Blather, rinse, repeat

During the summer, Gavin came over every night and I let Callum stay up super late and we marathoned The Untamed. The last episode was the last Friday before school started and Callum was so upset that he cried: so many reasons, summer being over, our fun Chinese Drama nights being over, sad that he wouldn't see Gavin as much etc. So we said, why don't we continue our Chinese Drama Nights once a week? And now Gavin comes over every Friday and we watch Douluo Continent and Mo Dao Zu Shi, Callum stays up late, we all have an ice cream cone, and then we sit around chatting (Callum goes to bed after the shows are over because he still gets tired around 10 PM,) and we just laugh the night away.

It's wild because to me it feels like we were just picking gavin up at the airport when he was 10 months old. Like... this was YESTERDAY to me and now he's a few weeks shy of 16 and I'm not sure how this happened.

And Callum is right behind him and I just can't cope with that sometimes.

My two boys.

Gavin comes everywhere with us in the summer. I wanted to take him with us to Chinatown for the Lunar New Year next week, but his Mom was too nervous about him going into the city and that's valid. I'm nervous about it myself tbh. I haven't been to the city since the year before Callum was born.

Bazzy and Mason were supposed to come over to play with Callum on saturday, and Bazzy was supposed to sleep over, but Mason is sick now (negative thankfully) and Bazzy still has a cough from being sick last week, so we'll see.

OMG and Miranda turned 17 a few days ago.Zach will be 19 in May. Haven't heard from Zach since before Christmas. :(

Zach, Miranda, and Bazzy are my cousin Celia's kids btw. Gavin and Mason's parents--my cousin Chrissie and her husband Tim--have custody of them. That's a long, unhappy story for another time.

I had a whole other section of this that I was gonna write about, but now I'm second-guessing myself so I deleted it!

I was driving to PT today after dropping Callum off at school and I totally had something in mind to write about, but now I can't remember what it was.

PT though, PT is actually fun. I know it's a drag for some people, but it actually helps me a lot, and the people there are super nice. Most of them are like, 20-30 years younger than I am, aside from the PT himself who's a year or two older. It's a very chatty place, everyone always ends up talking and being really social. last week, I met the best friend of the woman who wrote Jennifer's Body.

There's a young woman there, Emma, she's the PT assistant. She's 27 and we get along so well. We started chatting early on last year because, on a hunch, I asked her if she played Animal Crossing New Horizons, and she about lost her mind. And so now we visit each other's islands and such.

Animal Crossing new Horizons was important to me (still is) (and to a lot of people) because it came out right at the beginning of covid lockdowns in '20, and no one could visit each other. So everyone built their version of paradise, and the game had the, like, totally prescient function of allowing people to visit each other's "homes" and interact with each other. Bring gifts, talk, "eat" together, visit the museum, shop at each other's stores, go swimming and fishing with friends. A lot of people who had to put off or cancel their weddings did ceremonies on their islands, and invited their friends, which is epic.

My one friend - actually her Mom was my friend, we were Hula sisters back in the day. But she (the Mom I was friends with) died from covid in march of '20. (And I mean, it was godawful, GODAWFUL, and it happened really fast, literally within hours her daughter was posting "Mom has covid" and then an hour later, the hospital, and then an hour later, ventilator and then by the next morning she was gone. That's how fast it was, and that's part of why I get so angry at people who still-_STILL! ALMOST THREE YEARS LATER! SIX MILLION PEOPLE DEAD!!--don't take it seriously.)

Anyway. So my friend passed, and her daughter plays ACNH, and at the time, there were no funerals going on. So she had a funeral for her on her island. I can still go to her island any time I wish, and visit her grave there. I was able to bring flowers.

I know it sounds ridiculous but ACNH was huge for a lot of people back then.

I still play it too, because they did this update where you can design homes for hundreds of different characters, and they come with certain requirements or preferences. I've always loved any kind of game where you can design and decorate things. This really hits my "dollhouse" sweet spot.

