my migraine came back today and i'm worried that it will eat up my life. i had thought i was beyond the migraines, at least these really bad days-long ones, but here i am again, back in the dark dark dark attic with the light from the tv turned way down (can't watch movies, but You Tube is okay) and the light on my pc turned down, and on my phone, and a cloth over the lamp, and just damnit. i…

I have been migraining since Thursday. Or was it Friday? When this happens I become lost in a fog of medication. Currently I’m stoned on oxy. It doesn’t exactly stop the pain, rather it muffles me so that pain doesn’t matter so much. And in any case, I’m not really in pain now. I’m in fear of pain. I’m in the darkness. But I’m coming out of the darkness. I have the lamp on. The left side of my face is…

Another Mother's Day has passed and I am glad to have to over with. My youngest child is not speaking to me, which is pretty rough when that child is 34. Bah. But we had a nice dinner at Puckett's, and we did the NYT puzzle afterward, as we usually do. Dale is at the controls, casts it to our large tv. It's fun. Today I was wondering if my PT (pool) would be canceled because of lightning and it was.…

April was NaPoWriMo. I wrote 30 poems in 30 days. I still don’t quite know what I accomplished. I know some of the poems are very good, most of them are not, and I am certain a good number of them can be worked on/redone and will be fantastic. I have been spending so much time on Substack that I haven’t really thought about this website much. But yesterday I updated my wardrobe page, and today I am updating this blog.…

from Grist, 2012 You are always swimming. Because when you were four years old your father tossed you in the waves, threw you up high and then you crashed down, your ears and mouth full of salt. You sank to the sandy bottom and he lifted you up again, and again, and you can’t stop laughing, even now you laugh with the memory of it bubbling up from your center. You are always six months old sitting in the little tub…

I’ve had increasing pain in my incision sites the last week, and last night I couldn’t sleep with my CPAP mask. I slept in my bedside recliner so my snoring wouldn’t keep Dale up. I was heavily medicated for the pain, so my sleep was in and out and I kept looking at my phone. This pain is sharp and I think it is normal. It’s a kind of stretchy feeling, like my skin is stretching and crawling into a new…

I saw my physician’s assistant to the dermatologist on Thursday. She is the one who diagnosed me with HS. I've been seeing her for years and we had discussed this HS diagnosis before, but she had been reluctant to make it. I think the main reason that she went ahead and slapped that diagnosis on me was because I have been on a pretty highish dose of doxycycline for inflammation and I still flared up, and so that she could get…

I have woes oh woe is me I try so hard to never give into the woe is me my skin (diagnosed with HS yesterday look it up oh the shame of it! Silly silly don’t be ashamed. Started a Biologic yesterday) and woe the head and its fissures of electric green terrible aching never know when it will hit how can I ever keep to a schedule if I can’t ambulatory myself on any given day and also notwithstanding the…

So let's talk about skin care. I'm not good at it, but now that I'm 60 it seems to be more important...well, maybe because I just had the considered-medically-necessary brow lift and I'm thinking, well, time to make a greater effort. The biggest problem has always been rinsing, the hassle of it, getting water everywhere. And the yuck of heaviness of just-moisturized skin. And the sweatiness from it. And the hassle of just wanting to go to bed already, or just…

it's a little like being two people. no. multiple people. i am a colony of girls i am a company of birds my brain looks and divides observes and pronounces sifts through and lifts up. my brain is a ticker tape never ceasing, not even in sleep how can i ever be expected to pay attention to what? to how? to be slow is to be in-between to be peering through the space between behind within the eyes the green place…

Perhaps the way to make a lasting change is to be the change, be the path you want to be walking on, let the road rise to meet you at ten am because you’ve already been on that road since five am yesterday.  If I want to eat, less, better, differently, then I really must needs WANT to change the way I eat right now. Already. Today. Just a moment ago when I made the decision. Changing a habit, and there…

My mouth now sometimes thoughtfully considers the tastes it discovers, the tastes it anticipates, the breakfast the lunch the mostly boring suppers; the mouth likes boring things, likes the sameness of the days, the sameness of the hours counting down each day; the mouth is more aware, more greedy, more forgiving, more obnoxious, more me and myself and all things bread & butter, brown sugar, steaming oats, lentils & rice, watery things with tiny bubbles all working toward the good–this is…

