January 2026

I took that picture.

Farm Karin’s dad’s horse, AJ. He was sassy and I wanted him so badly.

But, in no way did I have enough experience to give him the life he deserved nor the training he needed.

I still enjoyed him in the time I knew him. And that is one of my favorite pictures I have ever taken.

To take said picture, I had to drive down Prospect side road in a snow storm. A month prior I had made the same drive and flipped a jeep into the swamp. My first car wreck. The road was pure ice and all peaks and valleys and super narrow. I came down a hill too fast, fishtailed and lost control. I think now, in retrospect I either hit the brake too hard, or accidentally the gas. No way of knowing. I just know I fucked up.

I remember being terrified to take that same road, in yet another blizzard.

But I did it.

The universe rewarded my bravery with some really gorgeous pictures and a few hours of playing ball with an amazing horse. And that feeling of “I was scared, but I did it anyways”.

I have fallen into a common Canadian winter mind trap.

A tease, but not quite a lie.

The myth of +1.

Those who make the long range forecasts always throw in a +1 C far enough ahead in the forecast to give us hope. Sometimes it comes, more often than not it gets pushed forward a week until finally, in March something breaks.
Once every few years we get a balmy day or 2 in February followed by a colossal dump of snow.

But eventually winter ends and the joy of summer returns. And maybe if we didn’t have the deep freezes, shin deep snow, and the darkness of winter as a comparison, June, July and August wouldn’t be so sweet.

If I ever look back on this article, mayhap I can remind myself that this too shall pass.

But we have been in a deep freeze for about a week now, and weather patterns that have been patterns for my entire life are changing rapidly.

I find myself in a constant state of ‘let’s just get through today’, ‘one more day’ or 2 or 5. 

Or, as of the time of this article being published 144 weeks, 4 days, 16 hours and 19 minutes.

I know we aren’t going to vote our way out of this, but it is something to hold onto for now.

Last night/this morning was supposed to be the worst of it and Monday is supposed to be a balmy -1. -2 now, but who is counting.

It’s been the end of January for about 84 years now.

And the snow just keeps falling. 

I flagged down a dude with a truck and a plow last week and bribed him with my last $40 in cash  to dig out our back parking lot. Took him 5 minutes, would have taken me hours. Worth it.

It dropped from -18 to -22 last night. I had to work yesterday and every atom in me was screaming, “go home, make soup, keep the animals warm, light candles, make tea and hibernate.” But instead I was planning events and counting chafers.

Somewhere deep down in my peasant DNA there is the voice of my ancestors screaming at me to survive this.

Or maybe it’s Laura Ingalls.

I read the entirety of the Little House on the Prairie series hundreds of times as a kid. I still have the OG copies my mom gave me that were hers.

She wrote prolifically about the winters she survived. Dedicated an entire book to one specifically extra ultra mega bad one.
Grinding wheat in a coffee grinder to make bread when they ran out of food. Twisting hay and straw into tight bundles to burn when they ran out of firewood. Digging a tunnel between the house and the barn to tend to the animals. And finally, eventually, one day the winter broke and the train that had been delayed for months arrived.

So honestly. This isn’t that bad. The kittens and I are warm. We have food, I made sure of that. And the car still runs. Begrudgingly, but it runs.

My son works for the football operations side of things at the same stadium as me. He worked yesterday too, and his team was stuck outside clearing the snow that won’t stop falling. I made sure there was hot coffee and soup for my family. Perks of being in food and beverage.

All of the pipes have burst on the east side of the stadium and we have a championship game on Tuesday.

I know this too shall pass.

All of it.

I have been here before.

We had a bad cold snap and about 3 feet of snow fell overnight last year. I had to dig a maze through the snow in the backyard for Alice. But it didn’t last long. Melted within a week and made going for walks through the rivers of run off and melt really hard. She wasn’t walking far by then. And the poop maze was a blessing, she lost her balance often and instead of totally wiping out, the snow banks held her upright.

Last winter was one of the worst for me. Alice had a stroke, my boss died, I got insanely sick and there were microscopic bugs in my apartment chewing the shit out of my legs and torso. Never did figure out what was biting me.

Alice fell off the bed one night and hurt herself really badly, so the bed went on the floor. 

