This and that, and a ton of pics and visuals as I went through my entire camera roll and found interesting things to share here as well as two pictures of my mother in law I hadn’t deleted yet.

Strange memories like the time Lucas and I were camping and a car rolled up to the next campsite over and a guy with a British accent gets out, says hello to us… then just lays down on the ground, folds his hands on his chest, and goes to sleep. No equipment. No blanket. It was cold. We were up making coffee when he woke up, stood up, got back in his car, and drove away.

Being the sole keeper of all the memories you alone shared with your person is such a huge weight sometimes I feel like it grinds me to powder.

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In cat mentions, these two purr loudly as they fall asleep, so it’s kinda like a comforting sound bath, in stereo, to drift off to. They have very well understood the assignment they were tasked with.

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You can see in the pic with Alabama (le black and white one) that my eyelid eczema is down to just one red dot now. It’s not medication that helps but instead the fact that I’m not crying as much anymore.

My own weird body is allergic to its own damn tears. I used to think that was insane, but anything can be accepted. The brain both creates nightmares and then is afraid of them, after all. So why not be allergic to my own tears… there is fucking poetry hidden in that, somehow.

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Let’s see how I did with my 2024 resolutions- I found a list, screenshot them, and back in January decided to pursue them. Let’s see how those worked out.

Does my husband’s spirit waking me up at 4:37am for two solid weeks in May count? I certainly did use the time for desperate introspection and memorial service planning- as well in the giving and receiving of messages to and from the spirit realm… so I’m gonna say that’s a checkmark.

I didn’t in the before time, but I write to Lucas every night before bed. I have almost an entire journal full. It is not hard. He of course has become my pen pal.

The weird thing is that I got this Italian made, STUNNINGLY soft, leather bound journal on the clearance rack at TJ Maxx years ago- I’m talking… 11 years maybe? And I never wrote in it. Never. It was “too special.” It’s weird I bought a death journal that long ago and just had it waiting around.

I also would KILL for another journal made by this company… and they’re nowhere to be found online. I bought another Italian leather journal and it makes me want to chunk it through a window it’s such a poor comparison. It’s fine, but I use that one for recording dreams in the mornings. (I don’t often remember dreams though, so it’s filling up much slower)

In other writings I have about 26 pages of grief thoughts distilled out on a word doc with a title of “A Year of Magical Thinking Fuck You Joan Didion”… because the title of her book would be a better title of the one I’m working on than it was on hers, I say with not even a hint of humility.

I also write here on the blog, though that’s usually Sunday mornings.

I do think writing has been the thing- like capital letters THE THING- that has saved me this past 7 months.

I do lots of writing.

It is about the man and life I am grateful to have had and the things I can still be grateful for now. It has helped me release negative thoughts. I seldom have plans for the next day though. This one gets a checkmark too.

I learned many things, but they were most often not online. Half checkmark.

I guess 4 sucked.

So does the current silence in my previously loud house. Mac “gone”, chickens gone, Lucas gone, Murphy gone, my oldest “gone.” Sometimes that silence I am surrounded by is because of meditation, and in that silence I find peace. The rest of it hasn’t always been good for me.

Thanks Universe.

“Well you asked for this soo…”

I hate blackout curtains. I have never been an after dinner snacker. My bed is cold all the time now. My screens are burned into my retinas. The good news is I am IN bed a whole hell of a lot. This one does not get a check and may god have mercy on its/my soul.

In the early first few months of grief I used to get the witching hour from 7-9 each night. This consisted of this crushing anxiety and sense of “I have lived all the life I can make it through today and there are still 4 hours left I have to be awake for.” To combat this I took to taking the dogs for a walk in the evening and it did help. Saw an owl a couple of times. And it seemed to reset the nervous system. So they were good aside from that one night I was struggling so hard and my down the street neighbor walked out on his front porch, saw me, and called out “I just wanted to say I always liked Lucas.” To which my reply was to immediately burst into tears and not be able to get a word out. He bolted back in his house and then stopped me a few days later and said he was sorry he made me cry.

These nightly walks helped immensely (previous story notwithstanding) and so of course I outsourced them in the fall because life was just not for a couple of months there. Reminder to myself that when simplifying your life to not simplify out or stop doing the things that are good for you. Half checkmark. I have since started the nighttime walks again.

I am studying grief like I’m gonna take the sorrow MCAT. Ten pages would be really ramping that shit back. This year I have read more books than I have in any of the previous… man I was gonna say years, but it may be decades.

So, on the whole… the most successful resolution year yet. Confetti feels weird though, eh?

Don’t ask the universe for patience or it’ll send you things to teach you patience.

“I just want to sit down more this year!” Boom. paralyzed.

Maybe it’s like that.

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Y’all remember this lamp I mentioned a few posts ago:

Yeah. Sold that bad boy.

And now I think I’m done reselling. Let me go out on a high note. I think the rest of this dwindled stock is getting sold for pennies at a garage sale or given away. I want my space back and reselling was just such a snapshot from a different time and place and person.

I was really good at it, though.

But it doesn’t mean I won’t leave it behind.

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A favorite thing.

I transferred everything everything when the old laptop died- so apple ID, name, contents, formatting, EVERYTHING transferred, so this one also thinks it belongs to my husband- I haven’t had the heart to tell it.

And everything else transferred over exactly: name, apple ID, passwords, cookies, background, screensaver, formatting… everything except the icon.

The icon on my husband’s old laptop was randomly selected and it was an eagle. He never changed it.

And yet now it is a red rose.

I don’t know how or why it happened.

In Victorian Flower language the red rose is a symbol of eternal, romantic love.

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One of a handful of favorite good lessons from this year: I can assure you that this is the only way to properly respond to getting sung Happy Birthday by a crowd. No more awkwardness and not knowing what to do with our hands… we should be more like this about it about it.

File it away.

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This is my favorite fish I’ve ever caught. This wasn’t from this year. But it’ll always be my favorite fish- even over the 6′ Bull shark I caught and landed all by myself in the Florida Keys. The past held awesome fish, never to be topped. I get the old guy nostalgia now and wonder if it is in fact about the fish, themselves.

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This is my favorite shampoo these days, alternated with regular old Head and Shoulders. (Never had dandruff but holy hell is my hair soft after that stuff.)

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This is my favorite sculpture.

Title: For Whom… by Kris Martin. It swings on the hour and has no clapper. A silent bell, swinging, and then stopping. It captivates me. Spoonbridge and Cherry can suck it in comparison. Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

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One of my favorite things found while reselling. Undated, but in a group of photos from the early 30s so probably from then. I love it. Get it, girl.

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This is my favorite breakdown/explanation of chakras and the only way that makes me feel like I may understand the concept even a little bit.

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This is my favorite rose, Ebb Tide.

My 2025 resolution is to see it again- that’s it. That is all I am resolving.

Let’s see what fucking dark ass spin the Universe can put on that.

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The new year holds new things.

May some of them be good.