Writing poems is a fire, blue and hotter than anything else. Writing poems is a kind of violence, a taking over, a spinning and dropping and flying thing that possesses. And consumes. And refines. Words are the flame under the kettle. I am the kettle. I am the little tea pot. I steam up and the water comes pouring out, scalding, poem after poem after poem, hot off the presses. I will be famous, I will be remembered, I am genius…

The hardest thing about learning to be mindful is slowing down, is learning to pause. I do meditation using the CALM app every day. Even though it is very difficult for me to make new habits I have made this one. Am I good at it? Do I do it “properly?” Do I sometimes fall asleep? I've learned to ignore these questions and to simply concentrate on showing up and breathing. The bonus is the daily lesson that is almost like…

My birthday is tomorrow I will be 60. This stretches my credulity. And yet….of course I am 60. Today I will make myself a coconut cake, trying to recreate my granny's coconut cake. Or I will make MAGIC bars and shoot for very-low sugar can she do it? I have begun pulmonary rehab and I'm having so much fun exercising. I get tons of attention and as far as I can tell I am never really short of breath so I…

Today I went to a local surgery center for an epidural in my C Spine. This is routine, I’ve done it 3 times before. No biggie. The nurse who took me back was a little flaky, but I just thought, okay she’s a little flaky. She was asking routine questions and I told her I wanted to be clear that I had had COVID 2 weeks ago. She then began a sort of mini tirade about how COVID is the FLU…

It's fall, though not as much fall as I would like. But it’s apple season and I need to get out and hand pick some apples. Sumo (orange) season is my favorite fruit season and that is in  January, but a close second is apple season– when the apples are good. I want to drive over to Ellijay and get some apples there. I would like a Big Mutsu,  some really good Winesaps or Romes. But every year is different. The…

I have begun a meditation practice. I'm reluctant to call it a “ practice”  because I don't want to jinx myself. I want this pattern to continue.  I've been trying to begin a meditation practice for quite a while, years actually, but these last few days I have found myself actually doing the “daily calm” on the Calm app.   It's interesting because in a way  I think of this particular meditation as a kind of daily “devotion” with a lot of…

I have been hankering for a change, some sort of fundamental change maybe, something life-altering like moving away from here to a place that is so different that the corner stores are unrecognizable. Moving away somewhere where no one knows us and we have to start all over. Or running away by myself to live in Europe all by myself where no one knows me. I suppose this is a kind of escapism, or an attempt at  escapism. There has been…

The things we discover about ourselves. I will be 60 November 15th, but it is at this late point in my long long therapy journey that I am beginning to accept.. to realize yes.. but to also accept the fact that I am so hard on myself. All of the time. I drive myself just as relentlessly as if my mother were still in the house with me as if she were still living and could call me on the phone…

If I had known how difficult it would be to live as a bipolar person, to keep myself grounded, to keep myself inside the white lines going down the road that I'm living on, I would not have had children. When my keel is even and I am able to interact with people pleasantly, it's not so bad. But this morning I found myself practically yelling at my poor son, my autistic adult child, who had just awakened. I started ragging…

i drove us backroads-all-the-way down to the farm. such lovely places spaces views what an enormous and glorious country. what a pleasant time with my father. and my brother who i was not expecting. i rewrote/updated an old essay for my father and i read it aloud to him. he did not know that this is what i do. he did not remember that my brother and i played the hell out of the old piano Patches had given us. he…

I fear the future. Not afraid exactly, but very aware that things are shifting. I am 59. My mother died at 59, a little less than 2 months before her 60th birthday. I am well, other than all my ailments which seem to increase and then to ebb just a bit before increasing again. I want to change my health, if I can. I want to make the most of.....or is this true? Do I want to "make the most of…

this brain is full of glitches matted trees doorstops inside my wrists this brain gallops the length of this body corridors open windows massive doorknobs this giant yellow house these pink roller skates my mother’s twister boards this brain goes for a swim in the pool in the chest the brilliant clean blue god is there it thunders this pool becomes an ocean this god becomes a kitchen mouse a pocket watch my grandfather’s hairy hands lift it up my brain…

look! the stars were here. their black holes, their empty watering places. the memory of light. they swam these dark channels, they gathered up the coals and cast them down to god. their dragon breath, their dragon heads bowed everything burning everything turning redder as each flower of morning pulls the night over its head.