I slept in

I've just been up a few minute

I'm attractively hacking because I have

so much drainage

but also my nose is running

idk why

if it's cold shouldn't there be no pollen

also

eyes itch

I suddenly want pumpkin pie

but

have none nor ingredients

I don't really do anything for Halloween, ever

I used to buy candy in case I got trick or treaters

but since I don't decorate

I never get trick or treaters

and then I'd eat the candy

so I stopped buying the candy

now

I want

pumpkin 🥧 🥧 pie

but

probably not enough to go to the store

hope you're having fun

I love you very much sweetheart

Fell asleep in the chair again

The cheese song has been stuck in my head for I don't know a while

And steny

And it's amusing me no end that that's what stuck in my head

Goodnight sweetheart I love you

Very much

 i'm so tired

that really wore me out

i guess when you don't lift the boxes

stuff wears you out more

i'm pretty impressed with myself though

not because it's so perfect

but

i thought i was gonna have a step ladder

and a level

and all i had was hangers

a wonky measuring tape

and a piece of mat board to use as a straight edge

there're a couple things that aren't framed yet

but there are frames to swap out

they're not being sent out for framing or anything

there's some stuff to tweek

but that's gonna happen

after the studio gets set up and organized

i wondered why there were all the tables

students

she's thinking about getting students

look just no, not right now

pandemic

you are a high risk group

the pictures aren't all hung as perfectly as i'd like

but

i'm notoriously bad at hanging things

so it feels like a minor miracle

that i managed 

if you see something not perfect

you don't need to tell me

i know

i love you sweetheart

I fell asleep in the chair again

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

 not houston and dallas

houston and austin

that makes more sense

dallas is mostly republican

and

as far as i can tell

they aren't meant to be

at the polls

they are meant to quell unrest

which i read as protests

i am so stressed about this crap

And I guess it's officially winter

Because it's 45°

Which in Houston

Is known as a hard freeze

I guess I was going to tell you about my day with my mom and I mean it wasn't bad or anything but I'm not going to it's also not interesting

But I guess I do want to tell you

I'm kind of worried

They're in court now trying to get the hundred thousand votes of the people who voted and drive-thru voting thrown out because it's not natural to vote in cars or some s*** like that

They're also trying to get the mask ordinance lifted for voting because apparently it violates some kind of human right to have to wear a mask while you're voting so it's like they want to have it both ways somehow

And they're literally saying things like well you know sometimes in life you just have to do things that aren't safe and it's like Jesus f****** Christ really really You should have to risk your life to vote

So I've already voted

But my mother did the drive-thru voting because at that point and even still now she's really too weak to stand in line to wait to vote for very long at all so the drive-thru voting was perfect for her but if she drove through and they throw out her vote it's not like she can vote again so it's b******* it's just b******* and I'm angry

actually I think it was 100 people in Harris county that drove through vote I don't know if other counties did drive through voting or not it was a new thing because of the pandemic but I mean I think we've proven in Texas that there's nothing you can't do and your big ass truck so why would drive the voting not be okay You can get your prescriptions to drive through You can buy liquor through drive-thru that was actually all before the pandemic drive through liquors been a thing for years not getting like margaritas in the drive-thru that's new but like buying beer and wine and spirits at a liquor store that had a drive-thru was the thing you could do

And I mean every time in my life I have voted they have just looked at my ID and looked at me and had me sign a book this time they took my ID and they put it on a scan or thing and they checked it in their computer and they made me take my mask off so they could see my face I mean you know they did that stuff in the drive-thru voting as well so I mean they certified that the people were the people and I just I can't see what possible justification they could have for throwing those votes out and I would like to say oh I'm positive that they will not allow them to do it but I'm not 100% sure

And then the thing that's really got me scared is that the governor has already called out the national guard on election day for Houston and Dallas now what the hell

I mean if he was calling it if he was calling for them to be in the streets when the votes were counted and people know who won that would still be kind of scary but I do think it's likely that they'll be some trouble one way or the other

although I'm not sure Houston and Dallas are the places I would expect the trouble maybe

But I don't think that's what they mean

I think they're going to be having people standing around with guns at election places sorry polling locations

I think it's more voter suppression

And for the record I have never liked the governor

well I liked the governor when Ann Richards was the governor

But I don't really think I've liked any of them since

and I don't really remember about the ones before but I kind of don't think I was crazy about them either

Ann Richards was good though

She get out Texan anybody

And she was funny

But Abbott I don't think he's getting reelected

Because the Democrats in the larger cities really resented that he wouldn't let the local authorities make mass ordinances

And then when he finally did make mass ordinances all the maga't were all over him yelling at him and giving her s*** about it

So there really is literally no one who thought he did a good job

If they're going to judge us in Harris county we'd be in good shape because the majority of the judges in Harris county are democratic judges that are running on opposed so I mean

But I'm sure they're going to the Texas supreme Court or at least district court not like local courts I don't know how far they've gotten on it they're probably some of their things are all the way to the supreme Court

But it's just unbelievable to me The degree to which they're trying to suppress voting

I'm just worried

And I'm not sure what to expect

And what I really want to happen is I really want the Texas vote to all be in

And they know that he won't win California

And I'd like it very much if he didn't win Florida but I don't know that might be asking for too much

But at least all the Florida vote will be in because they don't do the regular mail in ballots they do absentee ballot

Like Texas we don't have a bunch of mail in voting we only have absentee ballot and they were extra stringent this time about who could get absentee ballots

But like my mom didn't want to get an absentee ballot even though she could because she's old and she's sick she didn't want to do that because she was afraid it wouldn't get counted so now they were just trying to find another way to not count those people's votes

But I want for that vote to be in Tuesday evening for them to have all the vote and forbid two have won the state so that they can look at it and say well you know he's not going to win California even if all the vote isn't in yet and he's not going to win New York and he didn't f****** win Texas so you know no great landslide for the orange one you know I mean he needs to lose pretty convincingly so that there's not any kind of case that can be made for them to decide it in the supreme Court he's got it all stacked because he wants them to decide for him he wants them to say oh you know whatever they can do to mitigate on his behalf which is not not what the supreme Court is supposed to be for but is clearly what he thinks it's for

And it just needs to be a convincing convincing victory for Biden it just needs to be

I'm super tired and I should go to sleep but I'm just so nervous and I know what my reading said I know it said that it's all going to be fine I guess I'm just not convinced that it's all going to be fine

because I didn't say that because I believed it I said it because that's what the reading told me

Please be safe

Please know that I love you

I'm going to try to go to sleep

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much

It's getting a little less scary I guess

Dealing with my mother

I went with her to her doctor

I've got a complete list of her medications

And she had called me I'm not sure which day it was either the day she got out of the hospital or the day after that she called me and her blood pressure was really low and normally that's not the issue but they had given her an extra blood pressure medication and so you know her blood pressure was like 84 over 49 and she was wanting to know if she should take the blood pressure medication and she'd called the doctor and she'd called the cardiologist and she couldn't get anybody to call her back and you know 84 over 49 is pretty low but I looked it up and it said that was low but it wasn't like dangerous in and of itself and I'm like well no don't take it because you know if you take your medication and you go to bed if your blood pressure goes any lower s*** you know

so when we went to the doctor I asked her I'm like you know look this happened and she couldn't get in touch with anybody what should she do and so now we've got a rule of thumb that if the top number is under 120 or the bottom number is 50 or under she doesn't take the medication she waits a few hours and takes it again to check and see what it is and she's supposed to eat something salty or drink some caffeine to bring it up a little bit which I don't like all this b******* take medicine to bring it down then if it's too low then each salt to bring it up

But you know I can't just put her in old people jail and she at the doctors

There was like a shielding around everything and there was like one little gap in the shielding because it was like one desk and it kind of curved or bent or something and so they had one little gap and she walks up and just sticks her face in the hole to talk to the nurse at the counter and it's like the whole point of the shielding is so that you don't do that but she just walks up and sticks her face into the thing and she touches everything she touches everything and then she rubs her mask she rubs her face and her mask like compulsively while she's sitting waiting so I really don't know how she hasn't gotten sick yet

It is super hard and I ask her if she had any hand sanitizer in the studio and she said yes and what she had was Lysol wipes which isn't exactly the same thing

but I've been cutting the paintings out of they're all wrapped up in boxes and bags and there's one single edged razor that is the cutting implement so I've been cutting them all out and she keeps reminding me not to cut the canvases and not to set the canvases wear anywhere the wire or the eyelet things are going to gouge into the paintings and I'm not saying anything but you know I mean I learned that stuff when I was 10 or 11 so I didn't forget but I understand why she's doing it because I always do that with anybody too because people don't do it they just stock the stuff and don't realize that it's going to f*** things up

