serafaery

I broke a nail yesterday. For the first time in YEARS. because my perimenopausal nails have been so weak and brittle for so many years that they haven't had the tensile strength to break, they just tore pathetically in sad little wispy strips.

Thanks, Creatine!

This may be a life changing supplement. My joints don't feel any better but maybe my hair does? It's the longest it's been since my 20s.

Cannot express how comforting it was to get home around 10:45pm last night and see the eaglets both on the nest, calmly watching the fireworks show. Last year the chicks had already begun to disperse, we never saw either of them on camera after June 29th, and their parents disappeared for two days after the fireworks. But this year, they shortened the show to 30 minutes and also my understanding is that they moved it slightly further away from the nest. So they were fine. They've had two fish deliveries to the nest from Shadow (dad) already this morning. All is well.

Avalanche was totally fine when we got home despite a larger amount of louder explosions in this area. She greeted us at the door with her tail up and asked to go outside, lol. Nope, not while the world is exploding, lil kitten. She slept under the bed with us, and came up to snuggle at about 3am. It was finally mostly quiet by then.

Both of my crows are here though they seem a little stressed, and I haven't seen their fledgling in a couple days.

I haven't heard our local red tailed hawk yet, but I don't usually hear that until afternoon, so, we'll see.

Was hoping to do some birthday stuff for Tyler today but he's not feeling well. I might bring him some bone broth later. Poor thing.

Tea with pixie this morning and I'll deliver her sparkles. I have to drive over an hour to see her but whatevs, it's not very often.

Time with Adam and Andrea last night was absolutely magical. I have a raging headache this morning but I think that was from the long day of work out in the sun, not so much the beautiful evening we had. I decided I like the simple plain metal gold sparklers the best. I still have three little boxes to save for next year.

Josh and Adam danced, Adam is a delightfully skillful follow, it was really fun to watch.

Going to lie down for a bit and digest my oatmeal before I get changed and head out. I put small apple chunks in while cooking because apples have a compound that helps headaches. Added cinnamon, a little bit of butter and a dollop of yogurt, plum, blackberries, and walnuts. So comforting.

Overcast but we expect sun and 80 for the high. The weather has been so blissful lately.

I cried a lot yesterday, some grief waves hit me sideways when I wasn't ready. I've been avoiding my meditations and not journaling enough. I'll get back to it.

omg! BOTH eaglets are back in the nest this morning! I'm so happy.

ETA: two hours later and they're still there! They've had multiple fish deliveries from their parents, I can see why they're choosing to stay :)

At the moment Luna is right up at the camera, Sandy is in a food coma :)

ETA again: still one eaglet on the nest this afternoon, the other is on Cactus Snag nearby :) Strong smart birbs yay.

Eagles are doing okay. Sandy hasn't made it back to the nest yet, but Luna did this morning briefly. I am holding out less hope for them being safely situated for the 4th and not driven away, they will certainly perish if they lose contact with their parents at this critical stage. The parents are doing everything they can to lure the chicks back to the nest, they keep bringing fish there, but so far Sandy hasn't been able to make it back, and Luna doesn't want to stay without her there. They are getting fed, but it seems like, much less. Fledging is one of their most vulnerable times of development. Most eagles don't make it past 1 year. More worried, but it's out of my hands, the whole fireworks thing.

Someone set off a mortar last night nearby and Avalanche JUMPED and stared at the sky for about ten minutes, staying under the gazebo on the patio. I am reconsidering leaving to visit Adam and Andrea on the 4th. I definitely will come home before dark. I don't want to leave her alone in that chaos. Fireworks are banned in Portland but not in Tigard, the city line is literally our back yard fence.

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Hiking Silver Star Mountain with Tyler today, need to get dressed and packed. There is smoked salmon quiche for us that I made Sunday and rhubarb pie in the oven.

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Kept meaning to mention, I can't remember if I already did, that after relating my difficulty with wearing glasses to my eye doctor, she suggested trying wearing one contact lens. She said 80% of people do fine this way and just to try it. This way, I have clear close up vision in one eye (the one with no contact), and distant vision in the other (this is what I need them for).

I have heard of people doing this but I thought they were making a mistake, but having a doctor tell me to try it has been life changing. It works great. I can drive, I can still see my phone, I can sparkle (up close vision is critical for this) but still see friends' faces at a distance, and I don't have to constantly stress about where I set down my $500 pair of hideous (I just hate how my face looks in them, any pair is abhorrent to me in appearance) glasses that I hate to wear and feel embarrassed and ashamed to need.

It's been sooooooooo nice to have this option.

She talked me into dailies which I enjoy the feel of, but not the wastefulness. So I will probably go back to 30 day lenses after this, but for now, I'm just doing dailies, and they are more comfortable, so, bonus.

