So. White Supremacists once again threaten all manner of kindness and decency in ways that follow the road maps left by their consummately colonial, entitled, dumbf—k evil roots and the only ray of flip-the-script light I could find when I learned what “6MWE” stands for was, “Well, at least they’re not Holocaust deniers…” Does this mean they fight with other groups of White Supremacists who are deniers? What do those fights look like? Do some people wear antlers and try to ram each other through a fence made of zip-tie hand cuffs while other people break into their homes, steal their furniture, and shit on their floors?
The premier of my province is trying to poison our drinking water because he’s a bargain basement free market lunatic who wouldn’t recognize real leadership if it picked him up with two fingers by his nostrils. He seems to think progress looks like a return to Blake’s “Dark Satanic Mills” and if he could, he would get everyone’s small children crawling around the machines of factories again. Clearly, the pampered little assholes should be earning their keep, propping up the economy, and dying young of lung diseases they can’t afford to treat because universal health care is for sissies. And don’t worry, while your little ragamuffins are learning the value of a hard day’s work, they can mindlessly recite the names of famous paintings because that’s the kind of education we need to compete on the world stage.
You know you’re hanging on by a thread when the best giggle you’ve had all week is when you noticed that the little Bobcat Loader/Excavator on the flatbed of the truck you walk by is actually called a, “BOBKITTEN.” Seriously? How f—king cute is that?
“What kind of work will you be doing?”
“Pulling up a lot of sod, bringing in gravel. I was thinking a Bobcat would be good.”
“From the dimensions you sent, it sounds like perhaps you need our Bobkitten, actually. Great rental deal on right now and it comes with its own ball of yarn.”
Oh, and did I mention that Girl-Cat’s top-left fang is gone? She yawned and I was like, “Wait. What?” It fell right out of her head at some point and went heaven-only-knows where. Did she swallow it? Did *I* swallow it? She’s nearly 13 and I’ve never been the world’s most progressive feline-dental-care kind of cat-mom… I have chosen to instead make sure both cats and my kid have food to eat and a safe place to sleep all day/at night but man… Nothing makes you feel better about yourself than realizing a living being you care for lost one their biggest, most prominent teeth without you even noticing that maybe something was awry…
Probably hard to tell from the directions of this particular post, but I actually have a daily gratitude practice with a couple of friends. I can always come up with things to share but some days are definitely harder than others and right now… Right now I’m clinging to things like the Bobkitten and this incredibly strange and so-terrible-it’s-almost-good late 90s movie that uses a live crab as both plot point and wielder of kitchen magic all while I wait for the next episode of The Expanse and wonder if it wouldn’t be better for as many asteroids as possible to wipe humans off this otherwise beautiful rock hurtling through space. Clearly, I want my son to live a long, healthy life full of creativity and connection and joy but it honestly seems as though there are too many people, with too much power, who just don’t want him to be able to do that and I’m just one, tired, middle-aged woman who never fit in very well to begin with…
I sign petitions. I do my best to live in good, sustainable ways. I get hurt and lose things and people and find new things and do my emotional homework and get up and keep trying and I show my son as many parts of the process as I can so he knows they are all valid… But an increasingly entrenched sense of helplessness is a bonafide f–king thing and so is exhaustion. And guilt and shame because what the hell right does someone as introverted and homebody’ish (even before the pandemic) have to feel helpless and exhausted when she’s barely ever DONE anything?
What can I say? Crazy is the new normal around here and I’m done apologizing. I’m going to try out a little day drinking, I think, and a few sprays of apathy. I’ll mist it into the air in front of me and walk through it with my eyes closed so it can settle on me like a blessing; lose itself in the faded, multi-coloured mess I call my hair…
If anyone actually needs me for anything I’ll be on my kitchen floor crying with my arms crossed while I make I Dream of Jeannie “doing” sounds and try to figure out how to wish for what I want without becoming as awful as everything that put me here in the first place.
Love & HUGS,
S.
P.S. The Readability Analysis on this post is depicted by a very sad, red-faced emoji that tells me I should “try to mix things up” because apparently rhythmic repetition and cadence are evil, long sentences are the devil’s spawn, one paragraph exceeds 150 words (how DARE I?!), and my failure to use “subheadings” will be my ultimate undoing. I’m honestly going to consider it a compliment that these soul-swallowing bots think I can’t write or communicate. Bless you, oh great crushers of creativity and difference, bless you for thinking I suck because it must mean I’ve done something right today.
