Caterwauling

This Invest 99L shit looks poised to ruin my week off. 

I was already rethinking taking off. Big week for me. Busy. And I wouldn’t wish one of the projects on my worst enemy. 

In fact, I just told the writer of that project to send it to me anyway. That’s how bad it is. 

The thing is, I’m pinning all my hopes on this week off. To refresh me and reignite my love for what I’ve spent the last 15 years doing. 

Realistically, I hope to rediscover the plan I had before the company reorganized and I had to start doing everything but writing. And now I have zero confidence in my writing ability because I’m so out of practice. 

At the very least, I won’t have to drive Stewie in the torrential downpours and possible hurricane and/or tornado. 

Although being trapped at home probably won’t help me relax and get creative again. 

Or maybe that’s exactly what I need. 

I’d still rather be in Key West, though. 

I finally asked a full week off.

And there’s like locusts and frogs and shit set to fall out of the sky where I want to head …

I’m guessing “staycation,” it is. (I did not book a hotel. Because that would just guarantee apocalypse.)

If I get to sleep and watch financial TV live and not via ads on their websites that always choke and shut down my computer, I’ll be happy.

And maybe, if I’m being really brave, I’ll even schedule a long weekend in September. Maybe October, too!

As Ellen Page said to Allison Janney in “Juno,” when she said she was going to get Weimerauners after Juno moved out, “Whoa, dream big!”

Hey, it’s all I can do right now. And I cannot tell you how forward I am looking to it …

In case anyone thinks my frame of mind after losing Sia is any better, well. Enjoy that optimism of yours. So cute!

The Baltimore Sun did a very nice story on her. One of my boys sent it my way yesterday, along with a tribute one of her editors did in his newsletter. And I was gut-punched all over again.

This makes me understand the journalism scholarship thing. Again, not quite how I would have honored her. But I get it now.

Her name was all over the air yesterday, actually.

I found out that a mutual friend was with her when she passed. That’s quite comforting. Not only was she not alone, but that she was with such a good friend.

I thanked him for being there. I don’t know why; it sure isn’t my place to say. But she would have said it if she could. I’ve been kind of doing that, letting people know she loved them.

She was always so good about telling me how awesome she thought I was. You feel good when someone like her admires someone like you. I just want to share that as much as I can.

I sent our buddy my favorite photos of her. He appreciated it.

Funny how our worlds connected, even when it wasn’t us connecting.

That’s the thing these days, with the small field we are in and the wide world of social media. You don’t have to reach out and call (don’t ever call me — text me) anyone. You can simply ask someone else how they are doing … or go lurk on their walls and go away quietly with them never being the wiser.

I got up the courage to read some of our last conversations on Faceypages. My last words in my last message to her, sent earlier this summer, were “Love you more.”

I’m so glad that’s the last thing I said to her. I mean, I wish there were so many other things said. But as far as parting words go, I’m OK on our “love you, Goddess”/”love you more” as our final conversation.

Was sitting at a red light here in Braddock Beach. Minding my own business. When BAM!

A VW rear-ends me. 

Mom was with me, and all her aches and pains. 

I was calm. Looked in my mirror and thought very long and hard about throwing Stewie in reverse and flooring it. 

Of course, my car is made of plastic and held together with gum bands and dreams. No match for that tank. So I threw it in park and stomped back to this fool. 

Horns honking. The light was green. Good for them. 

This dumbass didn’t even bother reversing. Or getting out of the car. Or reacting other than to say, “Are you really doing this?”

I said an apology would have been nice. But you’re no real man. So yes, we are doing this. 

He insisted his foot slipped off the brake. I said, “Onto the gas? Why the hell were you so close to me that it would matter?”

Long story short, Stewie is fine. Mom is fine. I got his plate and told him not to be in people’s back seats. 

This reminded me of being 19 and getting bounced in Wilkinsburg, Pa. The guy got out of his car and screamed at me to get back in mine. He was no doubt armed. I complied. 

