My Bad

SOUNDTRACK: WITHOUT ME/ EMINEM🎤🎼

 I’ve been so busy with a few things, one in particular, that is sucking the life out of me, is my annual 31 Days Of Halloween, where in I have a video up all 31 days of October which is actually three MONTHS worth of content condensed into 31 days and, I love it, do not get me wrong, but after this my mind will be an empty jar! It’s the editing that drags. You watch a video and you don’t notice the different editing features because if you did then someone did it wrong, right? 

SOUNDTRACK: I DONT GIVE A FUCK/ DUA LIPA

Anyway, it’s those tiny details and photo hunts that literally take HOURS to do one video that feels like paddling up stream. But! I feel great when I see it all coming together! I use a pad and pen to keep everything straight, I like to hold it in my hands so I can cross out, move, add, wherever I want and the messier it looks the more I lOVE it!!! 

SOUNDTRACK:  BABY HOLD ON/EDDIE MONEY

I’m really feeling the best I have in a long time. My time of year! Plus, a side effect of my daughter and son blocking me, that I do not think they saw coming, is that I feel so much better. I don’t have any pressure to make sure that I jump through hoops and it’s just not bothering me. I found a really great therapist that specializes in this adult child separation thing and she gives permission to express all the feelings that society says you’re a bad parent/ person for having.

SOUNDTRACK: RIVER/EMINEM FEAT. ED SHEERAN

SOUNDTRACK:ID REALLY LOVE TO SEE YOU TONIGHT/ENGLAND DAN AND JOHN FORD COLEY

I’ll try and do better checking in, I’m just so busy.. Oh! Found this man on Tik Tok who has the voice of a goddamned angel, melted Carmel, read me the dictionary, My Friend…. Anyway! He was abused by a female care taker and I reached out hoping that he’d read my message and not just think it’s someone sliding into his DM’s and we’ve been talking. He’s spectacular, kind, soft, a great husband and daddy and brave. He wants to have conversations with me and his wife before he has me interview him, we’ve started that process of gaining trust. I’m so blessed by this journey!!

SOUNDTRACK: SPRINGSTEEN/ERIC CHURCH

Gonna go.

Congrats on the girl. Girl dads are the best.

Luv,

Me

September 21

 September 21st Is my dad’s birthday. The second one that he won’t be here for. He’d be 76. 

I talk to him a lot and make sure that I’m not forgetting his voice but, that will come eventually. We can’t imagine forgetting the voice of someone we love but we do in time.

I’ve texted messages to his phone. I’d imaging that it’s not on anymore and probably at some point some stranger will be given his number and wonder who the weirdo is that keeps sending “ I miss you” “ I love you” “ I need to talk to you” and maybe they will be kind enough to just ignore them and let me continue.

It’s a strange thing, being an orphan. 

Happy Birthday, Dad. 

Tracy

THE POWER OF RETAIL THERAPY

 I’ve been shopping both for our trip in December, Lord willing and the creek don’t rise, and for fall because it must be done. I’m literally going to put the vacation clothes back into my suitcase after our trip because I *think* we are going to Hawaii in the late spring and the clothes are summer clothes that I can’t wear in the winter anyway so, look at me all packing in advance advance!

I’ve mostly kept to the, I’m wearing dresses and skirts for the foreseeable future, because I like the cute, but I did buy a couple of joggers that are tight at the ankle so I can style them pulled up and baggy or down around the ankle and a shirt with a belt and platforms or no belt and giant suit shirt tied? And I bought a skater skirt, a white sweater and knit tights to wear with my Docs. I love love love how Diane Keaton dresses so young and fun and sexy and maybe I’m in a midlife crisis but I am here for IT! I need a change! Head to toe, change things up! 

It’s impossible to find real Mexican food in this state. They like themselves soMe Tex Mex which is ( say this in a Scottish accent, it’s a lot better) Ccccrrraaaapppp! All soupy and fake cheese nastiness. But I still get on my phone every now and then and type in “ Real Mexican food near me” and three days ago a miracle happened and I found one!!!!! It was even right next the husband’s project so we both got the Chile Relleno which is one of my favs comfort foods!!! Plus, in Arizona we had a place that made Pollo con crema and I have not found it anywhere else…. Until three days ago!!! Yes!!!! My second fave with some handmade tortillas! I’ve found my people…. Well, my food of comfort!! How did that even happen, by the way? I’ve lived in the Southwest for a long time!

This is short. It’s really late and I’m very tired!

Night luvs!!

THAT GIRL

 Me

Dealing with loss

 I have to apologize for the blog reading like a bad soap opera. Really, I am not an unhappy, miserable , asshole, I just find that the stuff I need to get out isn’t about my great lunch date with my friend and her daughter or the fact that I rode 15 miles on the bike a few days before I went into the hospital and that before that I was going a good 10-12 miles per day. Or the fact that I was sent a handmade quilt by a subscriber of mine or that I have a pre- release release date for my little book or that I had the best Sangria tonight.

The stuff I need to throw on here with my metaphorical fist full of pain and rage and failure and embarrassment and short comings and red and black paint and scream a silent scream that would echo through space for thousands of years before it burns out, finally, into ash, falling back into the atmosphere burning out like fireworks for people I’ll never know….

