Dr. Wiggles Weiner Wagon

As I was writing my blog about my facial piercing, I was wanting to write more about desirability through the againg process because I had a lot on my mind about it. I'm probably going to say the same thing a thousand times over, but that's fine, this is for me, anyway. 

I think I was...11 the first time I was gifted a bra. It was Christmas, and I was still young enough to be interested in the Santa Tracker the local news station had in the corner of the screen even though I didn't really believe in Santa anymore, I just liked the magic of it. I remember I was wearing my favorite Christmas dress, a blue velvet number with gold star shaped buttons (the buttons were a facade, they didn't actually function in a buttoning capacity) and white, puffed sleeves that were a translucent tulle with embroidered gold stars on it. I felt very pretty in that dress, I loved it, I wore it for special occasions, it was THE statement piece in my wardrobe. We were at my grandma and grampa's house and if my timing is correct I believe this is the last Christmas spent with my grandfather before he passed away. I wanted to check my math on that...for whatever reason...and it turns out I was wrong. I was NOT 11 the first time I was gifted a bra. I was 10. My grandfather passed away in 1995, I was 11 that year, but this is a memory of Christmas Eve, and I did not spend Christmas Eve with him in 1995. Because he was dead. 

So.

I was TEN the first time I was gifted a bra. And then everything else stays the same, picking back up where we left off....I felt super pretty in my little dress, santa tracker, at my grandparents' house, we're back on track. 

Our Christmas tradition was that we got to open two presents on Christmas Eve: one was a set of pajamas, and the other was who knows what, but it was a present that was not pajamas. I had opened my pajamas already, I have no idea what those looked like, I do not remember, but I remember opening my bra because I was the most present and aware of my body in that moment than I had ever been in all my years before that. I can only imagine that I blushed deeply and immediately, because I had been opening my present with the expected panache of a dramatic kid, holding my gift as high as I could to show off whatever thing it was going to be, and several things happened as I recognized it as a bra: I became visibly embarrassed, my entire family started laughing, and I pulled the bra to myself to hide it. 

I don't quite know if I would have clocked in that moment that what I felt was sexualization and humiliation, but not in a hot and sexy, nighttime kink kind of way. In the kind of way where there is suddenly, and without my consent, knowledge of my body and its secondary sex charateristics, and it is no longer under my purview, but it is loudly at the center of everyone's world. 

The bra had been from my mom. She was laughing at me, my step dad was laughing at me, my sister was laughing at me, and my grandparents were laughing at me. I take the least amount of umbrage with my little sister. She was only 8. But the adults in the room should have known better. My step dad started teasing me about having tiny boobs in a sing song voice that he used all the time and I fucking hated it, and I extra hated it in that moment. My mom told me I had to wear one with every outfit now. I swear I didn't have anything boob adjacent. Nothing. I was still very flat chested, there's a picture of me around this age wearing a bathing suit top and I look like a swarthy little Mediterranean boy who is super into floral hot pink lycra. I was working with NOTHING and without my permission, I was shoved into having to notice my chest and think about my chest and put extra clothing on my chest from that moment forward. I didn't want to think about that. I was still kind of interested in santa. I was still playing with Barbies. The reality of my body and my breasts, wherever they had been the moment before, had been wrested from the ether and have not left my consciousness since. 

At ten. 

When I was twelve, I had to go to work with my mom one day and one of her coworkers...and older lady...told me I "was going to be built like a brick shit house". I did not know what that meant. My mom agreed with her, though, and I cannot recall EXACTLY the joke she made but it was something about me already being boy crazy and ha ha ha, preteens are a nightmare I should be chained up. It was something to do with me being locked away and once I grew into my adult female form, I was just going to fuck everything all over the place because everything all over the place was obviously going to want to fuck me. 

And to the latter point, there is definitely an accurate depiction of how I've been an object for consumption since before I got my first bra. My mom and step dad were assessing my body in a sexual way before I had even an inkling that my body being sexualized was on the table. They made judgements on when I should start to cover my breasts before they existed, and they preemptively made me ashamed of my breasts. Ashamed of my body in general, but the titties came first. They came much sooner than my bra, honestly, because as I write this, I'm recalling a time where I wanted to play in the sprinklers with my neighbor friend, a little boy, and I took my clothes off down to the undies and started running around with him. I was 6, MAYBE 7, and my mom came screeching out of the apartment for me to put my clothes on and if I wanted to play in the water I had to put on a bathing suit. I came in, started putting on my bathing suit, and asked her why I had to put a bathing suit on, my friend didn't have to and she said, "because you're a girl". 

At 6 or 7. 

She wasn't mad at me, I wasn't in trouble, but she was upset at my body being on display. My six year old little girl body, on a hot Florida day, running through a sprinkler with her friend who was a boy that was ALSO in just his underwear, and there were no functional, visible differences between the two of us. Just two children, indistinguishable except to those who knew them, and neither of us had boobs, but one of us was given preemptive body shame for titties that wouldn't exist for another 7 or 8 years.

It was me, I was the one who got those things. 

In eighth grade, I had a boyfriend name Angel. One time I made a poster on a piece of cardboard for my room that said I💜Angel except I spelled his name wrong so it said I 💜Angle. In reality neither thing was true. 

Angel wanted to make out all the time and I didn't. Angel wanted to paw at my thirteen year old boobs that were barely there enough, but they were there enough to make Angel notice. Notice and want to grab them. I didn't want him to do that. So Angel broke up with me to date Effie Lamour, a name I swear to you I am not making up. Effie had huge boobs and I suppose made out with Angel all the time because they kept dating, well..."dating"...through the end of the year. On the first day of 9th grade, I DID have boobs. Big ones. I wasn't thinking about my boobs in any kind of way other than they were a hindrance, I didn't want to call attention to them because I felt gross about having them. On the first day of 9th grade, I was wearing a white shirt that said WONDERBRAT on it. The spacing on the shirt and the size of my chest made it look like the shirt said WONDERBRA. Angel came up to me in the hallway and said, "wow, Drea. You've GROWN" and he mimed boobs coming off of his chest with his hands. The ubiquitous hand signal for huge knockers. You know the one, you're either thinking about it or doing it right at this very moment. I hope you're miming it to yourself. I know I did, but I couldn't do it right because of these stupid huge knockers. 

Again, my body, despite the personal plans I had for it, which was to wear my shirt and be left alone, was a display piece that was going to be consumed no matter what I felt or wanted. Existing in the body I was born in seemed to give everybody agency and access to my body but me. 

This was just the way of the world, and I had very little input. It didn't matter that it made me feel disgusting. Everytime my step dad told me I was going to be a knockout one day. Every time some strange adult man slowed down his car to talk to me as a teenager...an obvious young teenager...to invite me into his vehicle. And the bitch of it all was, it didn't matter how stripped down to nothing I felt by this consumption, I was newly replenished for each new leer, every fresh harrassment, it was like being born again so another man could condemn me to be tethered to his lust. Maybe they drove away and never thought of me again, but I thought about all of them every time I stepped outside. My body was weighed down by each of them, wondering when the next man would comment on my body without my permission, another stone in my pocket as I walked further into the sea. 

