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.

Bad at peopling

A snow storm blew through yesterday, the day after the snow plow was put away for the season. Sheila laughed. 

These guys were watching me through the living room window, wanting peanuts

With work closed, I sat on the floor of the empty third bedroom and assembled the bed frame my mother sent. She’ll only be staying for a few months out of the year, so it’ll be a guest room the rest of the time. (Or Gavin’s room, if he can’t get a job after he graduates next month.) She sent a gift card for Canadian Tire, and I picked up a gallon of paint in the color she wanted.

Stopping at Sobeys, I tried to practice looking at people. I realized I’ve been walking around with my head down like a teenager hiding behind their hair, and that’s not going to help make friends. So I smiled at the man standing next to the fruit I was reaching for, and he did a double-take, then looked sad and smiled. “Oh, you look just like someone I used to know, you have the same eyes.” He was a good-looking man about my age, tall with a grey beard and a kind face. I said that was nice to hear. “She was a dear friend from Alberta, but she… passed.” He looked like he realized this might be awkward as it was coming out of his mouth, and my guy, I GET IT. I told him I was sorry and thanked him for telling me. We waved and smiled and went on shopping. As I walked through the store I slapped my forehead. Was that not an opportunity to meet someone who seemed like-minded? Why did I not ask him any questions? What was your friend like? What happened? Are you from Alberta? What’s your name? I have been working in customer service and living in crisis mode for so long I’ve forgotten how to talk like a normal human - I either politely tell people to have a nice day or trauma-dump on them, and that is exactly why I’ve been watching my feet everywhere I go. Well, it’s a small town. If I ever run into him again I can have another go at it. And hopefully not be too weird.

Over the weekend, I decided to engage with Zenny and get her out of the house. She groaned and went limp in her chair when I said we should go hiking, so I gave her the good camera, showed her how to use it, and said we were going on a color walk. We drove over to one of the easy walking paths around a small pond, and she started hunting the color red, stopping every five paces to zoom in on leaves and rocks and birds. It took an hour to walk half a mile, but she was red-cheeked and excited by the end. “Tomorrow let’s try another!” VICTORY.

Saturday: she did red, I did white.

Zenny’s

Mine

Sunday: Roy G. Biv, the rainbow.

Zenny’s

Mine

 “I like photography. And I think I’d like baking, too.” Well, fuck yeah. I tossed the Baking for Two cookbook at her and told her to pick anything, I’d get the ingredients. 

She chose chocolate soufflés. We do not have a mixer. I am the mixer. Oh no.

That’s fine. THAT’S FINE. I showed her how to chop chocolate, demonstrated how to separate eggs, took out more eggs when she popped her yolks into the whites, tried not to flail around when she started drawing designs in the melted chocolate with a fork instead of moving on to the next step, then told her to pretend she was turning on the Kitchen Aid and proceeded to beat the shit out of those eggs until we had pale fluffy yolks and stiff meringue. My arms fell off. She folded everything together, put them in the toaster oven, and ate the rest of the chocolate while they baked. They were perfect. They were beautiful. They were delicious. We enjoyed them while watching the season finale of Traitors, and she jumped and clapped like a little kid when the contestants discovered the last betrayal. Before bed, she snuck up behind me while I was knitting, poked me viciously a few times, then laid her cheek on my head and hugged my neck. I love her. Being a teenager is hard, she’s doing pretty good.

I was reluctant to get on the scale this morning for the first time since the weekend, because I had been lazy about calorie counting and ate a soufflé, but the numbers were down 2lbs. Walking and shoveling makes the difference, I guess. When I couldn’t walk around the pond, I took a walk up the road by my house, and felt like I was in the Goonies. There’s an abandoned store just a short trot from my driveway, and I imagined an art gallery, with classes and figure drawing. Who knows? Life is short and the years are long. It could happen.