So we impact everything except I'm sure that isn't all of her paintings so I think some of them are still at home I don't know but I mean this is enough I think and she really wants to have some kind of like open studio where people can come and look at her artwork maybe not like open studio maybe by appointment but I'm not really sure how that's going to happen or how that's going to be safe

I really don't want to do this but she is super happy about it

And I know you don't agree but I think this is just something I have to do

She doesn't have any other kids

So there's nobody else to do this stuff and I need to get my s*** together

But I also need to know what I need to know for when things go bad

She's 76 or 77 77 I think so she's already 12 years older than her mother she's had a pacemaker for 5 or 6 years she's got congestive heart failure

And maybe I just listened to too many people talking about their parents died in the hospital with them having to FaceTime them

But also just the idea of her dying and my going into that house and have it to start going through boxes and boxes to find whatever it is that I'm supposed to use for probate and be trying to do that while I was working some s***** job

And she is working so hard at being agreeable and not being pushy and she still being pushy but she's trying really hard not to she's so happy

This is not something I'm going to do forever

When I went to the grocery store I stocked up again for all the things that I thought might go away if they shut it down again or if there's a run on the grocery stores

I think I have about 30 rolls of toilet paper and a lot of sanitizer and hydrogen peroxide and Pop-Tarts and Cheetos not enough Cheetos though also off-branch Cheetos but they're okay

And they didn't have any alcohol at the grocery store and then they've got limits on things again so you can only have two alcohol products or two hydrogen peroxide products so I got some alcohol wipes You know the little kind that come in the foil that you tear open because I thought those might be handy if you just need a little bit of alcohol to rub a wound or a thermometer or something and you don't want to use up a lot of alcohol then I went on Amazon and I found a cord of alcohol for like I don't know 10 bucks that seems reasonable so I bought that and the baby wipes that I use to clean my face I put the cleanser on and then I use those wipes to take it off I've been using the same packet you know one of those big packets I've been using the same one since the quarantine started but I'm on the last packet so it turns out Amazon has those two they didn't have it at the store

So I'm all loaded for bear

She had a therapy session today and she does those on FaceTime their therapist so I was going to go down and shop in the art supply because her studio is in the art supply building they have studios and they have several apartments so I went downstairs and to be honest with you it's not overly impressed I think they just reopened those so they may not have everything unpacked but they only had a few brands of watercolors and they didn't have the whole line and they were very expensive

Now I get it it's a small mom and pop type shop and they're trying to stay in business and I think really and truly that the studios is how they make their money and the apartments plus they live there so that makes it less expensive for them too then if they had to maintain a separate property and I don't know if I told you this but I don't think I did The guy who owns it Ben he fell and broke his hip over the weekend he is 90 years old but he is still in great shape his wife was very worried because his blood pressure went up and apparently he has like really freakishly normal blood pressure like 30-year-old blood pressure but his blood pressure went up and he had a fever but he's already had surgery on his hip and they were trying to release him today but she didn't want him to be released because they didn't have the results back from his blood test yet and the fact that his temperature went up that much had her really worried so I don't know that's worrisome I think she's younger than my mom by a little bit when I was a kid I mean I think I've known Ben since I was maybe three or five years old but his wife worked at the art store and then subsequently they fell in love and got married so it was you know kind of a love story and they're really really nice people

I don't think anyone came into the art shop while I was there and the studios a couple of people have moved in my mom introduced me to somebody whose name I've already forgotten He's a world-renowned artist who taught at lone Star college for years I didn't recognize his name but he seems very nice lone Star college I didn't even realize had an art program it's a community college

and then in the afternoon while we were working I thought I heard something and I was trying to figure out where it was coming from but she couldn't hear it and then when we were leaving I was like oh wait I think that's it and the studio next door there's this guy who has I mean like some sort of a clothing shop I mean it might be just regular old everyday clothing or it might be fancier than that I don't know the stuff he had in there wasn't ball gowns and stuff so I don't know I don't know what it is but he seemed intriguing in a slightly drag race sort of way although I didn't actually see him he was kind of behind something so I just heard him and he was busily sewing away

So I guess that's three of us

There are a couple of other studios that were closed up but they've got paintings hanging in the wall One of them has a nameplate on the door but I can't remember the name Rikar K I'm pretty sure that's not it but it's something like that it's super duper photorealistic and the one on the other end of the hall is like the polar opposite of that it's colors and textures and squiggles and swirls and there was another studio that got an enormous enormous canvas leaning against the wall The door was open when we were leaving but it wasn't open when we came in so somebody's probably bringing things in but it had this enormous canvas that had like some kind of I don't know it looked like Indian handblock printed something with hands on it it was all very kind of tribal and then there were strings with bells and things hung from the ceiling so I mean it seems like a very eclectic mix of things and there are there were like three studios maybe four studios that were just open and empty so those may not be rented yet

It was really good to see you

I got myself all worked up

I went to bed early

When I woke up at 3:30 I had to pee and I could not go back to sleep

And then I finally dozed off just about the time the alarm went off and I was like f***

So I decided I could sleep a little longer I said it a little later but I was laying there and at one point I could hear myself snoring and I'm like well I'm snoring I must be asleep but I was still talking to myself I did not feel like I was asleep and I'm like well I mean if you're snoring you must be asleep regardless of whatever is going on with your brain so just lay here and listen to yourself snore then and maybe your body will feel like it's getting some sleep

And then all day I was just kind of dragging

I just kept feeling like I wanted to cry

You think my cat would be upset about my leaving but no he remembers about going away he just made sure he got his going away treats and is coming home treats and I think he might have slept most of the time I was gone he sleeps a lot now He's enough older and he's not that old he's like five or six maybe which is still not that old for a cat but he just sleeps a lot He's telling me it's time to eat again even though I'm pretty sure he just ate like 45 minutes ago but he's probably down on food for the day so let me go feed him

 goodnight sweetheart

i'm depressed and i'm going to bed

Goodnight sweetheart

I love you very much

Good morning sweetheart

Well she's coming to pick me up at 10:30 and then we're on about our day

I'm kind of nervous

My coffee maker is broken so I made a French press and is super strong and so my stomach is kind of gurgling now

I didn't eat anything because the idea of food makes me kind of nauseated but the coffee is making me kind of nauseated so I don't know that's not a very good combination I'm not sure

I don't really have time to eat anything now I don't guess I have one of those grocery store donuts left it's a little bit stale and very sugary so I don't know I just don't know that putting that on top of the coffee is a good idea

Anyway I'll let you know how it went

I hope everything is good where you are

I hope you're happy and healthy taking good care of yourself

I love you very much

All right I'm going to bed I have to go with my mom to her studio and just kind of get the lay of the land and then I have to go to her doctor visit so yay I guess

I'm tired

I'm kind of confused

I have very mixed feelings about tomorrow

I love you very much sweetheart

 la paz

cable cars

donut shop

awesome guitar shop

ewan mcgregor can sing and play guitar, who knew

 not bolivia though

the roads are epically bad

the lake--  blood of the gods, though

 i'm watching long way up

and

i have to say

i want to drive through patagonia

the scenery is so startlingly beautiful

i don't think that i could get over my fear

of injury

enough to ride motorcycles

but

add adventure tour south america

to australia

to the list of places i'd like to go

i'm thinking about you sweetheart

I'm gonna go to bed sweetheart

I love you very much ❤️

Well I'm trying to stay on date time

But I couldn't get up at 9:00 which is what time I was going to try to get up originally and then I thought I was awake by like I don't know 11:00 or something but I was looking at my phone and I had a headache and I guess I just passed out and went back to sleep so I woke up at I don't know about 2:00 and I'm not sure exactly what time I went to sleep I think it was four maybe it was five 4:30 I don't know something like that so two isn't really an unreasonable amount of time to sleep but I was not planning to sleep until 2:00 so now I'm up and I've had a little bit of coffee I'm going to have a little bit of more coffee I think and I had a couple of donuts that I got from the grocery store they are cake donuts with their so sweet they just put way too much sugar on those donuts and I forgot to put sugar in my coffee but I just went ahead and drank it like that anyway because it was so much sugar from the donuts that it kind of compensated

So I don't know I had stuff I was going to do today but I don't think I'm going to do it i was going to go through my drawers and take out any clothes well what I was going to do is I was going to kind of try everything on and if it didn't fit I was going to put it in one pile and if it fit but it was just something that I don't wear or that doesn't make me a static I was going to put in two different piles things that I was prepared to get rid of and things that were pending my being ready to get rid of them and so then I was only going to put stuff in the drawers that was stuff that I was actively wanting to wear right now but I think I'm probably not going to do that so maybe I will do that tomorrow so I'm going to try very hard not to stay up all night tonight so that maybe I can get a little bit of that stuff done tomorrow maybe a load of laundry

Next week is going to be a really busy week

Got to go with my mother to the doctor on Monday and assuming that she feels well enough we've got to do that stuff in her studio

