Fall Is Here, Hear the Yell, Back to School, Ring the Bell...

I realize that in showing these photos I am one thin blog post away from those stupid stick figure family decals that people put on the back window of their car, but I can't help myself. My kids...THEY ARE SO SQUISHY!!!

School photos have come a long way since the 80's, though those pigtails don't fool me...she is growing up too fast, isn't she?

Giving his best Blue Steel. If this photo were scratch-n-sniff it would totally smell like clean puppies.

See also: Despite the mid-70's forecast today I wore my knit beanie and scarf to work. I am feeling very fall delicate, tomato soup and movie nights in which I cry at the part in Toy Story 3 when they go down the trash compactor...the suspense is just too much sometimes, you know? And so it is that on days like this I sing to myself in my head a cozy little ditty--And we don't notice any time pass / We don't notice anything / We sit side by side in every class / Teacher thinks that I sound funny / But she likes it when you sing...

Pumpkin spice and everything nice,
S

Like I Blister in the Sun

We should have named him Harold. Or Frank. Frank sounds like he would be a good sleeper, right? And Harold, well--Harold would never throw his toys at your face. Tim. Tim's a nice name, a nice guy. Tim doesn't dump a bag of Goldfish crackers into your cart at Target, Tim doesn't chew his cake pop and then let it fall slowly from his mouth and onto the floor the minute a stranger says how cute he is.

But Ozzy does. All of this and then some. Which is what we get for giving him the same name as the Prince of Darkness, even if we totally didn't name him after that Ozzy at all. Whatevs. Because my Ozzy doesn't sleep lately. Like from midnight until 5am, and then during the day he is a two year old nightmare on Crocs, yadda yadda, mommyblaaaahg, it's so hard and all that. As hackneyed as ripping the heads off of bats.

Tell you what else is hackneyed--because when he gives me a hug I fucking love him so much. I love him even before he hugs me, love him even as the chewed up cake pop falls down his shirt like a wet piece of poo and the stranger backs away with that small, horrified smile. I love him.

Though I will say this, not unrelated: I have been perfecting my 80's punk Pandora station. The Clash, Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Brains, Violent Femmes with a little New Wave and Ska to soften the blow--Talking Heads, The Specials. This is what I listen to on my headphones when I am at work now, partly to keep me awake and partly because I am an emotional, exhausted mess just jonesing for a mosh pit were it not for my fear of touching sweaty people I do not know + the possibility of getting hurt divided by the square root of my ballet flats. God, how I am tired.

xo,
S

She Bangs, She Bangs (Hello 2000) UPDATED WITH PICS!

There comes a time in every women's life when she asks herself: should I get bangs? I mean, my mom passed away, my cat died, I turned 41...what better time to blatantly disregard my very round face and want what general consensus says I should not have? I even went so far as to Google "should I get bangs." FYI--Google tries to anticipate what you should get by auto-populating that sentence with "a divorce," "a tattoo" and "married." Glad I'm not the only one turning to the Magic 8 Ball of the internet for life guidance. See also: glad I am not trying to decide if I should get a tattoo of bangs because that would surely be a sign I should.

The thing is, when I asked Google if I should get bangs it did not answer me with a resounding www.DoNotGetBangs.com but instead said I could totally look like this:

To which I say sign me up. I could totally look like that (if I were a completely different person). And yet? And yet I still hear the siren call of Jane Birkin winking at me beneath a boyishly sexy fringe of perfectly cut bangs that don't poke me in the eye or get greasy or ever need trimming, really. Just so you know, in this scenario I also don't have any hips and wear cords that make me look super skinny.

I mean, right? So cute. Like this. 

So should I or shouldn't I? Too late. I am at the hair salon right now.Which means that in just a few hours I could look like this:

A wonky-eyed mid-90's Brenda Walsh doing her best Paula Poundstone impression. In which case you're going to have to straight up lie to me, tell me I look très mignonne and then put some barrettes in my Christmas stocking.

Yikes.
xo,
S

UPDATE!!!!!!
And just like that! BAM! I got bangs!
Ok, here's the Before (yes, I totally Instagram filtered the hell out of myself, and double yes, I, too, have a wonky eye, #BrendaWalsh4LifeYo):

And After:

Right now my hair is a little too soft for my liking, all blow dried and styled. But tonight I will shower and tomorrow my hair will be back to it's normal texture. Already I'm loving what it does to a ponytail or a messy knot (instant style!) which is how I wear my hair usually anyway. So? I think I'm happy.
We shall see what Bryan and the kids think later...dun dun DUN.

