Caterwauling

I’ve had a little tub of Momma’s homemade spaghetti sauce in the freezer forever.

My plan was to use it on my birthday. But I ran off to Vegas for an entire week and am just now getting back.

I was feeling guilty that I was going to toast up some riced cauliflower instead of pasta. And that I was planning to use cottage cheese to protein it up (as we hated ricotta but I wanted something).

But you know what? It was really good.

It was strange holding that little clear tub in my hands. She was the last one to touch it. It lived in her little hands for a few moments.

I wonder if she even thought of that. That it would be the last time she’d make her special sauce — her mom’s sauce. Her grandmother’s sauce, really.

And I just enjoyed the last of it.

I have what my memory can conjure up from the recipe. But it will never be as good.

I do have her favorite pasta in the cupboard if I ever do try. At least one part of the meal will be consistent.

Thank you for the birthday dinner, Momma. Click-click.

My cousin sent me Taylor Swift’s favorite birthday cake (of 2023 — I had sent it to HER in 2024) … a gift from herself … and a gift the baby painted for me.

Her card was tops. Made me cry.

I read the card aloud for Mom. I told my cousin’s mom Elaine that she raised a fantastic daughter. Her son’s a loser like his dad, but the girl? The best.

I got another card today. From my mom’s BFFrenemy’s sister.

The sister always sent my mom cards. And weird gifts.

She sent a fuckin death shroud a few years back. We don’t know why. Felt like an omen.

It was.

She always sends dollar tree shit too. And I know she had an amazing career, so it’s not that. She just likes junky shit.

So hello, a birthday card! And that’s nice because she has zero reason to do anything nice for me.

The cart reads, “A Treat for You!” And there’s something hard inside.

A gift card?

I opened it and it’s not even dollar tree. It’s this weird dog face that’s peeling. And the magnet isn’t even a magnet. I can’t explain it.

I read the inside and she said she had to send this dog because it’s so cute, right?

Hm.

A treat for me … a dog, which I don’t even like dogs … and no treat?

At least it wasn’t another death shroud.

Everyone has figured out that I’m going to (redacted).

And I just got an uninvited request for what to do there. From a peer.

Listen.

I turned in one request for reimbursement in 14 years.

For two cheeseburgers.

And DTOM wouldn’t appprove it.

I get along with accounting so I am not worried about it. I was never worried about it. It’s just illustrative of things I would be crazy to type out.

Anyway, I paid a a good chunk to extend my hotel and cat sitter to go to this thing.

Out of pocket.

I’ve talked to my team about how to maximize this visit. And I have a great list. I also talked to the social media team. Great list from them. I’m good on “what to do.”

The only thing I want is to not have to use PTO.

Which I have too much of anyway.

I am delighted to do what I can for the company as I do love my work and it will benefit my work.

MY work.

I am typing this as a reminder to myself for when I get nuts from the weight of trying to please everyone.

The Bermuda Triangle of pain is how I refer to this era with my first Mother’s Day without my mother, my first birthday without my mother, and the day Momma passed.

The triangle became a box when I heard Joe Biden has Stage 4 prostate cancer.

My mom was terminally (ugh) online. If she would have read what I’m reading by people who were just experts on Bruce Springsteen last week (note: they did NOT pick up on generational poverty in “The River” is all I’m saying) … she would have felt even worse.

Cancer made her feel dirty. She was embarrassed. Like she fucked up by “catching” it. And these fuckface MAGAts would have only reinforced that.

May they all catch permanent diarrhea.

In any event, my box became a pentagon last night.

I logged into mom’s phone since Samsung threatened to delete her data if it wasn’t accessed soon.

Well that was a roundhouse kick to the head.

“Dawn commented on her post you haven’t seen.”

I mean, I know she hasn’t seen any of my posts for a year. But it hurt seeing it spelled out for me.

I felt like she was in the room with me. Magic supervised me. And I had a memory of her counting with him.

I haven’t ever counted with him. So I did it.

She would count to three. Plenty of 2 1/2 action too. After every number, he says, “Yeah.”

Now, no one has said this to him in a year. But he remembered. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I realized Momma was the love of his life. He’ll never forget her.