Day before the snow storm

Department of Big News:

Leif has been accepted into the engineering school at the University of Glasgow, as well as Memorial University in St John’s! He’s waiting to hear back about a possible full-ride scholarship for Glasgow before he makes the decision. They’re both great engineering schools, with MUN being a bit cheaper (and closer to his girlfriend, who’s locked into pre-med at Penn State), unless he gets the scholarship. I would not be mad about having a reason to visit Scotland and drink elderflower cider and eat meat pies, but I’d also love to have him here for holidays and long weekends. Whatever he decides is right for him, I’m so proud.

Spring

This teenager is more of a challenge than the others were. I tell myself I shouldn’t get my feelings hurt by a 13 year old, but it’s hard. Somewhere along the line as I was growing up, I learned to deal with people being unexpectedly angry by quietly cleaning. It gives them space, and keeps me busy while I think, and having a clean kitchen makes people feel better. We’re still working on this relationship, she’s not used to having just one person to absorb everything, and I’m not used to having someone get mad at me for smiling at them or asking if they want pancakes. We’ll figure it out.

The head cold did not clear up after a week, so I used one of my sick days and called urgent care for an appointment (I’m still on the waiting list for a gp). I’m used to the packed urgent care clinics of the US, so it surprised me when they could see me right away on a Friday. I grabbed my purse and drove down the coast, along empty roads and through the fens, to St Lawrence - wondering why the only urgent care clinic on the peninsula was in a tiny rural fishing village, and why a Canadian medical center was named the ‘US Memorial’. The clinic was nice, with a large airy waiting room filled with windows, and I got my answers as I browsed the art and plaques on the walls while waiting for my name to be called.

On the morning of Ash Wednesday in 1942, a 15 year old boy who lived on the cliffs of St Lawrence went outside in a blizzard and saw lights on the ocean. He realized something was very wrong, because the lights looked like a ship, and it was way too big, so he spread the alarm, and the fishermen went out to find a United States battleship crashed in the cove, with hundreds of soldiers floating dead or injured in the freezing water and hanging from the wreck of the ship. The entire town mobilized, pulling hypothermic young men out of the water and creating a makeshift aid station to save them. The crisis escalated when word reached them that a second battleship had crashed in the next bay over, and the village scrambled to organize rescue. The soldiers were covered in oil, and the village women scrubbed them down and dressed them in every dry sweater and blanket they could find while the men gathered the dead. In all, the people of St Lawrence saved 186 young men in a disaster that killed more than 200. Dead bodies were washing up on the shore for months. A third ship carrying supplies, which the Navy had been escorting when they went off course, had gotten moored on the rocks but managed to get out in one piece, and they gathered up the survivors. 

The United States didn’t forget. After the war, President Truman gifted a hospital to the town of St Lawrence in gratitude. It’s still the main clinic for rural Burin.

I felt like that was worth the drive, and left with a prescription for steroid nasal spray. The nurse made me promise to get a neti pot (I have an irrational fear of amoebas, but I’m using the damn thing anyway - whispering fuck you amoebas every time I boil the water) and I picked up a scale while I was at it. Oh no. I refuse to rejoin Fitness Cult - which I only joined to be supportive, until I learned he was, in fact, using it to cheat on me - so I sighed, opened up my old calorie tracker, and picked up the pace on my walks around the pond. The numbers started ticking down again. These meat sacks are annoying. Leaky sinuses and creaking knuckles and wobbly cheeks and groaning joints. Better than not having one, though.

Suddenly, all in one day, the world exploded in tiny yellow flowers. They are growing out of rock piles, gravel pathways, scrubby brown hillsides. I saw a robin, and the blue jays have taken over the bird feeder. I scraped aside a bit of money from my editing gig to order an English rose, and lined up little cardboard pots of soil in a plastic seedling tray to plant anemone bulbs. I’m going to build a painter’s garden over the next few years, plant by plant. 