Earthquake Weather

The weather has been unbelievable lately, bathtub warm, still, the air smelling of leaves and salt air. Beautiful out, isn't it? the guy at Walgreens might say to you at checkout. Mm, gorgeous, and then one of you mumbles something about it being earthquake weather and the other nods and you leave the store out to the freakishly perfect afternoon.

Of course there is no truth to that. Earthquakes occur miles below weather, caused by tectonic plates shifting, something that has been happening for as long as there has been an ever, during ice ages, when the earth was a hot bubbling swamp and everything in between. Nor do they happen more in the morning; your pet probably doesn't sense them, and small earthquakes do not prevent larger ones from happening. These are all just myths created to explain things we cannot possibly understand.

All this to say that if we talk about the weather I will probably say something about it being earthquake weather. That if you casually ask me how my day is I might think for a second that the earth will open and swallow me whole, I am that close to cracking. This business of understanding that my mom is gone--it has been happening for as long as there has been an ever, and yet. That's not how it works. I cannot wrap my head around it but for a few flash seconds at a time. How is my day? If a fault could open up there would be no friction. Without friction, there is no earthquake. And yet the weather is so stunningly still and happy, as if we are all just waiting for something to happen.

Quite frankly I don't know why I am putting this image here with this post except maybe I love that whoever Lana Moonblood is she gave reason, a purpose and explanation not for, but to her one tiny hand.

The End

I realize it has been a little Sturm und Drang around here lately, but when life plays you a dirge the only thing you can really do is slow dance to it. Which is what I've been doing, even though my feet are tired and I honest-to-god feel dehydrated from crying.

Saturday was my mom's memorial, and I sobbed through my eulogy and pretty much any time someone so much as looked at me. Still, I think we did her proud.

We drank Cheerwine and ate pulled pork, hush puppies and creamed corn, listened to Mississippi John Hurt and David Bowie and told stories about what a force she was.

After the memorial, Bryan and I went to the pet ER where Nacho has been since Thursday. He was not getting better, and had such significant brain damage that the vets gave him a 10% chance of any recovery, so we held his floppy body and told him what a kick ass cat he was, that we loved him, and then we kissed him goodbye as the vet put him to sleep.

Then today my dad, my brother and his wife came over and we decorated boxes for my mom's ashes. The gaudier, the glitterier the better. My mom was a maximalist who believed that more is more. Then add a little bit more.

Tomorrow is Monday, and not to get all sloppy sappy shut up, but I am going to start thinking of my mom and Nacho not in sadness but in gratitude. I am so incredibly lucky to have had such an amazing mom for as long as I did, and to have had such a sweet little fur baby like my Nacho. Not to deny my grief, but I do believe you have a choice in how you react, and I am going to make an effort to react in joy.

Which reminds me--when my mom was really sick, disoriented and could barely speak, my brother asked her if there was anything she wanted to tell him, and all she said was kindness. I don't know if that meant that she wanted us to remember her for her kindness or that we should act in kindness, but maybe it doesn't matter. The word itself is all that matters. Kindness. Such a simple word, not fancy at all (nothing like Sturm und Drang), but I think I am going to make that word my mantra. It can mean so many things.

On that note, I also want to thank all of you. For your comments and emails...even if you didn't reach out but just took a moment to think about me and my family. Thank you.

I'm turning the dirge off now. Anyone have a new song I can dance to?

xo,
S

FYI: September is Cholesterol Education Month, Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month and Apple Month. I Hate Apples.

Dear September 2013,

I get it. You hate me. I don't know what I ever did to you, but whatevs. You're a dick and in 3 days I will be done with you.

I don't know what kind of fucked up kid's game this is, but in better times I might want to play it.

I came home yesterday to find Nacho having seizures and semi-comatose. He had pooped and peed and was just lying there in it, twitching. Long story short, I rushed him to the ER Pet Hospital where he has been ever since. I guess his blood sugar dropped and he went into diabetic shock; we don't know how long he had been like that but it's now the next day, we are $3,000 into this and he is still in a coma. The vet says that all we can do now is wait to see how severe the brain damage is...

