Sometimes I think I’m in competition with myself for the weirdest blog post titles.

Eh. It’s a living.

Let’s start with the easy one first: Toothpaste. So I have chronically chapped lips. When I travel they crack TERRIBLY. I’ve had patches on my lips that drive me to distraction as they WON’T heal. Etc Etc. And so I feel it is the height of unfairness that now that no one is kissing me I finally fucking figure it out. Lo and behold… the issue was sodium lauryl sulfate in our toothpaste. And probably why it was worse when I travelled as I used a travel sized tube of a different brand… one that turns out to have some of the highest levels of sodium lauryl sulphate. (It’s whitening colgate, if you’re wondering) Here this whole time I thought it was dehydration!

Well chapped lips no more.

Got this new toothpaste that doesn’t have that chemical in it on Amazon, and the immediacy of solving the issue for me as well as the girls… it’s damn near stupid. Oh, and sodium lauryl sulphate also causes and exacerbates mouth ulcers. Cool cool cool cool cool.

So why is that in our toothpastes? It’s used to give that foaming action that makes us all look like we have rabies. Not sure that’s a quality tradeoff, you know? So now my lips aren’t cracking to the point of bleeding anymore and Colgate, Crest and all the others can shove it up their own ass for all the torture over the years, you know?

Anyway.

As for tile… so you know how I recently hired a contractor to step up the outdoor security lights and doorbell and repaint the doors (had them sealed too)? Well I just paid the deposit to the same contractor to gut our bathrooms.

No more paying to have the clawfoot tub re-enameled every 3 years. No more cleaning under said clawfoot tub. No more struggling with a bathroom vanity that literally every drawer is broken on. No more stupid double sink we never needed so that one of them was the permanent holding place for my makeup bag. No more shower leaking into the wall. No more insane glass shower door that hits a towel rack and gives me palpitations every single time it’s opened too wide. No more cracked floor tiles with unsealed grout. And no more “Only a tub in the guest bath and only a shower in the master bath!”

It was like that.

So now both will have tub and shower surrounds. I hate showers honestly. Something about supporting my own bodyweight while I bathe feels like an infliction upon the proletariat by the oligarchy, but I might as well get a shower put in both bathrooms if I’m doing it, you know?

I like the rounded edged, clean lined look of this one- very 1920s/30s looking. And yet it’s impossible to tell if the back is sloped on this one- I’ll have to verify that somehow first. And the ones in the local stores are lame, so I do really need to order one, sight unseen. I guess I can just double check the return policy… And these apron front tubs, while not the style exactly of our 1910 farmhouse, are “good enough for girls in this town” as my friend is want to say.

Here is the floor tile I’m getting:

let it be known I liked Moroccan tile long before it was in fashion… and besides- I don’t think this pattern was what was splashed all over Better Homes and Gardens there for a while. Plus, I like stars. And also thinks that all just looks awesome.

It’ll be about 12K total, which is insanely reasonable honestly. And then boom- another thing down that never got done in the before time. It will be nice to have clean, and functional bathrooms. And not be subjected to the previous owners’ design choices and mistakes. Only my own design choices and mistakes from now on! (Side note: Why is that statement so fucking sad? Is it the way I’m saying it in my own head or is it the thing I’m saying… I am legitimately stumped here and it happens ALL the time.)

Anyway. The vanity is green. Because why the hell not. It looks like this:

I may use this new alibrije for the color palette. I’m not sure.

I totally won’t. Can you imagine how hideous that bathroom would be? Like dear lord. This will be going in there though, and the green DOES match the vanity. I’d regale you with what I know on the artist and how many of my books he’s in but uh-oh, I don’t feel like it currently and that’s never a good sign. It might be time for some water, an orange, and some deep breaths. BRB.

I’m back. It didn’t help. I’ll just keep plowing on here. Some things are just sad. I often am one of them.

I also put up our ofrenda this week and we went to the Dia de los Muertos festival here in town.

I brought tape and put 2 pictures of Lucas on the communal ofrenda set up at the square. (Middle row, left, above the yellow garland) I sent this picture with a closer shot of his pictures to my mother-in-law (I’m trying to be nice) and she asked me if that was mine at my house. Which… Jesus FUCKING Christ, what? Just… WHAT? I replied: “obviously not as Lucas wouldn’t be off center, without a frame, and that far down on mine”. Oh and also mine isn’t outside, 50′ long, or filled with strangers. My annoyance was so profound, but so was her level of being an idiot.

Here is mine. And yes- it SUPER sucked to set up, but I did it. I still have to finish the papel picado on the ceiling but I have two rows up. Also- you see how tiny that arch is this year?