I've been working mondays for so long, it feels so disorienting to have this monday off.

I used to love mondays so much. I would catch up on office stuff and feel accomplished for all the weekend work and just rest and do chores and whatever seemed important.

Need to re-remember how to do that :) It's a good problem to have.

I had the most amazing evening with Andrea and Adam last night, sparkling a neighbor of theirs, I went straight from work and kept my wings/ears for it, everyone was so tickled.

Andrea is someone I met through my first love (that sounds so cheesy but I honestly don't know what else to call John, he was my everything from age 22-28) on livejournal (I met John online also, we were all prolific writers back then - omg I met John in the Red Dragon Inn on AOL lol, a free form role playing room), and when John and I split she and I were closer than ever and she made it clear she wasn't taking sides but if she did it would be mine (it was an amicable breakup anyway), and I felt so comforted and she has ever since been a source of comfort and an angelic presence in general in my life. She is from Tucson but eventually settled here in Portland (multiple loved ones I met online eventually came here to live, I feel so blessed by this), and she has been there for me in ways I can't celebrate enough, but always a little bit distant. I brag to her and anyone who will listen all of the time, she is the reason I met Josh and Tyler, she brought me to partner dance, was the first to encourage me to pursue fairy hair sparkling as a real profession, she has everything to do with how magical my life has become. (Indirectly I also credit John for all of this, since he brought me Andrea. The first person I fell in love with is basically the entire reason my life is as magical and supported and healthy as it is. He taught me how to be a good person. And how to love and be loved. Not to feed egos or with conditions, but just for the sake of love itself, because we want to, because we can't help but love each other.) It was really nice - I cannot overstate how nice - to reconnect and they asked us to come over for the 4th for vegan dogs and sparklers and to watch the downtown show from a safe distance and I am excited for this.

I am intimidated by Andrea, her intelligence and her beauty, and Adam similarly, but they love us unconditionally and I have not felt so safe and seen and held by friends in a very very long time and it makes my eyes mist up to think of it. I have been needing to feel cared for by friends for a very long time. I know life is hard and distracting, but chosen family is more important than people realize, to people like me whose blood family is too splintered (and mostly deceased) to provide anything substantial in the way of care.

It's been so painful to try to stay in touch with a former group of friends and continually get brushed off and not invited to their things and then to hear about gatherings they had without me, and I keep trying because I need friends, I don't have family, I don't have extended family, but they don't understand, they think we have all the time in the world because they have not lost friends their age to cancer yet, they have not lost their parents yet, it's so heartbreaking. So, Andrea and Adam's kindness and the unexpected level of comfort I felt spending a couple hours with them was so, so needed, like an oasis in a desert.

I will go buy sparklers today. (I already have tofu dogs and Beyond Meat brats.)

Should make a list of things I'd like to accomplish, and pick a few to work on:

* swimming
* sparklers
* bake rhubarb pie
* pick blackberries? or buy some.
* bake blackberry birthday brownies for tyler
* get eggs from the neighbor up the street (ride bike to the chickens)
* stretches/silks exercises/PT
* laundry
* light vacuuming
* ship orders
* take product photos and list more items on the website
* draft marketing email for website and sparkling

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One of my most beloved customers developed a rare aggressive form of non-smoking lung cancer out of nowhere and her treatment for it didn't work. She is on a trial drug now but she is basically figuring out how to say goodbye. She has 1-5 years left depending on how the trials go. I hate this and I am so upset and I don't know what to do with this feeling. I want to spend more time with her. I want to offer her free sparkles for the rest of her life, I want to give her hand made food and spend more time with her, but I don't know if this is overkill or too much? I just, I see so much of myself in her, she feels like me 20 years from now (she is 20 years older than me), but gentler and wiser, I just. ugh. She is handling it with so much strength and bravery and such a good attitude. She is most worried about how hard it is on her husband. It is really hard to move through the day while trying to process this, right now. I am so upset and I feel it all through my body as a stinging tightness and burning pain. All of my joints hurt, it feels like my skin is burning. It is part of why I want to go swimming today, to relieve the searing feeling.

I should get into my suit and head out soon.

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one of the eaglets fell out of the nest yesterday. no sign of her and the cameras can't find her. it is concerning but she was very close to fledging and did glide to a tree on her way down, so, it is possible, dare I say likely, that she will still get fed and cared for by her parents and continue to practice and eventually develop the strength to return to the nest in a couple days. One can hope. It might take longer. I am very nervous about her being out of the nest for the 4th of July, as that disorients birds and they fly in blind panic at night and get lost, so all I can do is hope she makes it back before then. There are so many people including conservationists with eyes on these birds, that if she did end up grounded, she would be professionally returned to safety. So I am trying not to fear the worst. Her brother seems a little upset and is acting differently without her there. They've never been apart.