HEY I still don't remember what it was I really wanted to write about this morning!

EDIT: I treated my co-worker on Monday (massage treatment) and she was supposed to treat me tomorrow because we trade. She texted me earlier to say "I wasn't feeling great yesterday, do you mind if we bump it to next week?" and I was like OF COURSE??? Have you MET ME? Then she texted me a few minutes later to tell me she tested positive.

So I treated her Monday, she started to get sick on tuesday. Now we wait to see if I come down with it. :( I was wearing a mask (I always do,) but she wasn't. My room is 10X10 and unventilated.

I know I've been exposed in the same way before, but this one is way more transmissible, so I guess we'll see. Jesus.

I used to love journaling so much, and have so much to say, now it feels overwhelming because, where do I even start? It's just little things today. I can't find a pair of bluetooth headphones that will actually charge. Fascinating stuff.

I have work tomorrow, umm. One of my regular clients got run over by a car, her little legs are just mangled, poor thing. She told me people keep telling her, "It could have been worse, you're lucky" and I'm like "uhhh no, lucky would be if it didn't happen." I hate when people diminish others' trauma.

I've been through a few fandoms since the last time I was seriously journaling, that's always fun, I always need something to pee my pants about.

Let's see, what else what else. Lunar New Year coming up, I'm going to take Callum to Chinatown for that and my anxiety is through the roof because I haven't been on a train or to the city since 2011. Yikes. Plus with the pandemic, I haven't really left the house other than for work, bringing Callum to school, PT, and Target. We're still all fully masking with KN95.

Jeez, imagine going back and telling Past Me that we'd have this global pandemic?

What I should do is actually make more icons, I used to love making icons.

I still have the fan in my main icon up there too. It says "The fan of a floating woman."

Actually, now that Google Translate is a thing, it would be fun to see if that's what she really wrote 😂

I miss it even though I have nothing good to report at the end of 2017. I was watching this achingly good version of O Holy Night by Willie K and Makaha Sons, so beautiful, and I just started to think about uncle John.

So. Sano died a few days ago. I had him for 14 and a half years. I was journaling daily when I adopted him, and I wrote down the whole thing. It seems like yesterday, sorry for the cliche. He was 16 and a half, and he died in his bed overnight after a few hours of vestibular (which is typically not a big deal. He's had it before and it's not dangerous, so...?) But 16 and a half, in his sleep - I guess it doesn't get a lot better than that.

And Haku has been gone for 7 months. I wasn't even done crying about him every day. He was young, and it was sudden. Like, seconds.

I guess I'm depressed because if I went back and told the me that started journaling on LJ all those years ago that my Gran and Dad would die within 3 months of each other, and uncle John the next year, and a big chunk of what I'd considered a decent family would split up, and then? In 2016 Lao Shir would die (also pretty suddenly,) on the day that Haku was diagnosed with the cancer that would NOT end up killing him but would cost me yet another $10K, and that Sano would follow him soon. And David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Leonard Cohen, Carrie Fisher, Chris Cornell?? WTF??? would all be gone? And I'm in total poverty and can't afford, never mind Kung Fu, but like, even new clothes half the time? And the book I worked so hard on won't even sell!

Well actually, if you told me that, but also told me "however if you change even one terrible thing, you wouldn't have your son," then obviously I would do every second the exact same way.

But still. I mean, it's bullshit. It's a lot, right? Maybe I'm just all scraped up over Sano--it hasn't even been a week yet--but I keep thinking back to those years when everyone was alive, and people were still together, and my dogs were young and I was young.

Sometimes it just sucks.

Do have a listen to that song, though.

And here's to 2018 being, of not better, then at least not worse, jesus.

