it occurs to me that I didn't really explain myself very well when I said I was dizzy and I was going to go lay down I did go lay down but I fell asleep

Now I didn't finish my coffee it's very unusual that I don't drink the full first cup and then go get a second cup but only drink about half of the first cup and was like I really don't want coffee which is usually a sign that my stomach is upset and/or that I'm sick

taking naps in the middle of the day is also a sign that I'm not feeling very well it's pretty unusual for me to do that although my sleep patterns have been pretty erratic and I have had a lot of stress but sleeping during the day for me is a sign of illness

And then I got up and it was like I don't know 5:00 or something and I had toast and a baked potato cuz that was all pretty bland I was much less dizzy after I had the nap but I still did not feel well and I was having like cramps so that tends to reinforce the hormone thing

I I just really couldn't tell you what I have been doing I did research on retinols I I don't know I've just been kind of zoned out I watched some more Monty Python I didn't even really look through very much social media just a little tiny bit

But I'm pretty sure that the symptoms of covet are not just like nausea but actual you know vomiting or diarrhea not just like oh I feel nauseated and I'm dizzy I'm pretty sure that's hormonal and it's been a while since I had a bout of this exactly this way but I'm pretty sure this is what my body did right before it had periods

Now I've had hormonal stuff I don't know how frequently I've had that I don't have any sense of time anymore at all but I know I've mentioned it a few times but I feel like it's highly likely that I will actually have a period because I had that whole emotional maudlin episode which would be consistent with really bad PMS now that I'm looking at it after the fact and then I had the dizziness and the nausea and I feel better now but I've been real out of it all day I would say brain fog is a pretty good description

so I'm sorry I know I said I was going to go lay down and then I kind of disappeared and that might be a source of worry and I don't mean to be that I feel confident that I do not have covid

And I'm going to put on some of that hormonal cream before I go to bed

I love you very much sweetheart

💋

 i'm feeling generally better

but i'm not going to the studio tomorrow

both so i can get over it

and so that i have a change to make sure that's what it is

so i don't have the covid, for sure for sure

i love you very much sweetheart

gonna go to bed now and get up at more or less regular time

sleep well sweetheart 

 good morning sweetheart

how are you doing today?

i'm waiting for her to call--  appt was 10:30

but

first appt and whatnot, but it also occurs to me that i'm not sure there's anything for me to be hearing yet

they think she has sleep apnea and she has to be tested for it

not something they can do in the office today

so it may all just be asking her questions and physical exam

and scheduling

might not be anything to see here

i'm still, or again, really, having nausea

i looked it up

it can be an early sign of covid

but

i don't think it is

i still think some kind of hormonal thing is more likely

and that is what it feels like today

so she called

he lungs sound good

he doesn't think there's enough evidence for apnea

to be worth sending her to a test at this particular moment

she's using an oxygen concentrator when she sleeps

he wants her to continue with that

i feel a little dizzy

i'm going to go lie down, i think

i'm drinking some emergen-C

i love you

Well surely is having surgery in the morning

They've had her on IV antibiotics and although the infection was going up her arm it's headed back down to her fingernail and they checked and it hasn't gone into the bone so they have to basically lance it and cut away the dead tissue

and I heard her talking with my mom on the phone well my mom was talking to her caregiver but I could hear her talking in the background and she is scared I doesn't really understand what's going on and she wants to ask questions but she can't remember the words that she wants to use so she is asking questions but the word she's using are I mean they're real words but they have like a word salad quality to them but as soon as she says the wrong word she gets frustrated cuz she knows that's not the word she wants so she tries another one and that's not the word she wants and she tries another one and that's not the word she wants so it's it's just really kind of sad

But she just sounds angry and petulant

But I can tell she's scared so there's a quality of small child you know it's it's pretty sad

And my mother is going to lung doctor tomorrow because they think she might have sleep apnea when she was in the hospital they were monitoring her oxygen levels and the nurse told me that her oxygen levels had gone down when she was sleeping like significantly and when I asked the doctor about it the doctor didn't seem to know but then subsequently they decided that she might have sleep apnea

And I kind of wondered if they would have come to that conclusion if I hadn't asked about the oxygen levels going down but perhaps they noticed it on their own I don't know it doesn't really matter at this point

so she's going to this doctor but I can't go in with her if I go with her I won't be allowed in the building because there's no place for people to wait which was how it was in the hospital you know there was no waiting room so if you like if your whole family had come thinking you were going to get to see your loved one they would have been like no you're only allowed one family member and everybody else you know has to wait outside

Which I'm assuming that people knew and so they didn't bring loved ones that couldn't come up but it did seem like there were people milling about so I don't know

So anyway I can't go with her because I won't be allowed to go up and the only reason I want to go is so that I can find out what they say so what they said was that she could call me when she's up with the doctor and I could listen in and I could ask questions now will she do that I don't know while she remember I don't know so I guess I need to be prepared for that but I don't know if it's happening or not

Then she's got her regular doctor appointment in the afternoon but she's just getting blood taken for that she was back down to only 2 lb over today she says I don't know I I can't tell she doesn't look swollen at all to me and I made her promise to take the diuretic this evening as well

When I was on the way home and I was almost all the way home I had this like wave of nausea and my first thought was oh my God I've got the covet but I'm pretty sure I don't I don't know why I was having nausea sometimes if I'm really really hungry I can feel somewhat nauseated and I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast and it was kind of late but I've started taking iron again I am prone to anemia and I mean probably not so much anymore I think it had to do with really heavy menstrual cycles and not having those so but I haven't been feeling as good as I think I should feel and I decided that perhaps vitamins were in order and I have these vitamins they're called heme iron and they're designed really for if you have issues with anemia they have really high b vitamins and the iron is like 450% of your daily required whatever with the idea that you know you take them and it builds you back up faster but since it is so high I don't ever feel like I should take them every day because I don't want to get too much iron so I tend to take them sporadically you know like I'll just take I'll take it every other day for you know a few days and then I don't take it for a while I have this pain I get in my hips sometimes that for some reason I feel like is a sign that my iron is low so I'll take the iron then and until the hip pain goes away I can't explain that it isn't scientific it's intuitive and it might be completely wrong

But where I was going with this was I took that this morning now if I took that on an empty stomach it would make me feel sick and the way I felt was similar to how I feel if I took iron on an empty stomach except I probably would have actually thrown up if I had taken on that iron on an empty stomach and it was hours and hours and hours later so I have no explanation for it unless it was just you know stress or hormones or something I don't know

So I came in and I ate some crackers and I sat down for a little while and then I had cod kind of poached maybe is that what you would call it You put it in some water with a little bit of butter and a little bit of well a lot of lemon and you could good in the oven on a low temperature That's poached right and root vegetables carrots and beets and onions sweet potatoes and brussel sprouts I know Brussels sprouts aren't root vegetables but they're really good with root vegetables and it gets you a green in there

And then I fell asleep in the chair pretty much immediately

But I had a very exciting thing happen that was just about me didn't have anything to do with my mom it was just an exciting moment for me and this is probably going to be even more boring for you than hearing about my mom but I can't help it it was amazing

At some point during the pandemic months ago I saw a video that said that if you put cleansing oil on your face and you massage it for like 2 minutes that all of your blackheads and clogged pores and whatever will come out well maybe not all of them but many of them and I'm like I don't believe that but I would love for that to happen so let me try and I mean I'm massaged and massaged and massage to massage and I got like maybe one or two blackheads out of my whole face it's very disappointed

But I have not stopped trying right so you know every day at some point during the day I'm rubbing my face with this cleansing oil I have actually have a couple of different ones I have one that I use downstairs that's a little thicker and I can clean it off with those honest baby wipes and then I have some upstairs that's more liquidy and I use that in the morning usually although I haven't been using it in the morning lately because I've been using noxzema

Which I really like and is dirt cheap and I feel like it is at least as good and maybe better than anything else in terms of clearing my skin now it's not a beautiful immersive experience of the green beauty and the luxury and whatever but you know I have a really beautiful cleanser well it's almost all gone but I had a really beautiful cleanser that's from a Hawaiian company and it has red Alea Clayand hibiscus and all this kind of stuff and when I put it on my face it softens up my sebum plugs so that I can scrape at them and they come out well initially I thought of this is great but what it does is it makes me pick my face real bad so it's not really that good of an experience for me because it makes me do bad things that I shouldn't do

Well the noxzema it loosens the sebum plugs but you know I'm doing it in the shower so it's a little bit different situation be I can scrape with them a little bit and they come out and I don't end up doing as much damage I don't know whether it's because I'm in the shower or whether it's because of the noxzema experience or what but it's working for me and it's like cheap so I'm like okay whatever I'm not fighting this

