Birth, Death, and Children

Today is my mother's birthday, which makes it a great day in history.

Today I started a part time job caretaking and chauffeuring for a family, their kids. The irony of this is beyond comment. I'm terribly conflicted. But also broke. Money is stupid.

Today Gene Wilder passed away. Beyond the awfulness of losing such a beautiful person, as any regular readers of Blahg will know, Wilder means a lot to people round these parts.

A few weeks or months ago, someone I cared about told me they were mad at me and didn't want to talk to me, via text. I haven't heard from them since, nor do I expect to at this point.

The last text they sent ended with "Good day sir!"

It was actually pretty funny.

But I'm a little overloaded on morbid and ironic humor at the moment. I'm still so adrift. I don't even have access to my music. It's locked away on a hard drive.

That seems like a silly thing. But when you have very little of your own, when you live in and around other people's landscapes and lives, those small things may be all you've got. Or don't have, as the case may be.

At any rate, pretty sure we've mentioned Wilder's autobiography before: Kiss Me Like A Stranger. It was an amazingly honest and forthright book. I think a person could read it and like Wilder less. But it only made me love Gene even more. Which probably explains something about me. Whatever.

The point is:

i don't know what to believe in

you don't know who i am

sometimes i feel invisible

i sometimes feel like the biggest lumbering oaf in the room

so clumsy i could knock your nightstand over
from across a continent

too much sadness for one cup

overflows to bitterness
(the rust of the human soul)

I've Been Loving You Too Long To Stop Now

You are tired and you want to be free

I'm tired of thinking. I might think too much. Rather, I probably think in incorrect ways and that's why I get so bogged down.

The two rent-a-cops patrolling the neighborhood just, uh, holla'd at me. I think. Are they allowed to do that? Maybe I shouldn't be sitting outside in my jimjams.

My love is growing stronger as our affair grows old


I don't why you came along at such a perfect time

Anyways, I'm tired of thinking. I'm tired of having to sort through all this bullshit. Like, my bullshit, specifically.

I'm tired of having to think about the ironies, multiple, involved in having just been offered a job caring for kids, helping manage a household, and assisting someone else in getting their life in order.

For very little money, compared to the debts I face. Debts no honest man can pay.

Your heart is as black as night


Give me real, don't give me fake

Not interested in listing that I am well past the point of
--feeling like caretaking for anyone,
--much less the really strong feelings I have about child care and the rigor it requires,
--added to the fact that there's a goddamn good reason i don't have kids and fuck you very much,
--and yeah, I do remember you, you're that couple that blew me off a few years back when I submitted for an assistant position. never even got an acknowledgement email despite friends introductory email. bad business, that, even between casual friends. so, i wasn't good enough for you then but now you are covered in baby shit and some dumbfuck like me could at least manage to chauffeur the kids around and do errands like buying our food for you?,
--motherfucker, i can't even get to the store to buy food for MYSELF! This is BEWLSHEET!
--please note that management is fully aware of how nuts this sounds--imagine what it's like in my head

Give us a kiss

--aside from the fact that i have no desire to have that kind of familial intimacy with anyone but my family right now,
--not even addressing my profound commitment avoidance,
--not to mention that i'm really getting too old for this shit

Yeah. I don't wanna think about. anything. So I'm just gonna hand this off to somebody else.

Give me love over this


Everything was in place, everything seemed alright

I'm tired of keeping count of all the ways life is laughing at me. Maybe I should laugh with it. It is quite farcical at some points.

Then again, there is always music. At least. That can't let you down, not if you let it inside.

But you were missing

My Kryponite?

  Desperate for employment. Ah-ha, what's this? Why, a notice from one of my casting notice subscriptions.

Aw, snap! I can apply!

Money is nice.

No bikinis? This gets better and better.

Fair Warning: Rough Seas Ahead

Blatherblahg may be getting a little. . . intense for awhile.

Unfortunately for everyone involved, this is my primary therapeutic/expressive outlet.

And things are, well, intense in my life right now. Or rather, they feel intense.

I've already advised some folks to unsubscribe or whatever it is all 3.5 of you read this thing do. I'll be talking about some unpleasant and probably nonsensical things as I try to work through whatever is going on in my fronthaid right now. I don't blame anybody for not wanting to watch.

I mean, that's kinda what drives me here in the first place: nobody wants to hear this shit.

And it is undoubtedly very foolish of me to do this in any public way. But for some reason, this format pleases me. I'm not a young girl anymore; my days of filling up journals with the scribblings of depression are over. Have been over, for a long time.

Instead, I'll emotion-vomit all over the Interwebz. I mean, it's got plenty of room. And everybody else is doing it.

And I can't afford therapy and I like all my friends too much to burden them with this shit. Well, at least not directly burden them. I'm obviously not nice enough to keep it all to myself. I am a flawed being.

I'm not saying any of this makes sense. But right now I have to put one foot in front of the other and keep going. I do this, literally, every day now. Walk it off. It's surprisingly effective, at least short term.

I'm tired as shit, but that dog don't hunt.

Because if i stop treading water now, I'll drown.

PSA: Your Water Isn't Safe

Madre de dios. Sorry about the downer nature of Blahg, lately. But this seems important and I don't do the facespace/mybooks, so pls pass along.

https://www.researchgate.net/blog/post/6-million-americans-have-unsafe-levels-of-toxic-chemicals-in-their-drinking-water

RG: Can you provide insights into why these toxic levels of PFASs are more likely to be found in certain states?

Hu: Drinking water from 13 states accounted for 75 percent of the detections, including, in order of frequency of detection: California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Illinois.