I could talk more about 2016 constantly at the doctor for this that and the other; I could go back into my head and rethink how devastated I still am about Leonard Cohen and Carrie Fisher (WTF? WTF? WTMFF? I'm not over it) or about “President T****” and how much debt I'm still in from Haku's surgeries and this really ill-advised trip to Disney (that I planned BEFORE last year's surgeries) and my own anxiety, and anxiety about leaving the dogs again when we go, or that that the town canceled my summer Hula class (that I was going to get paid nicely for :/ ) and how much I still miss Kung Fu and my friends and, and, and.

But, damn it, no. It's April and this is Dreamwidth and a fresh start, so!

I'm taking my soon-to-be four year old to Disneyworld next month, and how awesome is that? Hashtag blessed, that's how awesome.

It's going to be 70 degrees next week??

There's planets? TRAPPIST-7 exists and that is so rad!

I recently got the most excellent fanart from a fanfic I wrote ages ago.

My book is out on submission! If you had told me five years ago that I'd be the lady who lives by the sea, about to take her 4 year old to Disney, waiting to hear back from her agent about her book that's being pitched to Random Penguin right now? I mean I'd about have DIED, you know?

I've been cleaning the yard – this is good. I haven't done it since before Callum was born, because I just couldn't; there was no time, no way to get it done. But now he's almost 4, and I can take him outside and he'll mostly play with his toys while I cut down vines and rake leaves and shit. It's hard work, I mean – like really super hard, because I let all of this go for about 5 years and it's a jungle of bittersweet and wisteria. I don't mind the wisteria except it eats everything in its path. Bittersweet is an asshole, I straight up plain hate it. So this is a real shit show and it's not even a quarter of the way done. And I have to cover myself and Callum in IR3535 (tick repellent) because Lyme and Powassan and RMSF are super real, and all the crawling around in Tick Country freaks me TF out, and the bending and twisting to get the roots up are kind of hurting my back. But it's not as bad as I thought – and I actually feel better? Like, less pain in other places, idk. I haven't moved in so long.

I really wish I hadn't read this article about a lady dying from an abdominal aneurism while running a marathon, because I was thinking about starting to jog again. I have to do something. I miss Kung Fu. There's a school about 30 minutes away and I talk to the Sifu on Instagram every time he posts something. “Oh, I remember that form!” “Broadsword, my fave!” “I love that drill!” and he's always like “COME DOWN AND TRAIN, WE WANT YOU,” but the money doesn't exist in this universe or any parallel universe.

Someday, though. Really, someday.

It's weird how these days you have to second guess everyone like, “but how awful would it be if I went there and made friends and then found out they'd voted for T****?” This is a real issue. Isn't that terrible?

Well anyway, the weather is about 60 today, and 70s for the next 3 days! I have to work, but that's cool; I can get outside when I come home. Do more yardwork, take some time sitting on the deck with Callum and the dogs, blowing bubbles, listening to music, taking pics. Disney in a few weeks, and then summer and those glorious beach days after that.

And yeah I'm always afraid of what comes next – with two old dogs, negative money, various other dramas. But I used to deal with all of my shit way better, I think. When I look back at my old LJ, like before Gran and Dad passed? I totally dealt with my shit way better. So I'm going to try to get there again for sure.

Tomorrow I'm going to Lao Shir's memorial. This is a thing I'd hoped I wouldn't have to even think about for a long time. On the other hand, she fought cancer for ten years, and her prognosis was about 18 months. But, when she wrote saying she was having trouble—CHF--I thought, 'Well, people can live for years with CHF. There's medication. She'll make it.' I guess that no matter when it happened, it was going to be sudden, even though it wasn't. It's always sudden.

It's so hard for me to believe that she won't show up. I know how weird that sounds. I had a dream last night that she did show up, actually. That her memorial was at a college campus (it's not; it's at a restaurant on the water by her home,) and I ended up talking to her about strength training. She was so her in the dream, all her expressions, mannerisms and everything. She was talking about how to do that thing where you balance on your hands, with the rest of your body horizontal, you know the thing? She could do that! And in the dream, she was telling about it, like, how to practice for it and get strong enough to do that. And I was just like, 'Of course she's here, why wouldn't she be?'