I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m busy, and at loose ends. I’m dreaming about my kids as babies, and about my grandfather dying. I’ve saved up enough money to buy tickets to Arizona this summer, even if I’ll be mooching rides and food and space in my mother’s hotel room the rest of the trip.

And soon it will warm enough to sit outside on the deck in the evenings, and see what the stars look like at night. Maybe I’ll be a good gardener, and maybe there will be apples on my trees in the fall. I’m looking forward to finding out.

Easter 2026

Sheila must be pissed, because this broom business has been going on all week. People are complaining about the weather, but they know this is the good stuff; a lady coming out of the post office caught me stomping all over the lawn because the firm slush felt so satisfying to smush, and she started doing it, too.

Anyway, now I’m sick. This probably has more to do with having a school-aged kid than playing in the snow, but it happened just in time for all the stores to close for the holiday weekend. I rationed the last few DayQuil capsules in the medicine bin and dragged my carcass around getting the eggs boiled for dying and the baskets hidden. On Easter morning we ate creamed eggs and watched bluejays visit the bird feeder for bits of biscuit.

I put some egg slices out for the crows, and one came down from the tree, waffled around nervously because it could see us watching from inside the house, then retreated to the deck to call the others for help. There are four crows in our backyard murder squad, and I’m calling that one Sir Robin.

We talked to family most of the day, and the boys managed to walk Zenny through setting up Minecraft on the old laptop so they could play as a group while I put the roast in and made popovers. I threw some scraps out for the crows, “A blessing! A blessing from the Lord!” Zenny yelled at me from the living room to stop talking to the birds. I will not. When I was 10, some girls at summer camp yelled at me to stop talking to the horses, and I made up my mind right then to talk to all the animals, forever and ever, the end. I didn’t understand why they would get mad about something I was doing that didn’t affect them even one little bit, or how anyone could get up close to an animal and not want to connect with it. Life is bills and work and cleaning and cooking and child care and health problems and grief, and then we go back to being dead. Let a person talk to an animal. Goddamn. 

She experimented with snow dying and ended up with brown sludge, but she had fun

Need a gravy boat

I ran out of DayQuil and I am loaded on robitussin, so I know better than to trust my brain right now. I’m missing people. My sons, my cats, dead people, old friends. I haven’t connected with anyone here yet, and maybe I don’t want to. One of my online friends invited me to a group chat to share “joys”, and I can’t hit the button to join. I’m still blowing on this smoldering coal, trying to get it going again. I don’t have any fire to share yet.

And that is my cue to get this body to bed. 

Happy Easter.

Sheila’s Broom

Note: I’ve added a link to my website on the sidebar. Prints are up if anyone wants one.

Edit: site was borked but should be working now

The last snow storm after St. Patrick’s Day is called Sheila’s Broom in these parts. Nobody really agrees on who Sheila is - St. Patrick’s wife, girlfriend, just some lady he was annoying while she was doing chores - but it’s agreed she flicked her broom at him, and she’s sweeping him (and the hungover men laying around after the holiday, depending on the telling) the fuck out the door.

This sweeping has lasted 3 storms so far this week, but people are adamant that it’s all the same broom, and spring will be here to stay once it’s finished. 

I went on my walks around the pond every day anyway. I’m not adversarial with winter.

Same spot, two days apart

How to get killed by a porch light

Over the weekend I took down the dangling broken plastic porch lights and installed a couple barn lights. I threw the breaker to the shed, which cut power to all the lights inside, stood on a chair, took the external fixture off, touched the new wires to the old wires, and just about blew myself off the chair. I made fire! I am a survivalist! It turns out the shed is powered by the house, and the porch light is hooked up to the line before it gets to the breaker box. I had to leave the damn things live and exposed while I raced to the hardware store for help. The guy at Canadian Tire showed me how to use a hot wire detector, I zoomed back, threw all the breakers in the house to find the right one, and finally got the damn thing installed without burning the shed down. Bonus: my hand suddenly stopped buzzing and shorting out, so maybe shock therapy is the way to go with carpal tunnel. I think I may have a future as a health influencer. Or a law suit defendant.