So yes, it is September, my mom died and MY CAT HAS BRAIN DAMAGE. Fuck you, September.

Tomorrow is my mom's memorial and I have no idea what to say.

But I do know I am coming at October with a nosegay of flowers and a timid little smile.

Not an x, not an o, not a love, but a dash--
-S

What Comes Next

Today was my first day back at work after 5 weeks off to be with my mom, and then to mourn for her, and it felt sad, a small word for something far bigger. Because, I mean--this is it? I thought that all day. Am thinking it still. Everything just goes back to "normal" now? The proverbial "life goes on" can't be right, it seems disrespectful, wrong. It makes me sad. I think I said that before, and then last week Nacho was diagnosed with diabetes. I give my cat two shots a day now, the exact same insulin that Bryan gives himself, only one is covered by insurance and the other is not, so there's that, plus the caterpillars I ordered for the kids have spun themselves into chrysalids that hang delicate and dry from the butterfly house, and this photo that I took of Ozzy who walked down the stairs slowly, very carefully arranged himself and then called out to me with a straight face before cracking himself up. This is how life goes on, I guess.

I just miss her so fucking much.

She Is Gone

My mom passed away yesterday, and all I can think is she is gone. Like that. Even if it wasn't like that at all--it was long, she hung on, we were "ready"--but now she is gone and her not being here is a weight, a thing that I hold in my hands, not knowing what to do. How can she be gone?

Maybe you've heard me say this before, but my mom was magic. To try and explain her would be a disservice to words.

She was beyond superlative: the funniest, the smartest, the kindest, the strongest, the most beautiful, the most eccentric, the most complicated, the mostest...even so. Those words do nothing to describe her.

Now she will no longer be limited by words or body or health. She will live on in the sound of me whistling, in Zoey's eyes, in Ozzy's sense of humor, in the way that I fold my legs when I sit, how I arrange flowers, my collarbone...sometimes I even hear myself breathe and think, god, that sounds like my mother breathing.

Still. It will never be enough. I will never stop missing her, loving her, wanting to smell that mix of perfume and smoke as she brushes her fingers across my face, wishing she were here to tell me one of her long-winded stories filled with the strangest of pauses.

Stupid stupid words, all of them, all of this, falling so stupidly short of what has been lost. Leaving me with this, saved voice mails that I play over and over pretending it's a Sunday months ago, before she was gone.

I love you, I love you, I love you, and I miss you so, so much, too.

The Hardest Part (So Far)

In case you were wondering, I am still here, waiting. Like a Tom Petty song, and I hate Tom Petty. (Sorry Tom Petty.)

I have actually been steering clear of this here blog and even Facebook lest my innards seep out, getting my emotions all over your everything. So let's not with that. Instead let me just say hello and let you know that I am here, waiting. And that I heard a genius lifehack that you can use an empty Pringles can to store opened dry spaghetti, so I bought and just polished off an entire can of Sour Cream & Onion Pringles just now only to find that spaghetti is an inch too long for the can. Now I have a stomach ache, bad breath and feel lifefacked.
But I am here.
Hi.
Love,
S

Home

You know what can make you feel like a total dick? Going on a beach vacation while your mom is in Hospice. Also? Cutting in line, getting caught looking up and down at someone's outfit, littering. But I only did one of those things (I didn't get caught so the outfit thing doesn't count)--I went on vacation while my mom is in Hospice and felt like a terrible daughter/human being.

I could go on and on about people telling me I need to take care of myself, that I deserve this vacation, etc. etc, but really. It didn't feel right, though nothing does right now. Blah blah, are you tired of me being sad? Because I am. So let's look at a few/too many photos from my vacation and pretend for a second that you can't feel my mopey dick face* on the other side of the camera**...

Joy. Someone has it.

Babe. My babe.

Looking in the right direction.

I paid her two Oreos to drape the kelp over herself, and it was worth every last trigyceride.

Happy boy.

If you're wondering why there are more photos of Zoey than Ozzy it's because Ozzy prefers to go nudey at the beach and I don't want to post pics of him in the altogether.

Love the confidence. Even if it only lasted until her first wipeout.

Cali Girl.