But last night I put on I have the stuff that I bought with points at Ulta or something I don't know a while ago and I like it it's got polyglutamic acid in it and at first I think that's what it's called and at first I maybe it's polyhydroxy acid maybe probably glutamic acid is something else any rate it's like AHAs but it's bigger so it doesn't get in as deep doesn't irritate your skin as much it's actually not supposed to irritate your skin at all but I have weird skin and it gets over stimulated in whatever so when I got it and I used it I thought it was irritating my skin and I stopped using but then subsequently I started using it again and I decided that it wasn't actually irritating my skin it was purging and at the point when I started using it again I didn't have as much to purge and so it didn't cause as much trouble and so I started experimenting with it so now I use that periodically

So I put that on and it's an essence not a serum or whatever it's in essence so put that on and then I have a little bit of that Clinique salicylic acid stuff left and so I put that on my spots

And then I have this serum that I got from beauty pie I don't know probably a year ago or almost a year ago that I've used periodically and I like it but I still have quite a bit left and I'm like I'm just going to put this on too and it's a micropealing serum but it's it's pretty gentle so I thought you know I could handle it and when I got up and I went into the bathroom this morning I put that oil on my face and I started rubbing and oh my god all this stuff started coming out of my skin just all these little sebum plugs and they're really small you know it's not like I have gigantic blackheads or whatever they're really small and they're mostly not oxidized because I'm trying my best to get them out you know so they're mostly not visible but I can feel them or whatever and they bother me to have all the clogged pores so I just started rubbing in a circular motion and they just started coming out and I was like oh my god and there were so many of them and I was just like aaaahhhhh

and it was I mean it was the experience that I've been trying for all this time and then I was like f*** what did I do and I was trying to think back to what happened last night at this remarkable experience so it's

Exuvience probiotic anti pollution essence

Clinique clinical solutions clearing gel

And beauty pie micro peeling drops

The micro peeling drops are like fruit acids it's got mango and banana and some other thing I don't know

and so of course now I just want to do that like again and again and again but I'm not going to do that I'm not going to do it more than twice a week because that's a s*** ton of stuff and I want to f****** my moisture barrier but

When I looked at my face this morning I was like you know the spots aren't that bad so I put on I have this sunscreen that's made with zinc so it's a physical sunscreen but it was made by one of the people that I follow on Etsy and it's got zinc but it's also got all this amazing amazing stuff in it so it's very nourishing and I got it because you know I thought if I was going to go outside I might need a sunscreen and it had all this amazing amazing stuff in it and the sunscreens I had you know were expired and I have so much trouble with sunscreens irritating my skin and I had had really good luck with all of her tinctures and stuff and I liked the ingredients so I'm like I'll just get that and I mean it was more expensive than a super cheap zinc sunscreen but it was less expensive than the zinc sunscreen that I used last time I needed sunscreen and the one I really liked they stopped making I used to get one at whole foods and it it was white I mean it had a white cast I don't know that it looked that good but like I would wear it when I went on the road and by the time I would get to wherever I was going to see you whatever breakouts and things I had would be cleared up because zinc helps clear up breakouts so I thought well I'll put this on and I don't have a little bit of a white cast but it also has to cut down on the white cast she put this mica stuff in it so it's glowy so it it has a kind of a blurring effect so it doesn't it's not like a tinted sunscreen but it's like a blurring sunscreen so I put that on not in super large quantity and then I put a little bit of that tinted thing the covergirl thing on top of that and I was like well you know that pretty much covers it if you look real carefully you can see but if you aren't looking too carefully it's pretty pretty well concealed so I did that and I felt pretty felt like I looked pretty good and she didn't give me any s*** so I guess she either decided not to give me any more s*** or she didn't really notice I mean I really thought it looked pretty good so

I realize that that whole thing with the sebum plugs coming out of my face rubbing in an oil I realized that that's gross and to normal people and that that's probably not really what you want to hear about but for me that was like I don't know some kind of fantasy experience it was just amazing and it made me so happy

And then that I could basically quote do my makeup end quote without really wearing any makeup and look at myself and think I looked pretty good although I got to say the mask covers up awful lot of my face and then I've got my hair all pulled back and I don't think you get any real sense of me when you look at me

My hair seems very faded and my feature seemed very nondescript so I'm not going to say oh I look super good in a mask but you know I felt pretty good about it

So I guess I need to go to bed and on the one hand I am so tired so much tired of then it makes any sense to be

But on the other hand I don't really want to go to bed I don't know why I'm like that

But I'm not working tomorrow I'm just being on call for doctor phone calls that may or may not come and working on other things but not at the studio at home

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

I hope you're doing well I'm feeling a lot better about the world today I still have a lot of stress but I'm not spending a lot of time thinking about how I'm laying on the floor with a broken hip dying you know I mean that was not my proudest moment

All right what looks like we're on for today

And she has an appointment to have blood taken tomorrow

She's still up 2 lb

But I made her promise she would take the diuretic tonight as well

She did not tell them that she was up 2 lb when she made the appointment

and she doesn't have an appointment to see the doctor she says if she makes an appointment to see the doctor they'll make her wait for a week which may or may not actually be true I don't know but she says that if she's still up 2 lb she promises she'll tell him and ask to talk to the doctor I'm not sure what I can trust her with

And I told her we need to find out from the doctor how much of that diuretic she can take safely because we might be in a situation where we need her to take more of it

Because if you just have to sit close to the bathroom all day that's a whole lot better than going to the hospital

So anyway I am tied up for today for sure

I hope your day is going good so far I hope it continues to go good I love you very much

Well she's kind of difficult

And this isn't entirely about that

But Shirley is in the hospital now

my mom texted me and so she doesn't know whether she's going to want to work tomorrow or whether she's going to need to do something with Shirley

I'm not sure what she would be doing with Shirley because the woman who is hercaregiver isn't exactly the right word because she's in one of those kind of halfway houses for old people that you put people in when you can't really afford to put them in a nursing home

And she's already been in it a couple of them I think

At least one she got moved out of that one because she said they were mistreating her and then she had a strangely broken toe and so they moved her out of there and put her into this new place but now she has something wrong with her finger and she's been saying these people are mistreating her

And this woman who's her like I said caregiver isn't the right word because she's not staying with her and as it turns out Shirley is having visits from hospice care though although my mother talks about her with some degree of regularity she passes out actual information pretty badly

The last information my mother gave me was that she was not Alzheimer's she had dementia and that that was different and that she could live indefinitely with dementia

Well apparently she's been diagnosed with Alzheimer's at some point subsequently and she's receiving hospice doctor and nurse visits through her insurance 

But the woman who's in charge of monitoring her situation because my mother decided she couldn't deal with it and she'd been living with that woman for a while but her condition deteriorated to the point where she couldn't handle her anymore so now she's in charge of making sure that everything that needs to happen for her happens for her she saw her Thursday and she said she was fine Thursday but then apparently today she's got blood poisoning

So you know they don't know yet and she's in the hospital

And I don't know how hospital is for you there or if you even would know that but here they are currently allowing people to have visitors but they allow one visitor so since Shirley doesn't necessarily recognize people and this is the person she sees the most and this is the person who's in charge of making sure that all her stuff goes right That's the person who's going to be her official visitor so my mom will not be going to visit her while she's in the hospital but the hospice worker said she needs to move out of that place and they recommended a place to move her to so that's going to have to happen and I don't know whether my mother's going to need to be involved with that or not

But she said that she wasn't sure whether she was going to want to work or not so I told her I would be up and ready so that if she wanted to or if she needed me I would be available and she should just keep me posted so I may be free tomorrow or I may not

But the reason why I said my mother is difficult is that you know she's supposed to be monitoring her blood pressure and she's supposed to be monitoring her water retention because she had to be hospitalized and it was a pretty big ordeal and if her weight goes up two or three pounds she's supposed to call the doctor

But she went to see her cardiologist without me and he apparently told her she should just take an extra water pill which you know is probably what the other doctor would tell her to do so I don't necessarily have a problem with that as a thing to do but she's lying to me when I ask her about her numbers

I know this because hey I was pretty sure she was lying to me and then b she told me oh yeah I was lying to you and I'm pretty sure that she was up 15 lb and that was fluid maybe more than 15 lb that she had to be hospitalized but then when I was talking to her today she said it was 10 lb and she's up 4 lb now and I'm like well you know if did you call the doctor and she's like no I just took an extra water pill and I'm like okay but you're supposed to call the doctor if your weight goes up 2 or 3 lb and she's like well that's not what the cardiologist said and I'm like okay but what I understood was the agreement was that it was your regular doctor who was going to be monitoring you because it's hard to get in to see the cardiologist and she said call and she said that you needed to go in more frequently to be checked and she's like well she told me 2 to 4 weeks and it's been 4 weeks so I was going to call her tomorrow but she wasn't going to call her tomorrow

So I'm like okay well you know she took her extra water pill tonight because apparently she's taking the water pill one time a day now instead of two times a day

and she sure that it's all going to be fine in the morning and I'm like okay well you know way yourself before you call the doctor to try to make an appointment so that you can tell them if it's up and I mean it's not like I think 4 pounds is such a big deal

