Family Soup

Today would have been the mommie's 96th birthday. Tomorrow was her husband's birthday. I don't remember how old he was. They had a joke about her being a day older than him. In fact, he was a year older than she was. As if any of that mattered. My psychological soup is stirred up. 

I've been remembering a time when I danced with my dad. My bio dad. I was so uncomfortable in his arms. He wasn't the molester in my life. He was absence. I may as well have been dancing with a total stranger. I might have been more comfortable in the arms of a stranger. I've aways known his absence and K's invasion created a physical tension that may never go away. Although it doesn't bother me as much. 

I get tired of the same old soup. But I have been getting deeper insights lately. Which is as calming as I imagined it would be. 

I no longer need to find a card with a frog on it for her and a card with no emotion for him. Maybe I never did. 

Typing

It feels really good to type with both hands. I've been pecking at my phone for too long. I couldn't wait to open the laptop this morning. Right now I have the TV on and a TikTok playing on my phone. Probably need to settle down. I used to think about what I was going to post. Now I think about my TikTok of the day. 

Doing a TikTok is similar to writing in the sense that you have an amount of time and if what you're saying doesn't fit you need to edit. I redo posts multiple times. But writing is more sentient for me.

I do feel like it will take awhile before doing my blog has any rythm or depth. Writing always happens in my head before I get to a screen. Even in email. The blog will become part of my inner chatter. 

For today I was just happy to be doing it. I opened the laptop and realized I didn't know what to write. HA! 

Chag Sameach.

Happy Good Friday,

Ramadan Mubarak. 

I'm back.

 A year ago, I wrote a post about my knees not being comfortable at my desk. I do most things on my phone, or iPad. Not conducive for writing. So....I bought a laptop! I can sit in a more comfortable chair and tap away. We'll see if it makes the difference I think it will. Since I fell last year my life has lost form. I can't get to the pool. I do very limited yoga. I sleep too much but not well. For awhile my doctor thought it was just left over concussion issues and things would clear up but I'm starting to think I need to push. And I feel like I can make writing be a way to focus. We'll see.

TicTok has become the thing that gives me a daily outlet I really enjoy it there. I've been on it for a year. 

Writing is a muscle and all my muscles are weak. But I'm going to keep trying. 

Eight Years In

In a world full of uncertainty, you can count on me posting on June 16th. This is the day I moved into my nest. I've always been restless and sometimes I feel that way here. But more and more I feel settled. For the first time in my life. The first pictures are pictures from the first day. Before the movers and after. The next two are after some settling in.  I need to do one for how it looks now. 

The library shelves are filling up but there is still room behind the chairs. My inner dialogue when I'm thinking about what books to put behind a chair is probably amusing. And tortured. 

I'll get a picture of how it looks now. 

I will. 

                                              

                      

Knees

 One of the reasons I don't write is knee pain. Yeah. Weird huh? I'm only comfortable in my recliner with a pillow under my knees. If I sit in my desk chair too long my knees start to ache and then lock up. It's a drag. 

I had big fun with the poem fragment project in April and wanted to write about it but ... the knees said no. In terms of identity markers Atwood and Vuong are very different.  Race, gender, sexual identity, nationality, on and on. Yet, somehow, the fragments seem to respond to each other. 

I'm doing some physical therapy soon so maybe it'll help. 

Sigh. 

National Poetry Month

It's gonna be April in a minute. I'm going to do my fragment posting on Twitter. I had a plan, which involved purchasing books. Heh. And then I noticed that I had two newish poetry books that I hadn't spent much time with and decide to use them. 

I bought Night Sky With Exit Wounds after I read On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. All his lines are beautiful. I also bought Margret Atwood's newest poetry-Dearly. I bought it because it's ... her. I think they might be interesting people to go back and forth with. 

I'll post on Twitter and copy to Facebook. 

This is just me spending time with poetry. 

Fat Body

I started changing how I thought about being fat in my late teens. So fifty years ago. Lots of analysis. Many epiphanies. Every year I feel like I settle deeper into an authentic sense of who I am, which includes being fat. I am fat. I'm a lot of things. Fat is one of them. 

I'm surrounded by women who talk about weight loss and preference for thinness. Some of them are my age. There are days when I just feel tired. In the pool. In the dressing room. So much chatter about weight. I over heard talk about plastic surgery for arm waddle. I mean. Sigh. 

Maybe because of my age or maybe because I buried the mommie and got on some kind of mailing list, I get a lot of information abut burial planning. I think about how I want to be buried. I'd like to do it with some ethic. Cremation is hard on the environment. You can be buried in a biodegradable fabric, which means you're just compost. There are forests in the east where you can bury your ashes and there will be a bronze plague with your name om a tree. Sounds peaceful. 

The other day I got information from a group who has levels of service. They will handle everything. Or you can handle the service. The prices go down with the amount of stuff you do. The cheapest level is donating your body to medical science and then the ashes are sent to you family afterwards. In fact it is free. I had a really odd reaction to it. 

I have a scar on my right ankle from having been under the wheel of a truck. Long story. It's a pretty big scar. The surgeon cut a sort of flap to cover a hole on the side of ankle. Then took two pieces of skin from thigh to cover the opening created by the flap. It was a six hour surgery. I was on something that cut off feeling where they were working. Maybe a spinal block? And I was put under. I came up from time to time. The anesthesiologist would ask if I was OK and then put me back under. I think that might have been because of the length of the surgery. 

At one point, when I surfaced, there was a discussion happening about what a shame it was that I was so fat. I was young and had a pretty face. The anesthesiologist noticed that I was awake, gave me a look of apology and knocked me out again.  

That memory came back when I imagined medical school students cutting up my body and making fat jokes. It shook me up. 

Why? 

I'll be dead. I probably wont be there. I like the idea of medical science having a way to learn about bodies. But so far I can't get over that image. 

Most shocking of all was that I felt this way. It's like all the years of inner work wasn't enough to sustain me. I already deal with how little impact I've had in in the world in terms of how fat bodies are seen. Especially these days. 

I probably have some time to work through all of this.