Cute

In the evenings, while watching Tom Holland Spider-man movies with the kid, I hand-stitched a piece of wood block print gauze ($4 on Etsy) into a pocket-rod valance for the kitchen ($3 curtain rod from Dollarama). I love it.

I don’t know where the ravens went, but suddenly the crows have taken over. They have started knocking on the glass door when they smell me cooking, and then they cuss me out for standing too close and watching them eat. I’ll wear them down.

SURRENDER BANANA BREAD

fank oo 

Between the melt and the new snow, my yard revealed something amazing that had been buried all winter: GIANT WITCH’S CAULDRON.

I’m curious to see if anything grows out of it this summer. If it’s all weeds, I’ll put some witchy flowers in there for next year. I have two apple trees working on buds right now, and I can’t wait to discover if I am actually a terrible gardener or just a terrible tropical gardener, now that I’m in the right climate for roses and tulips and peonies. Let’s go, Sheila.

The bounce back

Leif was accepted into university in Scotland! He texted me all afternoon, sharing pictures of the cheesecake he was baking to celebrate with his girlfriend and her family. It’s wonderful news, he’s been working toward this for a long time. He still has to pass his AP exam to lock it in, but that shouldn’t be a problem for him. He and his girl are pretty serious, but they’ll need to part ways in the fall as they head to different schools. It will be rough for them, but often the people you love in youth stay loved for life. Maybe they’ll find their way back onto the same path, even if they have to take the long way around.

With the birthday a success and the good news from the boy, I started feeling light in the foot again. The weather has been trying on all its outfits, switching from sunny to snowy to hurricane-windy. Every day I stubbornly zipped up my coat and went out for a walk, splashing through slush and letting the wind blow me around Salt Pond like a lawn chair. Yesterday the winds suddenly stopped, and the temperatures dropped from 13 degrees to -13 in a matter of hours, freezing the spring melt into impossible patterns. Ice grew up from the moss in fragile stalks like mushrooms, the river shallows froze into ripples, and sticks of crystals branched across puddles. I had my nose tucked into my coat collar and couldn’t feel the tops of my legs through my jeans, but I felt happy again.

My painting hand is recovering, now that the shoveling is done and I’ve been rubbing Tiger Balm* into it while drinking anti-inflammatory turmeric tea and popping NSAIDS. A few days ago I had gotten exasperated about my failure to find gig work and threatened to start selling foot pictures, so I drew a big sarcastic panel of classical-style foot studies and started painted them in the evenings. Hands and feet are really good practice, because they are hard. You’ll see artists go through all kinds of compositional contortions to avoid drawing them. By the time I started getting the hang of it, I was feeling good enough to start a real painting again. (And I can replace my nearly-empty tube of white paint now - thank you F. for stuffing a bill in my pocket and giving me an encouraging shove in the right direction.)

I saw the first flower buds of spring, and gathered pussy willows that broke off their stems. People complain about winter, but nature really works at break-neck speed. Blink and you’ll miss it. I’m so glad to have seasons again, it makes time feel real. And me, too.

* My mother always kept a little Tiger Balm in the medicine cabinet. One day, on the reservation, our neighbor’s uncle came knocking because he heard she had some. He explained that he had been riding in the rodeo the day before and hurt himself. “I need some Tiger Balm for my groan.” “Huh?” “You know,” he rubbed the insides of his thighs, “my groan.” She went to get the tiny jar and said he could keep the rest, and he waddled away gratefully. Ever since, we have always used Tiger Balm to relieve our groans. (HEY TIGER BALM I HAVE AN AD CAMPAIGN FOR YOU.)

