A few days ago I ran five miles and began sorting boxes. Gary emptied the attics last month. Six months ago I began running again. Two years ago I decided enough was enough and I would eat better and lose some weight. We began isolating from Covid in March 2020.
All the boxes stored in the north and south attic went into the largest bedroom. Then we emptied the huge closet in that room and everything from under the bed came out.
Maybe I should keep it to myself. But no, that would not do. I read most of it aloud to Gary. Then I composed an email, but kept adding to the Bcc. So here. Here it is. It’s unlikely that any (none?) of my family will read it, but sending it as a link in an email probably wouldn’t change that.*
I am calm in desperate situations, sometimes passionate in discussion, but quiet at my core under stress. Pressing down fear, anger, frustration, and other emotion in fraught situations is almost automatic. (Most people who think they have seen me angry have no idea.*) I learned to suppress those emotions when I was being teased, bullied, and otherwise harassed in childhood and adolescence. It is a skill I have fallen back on throughout my life when dealing with mentally ill relatives and grief. And injustice every darned day.
[intended as] First post in over a month. Retirement, running, carving, canning, Facebook, and reparations, in no particular order. And the skink.
A friend of mine, someone I know only through our mutual blog posts and a handful of emails, the exchanges of notebooks and weaving… lives in a deeply red community of a deeply red southern state, the one blue dot in a red sea. She has found herself in situations where people say what seem such outrageous things that she is too flabbergasted to respond and in situations where she knows she is being deliberately baited. Walking around blue becomes an act of courage.
I get that.
This is probably not the best way to come back from a month of silence. I meant to write about wood carving and jam jars and a train ride, our bivalent booster and books. I’ve started that post. Instead…
&PRIDE Press 