And it's not like I want to be you know the military police or something

But I mean I thought we were all on the same page that you know this is something that we need to be taking care of before it gets out of control and it wasn't 10 lb it was more than 10 lb but if she thinks it was 10 lb then she's almost halfway and she just is blase about it

I told her that the covid is coming and the hospitals are about to be completely overrun and that she wouldn't be able maybe to get medical treatment if things got out of control and besides she didn't want to be back in the hospital but I'm not certain that she's taking it seriously

And apparently I can't tell by looking at her if she's retaining a couple extra pounds of water That's just too small of a threshold

And see this is part of the reason why I have to be doing this because she can't be trusted

And you know if she wanted to die I could respect that I understand that I've wanted to die lots of times but she doesn't want to die

and I feel like she isn't taking the cover to seriously if she should be and I don't know how to ask her more specifically about her numbers without just being a complete b****

I don't know

I don't know

I'm not sure how to handle her

Anyway I thought I had written you this morning but I see that I haven't and I'm sorry I just to be honest I just watch Monty Python episodes all day and talk to her on the phone and you know I don't even know what else just kind of veged I mean it's been probably 5 hours since I stopped watching Monty Python episodes

I need to go to bed because I need to be up in case she wants to work and I didn't have to do it that way I could have said no if you don't know now then let's not do it but to be honest with you I didn't want to do that because I kind of feel like I should be watching her so if she wants to do it I kind of feel like I need to just so that I can keep an eye on her and try to make a closer assessment of her water retention and whatnot

Anyway I didn't mean for any of that to interfere with you

So I'm sorry

I am feeling some stress

But you know I don't know how much longer she's going to live like this I mean she has really good medical care she has much better medical care than I think I probably have ever had and for sure she has better medical care than what I'm going to have when I'm old and childless so they won't be anybody checking on me

I was thinking about that too

What it's going to be like when I'm old

although realistically I don't know how old I'm going to live to be

So you know that's not help helping anything

I think I told you I had a vision a few years ago that I was going to die alone in the desert

But I'm not like afraid of that

I kind of go back and forth about whether I think that's a good thing or a bad thing but I'm not afraid of it

I just really hope that I don't like fall down and break my hip and have to lay there until I starve to death or oh no I would dehydrate first so three days it'd be a long three days laying on the floor waiting for somebody to come by and find me and why would they I'm a f****** hermit I aspire to hermit this in a lot of ways so these are not happy thoughts but you know it could be worse

But this is not what you want from me this here

So then what do I say right so now it's late and I'm just saying it anyway I may as well have said it hours ago

If she does want to work tomorrow I may have to bust out the real makeup because I'm more broken out now than I was before

I don't know

I just don't know

I'm sorry I'm not more there for you

And I worry about you

Whether you're healthy or not

Whether you're taking good care of yourself

I hope that you are

And I hope that you understand why I didn't say anything earlier

And I hope you aren't unhappy with me for saying this now

I tried to get all upbeat I really did

I just didn't quite manage it

Then I'll be fine maybe

I wish I had another sibling

That Jennifer wasn't just the imaginary kid she talks about but was actually somebody I could stick her with

But truthfully there's a way in which this is psychological work that I really need to do to be able to have any closure about this

And she's been saying you know how I'm so awesome and talented and whatever and of course it's all because of what a great mother she was and when she said she had lied to me and I was like yeah I kind of thought so she's like oh we can't lie to each other because we're bonded at the heart

Can I just I don't know about that stuff I don't think she was a good mother and I don't know if we're bonded at the heart I don't feel very bonded at the heart

But she is my mother you know

And I love her

Even if I also hate her

Does that make sense

But my brothers they're not her kids

I'm it

And she's got her self all tied up with Shirley because she didn't want to trust Shirley's son and she keeps trying to get me to sign on to be in charge of Shirley if she dies and I'm like no I'm not going to do that I don't really want to have to deal with you dying and you know going and digging through your house and trying to figure out what I have to do and I'm not really emotionally prepared to deal with any of that but I'm not taking on extra people who aren't my responsibility

I didn't want my mom to take on this responsibility because she's old and she has a hard enough time taking care of herself

And that's not so much because she's old as it is just because she's crazy

But I'm I'm not taking on extra people I'm not and what she should do if that's the issue is go get a lawyer who would be in charge of that stuff but there isn't really enough money for that

Me and Shirley doesn't really have enough money for that she was just so determined that she needed to be in charge of all that

But when Shirley came down here to live with her you know she asked her son if he could take her one day a week and he was like no

But I think she had a worse relationship with with her kid then I have with my mom for sure and you know men aren't really expected to do that kind of stuff anyway

So whatever

You know

Yet another reason why being a girl is a bad deal

And that's enough of that

I love you very much sweetheart

Going to try real hard to wake up with a better attitude

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

 well

that trying not to sleep late

it didn't work

i slept ten hours

i didn't think i could sleep more than five hours

before i had to get up to pee

but i do not believe i did that

kitty was pissed at me

he must have tried to wake me

he was obviously unsuccessful

so

i fed him

and went to the bathroom

and made coffee with eggnog

[i used a little too much eggnog so it is a little too sweet

but delicious all the same]

i need to figure out what i'm going to eat

because i am very very hungry

i love you sweetheart

I love you sweetheart

I hope you had a good day

I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person

Do you know that you're kind of adorable

Do you have that sense of yourself

I had a donut today

It was a Krispy Kreme donut

With pink icing and sprinkles

We went downstairs to the art supply

She bought gouache but I don't know why she bought gouache and she bought a bronze acrylic

And that one's my fault because she had a painting that I was asking her Don't you have a bronze Don't you have a bronze because I thought it needed bronze

somebody I missed too had brought them some Krispy Kreme donuts and Lucy was like they're for the art supply community and you're part of the art supply community now so I got a donut I was very excited

And we worked a little late and then I had to go to the grocery store and kind of restock for apocalypse

I mean I could have done it tomorrow but I just wanted to get it over with and I thought there'd be less people in there today they were quite a few people in there but I guess it wasn't too bad

I got to say I was under the impression that Burroughs were very small maybe they're not quite as small as I think they are

But I just have this image in my head of this like 7 and 1/2 ft tall guy kind of perched with his knees almost all the way up to his ears on this little burrow that's standing like maybe three feet off the ground and it just will not leave me

I wish they would just go ahead and let Biden start his transition in the regular appointed way

With whatever emails and offices and briefings are supposed to be allowed to him

It's starting to have kind of a government and exile feel to me that I don't like

The Texas legislature is looking at legalizing marijuana well actually they're looking at doing it again they keep kind of going around and around about it and they keep talking themselves out of it

But we all know it's just a matter of time before they say that is just a lot of money to walk away from let's just go ahead and legalize this s*** who cares most people want it and if we make it legal we can tax it and regulate it

I thought surely when they saw how much money Colorado was making they were going to do it but You know whatever but now they've got all the extra pressure from the pandemic and the unemployment and the you know apocalypse

But I just can't express to you

Just how much a little bit of that stress relief would be worth

From a variety of standpoints

I have to go to sleep it's very late

I was exhausted earlier and I fell asleep in the chair and then I fell asleep on the toilet peeing which seemed like an unlikely thing to do

but then I was watching and I got all caught up in it and I got my second wind and now I'm up all night so I'm getting back into a bad pattern of staying up all night even when I have to get up in the morning although I don't have to particularly get up in the morning tomorrow I have been staying up late this week and not getting enough sleep

And that 5 or 6 hours of sleep model is really not quite enough I know I seem to want to do it all the time and it's been a pattern my whole life You know if I get 5 or 6 hours of sleep I'm fine and sometimes I get like four hours of sleep or four and a half hours of sleep but three and a half hours of sleep not like very often but you know there's some theory that you don't get caught up that it doesn't work to be short sleep some nights and sleep over some other nights but nobody's ever explained why that's not okay so maybe it isn't but maybe it is maybe it's generally fine but you just thrive better if you get enough sleep every night I don't know when I get extra sleep sometimes I feel more tired and if I got less sleep and I've always had all these theories about it being to do with what part of the sleep cycle you wake up in but I don't really know I don't really have any expertise in it and the cat is howling for no really good reason sometimes I think he house because he just is saying please for the love of God go to bed I just fed him before I started dictating this and I think that I had said something about going to bed so probably that's what he wants and I really need to go to bed I'm not very coherent at this point

What is my favorite pie

I think my favorite pie is lemon meringue

I like key lime pie if I'm someplace where they make good key lime pie but to be honest with you I don't think I like key lime pie better than lemon meringue pie it's just you almost never see the lemon meringue pie anymore

I like apple pie apple pies fine you can't go wrong with apple pie it's not amazing but it's consistently good