I'll update if I find any info on detecting/securing a clean supply. The chemicals in question are extremely difficult to remove, even at water treatment plants.

avuncular whoas

it's times like this i wish i learned to play music, because no written word will do

you are running fast my dear friend
my outrageous teacher
and practical guide
with a spark of madness

you've always run faster and farther than you ought
but even now you slip away into the horizon
the mast and sail flattening into an ever diminishing black dot

and this time you sail where i cannot follow

i grieve the joy you take with you
grieve the sorrow left behind

(i will make bad jokes to the air
pretending you are there
that it is your joke
in your voice
and not my pale imitation)

Mark this man and know his kind,
they are not seen overmuch anymore.
Know him as Artist, for that is his soul

but what the fuck do i know anyway?

For Those Of You Keeping Score At Home

Because I know you just hang on the teetering scales of karmic retribution that passes for my life.

But just in case I haven't expressed this adequately, since I've been told repeatedly how bad I am at coummincating, here goes:

It's been a helluva few years. The last 18 months seems to have made it a personal mission to age me decades. And I still really haven't gotten a break.

Now, I know lots of people don't get breaks, that's life, right? You have to keep trudging forward. But by the 8lb 9 oz babby jebus, it can be vexatious.

Last May I made the difficult decision to quit the only steady employment I'd had. It was literally making me sick, physically. Anyways, after two weeks of unemployed bliss, wherein I decided to overhaul my room, I got a call about a loved one.

So June found me headed east. They reckoned he had cancer and was dropping dead soon. The truth turned out to be far more complicated and every bit as scary. I became one of a two-man primary care-taking team. We had help from Hospice (an amazing organization) and it still took everything we had.

While everyone did admirably, the emotional tolls exacted on the participants were difficult to deal with, for each person and for each other. I think maybe everybody might need a little therapy. Seriously. It was some stressful shite. Twere not dull times, is what I'm saying.

And there were additional lovelies along the way--another loved one has inoperable cancer. He is tucked away somewhere dying and I can't help him and I really don't want to talk about it much more than that.

Life continues. Money is ever so scarce. The future is uncertain. Everyone struggles. Donald Drumpf. It's bleak, is what I'm saying.

In mid winter we decided we had plateaued, and I headed back West. After three weeks our Charge took a serious dip and I got a call from a Hospice nurse telling me that he was dying in a room in th ER as we spake.

SO, flew back to family, lived in ICU with my Number 1 Patient for a few weeks of a coma, and then we slowly got him out of there, into PT, and off the drugs and through the condition that was making him nutsy fagin.

Fair to say, was an emotionally challenging Spring. Perhaps this is where I began to feel frayed.

Everything has leveled out to an acceptable state, and I returned West once again in June, almost an exact year after I'd first left.

I have little money. I have no income. I have no real networking. I'm working on a side/dream project and trying to make an honest effort at it because HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME and it's easy to play Prufrock but maybe I could make on stage as even a Guildenstern, if not Hamlet himself.

And it's fine if you don't understand any of that. Because here's what it means: I GOT STRESS. liekwhoa.

I visited some friends, but I haven't had a break. Bad news, real life, responsibility, have dogged me every step of the way. I can't relax. It's me--I think I need 30 days of intensive Netflix/Deserted Island therapy.

Whatever the case, including that I'm in some kind of PTSD meltdown or just a mid life crisis, I haven't gotten a break. The beat goes on. I'd like a nappy break. Can I tag out?

I'm exhausted. And I'm my primary resource. This corporate structure sucks.

I know you peeps out there are feeling it, too. John Irving called it weltzenhammer and said it was German for "world hurt."

Kinda like Sorrow.

Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid, But They Still Turn Me Inside Out.

Some new and potentially important things are going well right now. It's hard to enjoy partially because I'm just exhausted beyond all belief and I'm not right. In the head.

People seem to think I'm kidding, but it's been a rough 14 months and quite honestly the few years before that weren't none too gentle neither.

I don't even think I'm running on fumes anymore. I think I'm running on delusion, possibly. I don't know, I can't make complex distinctions like that right now.

However, and possibly related, it is fair to say that it is also hard to enjoy because I'm missing someone right now. I just don't seem to be very good at these things.

I would try to tell them, but that's what got me in this mess in the first place. I think. I don't know. I may be having a PTSD flashback. I really need to get on a better eating schedule. One which involves things like eating.

So, some cool things are happening and what's even cooler is the effect on my roommates and family. They seem very happy to have some good news, however silly it may be.

It's like there's a party going on inside but I'm stuck outside the window, staring in. And the bitch of it is, it's my party.

bewlsheet

i resolve to be more celebratorial about my acomplifications

DAYS INCIDENT FREE: 0
BITCHES CHOKED TODAY: 1
WEEKLY COUNT (Sat-Fri): 3
SUMMARY: HAWKEYE HAD TO CHOKEABITCH THREE (3) TIMES THIS WEEK. OF NOTE, FOR ONCE, MANAGEMENT WAS NOT DISPLEASED.

out of my hands

it would have been nice
to have, i think

to have something warm to share
to have someone who saw you, and wanted to see more

but i was foolish and weak
and believed things that were too good to be true
from a source i know is prone to be mercurial

what was i thinking?
well, i was thinking this was a bad idea that would hurt me
but i was real busy hoping
and all that stupid, feckless hope drowned out the truth

i thought i'd grown past being disappointed by surefire failures
was beyond being hurt by impossible promises
had become inured to ridiculous fantasy

but all the pieces of my life fell in such a jumble
i was so lost
(i am so lost)
and for a moment i wanted to feel good
to feel love
to believe in good luck, good fortune, happy accidents, true hearts, true friendship, honesty

and the tiny spark of feeling loved in return

(the problem with that word is that so few people can agree on a definition)

i'm too old and broken for this shit
and perhaps i'm just not cut out for it anyway

turn off the sign
pull down the gates
close up the shop, maybe we can find a home to wander into