I originally thought I had bed bugs so I tossed the couch, and her and I ended up on an Ikea mattress on the floor in the living room. Me playing games on my phone and making jewelry. Doing anything to keep busy while being as close to her as possible, while she just got sicker and sicker. Our whole life was a vigil propped up on pillows and blanket nests for 100 days.

This January has also been a bitch.

But isn’t that just January?

-30 C when Giant barbequed me steaks on our first date and the sound the snow made under the cute boots I wore instead of being practical. 2015 was it? 2014? He left a week later. I was crushed.

The ice storm of 2013 and the fallout thereof.

Burst pipe in the basement of Milton house, but at least it was hot water and the floor actually needed a deep clean. Maybe not 2 inches of water over 900 square feet, but at least the floor sloped to the east and it didn’t reach the hardwood.

The multiple vortexes/vortices at Milton house wherein I ran out of firewood to keep us warm that first winter. I had a customer who would cut up hardwood pallets on his breaks at work and fill my trunk and back seat with banana boxes packed with burnable chunks of wood.

It got me through.

8 bush cords and about 100 boxes of ingenuity and kindness.

I still have one piece. A reminder that I am capable of doing hard things.

I have one incredibly vivid memory of that year. I went into town to run errands. It must have been the beginning of March, snow still falling intermittently and Mama Nature still throwing fits of cold after the deep freeze. I had a coffee and somehow a Marlboro cigarette, maybe the last of the ones I brought back from Arizona. The sun was shining, it wasn’t particularly warm out. But you know those brief moments where the sun touches your skin after a prolonged period of grey skies and you can remember what it feels like to be warm, and that spring is real. I opened the car door and the inside was actually hot. 

I just sat for a few minutes and my optimism came off of me in waves.

I think that has been what is missing these days.

Any kind of optimism about anything.

Life is expensive and terrible. I had an event at work last Saturday. 60th birthday party for a gentleman with Downs Syndrome. It should have been sweet and fun, and it was for them. 

But I made the mistake of opening my phone and they shot Alex Pretti in the back and I spent the rest of the day terrified for humanity in general, but mostly the pink coat lady. I had to excuse myself and I cried in the elevator on the way down for a cigarette. Eyes and chest burning form trying to hold in the kind of sobs that shouldn’t be sobbed at work.

I think herein lies my problem with getting back into this writing thing.

None of this matters.

Life is just one big cortisol spike after another.
For a few minutes here and there I can forget about the terrors. If I write things down I can remember lying in bed next to Giant listening to Postcard from 1952 with a belly full of steak and whiskey. 

Or the sounds of the trees exploding in Milton from the cold and ice while I fed chunks of fragrant wood into the fireplaces and Alice was still alive.

The sense of accomplishment that comes with traversing snow covered highways and side roads. Trips that would take 2 hours in the clear turning into 5 or 6 hour tours, tucked in behind transport trucks and plows creeping at 40km/hr just trying to get where I was going. And the relief of bare roads.

The journey from New Brunswick to the ferry when I spent 11 hours holding the wheel to keep my tires in the ruts left behind by truckers and just praying I would make it on time. I did.

If I go further back I can remember being wrapped in blankets in my childhood bedroom closet, in the cubby I had made with a little lamp and a pillow nest, reading the Long Winter by Laura Ingalls.

Dark winter mornings, eating my mom’s oatmeal and listening for the announcement that buses had been canceled. Childhood joy, hot chocolate and sledding with the neighbor kids on snow days.

Maybe we will get back there. Recessions and wars end. The dust bowl eventually became fertile farmland again. Evil men die or go to prison. Systems fail and spring will come eventually.

All we can do is stay vigilant, fight the good fight and allow ourselves some nostalgia for when things were better, and some hope that they will be again.

Today is probably not that day.

The kittens are off the schedule they have been on for the past month. Up from 6am to 11am, back asleep til 6pm, up till 11pm and so on and so forth.

The good/bad news is I slept in this morning.
I have been sleeping in a lot lately.
I like being up in the dark of winter and writing by lamplight.Coffee in hand. Smoke breaks in my slippers and pjs. Feeling like I actually did something while others were still asleep.
But what am I really doing?

Plus, if I get up early enough, uninterrupted showers are a bonus.