I like cherry pie but to be honest with you I don't really like cherry pie that much I like fresh cherries a lot better than I like cherry pie so I would get it if I was going to a diner and I was going to have coffee and cherry pie and I would probably order it over apple pie and less I thought it was really good apple pie I would probably take a really good apple pie over cherry pie

Mostly because a good apple pie would be made with fresh apples and have a really nice crust and I have the impression which might not be accurate but I have the impression that cherry pie is not usually made with fresh cherries it's usually made with some kind of pre-made thing that you just pour in and that's never going to be better

I like pumpkin pie and sweet potato pie and pecan pie and mince pie all reasonably well I don't really love any of them but I like them in their contexts

I'm not crazy about strawberry or strawberry rhubarb pie in any capacity I would not order that if I was at someone's house and they had made it special and they were offering me a piece I would eat it to be polite but I'm just not into it

Oh I forgot it's possible that lemon chest pie is my favorite pie

Or buttermilk pie

I like peach pie but not as much as I like peach cobbler and I also like blackberry cobbler which I seem to be able to eat I'm uncertain whether I can only eat cooked blackberries and the Rollins make me sick or whether it's only raspberries that I have the problem with I've not had blackberries raw without raspberries so I don't really know

I like lemon cream pie and coconut cream pie but I don't like cream pies as much as meringue pies it's not like close it's not like oh they're pretty much interchangeable I really like the meringue and I'm kind of meh about the cream and I would not eat chocolate pie or any of those really rich gooey like I'm trying to think of names of some of them there's a whole slew of them Mississippi mud something something silk I don't like any of those rich gloopy pies

And thinking about fruit for some reason I feel a mild aversion to blueberries

I used to love blueberries I mean like I could sit and eat a whole container of blueberries and they've got a really high orach value

There's just something about them I don't really like now I still like blueberry muffins although that would have been my first choice of muffin but I mean I don't have an aversion to like a few blueberries baked into a baked good but blueberry is just not a flavor that I seem to have any desire for anymore it's kind of strange

So yeah lemon chess I think lemon chess well I don't know if I was someplace that had lemon chess and lemon meringue I would be stumped because I love both of those pies and it's so hard to find them I mean sometimes like if you're on the road or something sometimes you'll find to make these little pies that are like and they're made by some kind of folksy country

so sometimes you'll be on the road and you'll see those little tiny pies and they often have lemon chess or buttermilk and they pretty much always have pecan which I like but increasingly I don't because it's too sweet and too gloopy

They sometimes have lemon chests they never have lemon meringue sometimes if you're in a diner or dessert place that has a really big selection of pies sometimes they'll have one or the other of those but I'm not sure I've ever been any place that ever had both of them where you could pick between them

I just fell asleep again

there was something else I wanted to talk about now I almost forgot what it was pralines

When I was a kid you saw pralines around a lot more than I see him now

And there were two distinct kinds

There was one that had a texture that was a little bit more like a nut bark or nut brittle it was clear sugary syrup bas ed with pecans where you could kind of see through it it was kind of clear but not clear clear like transparent That's the word I'm looking for it was mostly transparent and it was kind of a brown color and I did not like those

and then there was another kind that was opaque that had a kind of a soft texture that was more granular melts in your mouthy than had pecans but maybe fewer pecans

And when I was growing up it was that granular melt in your mouth kind that I liked

And there seemed to just be the two different kinds but there didn't seem to be any sort of pattern as to who you would expect to have which kind

now the idea of either kind seems kind of gross to me seems like it would be so sweet that it would make my teeth hurt now maybe it would maybe I would just go right back to it because it was something that I enjoyed as a kid although I didn't have a very frequently

In fact it's really kind of strange

I don't really want chocolate either

Saltwater taffy

Japanese artificial grape hi chews I haven't had those in a while

I've been wanting some kind of hard candy I got jolly ranchers and I ate them all over the course of a week or so but they weren't exactly what I wanted

I think I wanted something with a little more complex flavor

Make a cough drop

Honey and lemon and some spices or something

Eucalyptus

Ricola

At the store there were a couple of things I was trying to get that they were out of I mean like a big section just cleared out like you would expect for a hurricane or an emergency situation except they were kind of strange things to be cleared out

I wanted to get non-fat Greek yogurt and I usually just get plain because I don't need them to add a bunch of sugar to it but the plain was completely sold out so it's like well I could get vanilla and then I saw honey and I'm like well I mean honey is delicious and I would probably put honey in the yogurt anyway so let me try the honey but I tried it this evening and it is so sweet

I mean it's delicious Don't get me wrong

But I think it's normally about 100 calories of serving or 110 and it's 150 with the honey so and I think it's like 28 g of sugar and I don't know how many how much sugar you're supposed to have I guess it kind of depends but that just seems like a lot but it is tasty

I fell asleep again I got to go to bed this is ridiculous

I hope you have a really good day tomorrow I'm not sure how late I'm going to sleep but I'm going to try not to sleep too late

Good night sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Hope your day is great

I love you very much

 goodnight sweetheart

i love you very much

 i had not been wearing makeup

i thought i looked fine

and besides

only my mom was seeing me

well, and vickie and lucy and rando studio people

but

the mask covers most of my face

and the glasses

i thought i was fine

i had a healing blemish on my right cheek

no biggy

i have some red spots on my nose and mouth area

healing/healed

but after the whole election thing

i had picked my forehead

so monday

she's all like is that from your mask?

really

i was under a lot of stress

i picked my face

[she picks her face, hell she picked my face]

she seems not to know what i'm talking about

 also

i know i have told her about my skin struggle

she says something

and to be honest, i don't even know what

it sounds judgemental and whatnot and i'm not listening

i haven't worn makeup since march

i didn't wear foundation until i was over 40

for the last several years

i wouldn't even go to the grocery store without makeup

i felt like i looked fine now

that's the kind of thing she does

and i've got a bunch of bare minerals powder

but i thought that might be drying

and

i just didn't want to go to that much trouble

and then i remembered i had this covergirl that i bought

before the pandemic

at that time i thought it was not enough coverage

i tried it again

it evened my skin tone

covered my spots {enough to make them only noticeable if you're an asshole}

and covered the not really all that dark circles under my eyes

i put it on over papaya oil

so the coverage was really light

it looked good

i didn't powder it

it didn't rub off on the mask

{just a tiny bit}

it looked good all day

and my skin felt really good

light and breathable and hydrated

new normal makeup approved

 i should maybe mention

the artist statement was her idea

i didn't ever say she needed one

maybe it's good because it gives something to connect to

i tend to agree that they are often pretty phony sounding

much better to have quotes about your work

or even

just your c.v.

but

maybe those don't work for her specifically

 i need to go to bed

i hope you are doing well

i love you very much sweetheart

how it's going

 i can't get her to take anything out

i've given up on that

i'm hanging them

so they make each other look better

and

now we're making the bad ones good

at least to the best of my ability

the water lily

the flower was great

but the whole rest of the picture

was these hideous greeny orange lily pads

we've also been working on her artist statement

and she wrote these really awful things

maybe not as cringe worthy as creativity catalyst

[which she stole btw]

but these things that seem so separate from the person i think i know

and

i started asking her about things she wrote in them

either because i wanted to get at something

or because i didn't think they were true

the main "finished" one

[i'm supposed to re-write of course]

is way to aw shucks

and spends more time talking about how she has

enough boxes of old lace to "wrap her house in"

than about painting

but

she mentioned painting on the floor of her dorm room

in college

tell me about that, i say

i painted on the floor of my dorm room

so i wouldn't get the furniture messed up, she said

no no, i argued

the stories you've told me about rice were that it was hard

you were stressed that you wouldn't pass the higher level math classes

so you added the german major so you'd be sure to graduate

under all that stress and time pressure

what made you turn to painting

i thought it'd be fun, she said

that was all i pry out of her

and i did come at it from several angles

ok

you've been a working artist for like forty years

you had at one point three galleries at once

you are one of only two people who was president of the watercolor society twice

and you're writing an artist statement that makes you sound like you were a housewife who just woke up and realized she was a creative person and something about being an old lace conceptual sculptor and i'm confused--  how is this you?

i think artist statements are made-up bullshit that always sound disengenuous

so that's what you wrote?  a bullshit disengenuous artist statement?

ok, fine, pull out that other one

[i should maybe mention that the first one was written out in very artistic handwriting, apparently by some mentor-y woman who does some kind of art poetry thing]

this other one was about driving around texas as a child with her parents

and how everything changes but the landscapes

but these don't really seem like texas landscapes, so much

no, she says, they all come out of my head

ok, well, i'm gonna give this one a hard pass too, i say

she doesn't seem to have anything to say

it just all comes with a mysterious unawareness from deep within

i can't tell what motivates or inspires her

but she's told me like fifty seven times about her experience during the quarantine with a dragonfly that came by every day which reminds me of my experiences with mr. sluggo

and that ties in with her deep inner whatever

so i'm trying to work up branding with that theme

it hasn't quite jelled yet

     

