Here I Go Again

On the surface, it may seem like I have next to nothing in common with this character from TheWire. We look nothing alike. She's describing life experiences that are a world away from anything I've lived through. Our ages are significantly different. But in many ways, I identify very strongly with what she's saying.  I don't think most food addicts turn to such desperate measures to get money to feed our addiction. This doesn't make me any better than this character. It just so happens that heroin is illegal and therefore expensive, and in America, junk food is cheap and available pretty much everywhere, any time of the day or night. But I 100% get what she's saying about her inner addict and how that bitch wants to kill her. Because I have one of those, too, and she definitely wants to kill me. It's recently come to my attention that certain people in my life are surprised she hasn't already finished the job. (This isn't helpful, by the way. Nor are...

First, I have to say: I got my ninety days!   This is a page from my bullet journal . I've started a new one counting down to 180 days! I had planned to get a tattoo to commemorate it, this time on my right inner wrist. It was important to me that I be able to see it all the time. It took some time to get it figured out, because the original design I wanted couldn't be done small enough to fit there. This is what I went with, courtesy of Jamie at TRX in St. Louis.  A tattoo in this location on your dominant hand will bump against EVERYTHING. Beware. Once it heals it won't matter, of course. But you have to be careful until it does. But here's the thing that I really want to celebrate: last Thursday was my niece's birthday. She's still a young kid, and she has to deal with the adults in her life not being able to do stuff an awful lot, because my parents are older (75 and 78) and not in great health, and until recently I couldn't even walk from one room to ...

 Having Your Day in Court Wednesday evening, I made my dinner and settled in to watch the latest episode of Handmaid's Tale . I will be thinking about that episode for some time. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but Elisabeth Moss just nailed  her performance as June in this one. There was testimony involved, and even though I've watched more dramatized trial scenes than I could possibly recall - and have litigated a number of bench trials myself - something about her statement really drove home the idea of "having one's day in court." Justice is the end goal, of course, but in that moment it's about something different but equally powerful. It's about standing in a room with the person who hurt you, and he has to stay there and listen to you speak your truth. He may deny it when you're done, but for those moments you  know and he  knows that what you're saying absolutely happened. I never got my day in court, and I never will. But I did ge...

A dear friend said this to me over the weekend. La vida es ahora . Life is now.  I had one of those wonderful afternoons where you are talking with people who just get you, who accept you, who've been through it  with you, and everyone loses all track of time. We talked for seven hours straight about all kinds of different things. At one point, I was expressing misgivings about a life change I've been considering, listing various things that could change in the future which would make this change impractical. My one friend, who is fluent in Spanish, finally said, "You keep talking about 'if this' and 'what about that?' but la vida es ahora. " We happen to be only a week apart in age, and we've been talking quite a bit lately about this stage of life we're in, which involves considering what we want the rest of our lives to look like. I think a lot of people my age are thinking about this in terms of their children being almost-adults and the ac...