She's got some kind of physical therapy or rehabilitation or something like 3 days next week I think and she had to be able to drive herself to it I believe and her new studio is very close to her doctor and the medical center and all that so The tentative plan is to do the studio stuff at least on those days because you should just be popping over and popping back and I think it's only an hour per session so I don't know but next week is going to be kind of challenging because I'm not used to leaving the house and going places and doing things you know it's going to be readjustment to the real world

except what I'm going to be doing is going to be very real-world like so you know it'll be interesting

Details

I'm going to bed now

I love you

So the plan is to vote tomorrow

I'm not going to plan to get there when the pool's open cuz I figure they'll probably be more busy first thing in the morning for people who have to go to work or be at zoom meetings or whatever

So I'm going to try to get there probably between I don't know 10:00 and 11:00 ish

And the information I looked at first was I think wrong because the address that's on hillcroft isn't a University of Houston campus that I didn't know anything about it's unity Church which I did know about although I didn't know it was a voting spot and I think it probably wasn't before because I would have voted there before rather than driving to spring Branch

The campus is an HCC campus and it's over very close to where I used to work which is to say pretty close to me also

they have drive-thru voting at that location

my mother is going to go there tomorrow and go to the drive-thru voting because she can't really stand in line and she would rather not be exposed to people which I agree with

there's also a Hampton inn that's over on the other side of the freeway from the galleria close to uptown Park I think

So if the unity turns out to be too crowded then I'll go to one of those other ones and maybe that's wrong maybe I should go at 7:00 in the morning

But I'm not going to

If everybody is all super packed at the time that I think they should not be then maybe I'll have to modify my plan and I might have to vote on another day but I don't think so I'm prepared to stand there for a long time and I don't think I'll have to all the Intel I'm getting is that it's pretty quick like literally everybody that I've heard talk about voting which is not very many people but everybody that I've heard of it's been like you know 15 minutes which is about what it would be normally

I have to go with my mother to her doctor's appointment on Monday well I guess I don't have to but she wants me to and if I'm going to have to be responsible for her then I need to actually know what's going on and I can't trust her to tell me that stuff so I pretty much have to go

And when she was talking about that with me I realized that in my mind the working with her was a distancing like I thought it was going to be better because I'd be working with her and she drives me crazy and whatnot but I'm used to the people I work with driving me crazy I thought that was somehow going to make it better but I'm not sure that that's actually what's going to happen cuz I'm having to call her like four times a day and not have to go to the doctor with her so

I don't know

She also seems to be developing a resistance to texting and once phone calls which I don't like

And I saw a map of the country where the states were the viruses on the rise are painted in red and the ones where it's stable or white and the ones where it's declining or I think green and now I'm in a green state but you're in a red state and the state you just left is white

So please please be careful

Also probably you've already looked into whatever the voting thing is in your state and you've probably already done whatever it is you need to do but if you haven't it looks like you've got until the end of the month actually to register although you might have to do it in person somewhere I'm uncertain about that just seems like there isn't a lot of lead time for mailing it to you or mailing something in and then having them mail something back to you Don't know I'm sure you do not trying to tell you your business I was just worried about you and that was one of the things I saw while I was researching

Really The trigger word was thrifting

Before that I wasn't worried at all

also I was thinking about what I told you about wearing the two different shirts and that doesn't really give a complete picture because I based my wearing of those shirts on a that they were comfortable one of them is a modal fabric that's really soft and really really feels good The other one is a rayon spandex blend which is also soft although not as soft as the modal but the little ruffles make me feel like a little ballerina which is the psychological

I would be less inclined to wear that out in public although I certainly have I wear them pretty regularly but I'm not certain whether I think they really look good on me it's just about how it makes me feel

and the even funnier thing is that although it is a habit of mine since I was I don't know how old a long time ago like at least in my 30s I started doing this if I find something that I really like I buy multiples of it because then I can switch those through and it extends the life of the garment by you know three times

But on this particular shirt it came in a lot of different colors and they were all really pretty and so I was going to get different colors but I ended up sending back the other colors and exchanging them for this one color because this was the only color that look good on me

Which doesn't make any sense

But it's kind of a very very pale taupe-y lavender and then it's got two little ruffle things around the bottom that are I don't know not tie-dyed like kind of like distressed dyed in kind of darker taupe-y purple

The shirt that I wear the most out well I don't know if there's one shirt but there is a shirt that I wear a lot that I bought I think I bought it on eBay and I don't know if it was new or used at the point when I bought it but it was an Eileen Fisher linen knit I'm not sure if it's sleeveless at this point I don't have it in front of me it's either sleeveless or like little kind of cap sleeves I think it's sleeveless and it's a black shirt that has a gold I hesitate to say foil it doesn't look like foil but it has a some sort of a gold on the top of the black and it is really lightweight and it's really breathable and I've always liked woven linens I'm not super crazy about just regular flat linen because it wrinkles really bad and it doesn't have a lot of stretch or give but it's cool and breathable but this shirt it doesn't wrinkle and I have a tendency to wear it and hang it up and it has to be hand washed but I've worn it a bunch of times and I don't wash it very much but I love it I super love it and I'm not even sure it looks good on me to be honest with you

When I saw you last no not when I saw you last when I saw you in January I took that with me and I wore other shirts and then I wore that one and on the day when I wear that one I'm like I don't think this really looks as good as the other ones do but I don't care because I just love it so much and I don't have three of those I just have one of those I looked and looked and I couldn't find anymore

Those Eileen Fisher are in collections and if you don't get them when they come out you know good luck

I also have it's a woven shell with kind of rusty orange kind of abstract flowers with some gray that I don't wear very much because I couldn't wear patterns to work I also got that from eBay I believe but I love that I can start wearing that

And you're never going to believe this but all of my favorite pants and skirt well I have I have a pair of pants that I really really like that are brown and I have some pants that I really really like that are rust but my kind of default favorite pants are like a pale taupe-y gray only this time instead of the purple kind of topi were talking about that Beige-y kind of taupe-y and my favorite skirt for years and years and years was an ankle length black knit skirt when I've been saying woven have I been saying woven because what I think I meant was knit it's not the same so it's linen knit shirts really shells tanks and my favorite skirt like by a lot like I wear that one more than anything is the color is called mocha but it's kind of a beige brown

So I think it's kind of funny that I went from wearing black to really liking more of a khaki type neutral

I have another shirt that I've worn quite a few times not recently but when I used to actually sometimes go out to eat it's also a sleeveless shell cuz I always wear these under jackets and we just can't be having all that arm fabric underneath the jacket just makes you bulk up too fast so it's a shell and it is kind of like a matte jersey fabric and it has a pattern on it with butterflies and it's got predominantly rust and turquoise shades it's got some other stuff but those are the two predominant colors and I typically I have this it's like a longer ballerina style sweater very very lightweight sweater that's a turquoise really light turquoise just a turquoise edge of Robin's egg blue say and it ties and the shell has it's like a faux wrap it ties and I really like that I like the way it looks on me I like the pattern I like the colors

So I'd say that I like those kind of khaki grayed khaki to brown I mean I actually prefer cool brown but I don't think what I have is predominantly cool brown

The jackets I've been predominantly wearing to work are a couple of jackets that I got and they're kind of oversized so they're loose so they hang really nice and they're Isaac mizrahi Pima cotton and they're really soft

so I guess you could say that my style and this doesn't come as any shock to me

Is predominantly that I want it to be comfortable and breathable and soft like a nice texture and that's like my predominant requirement but then I also want it to be pretty and look good on me or at least not make me look bad

And I favor those neutrals

But then I also really like rust and turquoise and like a really dark kind of gray purple

I have a jacket that I really like but I haven't worn it in a long time because I didn't want to get it messed up wearing it at work and also Susan gave me a really hard time for wearing it I don't know why it's a very simple boxy olive drab kind of canvassy looking jacket so it looks very much like some sort of army surplus except that it's not

It's not as thick as that and it's got pockets it's really it's pretty

And I wore it a few times with a yellow skirt that I have that I got in like 95 but I don't wear it very much because it's a pale color now that I got the yellow one and I got a black one and the black one has long since just you know died but I still have the yellow one and it looks really good with that jacket

And then I have a jacket I wore last year when I saw you but I doubt that you noticed it but it's a really thin cardigan but not like a sweater cardigan just like a cardigan that has an ombre pattern it's like green and gold it's really pretty I really like it and I have a another one that's a very similar style that's a solid color that I also didn't wear to work because I didn't want to get it messed up that's like a kind of a steely bluey gray

I'm sure those are not all of my clothes

Well I mean they're definitely not all of my clothes but those are the ones that are kind of popping out in my mind as being things I really really super enjoy to wear