As for Snow White’s seven dorks who left messages looking for her, I hope they all figure she hasn’t called or texted back because they are losers.

Anyway, this was so heavy. Is so heavy.

I hope Samsung is satisfied. That five minutes I spent in that phone reminded me I had a whole lifetime with someone and now have a whole lifetime I’m supposed to get through without her.

Except hearing from people who claim to be near dead to get my attention.

I cannot wait to tell (redacted) next week when she asks if we are still friends.

After kicking myself for letting DTOM’s non-approval of a $46 receipt piss me off for a full day …

I see that my beloved friends who work at (redacted) received an all-expenses-paid weekend at the very same Forbes five-star resort for their milestone anniversaries.

Literally where I was when I bought the two cheeseburgers on that non-itemized bill.

It’s been a while since I had a bad day.

I mean, I have bad moments. Moments of grief. Times when things are stressful.

But this day is particularly colored by two ridiculous work-related things.

One is 100% sponsored by DTOM and what I realize bugs me the most — the double standard.

The other is 100% sponsored by my own decision-making. The decision was mostly a good one but maybe not executed flawlessly.

The decision was 100% based on a series of exceptions to rules I’d been given. So I went with, oh, ok, we’re doing THAT now, let me do my thing. And my staff went above and beyond to help, as they do, which is what triggered people noticing.

Look, I can deal with bad moments, bad decisions, even bad days.

Not even my best moment, decision or day is going to bring my mother back.

And there is nothing, NOTHING, short of being fired that could make me feel worse than I’ve felt about that.

I guess I’ll go back to the other project that’s about to get me into trouble. Well the fact that I didn’t do it earlier, that is. Because I had no inspiration then.

At least now I’m inspired to knock this out and pretend this fucking day never happened.

At least, till I see it on my review.

Hearing President Biden has cancer has wrecked me in a way I cannot describe.

I already called this the Bermuda Triangle of Mother’s Day, my birthday and the day I lost Momma (Father’s Day).

Now hearing our guy has stage 4 with a 9 Gleason score? Fucking wipe the floor with me, I’m depleted spiritually.

Having mom be diagnosed with mets, I’d written, was worse than hearing the cancer diagnosis. But what I didn’t say was “hearing the cancer diagnosis at stage 4.”

That’s what the Bidens are going through. I hate it when it’s good people. Give it to the tRump family and all his idiot followers who put the laughing emoji on all my sympathetic posts.

I am going to meet Coke Junior, unfortunately. Someone had said to me oh I hope you run into him and I said oh I will. With a luggage cart.

It was the kindest thing I could say knowing that the company’s TerraMind was watching.

TLC just did a three-episode arc of “Sister Wives” that covered from Garrison’s suicide to his burial months later.

Honestly I thought I’d cry, heal, FEEL. But Kootie & the Browfish ruined that.

If I can look past their ridiculous antics, I can appreciate his three mothers’ grief. Plus his biological mom’s not only sadness, but her gorgeous subtle shade toward his idiot father.

Janelle spoke to my own sad heart in many ways. Like how she’s able to pull off “fine” till she talks about her son, specifically.

I got to thinking about her (and me) when I fell down some Threads rabbit hole today when I should have been writing my month-overdue newsletter.

A woman posted that she lost her Mama and her Mimi within a few weeks of each other. The grief was so great, she quit her beloved WFH job.

A few other women chimed in that they love their WFH jobs, love their colleagues, love the work they do, love the WFH itself.

But when faced with their own great losses, they needed to get out of the house. To drive and listen to the radio and be forced to be social. To quit a thing in search of a thing that better fits the shape of our grief.

Hmmm.

I feel that.

I have the best setup now. I used to work in my dark kitchen. Now I have my chair where Mom’s chair used to be. I face the sun and three bodies of water and grass and birds and nature.

I love my work. My team. My bosses. Most everyone else.

Literally living la vida Boca.

But I love being in a dress. On my feet. Being “on.”

I’m sure I’d hate commuting again. Interviewing, fuck no. Having to share bathrooms, ugh. And being nice to the people who don’t fall into the “most everyone else” category.