Then, in the dream, I decided I wanted to wear makeup. I met up with a girl who used to train with us, we'll call her Jen Di. She was a really tough gal, but her makeup was always on point. I asked her to help me do winged eyeliner. So we went looking for a bathroom. We went around the back of the campus and discovered we were actually in a place like Hogwarts. Excited, we ran to the restrooms, which were crowded, and my cousin was there with her son, trying to get him to nap in a stall. O_O Jen Di got out her makeup, and she also had this huge horse that she was suddenly leading around. She asked me to hold the reigns while she applied my makeup. Looking at the horse, I realized it was the same horse that I knew from when I briefly rode in the 90s: an 18 hand stallion named Nacht Wacht, but who we all called Urbie. He started to move away, so Jen Di tied his front leg so that he couldn't run off.

She finished my makeup, and when I looked in the mirror, I looked completely different. I remember thinking, 'Why haven't I been doing this all along?'

I went back outside to look for Lao Shir, but she had disappeared. Like actually disappeared, turned invisible in front of everyone and gone away.

It wasn't a bad-feeling dream? I woke up missing her, but also feeling like we'd had a nice chat.

I went to PM her on Facebook, actually, because I'd kind of kept doing that after she passed. We had been talking about getting together when she got out of the hospital. I'd sent flowers (she never got them,) and we were also sending music. I sent her “This Girl Is On Fire” and she never answered. I just kept PMing her because, I guess, I just felt like it. But then her sister changed her FB page to “in memory of,” and the messages are all gone now. That made me sad; I'd've liked to have read them again at some point.

Anyway, tomorrow I'll be there with the old Kung Fu group, most of them, at least. It really sucks because we always talked about all of us getting together, you know, like you do. But then it never happens until someone dies, and I really hate that. We used to see each other two or three times a week, it's just weird.

I wonder if we'll be telling stories about Lao Shir. If so, I have a great one. It was the night we went out dancing, just the Kung Fu ladies. The song “Temperature” came on, and Lao Shir hit the floor! I mean, she got low! And then she started throwing all these KF moves into her dance, and people cleared the floor to watch her and cheer. She had just finished her, I think second round of chemo. But I'll never forget seeing her dance to Temperature. She was so happy. That's the story I'll tell tomorrow, if we end up doing that.

It's so weird to be using my Kung Fu tag again, and even weirder to be using it for this.

Every year I like to post about the first time I hear the tree frogs. It was tonight, although others have said they heard them earlier, being out in the evening. (I was coming home from teaching Hula tonight.)

Also, there was a thunderstorm. Only a few days till Spring!

There's more to tell, but this is a happy post and I don't like to spoil it.

Since it's so hard to write this all down again, about Haku, I'm just going to copy and paste the latest update I've posted to his fundraiser.

Today's update is both good and bad. The good is that, thank the universe I decided to get a double cavity ultrasound instead of going right into surgery, because this is not a splenic mass. The bad news is that it is still a mass. It's possibly intestinal, and / or possibly lymphoma. Neither of those has a good prognosis. With lymphoma, there is no surgery, just chemo and palliative care. If it's intestinal cancer, surgery would be palliative, so that he can continue to eat and be comfy for however long he wishes to stay with us.

There is a small--SMALL--chance that the mass isn't cancer, in which case surgery would be curative.

Haku's grandmother had lymphoma, so I wouldn't be surprised.

There is some good in this. His heart looked good. The rest of his intestines looked good. The surgery--if it gets done--is less risky, and could be done at his regular hospital, which would save some money. And the other bright spot, if you can call it that, is that this mass will not rupture and bleed out suddenly, like a splenic mass would have done.

We'll know more when the biopsy comes back, but, either way, this will be either surgery or chemo. So, once again, I want to thank you all for contributing and sharing. And, please help keep this fundraiser going, if you can!

MAHALO SO MUCH.