That’s what lands here. Ash. My chest so heavy my soul flickering as it slowly burns to the core, ash flying around inside of me, falling onto the screen in things we call tears but they are literally molecules made up of chemicals released from our brain to relieve the pressure. Science can now look at your tears to see if you were happy, sad, dark, excited… your tears have the ash of the emotions locked inside. Uniquely yours. Like snowflakes on a soft warm cheek. The chemicals on this phone hold the weight of my world. My story. My highs. My lows. Tonight there’s no doubt some sangria as well.

Awkward juxtaposition of relief that I lived through another close call and the fact that my oldest child told me two days later that he didn’t call because I’m a piece of shit and if I died he’d be just fine…. Wait, hold on…I felt relief to be alive and for what? A sucker punch? Over baby food. This is what I was relieved for or when he said that I’m a shit mother, grandmother and person…… But, that’s a god damned lie!!! Or when he finally said, before blocking me… Are you suicidal yet? No! Not over you, and piece of shit is old news. It doesn’t hurt me anymore! I scream in my head as the ashes fly furiously around behind my eyes trying to fling themselves onto my cheeks but I play dead instead. I remove my emotions from my chest, set them in a box and paint. The girl child struggling with her mental health captivated by every word he types stands by yelling “Ya!” “I’m taking your grandkids away! In every way possible! Blocking you from all pictures everywhere, my phone too like he did!”

The day I met my Linky Cooper, I looked into his eyes and felt his puzzle piece fit into the hurt part of my heart left by my mother. I felt it happen. More pure love in him than I’ve ever experienced. It felt like light and warmth and the explanation I’d been searching for. This boy was why. Why my path had traveled the way it did and when it did and every turn, dance, fall, kiss, heartbreak, run, walk, cut, had accumulated into this boy. This soul and mine. I cried tears of relief and pure joy. My ash falling onto his tiny hand and he looked back into my eyes.

Gone. Why did I feel relief? 

My husband says… Stand up! Be the mother fucking warrior you are!! And I’m trying but ashes are falling out of a missing puzzle piece in my heart and I’m trying to scoop them up to pack them back in so the hole fills back up.

I’ll get there though. I always do. I’m a mother fucking warrior. Bet money on that.

No pictures of bears in ages and ages….

Night,

Tracy

I’m home.

 I have a nurse, IV antibiotics, oxygen, pain meds…..

~~I get knocked down but I get up again, ain’t nothin gonna keep me down.~~

It’s been a week? Right!? I mean, not a good week but a WEEK. I can’t remember a lot of it but I can tell by my arms that I was either in the hospital or fist fighting my demons. Drugged up? Yes. Sad about that? No. That’s the kind of mental vacation this girl needed, just check the fuck out. I wish it hadn’t come with all the other stuff though.

Last Wednesday I told my husband that I could smell sepsis. It’s a gift, thank you. And then Thursday I had excruciating pain in my flank. I used a heating pad and got some sleep, woke up, took a shower, packed a bag, the husband came home, I told him to get some rest after dinner because I couldn’t take much more. I began to get a fever, feel sick, cold sweats, headache…. Just NOT the best party. At 5 am I woke up the husband and told him that I needed to go ASAP. 

As soon as my blood test results came in I needed an ICU bed… antibiotic resistant bacteria, septic shock etc…

Spent nine hours in the bed I like to call Torture From The Depths Of Hell. No beds available. Get your vaccine bitches! Speaking of that, guy in his 50’s rolled by me on a stretcher wearing oxygen mask joking about how’s he’s finally been made to wear a mask…. A teen girl screaming for her mother because mom had Covid, girl had to leave her, girl yelling “ I can’t live without my mom. I don’t know how to do things.”

I was given no food, no water… The ER sucks and was overwhelmed. Then transferred by ambulance to a different hospital. And compared to the ER, it was like being gently placed on a cloud. A medicated cloud. 

Anyway, I’m tough. I’ve got some extra stuff to go through, I guess. I always power through the stuff. I’ve got to stay sassy and quirky! It’s mah job !

Ps: on a side note, neither one of my two oldest children called to check on me. Let that sink in. 

Me

Still in hospital

 Let me just list the list here:

Moved from sepsis to septic shock ( working double time to get on top of that!)

Lung nodules …. Probably from Covid last year …. But not the reason my oxygen is at 84 so I need to see a pulmonologist not a cardi-pulm anymore. One specialist per organ and a cardiologist. I’m on oxygen at home when I need it.

Kidney tumors. Three ct scans and two mri’s and they look like “fluid” which would be good. Need to get a biopsy which sucks

Double kidney infection, bladder infection and Urethra. 

My arms look like someone hit me repeatedly with a golf ball at high speeds…31 injections, iv’s and blown veins.

My face and arms are puffy af!!

I’ve had some really good nurses!!!

They knocked me out for days. I can barely remember my time there.

I’m on the mend. Go me.

Have to go.

Tracy

Still in the hospital.

 I’ll update when I’m able. 

I’m in the hospital

 Went to one hospital and was transported by ambulance to another.

Double kidney infection 

Sepsis 

Something found on lung ct

Something found on kidney ct

Update later