Not this time.

This guy trailed me by a good mile after I drove away. Hope he thinks next time. I bet he will. He’d better. 

I was truly not looking for more reasons to hate it here. But they sure do seem to keep finding me. 

I like me with fewer chins! Clearly I lost a few between Chicago and West Palm Beach …

Someone casually inquired the other day whether it’s appropriate to do an intervention based on someone’s Facebook posts.

In my usual flip way, I said people are morons and eff ’em.

But as usual, I really shouldn’t answer too quickly. Because that’s not how I feel in most cases.

I mean sure, my ex-roommate who’s found sobriety and posts about it forty fucking seven times a day is either high on life … or doing lines and looking up sobriety-related memes to share all day and all night. Especially all night.

I had to silence that shit. Too fucking happy (or high) for me, man.

I mean, good for you — but just like drugs and gun love and noise, keep it away from me.

But …

If “intervention” is generically used like my old friend and his “BAE” have a bucket list when they’re not dying, well. Word choices aside, if it means helping someone who could use guidance or resources that you have in your head that they do not know how to extract from your head, then ALWAYS HELP. If they need help covering their shifts so they can go recharge on a beach somewhere, absolutely yes. Help a brotha or a sista out.

What I wish I said was always help. Always. If you can help, don’t ever hold back.

They may not want the help. Or the type of help being offered, if it is specified. But, ask what they need first and they may surprise you and not need all that much to get where they need to be going.

With that, I think it’s time to go dark here again. And on Faceypages too.

If anyone does, say, want to ask why or offer to lend a hand, I wouldn’t mind at all …

“August, the summer’s last messenger of misery, is a hollow actor.” — Henry Rollins

Thanks to good ole Facebook Memories, I know that today is the day Leanne’s obituary came out. We would have her celebration of life at her favorite bar/club four days later.

Such a beautiful girl. She looks exactly like my friend Lindsey. Same spirit and big laugh too. No wonder Lindsey and I clicked. It makes sense now.

There will never be another Sia, though.

I think about her every day. Mostly kicking myself for keeping my distance at first. (I didn’t want her to catch the wrath of Shannika if they knew she was talking to me.) But she didn’t care. She wanted to be my friend. So we just didn’t publicize it when we did hang out.

There were some people we knew who were so mean to her. She had a way of outshining everyone without even trying. And to read their comments on her wall, you’d think she was their BFF.

I prefer how some others are handling it — with silence. We all know how you related to her in life. Grieve for the time you wasted.

You know, like I am.

It feels like my window closed for taking time off to heal. Summer is drawing to a close and still I’ve taken no time off. I have a list of things I want to “come back” and achieve. But I want that door open to a vacation … to not have to leave new projects unattended.

And if I don’t either take a vacation to get rested, or to dig deep into that God-I-hope-it’s-still-bottomless well for one more superhuman burst of strength … I’m not sure how to tackle all the things I want to do.

Mom decided we should postpone the Pittsburgh Pilgrimage to next year. Which is fine by me but I am also postponing moving until then too. So, big summer ahead. I just don’t know how much longer I can function till then. I needed that vacation NOW.

It has slipped out of my mouth far too many times that Sia was the lucky one, to finally be at rest. Not to say she is, but then that gets into all my existential fears that should remain unspoken.

Of course, my greatest fear is that there’s this big old world — and I’m not going to see enough of it. Her fear was that the world was too small and she’d see it all too soon.

I guess, in a way, she was right. She can see it all where she’s at now.

I need to get a new fear because I won’t be able to rest if I don’t set foot outside Braddock Beach again in this mortal coil.

And I need to do it soon, before another winter of discontent destroys what little motivation I have left in me.

“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” — John Steinbeck, “The Winter of Our Discontent”

Because every time some fool who can’t be bothered to:

• like any of my photos, 
• say something nice in my time of grieving, 
• send a thank-you card or 
• otherwise give a shit that I’m still alive 

But who can jump down my throat at the merest insinuation that Donald Trump is not our savior …

And not even on my wall but rather in someone else’s feed which was where I was playing with the smart people …

Well. 