Alas, I was up late last night and committed the classic blunder of stripping and washing my sheets, then forgetting to make my bed before bedtime.
I did it. The kittens “helped” so it took a bit longer

The time between Christmas day and January 7th was spent with a minor hyperfixation on a  niche mass hysteria event, coupled with the fear of civil war breaking out while I slept.

Nothing can exist in a vacuum.

Multiple things can be the truth at the same time.

I have a few articles floating around my head that the muses have chosen to bless me with or that my brain needs to work through, but unless I make the conscious decision to wake up and not explore the world through my phone before the sun is even up and the caffeine has hit my veins, everything becomes tainted.

An article about Jail Bae and Prison Bae and my role as comfort girl for both of them.

But ICE is harvesting and murdering people in Minneapolis and elsewhere.

I wanted to talk about the loss of Alice and the healing process. About how I just pulled 13 cat toys out from under the stove while my kittens supervised and my second coffee percolated.
For a minute there, things were both comical and peaceful.

But Russia pulled diplomats out of Israel and the ceasefire is a lie.

I have snippets of the catharsis surrounding getting my implants removed and the physical and spiritual ramifications of this whole surgical/healing process.

But listening to anyone in the Trump administration or their supporters justify anything that has been happening just launches me back to a place where I was gaslit for years about what I knew was happening. Those 2 thoughts jive if I let them.

This is not cognitive dissonance, this is sociopathy. They believe the words they are saying.

I am thinking the only way around this is to get up and write. Keep the outside influences out for as long as possible.

But then there is the laundry list of “have tos” and “should be doings” that, funny enough, usually include laundry. And an event order for work and the litter boxes and ceiling tiles and that new shelf I bought and and and. I have to figure out how to silence those too. Or just hit pause, on those things that all need doing.

I spent too much time this month/year/decade glued to Instagram.

Recently because I fell for “conformity gate.” The Stranger Things conspiracy that nay nay, it wasn’t bad writing, it was a fake out of epic proportions. There is something in my brain that thinks I can alter the course of events if I remain vigilant. This was ever so prevalent during the plague.

I almost wrote there is so little joy left in the world, but that is not the truth. The scales that hold the balance between joy and pain have tipped hard…towards pain.
But there is still joy.
I am still capable of love. 

My kittens taught themselves how to play fetch, and they are girls so they trill constantly. I have nicknamed the combination of the two things “yelly ball”.
Darkling Daddy still exists. And coffee, and kids laughing. But they often get drowned out by sirens and I have to be careful what coffee I buy lest I exploit someone or accidentally fund a bullet that will kill a Palestinian child.

The Greek definition of apocalypse is “the lifting of the veils” between what we believe to be true and the truth.

It was nice to have something to believe in for a few days, nice to feel like a part of something. Nice to have that sense of community and commiseration about something that wasn’t a real atrocity.

Darkling Daddy was sending memes and videos about it even though his emotional investment in the show was zero. He never watched it.

“Give the people bread and circuses, and they will never revolt” Juvenal

But the wheat is poisonous and my favorite circuses have massive plot holes, actors who are Zionists, and really shitty endings. Endings so shitty in fact that their entire fanbase imagined a hoax where there doesn’t appear to be one. It was all a dream Dallas circa Season 9 in it’s entirety. Or the jumping of the shark in Happy Days. Or Lost or Game of Thrones. The disappointment is palpable.

Got me wondering, why can’t we have nice things?

Well, let me tell you.

It all started back on the Titanic and the formation of the Central bank, or before that during the industrial revolution or when the sun never set on the Kingdom of Rome, or or or. We can keep going back. People have always been shitty and people with money and power are the worst.

I am half kidding.
But the Prussian public school system that teaches half truths and prepares graduates for either labor or war or prison if they choose not to participate in the latter 2 options also keeps the masses docile and illiterate.

And with the invention of the internet and the 24 hour news cycle and the owning of the media by a select few here we are. 4th grade reading level, less comprehension and the attention span of a goldfish.

Television shows aren’t smart any more because writers and producers are being told to present storylines in a way that we can consume it on the medium screen with the small screen in our hands. 