The paradox came from wanting to be consumed on my own terms. I didn't know what it meant then, but if Elliot Glassman had told me I was beautiful in 5th grade, I wouldn't have been upset. I didn't really like Angel (or Angle, whichever), I liked Jason Krentz, but if Jason Krentz had wanted to put his stubby little hands on my equally stubby boobs that were trying their hardest to grow, I might have been convinced to let him because I wanted that kind of attention from someone I liked by choice. I felt the sting of rejection every time a boy I had a crush on liked Amber instead. It's hard to reconcile the idea that I am ok being an item to be held, desired, and consumed in some circumstances, but not others. It's confusing because I've never been shown that my agency was all that important, and I knew that, but somewhere my agency wanted the thing I didn't enjoy at all and what is that supposed to mean, anyway?

I think this is why suddenly being invisble to the panopticon of The Male Gaze (TM) is so jarring. I've been struggling to put a finger on exactly what it is that I felt strange about even though I mostly feel liberated by nobody looking at me predatorily and sizing me up as worthwhile or not. A few things, really. One, this was yet again something I was given no real say in. Society around me determined my returns to be diminishing after 35, and I had to go along for the downward ride. Could I exert more effort into youthenizing myself so I can stay dewy and youthful looking? I sure could, but I don't want to. If a 42 year old is sexy in her own home, does she make a sound? She does, and the sound is "oh my god I hate wearing a bra". B, you do learn to tune your self worth into how objectified you are. How wanted you are. Your body. Your face. Your clothing. I kept all of that shit adjacent to tight in my twenties and thirties until I couldn't anymore. Suddenly the world crashes down around you when you go from viable to gross when being an object is all you've ever known and understood. Derek can say all he wants that his dangling from the edge of monogamy had nothing to do with my weight gain after the car accident, but you can't fool a fat uggo. Nobody he was being slimy with had bodies like mine or looked like me. none of the women he ogled looked like me, none of his porn looked like me. I was the only one that looked like me in his life, fantasy or otherwise, and for as much as Derek says it was about his own insecurity, I think that's a bullshit excuse from a man who has never really demonstrated that he thinks that much of me as a partner. And I felt like it was all my fault. 

And C, I think the worst thing of all is there really is no warning and it is confusing to feel both liberated and contrite, because surely it's your fault that you're so ugly and old. 

I'm still trying to process this. In so many ways, I don't recognize myself when I look in the mirror. Like, I'm still me, I know my own face, my gray hairs don't alarm me, my aging body doesn't alarm me. But for as liberated as I feel by no longer being on the menu, I also have never known myself to look uglier in my life. I don't look old, I don't look old at all. I just look ugly. And I suppose this is the crux of the whole thing. I think that ugliness and weight don't actually matter, ugly women and fat women get eaten alive by society just as much as skinny women and pretty women. Any combination of those modifiers is just as eaten. Nothing about it matters, not really. But I think there's a way to hide what you think about yourself when you're in the jaws of society. I don't think my being ugly is a pejorative that I need to fix, it's just a truth that I can accept. 

There are no bears in the sky: National Parks Trip preface 2 of ?

So Derek and I are 16 days away from our trip, and we've been pretty deadlocked on moving forward with an itinerary. Not because we can't agree on anything, but because we've been super duper busy. This weekend I started the push toward getting our shit locked in again, so I'm back on my type A bullshit. 

We have eliminated Devil's Tower from our itinerary and swapped it for rockhounding in Billings. The Yellowstone River is a premium site for rockhounding agates and petrified wood, two things we both love, so we're going to skip out on Devil's Tower and spend two hours on the yellowstone river instead. The Yellowstone days are the ones I cannot fucking figure out, Literally every day in Grand Tetons I know what we're doing, and every day in RMNP I know what we're doing. We opted to spend the night in Kansas City instead of doing the twelve hours home in one day, and I even know what I want to do while we're in Kansas fucking City. It's just these two...well, one now..and a half days at Yellowstone. The park is so unfathomably big, and I'm not even in it yet. 

I've been trying to figure out how to navigate the largeness, and I'm not necessarily overwhelmed, but I am a bit more lost than I usually find myself when planning a trip. Even traveling entire islands wasn't as hard as this has been. Hawai'i big island and Maui were a comparative breeze. So here's where we're at so far:

I've tried rotating that three times and it just keeps reverting to its sideways position. I'm leaving it this way now. 

I have another page with proposed stops:

I'm looking up all of the falls first. Derek is most excited about the geysers, and honestly I could ignore all of them the entire trip and be fine. He is also super excited to see the paint pots, so I'm excited to see those with him because it's the thing he's talked about revisiting the most. Biscuit Basin is closed, so I may not get to see Mystic Falls, which was pretty high on my list, and the one big geothermal pool I WAS excited to see, Sapphire Pool, is in Biscuit Basin and we can't see it now. So that's a big time boooooooooooooooo from me. 

I am trying to plot out our itinerary using this handy dandy map:

And it's mostly helpful, but it doesn't seem to be as detailed as it could be about all of the possible stops and hikes and things. I've been tits deep in my AllTrails app looking for hikes (so far I know I want to do Lava Trail and Fairy Falls and Mystic Falls, if able, but other than boardwalks around geothermal basins, I'm not positive of any other hikes we might be missing out on because again...the map is just kinda...sparse) and that's more of a slog than one can imagine. 

My charmed life is so hard. 

Sixteen days out from our leave date. Our bear sprays arrive Tuesday. My vegan jerky arrived last week. I'm maping out our itinerary. I'm figuring out what foods to bring. Derek almost fell for a CC scam regarding our hotel in Jackson Hole. It's a busy time. And I made a cabachon today out of Indonesian Painted Jasper!

It's only the second cab I've ever made, and it's my first cab using the "right" method. I'm not mad at it at all. But I AM impatient, and it's costing me shine. Well. I'll get better. And I will eventually have a blog about our little basement rock workshop, but likely not until after we get back from our national parks trip. 

I'm going to stop pretending that I didn't break your heart

Generally, I think of myself as a fairly unselfish person. I have my moments...we all do...where I'm very me-centered, and I don't think that's necessarily a problem. As the day to day goes, though, I feel like I'm pretty willing to give people what they're asking for. 

I am also an unreliable narrator of my own story. I want to paint myself with a pretty flattering brush in order to escape reflection into the ugliest parts of me. And when I'm being honest, I feel certain I'm actually kind of the worst. 

When I really and truly love something, I hoard it. I don't recommend it to people, I don't want to engage in conversation about it, I get aggravated when people are like, "oh have you heard of this band? They're my favorite right now!" 

There aren't toooooo many things I'm this greedy about...most of it is music, like Glass Animals and Eels. Rarely is it a restaurant, though my personal recipes I am SUPER guarded about and I do not share them. Sometimes it's art, sometimes it's a book, sometimes it's a movie. 

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is probably the biggest one on my Close To The Chest list. 

