and I don't want to.

Need to refresh my Wednesday dance, in the meantime.

...

erg, the mechanic tried to upsell me an oil change and a new battery. I just replaced my battery in January and my oil change also just happened. I think I will go find another mechanic after this. This is a place Josh found, and I've used them because I can walk home from their shop. I think because my car is filthy, they think I neglect my maintenance. I do not. It's filthy because I take her to the mountains, and don't have access to a hose or shop vac.

uuugghhhhh okay need to get over this anger-induced cortisol burst and get something done. :( might need some breakfast. my cramps are super painful right now and I don't want to eat, but I probably should.

I was today years old when I discovered that the word for popcorn in Spanish means "little doves" and I will be forever calling it that, and imagining little delicate papery doves taking off in bursts and flurries out of the popcorn maker :)

Popcorn is one of my favorite foods. I was raised on it. For a time I was eating it almost daily, and had to limit myself to one day a week, as I generally devour a bowl twice the size of my own head in one sitting.

Sundays are popcorn day. Or, "little doves" day :D

Popcorn is "popcorn" in French. Listening to Josh work on the pronunciation of this was adorable.

...

It's August, and normally I am elated but it's been such a stressful three days that I am just... embracing the fact that there are already Halloween decorations in the stores and dreaming of pumpkin spice. Not like me, but that's where I am, today. I sat down with my giant bowl of little doves, topped with fresh chopped rosemary and nutritional yeast, and re-watched Edward Scissorhands in its entirety.

I have avoided doing so for many years for the heartbreaking sadness and over the top silliness of the film, but tonight, those aspects were maybe my favorite. I just needed something not serious and profoundly sad. Like life. I loved Dianne Wiest so much, I relate to her more than to Kim, at this point (I was fifteen when that movie came out!), I feel like an Avon Lady at times, she was 42 at the time but that meant something different in 1990, and I'd forgotten how fun it was to watch Edward do topiary and dog grooming and hair styling.

I glanced at Johnny Depp's bio and my goodness, to come from a blue collar broken family that moved all the time, to drop out of high school and have the principal literally tell him not to come back, at age 16, to pursue his dreams of being a musician, and to create such a beautiful catalog of work from such a rocky start is so impressive. Some people are just able to do ten times what I could ever accomplish in a lifetime, even if they don't get dealt the best hand to start with. That said, his step dad was Robert Palmer, which inspired him to pursue music, which is how he got into acting, so I guess he had that going for him, ha.