Getting a little bit later start today but going in

Hope you're doing well

I love you very much sweetheart 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I slept a really long time last night I went to sleep at what like 5:00 in the morning or something and I slept until I guess up till almost 5:00 in the evening I was very very tired like exhausted type tired

And then I got up and I felt kind of hungover which I could have been hungover because I did drink yesterday

I didn't drink a lot of drinks but they were pretty strong drinks and I drink the day before that I drink quite a few drinks and they were fairly strong drinks and I felt pretty s***** when I woke up yesterday so I might have been hungover

And maybe if you're hungover two days in a row you wouldn't need to drink quite as much I don't know

I got up a drink coffee I wandered around I talked to my mother on the phone didn't really want to but she called me so I kind of had to

I watched the Chicago 7

Which was good I liked it

Was nearly as good as yesterday though

So I was looking around for something to say

But I don't really have anything to say today I just have kind of a I don't know I don't know how to describe it I kind of like coming out of hibernation or something except that I didn't run around and eat everything in sight

But it's like I'm having strange cravings

I want crock embossed loafers

Why I have no idea

Since this morning before I went to sleep I've been seriously thinking about the book idea again

I'm experiencing this fairly profoundly

And I just have all this stuff swirling around in my head and I suppose I should be thinking about my mom's social media possibilities and what not but I'm not not thinking about that at all

And I feel confident I had some really interesting dreams but I couldn't remember them when I woke up

I've been having these dreams and it's since I've been painting I guess where there's some sort of a quality to things and it gets expressed as this I don't know like aura type element that's like a wash of color over things

And in the dreams it makes perfect sense but then when I wake up and try to like explain it to myself it doesn't really make sense

also there are media or social media or computer or digital communication things that make sense in dreams and don't make that much sense when I wake up

I'm profoundly grateful for all the people in other countries who've been like worried about us You know there was a a woman I was following on Twitter for a while who I wasn't sure whether I liked her or not I kind of liked her but then periodically she would say something that irritated me that I didn't like and generally I don't think that's a good reason to unfollow people but then a while back she was interacting with somebody else and they were saying you know about they didn't really know if America was a democracy or something to that effect and I kind of agreed with them and it kind of worried me and upset me and I had all the feels about it but then the woman that I wasn't sure if I wanted to be following or not she posted something that was I don't even remember exactly what but it was very snarky I'll say snarky that's not quite right but I'll say that and I was like okay you know what I'm not going to follow you anymore and it was the same sort of feeling that I had when I unfollowed that girl at the beginning of the pandemic who was saying oh you know the government is trying to manipulate you blah blah blah and I was like you know what normally I would agree with you but no that's not what's happening now and so I unfollowed her and so I kind of have this feeling now like there's a certain attitude that I don't want to support and you know those people they didn't seem like they were worried about America they just seem like they were being kind of snarky and I didn't appreciate it

But I do appreciate the people who have gone out of their way to make clear that they're glad we came out of it you know

And I get how if you're another country especially like Europe someplace civilized where you might feel like that America is not a good risk you know we have enough people here that are I don't know stupid or just I don't know I'm not stupid isn't quite the word I'm going for but the kind of people who would re-elect George W

But worse yet the kind of people who would elect Trump the first time

and even worse yet the people who would look at all of that and go yeah give me some more of that

I could see where it would just be like you know what let's just write these m************ off because they are too dangerous they're too unpredictable they have too many undesirable traits and you know they're just they're just not worth the baggage anymore

But you know some of the some of the things that other countries did it just choked me up with emotion for how truly kind it was that they cared not like they're just like oh finally they've come out of it but like you know they were pulling for us and they were happy that we worked it out like like that you know

Like even we who think we're such hot s*** could have our whole democracy go to pieces and have to pull it back from the brink like like maybe that made us better as a people

I think maybe it did you know I feel changed

And you know the the whole time I mean it was just all a bit much but you know at first it was like well he's trying to do all this bad s*** but the courts aren't letting him do it and at least he's not getting us into a war and you know he's terrible but there was a point and I don't know exactly when the point tipped

And actually I guess it tipped several times but I think that when the pandemic hit and we shot everything down and then it became apparent that he just wasn't going to do anything and we watched all those crazy press conferences every day at the beginning of the thing and maybe it was partially a factor of being kind of trapped in my house and having nothing to focus on except that you know I mean before that I was having some pretty severe problems in my life that distracted me from politics you know

But then when I was just trapped in my house and I was completely focused on that it became

Well a lot more central to my existence I guess and so rather than just worrying about well you know there's all these things that are bad that he's doing and he's encouraging all of the worst elements

And I mean I knew there was racism okay I'm not that naive I knew there was racism but it's like when he was elected all the people who normally would you know reign it in a little bit because they know it's socially unacceptable and they wouldn't want to have problems maybe or maybe they wouldn't have rained it in but they wouldn't have been so aggressive about it I don't know

But it was like all those people felt like well you know our guy won and so that means that suddenly you know racism is the new zeitgeist and we can just all run around rampant and crazy and that have been going on but then with the mask thing it seemed to escalate it so much and again maybe maybe it didn't really maybe it was just that bad the whole time and it was just the idea that he didn't give a f*** if any of us lived or died I just I don't know and I knew I was stressed out and I knew I knew all that but then when the election was coming up and he was so clearly going to try to steal it

You know with the as soon as he realized they were going to try to vote by mail well then he has the post office removing mailboxes and destroying equipment and you know I mean just I mean all the things that he did I was really worried I was really worried and when I told you that if they just threw out those votes because they decided that they weren't okay because they voted by car even though the supreme Court of the state said it was fine that it was going to break something in me

That was just kind of all of that coming to a head for me it's like if they would do that if they would do that then there just wasn't any limit to what they might do you know because that was so clearly not okay but they didn't do that so then I had a little bit of hope but I was very worried and then my I was like well you know he just needs to get such an overwhelming number of votes he just needs to win all the states so that there can't be any way and then when it was a parent that he wasn't going to and there was going to be all this counting and it looked so close and I was just so stressed so stressed about it

And I was looking trying to see you know if it was likely that I could move someplace else you know and I don't have millions of dollars I mean let's not kid ourselves I don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars I have I have a little bit of money but I mean it's not enough it's not even kind of enough and it's dwindled down quite a bit so you know it's I mean I have some in Starbucks stock but I'd have to sell that so I mean I'm not really in a position to go buying membership to other countries and that was kind of how it was looking and I was starting to get a little bit hysterical

Any idea for more years of that

and then he came on and said that he had won and he claimed states like that was a thing

And then the news networks didn't seem to want to call it

And just the amount of stress

And then yesterday so happy I'm so happy so happy and so relieved

And so deeply grateful that it seemed like the world cared you know

And I've never particular one particularly wanted to go to Philly but I kind of want to go to Philly now

But then I went to sleep and I just slept like the dead and today I'm still just kind of hungover from that and I just cannot quite get it together and I should have gone to sleep like an hour and a half ago cuz I'm going to have to go with her tomorrow and do stuff

I don't know why I want crocodile loafers I really don't and I I don't wear those first I haven't worn loafers I haven't really ever worn loafers

When I was a ninth grade I went to a Catholic school for a year that was kind of a rich kid's school and I got my mom to get me some Sperry Topsiders cuz that was like a thing and I wore those everyday for a year and those aren't really loafers but their boat shoes which is kind of the same shape and style but they've got those rubber soles and they're good but they don't have any sort of arch support or anything

But it's like a lot of my clothes that I had that I liked I don't like them anymore and I want some new stuff and one thing that I want is crocodile loafers not real crocodile but crocodile print or not print embossed whatever and a paisley skirt I don't know what these things mean they don't make any sense to me

I hope your brain is working better than mine today because I don't make any sense to me but my card reading seems like it's likely to be right and it's already partially right and I think one of the things that at the time I didn't really understand something about female energy

I think that was to do with maybe Kamala and all the like big woman energy and girl inspiration and all of that

That's a big deal I I mean I knew it was a big deal but swept up in the emotion of all the other stuff it just seemed like a much bigger deal than I ever imagined it would be so maybe it had to do with that

And I was going to do another reading but I don't know if I have time to do that now I don't know why I didn't do that I got caught up in thrifting on eBay I guess although I didn't buy anything I just watched it all

I have bought a few things on eBay recently

I'm not necessarily sure that I should have spent the money but I did anyway

And I've been very happy with those purchases I got really good deals

I don't know I still feel good I don't mean the being hungover to mean that I don't feel happy I just mean you know how when you've been stressed for a really long time and then suddenly the stress gets relieved You don't just bounce back to normal right away

Anyway maybe I'll try to do a little reading

But I love you

And I've had roller blades stuck in my head all day and I'm not really sure what that means

But I love you

And I need you

And you are very important to me

And you better not ever stop loving me

And I just caught the stupid dictation thing instead of our said were and I caught it and I went back and fixed it