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One of our favorite hiking areas is burning. Josh and I were going to hike there the other day, but the weather was too iffy. It's been cool and rainy here all week but so much to the east of us is burning, from central Oregon to Colorado and Utah. Worrisome. Grateful for the cool and the rain. Even if it makes it hard to stay awake.

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A light week of work. Hiking with Tyler for his birthday tomorrow, teaching Wednesday, more Tyler time Thursday (his birthday proper), sparkling all day Friday, and a holiday weekend off. How fun. How lucky.

Tyler, my closet dearest most beloved friend aside from Cynthia, part of my wookiee family, has an identical twin brother who is a lung cancer researcher and doctor (oncologist). He knows all about the current drug trials and treatments for all the different kinds of lung cancer. Part of me wants to call him about my customer who is dying, just to, I don't know, ask how best to support someone in such a position. Sometimes Ben is just heaven to talk to, he and Tyler have inhuman levels of intelligence and discipline and capabilities and care for their fellow humans, it's just comforting to hear them speak. I would fall into a spiral of shame and inadequacy for being such an unaccomplished and failure of a human around them if not for the fact that they love me so.

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Josh and I finished Rise of Skywalker last night. This was my third or forth viewing and I only just started putting all of the pieces together for it. So much happens so fast in that movie, it tries to pack 3 films worth of material into one and it does so kind of poorly, so much of it was unnecessary and ineffective. I only just got in this viewing that the dudes Ben is fighting when he's trying to get to Rey and the Emperor are his own Knights of Ren, and that Rey sent the lightsaber to him to win that fight using the Force (something we've not seen before in Force trickery, along with the whole healing-powers thing that we only saw in this film - and that went straight from wound healing to full on resurrection - it's just too much too fast. But I do really love it went Rey heals the injured serpent). All I really care for is the connections between the characters, those are done well and I enjoy it, so I just sort of have to tolerate the rest of the chaos. I am still angry about the way Carrie Fisher died so young, before finishing filming.

I'm told I need to watch Andor, so maybe I'll start that next.

..

Current and recent photo of Avalanche. Her cat door is open but she chose to sleep next to me while I'm here journaling. We've been extra tight lately.

I thought tango would always be there. People dance deep into their 70s doing tango. But it turns out, like many of my other joints, my feet are deformed, and I can no longer walk with my weight on the balls of my feet. No more tango for me. Ever.

Partner dancing is all pretty much eliminated, as most partnering requires ball balancing for much of the time. For anything that pivots. Which is most of it, as a follow.

It is a loss that I will grieve for a long time. I took it for granted. I'm grateful for the time I had there.

I don't miss the stress of feeling inadequate and never being able to dress as nicely as the rest of the room. I was raised too impoverished to ever learn how to dress myself properly. I still shop at thrift stores because it's all I know. The only nice clothes I have are hand me downs from Cynthia and Natasha. And they are getting very worn out. Neither of them have given me anything since the wedding I don't think. I don't know how to care for nice clothing.

Fun observations about Avalanche.

When I water the plants, she chases the water drips, and this has become a highly anticipated game for her, she gets all happy when I start filling the watering can. She used to chase the sprinklers at the apartment - she likes water - so it's like I'm the sprinkler now, lol. I put extra water just to swing it around in circles to make her run after it, so fun.

Also, Josh exclaimed a high degree of wonder last week when, about four minutes before I came home, she walked to the front door and started watching for me out the window. I do not have a consistent schedule of any kind so there's no way for her to anticipate when I'll be home, but somehow she knew.

Natasha reported this behavior when I was visiting her in Canada, too. About four minutes before I came back from getting lunch and hiking and shopping a bit, not on any sort of schedule, Avi went to the window to watch for me.

It's too early for her to somehow hear the car.

How does she know?

Mysterious.

I want that antenna whatever it is :)

Life was better with dad in it. John Roscoe Jurgensen, 1942-2001. My heart aches daily. I had to learn to be my own father at age 26. Not recommended. But I do feel stronger now. Seeing people my age still clinging to their fathers with a sense of neediness for approval or support is a very strange sensation.

To see it with their mothers also, but I understand that a little more. My mom disowned me in my 30s, effectively orphaning me, and then later when alzheimers ravaged her brain I had to be the one to take care of her. But even through all of that, there is still inside me a little girl who wants her mommy. So I get it. The part of me who wants her daddy transitioned long, long ago to that whole inner Mr. Darcy thing. Though I do still seek him in my lovers. I know this. It's normal, it's fine, it's just instinct, it's not meaningful and I know I won't find what I'm looking for there, it's just a biological desire, like wanting chocolate, or a soft blanket.

