ANNOUNCEMENT

Leif got a full scholarship for all 4 years at University of Glasgow, including room and board! HOLY SHIT THIS IS HUGE. They only award this scholarship to one international student per year! He’s worked so hard and has only ever wanted to go to this school, and it’s happening for him. I’m so happy for him, and so proud!

Amazing.

Cooked or chopped?

Dearest Gentle Reader,

It has come to this author’s attention that no less than three members of the fire brigade were discovered to have taken up residence in the library yesterday afternoon. One of these gentlemen startled the librarian mid-luncheon with a knock upon her study door to beg admittance to the WIFI, leaning against the doorframe in such a way as to provide full vantage of his Russet physique. Once informed that no cypher was required, the gentleman returned to his companions in glad spirits and the three of them proceeded to perform distance training with a full complement of their Team at high volume for upwards of two hours, followed by an enthusiastic summarization of their learnings through a multi-part pantomime of flatulence in all its varied forms. Indeed, their winds were so convincing that they blew shut the librarian’s door, and she required ten minutes’ repose upon the carpet to consider her romantic aspirations.

There is but one day left before the brigadiers return to their duties—however, a special event next weekend affords opportunity for contacts to be reestablished, should the invitation be extended. Will this season end in parboil, or may it yet be twice-baked? Boldness is all. Seize the handle on the oven of love and throw yourselves in, dear hopefuls!

Back on my bullshit

This train of thought is heading toward a gap in the tracks, but I’m going along with it for now.

Here is the thing: I am annoyed about the “post breakup glow-up” thing that is not happening. Instead I gained 15 lbs, then lost 2 lbs and hit a plateau, because meeeeeh. I need to give more than half a shit if I want to get anywhere, but I don’t have any motivation. I have depression and a toaster oven.

Well, you know what motivation works for getting buff, besides horrible crushing stress? A horrible crushing crush. It worked in my 20s anyway, but anxiety has been doing all the heavy lifting since then. I feel like maybe it would be fun to have a crush again. The question: can my brain still do that? I don’t know. I definitely don’t want to date. I don’t even really want to talk to anyone. But that is not the trick here - the trick is tricking myself into catching feelings just enough to get stupid and make protein shakes and fit into cute pants again. (My own.) People can get a crush on anything - a person, a fictional character, binging noises on your phone. How hard can it be?

OKAY THEN. As soon as I clapped my hands and fluffed my hair, feeling ready to go out into the world and make a fool of myself in the name of self care/revenge, Zenny decided to start Teenage Bed Wars*, and it shot a hole in my confidence. My hair deflated. OKAY, TAKE TWO. After work I bought a Guinness and watched The Fall Guy (my emotional support movie). Now I have a soundtrack and a leather jacket, let’s go.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, exactly. I don’t know anyone, and I don’t go anywhere, and I’m not signing up for any apps. On cue, campus filled up with firemen. Just dozens and dozens of firemen, all corralled in the student lounge between training sessions. I don’t have a special thing for firemen, but I know a romance trope when I see one, so I went skidding in there to get some packets of creamer and have a quick look at the situation. Well, well, well. The weather has warmed up, the coats have come off, and… all these firemen still look like potatoes. That’s ok. Everyone likes potatoes, right? I just have to figure out how to tell them apart and find one that tells jokes or has a cool tattoo or something. 

While I was roaming around on lunch break, one of the janitors caught me staring into the staff fridge at my boiled eggs and yogurts. 

“What’re y’at?” he said.

“I was hoping some other kind of food would appear if I looked long enough.”

“You like classic rock?”

This guy is about 70, watching a 1960s guns-and-cars kind of show on the staff tv. “Yeah, I do, I like Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath -”

“Peter Frampton, John Fogerty, David Gates, Willie Nelson,” and he went on, just naming a list of musicians, mostly ones I absolutely would not classify as rock. Then he folded his arms and said, “The Guess Who is Canadian, you know,” with a bit of challenge in his voice. Oh no, this was one of those dudes-testing-a-chick kind of conversations. 

“Yeah, So Long, Bannatyne was a good album,” I said. 

MISTAKE. He started naming bands faster. “Al Stewart, John Prine, Rush-”

I started naming bands back. My mother was one of those 70’s teens who spent all her money on subwoofers and vinyl, and I was an unsupervised only child in the 80’s, COME AT ME, BRO. “Deep Purple, Moody Blues, Alice Cooper -”

“Alice Cooper! His big hit was Only Women Bleed!”