And hey. If anyone wants to pass on that fundraiser, or can contribute? That would be so wonderful of you. The surgery cost will be less now, but by "less" I mean "less than the originally estimated EIGHT THOUSAND DOLLARS." The ultrasound, and diagnostics alone, up until today, have already been about a thousand. We're looking at at least another few thousand, no matter what comes next.

Mostly, I have to say that one thing that has made me so happy, is how much everyone seems to love Haku. People out there, people I've never even met in real life, really want him to be all right. And I mean, he's not. He won't be. I'm trying to come to terms with that. No dog in the world is "all right" for that long. We're so lucky if we get them for fifteen years, and that's so rare. (I'm grateful that Sano is fifteen. Sano, BTW, was at the vets yesterday for vestibular. I had to "borrow" some of Haku's fundraiser money for him. Two hundred, just about.) But what I mean is, it makes me happy that people are cheering Haku on.

IDK, this is really hard. But it's so lovely to see all these people, even strangers, coming out to help him.

I know I know, it's taken me forever to write this, and there are a hundred other posts I keep meaning to make (mostly I really want to keep track of all the funny things that Callum says, because he is growing up so fast, but, that kind of ties in with this?)

It's almost a month already, but I really need to write this whole thing down about the passing of David Bowie and Alan Rickman, particularly so close together. For some reason I really, really need to unpack this right now.

And it's so strange that I need to write all this down because, in my 20s, I had the most out of control crush on Layne Staley. We used to email, I'd send him little gifts and he would thank me, keep them in his room or hang them from the rearview mirror of his car. He was so nice to me. I worked for his landlady back in the 90s. We actually chatted and I crushed on him so hard. But when he died, I guess I expected it. I felt so sad for him, his whole life a tragedy, and I was gutted for his poor Mom and sisters and little nephew. But I didn't dwell on it like I am with this. It's just weird, and it's making me feel really stupid and awkward.

When David Bowie died, I addressed it on Twitter with a kind of short version of how huge he was to teenage!me. Same goes with Alan Rickman. I don't even know where to start with the whole thing.

But I guess I can start around 1989, which is when I met my friends Rachel and Jolyn. I went to high school with Rachel from 11th grade on. We met in Chemistry class, trying to cheat off each other's papers. Rachel was married at the time. She'd gotten married at 16, because she wanted to. And she introduced me to Jolyn. I introduced her to my other best friend Jeremy, and my cousin Celia. Soon, the five of us were always together, and nearly all of our time revolved around David Bowie. If we weren't listening to him, we were talking about him.

I never went anywhere without a cassette player and walkman, so, during all of our family trips, everyone had to listen to David Bowie. In the summer of 90, right before I started college, we used to get together a few times a week and go swimming. We'd swim all day and into the night, listening to Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs, mostly. But all of us, we had all of his music. All of it. The obscure, non-released stuff, and let me tell you, that was really hard to find back then before there was an internet. We had to drive to record stores, and some of them were like, an hour away.

We even had a recording of Baal ffs, do you know how hard it was to find that back then?

There was a period of about three months when his cover of “Wild Is The Wind” was my favorite song to the point where I would get to the end of it, rewind, and play it from the beginning. Over. And over. And again. For hours, while I was cleaning, or writing, or whatever the hell I did back then before the internet. That song, the way he sang it I guess, was my idea of perfect romance. I loved them all, but there was something about that one song. I had a boyfriend at the time, actually, my first real boyfriend, you could say. I never felt “Wild Is The Wind” about him, though he was a really good person. So good-looking I'm still not sure how I landed him, very kind, but we totally weren't creatures of the wind, LOL. We're still friends, though.

Oh, jeez, and I was also obsessed with Cygnet Committee. Late at night, after everyone was in bed (Celia lived with us back then,) I'd drag out the video camera and set it up on the tripod. This was 1990, okay, video cameras were HUGE back then, and it was a big deal to load up that tape and all. But I'd set the camera on a tripod, I'd play Cygnet Committee, and I would act the whole thing out on video. Just, like, flailing, dancing, acting out every nuance with the kind of drama you can only manage when you're 17.