I have a soft gray sleeveless Eileen Fisher sleeveless shirt I think it's cotton

Right now since it's not quite as hot I'm wearing a Navy I guess it's a shell it's kind of almost a sweatshirt fabricsomewhere between it's like a sweatshirt fabric but it's more like t-shirt weight and it's got very little structure to it it's a free people is that what it's called free people I think and it must be designed to be like huge on someone because I don't really think that they're extra large should have fit me but it's huge

I think I have two of those I got it at t.j Maxx

I have bought clothes on the home shopping

Mostly on clearance

But I always mostly bought clothes on clearance

when I was younger I used to go to Macy's when they would have those sales and I would stock up on stuff and I mean sometimes they would be 60 or 70% off of the original price

I have two skirts they are the same style but one of them is a well the reversible and on one side it's a black like just a mat kind of not a matte jersey it's like a matte crepe kind of and the other side is it's like a tie dye but it's a kind of a chiffony textured rayon or polyester and I was so excited that they were reversible but I've had them since probably 2000 maybe like 2002 or something but I mean I've had them like almost 20 years and they're like rock solid they were in heavy rotation for years and they're in pretty light rotation now because they're kind of warm to be honest but I only wore I think it was the brown one of whom's brown and one of them's like a lavender and I only wore it on the brown side like this year I think one of the times that I went out every other time I've worn them I've worn them on the black side and they don't look new but they look fine they look really good I would keep those I can't see myself ever getting rid of those

but I like them cuz I wear them on the black side and a little tiny bit just like maybe a half an inch of the chiffon shows at the bottom and it's like got this kind of fluttery edge but it's never been enough than anybody's been like you're not in a solid color you're not wearing black you know it's just like a little tiny bit like if it was a really long slip showing through or something I don't know it's it's very for me it's very feminine but it's pretty low-key

And I love that new coat that I got I hope I get to wear it out some this winter I hope it gets cold not super cold not like but you know it could get to like 50 that would be okay

It's kind of a it's not quite olive drab green but it's it's green and it's in that sort of neighborhood with some like kind of mustardy rusty plaid

I've got some Navy stuff too

But yeah that's kind of consistent

And you probably don't have any interest in my clothes or wardrobe choices

Anyway

What I do on eBay is very much like thrifting it's just if I go to a thrift store they usually don't have a lot of things in my size and even if they do have a lot of things in my size it's still kind of unhappy because all the really awesome stuff is not going to be in my size but I seem to remember being somewhere with my mother I think it was brenham there was a thrift store that had some cool stuff in my size

oh I forgot about that outfit I wonder if it still fits me I have from back when I used to shop at Macy's I have a Ralph Lauren skirt and shirt it's like just a shell shirt and a just a plain old pencil type skirt and they're striped in you know those kind of Ralph Lauren colors it's got an Indian red and a mid-level blue and kind of a light forest green maybe maybe it's got a little bit of a yellow ocher or something I don't know but it's striped and I f****** love that outfit I got that back in the I want to say I got it in the '90s but I might have gotten it at the same time that I got the two skirts I don't know and I don't think it was on clearance either I think it was only like maybe 30% off or something but it was just so fine had to buy it but I don't wear it very often because you know I go to work and then I don't go anywhere else but but I love that outfit I think it's up in my closet somewhere I hope it has not been eaten by bugs I would cry I would cry if it's got holes in it

but I mean I haven't gotten rid of very many of my black clothes I took some of them to Goodwill but I wasn't sure it was going to stick you know so I didn't get rid of all the good stuff

Anyway I'm just rambling I'm not saying anything important and I hope you understand that I've just been talking to you I haven't been sending you coded messages or you know being all stealthy I've just been telling you what's going on

I love you very much sweetheart

Oh yeah I forgot I was going to tell you something about my palette

I've changed some of the colors from what they originally were

and my original plan was to have all of the colors be things that I both enjoyed to paint with as they were and they were good for mixing so I took off a couple of the colors that were good for mixing but that I did not like painting with on their own

And that was all working good

but there was a color that I kept wanting to mix and I could mix it with what I had but it required mixing like four different paints I had to stage it so that I could get you know the color that I wanted and it was a little bit muddy because I had mixed so many colors together so I finally decided that what I really needed was like a blue violet

and I went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth about which blue violet and there's a color that's the right color it's called ultramarine violet but it's got ultramarine blue in it and it has granulation and I didn't want granulation because I already have a lot of colors that have granulation and I want to be able to make things without granulation and some of the things I wanted to do with this blue violet I would rather not have had the granulation

So then I was like well no those weren't won't work then

so I was vacillating back and forth between sennelier and schmincke and DaVinci

Which all had colors that were just about right it didn't have granulation then I kept looking at that manganese blue and that umber thinking about how much I like them and the way they paint and the vibrancy of the color and I said no you know what I want a whole bind paint so I went and looked through all the whole bind paints and they did not have exactly the color that I wanted they didn't have a blue violet they had well they I think they did actually but not without granulation or something I don't remember now but the one that I decided on after a lot of debate and trying to see videos of it was the permanent violet

And it is not so much something that I would paint with by itself it's very purple

However it mixes with everything in a way that gives me something that I either couldn't mix before or that I couldn't mix satisfactorily before

It neutralizes the yellows in such a way that they become soft and almost like a Naples yellow and it blends with that a lizard and gold to make this really cool brown orangey brown and it mixes with all the pinks and violets and it mixes with all the blues and it even did something interesting with the green which surprised me

So even though I doubt that I will have very many occasions to paint with it just straight and I did say that was something that I wanted I had determined there was something missing from my palette and that was the thing that I needed and I feel like I was right I feel like that that is a good inclusion that makes everything better

And then I watched that video whenever that was with the landscape painter who was showing I found her video when I was looking at purples and she recommended this violent burnt umber and I don't usually get burnt umber and I felt like that really I could mix it

Just a regular old per number but that color was so pretty and seemed to have so much utility just on its own without my needing to mix it that I just went ahead and ordered it from cheap Joe's it's his brand it's called American journey and everyone is pretty sure it's made by DaVinci and it is really really pretty it's much prettier than your typical burnt umber because it's got that violet from periling early and violet I think so like not only is it really pretty by itself and I swear to God if you dilute it down really really pale you could just use that as a skin tone on its own but it's really good I mean it doesn't really look like Caucasian skin tone You could use it for darker parts of Caucasian skin tone I guess but anything darker than Caucasian it's pretty awesome

And it neutralizes with the periline green to make this kind of warm gray that's really pretty and it mixes with a bunch of stuff really nice it's really really good so both of those one of them I bought not to use on its own when I had said I didn't want to do that and the other one I bought pretty much predominantly to use on its own so those were kind of cheater I guess

But I feel really happy about the colors that I've got now

And the extra colors that I don't have in my 18 palette are good colors I'm happy with them as colors and I might at some point get a larger palette and then I'll put them on there but I feel like 18 colors is enough to have on your everyday palette you know

And I'm pretty excited because

Which divided up in kind of a good way

There are seven DaVinci colors

Six Daniel Smith colors

Three Holbein colors

And one sennelier color

Oh yeah and one American journey color

Okay now I really do have to go to sleep

Good night sweetheart

All right I love you very much sweetheart I'm going to bed I should have gone to bed a long time ago but I just can't seem to make myself I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing tomorrow she's all home safe and sound she's got oxygen to do at night because her oxygen levels were dropping when she would go to sleep and they think she might have undiagnosed sleep apnea but they've got to test her out for that so in the meantime she's got oxygen she can breathe while she sleeps

But she doesn't have to do it when she's awake cuz she's breathing okay

She was wanting me to go with her to get her car tomorrow but then the woman who takes care of Shirley well Shirley's in kind of a halfway house for old people but the woman who monitors her and does all the stuff that she needs and takes her out and whatever all the stuff my mom's not doing that stuff anymore so the woman who does that is going to take my mom to get her car and give her a rundown on what's been going on with Shirley and while my mom was in the hospital

And while I didn't particularly want to do the whole car thing it wasn't my idea for this other person to do it it was her idea and so I think my mom may want me to do something with her after they get done with that but I've got no idea when that might be but I probably should be up and ready in the morning but I mean I don't think they're going to go super early maybe they will I don't know but there's a limit to how early I'm going to be able to get up now cuz it's like pretty late now I just have not adjusted to going back to day side very well

And I need to go through all my clothes and sell and or get rid of a bunch of stuff I don't know some of it's pretty cool though but when I decided I wasn't going to wear black anymore I got stuff and some of that stuff didn't turn out to really be stuff that I wore and then I've continued to acquire stuff and most of that stuff isn't stuff that I wear either

And during the whole time of the quarantine I pretty much wore I have two different shirts that I have three each of and I wore one or the other of those shirts for like 90% of the time

That's probably an exaggeration

But all I wanted to wear was those shirts

One of them was an oversized modal t-shirt

Not exactly t-shirt because I don't wear t-shirts but kind of a t-shirt kind of a fancier t-shirt