I know it's silly, this is a really popular move, it's really well known. It isn't some obscure thing that I can be smug about in my own little zeitgeist cloud...it's...it's fuckin' Eternal Sunshine. Who my age and at least twenty years younger hasn't seen this movie and enjoyed it? Fucking ridiculous. I was...I think 19 when it came out, and I remember watching it by myself and thinking that it was such a tragic love story, and I reflected on my own life and understood how miserable I was with my eldest's father, and there was just no love there at all. I was certainly no Clementine, Chris was certainly no Joel, but we were also not two people who lost each other and then chose us again. Ew. We were two people who hated being together and that was that. 

My relationship model before Eternal Sunshine was What Dreams May Come. The idea of soulmates, someone you would choose suffering with because you are meant to be together, endured for several years as the paragon of heteronormativity and coupling up. And like...when you strip the idea of soulmates down to something like, "you would choose to suffer with someone because you were meant to be together", you can hear the misogyny of it all...the patriarchy of it. What a shitty idea to sell to mostly AFAB people (since we are the primary consumers of anything displaying romantic love)...that you may suffer, and your partner may abandon you when you need them most, but if they're your soulmate, you'll stick around. Destiny is stronger than autonomy and happiness. It's fucking insidious, and I fell right into it. How could I help it? I saw What Dreams May Come at 13, I think...maybe 14 (I looked it up, I was 14, I saw it the year it came out) and that age is right about the time you're figuring out relationship dynamics and being taught how to perform gender expectations of others and yourself, role expectations related to gender, and how to connect those things together and perform in a relationship. 

Soulmates actually fell apart for me fairly quickly (though it is worth mentioning that I still love What Dreams May Come. It's such a sentimental movie, and there is a lot you can feel good about pulling out of it. I took a lot of parenting advice from What Dreams May Come, so while I may no longer believe in soulmates, the movie still holds up. And I will forever want my home to be graced by a wisteria tree at the entryway) once I started being in relationships. Especially because I was in relationships with grown ass men when I was still a child. Society is really and truly failing AFAB kids. So there was this pocket of time where I was ideologically driftless when it came to what to model relationships after. And then came Eternal Sunshine, and I latched on. 

I do credit this movie with giving me the audacity to leave my eldest's dad. I saw two deeply flawed people break up, erase each other, find each other again, become aware of who the other is, and then choose each other again with full knowledge of what they were getting into. I knew Chris and I were never going to be that, I knew I had actually despised him from jump, I knew I was not attracted to him, and I knew he treated me terribly. So I left. 

I dated. I got into a relationship with Allen. 

I found myself adjacently unhappy. I loved Allen this time, I had been attracted to Allen at one point in the past. There was no sense of predatory yuckiness between us, we were bonded in a way that was real and not rooted in me trying to escape trauma. But would I choose Allen again, knowing all of his flaws? Would the bumblebee fly, anyway? No. I wouldn't. I knew it before I acted on it. The idea of staying together for our kid kept me rooted longer than I should have, because splitting from Chris cost me my oldest and I didn't want to go through that again, or put another child through that. I couldn't. Allen and I were together for...five years, I think. I had checked out after three. I knew he wasn't right for me, and I stayed with him, but it didn't really feel like a choice. Eternal Sunshine showed a conscious choice, and I wasn't making a conscious choice. My hand was being more forced than anything else. 

I was lucky that Allen and I split so amicably, and we both recognized that we could be friends, and be roommates, and raise our kid together in a way where everybody won. 

I dated again. 

I met David. 

And truly, I think David is where I could have completely diverged from this story and learned the big L lesson that I think Eternal Sunshine really hammers home, but that I didn't catch until a few years ago. 

When our relationships end and we reflect on why that person was a bad choice, I think it's fairly safe to assume that we promise ourselves we will never do that again. We will never go for that kind of person again. We list their flaws, we pick apart every single thing we didn't like, and we tell ourselves those are our red flags from here on out. I'm no stranger to that, I've done the relationship autopsy a few times, coming out of it thinking I had learned some amazing lessons about myself and what I was willing to put up with, and where my barriers would be drawn up for next time. I told myself the patterns I allowed the last time, and the different patterns from the time before, no longer had me in a chokehold, and I had grown as a person and as a partner. 

David was unlike anybody I had ever dated. David was the first person I broke my "no military partners" rule for. He was a lawyer in the military, something similar to that, perhaps? I know it was something legal adjacent, and I know it was for the military. David was very very very country, very very very white, and very very very earnest. I had legitimately never dated anybody like David in my life. The first date David and I had was supposed to be to this place in the Springs called Marigolds, my favorite bakery/restaurant, and then we were going to go the bar across the street and have a drink or two. But that day was the day Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed, and when I told him my friends wanted to go celebrate at Club Q, could we take a raincheck, he instead said, "well why can't I come celebrate, too? This is a big deal, and if it's important to you and your friends, let's experience that together." And I was just hooked on David from that moment forward. I was still seeing other people, though, because one, I have always been about that ho life and exploring my sex options is extremely rewarding, and because two, I did learn to not put all of my eggs into one basket when it came to partners. That was a mistake I definitely learned from. 

One of the people I had been seeing at the same time as David was Dan. I was also seeing Brian and...oh fuck, this other guy...Zach? Jeff? I dunno. But I drifted away from the other few people I was seeing, and then I was just seeing David and Dan. 

David was so sweet and charming and transparently into me. He was going to go home and visit his mom, and he wanted to buy an outfit for going to see her, and I had to stay home with my daughter that day, so he sent me pictures of outfits and had me help him pick the one he was going to buy. I remember sitting on my couch thinking that David was perfect, and I was seriously, seriously into him. He called me just to hear my voice, when we were together it felt like we fit. And had always fit. I mean...being with David kind of felt like finding my soulmate. I remember Allen telling me, "that dude wants to wife you up bad, I can tell, and you haven't even been seeing each other that long." 

Barrrrrrrrrrrrrrrfffffffffffffffffffffffff.

It isn't like Allen saying that was bad. It wasn't. It isn't like it made me feel a certain way about David. It didn't. I loved it. And I think somewhere, a universe exists where I chose David and we are married, happy, and ranching somewhere, as blissfully into each other as we were in the months we dated. 

I didn't choose David, though. I chose Dan.

Where David was forthcoming, Dan was elusive. Where David was sincere, Dan was acerbic and sardonic. Where David was attentive, Dan was aloof. Where David saw my fullness despite any paper trail pedigree, Dan saw what I wasn't and punished me for it. 

Somehow, the Dan option was my ambrosia. I tearfully broke things off with David. We were both upset. David was upset I had been seeing other people, and I suppose that's fair, though no exclusivity had ever been discussed, but we were both upset to stop seeing each other because there was a LOT there. David made himself important in my life with intention. David knew I had children, and he was so on board with that. He respected needing to wait until we were serious to meet my daughter, but he met Allen and he met my other friends, and he never made me feel like I had to chase him. He just...showed up every day and loved that I showed up, too. It felt like we had already been an established item, and David telling me that he felt the same way was a gut punch because he wasn't wrong. 

But Dan was making me earn it and making me feel like shit the entire way through, and I guess that's the cup of a carpenter. 