But, the biggest thing: Rachel, Jolyn and I were writing a book about David Bowie.

Okay, so, we were kids, here. I was 16-18 when this was all going on, Rachel 17-19, Jolyn 19-21 during these years. And we were basically writing a real person fanfic. Thank god there was no internet back then. I mean, honestly, I am so thankful every day that there was no internet when I was a teenager. This David Bowie story was an epic, three-book series, written by hand and on a word-processor. Each week, Rachel, Jolyn and I would get together, having brought different parts of the story, and tie them together.

The fic (for that's what it was,) was a David Bowie/You fic, and “You” was a Mary Sue. There were also two other named women, and all of them had the best aspects of ourselves, plus all the SUPER POWERS that come with being a group of Mary Sues.

The plot was that David Bowie was a vampire, about two hundred years old, and we were the three teenage upstarts in the vampire world. Of course, David Bowie could not help being completely impressed with us, and we all lived with him in his Vampire mansion in England.

There were other famous vampires too, of course. Basically anyone we were really into. For instance, the head vampire, the king of the entire vampire world, was David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. And like, of course they were going to have to “get old” and “die” one day, so that they could go back to living in obscurity for a few hundred years, before resurfacing as an artist in a different medium, and getting famous all over again. (Vampires could use a Glamour to appear old.) Oh yes, and David Gilmour was 2000 years old, and was David Bowie's secret father. And David Bowie's secret Brother was Phil Lewis of LA Guns. (Celia really liked him, so he made it into the fic, too.) (Imagine how we all dropped dead when LA Guns made an album called “Hollywood Vampires” lololol.)

In 1991, “Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves” came out. And holy shit, we all went insane for Alan Rickman. I mean, for Christian Slater, obviously, but hugely for Alan Rickman. The five of us went to see that movie in the theater nine times. That was more than we'd gone to see Bill And Ted (seven times.)

Naturally, Alan Rickman got written into the story. He was so charismatic, so much fun, and so hot, our allegiance even shifted a little. Our Mary Sues started spending more page-time with Vampire!Alan Rickman than with Vampire!Bowie. I think one of our Mary Sues even moved in with him.

And, naturally, we all hunted down every last one of his movies. Truly madly Deeply. Closet Land. Quigley Down Under. We would have watching parties, and then go and write some more.

By 1993 I was sort of more into T Rex, Syd Barrett, that kind of thing, and I was buying things on CD by then but could not afford to replace all of my Bowie stuff with CDs, so it remained (and still remains) on cassette, sadly. Over the years, I downloaded the odd Bowie song when I could find it. Just the faves, mostly, figuring, you know, if I ever really, really felt like listening to Please Mr Gravedigger, I'd break out that old cassette player. It's not like the music was going anywhere.

(Except it did. I sold or donated most of my cassettes before I left for Seattle in '94. Because by then it was Pearl Jam and NIN and Soundgarden and all of that.)

(And honestly? I'm writing about David Bowie because he died - if I'm being completely straight here, I've always actually loved David Gilmour pretty much more than god. My world is going to come crashing down when he dies; god I don't even want to write those words; I can't bear thinking of it. To this day he is my biggest rock-star crush, I think he's absolutely beautiful.)

So anyway. The five of us as teens, we were really serious about David Bowie and Alan Rickman, and by “serious” I mean “obsessed with,” and don't think for a moment that we didn't sometimes believe our own bullshit. Like...that maybe we were onto something. Maybe we would meet David Bowie and Alan Rickman. Maybe they would never get old and die.