And the other one was a kind of a fancy t-shirt as well that has these ruffles on the bottom that's kind of ballerina-y and pockets which I never use but are fun anyway

that wasn't clear I use pockets I just don't use the pockets in that shirt

And at one point I wasquiring those silk woven shirts and I really liked them but the neck is really too high so I keep like pulling at it and it's not that comfortable and screwing up the shirts

So I'm thinking I probably have some stuff that I'm not going to wear and maybe I could sell it or get rid of it but if I could sell it then that would bring in some money and give me some experience with you know eBay or poshmark or whatever I mean I have experience with those things cuz I bought stuff on it but the problem is some of the things are really cool and I don't want to get rid of them but I don't seem to want to wear them either

And I thought I had developed a sense of my style and what I like to wear but 100% sure that I have and if I did I'm not 100% sure that I agree with whatever that was so I probably need to go through all my clothes and do laundry and all that stuff which sounds like a lot of work and kind of a pain in the ass

I hope you're okay

I love you very much sweetheart

 huh

well

i wonder what's up with the phone

that's gonna be super inconvenient

she's getting released today

the doctor hasn't called me

but the oxygen delivery called

i finally got through to my mom

and she says between 2:30 and 3

supposedly

and her driver guy is picking her up

she says she doesn't need me to come over and get her settled in

but

we'll see if she changes her mind

the doctor said she was cleared to go pick up her car

but

she's not gonna do that today

we agree that it's not the best idea

i'm going over tomorrow in the morning sometime

and we'll see if she's up to that

she drives an s.u.v. and i'm afraid to drive something that large

so, if she can't, it's gonna be an adventure

i'm very tired

i think i got about four hours of sleep

i dreamed

about changing into a bird

there was something about

a flight pattern

and it was a golden eagle

and you were involved somehow

 i tried to post something earlier on my phone and it wouldn't let me

then i tried again just now and it wouldn't let me

so

testing 1,2,3...

on the computer

That was kind of long and I'm almost out of battery and I'm about to go to sleep

On a positive note Texas is a swing state now

I hope that all just didn't sound like some kind of long depressive rant was not meant to sound like that but I'm not 100% sure it wasn't that

I'm vacillating between thinking this is a really good idea for me and thinking that this is a really crazy idea for me

So I don't know

I love you very much sweetheart

Goodnight

Well it did my taxes

Which shouldn't have been any big deal at all but somehow I managed to make it a big deal

I talked to one of my mother's doctors

The way it work s seems to be that there's a doctor who's in charge of her care in the hospital

And that doctor is in the same medical group as her primary doctor

Because their group has a couple of different doctors that work in the hospital

And the doctor I talked to today was the same doctor I talked to on Friday who was really nice and made everything clear and was just really kind of a joy to talk to you

And then the doctor who was there over the weekend having talked to her multiple times I've got context for how she is and I if I talk to her again which I'm hoping I won't because I'm hoping she'll be out before the next weekend I would be able to understand what she meant but she doesn't have very good bedside manner and she freaked me out

But I talked to this first doctor again

And she seemed to think there was a good chance she would be out on Wednesday or Thursday

And we talked about some strategies for trying to get her to take her medicine

And I mean the fact of the matter is is that I think she's just been in denial

And so when she cuz she said she'd gained 20 lb over the last couple months and she hasn't really been eating that much

and I know she weighs herself all the time because her weight is one of the things that she would always talk to me about when we would go out to dinner

But in the process of texting her and talking to her everyday during the pandemic there hasn't been any mention of weight

But I'm not fixated on weight so I didn't snap to the fact that she wasn't talking about how she's lost weight

So maybe I should have caught that I don't know but she knew she was gaining weight and she knew she couldn't be gaining weight from what she was eating

And she's still working out with her trainer twice a week they're doing zoom or Facebook live or something I don't know I think it's varied several times

So she knew she couldn't be gaining weight but rather than you know doing something or calling the doctor or going in to see the doctor she just was in denial about it

But the thing is is that I mean she let herself get all swollen up and then it was this big ordeal with you know multiple doses of intravenous diuretic and you know CPAP and you know maybe going to be put on a ventilator and whatever

And if she can just monitor it so that you know if it's been a day or two and she's up 5 lb call the doctor and they can figure out what they're going to do to reduce her fluid levels

Because she's got congestive heart failure apparently even though she claims no doctor has told her that and she claims that this last doctor told her that she's in perfect health and she claimed last year that her primary care no I think she said her cardiologist told her that I'm not sure which doctor she said now told her but basically that she was super healthy and going to live to be 90 or something

But then today she said that since 2012 all of her doctors have made her feel like she was on death's door

So I don't know what they've told her because none of her stories match up

But if when she's up 5 lb in a short period of time and it's got to be water weight she contacts her doctor then the doctor can have her come in or she can have her take an extra diuretic pill or whatever but 5 lb of water weight is not a crisis situation and if they can deal with it when it's not a crisis situation that's better obviously

But I mean this situation was I mean technically life-threatening

But she did her walk test today she walked around for 6 minutes without oxygen and she didn't get tired and her oxygen levels didn't drop below 94 so that's really good and that's an indication that probably she'll be able to get out Wednesday or Thursday

however her nurse told me that when she went to sleep she took a nap when she went to sleep her oxygen levels dropped to 88 and they don't know why that is so that's an indication that she might not get out on Wednesday or Thursday

I don't know I feel very surreal

And I'm sorry I have not paid attention to much of anything today I've been pretty ADD

So I hope you don't feel ignored

I wasn't trying to ignore you

I'm just confused by her

I mean I understand denial I do

But I don't really understand the way she just kind of hands off her health to physicians

Like when they were saying she had prediabetes

she was mad at her doctor because she's like well I've been coming to her all this time and she should have seen the signs

And it's like well maybe

But if you think the signs were so obvious you're with you everyday why are you at the mercy of your doctor to determine what's going on with you why aren't you just you know monitoring yourself

And I didn't say that

and she goes on and on about how incompetent all these doctors are that she's had and now thrown over from new ones

Like not just in passing but like she'll go on a diatribe about that when she can't breathe and she's needing to be telling me something pertinent and she'll just go off on that and it's like you know maybe not right now

I would have said you've only got so many spoons but I didn't want to have to go into the whole explanation of the spoon concept

I don't know I don't trust doctors

My experience with doctors is they're kind of like mechanics if they can catch it doing the thing that's wrong in the right context then maybe they know what it is otherwise they're just guessing and troubleshooting

anyway it's funny she keeps going on about allergies like you know that's the reason why she's having trouble breathing cuz she's having really bad hours she's and whatever

But then today I have just been sneezing and sneezing and sneezing

And sneezing is not a symptom I usually have with my allergies I mean sometimes and I'm not saying I never sneeze but usually if I sneeze it's because there's something you know in the immediate area that is aggravating me and I'm inside with the air conditioning on so that is not happening but when I got up this morning I was sneezing and then later this afternoon I was sneezing and I was like damn is you know they're like a really bad ragweed outbreak or something

So I looked it up and it's a super low pollen day

So I don't know what that's all about

Anyway

There's a bunch of stuff that I'm going to have to figure out a way to find out from her

Because her plan is that if anything happens to her I'm going in her house and starting to sort through boxes of mail to try to find whatever information it is that you need

Which I guess if she's dead I've got a reasonable amount of time to sort through the mail and find whatever it is you need but I don't know what it is you need and if she's not dead and there's a need for something to be found quickly there's not a chance in hell

But I really don't have a good grasp of how long she might be expected to live

I talked to the doctor today like I said and she said that she's got the congestive heart failure but it's diastolic congestive heart failure which is I guess not as bad and can be more stable because basically it means that her heart muscle is not very flexible she's also got the AFib though but she's got the pacemaker for that and she's got a leaky heart valve so that's why they've got her on blood thinners because she gets some amount of pooling or can have pooling in her heart and that can lead to blood vessels which can lead to blood clots which can lead to heart attacks

But this doctor said that some people they get that leaky heart thing and it doesn't really get worse they just have a mild amount of it and they continue to just have a mild amount of it it's not something that always deteriorates it can but you know it just has to be monitored there's no particular reason to think that it's going to get worse

And the contest of heart failure you know I mean it's not good but again she seemed to think that you know she does not have a terminal condition she has something that probably will eventually kill her but there's no reason for it to deteriorate rapidly unless she doesn't take care of herself so I just have to make it very clear to her which I think I have but I don't know that you know if she wants to live she needs to really take this seriously

Because she has a condition that can become life-threatening pretty easily or it can be managed and be reasonably managed