And I always try to fix things but I always miss things when I go back and read them again so if anything I said on here doesn't make any sense well most of it was just talking through a kind of incoherent stress hangover that I have today

But if there's anything else like that then just correct it in your head

I'm not sure I can stay up to do a reading I am just about to fall over which I guess makes sense maybe I don't know I haven't even been awake that long but I have to get up I don't know

I think one thing that you should have learned about me by now

I said I get kind of incoherent and semi-delirious but some fair degree of regularity

But I love you sweetheart

And I'm thinking about you

and I'm not sure I would have made it through

If it hadn't been for you

and I feel like I'm bonded to you in a totally different way than I was before all this

It's a lot more I want to say intense but that's not right I don't think I could have been any more intensely bonded to you

So whatever you think when I don't talk

Don't think that I'm not thinking about you

I'm always thinking about you

I just don't always have talking

Okay I'm a hopeful some of that was coherent

💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

I need to go to sleep

I've been glued to the TV pretty much all day

I was hoping that we would know about Pennsylvania today

they sent me a letter in my correspondence inbox letting me know that I don't need to start giving them stuff until the 22nd of November

Which is after the point that my money should have run out unless they extend it through the end of the year because of covid

which is I think what they had said they were going to do but I don't know they said they'll let me know so they'll let me know

I don't like this late night crew on MSNBC

I find this woman very irritating

I guess she's just very opinionated

but I don't know she just comes across this so white cisgender upper middle class entitled

I like the combination of Joy and Rachel and what's her name Nicole is her name Nicole

Let me not be her name

Because they all have very different perspectives and personalities and they I don't know I feel as though one or the other of them is always bringing up an idea that the other ones haven't thought of that they then are like oh

And I really like that

I think it's her tone I don't like

But all that stuff I mentioned before is what her tone brings up in me

I can't quite believe that he told us basically that what he was going to do was tell all his people to vote on election day and then claim that all the male in votes were not legitimate votes I mean it's not a surprise that he's saying that he basically told us he was going to do that

But then he actually tried to do it

And he seems to just think that he can go to the supreme Court and say hey just declare me the winner

And one has to wonder what's going to happen

I mean he's going to lose and they just don't have anything so far that they can hang a case on

I mean they don't have hanging chads and whatnot and everybody has been you know following all the procedures and being transparent and you know live streaming the counting and you know I mean I think they're just going to have a really hard time finding a technicality that they can throw it out on and besides I mean in the stolen 2000 election what happened was they got them to stop the recount but I don't think that there's going to need to be recounts in order to decide who won you know

I mean I think they'll need to do a recount in Georgia because I think the Georgia is going to be a squeaker if they're going to use Georgia as a part of the 270 and I think they're planning to try to do a recount in Michigan was it Michigan I think it was but if Pennsylvania comes out as much ahead as it theoretically is going to then you know it's going to be like a 40,000 vote margin That's not going to be recount material unless they can show that there's some abnormality which they have been unable to do and they're going to be pretty hard pressed to do it because like I said they're having so much transparency and they've got so many people watching them count I just don't see how that's going to fly

I totally believe that the supreme Court would you know would give it to him if there was a way to give it to him but I don't see how they're going to do it because it's not going to be one state that's a small margin it's going to be a bunch of states and only a few of them are going to be by small margins now he might pull out Arizona Biden is ahead now but Trump might he might pick up Arizona but Nevada he's not going to pick up and it really doesn't look like he's going to pick up Pennsylvania and he might not pick up Arizona it's just not sure so I mean if he's got a couple of states that are close enough to have recounts well he can have recounts and the supreme Court can stop the recount but since he will be behind that won't help him and I just can't see any scenario where the supreme Court is going to say we have to throw out all these legitimate ballots because Trump wants to win you know I mean they could do that but it wouldn't really be in their best interest because it would be super corrupt and against the law and their supreme Court justices do they really want to appear to be illegitimate puppets of some dumbass who's only going to be even if they get him reelected only going to be in office for four more years and then they've got the whole rest of their careers to look illegitimate for that

If you were a stupid corrupt person who had gotten yourself nominated to the supreme Court or maybe not even maybe not even corrupt but just you got yourself appointed to the supreme Court when you didn't really have enough experience and credentials to really be qualified for it You got yourself appointed because you had a particular political stance and perhaps you were willing to play ball you know

Would it really be in your interest to delegitimize yourself that way I mean I know he wants everybody to have that kind of loyalty to him but he wouldn't have that kind of loyalty to him you know so why should they

so I mean I just don't think he has things lined up in such a way that that's going to work for him

I mean I might be wrong I'm certainly not going to rule out the possibility that people are worse than I imagine them to be but even if you're just looking at it from their self-interest I mean there's not going to be a way for them to do it and maintain any sort of credibility and in the 2000 election there was I mean we can argue about whether it really was legitimate but at least it was cover you know and I just don't think that there's going to be that this time

So if he gets ousted

or well that's dramatic if he if he loses like okay say Pennsylvania is called for him no for Biden tomorrow sometime and Fox news which seems determined to kind of f*** him over now calls it for Biden because they've already called Arizona which nobody else has and Arizona might not even it's close so if Fox news calls it for him tomorrow for Biden I mean and says to all the the MAGAts that Trump lost

I mean I suppose there's the potential for there to be violence and unrest for an extended period of time from the people who think it's appropriate to carry their AR-15s through the street and into Capitol buildings and screaming police faces and stuff like that

I mean I think there's likely to be some danger from those people although I don't know for sure

But what about Trump do we have to worry about him launching the nuclear codes or stealing all the silver and the White House do we have to worry about him causing mayhem and being like you know if I don't get reelected then I'm burning it down you know I mean when he was trying to get reelected he was behaving in ways that didn't seem to me to be consistent with having people continue to like him or support him

The lead in Georgia is only 665 for Trump now

And as disappointed as I am that there was not a repudiation I will say Biden has a big lead in the popular vote and it isn't easy to unseat and incumbent president

so even though I am still disappointed that there was not a repudiation I probably should at least take those factors into account and not be quite as disappointed with Americans

I'm going to be hanging the hallways for my mom I don't know if I told you about that I don't think I did she has when we were going through her stuff I thought we had all the framed things but it turns out that we're a whole bunch of small frame things that are like I don't know 12x16 or 16x20 or some something like that I don't remember and there were 6 or 7 of them and they're in very elaborate gold frames and she was wanting me to just kind of fit them in wherever in the studio and I'm like okay that is not going to look good and defeats the whole purpose and I don't want to do that and I'm like you know aren't we hanging some stuff in the hallway and she's like yes and I'm like are you worried that if we hang the frame things in the hallway they'll get stolen and she's like no and I'm like okay well let me go measure this wall and there's a wall that's exactly the right size to hang all of them and then probably we could get another part of a different wall although we're going to have to talk to Vicki about it and there's some larger canvases that she was going to do some work on but you know they could hang there and then they could come in one at a time and she could work on you know there's no reason why they can't just go up

and I really just want to watch the news until something is resolved but it's probably better if I just do something more productive than be stuck to the TV because again it's not like my watching it has any impact on the factual things that are happening in the world they don't need me to watch them to happen

I'm still very uncomfortable with this whole situation with Trump and his kids and just declaring himself the winner and declaring votes as illegal votes and it's like you know so in the places where you might still win they should keep counting but in the places where your head they stop counting and I'm just worried I'm just worried I will be a lot happier and more secure in my psyche if you know he would just go golf in Florida right now and vacate the White House and you know not have anything else to do with it I realize that that probably wouldn't be safe either from a national security standpoint but I just I don't know I don't trust him I feel as though there's really not any way that he can do what he wants to do but that doesn't mean I don't think he can cause all kind of f****** trouble

So I hope you are doing well I love you very much I am exhausted just exhausted I'm worried about the covid

Please take care of yourself

It is going to get bad again really really bad in fact it's worse now than it was when it was bad before and we are just like a week or two away from hospitals being overcrowded again please please please be careful

I know you're super healthy and whatever but just be careful

goodnight sweetheart I love you very much 💋

Goodnight sweetheart I love you very much ❤️

 i'm just not going to get things done today

i can't focus

i hope you are doing well

i love you

goodnight sweetheart

I have to go to bed

I love you

I predict

Now this is not a reading

This is entirely my prediction

And I guess we'll find out how psychic I am

Which is probably not that psychic

But I predict Biden will win Texas

Maybe I just really really want him to

And that is making me feel it in my bones

Well I'm working with my mom tomorrow

But I'm hoping not to work on Tuesday or Wednesday I'm anticipating staying up really late Tuesday and I'm worried about there being civil unrest on Wednesday and Tuesday I may need to take my mom to cast a provisional ballot I just don't know yetI don't think she can just vote again although she should be able to I think she can only cast a provisional ballot but I can't get an answer on that so I'm not sure