“It was not, it was School’s Out, and that wasn’t even the best song on the album!”

Goddamn it. I was supposed to be trying to find an imaginary boyfriend, not fighting with a septuagenarian who likes Ted Nugent. I grabbed a boiled egg and slammed it on the counter to crack it, “Gotta go, I have an egg!” And I ran for it.

Now he’s been haunting the library, hoping for a re-match.

This is going to take some work. At least if I’m avoiding the staff room, I can’t eat all my snacks.

I hear firemen in the lounge, engage your core.

* I asked her to make her bed, she wouldn’t. I patiently made her bed for her, she threw it apart. I impatiently made it again, she tossed it. I made it a THIRD TIME, not-at-all-patiently explaining my lowest-bar expectations for teenage housekeeping, she snuck in 1 minute later and trashed it. I threw all her blankets and pillows on the floor and made a noise like a t-rex. We went to work/school. I cracked a beer when I got home at 4:30pm and dropped fresh sheets on her bedroom floor like I didn’t give a shit, she looked alarmed and thought she broke my brain. She made her bed. 

Leif graduates

I am a puffy mouse-eyed wreck. Look at this kid.

We stayed up until 2am to watch the ceremony from the phone, cheered for him, and sent him congratulations money. The graduating class sang Legacy and danced hula at the beat change. When they got to “we had a wonderful time, thanks for the memories” I cried my damn eyes out.

I’m so proud of him, and of Eva. She’s class president, valedictorian, and starting pre-med as a biochemistry major at Penn State. Her family buried her in leis. The two of them spent the evening on the beach outside her house, playing a loud slapping game of cards and chasing crabs with their closest friends while my family partied with her family (my mother reported on this and enjoyed the food). Their friend group is making life plans, getting excited about all the places they’ll visit together on school breaks. I love that for them.

I’m a mess. High school graduation is a big deal in Hawaii. I wanted to be there for Leif. I am having BIG FEELINGS about it. Along with that, I am PISSED AT MIKE. But you know what? We have firemen at the college all week for some kind of training course, so I am going to go get a cold Tim Hortons coffee and look at them. With my eyeballs. And then hide in my office. Because I’m not actually interested in firemen. 

Anyway. It was Leif’s day, I love him a lot, we’ll be back together for his birthday, and I’ll be making up for lost time in baked goods. 

Congratulations to the class of 2026!

Dept of Misc

Booked my tickets back to Hawaii for the summer. Goddamn it. 

Tim was very excited to hire me as a sub while he goes on vacation, so I’ll be spending a few weeks working my old job. GODDAMN IT.  (I’ll be glad to see my favorite library people again, though.)

It rained, and the tool shed flooded. I don’t have a ladder or wood or shingles to fix the roof, so I set up buckets and tubs and containers to catch the leaks. One of them was a bit flimsy, and I had it shoved up under the beams, so when I pulled it down it collapsed under the weight of the water and dumped it all in my face. And nobody was there to see it. 

This weekend was a beautiful warm holiday weekend, and town is shut down until Tuesday!

I broke my tooth on Saturday. 

Planted a rose bush. 

Painted a daffodil. 

Fixed the laundry line and hung clothes out to dry. 

Got mad at my knitting because I ran out of the color I needed and forgot to save the label so I could buy more.

Saw Project Hail Mary, through… means. Very fun, Zenny’s re-reading the book again.

Currently listening to the new murderbot book.

This week: adventures in dentistry. Is there a dentist who can fabricate caps anywhere on the peninsula? We will find out. At least it won’t cost $600 a cap like it did in Hawaii. Unless I have to drive to St. John’s to get it - gas is rising so fast, the Triangle station finally just gave up and unplugged the pricing sign.

Mother’s Day 2026

I read somewhere about an indigenous method of healing trauma by telling it to rocks and releasing them into water or burying them, and how the practice was banned by missionaries for being superstition (the same people who believed garlic warded off vampires and sneezes were the devil trying to steal your soul), but neuropsychology now confirms that the method works as a real way to rewire memory storage and help quiet the brain.