When Dan and I fell apart because of course we did, I was emotionally shattered, and while I have come to realize that this was NOT because I was desperately in love with Dan in any meaningful way, untethering from that rotten anchor was still really hard. 

And I didn't want to go through any of that ever again. I spent a lot of time after my break up with Dan wishing I had chosen David. I realized this about halfway through my relationship with Dan, actually. When Dan was deployed, I reached out to David to apologize to him, and he called me on my bullshit right away. He saw my bullshit before I did, honestly. He told me he had no interest in getting a drink with me, because he guessed whatever relationship I had going on was failing and I wanted to find some sort of safety in him, but he said very firmly that he was nobody's second choice, and I could take my apology and shove it right in my own butt. To his face I was indignant, but he WAS right. I was quietly hoping meeting up for apology and explanation drinks would turn into an "oops, we boned, and now there are all of these feelings again, guess I'll break up with my partner now and we can try again!" David blocked me after that and I never talked to him ever again. I can't even remember his last name to look him up, but I truly and genuinely hope wherever David is, he's happy. 

I did a lot of soul searching after Dan. Dan strung me along, and while I definitely was seeing other people after we officially broke up, and I knew he was seeing other people even if he didn't admit it (which he didn't owe me), I was still holding out hope that Dan and I would end up together. THIS was my Eternal Sunshine Era where I still thought it was a love story instead of a cautionary tale. I saw a lot of Dan and I reflected in those characters. Similar to Jim Carrey's Joel, Dan was avoidant, dismissive, judgmental, and passively boring (to me). Similar to Kate Winslet's Clementine, I saw myself as flighty, sure of myself, a little weird, and interesting (to me). Colorful against drab mundanity, exciting to someone who didn't really allow themselves against the grain excitement. I know I wrote blogs during this period where I quoted various Clementine monologues and applied them to my relationship with Dan. Because honestly, I forced it to fit. I was confronted with the reality of who Dan was and how he saw me, and I would have said "okay" if he had chosen me again. 

When I met Derek, he was nothing like Dan...he was like David. He was sentimental and earnest and he wasn't ashamed to like me. He didn't make me chase his approval, it was ok for me to be who I was, where I was, in the shape I was in, with the life I lived. And I still didn't want it. I was still chasing Dan, but I was honest about it, and I felt like that was growth. 

But the biggest failing that we all have is feeling so certain that knowing what our pitfalls and problems are means we are working on changing and overcoming them; the thing that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind confronts us with is it absolutely does not.

Derek is, for all intents and purposes, Dan. Now I say this with love for my husband, because I DO love him, and I say this with grace for myself, because I have grown...but Eternal Sunshine to me now shows how, had I really understood myself and CHANGED in that understanding, I would have ended up with David. I would have chosen David in a second, and I would have left Dan behind. Or I would have chosen myself and been with nobody, but that's for another day. 

Twenty some odd years later, I still love Eternal Sunshine, but it shows how terrible we are at breaking our own patterns and calling that anything other than what it is. Joel and Clementine are miserable together. They may not remember, but their interviews from Lacuna paint a bleak story. They both listen to the trajectory of their past together, and they both make the conscious decision to get back together. They are still the same people. Nothing has changed, they didn't learn lessons from their past relationship because they don't remember it. They walk into the same choice, despite being told by themselves that it's a mistake. That's not romantic, that's a warning. Joel and Clementine are not soulmates. They are two people who are attracted to each other, and that's fine, but they are two people confronted with the idea that they do not work, and they end badly, and they go ahead and make the choice that a version of them understands to be bad. It's a little silly to me now, and I am not rooting for them. My love of the movie comes from the autopsy of memory, and the understanding that even the worst days are ones worth remembering, because there were really great days, too. 

I have been sitting on this blog for months, and I opened it today because I had an episode that made me want to email Dan. I found a folder full of our old emails to each other, and I read one of the last pleasant emails we exchanged. It was from Dan, and sadly my email to him that he was responding to wasn't attached. I wish it was, he mentioned a disagreement we had about racism and I'm very curious about what I said. I am kind of guessing I said something pretty casually racist, I know who I was twelve years ago. But everything else he wrote clued me in to two things: one, he held pretty socially progressive views for the small window of him that email showed me; B, I did not pay any attention to him as a person. 

I have been really wrestling with this since yesterday. 

Not because I feel like Dan got the short end of the stick or anything. I suppose in a way he did, but not in any kind of way that I feel the need to apologize to him. I've been struggling with this because I spent so much time obsessing over Dan and getting over Dan and I can't even tell you the things about him that made letting go so hard. I have blogged before about how I understand that so much of my difficulty in getting over Dan was less about Dan and more about me and how he made me feel about myself, but I don't think I  understood how little of it had to do with him. Almost nothing. Because I cannot for the life of me recall anything about Dan socially. Like, I know nothing about him. I was just telling my girlfriend that the two things I can say about Dan for sure are that he was exceptionally smart, and he had a great laugh. His laugh always sounded surprised, like he was laughing in spite of himself, and I loved his laugh. But after reading that email and feeling shock at not recalling any of these things about Dan and forgetting them so hard that I allowed for the space to keep Allen's voice in my head with the assertion that Dan was super conservative (though I do not think I have ever in my life dated a conservative, I said as much then to Allen and I maintain that now), I feel like I have no other choice but to conclude that I didn't love Dan for Dan at all. 

My entire relationship with Dan was about seeking his approval, but for no reason other than he refused to give it to me in any meaningful to me way. I chased him and victimized myself because I wanted validation from a person that I did not know enough about to know if this was approval I even wanted. This was not terribly fair to Dan. I am not here to like, make him out to be the victim. I know I did some dirty fuckin' shit while Dan and I were together, I lied to him and misrepresented my victimization in very typical white lady ways, weaponizing my tears and that's gross. It isn't like he didn't make me cry, he definitely did, but I can think of a few times where I played it up WAY harder than necessary just to twist the knife, and I'm not even sure I was holding a knife to begin with. I do not think I was cognizant of any of this in the moment. I do not think I understood at 27, 28, and 29 that I was stuck in limerance without cause, I'm pretty sure this is something that you can only see in hindsight. But I do feel some type of way about it, because I accused Dan of so much shit that hurt me that I think I was doing to him. 

Now, several things can be true at once. Did Dan treat me like garbage? Absolutely. Was it valid to feel like Dan was embarrassed of me and to feel like he was right to be and to chase his love and validation? To my recollection yeah. Was Dan cruel to me? Absolutely. By Dan's own admission he was cruel to me, so this is not a projection or more victimizing. He wasn't nice to me. I could have left, but I didn't. I'll never know if he was trying to force my hand, or if this is just the way he behaves. We haven't spoken since 2015. I was considering emailing him today, actually. I've considered emailing him a lot in the last ten years, I think the last time I emailed him was 2016. He didn't respond, which told me a lot, and that's a small part of why I don't think I'll be emailing him in 2026. The other parts are why would I? And I've said deeply uncharitable things about him in these blogs in the last few years, and my biggest personal fear is finding out the ways that he ALSO figured out I was a rotten egg beyond the reasons he had 15 years ago. I've needed to exorcise those demons, but nobody should have to read someone else's moratorium on the ways they are terrible people that we aren't attracted to and that we actually kinda despise. I'm not saying I think he reads my blog currently, but I AM saying that there isn't a small possibility that if I DID email him, he might feel compelled to go read my blog and catch up on what I've done the last eleven years since we spoke. Even if he didn't respond. I know I would be curious. I AM curious about him, and sometimes I do wish there could be a friendship between us, and I think more and more...especially after yesterday...it's because I am quite curious about who he is as a person. 