And she may not want to go but you know I could stand in line for her I guess and then she could just come when I got to the head of the line maybe I don't know what she wants to do I'll have to talk to her

I'm really hoping that what will happen is that that judge will be a legitimate judge and say this is the state's rights issue and they sent it back to the Texas supreme Court and they wouldn't hear it they were like ask an answered so I really hopebut that's what happens there it really isn't any excuse for anything else to happen

And I really hope I really hope that Texas flips back blue

I really hope that in a couple years Lina Hidalgo will become governor or maybe Beto

I really hope that MJ Hagar beats Cornyn although I kind of don't think she's going toand although I would dearly love to get rid of zodiac I think it's good that Beto didn't win because I don't believe that he would have been doing this work that he's doing now that's really important

An election day I'm going to have margaritas I need to stock up on supplies probably tomorrow on the way home

Also having pizza I don't know that pizza and margaritas are such a great combination probably pizza and beer is a better combination but I don't want beer

I mean I can drink a beer or two if it's really good beer and impressed maybe I could drink a third beer but since I have no strong emotional tie to beer anymore I've kind of gone back to not being all that enthusiastic about it I guess I have quite a bit of beer in the house and haven't really drunk any of it in fact I don't think I have drunk one beer during this whole pandemic and I have some pickle beer and oh I have some really old bourbon barrel aged pumpkin beer might have to bust that out at some point if it's still good which it may not still be good I have a lot of wine too well I mean I don't know a lot but I have some and I haven't drunk that either which since it's not an exactly climate-controlled storage it may not be good anymore I don't know The only thing I have wanted to drink is margaritas I guess margaritas are really my drink

I need to go to bed pretty soon I really don't feel sleepy and I did that thing again where I stayed up late and then didn't get up early

But whatever

Got to get stuff physically moved around in the studio I'm really hoping that by the time I leave tomorrow it's going to look like an attractive space

I have a rug

It's a pretty good size rug I think it's like 9x12 it might only be 8x10 but I think it's 9x12 I got it at the bluebird circle years and years ago I mean like no not the bluebird circle The guild shop I got it I mean when I was still working it the Starbucks I think I don't remember how much it was

I thought at the time it was a pretty good deal for a rug that size

And I suspect I may have paid like I don't know $250 for it or something but then subsequently I don't think I've ever had it on the floor anywhere because it's kind of a strange color it's kind of a corally red it's fairly bright and it just doesn't go with any of my stuff I think it may also have some green in it but like darker green and what I'd really like to do is take it to one of those people who like barrel dye things what I'd really like is for it to be like maybe bleached or something so that it was lighter but I don't know if they can do that

And it may be that it's an odd color in a clash with everything or that she doesn't want to rug in there I was just thinking that floor is really hard and it would be nice to have something softer to stand on and I'm not using it currently so it's available

I don't know I don't think she's going to want to do that but I will offer

I had chicken soup tonight cooked in the crock pot it was really good and all comfort foodie and whatnot but I was wearing my light gray heathered modal oversized t-shirt which I've been wearing for a long time but now I take it off and put on clothes and go out and then come home and take off the clothes and put that back on and I don't know how long I've been wearing that particular shirt and in fact I wore it for a while and then took it off and wore something else and then put it back into rotation without washing it and it I mean quite frankly stinks but I didn't have anything spilled on it and it looks still really good and you probably don't know this about me or maybe you do maybe I've told you I don't know but when I was a kid I was really bad well maybe not when I was a kid but maybe when I was in that kind of 10/11/12/13 area I was really bad about spilling things so you know I would get a pretty white shirt and we would go to like the Houston international festival and we would get a gyro and I would take a bite of it and I would spill grease all down the front of my shirt and it would be ruined and you know we would go out to a restaurant and if it was a nice restaurant and I was wearing nice clothes I was for sure going to ruin them now if I was wearing crappy clothes that I didn't care about and/or we were going to some not nice restaurant you know if we went to like a burger place or something then maybe I wouldn't spill anything on myself but I was extremely irritated and I guess I got a little better at knowing when I was going to go places that I would spill things on myself and I would immediately get up and go to the bathroom and wash them out in the sink you know not take them off but just you know put paper towels underneath and rub soap and whatever and so then I would look like s*** still but my clothes were getting destroyed less frequently and I didn't have a lot of clothes I mean I think the whole time I was in high school I probably had two or three pairs of jeans in rotation You know like if one got messed up then I got another one but I had you know two or three pair of jeans and maybe a skirt and that was and then some shirts obviously

And when I started working I was still living at home and I had some expenses but like I was spending all of my free money on books and clothes and I had these dresses that I got at Lane Bryant that were awesome I mean I had one that was like a khaki colored shirt dress I think is what you call it and I had these kind of fancy exotic fake leather shoes and the whole outfit just looked like you know out of Africa I looked like Meryl Streep and out of Africa and that was when I discovered that if I used kind of a bronzer and went over the center of my nose I could kind of de-emphasize the kind of pointiness or bridginess or whatever and make it look a little more I really wanted to look turned up I just wanted to look a little more wide but no I think I was going for more of a oh what is her name not Cameron Diaz Ellen Barkin

Maybe it was somebody else but sort of that type with the wider kind of liontine nose

whatever that's not that important but I had also these like full circle neon had one that was like a neon green with black graffiti on it and one that was white with multicolor graffiti on it it was you know '80s '85 '86

it's a very brief phase because I had not enjoyed to wear dresses except for costumes and then very shortly after that I decided I didn't like to wear dresses anymore but that was a period of time when I had a bunch of dresses and I was trying to look nice I think

Why am I telling you this

What was the significance of this story

In my mind you know as soon as I started buying my own clothes I started buying black clothes but you know I'm realizing now that that wasn't actually true I mean there were some black clothes mixed in with that

Oh yes okay anyway so I had started wearing black clothes but I wasn't wearing completely black and then when I applied when I applied for Starbucks was when I just went full on all black all the time Black had been my favorite color and I had been wearing mostly black but that was when I went completely black

So that was 95 94

And the thing about black you can spill things on it and it's really not a problem but I think I had stillsome ability to not spill things on myself I had kind of trained myself up but then when I started working at Starbucks and I was wearing black all the time and I was spilling coffee on myself and I was having the bad periods where I was bleeding all over myself and you know what not I just stopped making any effort to keep stuff off my clothes I mean I would literally wipe my hands off on my clothes on a regular basis

And then when I started wearing non-black clothes I had a really hard time readjusting

But now my favorite clothes are these pale like taupes and khakis and you know fairly light colors

and I would have clothes when I was wearing the black clothes I would have clothes that I would wear around the house and they were not necessarily black I mean they were mostly

but then when I started buying the non-black clothes I bought non-black clothes to wear around the house too and I would spill stuff on them and they looked terrible they would just get to where they looked terrible

And so when the quarantine started I started wearing these light colored clothes that had been things I was wearing out in the house

Because even though those modal shirts were oversized and didn't look that good I was still wearing them to work or whatever but I started wearing them in the house and I thought well you know they're going to get f***** up but I'm like you know I'm not going anywhere and I'm in the house all the time and I want to wear stuff that makes me feel good

So this shirt I've been wearing a long time

I have two or maybe three I can't remember of the style that I bought on clearance of these modal t-shirts and then I have the ones with the ruffles on the bottom and I kind of went through everything and then I kind of was like well I want to keep wearing this shirt but I don't want to do laundry so I just kept wearing it and so I mean I have really no idea how long I wore the shirt but it was like wear it for weeks and then air it out and then wear it for probably months I mean really I would not wipe my face with it I would not you know like I sometimes would clean out the corners of my eyes if I was having allergy stuff with kind of the inside collar of my shirt I wouldn't do that I wouldn't clean my glasses with it because it was filthy it's stunk but it didn't have anything spilled on it not anything I had been eating you know soup and whatever else I was eating for months and nothing was spilled on it and I was like you know that's pretty impressive I guess you've learned

And I shouldn't have thought that I thought that like you know yesterday or possibly the day before and then today I'm having soup

And I'm having it in my attack bowl which has the chopstick rests and the little holes right so I eat the soup there's some broth in the bottom and I pick the bowl up to drink the broth in the bottom and I do not remember about the little holes if you're going to drink out of the bowl you have to turn it so that the little holes are not facing you when you're drinking the broth but I did not remember to do that and so I lifted it up to drink the broth and I poured soup broth all down the front of my shirt

And I don't skim the broth cuz I like the fat

So I've got broth with some amount of chicken fat in it poured all down the front of my shirt and that happened actually right when I realized there was a show so I went into the kitchen and I rubbed a lot of dish soap into the grease stains on the shirt and then I took a big bowl and I put some soapy water in it and I put the shirt in there to let it soak and after the show I went back and oh my God that water was filthy it was filthy

and I rinsed it again and again and again and again and I run it out and I ran water through it and I mean it was really really dirty I don't think in my life have ever worn anything as dirty as that shirt I mean maybe if I wore jeans outside and was you know in the mud or something then maybe technically but I mean filthy

so I mean I guess we're going to find out if I got the stain out I used to be pretty good at that