But that last doctor told her or not the last one the current cardiologist told her supposedly that she was not going to have he could pretty much guarantee she was not going to have a heart attack and something else that indicated to her that she was great and you know healthy as an ox and you know whatever so she just didn't take her medicine she caught to me that she wasn't taking the diuretic in the morning and then another conversation that maybe she wasn't always remembering to take it at night either so probably the truth is that she isn't taking it all

And the doctor told me today that she told her that she's not sure she always remembers to take her blood pressure medication

Which probably means she isn't taking that except when she takes her blood pressure and has a number that's high enough to scare her

and I know at one point she was taking her blood pressure at least once and probably multiple times a day but she told me that with the raw food doctor her blood pressure went way down and she didn't even need to be on that medication and so she wasn't taking it at all and so I guess if she is now healthy as an ox she for sure doesn't need to take it

But that doctor said that she thinks the raw food doctor did a lot of damage to her

because he took her off her medication and he turned down her pulse and you know I don't know but initially I was very excited by the raw food thing and then she started telling me things that didn't make any sense

like when she started going to him she was going to be doing the raw food but he took her off for medication on Monday when she wasn't going to get her first raw food meal from his clinic thing until Thursday

And then when she went to her trainer who used to be a nurse she was all swole up and the nurse called that cardiologist and said hey she needs to come in and see you and he's like it's too late in the day just have her go to the emergency room and she's like nuhuh cuz you screwed this up

And at that point I was like well I mean I like that he's raw food but that seems not very good

So I was kind of like well but then she was like oh blah blah blah blah blah I love him he's great and he likes me so much and blah blah blah

and then she would say well he's always doing all these tests but I never get any of the results

And that didn't seem very good

And I would say well you know that doesn't seem very good and she's like oh blah blah blah blah blah blah

And then she said that he wasn't telling her what her condition was he was just saying you know your heart muscles just kind of old and tired

Which is technically true

And then she said that he had that portal that you could log into that had all your diagnostic information on it that you could look up at any time

And I was like oh can I see that and she was like uuuuuuuhhhhhhmmmmmm

And apparently the answer to that was no

and then I was saying well what does that say and she's like well I can't really get on there it's a problem blah blah blah

So but then after she went to the new doctor and he told her she was healthy as an ox

then she said when she was complaining about the other doctor how all his diagnostic stuff on the website or portal or whatever was saying she had congestive heart failure and I'm like wait wait what

but then she claimed that nobody ever told her she had congestive heart failure so I don't f****** know what has happened

and it might be that the only way I'm going to know what is going on is if I go with her to all her doctor visits and write everything down and treat her like she's a child and I don't want to do that

But I'm uncertain if she really knows anything about her condition or if she's really just finding out this weekend that she has congestive heart failure

And what is this crap about she's been thinking she was on death door for 8 years

When the whole time she's been telling me she feels great and she's going to live to be in her 90's

I really hope I'm not like that

I mean I have my fair share of denial for sure

And I don't go to the doctor

and when I have gone to doctors I have often been very confused by what they say and they often do seem like they don't want to tell you what's going on but it just didn't make any sense to me that now two or three cardiologists have supposedly told her that they would write all of her stuff down and mail it to her and then with repeated calling to ask for said letter they've just given her the run around and refused to tell her what was wrong with her

That didn't make a lot of sense to me but I just trust doctor so much that it wasn't completely unbelievable

but it does seem like an odd thing for a doctor to do if what they want their patient to do is take care of themselves and don't do stupid things

So I don't know I I just don't know

I just know that talking to the doctors that I've talked to and the nurses that I've talked to feels like the first actual information that I've gotten

And I kind of suspected she might have the beginnings of congestive heart failure but I mean you know people get old they get congestive heart failure that's a pretty common thing for your heart to get hardened especially if you eat the American diet and live the American lifestyle and whatever it's pretty common

And nobody lives forever and everybody dies of something and so you know if she had congestive heart failure well really all you can do is monitor that you can't fix it

So even though I figured that that was probably the case you know she's going to the doctor every couple of weeks it seems like and she's taking bunches of medications although apparently not well not bunches but several

So I mean I just sort of thought it was under control

And I got some more story about her cardiologist cuz I've been talking to her and so she's been letting stuff slip

she asked the cardiologist again about the letter and he's like what do you mean and she's like you know you promised to mail me a letter and he's like well usually I call people to tell him about their results didn't I call you and she's like well yeah you did call me

But whatever it was he said she didn't listen or she didn't hear it or she didn't believe it or she just couldn't deal with it

So in the story she gave me none of that happened

So I mean I don't know

did the new doctor tell her something that made her feel like she was healthy as an ox and didn't have anything wrong

or was it just that he said he could pretty much guarantee she wouldn't have a heart attack in the next year and heart attack is the only heart condition that she can imagine as being a serious condition based on life experience or people she's known or something and so she thought that meant she was healthy as an ox

I don't know I'm sorry I'm going over and over and over the same thing I just I don't understand

I'm not I'm not blaming her

I'm just trying to understand if she just worked up enough denial to screw herself up really bad

or if there's some way that she just really didn't understand that she had a condition that needed to be managed

And like much of my experience with my mother I really don't know what she's thinking or how she reasons things out or what goes through her head she seems to come to some conclusions that seem pretty illogical for somebody who majored in math that Rice University

By which I mean

But she wanted to be was a math teacher

I don't understand

How that kind of love of math which is all very mathy I guess I think of that as being very concrete thinking in reality based

Like math is supposed to be this thing that's true objectively

Now it never really had that for me it seemed to me like that was always just as made up as everything else was that they just said it was all objectively true but I never really bought that to be honest with you

I really liked math when I was in elementary school then I didn't really have any math instruction in middle school and I got so behind that when I got into ninth grade and I had had really almost no math training since the fourth grade I couldn't really do the math

And I never really did get caught up

When I was in philosophy I had to take logic and it was equation sort of and so I have a block against it and I couldn't do it and I couldn't do it it didn't make sense and then one day just kapowit was language instead of math and then suddenly I could do it easy there was no problem at all

I really really would like to understand her I really have spent quite a bit of time trying to understand her

And I know she taught me when I was a kid when she was wanting me to lie for her that there's nothing wrong with lying to people if it's none of their business

So maybe she knows what's going on and she's just lying to me because it's none of my business or because she doesn't want to worry me or because she can't admit it to herself because she thought she was going to live forever

I don't know I just have no real sense

I've always felt like she didn't have a very good grasp of reality but she's managed to support herself her whole life and she's only had jobs during part of the time she was married to Bob and I think that's because he made her get a job I'm not sure why I know she didn't do that well and she hated it even though for part of the time she was a teacher which is what she had initially wanted to do

She's just terrible at teaching

I mean maybe she's good at teaching art I don't know I haven't taken an art class from her but she's terrible at teaching math because when I would have a problem in high school and I would want her to help me she would sit down and start trying to teach me something and it would frustrate me so much that I would end up having to kind of figure it out for myself just to get out of the situation with her

and when I say she's out of touch with reality I don't mean like she schizophrenic or some or delusional even maybe

And I know that people edit their own stories over time everybody does it some people do it because they brag and so things get inflated over time and they don't really remember what's real anymore they've just made a story

And some people they feel differently now and so the way they look back on the past they've got a different perspective and that changes how they see what happened and that changes their story sometimes a little bit sometimes a lot

and that's human everybody does those things

I can remember when I was a kid there were some things that had happened to me that I had kind of repeated to myself over and over because I wanted to remember them and then at some point when I would think about the things that happened it wasn't like I was experiencing it it was like I was watching a movie and then I was not sure if it was really true and I found that disconcerting like I have this story of my life that I've been retelling to myself so that I can be sure that I remember it correctly but now the way I'm seeing it is from a perspective that I know couldn't possibly have been the perspective I saw it from so is it just made up

And I was maybe seven or eight

And I know there are stories that I have told you more than once that when first I told them to you they were one way and when I told them to you again years later they were another way and they don't seem the same to me but I feel like they're both true

And I can't really reconcile that with reality

And I know recently I've had this whole like shift where I'm like you know they're all these things that I thought I was good at and that I was really proud of doing a good job of related to management most specifically

and now I think well maybe you weren't really all that good at that stuff maybe that was your perspective and maybe the people you were managing would not have felt that way and I'm like well you know I tend to base those things on the reactions I was getting from people but if I'm honest the reactions that people had to me were different based upon the relationships I had with the people and which of those people were right I don't know so probably I was good at some things or for some people but you know it's not like I'm some kind of great golden god of management it's not like I'm the world's best coach

And I've kind of reassessed that and said well you know also I feel like there are some ways in which maybe from perspective of 2020 after the me too and Black lives matter movements maybe from my perspective where I am today there's a lot of stuff I might have done better

You know not saying that I was an a****** or whatever but and I'm not beating myself up and saying oh you suck blah blah blah that's not what I'm doing what I'm saying is there was a way in which I was very connected to those stories and I painted myself as the hero of them