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( a small need to vent, reflecting on contrasts, jealousy, insensitivity. humans just humaning. life just lifing. and then unlifing. as it does. nothing to be done but try to enjoy the brief flicker of participation we are mysteriously gifted. )

TIL how to check wifi signal strength so that I can make sure to have a decent video chat at my studio next week for group therapy - we do it online (everyone else is in the Ann Arbor/Detroit area with my therapist) and this week I'm working at the studio right up until the call starts so wanted to make sure I could connect here strongly enough for the call to work (the tech is a little tetchy and requires a very strong wifi signal, which this studio does not provide - my hotspot however will do the job, I learned).

Finished sparkling, brought my laptop to finish my work here while traffic is thick and will get some groceries and drive home after it dies down.

I'm getting really good at opening thai young coconuts with my newly sharpened chef's knife, and also at eating entire thai young coconuts in a single sitting. SO YUM.

I will put my hair back into space buns again before I leave here.

Grateful for a/c! It's 92 and muggyyyyyyy. Back down to 70s/80s the rest of the week, thankfully. Might try hiking silver star mountain tomorrow. It's the only place I've ever seen pika. (I hear them lots of places but have only laid eyes on one at silver star.) It's bear grass time and such a beautiful little mountain, nestled between the gorge and several cascade volcanoes (rainier, helens, hood, adams).

I'm tirrrrrrrrrred but my headache is gone thankfully!

I was in the worst mood yesterday and this morning but I feel so much better now. Work fixes it, sometimes. I had a wonderful morning, cleaning and cooking and showering and taking care of my cat and my husband. I made him a beautiful lunch. And myself also! Green salad and salmon salad for him. Purple food for me. (Cabbage and radishes with the last of the porchini mushroom gifted from the mountain.)

( food/body related. )

Tentative date with Finley Thursday? It's not tentative but we've already rescheduled twice, so, fingers crossed. I miss him. But I can't say those words to him. He won't say it back. Although he did say once, a year or two ago, when talking about leaving the country, "You're the only person outside of the polycule I would miss." He cares somewhat, or at least, he used to.

I keep listening to Rey's Theme in the car and playing Star Wars scenes in my head. It's such a fantasy land. Why does no one in space ever use a toilet. I think they are all angels. With angel-propelled aircraft. And somehow endless fuel and batteries that never die, somehow there is always charging available. I struggle with a lot of suspension of disbelief, the constant contradictions within the plot, the senseless violence, treating life as sacred and meaningless simultaneously. But I also love love love the feelings that universe evokes.

Needed to lock down my last couple entries because of too much detail about money/income related to the messed up taxes fiasco. I'm still feeling nauseated and unsettled about it but slightly less, it will diminish as I get used to the fact that this is just my new normal, now. I know they cut something like 81% of the staff at the IRS so they're basically purposefully messing up people's taxes and letting us drown in the fallout. My issue of payments from a secondary spouse not being applied to a joint return is known and common, the software is antiquated and can't resolve the two SSNs automatically, who knows if/when it will get fixed or what. But at least, it happens enough that they probably have a system in place for fixing it, once they get through the stacks of mistakes and eventually reach mine? Going to try not to pay it so much upset and attention, it's just really hard. We already bent over backwards and went so far out of our way to make sure we did everything right and this is clearly their mistake. So. Trying to relax about it.

It's a tough adjustment taking away Avalanche's free reign. She keeps going to the cat door and crying. I am wondering if I seal up the mystery hole in the bottom of the fence under the clematis and maybe somehow install a barrier so she can't climb up the tree, maybe that will solve the problem, or at least make it so I can let her out when I'm here at the house but not necessarily watching her.

I need to do some research on pet GPS devices, too. If she had something that actually worked and also alerted me immediately if she leaves, that would allow her more freedom also.

I am pretty sure when we lost her the other night she was just hiding under the neighbor's deck and not coming out. I shined my flashlight under there but it's a huge deck and I couldn't see all the way inside of it.

So I am playing with her and hyper focused on her in the mornings in the yard so she doesn't go anywhere, which takes away from all of my relaxation in the mornings, as it's about an hour of pure Avalanche supervision and play, but I want her to have some freedom and playtime so, I will get used to it. Just a tough adjustment.

It's fun to daydream about building some elaborate structure that she could run up like the tree but in the middle of the yard so she can't escape. But that's probably way overkill.

It's such a perfect day already. I need to get dressed and head to the dentist. Grateful I got in! Not looking forward to images as I just had that done, but will probably have to start over since this is a new doctor. sigh. At least it's close by.