During the first part of the plague I made a decision to finally watch Game of Thrones all the way through. Hadn’t watched it past season 3 episode 4 I think. Google has corrected me, season 4 episode 2, Joffrey died and it made me happy.  But that was 2014, then Young Un the First left and it was our show and I just never watched it again until 6 years later.

Small sidequest here. The evil in GOT didn’t stop just because Joffrey died. 45 will be the same. It’s the hydra, chop off one head and Erikkka Kirk appears to take it’s place.

My point is, I made a pact with myself to watch one or two episodes a night depending on my level of tiredness and my attention span and to plug my phone in on the other side of the room. So I actually could focus. And it worked.

But, it took some effort, self awareness and self discipline, which is sorely lacking among the general public. And myself if I am being completely honest. And I am, that is what this blog is for.

Everyone curates their own algorithm, it’s all an echo chamber and I firmly believe reality has been split in two. Everyone doom scrolls for their own brand of doom. Christians think they are being persecuted and the rest of us know they are in a cult. Trumpers think he is the second coming and the rest of us know they’re in a cult.

I heard the term Tragedy Tourism. And it encapsulates everything that has been happening since Harambe and the clowns from 2016.

I am not really on Tik Tok anymore. Instagram, yes. Ir’s been 5 years and I still miss that one Facebook feature where they would let you look back every day at the same day in years gone by. Made me feel like I actually existed.

Panda is back and that helps. Someone with the same memories as me from a time when the world didn’t feel so fucked.

And therein lies another revelation.

It was always fucked. I just didn’t know about it.

I knew some things.

Eric Garner died in 2014 for selling single cigarettes and it broke my heart. In the late 80’s I had a child’s understanding of the apartheid in South Africa. In the 90’s there was Rodney King and Rwanda. 

But I was insulated and I see that now. I technically still am. Nothing I am doing or not doing is aiding anyone anywhere.

I am safe in Canada. I can feed myself and pay rent.

It’s been 2 weeks and I am over the let down of Stranger Things. Apparently the wife was carrying a lot of the weight talentwise without being credited, and they divorced so there’s that then. Shocking, I know.

 I am going to keep writing. I have always said, they can’t all be diamonds. And maybe I am digging in the wrong places. But if I keep at it, maybe I can find my rhythm and my voice again. Provide a bit of serotonin for you fine folks here and there.

But for now, the plants need watering, kittens need feeding and I have to get to work.

I did it again.

Woke up early today which is good. But we are somewhere between Civil War and World War 3 and they might be a double feature, which is bad.

I doom scrolled for just under an hour looking for hope. Couldn’t find any.

It’s not my poop towel for the record.

I did have to have a stash of rags under the bathroom sink before my dog died because her balance was really bad and 3 outta 5 poops she’d end up stumbling backwards and stepping in it. She always looked devastated by the poop foot, so I kept the clean up as dignified as possible. Lots of warm water, soap, love and reassurance followed by a pupper burrito and some cheese to appease her wounded ego.

God I miss her. I wouldn’t trade a minute of my life that she was with me, poop foot, double strokes, bad breath and all.

Saw something on Instagram the other day. A very average person’s idea of being rich.

It’s not yachts and white parties. It’s the ability to walk into a grocery store and not have to worry about the check out. It’s about our kid’s cars breaking down and us being able to say, “don’t worry, I got you.” It’s about having the money to ease your pet over the rainbow bridge without worrying about rent or your next meal.

I am in a lot of debt. Alice died last spring after a prolonged and expensive winding down process. I took a lot of time off work last spring to look after her. And the spring before to move and facilitate the sale of Hess house, went out of pocket hard on that little project, and 9 months later, the bank took it. 

My rent was way more than I could afford because I chose an apartment based on a salary I was promised, but my GM died on New Years day 2025 and the raise never happened. And one fun aspect of the aftermath of Covid was everything getting way more expensive.

Apartments that were $1000 in 2020 were suddenly $1600 and up.

There was a shortage of used cars, so when my old car got hit and I needed a new one, I overpaid for a lemon. 6 grand to buy and another $8000 in repairs over the next year. My credit cards are pretty maxed. I don’t even carry them on me anymore.

None of this is a tragedy. Losing my boss and my dog within 79 days of each other was rough.
I definitely wanted off the mortal coil when Alice passed. I still break down on a pretty regular basis. I miss her.