Endurance

I warned myself I’d be hit by grief and question everything - quitting my career, dumping my life savings, and moving to another country in the middle of winter to work a job at poverty wages with no support system. It will get better, I told myself. After one year you will qualify for grants, receive assistance credits, and get a step movement. Until then you will hunker down like an animal in a storm and you will ENDURE IT. 

So I knew it was coming, but it still sucks.

On Friday I dropped Zenny off at a classmate’s birthday party, feeling a bit guilty that I couldn’t throw her one of her own but glad she was still getting a hit of celebration on the week of her birthday. She had a blast, dancing with her friends under black lights, covered in glow paint and stuffed with pizza. And I felt validated for my years of social awkwardness at parties, because every mother drove up in a line of cars, threw their kid out, and left. We all returned in a horde at 9pm, the doors of the Lions Club flew open, and the kids spilled out into the night and ran to their vehicles. Not a word was exchanged, everyone was punctual, and I realized that I have not been socially awkward all this time, I was just raised with Newfoundland party rules and had no idea how to navigate the “stay for a glass of wine, party ends whenever” beach moms on Maui.

On Saturday I ruined a painting and wiped it out, wincing about the cost of the paint I just wasted. I need to make something to sell or I can’t buy more, and my hand still isn’t working right. This copy-editing gig isn’t going to pay much, and my client is an older guy who likes to pay by check, so it will take 3 weeks to get here through international mail. I ran out of grocery money buying ingredients for Zenny’s birthday cake and favorite meal (Panda Express-style honey walnut shrimp, hell yes), so I swallowed my pride and onboarded for a remote job training language AI models, but didn’t get a gig because it’s high demand and I choked in the video interview. I looked for part-time local jobs, and only found a listing for a job straightening greeting cards, which didn’t pay enough to be worth the gas to get there (currently about $7/gallon and going up), let alone the last scraps of my pride. It feels like I can be more useful than straightening cards.

On Sunday I talked to my mother, and then took a call from Mike so I could talk to Leif, who likes to sit in on our video chats so he can answer texts from his girlfriend. Mike’s mother lost her partner of 25 years last week, so he had just gotten back from the funeral. Between him running into his most heinous affair partner, talking about how broke he is since I left, and comparing how much money his siblings take home with high-paying jobs and no mortgages (a lucky inheritance; Habitat for Humanity), all my insecurities and anger rose to the top. I got off with them, fumed for a few minutes while hand-stitching a curtain hem, and then got a call from my oldest and best friend. I have kind of been avoiding talking to him, because I don’t want to drive him away with how pathetic I am right now, but another friend reminded me to take the hands that reach out to me and let people decide that kind of thing for themselves, so we finally talked. And it was good to talk to him, but when I sat down to try to paint a bit afterwards, I started crying anyway.

Well, goddamn. Get your shit together, Braffet. You have a kid who is having a birthday this week, and I know how it feels to be managing a depressed single mother, so we will be having NONE OF THAT. I know I’ve been happier in general since breaking free, and that this feeling will pass. My ancestors would think I’m doing pretty good, with a house and electricity and hot showers. Cheer the fuck up.

When I feel like shit, I bake. I don’t have a mixer, so I kneaded my feelings out on a loaf of milk bread, then baked a birthday cake that is way too big for two people because I only have a 9-inch pan and a single layer cake is just too sad.

My slicing skills are matching my painting skills lately. At least it’s consistent.

I knew better than to even attempt to slice the layers thinner.

Chocolate cake from scratch, raspberries and whipped cream filling, chocolate silk frosting, and lucky chocolate coins for my St. Patrick’s Day girl.

My last baby is a teenager today. I got her a couple small gifts, wrapped up the presents from her dad and brothers, and her grandmothers sent her money. We will have shrimp and cake, say hi to everyone on FaceTime, and binge Project Runway. She’s been thriving, and everything is going to be great, I’ll figure this all out. It’s only been 3 months, that doesn’t really count as being a failure at life. This is just the part where I put my shoulder down and push through.