I guess we’ll never know who got into the bin and shredded damn near all my meticulously collected paper flowers, now will we Asher? It’ll remain a complete and utter mystery. So there were very, very few flowers to make an arch out of this year. Maybe I’ll get more today. Anything is possible, I guess. (Note from the future here: I did make it to Market Square, and bought an ass ton of new flowers. Asher has already destroyed one.) It isn’t our best this year but I’m thinking that fact is pretty understandable.

Speaking of Asher and his nonsense: Lacey has had it up to here with him.

And I know he looks all innocent up there, but her “troll under a bridge” impression was not unprovoked. She beat the ever loving hell out of him right after this picture- it was well deserved.

Y’all ready to get real fucking weird? Let’s get weird. Life is short.

Things you probably didn’t know about me: I think astrology is horseshit but kinda feel that tarot could work, in the right hands. Maybe. Something about pulling meaning from randomness… I don’t know.

First tarot reading I ever got was stumbling out of a bar on 6th street in Austin with Lucas one night in my twenties and saw a guy giving tarot readings on a cardboard box for $20. I sat down, got a reading and was nodding along to being told that a particular card showed I was fiscally responsible and good with money when Lucas said from behind me: “Obviously not!” We both started laughing, the tarot reader glared, and I waved off the rest of the reading and we went along our merry way. Not everyone can do tarot, and distrust guidance coming from a cardboard box, on principle.

And so, in these last few months of casting about for damn near anything- I’ve had a couple of tarot readings again- one quite recently. That brings the grand total in a lifetime to 4, so it’s not a regular thing, just so you understand.

But first, before I discuss the horseshit I kinda believe and not the horseshit I don’t… im not so sure about fucking astrology, y’all. Stuff like Mars is in Sagittarius gets my back up. The light from those stars in the constellation Sagittarius took years to get here. So when the planet Mars moves in front of the light from those stars… the stars themselves are nowhere near that position. And also the stars are different light years in depth from us- so to use examples of actual stars in Sagittarius: Ross 154 is only 9.69 lightyears from earth and (ugh this name) MOA-2009-BLG-387L is over 20,000 light years away. Which means those stars have literally never been in the pattern we see. Their light is all from varied times in the past. And when Mars moves through said pattern… those stars aren’t actually there. I just thouroughly can’t with damn near most of it. (what a total Leo thing to say, amiright?)

And to then bring this critical eye to tarot: How much are you telling a reader even when you think you’re not giving anything away? Are they just good bullshit artists? What do they pick up from you, the question you ask, and any descriptive sentences you provide, if any? I had a journalism class where we went around and said the sentence “I am holding a gallon of strawberry ice cream,” as neutrally as we possibly could, and the class had an over 90% success rate in guessing if we had written down on the paper in front of us as to if we liked strawberry ice cream, or didn’t. So like- maybe tarot readers can pick up on all that subconscious inflection we’re putting out. Maybe.

But anyway, a recent reading when a friend and I went to a local shop that had a tarot reader there, it did kinda blow me away. I asked: “my mom just passed away, and I am wondering what the path forward looks like.” I got this in response.

The first card showed I had had to be organized and protective around mom. That I had worked for a long time to protect myself and others from her. (spot fucking on and not a universally shared experience with people’s moms, methinks)

The second card was indicative of strength, but I was told that while the lion is strong enough to hunt and protect and lead- what it does the majority of the time is rest. To picture lions resting on the savannah: they are not always on alert. Their strength comes from their ability to rise to an occasion when needed and to relax otherwise. I was told I needed to be strong like this- and that rest was what was most called for in my present. (okay… also something to really think on. But also maybe I just looked real fucking exhausted, you know?)

The third card was the ace of swords (I remember that one). It indicates clarity of thought and that the realization is that my protection days (from this) are over. It’s time to put down the sword. I don’t need to be on constant alert and so I need to learn to be able to lower the walls I had had to build in the past. That old patterns no longer serve me in this new and different situation I now find myself in.

And it really was an epiphany. One maybe I was capable of getting to on my own eventually, even. And yet I appreciated the nudge to that realization.

I don’t feel a need to toss $30 at tarot regularly, but this one was helpful and had lots of information I legitimately don’t know how she would have picked up on.

And what all of this means is that yes, I’m trying a bunch of spiritual stuff on for size these days. But I swallow none of it whole. And I do all of this with the critical eye I’ve always had on such things pretty firmly still in place… and yet… I have gotten messages that I know are from Lucas. I keep going back to that. I got tattoos to remind me; that was real. That happened. The mind (or at least mine does) wants to push that aside but I want to always remember… it isn’t all bunk, you. You can trust that bit.

My question though- that I WON’T put before a tarot reader (that’d be hilarious) is: how do I stay open to different and more spiritual things, while still bringing a critical and logical eye to it- as much as I can. I’m working on trying to understand that bit.

It’s a weird thing.

I did warn you.