And now I'm no longer connected to those stories and so it isn't so important if I was the hero or not and I've come to the conclusion that I can't really say with any objectivity at all how actually good I might have been

and I also don't really care I'm coming from the perspective of you know I've made a lot of mistakes and oh well

I love myself whether I've made mistakes or not

I am kind of like you know if I'm a bad person then I'm just a bad person I'm not trying to be a bad person but you can certainly look at me and say from some perspectives

And fine

I'm not saying that I'm always right or have ever been right or whatever

And this is kind of a perspective that I've been developing over the whole pandemic thing

And so I guess now I'm just feeling like

why can I still not understand what the f*** is going on in her head

And she will say things to me

And I don't know it's like

It's like her story changes constantly

Like she said something to me about how I raised myself and I was like huh

Because generally you know she was the world's greatest mother and you know blah blah

But now she's coming at it from this You raised yourself perspective and I'm like I don't really get this new angle

but she's like well I always let you make all your own decisions within a framework of safety and that's why I'm such a good mother because I let you raise yourself

And to my credit I did not laugh at her

My first thought was about the you know corporate model where you're having your assistant manager do all the work for you and you're saying that you're developing them which you know I mean it does develop them but

That isn't what it primarily does

And I thought back cuz I'm just thinking you let me make all my own decisions and that's why you're such a good mother but you didn't give me the information or the assistance for the resources to make a lot of the decisions that would have helped me become the adult that I wanted to be but yes now that I'm thinking back you did like let me make decisions about what books I was going to read or you know what I don't know little stuff stuff like that Deborah wouldn't have let me make decisions on Deborah would have just told me this is what you're going to do and my mother let me make those small unimportant decisions

But I don't believe I don't believe that that was the thing that made me raise myself and I'm not really sure I have raised myself to be honest with you maybe I'm not raised

I don't know I have kind of an open perspective on it and I guess you know it's pretty rich for me to be saying she's out of touch with reality

But no I feel like I've adjusted for that too

I mean I know that I don't know a lot of stuff

About you and me and us and whatever and I've just decided that ultimately I'm in it so however it works out is however it works out I don't have any particular beliefs anymore about what might actually happen I just I'm going to see

And so I don't know if this is a more realistic viewpoint I think that it is

I mean when it comes down to it

I'm just like yeah

Absolutely right great mom

Because what the f*** I'm never going to get some kind of acknowledgment that she always put herself first that it's entirely possible entirely possible that she seduced me away from my father just to f*** him over because when she would come and get me for visits she would be so nice she would be on such good behavior and all summer when I spent the summers with her she would be so nice she'd be on such good behavior she never yelled at me she was always sweet and then when I went to live with her she was just not that far from Deborah and I was like oh my god my father was consistent in his choice of women and I just lost it and she would I mean oh my god so you know the things that I think of as being markers for motherhood she didn't meet

And maybe I'm unfair maybe

And I mean I knew it hurt my father's feelings when I left him and he tried to tell me that you know she was just doing this she had told him that you know she was going to take me back when I got to be old enough to be useful but you know even though I knew that I heard was hurting him I could not deal with Deborah and I could not deal with his continual not protecting me from her I didn't leave him I left her and then he made me suffer for that and he was and I didn't understand it I didn't understand it until I was driving home from Santa Cruz the first time and somehow I had an epiphany on the road in the dark about my father's perspective on my leaving him I can't remember exactly why I had that epiphany or exactly what it was about but somehow it just became so clear to me what his perspective was how I was like you know the person who had always looked at him with complete faith and adoration and I was his true love and I left him I didn't believe in him anymore and I think that hurt him probably more than you know any of his wives or divorces

So you know that's on me or whatever

But I was 10 and a half years old

And so maybe maybe the thing that I just can't get past is you know when she would come to pick me up for visits my father would go out and they would bicker and fight and it would upset me and I would say can you please not do this it really really upsets me and they obviously cared more about bickering with each other than they cared about whether or not it upset me because they still had some sort of energy you know and then I went to live with my mom and I reminded her of him and I smiled like him and she would yell at me for it and you know it was just a lot of yelling and looking like she was going to explode her eyes would bug out and it was so so scary and then I wanted therapy and she said I was just trying to find ways to spend her money

and there's just all these bad bad memories and we've had periods of time when we got along pretty well I mean it's not like it's all been bad but there's just so much

and I guess I just want some kind of an acknowledgment from her that she always put herself first and she didn't really care about me that much but she doesn't see it that way so that is never going to happen and there isn't any point in pushing for that to happen because it's not going to

She's going to live for some more amount of time and we don't know how much that isand I never really felt like I had something I needed to resolve with my father I always felt like you know I just couldn't resolve it it wasn't going to be resolved

And maybe it isn't going to be resolved with her either but

I don't know if it makes any sense that somehow I have to resolve it in myself when I didn't seem to need to resolve it in myself with my father I don't know whether that's because I hurt him and here hurt me or whether it's because I don't know I don't know why I just have always felt like he loved me and she did not well no I haven't always felt like that only since I went to live with her but I think she probably does love me and I don't know exactly what it is I need to resolve in myself but whatever it is it doesn't require me anymore to try to extract from her Mia culpas so it's like yeah fine You were a great mother

And I'm doing something that is either a really good idea or a really bad idea and I'm not sure which

There are a lot of problems

And they all so clearly dovetail

So I'm going to be working with her

She has been trying for years to develop a brand I guess she wants to be well she wants to be a famous artist whatever that means but she wants to sell art she wants to have she used to sell art we had a great business she made pretty good money but it was based on selling a particular type of item that seemed to go out of popularity and then when that all kind of fell apart I guess was a little while later she got the job and whatever she had a really bad midlife crisis everything all went to hell I don't want to go into all the stuff that happened but she had she had a bad midlife crisis

Whatever I'm going to work with her and try to help her achieve some of the things she wants to do and that has made her so happy that she is all enthusiastic and happy and excited and has a new renewed energy for life

And right as my hope that in the process of helping her do this stuff I can figure out my business and she can teach me whatever she knows about the whole running around business thing and I can monitor her a little more carefully a lot more carefully and I can get all the information maybe that I'm going to need to get access to so that when she dies I don't have to go spend two months digging through boxes and boxes of mail to try to find her accounts

And whatever it is that I need to reconcile with her or with myself about her I will have to do it

So the out of all this will come some kind of closure

Because realistically the monitoring is going to have to happen and I may have to move in with her which I really don't want to do but maybe maybe I can make that not happen and I'm not saying I'm going to work for her until she dies I'm just saying you know right now there's a situation where the kind of work I am actually qualified to do is work I don't want to do I don't want to do it because I don't think it's safe and I don't want to do it because I have lost money desire to do that kind of work anymore

And there are some reason why I have not done this thing that everybody who has ever had much close contact with me has felt like I should do which is to have my own business there are some block or some something

Maybe it's just some version of what she does you know maybe it's just another form of being completely out of touch with yourself although I don't think so

But they're s*** wrong with me for sure

and I realized that in a way we're all just you know trying to make it through and very few people really have their s*** together it's more about momentum

Anyway I don't know if this makes any sense it makes sense from my perspective but I'm not 100% sure where exactly I'm coming from right now I just feel like this is got to happen and this has got to be awesome you know like I have to just let it go just let it go

Like I'm at a place where I need something

And I'm going to try to get it from her and I'm going to try to help her with something that she needs help with and maybe in the process we can just heal whatever this is

And you know it's kind of funny I was thinking about it cuz you know there's been the Pluto and Capricorn thing and then there was a Saturn return and there's all this you know theoretical blah blah about you know tearing yourself down and building yourself back up and Saturn return is supposed to be this big you know lesson year thing and then Aquarius Capricorn went into Aquarius and then it retrograded and so there was supposed to be this one last push to learn whatever you were supposed to learn and I was like man I don't know if I learned anything I think I was supposed to leave that place years ago and I didn't and now I have but what am I learning you know but even though I know this whole pandemic thing is theoretically the time when I should have done all these things you know and I couldn't really look at anything I was doing and say well that's productive and useful you know I felt like I was doing some work emotionally psychologically and maybe you know and then I was like well yeah maybe or maybe that's just b******* I don't know

But then I'm looking at this and I'm thinking well this is either right about when Aquarius is coming back and it's all supposed to ease up maybe it doesn't maybe that doesn't happen till next month I don't know but it's soon and it's not like I was thinking about that but I'm thinking about it now

And maybe there is some way in which I've learned important lessons and and moving on to another step and it's all going to be great

Maybe I'll at least come out of this understanding her I don't know I kind of doubt it

But I guess whatever

Maybe I'll understand me better

Maybe I haven't understood myself nearly as well as I thought I had I don't know I feel very strange very aware of the non objectivity of everything