Here's where I could talk about all the “years go by, Celie has four kids, Rachel lives in Washington, blah blah” all the things that have changed for all of us, or do the ole' Stephen King “We never again felt the way we did for those few years, like anything was possible” and such. I don't think that's true, at least for me, because I still think that great things are possible. Like, truly, our big dream for that book? Was to get it published. Which, looking back is so cringingly hilarious and awful, and thank god, thank GOD there was no internet for us to put it on. But we did want to publish that stupid book (which, oh, by the way, it was called Sandcastles, because it was a book about vampires so why not call it ~~Sandcastles~~ because isn't that so special?) and we knew nothing about how to get anything published. Query letter? Editors? Agents? WTF, it's 1990, we are in high school / off to college ffs. Besides, no one would ever have to edit our work of genius; it was obvs so perf as it stood.

But anyway, none of that, I guess. Right around this past Christmas, I had my iPod on shuffle and Cygnet Committee came on. I was cooking dinner for Meghan (23 year old cousin, lives with us while going to college,) and Callum. And I found myself telling Meghan about how I used to record myself acting that song out. Like, I thought it was so deep, and I was so deep, because I got it okay, and other people just couldn't understand all of his references, and man, if David Bowie ever saw my interpretive dance of that song, he would obviously hire me on the spot to be in all of his videos. And we just had such a huge laugh over it, over how dramatic you can feel about a song when you're seventeen.

(Although, let's not lie—and I said this to Meghan, too—I really never lost that overwhelming emotion I can feel over certain songs. I still get the music frisson, I still want to act that shit out. Although these days “act it out” means more like, use it as character inspiration, and like that.)

So then David Bowie died and Alan Rickman died, what, four days apart? And of course the bunch of us were on Facebook with each other just reeling over it. Like, why them, why both, why so close together? That kind of thing.

It was always weird to me to see Alan Rickman in the Harry Potter movies. I was happy, really, that the next generation was as enamored of him as we were. He deserved it; he was such a king.

So the day after Alan Rickman died, we were all still all over Facebook, posting our thoughts, movie clips, music videos, just like everyone else, you know. And then Celia posted “Wild Is The Wind.”

IDK, for some reason, that was kind of it for me. I had completely forgotten that song existed. And like, how could I forget the song that got me through being 17 and starting college? That one song that defined how I felt about things like love, and romance, and which I used to listen to on repeat to the point where the ending of the song sounded like the beginning of it, you know what I mean? Callum was napping when she posted it and I listened to it over and over again like when I was a kid, and I was just crying like an idiot.

Then, when I went to wake Callum from his nap I was still crying because it was so weird for me, suddenly, to have a kid. I mean, it's 2016, I have a child, I forgot that song existed, and David Bowie and Alan Rickman have both died. It was such a weird emotion, it was part, “That poor little 17 year old girl and her friends, nightswimming in the summer, biggest worry in the world is 'will it rain tomorrow' and 'is there enough cheese for pizza muffins?' How would she feel about this, she would be so crushed.”

And the other, really weird and kind of unexplainable part had to do with Callum. I can't figure out what it was or why that was making me cry so much. Something to do with that song in particular, how strongly I felt about it, I guess, and maybe wondering what sort of 17 year old he would be, and which of his childhood idols would die someday when he's an adult with a kid of his own (if he decides to, of course.) “You're Spring to me, all things to me.” He's so innocent.

And then also, David Bowie's daughter is around the age I was when I was so into him, and she just lost her Dad. I mean, I lost my Dad at 36, there's never a good time for it to happen, but 16? That's awful.

But that's not even really it. I can't actually explain it. I actually feel really stupid even posting this, like that overly dramatic 17 year old who takes everything way too seriously. But like I said, I had to unpack all this nonsense.

The weird thing was, David Bowie's death was easier for me than Alan Rickman's, maybe because he remained such a beloved part of modern culture, with Harry Potter and all of that. In some oddball way, his death seems way less real to me, more of a shock, and harder to understand.

(Then, let's not get into the spiral of panic that came after it. Them both being 69, and my Mom is going to be 70 in a few weeks and you get the whole “But they were so successful and had access to the best tests and the best care, and if it happened to them...” You know how anxiety starts to talk to you.)