I am doing my best to recover and recoup. The moral and ethical thing to do right now is to not spend money, so that works.
I haven’t stepped foot in a Wal-Mart or made an Amazon order since 2020. Had a brief relapse over the summer at McDonalds for ice cream. Starbucks too, but those ended in August. My conscience couldn’t abide.

I think I have stated that I am living in an apartment that feels quite a bit like a cathouse. Minus the strippers, cheap body spray lingering in the air, and glitter in the carpet.

Built in 1941 and probably not upgraded this century. The electrical is mildly frightening and I have 1 outlet in each half of my room.

I have a plug in oil heater and I have to keep pretty much everything else off to maintain a decent room temperature or the breaker for my room goes and I don’t have access to the basement to turn it back on. The oven is either all the way on or all the wat off because the last tenant used to crank it on high and leave it on the warm up the house. It’s okay, makes me have to be creative with what I make for dinner. But grocery prices are insane and my glasses are both the wrong prescription, and broken in 2 places, being held together with nail glue. It’s really good nail glue.

It is the 89th of January, this too shall pass.

The walls are paper thin, the toilet gurgles 2.5 seconds before the shower turns nuclear power plant skin melting hot.
The heat comes and goes.

There are 2 kids and 2 adults above me and they are not soft steppers. The boys are 6 & 9, I think and they play like 6 & 9 year olds.There’s a disgruntled short ‘king’ downstairs who believes this is HIS house and we are all just staying in it, he thinks he has to provide the soundtrack for the whole house, so my glass knick knacks vibrate to old Chevelle track or sometimes Biggie and Tupac.

I can set my clock by the blender going off upstairs at 6:32am and the kids running around getting ready for school. And unless I get up at 5am and shower before 6, I have to wait until after 8 to shower because they each have to flush the toilet at least twice every morning. It is worse when the downstairs neighbor is home, I think he flushes maliciously. The only “aggressive” he knows how to be is passive aggressive.

It’s -18 here today, 0 degrees Fahrenheit for my American friends.

I don’t have to work today, but I have laundry to do.

Yesterday I managed to finish tiling the bathroom ceiling, something I started back in July of last year. That was good for a skooch of dopamine.

Everything else is terrible.

It is hard to get motivated to do the small things when the world is ending and this hell is literally frozen over. Which reminds me, I need new tires. I almost slid into traffic from my solid iced over driveway the other day.

I wish I could be protesting, or handing out coffee to the protesters, carrying first aid, opening my door to people who need it. But I barely fit here.

The state of the world and the weather has me feeling really doomsday preppery.

Not much I can do with my current financial state and limited space.

I have a roommate that came with the place.

It’s not great.

I lived alone with Alice for over a year, which was good for me and bad for her.
My upstairs neighbor was kind and relatively quiet. He did sing to himself when he was cleaning but he had a lovely voice.

There is something amazing about coming home from a long day gone and having everything the same as when you left it. The attic at Hess was like that at least. And my giant room in Newfoundland. But the rest of the house never felt like mine and there were always dishes in the sink that I hadn’t used and some random bit of housekeeping that needed doing.

I also stumbled on something recently that has me slightly worried.

The poop towel and the consequences thereof.

I see the roomie maybe thrice a day. Yesterday afternoon he emerged from his den with a towel in hand. I had plans on dying my hair and asked if he was jumping in the shower.

He said no.

It took me a minute, but then it dawned on me what the towel was for. He uses the bidet, then…ya. No toilet paper, just poop towel.

When I first moved in, it hung over his door, never thought much of it, then I painted the hallway and doors and it disappeared.

This roommate has questionable hygiene, and is either sleeping or sitting for 16-22 hours a day. I have been on my work break for a month and home for 99% of it. He has worked maybe 4 or 5 of those days. Showered the same number of times, maybe less.

His laziness, finances and cleanliness are not my problem as long as the common areas stay clean, he keeps his door shut, and pays rent on time. Which he does for the most part.

The problem is the poop towel and the placating monster of comparison. 

