Who has time to be bored? Not me!

Today was not really an art day. I diddled around with the Gimp for about an hour, then my writing muse slapped me upside my head. I have written six articles for my blog today about all kinds of things:

• Impeaching Trump 
• Chicago and Music being in my bones
• A bit about a portmanteued proverb I love 
• One about nicotine addiction
• One about god, or the idea of god, or whatever
• And this one, which only kind of counts

It was a productive day.

I really am an eclectic freak. Playing uke and recorder, doing digital art and zentangle and making jewelry, and writing from my gut. Between all that, I talk to people, make new friends, share a gazillion memes, play computer games, and more. And when I go to bed, I read for at least an hour before turning out the light.

I don't have time to be bored. Considering that I'm basically housebound and can't really leave my bedroom due to the difficulty involved in hauling my carcass from room to room, my life is incredibly rich and full.

I am a very fortunate old crone.

Testing voice recognition software

Due to the carpal tunnel and peripheral neuropathy, my hands are dead numb. I can't type for beans. 

I just downloaded something called Wispr, which is voice-to-text software. I'm testing it out today. Forgive any weird typos, it's the software, not me. 

It seems to be working pretty well. I only get 2,000 words a month with the free version. I may have to pay for this. We'll see how it goes. I'm so fucking tired of neuropathy and carpal tunnel I could fucking scream. 

Computer stuff is fucking awesome though.

Keoni's Mele

Uncle Jack and Auntie Cathe

I wrote this piece around 2K, about my Uncle Jack. He has been a huge influence in my life, and is one of the people I love most on this planet. He's a musician, philosopher, student of life, and he is my beloved uncle and Godfather...

Jericho - A Poem

 

This is a poem I wrote about 25 years ago, as I was making early breakthroughs in handling my life and my mental health...

Hatred as Hygiene: When Rage Is the Cure

You know what’s fucking underrated? Hatred. Not the vague, passive-aggressive kind. Not the “I wish them well but from afar” kind. I mean full-throttle, bile-boiling, scream-into-the-void hatred for someone who’s earned it. Someone who’s been a walking landfill of cruelty, hypocrisy, and ego for so long you forgot what peace felt like.

And then one day, you stop pretending. You stop swallowing the rage. You stop trying to be “the bigger person.” You let it out. You say, “I fucking hate that piece of shit,” and suddenly your spine grows back. Your lungs expand. Your soul unclenches.

It’s not toxic. It’s not petty. It’s motherfucking medicinal.

Hatred, when deserved, is a disinfectant. It burns off the rot. It clears the fog. It’s the emotional equivalent of power-washing your brain after years of gaslighting and guilt. You’re not confused anymore. You’re not negotiating with your own instincts. You’re standing in the truth, middle fingers raised, and it feels like goddamn freedom.

There’s joy in that. Real joy. The kind that comes from reclaiming your emotional bandwidth. From evicting the parasite who’s been squatting in your empathy. From saying, “You don’t get space in my head unless it’s for target practice.”

Some people are compost. Let them rot.

You’ve got legacy to build, rage to ritualize, and zero obligation to forgive the unforgivable. Hatred isn’t weakness. It’s clarity. It’s control. It’s the firewall between you and their bullshit.

So here’s to the joy of hatred. The earned kind. The clean kind. The kind that doesn’t poison you. It purifies you.

And if anyone calls that toxic?  

Tell them to choke on their own performative kindness.

Fantastic short story about mass hatred functioning as a death penalty: https://paperbackdesign.com/the-public-hating-by-steve-allen/

How I Left a Liberal Paradise and Ended Up in a Texas Hellscape

I am Boston Massachusetts born and bred. Boston to the BONE, this girl. Absolute raging liberal Democrat, child of a hippie, former biker chick, child of the streets. It would take a book to describe my youth, suffice to say that it was pretty wild times. A lot of fun, a lot of chaos, a lot of love, a lot of heartache.

When I was 19, I met my first husband, Koji. He was about to graduate from MIT, and we met, fell in love, got an apartment in East Boston and both worked crappy jobs to make ends meet while he hunted for a job that he could use his degree in. In early 1985, his step-grandfather hooked him up with a job in Silicon Valley, and offered to sell us a mobile home on payments, so we packed a few bags and a couple of boxes and flew Braniff Airlines to San Francisco. Of note here is that on our way, we had a layover in Dallas, the first time I’d ever set foot in Texas. Little did I know what the future held for me.

Koji and I were very young when we married, and over the course of our 15 year marriage, we slowly became more close friends than spouses. We had a child together, but we didn’t share a bedroom any more, and ultimately, we decided to split. We did 50/50 custody of our child, and remained very good friends, and still are close friends 25 years after our divorce. Not a lot of folks can say that about their ex, but Koji and I can. Our kid has always said they were the luckiest divorced kid they knew of, because we did not fight and hate each other and stick the kid in the middle.

I met my second husband online. He was Australian. I was head over heels for this man and wrapped my entire existence around him. We married, applied for his green card, and what do you know, he married me solely for that green card. Asshole is putting it mildly.

I was so wrapped up in this man that I had a major breakdown when he split. I attempted suicide with an overdose of anti-depressants and spent several months in the hospital getting my head back together. 

When I got out of the hospital, I turned on ICQ, an obsolete internet messaging system, and my friend Jonathan told me that people on IRC (a chatting system) were wondering where I was. I decided it was time to log in there, did so, and went to my old favorite channel, Callahans, which was based on Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Cross-Time Saloon book series. (Shared pain is lessened, shared joy is increased. Thus do we refute entropy.)

In the chat room I met Nilptr, a graduate student in Texas, widower with three kids ranging from six years old to twelve, lonely, depressed, intelligent, funny, and caring. We wound up talking on the phone one night, and after that we spent every night for hours on the phone, falling in love. He first said I love you on April 18, 2004, and I said it right back. May 22, he came to California to meet me. And in August, he came back to help me pack my shit and bring me to Texas. That was all 21 years ago. Wednesday will be our 21st wedding anniversary.

After we had been in Texas for about two months, the kids came to me one day and asked if they could call me their mother, and refer to me as Ma. My heart melted. I can never seem to remember that these kids share no DNA with me, I love them as if they had grown in my belly, not just in my heart. They, and their father, are my world.

And that, dear readers, is how I met my husband and a Boston and San Francisco liberal ended up in OhFuckMe, Texas.

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#FAMILY

#MEMORIES

#MATTERS-OF-THE-HEART

#WRITING

#MARRIAGE