And I mean I always am kind of aware of the non-objectivity of everything but very aware

But less childlike

Which wasn't really the goal somehow

 they reset her pulse rate

they think having it so low

the raw food doctor set it down

might have contributed to the fluid retention

at least in that it made her lethargic

and not moving around enough

they are adding some medication

the doctor told me

but i don't remember

i don't think i heard her properly

and

also

that was before i realized i was supposed to know everything

so i was having trouble hearing or understanding her

cell phone issues + accent + stress

idk

and i was only asking her to repeat

things related to immediate danger

anyway

she's better

they're doing some lung test tomorrow

and all the doctors are gonna be assessing all the info

from the weekend

and maybe they will have an estimate

i love you very much sweetheart

i feel weird

but i'm going to bed now

goodnight

oh yeah

i meant to tell you

i watched walk hard again this evening

there were a bunch of bits i had forgotten

i got to laugh at like it was the first time

very fun

 i'm going to bed now

i'm pretty tired

i have a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow

she's better

but

still not sure when she's getting out

not sure now which day i'm voting either

stuff is all kinda up in the air

i'm not sure what i told you

hang on

i love you very much

 goodnight sweetheart

i'm going to sleep now

but

i'm not going to be able to sleep for long

i'm going to visit her again tomorrow

i'm really tired

but

wired too

could not make myself go to sleep

 she's ok-ish

she apparently hasn't been taking her diuretic

first she told me

if she needs to leave the house

she doesn't take it in the morning

but then

she later said something

after i said maybe they could increase the strength of the diuretic

when i remember to take it

so

she's not taking it

she doesn't like it

and this new doctor told her something

that made her think she was perfectly healthy

so she stopped taking it

she didn't take it when she had the raw food doctor

all the extra vitamin k from raw foods

she isn't eating raw food

just now her hospital doctor called me to ask me questions about her prescriptions

why is she taking warfarin?

i don't know

the doctor put on warfarin, seemed to think she needed it

which doctor put her on that?

i'm not sure, i think her first cardiologist

who is that?

it went on in this vein

and i'm like

she has always seemed cogent enough to handle her own medicines

so i talk to her

she tells me about them

but

i'm not tracking and monitoring them

i do not have indepth and accurate knowledge

do you not have a chart for her

[she's in the same medical group asmy mother's primary care]

i'm happy to answer your questions

i'm just not sure i have accurate answers

Okay

So I don't know what you're going to hear out of me today I'm just going to tell you this so you have a pre-frame so if you don't hear anything else you don't worry

Or don't worry about me I guess

I was finished with my shower and I was on the toilet and I was thinking I should text my mom and find out when she's getting moved to her room

And I got a call from a doctor in the hospital

She was updating me on my mother's condition

What you got up this morning she was having trouble breathing again cuz she has fluid in her lungs

And the oxygen she was on wasn't getting into her blood so they put her on a CPAP that forces oxygen into the lungs

and after the first treatment of that it wasn't effective

So she said they were going to put her on another or she was right then on another session of CPAP but that if that didn't work they were going to have to intubate her

So I freaked out a little bit because they're basically asking if they can put my mother on a ventilator

and my experience with ventilators is really just what I've been hearing over and over and over again with covid

I won't go into all the details

But she was making it sound like this was going to happen in an hour and that she needed to know right now if there was approval and did I know what my mother wanted

I'm like no I don't know

And anyway so then I'm trying to call to find out if I can go see my mother before she's intubated

And they're all like no the visiting hours are from 1:00 to 5:00

And I'm like but I'm trying to get in to see her before she gets intubated

And they're like well I don't think that's happening

And I talked to her nurse who was like well she seems better now they haven't done the oxygen check yet blood oxygen check from this CPAP session but she seems better

And just about then

I get this text from my mother

and she's like they moved me to a new area because I was having trouble breathing because of allergies

Really

so I gather that her condition is quite a bit more serious than what she's led me to believe

Continues to lead me to believe

and the doctor made it seem a lot worse than it probably is because she wanted to get instructions for the next step

without making it seem like there was any likelihood that the next step wasn't happening

For which I'm not overly appreciative

But I trust the word of a nurse over a doctor any day and two separate nurses were like oh I don't think that's happening

And her nurse seems super cool

So I'm going to go see her

and I'm not sure I don't think I can stay the whole one to five I think I can always stay one hour during that time

But I'm not certain how much I'm going to want to talk or how coherent I'm going to be

But that's what's going on

goodnight sweetheart I love you very much

🌈🏵️🌺🍥🍭

I love you

I haven't watched that one thing yet

because

I had to lie down

there has been a surreal

and very stressful

quality to the day

I'm sorry if I've been

out of it

My mom

is at the urgent care

emergency room

not sure which it is technically

she's had this before

she's having trouble breathing

because she's full of fluid

they have to give her i.v. diuretics

I'm at the car place

getting a new tire

my day is weird

sorry

I'm not up to much conversation

maybe I should be there

holding her hand

I'm not sure

Okay I'm going to go to bed now

I was going to go to bed like 3 hours ago

And I even fell asleep in the chair

I don't know why I won't go to bed

Like a 4-year-old

Anyway

I love you very much sweetheart

Goodnight 

i think that was good for me today

 the guys at the shop

they weren't really wearing masks

well, they were wearing them, but dangling off one ear

so like if they had to put them on real quick, they could

and

i wasn't that afraid

as i sat there in my vote mask, hoping it would protect me

and then

i began to wonder was it rude, somehow

not to be wearing a mask, obviously

but to be wearing a vote mask specifically

i mean

when this guy was growing up

discussing politics was rude

political stridency was rude

hell, when i was growing up

it wasn't polite

to be making a public protest was fine

but

to go to someone's house for a visit with a sign

rude

and i wondered

was i coming off rude to this old guy

i like him

but

then i realized i was being anachronistic

to say vote can only be construed to be political

in this atmosphere

it would have been--  in his time, in my time

merely a civically minded statement

i got a new battery

and i needed a new tire too

i had a bubble on the side

i scraped a curb a while back

looked for damage but didn't see any

i guess i had it afterall

he's ordering it

tomorrow

i'm going back to switch out the tire

also need to go to the h.e.b. to get the new sticker

pretty sure they're doing that again

So I found my insurance card

and my AAA

and my neighbor left right before I was gonna ask him

but then he came back

and he jumped the car

and I drove around to charge it

and now I'm at the car place

they say it's an antique car now

so no emissions test

so

I'm waiting on the inspection

an oil change

and

I asked them to check the battery

if it's weak at all

I want a new battery

so I don't get stranded anywhere

all in all

it seems like it'll be ok

goodnight sweetheart, i love you very much

 i was going to go to sleep

like and hour and a half ago

but

clearly i didn't

i think i need to be up by 8:30

so

now way i won't be short on sleep at this point

but

that's just how i roll i guess

hard to go to sleep--  like ever

if you're me

because

i won't lie down and close my eyes

i love you very much sweetheart

i hope you're doing ok

so much

the sky is falling energy 

everything is fusion, in the end

 i started watching when i got up

but then i finished just a few minutes ago

they say that stuff

because if they can convince you

then they did

anyway

they don't know what they're talking about

we don't even know what the new world will need yet

how's anybody supposed to retrain at this juncture

i'm going to bed in a few minutes

i'm gonna get up in the morning and try to get my shit taken care of

so i have no idea how that's gonna work out

i need to get my inspection done too

so maybe i can get that all done at once

maybe

i cannot tell you

how much

i don't want to deal with any of this

it occurs to me

that in the i cannot deal with this mindset

i forgot to give you specifics on kitty

he was limping around pretty bad

and

i was worried that he might get aninfection

i didn't think there was any way it could be broken

or substantially fucked up

but

if he got something that needed to be drained

then it would need a sedation

because he just would not let that happen

and then it gets to be like surgery

and a much bigger deal

so even though

probably

he would have been ok

he went to the vet

he got antibiotic shot

and kitty non-poisonous anti-inflamatory

they can't take human stuff

and he's much better

although i was led to believe

[by being specifically told so]

that the anti-inflamatory would disolve

and it does not

so it couldn't be mixed in food

as directed

he's a good boy, sort of

olives are good in stuffing

although

i might try a different stuffing base

maybe cornbread

maybe rice

the breadcrumbs didn't seem quite right

i was thinking as i was eating it that more like a dirty rice base

made with chicken livers

might be really good

and have something more authentic about it

i've never liked chicken livers

except in dirty rice

but

i think that would be the trick

kind of an annatto sofrito dirty rice

with olives and capers

or

maybe not with the annatto and sofrito

maybe just dirt rice with olives and capers

so

not really a puerto rican dish anymore

i guess it's hard not to let the foodways you grew up with

influence your tastes

everything is fusion in the end

i guess