What is today?

No, really. What day of the week is it? Because I’ve been convinced all day that it was Sunday. Even though I watched TV with Ginny and Sharon this morning, and we don’t do that on Sundays! But I swear today is really Sunday. But it also feels like tomorrow might be Sunday, instead. Good lord, y’all. Work at home, kids, live the dream! Never need to look at a calendar again! Not because you’ll know what day it is – trust me, you won’t! But you won’t care any more, either!

I have so much to do for GLAM in the next … sixteen? seventeen days? that I’m almost tharn. I am just staring into the headlights of GLAM like …. oh, shit, that thing gonna run me down. The only things I absolutely have ready right now are (a) things that didn’t sell at GLAM in December but I’m bringing anyway, and (b) things that haven’t sold online but I’m bringing anyway. I’m hoping to have a few things that are new, but damn I am cutting it close to the wire.

Maybe if I bow out of a few social things I’ve already committed to in the next two weeks, and work some late nights in the studio, I can get it all done, but… still. Three of the five things I wanted to go into Gainesville for next week are doctor’s appointments (two chiropractic appointments and a first visit with a new Primary Care Physician). There’s a part of me going “but I’m already so tired from all this other stuff” but also a part of me going “you know if you were a REAL artist you’d be more prepared for this, it’s not like you haven’t known that the show is coming up.” Brains are dumb.

Anyway. I’m tired and I’m cranky and …. well, part of it is that grief smacked me upside the head earlier this week and that was a surprise. Grief is weird, you know. You’re fine… until you’re not.

I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, This Podcast Will Kill You and the subject was Listeria. Not something I know much – er, anything – about. The first-hand account at the beginning, well… I thought it wasn’t going to bother me. They did a little warning at the start, sort of a “hey this first hand account is going to talk about the death of a mother, so if that’s a thing you can’t listen to, fast forward eleven minutes” and I was like “omg, please, my mom is like one of the last relatives I have who is still alive, this is gonna be fine” and then HAHAHAHAHA. The account was told from the point of view of the daughter, who is a nurse, and knows her medical shit. And even SHE didn’t know what was wrong with her mother. Her mother was fine, then sick, then almost dead, then better, then a little better, then dead. And they started talking about Listeria and how hard it is to diagnose and blah blah blah and I just sort of spiraled off into remembering how frustrating it was not knowing what Tim was sick with at first, not knowing how to make him better, how this woman talked about not knowing how her mom even got it, and how we still don’t know – and will never know – how Tim got sick in the first place, and it just… I had to turn off the podcast. That’s probably the first episode of theirs in six seasons that I haven’t been able to listen to. And I was just kind of in a funk and out of it for the rest of the day and then I didn’t sleep well for a couple of nights, and blah blah blah. And I know – I KNOW – that her story is not my story, and while it turns out that Listeria can very rarely cause endocarditis, that is not what Tim’s endocarditis came from, his came from a staph infection, so blah blah blah it’s not the same and whatever….but now I’m tired and cranky and fussy and my neck hurts and my hip hurts and did I mention I’m grumpy and now my brain is taking all that stuffed down anxiety and telling me how I’m not ready for and am going to do a terrible job at GLAM in a few weeks.

THANKS, BRAIN. How about, brain, a nice tall glass of Shut the Fuck Up?

But! My dogs are adorable, if somewhat bananas, so there’s that.

Here’s the thing about grief. I don’t know fuck-all about surfing, but I do know an awful lot about grief. I imagine grief is the emotional equivalent of surfing. Sometimes you ride the wave, and sometimes the wave rides you. Sometimes you are on top of it and everything is working and you feel perfectly balanced… and sometimes you move just a hair to the wrong side and get knocked feet over head and the surfboard hits you in the head and you see stars and you eat sand. The good waves, the waves you ride beautifully, you treasure because you know not every wave is going to be so perfect. The bad waves, you get through and you know the tumbling, buffeting, drowning feeling isn’t going to last forever. And I guess like surfing, you have a choice when you get to shore. You can hang up your board and never go out into the water again, or you can get right the fuck back out there.

I’m a get right the fuck back out there type.

But I’m also a normalize talking about it type. So thank you for reading this.

xoxo y’all