Ideally when I've got something that's got grease on it I would put flour or cornstarch or something on it to absorb the oil but I did not do that I just used soap and it's not dawn it would probably have been better if it was dawn but I don't buy Dawn so we'll see I don't think it's dry enough to tell yet

Smells good though

I got this dish soap they had rosemary again and I was going to get rosemary because I love the way that smells and they didn't have the autumn leaves but they had they had dia de los muertos and I was like so what is that smell like that bodies I'm not almost didn't get it but I couldn't I couldn't not so it smells like those little chrysanthemum flowers or marigolds I'm not really sure which it smells like they both smell kind of the same to me I think or rather if I was smelling them side by side I would probably be able to tell a difference but I don't have it coded differently in my head

So we'll see if the shirt makes it through I mean if it doesn't because I can still wear it with stains because I'm not wearing it out it's not like anybody seeing it but I really hope that it comes clean

So that was a very long story that included a lot of information that doesn't seem like it was really pertinent to what I was trying to say

I feel like that's kind of a hallmark of my writing in a way

Although I wasn't trying purposely to make it be long and circuitous I was just telling a story and I think that's just how I do it mostly

I think my propensity to tell stories in that way is part of the reason why so much of the conscious writing that I try to do has stuff cut out of it that it's sort of attempting to be poetic and sparse or something I don't know and I realize that this dictating thing is in some ways very undesirable because I don't really enunciate clearly enough for this machine to get it all right and I try to catch it but I don't catch it all and then I go back and read it and I go oh well does that even make any sense

But it's more like if you were talking to me and I think if I were to sit down to write write it I wouldn't

So this is my compromise and I hope it's okay

When I've gone back to reread them I felt like they were okay with the exception of things that really don't make sense and need editing and I can usually tell what I was trying to say and then I figure well you know he probably knows what I'm trying to say too but there was something in that last one that was kind of bad and I should have edited it when I was reading it because now I don't remember what it was

I love you sweetheart

goodnight💋

I'm very tired

My phone asleep in the chair a few times

I think the time change tonight and I pissed away my chance to get an extra hour of sleep

I feel generally like I can't sleep

When I make myself go and lay down I do I fall asleep right away

But I just feel like that there's no way I could possibly sleep

I'm really worried

I'm really stressed

I just cannot get it together

an all day today I kept thinking you know I really need to say something

I feel like that you really want to hear from me and I'm not providing what you need

And then I worry that maybe you don't want to hear from me that maybe you're mad at me

Then I think if you're mad at me

Then why are you mad at me what have I done The deserves to have you mad at me

And then I think if he's mad at me maybe he never really loved me at all

I don't really like that train of thought

so then I want to try to not think about that

And then I don't know what to say

And I have stuff I'd really like to say

Well that's not true

I have stuff that I feel like I would really like to talk about but I don't feel at liberty to talk about it

And I don't really know exactly what I want to say about it anyway

There are just some things that I find unsettling if my perception of them is correct which it may not be because I don't feel like I'm in my right mind I really don't

The stuff with my mom is going well but it's still an awful lot of being around my mom

I know it's a lot of being out

and I know you've been going out and playing tennis and doing all kind of things outside so maybe it's hard for you to imagine that just leaving my house freaks me the f*** out

So I just feel like I have all these things that are just a little bit too much on some total of all the things that are just a little too much are kind of a lot too much

And so there's something inside me that's just like shut it down shut it down

And then when I'm trying to be all communicative and loving I just don't know what to do

So if I'm right about any of that

Then I'm sorry for anything that you need that I'm not doing

and I just want to say that I will be glad when the selection is over but I can't even really say that because I'm so afraid

I know that it seems like the idea that he could win again is you know impossible

But I can still visually remember watching the news at the last election and just being like what the f*** what the f***

And everybody was saying last time that there was no possible way he could win

Except the guys I was watching

Who were saying well it's almost impossible that he'll win but it's not impossible here are the different ways he could do it and they'd map them all out and I'd be like well that seems pretty unlikely so I mean I didn't think it was impossible but I was shocked

And I didn't

I didn't in my wildest dreams imagine that he would be as bad as he was

I really thought a lot of I really thought a lot of that stuff was an act that he was not really capable of being quite as bad as he seemed even

And I also thought that when people explained to him what he was supposed to do he would at least marginally pay attention to them

I did not expect him to just I mean I can't even put into words all of the ways in which he has defiled defiled the office of the presidency to file the trust of the American people to filed America

Not in my wildest dreams did I think he would be as bad as he has been and I didn't think he would be good but he's far exceeded

And I'm never really trusted the voting machines I mean at least if you've got a physical ballot you've got something you can go back and look at but with the electronic ones you just have whatever it's got recorded and you just have to take their word for it I've never felt comfortable with that

And I didn't previously know that Texas was actually I mean I knew there was horrible horrible gerrymandering but I didn't realize that we were like a full-on voter suppression state

Which is I guess just a form of my privilege showing

But I think of voter suppression as being something that happens in like you know Alabama and Mississippi and Georgia Florida I mean to be honest with you I'm always a little shocked when they say the deep red state of Texas because I mean it wasn't the deep red state of Texas when I grew up

And Houston I mean sure there are plenty of Republicans who live in Houston but it isn't at least in Houston proper it isn't redneck maga country

But I'm thinking about the courts

Not just the supreme Court but all those federal judges I don't think I really have ever given a lot of thought to federal judges

Or their appointed for life and I'm not sure how I could have failed to think about that but I don't think I have ever really given it a lot of thought and Trump has nominated hundreds and hundreds of these judges many of whom are probably poorly qualified and most of whom are probably right-wing activist

Like the judge that drew the drive-thru voting in Harris county it's apparently one of the most right-wing activist judges now if the Republicans are supposed to be for states rights I mean they always say states right states rights when they are trying to say that women shouldn't have a right to control their bodies and we don't need to be making any federal rules to that effect that it should just be the state's rights whether they want you to have any rights

But the supreme Court of Texas said drive through voting was fine and they verified all the people so it's not like they don't know that they had actual legitimate people voting legitimately

But now they're saying it's a illegal extension of the curbside voting which is for handicapped people and you have to prove your disabled to be qualified

And there shouldn't be any question it should just be an open and shut case they were legal people voting legitimately it was decided by the supreme Court of Texas that it was fine and all the voting is over well all the early voting is over I guess there's still some voting to do but the whole point is that a lot of the people who voted in drive-thru were people who couldn't wait in line for one reason or another and they expanded it because there are people who aren't maybe technically handicapped but who are at a higher risk or who are unable to and it doesn't matter it shouldn't matter it shouldn't matter there it shouldn't be a case it should just be like this is ridiculous you're just trying to get votes thrown out because you think they didn't vote for you

but that's exactly what it is That's all it is they're saying they want to throw votes out because they think they aren't for them and that isn't the way the system is supposed to work

And I realized intellectually that there have been people all throughout the history of this country that have not been allowed to vote for a variety of reasons all of which have essentially been illegitimate

I realize that intellectually

But if they say that they are going to throw out the votes that there is no other reason to throw out and their votes that have already been cast

If there is a judge that is going to say no I agree we should throw these out

Because they're all just corrupt and the judges are corrupt it's going to break something in me

And if he wins again then I mean it's not democracy anymore

And there's always been some debate in my mind about whether it was anyway

For a variety of reasons over the course of time but I guess you know I could suspend my disbelief or I could say but yeah but this is where I'm from or I don't know I mean there's a lot of a lot of stuff going on all the time a lot of moving parts and I've never gotten over I've never gotten over the Patriot act and the just trampling of privacy and rights that that entailed

But then we've got all the social media and internet and we don't we don't have privacy anymore and we mostly don't even understand that we should have privacy anymore

And if he wins again

I don't think I can do it

And I'm not prepared to move someplace else and I don't think I have the resources or the skills necessary to make that happen

And it's like

In a weird kind of way I'm seeing red dawn flashes in the back of my head

I'm just not handling it very well

I'm making up conspiracy theories about how the Russians are going to hack the election to where it obviously looks like it's hacked and it looks like you know like Trump wins California and Biden wins the red states and you know that it just all the information is mashed up and it doesn't any of it look legitimate like the whole thing looks illegitimate but maybe biden actually wins

And then what

Then Trump says oh you know the election was rigged and it's unfair and it seems obviously like it was but then you know if it's the person you wanted to win then do you say no this is clearly a fraudulent election or do you just go well you know maybe we'll just ignore that

And how do you stabilizing is it

Either way if it looks like it's been tampered with

And I don't know

I know that you don't have the answer to any of this

And maybe you're worried about it

Or maybe you're not worried about it

So I don't know

I hope you're not mad at me

But I don't feel like I'm really doing all that well