09 January 2025

Woof!

I said two days ago that L and I were waiting to hear news about one of the dogs.

This is Jamie. Say hi to Jamie. Jamie, this is my audience.

Jamie is one of four Great Pyrenees dogs who comprise four out of five of my housemates. He came to live with L when he failed as a guardian dog for a prairie-dog colony in Colorado, said failure involving his converting a prairie dog into an outdoor snack. Jamie is the brother of Mist, who was already living with L, so the previous owner asked if L would take him too. And here we are.

However, that was well over a dozen years ago, and you know that anything over ten is old age in dogs. And Jamie’s been slowing down a lot this year. Lately he’s been developing some nausea after meals and the vet ran some tests, up to and including a biopsy from his abdomen. They were looking for liver cancer.

Well, the results came back today. Jame-o’s fine. At least on that count. He still clearly has something going on, but they’re going to investigate further. His energy is still pretty good for an old dog, though. I think if they could get a handle on his nausea, he might be in the clear for a while.

I hope so. He’s such a sweet boy. If he’s not done with me petting him, he’ll smack the surface in front of him with his paw as if to say, “Hey. Hoomin. Dis how u do it.” He will also sometimes get a little lonely for me at night and scratch at my bedroom door just to get pettings. It is all so terribly cute.

I still tell people I’m a cat person. Though I also argue that GPs are just huge fluffy cats who bark. If you’ve ever been around one, you know what I mean. I wish they were welcome more places.

Last day of a milestone

I turn fifty-one tomorrow. My year as a half-centenarian did not at all go the way I had, for years, hoped it would. It still didn’t turn out badly, I must say. After two solid years being alone with my life going entirely downhill, I spent my fiftieth at a Chinese buffet with a dear friend and then proceeded to shift into a whole new life where I live next door to one of my favorite authors and with another one who’s had a profound influence on my life. Did not see that coming. Also some other wow-factor things I won’t list here. Also got to reconcile with a brother I’d been long estranged from AND revisit a place we both visited as kids.

Strangely, after all this, the thing that surprises me most is that recreational weed is legal somewhere.

I know. World, my brain. Brain, meet the world. Howyadoon.

But I’m starting plans now to party it up in some way for my sixtieth. Goddamn it.

Another anniversary

Two days from now will mark two years since my first official homelessness. I got some advance warning, and they let me stay out the week, which meant I got kicked out of InTown Suites (Whitehall, Ohio) the day after my birthday. They’d found bed bugs in my room and had to treat. I was to be allowed to get a room again three weeks later. But this was January, AKA Going On A Diet Month and also Minding My Budget Month, and I would soon learn my car had developed a fault, so I couldn’t drive enough to earn enough to go back what with the hotel tax added back on. Right around the same time, I finally got confirmation that my favorite actor was indeed a married man, which was not a good time to learn that, and then a couple weeks later my daughter basically told me to fuck off. It was a shitty month. I’m glad it’s done.

News of my kiddo

I’ve known since July that my daughter took a trip to Ireland last year. I suspected a college trip, but didn’t know for sure; that has now been verified, as of yesterday. I even know the name of the school, though it appears to be a distance-education school with some in-person interaction for educational purposes.

It’s interesting that my daughter goes by her trans name at college, which makes me wonder if she’s gone through with a legal name change. I’ve long thought that if she actually makes the legal change, I’ll go along with using that name, but I wasn’t going to do it while it was still a passing fancy. So it’d be nice to have some sort of confirmation of that, so I know which way to go.

I have a mole who follows her Instagram and the mole has not been forthcoming with details, if they even know them. I understand why Mole doesn’t give me every single detail and I’m grateful just to hear anything. Mole and I go way back. Mole’s one of the few people I almost totally trust. Mole tells me what I actually need to hear on this issue. So if Mole hasn’t told me about this, Mole doesn’t know either.

It’s not like I’ll get it from the source. It’s interesting that my daughter told me “no contact until you go into therapy” but every single thing she and her father have done in the two years since she set that ultimatum points toward “I never want to hear from you again.” E.g., not telling me they were moving, not telling me if she was keeping her number (how am I supposed to tell her whether I ever go into therapy?), and so on. But then, this whole conflict started when she adopted a subculture of liars, and the parent still in her day-to-day life isn’t known for honesty himself. I know why I left her with him. I knew she’d be safer, because ugly frumpy fat middle-aged women with teenage daughters are a favorite target of bad men. I wasn’t quite counting on things going the way they’ve gone, though.

I did have an amusing thought yesterday: When she was still on the way, more than twenty years ago, her father and I discussed what to name her. I had wanted to name her Amélie, because I love that movie and because it’s the French version of Emily, which I have an aunt by that name. Matt immediately ixnayed it, which was bold of him considering the shit he’d put me through all year, and wanted to name her Althea after his great-grandmother, who was a much-loved figure in his mother’s family. I thought that was a nice name and I liked the idea of memorializing someone special like that, so I agreed. But the upshot is that the name she’s rejecting now isn’t one I chose for her. It is just one I went along with. She’s rejecting what her FATHER named her — the same father cheering on her self-destruction and her alienation from me — and that’s kind of hilarious.

Her middle name was his idea, too. It was the middle name of my ex-mother-in-law, who stole my son from me and then proceeded to make my life hell for nine years afterwards. She also helped me a lot after Matt kicked me out pregnant which was why Matt suggested the middle name to begin with. So my daughter is also rejecting my ex-MIL’s middle name, which is also hilarious.

So, I mean, if she’s really attached to Quill and wants to keep it, and actually legally changes her name to it, I’ll adjust. I was way too much into THIS IS MOTHER-REJECTION!!! mode, and I took it too personally when I should never have done that in the first place. Zen. Calm. We good.

The Los Angeles fire

I have been in L.A. proper exactly once in my life: when I was taking the Greyhound from south Louisiana to NorCal to come live here. I am pretty sure that on the way out of the city, I traveled through areas that are now ashes. It’s odd to think, and a little depressing (would be more so if I personally knew anyone affected).

California is a HUGE state, a fact not easily appreciated by anyone who’s never been here, and especially noticeable to someone who spent two decades in a state the size of, what, maybe a quarter of CA’s total land area? Wait, let me look that up. Yep, I was right. Holy shit. Point is, what’s going on there is REALLY far from me and, on top of that, I’m basically living in redwood forest. Redwoods are not absolutely fire-resistant; if things got hot enough fast enough, we’d be fucked here. But in a normal wildfire, they fare pretty well and would slow the burning down some. Coastal southwestern California doesn’t have them, and also gets some insanely fast winds that we don’t get here, which is not helping the situation.

I know I said that shit about being sad that my favorite actor is married (hush), but in the main I kind of don’t really care one way or the other about whichever rich celebs lose their homes in L.A. I’m kind of wondering about all the homeless people who have to sleep in tents there, actually. I saw some of those as well on the way out of the city last May, and I fucking doubt like hell that anyone’s looking out for them.

God, I never want to be back in that situation again. People see you as garbage. I only got decent help because this country loves legal murderers more than it cares about the down-and-out. My veteran status saved my ass. I wonder when we’re gonna stop paying lip service to “pro-life” and actually, I dunno, start giving a shit about the actual life-givers? Never? My bet’s on never.

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Okay. This post took me two days to write and I’ve got other stuff to do. ‘Later.