Once upon a time at the farm, way back when, I got up in the morning, had my coffee, let the dogs out, did my chores, checked my Facebook and by around 10am, I settled down on the couch to watch Maury Povich, Jerry Springer and that guy Steve for about 3 to 6 hours. If those weren’t on, there was always TLC which had become The Ludicrous Circus by then instead of The Learning Channel. Always a house on Hoarders that was worse than ours. Always a guy cheating worse than hubby was on Cheaters..
Always something worse. 

I could sit back and feel okay about how great my terrible life was in comparison to the scripted chaos I was feeding myself.

I orchestrated a lot of my own brainwashing.

Found ways of coping with what I should never have tolerated.

I realized a million years ago that the relationship before that one had lasted longer than it should have for the simple fact that we played Goldeneye and I beat him constantly. All the aggression and angst I couldn’t articulate manifested and somewhat released by blowing him up with a virtual rocket launcher.

I would like to think that I am not like that anymore. But in times of sadness and duress, old habits come creeping back.

And the old adage is true, comparison is the thief of joy. And this roads goes both ways.

I find myself with my phone in my hand way too often. I didn’t go anywhere yesterday so I didn’t shower and I know I stink. But at least I put up the bathroom tiles, and at least I worked on Saturday and at least I don’t use a poop towel.

I want so badly to live alone. Roommate’s lack of physical movement has manifested in a lack of ability for physical movement. Amazing how that happens huh?

I am terrified one of my kittens is going to slip past him and bolt outside and he will be apathetic as well as unable to do anything about it. I have expressed this, in writing and conversationally, repeatedly.

The main hurdle is money, and here is where I will ask, humbly, for anyone who is able, to subscribe to my Patreon for a couple bucks a month.

https://www.patreon.com/sarahthegoodwitch

I am reminded of the old commercials for UNICEF, “for the price of a cup of coffee” a month. And that is all it is. No one is coming to save us, so we have to save each other.

The plan is to move the 73 articles that I was forced to hide over to there once I can get it sorted, they are juicy. Might be worth it. I at least have to ask.

Apparently I somehow accessed the old old Our Lady of Lust and Grace and it threw me for a fucking loop.

I think we’re back. But this is too funny not to publish as is. False starts and all.

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Well fuck.

Below the line is the article I intended to publish this morning.

That line from Kill Bill is riding the carousel of my inner dialog right now. Or my paraphrased version of it anyways.

Lucy Lui : Silly rabbit. You didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you?

Uma Thurman: You know, for a minute there, I kinda did.

The irony being, it wasn’t easy. Not for her, nor for me.

I did the obligatory changing of the password to get into my WordPress dashboard and damn. Nothing is there. Nothing recognizable anyways.
Can’t find any old articles, just one blank and something I know I didn’t write.

No stats, no subscribers, no way to access old articles.

I am glad I decided to write first, worry about the rest of it later.

I have zero clue what to do here. I truly believed I would just have to go through the headache of updating some plug-ins on muscle memory and poof, away we go.

Not learning a new language, just remembering it.

This is all Greek. Greek tragedy.

I think it has been updating on it’s own, into something unrecognizable.

The good news is, the website does still exist. I still have access to the corresponding email.

All is not lost per se. I just can’t find it right now.

Just gotta add this to the list of shit to do. Or reroute all y’all over to Patreon.

I’ll figure it out.

In the meantime, please attempt to enjoy watching me shake the rust off.

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Choices.

We all make them. From the infinitesimal to life changing. Sometimes those are one in the same.

My choice this morning was to get up and write. No checking my phone, no putting on the same mediocre show I have probably watched a half dozen times in the last 4 years. I haven’t enjoyed it, don’t know why I keep doing it.

It’s been 84 years since I wrote for you fine folks, minus 80. I think.

It’s kinda off-putting to know that all I have to do is log on here and I can see exactly the last time I did the thing I love the most. I haven’t done that yet. I am disappointed in myself for so many things, one of them being all of the time I have lost.

I have been off work for 21 days and accomplished very little beyond survival and getting a china cabinet. Finished Stranger Things, ate comfort foods and did the 12 days of Christmas burn-a-wish tradition.

This is the wish I am responsible for.

Step one was getting this old laptop up and running again, which I did, last September. Next logical step would be to update OLLG and all of it’s plug-ins, as well as this 7 pound tank of a thing. The right hand side of my screen is demanding so many things right now.