I think it's pretty shitty that I never committed to memory anything tangible about him. It is deeply selfish that all of my pining for him wasn't about HIM. That's freeing as well, though hardly revelatory, I've blogged about that before. I pined for Dan because I wanted to be worthy, but I don't know who I wanted to be worthy for. So the only conclusion is that I wanted to be worthy to ME, which makes so much of my relationship to Dan's approval egotistic and self serving. I honestly cannot say if I wanted Dan to love me, or if I wanted me to love me and I felt like Dan was the finish line of some shitty marathon I never signed up to participate in. I can tell you so much about David, I can tell you so much about Allen, I can even fucking tell you about my oldest's dad. But I cannot tell you much about who Dan was as a person. I don't know him. I didn't know him. I know some of the things he was interested in as hobbies, like I remember he got really into making beer (that tasted like salami and I hated it), he went snowboarding with his friends on weekends, he was a runner...I think he did cross country in high school?...he played video games enough that I felt like window dressing in his life because he'd game for hours while I just kinda hung out....he liked reading. But our interests are just a part of who we are. I can't tell you about his belief system. I think I remember us getting into an argument about things worth dying for, but I more remember him making me feel stupid about my answer than I recall what my answer even WAS, and what he said he thought was worth dying for. I don't feel good about the fact that I was longing for someone who like...didn't even matter enough for me to get to know. He didn't inspire me to educate myself on any topics he discussed with me, he didn't recommend I read anything, he didn't really talk about anything big and important in the news that he was excited by or grossed out by, and while I can attribute this to him not meaking me any part of meaningful staple in his life, I can also say that I never bothered to ask. I did not do any kind of service to Dan. We were bad together because neither of us really fucking cared about the other person, and both of us would have been much better off if we had admitted that to ourselves and then admitted it to the other person. 

In defense of myself, I think these are big ideas that you can't really understand in your mid to late twenties. But we always look to excuse ourselves from our grossest failings, so I'm just going to have to sit with that. 

I didn't read any of our other emails to each other. I only read the one and then deleted them all. Deleted all of our old conversations. I don't need to see them, I don't need to know who Dan was then, because that chapter of my life is over. Who he was doesn't matter. I mean, it did, and I am apologetic about not figuring him out. Super gross of me. 

Since Dan and I stopped talking, I have done a lot of soul searching about the relationship. About my role in it. I know I was not a good person back then. I know that I did not do the best job of communicating things to Dan and advocating for myself. I do not see myself as a massive victim of Dan anymore, though I do still think he was deeply and unnecessarily cruel to me, and as much as I dismissed the reality of him, he dismissed the reality of me in ways that far surpass mine. Though there is no olympics of pain and wrong doing. I've often wondered if there is any blowback from this relationship on Dan's part. I wonder if there is any remorse, or reflection, or sadness about us and the ways that he failed to be decent to me. I wonder if he's uncovered ways that I was cruel and dismissive...because I can think of a few times that I was. I wonder if he's gone through the motions of discovery like I have, or if I just ceased to matter the moment we stopped talking. I wonder if, after so much time, he and I could be friends, because at least for me, there is enough distance and understanding now that it would be like meeting someone new with the knowledge that the intimacy of a romantic relationship wouldn't be on the table in the least. It's what makes me want to reach out and see how he's doing. What keeps me from doing it is maybe I AM a painful memory, and that doesn't even have to be about me personally. Maybe I'm something Dan is ashamed to admit he did to someone, and any reminder of that sucks. Again, not because of ME, but because nobody likes to admit to their callousness and be reminded of it. Or maybe Dan has done the same kind of autopsy of our relationship and figured out that yes, I am a deeply unlikable person and who wants anything to do with someone like that? I have no interest in rehashing our relationship with him, or litigating the wrongs and slights. While I would love to know why certain things went down the way they did, I also know that it won't make anything better. I've dealt with my wounds and nothing Dan could ever say would make things different. 

I think I'm just curious about him now. In a way that is completely asexual and devoid of romantic longing. I want to know who Dan is, because I didn't before, and it's fucking nuts to me that I let that slide. This isn't even a "I hope wherever he is, he's happy!" kind of thing, because in the most objective way, his happiness is of no consequence to me. I don't wish him harm, certainly, but whether he's happy or not is not a thing I'm invested in. In the ways where like, we don't care about the happiness of someone we don't know, because we don't know them so why do we care? In an overall human sense, I hope he's happy, but him personally, I'm detached from. And I think if I were to ever try and pursue the wild idea of emailing him that I get from time to time, it's what keeps me grounded in the idea that I was not ever in love with Dan as more than a concept (a thing I lobbed in his general direction as my own J'ACCUSE), and he could be the most interesting person in the world that shares every last one of my social ideals and I would not ever in a million years feel anything more toward him than friendliness. 

To bring things full circle, it's not impossible that I would make different choices now. I think, if I were Clementine, I wouldn't choose Joel. I would choose myself. I love Derek, I know who he is, I can tell you everything about him, but I don't know that I would choose him again with the information I've gained over the last twelve years of our relationship. I want to say that the cautionary tale of Eternal Sunshine taught me something finally, and I can examine my habits and choices with a much clearer set of eyes. There is no romance in walking through fire again and again. 

 

There are no bears in the sky: National Park Trip Preface 1 of ?

If you are not a type A trip planner or a type A trip TAKER, I am not ever going to be a good companion for you when it comes to taking trips. I research the places I'm going, the places that are must sees, the things you might miss unless you're in the know, the general vibe of a place, I have to know everything about a place that I'm traveling to. I think this mostly stems from the idea that like, I rarely go to places twice (except New Orleans and Chicago!!!) and thus I must maximize the time I'm spending in any given place because I'm unlikely to return. FOMO is real. There's another part of me...much smaller...that wants to make sure my arrival in any given location is feasible. Will there be potties for me, will there be things I can eat, what do I need to bring from home that I likely can't get when I'm traveling, etc. So I do a lot of preparing. 

A lot. 

I asked Derek yesterday if he hates that I'm a type A trip person and he said he doesn't hate it, but it can be a little much and sometimes I hyperfixate on things. 

Keeping all of this in mind, I had initially planned for this preface to our trip (42 days!) to be a quick peek in to the madness that is my itinerary creation, and now, that's going to be a PS instead of the main body. 

Back in the 90s, I was an absolutely fiendish reader. You gave me a book, I read it. And fast. Naturally, I loved the Scholastic Book Fair. Me and the Scholastic Book Fair would have been besties if I hadn't grown up super poor, but not every scholastic book fair was a disappointment. I do recall a few where I got to walk away with a book or two. At one of these book fairs, I found a book, judged it by its cover and determined it was surely the pinnacle of the truest journalism ever, and bought it. I remember looking at it in class after returning from the library where the book fair was held and counting down the seconds to recess when I could finally sit under a tree outside and read, unbothered, for fifteen minutes. 