Well, why not? Humans have had funeral rites for eons for the same reasons. So on my walk that day, I picked up a handful of pebbles and put them in my coat pocket, and when an unwelcome memory bothered me, I pulled one out, told it the story, and tossed it into the stream as I went over the little bridge. Fuck you, I said to the memory as it plunked into the water. And it worked. The thoughts stopped playing on repeat. I did it a few more times, throwing bad memories into the streams, and they went into long-term storage where they belong. Huh.

Hey, if it works on bad memories, maybe it works on good memories, too. I picked up a slightly larger rock and put it in my other pocket. I saw a robin, and an otter, and a flock of cormorants, and I told the rock. Throughout the week, I fed it birdsong, the smell of rain, the trees in the wind - anything good I would want to remember. Maybe it can hold them for me, and tell them back to me some day, like Frederick.

And that is why I was walking around the pond on Monday, crying to a rock about Mother’s Day. 

Instead of a nice sunny hike, or a day shopping for spring clothes and eating takeout, what I got was both barrels of a bed-rotting teenager faced with a cheerful person who wanted to do something fun before 2pm. Who ordered this kid? I have the bad feeling I was just as much of a shit when I was a teenager, and that I am finally getting the comeuppance my mother wished on me. I hope that means the girl will be making stupid art and talking to rocks in a couple decades. 

I did laundry while giving her time to come around (saintly mother), and got yelled at for washing her jacket without checking the pockets for the folded-up permission slip she was supposed to have already turned in. Then I had a nice solo drive to the dump because I was in self-imposed time-out for telling her to do her own fucking laundry then (saintly mother), followed by an impulsive stop at Walmart to buy a cheap tv so I could reclaim my computer monitor. While I was at the store, I picked up some Allegra and Pepsid so I could recklessly experiment with the latest internet pseudoscience miracle perimenopause mood cure, because sure, why not? It’s just antihistamine and antacid, it’s not addictive or contraindicated, probably. Well, it will surprise exactly nobody to learn that this magic potion is complete bullshit. You know why it “clears brain fog”? Because it is a STIMULANT. You can drink a Diet Pepsi and get the same results. Or rub yourself on a smoker’s walls. It did help with my stuffy nose, though, so I cut the allergy pills into thirds to take in smaller doses and still be able to sleep at night. 

The morning was a bust, but in the afternoon I talked to my mother and my boys, and laughed because Gavin tried to send cookies from a place that promised ‘next day delivery to Newfoundland!’ and apparently sent them into the void. They’ll probably show up in a few weeks, after we’ve all forgotten about them, and it will be a fun surprise to see what condition they’re in. While we were talking, my mother texted Mike and ratted on Zenny for being an asshole, and he called her to give her a discreet earful. She hid in the bathroom for half an hour, but came out looking sheepish to help with dinner, and finally muttered Happy Mother’s Day into my chest when she hugged me at bedtime. 

So it went ok in the end, I thought. But when my coworker asked how Mother’s Day went I realized I was about to start crying, so I made a joke, asked how hers was, and then booked it into my office. She came in, put her phone number on my desk, and said she’s always available if I need to talk. My stupid transparent face.

It was my first Mother’s Day without my family. And it was the weekend of Gavin’s university graduation, which I watched on livestream because I couldn’t be there for him. Leif’s high school graduation is next week, and I can’t be there for him, either. And I swore in front of my kid, who I evidently haven’t taught properly how to treat days like Mother’s Day (or Father’s Day, or birthdays?) without another person doing it for her. I felt like a failure as a mom.

But I can do something about it. We are going to work on special event protocol, I’m going to book my tickets back for the summer, and I can help Gavin move up here and get enrolled in the welding or electrical engineering program at my college if he can’t get a job in the next couple months. It’s going to be okay. I have grief and anger in me, but I’m trying to pull it out and settle into this new kind of life. It’s going to take a lot of rocks, though.

How to hide your own dead body

It became clear recently that I need to go to Hawaii this summer to see my son, help my mother move, get my cat, and bring Zenny back from visitation. The nightmares started again. 

To keep away from those thoughts, I put on audiobooks in the evenings and cut stencils out of wax paper with a utility knife, using them to paint designs on the walls of the shed. It looks like amateur crafts, because it is, but I like it anyway. Once I get some baseboards nailed down and a rug on the floor, the room might finally feel ready to use. It still smells like tobacco and night jitters, even after all the painting and cleaning. Smells are sticky. I’m going to carry the toaster oven over on the weekends and stick brownies and scones to the walls, instead. I’ll plug in the slow cooker and paint the ceiling with green curry and shoyu chicken. The ghost of Himself is going to have to get used to it, and stop smoking in my damn studio.