Remind me later.

Remind me later.

Remind me later.

My executive dysfunction, task paralysis and imposter syndrome still exist.

But there is a much bigger, worse thing. 

Isn’t there always?

I don’t know who I am anymore,

I can tell you who I was before I stopped writing, I wrote it all down. And I wrote the truth. 

All of it. 

Ugly or not.

I know my name. 

I have a straight job.

Alice came back and then she died.

The amount of time that elapsed while she was missing was the exact amount of time I got her back for. But that is a story for another day.

I have 2 kittens, Zoe and Violet. They don’t know their names.

I moved, twice.

This most recent house very much feels like a cat house.

Built in 1941, 3 storey split in 4. One water heater so I have to wait my turn for the shower unless I wake up at 5am or stay up until midnight. Walls like paper and not near enough outlets.

I have a roommate that I see once or twice a day, maybe.
But the rent is crazy cheap and I am heavily in debt.
And it feels kinda haunted, so that’s good.

Arizona replaced Florida as winter sanctuary.

But anywhere in America is off the table for the foreseeable future thanks to the cheeto in charge and my inability to keep my mouth shut about human rights.

Dave went crazy. But in retrospect, he might always have been.

Wolf is long gone and Darkling Daddy is still here. Which, in itself, is some kind of small miracle.

I remember those. I remember living a blessed life. I remember being more than what I am now and I miss her. I miss the muchiness.

Giant got married, I think, and I still talk to the Hulk.

Panda came back. And that seems the best place to start.

380 ish words and I got there. Not my best but not my worst.

She is so many things, but a touchstone and a testament is what I needed.

Initials carved into a tree to tell the world I was here. She’s the tree.

She met all the boys I used to write about. 

Mostly.

I understand that the past is just a collection of stories we tell ourselves. But I have the added bonus and responsibility of telling literally everybody, why else would you be here?

Panda though, she makes it real. Not just tales I told.

Those people, places and things were real.

She lived in the houses I called home and she herself was home for me. Shared memories with different perspectives. She was in Newfoundland on that first trip. I finally got to tell her that I didn’t make much effort to get us out of there when she asked. Among 100 other confessions and apologies.

I quit vaping and went straight back to smoking after Alice died. It’s fine, the world is ending anyways.

Stopped at the same convenience store every morning for a coffee and a pack of smokes, and one day, there she was.

I had been dreading it. My straight job is right around the corner from where I knew she lived. But 3 years went by and no Panda in sight. To say my guard was down would be a staggering understatement.

7 years ago we ended things. It wasn’t pretty. I lost things that were important to me and she laughed. I was starving and instead of sending me the money she owed me, she got a tattoo. Her revelation of “ I haven’t liked you for a while now” rang in my ears for years afterwards.

How did I not know she felt that way, and if I did know somewhere deep down,why didn’t I stop it somehow, either by leaving sooner or making an effort to fix what was wrong.

The answer is simple now. Because it went the way it was supposed to.

Everything does.

Just like this.

Choices. Some small, some life altering and some just promises scribbled on burnt pieces of paper.

And honestly, none of it matters. All we have is here and now.

I have to work today. First time in 3 weeks where it has become unavoidable. I didn’t do any of the things I was supposed to on my time off. And even this is so on brand for me, waiting until the last minute to do the one thing I promised the universe I would do.

I have more things to burn and I missed the full moon, tomorrow is Epiphany, that’ll do.

As for Panda. We had living and growing to do that we couldn’t do together. It is near impossible to describe what it is like to relearn someone wrapped in the comfort of familiarity while simultaneously experiencing the intrigue of meeting the new person they have become.Maybe it’s like a cover of a song you used to love and forgot about for a while. Not same same, but not new either, some other thing.

I know this isn’t a great article.

I am going to publish it anyways.

Just like the books I wrote that suck really bad, I published them anyways.

Sometimes you just have to jump and see where you land.

I think the last time I tried this I made a bunch of promises that I didn’t end up keeping. 

I won’t do that now. I have some ideas, and that is enough.

I have some hidden articles that I should probably move over to Patreon.
The subjects no longer need or deserve protection.

But for now, I am going to make another coffee, feed the kittens and pray no one flushes the toilet while I am in the shower.