The book was called Phone Call From a Ghost. 

And this was the cover:

Eat your heart out, Al Jazeera. 

I do not recall a single story from this. Not one. I DO have memories of carrying this book around with  me on more than one occasion after I bought it, though. And I have always been a heavy leaner toward the side of the fence that says ghosts are real, not because of any science or eidence, but because I have a lot of anecdotes that I can't explain away with reasoning or rationality, and so the next logical conclusion is ghost. Obviously. 

I have not thought about this book in easily three decades. After looking it up, I saw that the version I bought is the second edition, published in 1990 (presumably the give it a more believable cover), and the first edition was published in 1988. I was four at the time of publication, 6 at the time of reprinting with a skeleton about to use a rotary phone...and also fully dressed, which raises a lot of questions about the lives of animated skeletons for me, but that's for another time, I suppose...and I don't know that I was kicking around book fairs at 6 years old, so if I had to guess, I likely bought this at age 8. I bet it lived with me until my mom and Dee got maried, and my mom went nuts against anything that wasn't her idea of good, so I bet this got chucked when my mom and Dee consolidated homes. I was around 10. So I haven't thought about this book in thirty odd years. 

In preparation for this trip, I called my dad and Caryn and asked about their trip, anything they could recommend Derek and I do, that sort of thing. My dad was like, oh I have these two great books, let me send them to you! One of them is like, a picture book of some of the sights at Yellowstone, and another is called Spooky Yellowstone, it's full of ghost stories. 

Sure, that sounds fun to me. I love ghost stories. Though these days, I am more fond of finding out the truth of like...travel ghost stories. Headless bride, you say? Murdered in the room, you say? Let's just look that up. I verify, I debunk, and all the while I'm still kind of in on the fun of it all. There is nothing wrong with a little spooky vibe, and I cannot stress enough that I have dozens of stories that I attribute to ghosts because I cannot explain them any other way. I don't hate the game, I don't hate the player, I am just...I guess I'm just choosy about where my gullibility lands. And it always lands on the side of believing for myself. I'm selfish about my gullibility, too, I guess. 

The books arrived today, and when I saw the cover of Spooky Yellowstone, I kinda rolled my eyes. I would NEVER tell my dad that, it was such a thoughtful gesture on his part and I love my dad. And also he didn't write the fucking book, he just passed it along. 

No fully dressed Park Ranger skeletons??

While there really isn't anything on the cover that is inherently dumb or silly, I had a suspicion that this book was going to be dumb as fuck. Again, as a lover of all things haunting, strange, and local, I do not like betting against the home team. With extreme hesitation, I flipped through the first few pages and read the first chapter, titled "Mattie". 

And I immediately thought of the book Phone Call From a Ghost. The author tells the story of how she was visitng Yellowstone and had lunch with a pleasant lady named Mattie who was absolutely tits deep in implied consumption, and upon the lady's exit from their shared meal at the Nez Perce Picnic Area, the author realizes MATTIE HAD BEEN A GHOST THE WHOLE TIME! Her old timey clothes? Ghost clothes. Her manners? Ghost manners. Her consumption? GHOST CONSUMPTION. The author describes her discovery of her lunch companion's ghostly nature by seeing the gravesite of Mattie Gilbert by the very same place she had been recently lunching. With Matties ghost. Let me tell you, when Matti'es ghost had a coughing fit and coughed up blood, then ever so daintily wiped it away with a little lace handkerchief, I laughed out loud. Ghost manners indeed. 

There IS a real gravesite there. The person buried there was called Mattie, she had been a living, breathing person at one point. I looked her up. But I cannot find any instances of reported hauntings at this location. I guess gosts just don't want to eat lunch with travlers nowadays? Covid really ruined everything for us. 

I was initially going to put the book down and not read a single letter more from it, but then I kicked myself for how much more silly shit I could be missing out on. I flipped to a random page in the book, and....my body was not ready. 

It appears that the schtick of the book is "retelling" stories...in the first person...from different people...as if this is a collection of conversations from the various story tellers directly to you. The book, to its credit, does say "retold by SE Schlosser. I had incorrectly assumed this would be like, me sitting anybody down and saying, "A friend of mine told me about this time that XYZ thing happened", maybe taking a liberty here and there for drama or emphasis, but otherwise keeping a tight story structure of a historical nature. No no. These are all "event unfolds to the reader in real time" stories told by various people, filtered through this Schlosser person. Actually, when I read Mattie and understood the way the narrative was operating, I kind of thought the book was going to be written as if every single ghostly interaction happened to SE Schlosser and I was like, "who the fuck buys that one person meets up with this many ghosts?" But flipping through the book and landing on The Sentinel corrected that for me. 

The Sentinel is so fucking racist that I didn't know how to react except to fucking read it with my mouth agape, tiny little spits of incredulous laughter popping out every few seconds (and not a dainty lace kerchief in sight to wipe my mouth with!). The Sentinel is absurd. Would you like a taste? Excellent.

"I don't know why I let my friend Johnny talk me into taking an all-day Yellowstone Tour. I hadn't intended to visit Yellowstone at all on this trip. But Johnny, who is Crow on his mother's side, told me he had "important business" in Yellowstone this weekend and that I should come along. And who was I to argue with a medicine man?"

That is the introductory paragraph to this story. I guess we're not tired of the MYSTICAL NATIVE trope, SE Schlosser. Was this the way you CHOSE to retell the story? Good fucking call. Anyway, apparently Johnny is a medicine man. In the same way every white woman has a tribal princess in her family tree, I'm sure. If all indigenous men are medicine men and all indigenous women are princesses, who is left doing all of the indigenous banality of life? I don't understand the social order. Maybe SE Schlosser can explain. 

The story goes on, with Johnny never ever EVER using a single fucking contraction any time they are depictued speaking, despite everyone else using contractions. 

""But why arrange a tour?" Why don't we just drive down in your truck?" I asked, confused by his desire to play tourist. "It is important," Johnny said somberly, his eyes fixed on two ravens perched on the fence."

The ol' medicine man just communing with animals, using short sentences. I hear the pan flute playing in the distance, somewhere. 

""What's with all the ravens?" I asked Johnny. My friend shrugged, a sure sign he was keeping something to himself. "You know what they say about ravens," he evaded my question, stepping on to the waiting tour bus. "No I don't know what they say about ravens, " I retorted, swinging myself in behind. "Shape-shifter, " he murmered without turning his head. "Raven teaches people how to understand the language of animals and helps them as they move within different dimensional realms and different states of consciousness. A powerful totem.""

What fucking episode of Walker, Texas Ranger have I fucking stepped into? This shit is patently racist and absurd. Johnny might as well be saying, "Him Make-um big smoke signal at pow wow. You enjoy crow teachings in teepee". Culturally in touch and so on it, SE Schlosser. 