I painted the window while I was at it. I’ll scrape the sloppy bits off the glass with a razor later on.

Fog settled in on Saturday, and the birds went quiet. In the evening I walked down to the water and followed the shoreline, climbing over rocks and under fallen trees, thinking I probably should have told Zenny where I was going before wandering off into the mist like a character in a video game. There was no sound at all, even the water wasn’t talking. I passed two seagulls, and they stared at me judgementally until I was out of view, just crunching along loudly in big boots like the opaque silence wasn’t filled with hidden teeth. They were gone when I came back, my pockets filled with rocks and shells and shiny plastic, lugging an entire wooden door that someone had thrown off the cliff. It’s good wood. 

The fog cleared on Sunday, and the birds were hungry again. One of the crows has figured out that I’m not dangerous, and that I’ll come outside with nuts if he screams, “HEY STUPID I WANT SOME NUTS” when I pass by the window. The other crows sit at a safe distance and cuss him out when he packs the nuts in his beak like a kabob and takes them all. Fortune favors the assholes, crows. 

In the evening, I left Zenny playing Minecraft online with her brother and took a walk along the road, looking at the new three-story houses with tacky sentimental signs decorating the freshly painted porches, and the old one-story houses with rotting wooden palettes piled up against broken railings covered in decayed Christmas decorations. At the playground, I took a turn down a gravel path, which turned into old ATV trails through the woods. I followed them in loops that crossed themselves, over hills and around dense scrubby pine trees, thinking about how easy it would be to drop a dead body off the trail and into the thick bushes, where they would lie undiscovered for years while the occasional ATV rider rumbled by in the summer to go drink in the clearing and set off fireworks. Then I stopped and realized; I didn’t know which of the trails led back to the road, there were no shadows to judge direction by, and I hadn’t told anyone where I was going. I was one unexpected aneurism or forest madman away from being a body in the bushes, myself. Turning around, I retraced loops and tree stumps and old beer cans for another 15 minutes before I finally got back to the road and headed home. I picked up a few cans and bits of trash along the shoulder and threw them in my dumpster as I went inside, reminding myself to stuff some small trash bags in my coat pockets for next time. 

I feel better, with the birds and trees to keep me here, away from my old life. I’m going to have to face it again some time, but not right now.

Department of Teen Engagement: 

Zenny picked a dinner recipe, and we went to the store for ingredients to make calzones. I mangled the dough into discs, she stuffed them. On Sunday we came across a recipe for Future Brownies online, and went on a quest to find mochi flour. FAIL. There is no mochiko in all the Boot. Sent the recipe to Leif, and they got to eat them, instead. Goddamn it.

We are going to make regular brownies tonight.

What I’ve been reading:

6 Wakes, by Mur Lafferty. 5 clones on a deep space mission wake up with no memories, surrounded by their own dead bodies. One of them is the murderer. 

I Was A Teenage Slasher, by Stephen Graham Jones. A teenager loses his father in a gruesome accident, and a year later gets drunk at a high school party where everything goes horrifically wrong, activating a curse that brings the rules of every teen slasher film to life - and now he’s the killer.

Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman. I don’t even know what this is about yet, I’ve just started it after seeing it recommended several times. Edit: I have no idea why this was recommended as a wildly funny and weird story. It’s just litRPG -  a game walkthrough. It’s like watching a 20 year old streamer play a video game. The “weirdness” is just video game humor, the characters are overwhelmingly male and stupidly violent, the female characters are bitches or pathetic losers. His cat co-player is a prissy bitch, the ex he reminisces about is a cheating bitch, the neighbor who yells at him is an old bitch, the women they encounter in the game are pathetic/gross/homeless or dead. I predict he will encounter his ex closer to the end of the game, she’ll be a manic pixie dream bitch, and the cat will win the game. I’m not finishing this thing. Listening to any comedy improv DnD podcast is better than this.

Angel Down, by Daniel Kraus. I don’t know anything about this one either, except that it’s horror and just won the Pulitzer. It’s got to be better than Carl.