Sorry not sorry, but I have to defriend ya. 

Mom is pissed. This happens often. Last week it was someone destroying me because I was thinking about all the nice girls I met at a rally eight years ago … And I hoped they are happy and well. 

But sure. If that’s anti-Trump and you’re offended, bring back my friend and go take her place on the other side. Please. 

Anyway.

Momma is like, these fuckers aren’t your fathers. And even if they were, fuck them for crapping on things that are important to you. 

It happens off Facebook too. I get to hear opinions I didn’t invite because I wasn’t offering my own. I can only smile so much in a damn day, you know. 

I asked mom if I were wrong in offering a thoughtful opinion like, say, Trump rallying his fans to perchance use their second amendment rights to justify, oh, violence against his opponent is not funny. 

Literally. That was my comment. I don’t find it funny. 

Burn me at the stake, why don’t ya. Maybe that was the era that America was so great. 

In any event, mom tells me I’m smart and well-read and have my own mind and I use it. Oh, and did she mention fuck them? Because, fuck them. 

I wish my mom were healthy and could live forever. Because the world needs more of her and fewer non-friends who treat my very neutral comments as a reason to crap on me like I’m their personal litterbox. 

Don’t mess with my momma, fuckers. Because then I will really be about to throw down. 

Peace out, losers. 

Dearest S.,

I know you were with me all day today. So I don’t have to type it all out.

You know the impromptu meeting that almost kept me from meeting your friends tonight. You also know that I never worked as fast as I did to make sure I made it on time.

We didn’t do that while you were alive. I wish we had. Excuse ourselves from the unimportant to enjoy the company of like-minded people.

I enjoyed everyone I met tonight. But, you know. Those days of instant and complete friendship like we had? That ship has apparently sailed. But I do like your newer friends. I thank you for bringing us together.

It’s Alex’s birthday, which you know. I reached out to him last night and we’ve typed a few times since. I thanked him for welcoming me into your home and for all the dinners, bottles of wine and conversations we all shared. The day is bittersweet for him. I told him you’d want him to not miss the sweet. I hope he’s listening to me.

He called me Goddess on every reference, like you did. I love you guys so hard right now. Always did, but you are truly living on … please know that.

Your other friends and I head-scratched over the scholarship thing. I had to ask what they thought. They all had the same puzzled reaction. One said pretty much what I typed earlier. “Sia wanted to save the world. I am not sure I would have arrived at ‘journalism scholarship.'”

Another said you were probably cringing at the obituary writing. We all agreed you would have edited it heavily. And we also agreed — they picked the most-beautiful picture possible to accompany it.

You know the rest. You know how I cried when C. told us about coming to your house for dinner. I told how your mom taught you and your sister to cook. How she called you both “Child.” C. told us how he got his apartment (um, you. Of course.) and I told how I gave you the name of that place. They asked how I knew you and I told all our stories from Rockville and beyond. At some point they also realized I hired Teresa too.

I’m pretty sure I earned rock-star status, for bringing you both into our world.

You guys are the rock stars. I am just really, really good at hiring. 🙂

Funny how we don’t often get to do what we excel at.

They told me what happened with your promotion. Utter and complete bullshit. No wonder you didn’t tell me.

Well, you know the rest. I will leave it at that.

The nice thing about this gathering is that everyone loved you. I know of one, or probably two because you just know that’s how it goes, who were so mean to you who are coming to the next event. I’m waffling between wanting to share your story and wanting to keep you all to myself in mixed company.

I know I’ll make the right decision when it comes time.

In any event, the wine is wearing off and there’s a surprise little project in my inbox. Again, something you’d understand and appreciate.

I’m beginning to realize you were the only one who could. Or did.

Love you,
Goddess