The crux of this craaaaaaaazy tale? A bear tells the narrator that it is a sentinel and guards Dunraven Pass. Fucking stupid. So fucking stupid. So obscene. And the kicker is that the narrator just assumes Johnny brought him to Yellowstone in that spirit guide kinda way that only tropey natives can. 

"I glanced from the raven to my dark eyed, mysterious friend. "Let us go, David. I am hungry," said the medicine man."

SAID THE MEDICINE MAN. 

BRO. 

I'm going to fucking crash out, this is so fucking offensively silly. Text copyright TWENTY THIRTEEN. Come the fuck on. 

I do not think I'll be reading any more of these stories. I'm going to send this back to my dad. 

I am, however, going to read a few stories from Phone Call From a Ghost. Right now. I found it on archives.org, give it a try if you'd like.

(I am not going to give a page by page description of Phone Call From a Ghost, but I read about fifteen pages and as hysterical as it is, it's also written in a more journalistic and authoritative tone. If I had to choose truth tellers, Daniel Cohen gets my vote, and SE Schlosser can eat bugs somewhere else. For whatever it's worth, the first chapter of Phone Call From a Ghost IS hilarious. Not intentionally, but it is well worth a look.)

I am neck deep in planning our National PArks trip, and I know it's going to get a bit more intense as we get closer. I don't want to miss anything, but I was zooming into the map last night and I'm not sure how the fuck we're supposed to feel like we've seen even a tiny little bit of enough of Yellowstone. Evey INCH is lousy with new things to see. This is going to be an intense full two days to plan. Last night, I started compiling a list...just for Yellowstone. I am going to have to do this for Badlands and Grand Tetons, too, though with Grand Tetons (and Rocky Mountain National Park) I am pretty locked in to what I want us to do in those places. 

This list is just going to get more intense. 

I am so excited for this trip, but I am sper overwhelmed by the choices it means making. 

 

Bad nipples on decent titties

I am really not one for selfies, as most people know. I'm also not one for being in photographs with people at all. I know I'm not terribly pretty, which is actually fine with me, the way I look is the least interesting thing about me. And as I get older, I am more and more pleased to find that my age shelters me from things like being cat-called and expected to perform desired feminine sexuality everywhere I go. I hate this for my children, and I did my best to raise Vivi without harping on looks, but I wasn't able to raise Rhyann. While I am generally happy to not be looked at by and large anymore, there is something that happens to you emotionally when you've been left behind by society. I know that I was never really above average in the looks department, and I think this is what impacts me the most about no longer being looked at and cat called, because I know it was never my looks that made people pay attention to me, it was my youth. I was cat called because I looked young. The second I stopped looking young and started looking my age (in my very early thirties), the cat calling stopped, being hit on by men stopped, I effectively began the great disappearing. 

And initially, I really fucking felt some type of way about that. It's strange how the absence of a thing that felt terrible when it was present can be upsetting instead of freeing? I felt like I was getting confirmation that I was for sure ugly, that my body was gross, that I looked like a raggedy hag. I wasn't resentful of anybody who WAS getting catcalled and hit on, I just wondered what was wrong with me. Twelve-ish years in to being socially invisible, I am no longer bothered, I DO feel free, and I talk to my children as much as possible about how their looks are the least interesting things about them. I rarely, if ever, compliment their looks (unless prompted) and focus instead on their wit, their creativity, the intangibles that aren't as consumable by predatory gazes. I want to prepare them for the reality that one day, their looks will no longer be valued because an arbitrary expiration date has been pushed on them, and that you will learn how much you actually value being an item for consumption when the appetite for you is gone. 

I remember being told by several of my (male) bosses that I was hired for my looks. And I'm not even talking about the sex work jobs, because believe it or not, they do not care what you look like. Some of the most successful sex workers I ever got to know were super far from socially attractive. Every time I was told that, I stopped trying to be a good employee and I leaned in to being window dressing. If I'm being given money to be decorative, that's where my energy will go. I don't want to be thorough anymore, or smart, or prepared, I just want to be pretty. But doing that made me think twice about my own decorations. About doing to my own body what I wanted to do. I waited a LONG time to get tattoos on my arms because I knew it took away from my socially accepted prettiness. I got a facial piercing that failed several times, so it didn't take, and I never had to deal with the fallout from that at my people facing jobs, because I did it in between jobs. I kept my hair straightened instead of being curly and wild so much so that I don't recognize myself with curly hair. I only feel like I look like me when my hair is straightened. It doesn't help that Dan laughed at my hair the one time he asked me to wear it curly so he could see it, and it absolutely shattered my last shred of curly girl love I had for myself. 

I'm 42 years old, and half of my life has ben spent trying to be pretty as a person who realizes she's always been the low end of average looking. I WANTED to be looked at and desired and consumed, and when it happened in the expected ways...the cat calls, the stalking, the touching without permission, the sexual assault, the overt, unaccepted consumption that all people who present as femme are expected to traverse...I fucking hated it, because I wanted to be consumed on my own terms in the ways I decided I liked. And it just doesn't work like that. I don't get to decide which ways the leopards eat my face. 

But I'm now no longer a commodity, and I can be as ugly as I am, or put in as much effort into looking average as I feel like, and the only person who notices is me. 

All of this is to say I did something. Something I've wanted to do for literally decades. 

Here I am, a few days before. See my face? It's there! Pre-thing!

And here I am a few weeks later, post-thing!

You are going to nevermind two things:

The first is my head tilt. I don't know why I do it, it's a thing I do, I am not super hip on taking selfies and they are terrible whenever I take them. It's like you didn't even read my intro.

The second is the shadow across my nose that makes it look broken. It isn't. It's just hilarious lighting. 

But I got my nostrils pierced! Hooray! I've wanted my nose pierced for fucking ages. I finally got it done and I am so happy. I'm almost healed enough to get new posts and the double chain I want that will go across my little nose bulb, my piercer said I had to wait three months and I actually just passed the three months mark last week. I was terribly worried my face would reject the piercings, but they didn't. They have stayed put, they have healed beautifully, and I am SO excited to get my nose chain. My current posts are little stars, and while I love them, they do catch on just about everything, and I've ripped my tender little nose holes a couple of times because the corner of a star has snagged on something. 

Anyway, I love being in an era where I can do stuff for me because I want to and I don't have to be worried about my hirability or my looks or what a boyfriend will think. In my twenties I was so fucking afraid to turn thirty and forty and fifty and I had no idea that these years would be my favorites. The secret people should be telling femmes/girls/theys who present "feminine" is that youth is a fucking scam for people to treat you predatorily and you'll let them get away with it. People value you for your youth so they can consume it, not because it's better inherently. I have never in my life felt as good as I have in the last few years, and I have never felt as alive and real as I have coming in to my forties. I thought 23 was the end of my worthwhile years, and I am happy to report that I was only being stupid. The best shit is still coming. 

43 days until our National Parks trip!!!