So I needed to write about this, but I also kind of don't want to dwell on it? My other favorite Bowie song was Lady Grinning Soul: another one I forgot, played again after he died, felt sad for a bit, and then remembered that we thought at first he was saying “She'll lay the beef on you,” and cracked up laughing.

And then I remembered me and Celie sharing a hotel room in Florida, her trying to fall asleep, me listening to my walkman and singing out loud: “You're face... to face... with the man who sold the world” and her yelling “NO, YOUR FACE! Now shut up and go to sleep!” For years after, we'd greet each other with the call and reply “you're face” “to face...”

And how in Diamond Dogs, Rachel and I both thought he was saying “Come out of the garden, baby, you'll catch your dick in the phone,” and each time we had to talk on the phone, we'd warn each other of this potential danger.

But, okay, I wrote it all out and even though I feel like an idiot, I'm glad I put it into words.

Wild Is The Wind

Cygnet Committee

Lady Grinning Soul

I have some kind of sinus infection or something, but here's the thing: I've spent the last three days, while Callum is napping (and sometimes even when he's not,) googling, “sinus pressure brain tumor” and “ear pressure brain tumor” and “head pressure cancer” and the usual, “twitching ALS.” And then sitting there crying, thinking that I would have to make videos for Callum to watch as he grew up without me. That kind of thing.

All that free time, when I could have been doing anything else, like reading my writing-buddy's revised manuscript, which had actually been taking my mind off my own nonsense? Yeah.

Then last night I said, “boy, that's really stupid,” and instead I started to google local therapists that deal with anxiety. :P So maybe I have a few leads, some people I can scope out to talk to.

Even though I completely recognize how ridiculous I'm being, there's still that part of my brain that thinks that this will be that entry I look back on, wishing it had been something minor. Because you read those stories, you know? About the stuff that started out so innocuous, and ended up being the beginning of the end. Those stories are all over the internet, and they are by real people, ones who thought and hoped they were overreacting and being silly. It almost always starts out that way. I really try not to get sucked into reading them. But that doesn't help either, because those stories are reality.

When I was doing Kung Fu, I still had some anxiety, and health anxiety, too. I always have. My Mom does, too, though not as much as she used to (she got help.) Kung Fu gave me focus and made me feel relaxed. Also, I was really strong, and didn't have the aches and pains I sometimes get now. I wish I could still afford it. If I had any kind of money, I would find a way to get there. I'd bring Callum or something. I'd figure it out. I just don't have that money. And part of it was the friendships I made there, too, because we were all a little messed up, and we could laugh about it. But now, I only know one person who trains there anymore. Everyone else has left. I don't know if it would be the same training somewhere else, or even in a different style of martial arts. Kung Fu was my jam.

On the other hand, if I'm not worrying about myself, I'm worrying about Callum, or my Mom. I took Callum to the doctor two weeks ago, halfway sure she was going to tell me that he had neurofibroma, because he had these little tiny bumps from mosquito bites. Last year, Callum's doctor told me, “When you find yourself getting sucked into that panic over him, try to remind yourself that it's not HIM, it's you. These are your issues.” Which is really super advice. And I try to follow it, except that sometimes kids really do get sick.

And that's the thing I can't get past on my own. Most of the time I'm dandy. My default setting is still “happy.” I'm really SUPER AWESOMELY LUCKY that I don't have depression, because I know how tough that must be. I just can't seem to get out of that vortex of panic on my own anymore. And it kind of sucks, spending the whole day going “but what if? What if? Wouldn't that be the worst thing ever?” It's a waste of time, and I want that time back.

Oh, nuts, I just heard back from one of the therapists I contacted. She doesn't take insurance. Ugh! Well, that blows. If I had a few hundred bucks a month to spare, I'd find a kwoon (or a dojo or ANYTHING) and train again, jeez.

Onward!