Still. When I read about these women who took the leap to go from being alone in a house to trying a new thing, I was like wait, is that for me?

TBH what’s for me is to meet a sugar daddy who don’t need no sugar.

I think of my friend Kim who was paid for 34 hours a week at Phillips despite working at least 45. I would know since I shared a wall with her and worked a minimum of 65.

She said at least she can leave at five-ish. Go pick up her kids from dance class. Not work a weekend if she didn’t want to.

I’d like that setup.

I’d also like to not feel so exhausted and yet not be able to sleep through the night.

Moreover, I’d like the money to go on all the trips I’ve been invited on. And to not feel absurdly lost after missing just one day of work, let alone take off the two weeks that Europe invitation would require.

(My cousin is a doctor. Not like she can doctor during those two weeks. I’d probably be working at a cafe while she takes care of her baby. Some trip for all of us.)

Anyway not to sound ungrateful because I’m not. I’m just more intrigued by how can I do this, but in like half the time, so I can experience twice as much?

I get frustrated in psychic classes when we have to practice on each other.

I mean, yes, information jumps into my head. Either really right or really wrong.

I’m more of a signs in dreams person.

And I just woke up from a doozy.

Bad shit is coming. I mean, worse bad shit.

I was in what I assume was Kennywood. I know my grandfather was there. But I was so exhausted from trying to outrun the fascists, I barely acknowledged him other than to say, “It’s my turn to fight them now.”

There was no reasoning with them. They were on our scent like bounty hunters.

There were many options to outsmart them. They got distracted by slower-moving people and those who decided to trust them.

I remember them slamming someone into a room who was in a wheelchair as I hid behind a door.

The door opened and I screamed that I was coming in. I think I had a weapon.

Well. They kicked out that wheelchair and had dismembered the person in it. It nearly knocked me over.

I know a weird ass dream when I see one, and I usually forget about it.

Something is telling me not to forget this one.

There were a few messages, most of which I don’t remember.

But “Trump is running out of patience with you resisters” was pretty prevalent.

I think hearing that Biden has an aggressive prostate cancer yesterday set this off in my head.

He has a 9 Gleason score. Not great.

Mets to the bone, too. I am intimately familiar with those.

The only thing worse than hearing you have cancer is hearing that it’s in your bones, IMHO.

Well, the only thing worse is having Coke Junior snort an 8-ball and tweet about why didn’t Joe’s PhD wife Jill notice he had Stage 5 cancer.

Let this be a lesson to all of us that praying for his bloated fat fuckface of a father to fucking die or have someone unalive him sent the message to the universe to make the guy we love unwell.

Still.

Wrong guy, universe. Wrong guy.

I feel like I should put in for PTO on Saturdays.

Every weekend has been a working one lately.

And I know it’s going on my review that I blew a deadline to launch a new newsletter even though I was working on other shit.

It went on my review last year that some flaw in programming exposed our testing site.

I am not programming.

I am done with the working 70-80 hours a week. Honestly I’m not even a fan of the 40-50ish unless they are on my terms. Which is, whenever inspiration strikes, along with being available six days a week.

The amount of work I have to achieve today (Sunday) is daunting. I want to be outside. I don’t want to be in an uncomfortable chair in a house that needs cleaned.

Also I still never drafted that damn newsletter that’s a month overdue.

What I did do was set up a weekly call with one of DTOM’s people. I like the person; just been avoiding because of the whole having to run things up that flagpole.

But I realize I can give them the knowledge they lack because Miss Social Butterfly over here is always out collecting, but not really sharing, it.

And I’d like to forfeit my right to grumble about stuff that isn’t in my control.

So, I will put it in my control in this way.

Anyway, I am still dreading spending my whole day on a project I didn’t want, but that I could do in my sleep if I could just get into the right mind frame.

That’s what happens every launch. I kick and moan and whine and procrastinate.

But I also research and think and daydream on it.

And the final product usually turns out great.

Here’s hoping that tradition holds true. Since the next-biggest boss is writing my review right now.

Oh shit that means I have reviews to write, too — on top of all the other stuff.

Great.