Self identified degenerate bitch of the future

So Derek and I made a super late decision and decided we are going to go to Badlands, Devil's Tower, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton. I want to throw a day or two in at RMNP, so we'll see how that pans out, I'm going to chat with Derek about it today. Every single fucking time I've gone with him to RMNP, it's been too snowy to hike. Since we're starting this trip in VERY late September and we'd be hitting RMNP in very early October, this is still a snow gamble. But I really want to do the four lake hike (Bear, Dream, Nymph, and Emerald).

It's been several hours since I started writing this, Derek and I agreed on going to RMNP as the last leg of our trip, we booked a hotel in Estes, and we'll have two and a half days in RMNP. I'm so fucking excited!!!!

So our itinerary is:

Drive to Badlands

Day in Badlands

Drive to Devil's Tower, drive to Yellowstone

Yellowstone

Yellowstone

Yellowstone sunrise, drive to Grand Teton

Grand Teton

Grand Teton

Grand Teton Sunrise, drive to Estes Park

RMNP

RMNP

Drive the long ass drive home

I am incredibly excited, I have never been to any of these places (except Rocky Mountain National Park). Derek hasn't been since he was 14, so I suppose that kind of counts as it being the same amount of time that either of us has been. I told him that and he said, "GROSS". 

I do not do nearly as much blogging as I used to, but I will for sure be logging the trip. 

Let's see, some housekeeping:

Vivi has to get her galbladder removed; Rhyann moved out and has the cutest little apartment about 30 minutes from our house; Laurel just did her annual AnimeIowa performance and did a great job as usual. Derek and I are pretty sure we've been backburnered for moving this year, and it's looking like we'll be moving next PCS cycle. It sucks, but that's kind of why we're taking this trip. Derek got me an incredible fire opal ring when we had to stay in Texas longer than anticipated, and now we're taking an incredible NPS trip for staying in Missouri another half year. 

That's really it for now. I'm unlikely to blog again until our trip. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

It doesn't does, but it could! Wisconsin and Michigan trip, day 8

And this is pretty much all she wrote. I had told Derek that I wanted to leave Madison no later than noon, which meant leaving his mom's by 11 so we could go to Fromagination and the keto bakery. I woke up at 6am, raring to go, and Derek didn't crawl out of bed until 8am. And I was already upset about it. We had a lot to do that morning. I prepared a whole bunch of Halal Cart Chicken with white sauce for Derek's mom to eat ater we left, I prepped and froze five dinners and left one dinner out for her for that night, for a grand total of six dinners. But I do not fuck with animal flesh, so Derek had to cook the chicken. He got tired the night before and opted to do it in the morning, which was why I wanted him up at 7am, but when I tried to wake him up, he shooed me off quite violently and told me he'd wake up at 8. I was pretty fucking mad. 

I got out of bed, and started doing all of the stuff that needed to get done. I put all of our dirty clothes into the laundry so I could repack the suitcase. I did dishes from the night before, and then washed all of the tupperwares Derek and I had been using during our trip that had been cleaned out, but not properly washed. I repacked our snacks and meals bags and consolidated them from three bags down to one. I repacked our suitcase once the laundry was done. All of this took me about an hour, Derek finally got up, he cooked the chicken, and then got to packing up the car. At 10:30. I get very annoyed when we run afoul of my desired schedule, and I cannot quite get myself to understand that I need to be more flexible and loose. It took Derek almost two hours to get the car entirely packed. I didn't help him, but that was by design. There was really very little I could do until he got the saw into the car, and once that was done, I had finished all of the other things I had to do (cleaning the bedding from the beds, putting the bedroom back like we found it, cleaning the bathroom, dishing out Beth's meals, etc.) and could dedicate myself to packing up the bits and bobs I could manage while helping him with everything else. Getting the car packed up was a stressful event, but we managed to get 99.9% of everything we bought and brought into the car. The only things we left with Beth to bring to us in Iowa this upcoming weekend were two empty bins and one bucket with three superfluous tools. I was pretty impressed with Derek's Jenga abilities. 

We stayed and chatted with Beth a little longer than intended, as well, and we didn't leave until about 1ish. By this time, we were already in for a penny as far as a late departure, so Derek and I headed off to Fromagination. 

Oh, my first love. Cheese. 

Since I already took photos of the inside the first time we went, I didn't do that this go 'round. I had been searching and searching for gifts for my kiddos and magnets for my fridge, since I insist on being the type of person with travel magnets. I know, I'm one of those people, and I'm fine with it. I wanted to get Rhyann a food gift, because Rhyann is very food aventurous and it's a fitting gift. I wanted to get Vivi a shirt, because she bed rots in the same clothing for days on end and I figured a shirt would have the most utility. I didn't know what to get for Laurel, and by the time I was looking for gifts, Derek had gone to the car because he didn't feel well. So Derek will just have to get her something when he's in Iowa. I found a gift for my dad, though. Anyway. 

 

These made the most sense for Rhyann. They love tinned fish. I might actually get them a subscription to FishWife for their birthday this year, even though I'm not terribly big on birthday gifts anymore, but this year I kind of want to get them something since we're going to be moving and they are starting their adult journey, and having something yummy to look forward to every month might be nice. Spoiler alert, I just looked and they no longer do the subscriptions like they used to, now it's just a build your own bundle and make a monthly go of it. Well. No thanks. 

I can't find the shirt I got for Vivian online, but here's the one I got myself:

I love it and am so excited to wear it. 

I couldn't initially find any magnets, and I was looking all around for little things I could grab and perhaps glue magnet strips to and improvise a magnet for myself. This was one such thing, but since I did find the magnets, I just grabbed it for my dad:

And then my little magnet:

If being gay was a choice, I would choose gayer than bisexual every time.

And then everything else we got was food. Derek picked himself a sausage, and the byline of the brand fucking sent me:

Buy curious. Oh my fucking lort. 

....uh, my curiosity was not rewarded. Musty ol' dick lookin' ass sausage. 

Despite what I thought the appearance of the sausage presented, Derek reported that it tasted amazing. I thought it smelled worse than it looked, which is impressive, as it looks like it belongs in the wrong rooms of antiquity. 

They bagged everything in the prettiest bag. I really want to cut out the sticker and put a magnet strip on it. I can't help myself, it seems. I just love magnets. How do they even work????

I am debating doing a separate entry for just the cheeses, because Derek and I made a whole afternoon of it, tasting notes recorded and everything. I start out with the best of intentions and sometimes don't follow through, so just in case, here is a picture of all of the cheeses we got from Fromagination:

By the time we were done, it was 2:30 and instead of going to the keto bakery like I wanted, we just drove home. It was a pretty uneventful seven hour drive. 

When we crossed the bridge from Illinois into Missouri, we of course saw the arch:

and I told Derek, "you know, every time we leave Missouri, I always think about like, being thrilled to be in whatever new place we're in, and I don't even think about hating it in Missouri. And then we cross back into Missouri and see things like the arch and I'm like...man, I fucking HATE IT HERE AND I CANNOT FUCKING WAIT TO LEAVE THIS FUCKING UGLY STATE."

And it's true. I hate it here, and I cannot wait to leave this fucking state. Fuck Missouri, fuck the arch, fuck this whole place. That's a yikes from me. 

And that's a wrap on our Wisconsin and Michigan trip! It was so much fun, we had such an amazing time.