Eventually the feeling of being a total dick outweighed the warm water and I decided I couldn't stick my head (toes) in the sand any longer, so I flew home early while the rest of the family stayed for a few more days. I have a feeling it was just in time.

So if you were on Virgin America flight 958 this afternoon and were wondering who that woman was with her forehead pressed against the window crying, that was me. And I'm not a dick. But I was looking you up and down. To make up for it all, I left my Us Weekly in the seat pocket for you to read.

xo,
S

*Mopey dick. Heh heh. See what I did there?
**If you're my Facebook friend, let's also pretend you didn't already see all these pics on FB.

Starstuff

Everything I write here will be a lie. Mainly because nothing I write could come close to what is going on. How the breeze comes through the open window of my mom's Hospice room, or the sound of the church bells nearby...We are close to where it all began, my dad says, a few blocks from where my parents lived when they first moved to San Francisco 40+ years ago. He shows me the window of the room where I was conceived and I try to be an adult about it all. This being the Castro, later we see a naked man at the bus stop wearing a metallic gold sock on his penis and sneakers on his feet. The fog whips over the hill and it's cold. These things are all real, some of them tangible even, but still they can't be true.

They gave me a booklet. It's called Approaching the End of Life. I read it before bed and try to pretend I'm a Buddhist, that this is just a transition, that everything is changeable, appears and disappears. The cover of the booklet has a picture of sand, shells, a starfish, only now they are called seastars because they aren't fish and never were, though come to think of it, they aren't stars either, now are they? All of it lies, like this, what I'm writing. None of it can come close to what is really going on, the messages I have saved on my cell phone from my mom. Dozens of them--always Unknown Caller--knowing that there will soon be a time I won't be able to call her again, hear her voice, the way she says my name, how the thought of this makes me lose my breath. I guess that's the truth, or as close as I can get to one right now.

Quadratic Frustration

I like things to be just so. Like if I am hungry, I rate my hunger on a scale of 1 to 10, though the extremes never stay constant. How sad am I? On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 spilling over with joy and 10 soul crushing grief? I am an 8, the number somehow balancing right in my chest like that. For a creative who writes for a living and doodles on everything, I like to quantify my world. A 3 for sleepy, a 6 for thirsty, I am a 1 on a scale of understanding univariate polynomial equations of the second degree, 1 being I have no idea though I very much like saying the words.

Sexy graffiti if you ask me.

How long are we talking? I ask everyone what they think. Doctors, nurses, my dad, my brother. What do you think? On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being writhing, crying in pain, my mom is now usually a 9. 4 for clarity, sometimes more, she has lost at least 30lbs. I run these numbers through my head like worry beads, 9, 4, divided by the square root of 82...there is no constant and I can't do the math. How long are we talking?

The oncologist says it could be weeks, it could be a year, but there is just no way. My mom is not eating. The oncologist also pauses a lot when he talks; I want to take his dry hands in mine so that maybe he will flip to the back of the book for the answer. I know this--the Rule of Threes: 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water, 3 minutes without air. More numbers yet still no one will tell me.

I need to know how to pace myself. Because sometimes math becomes a word problem when significant information is presented as text rather than mathematical notation. The age-old SAT question. How many days should I leave work at 4pm to go to the hospital to then rush home in time to put the kids to bed to then jump back on work email to make sure nothing falls behind? A few weeks, a year? When will the train reach the station? Otherwise written as: how long can I subsist as an 8, the inside of my chest surely bruised, and more importantly, how long must my mom be a 9?

Virginia Lakes (I Have No Idea Where I Was Relative to the Rest of the State of California)

We went camping. Yes, there was a cabin, but it was of the log variety, and it was small and smelled of wet, so don't judge. We went camping.

Ozzy very much welcomed the opportunity to be dirty. In fact, he actually spent the week in a cloud of fine dirt, like Pig-Pen from the Peanuts Gang.

This photo screams boy.
He spent hours throwing rocks into the creek while I tried very hard not to get all reflective about never the same river twice, time and change and dying, death--quick! Throw more rocks boy! Build a dam and make it stop!
Anyhoo.
Zoey threw a few rocks, too.

 Both my menfolk look delicious in the Great Outdoors...

We also visited a Ghost Town called Bodie and I couldn't help but think of The Brady Bunch, demented prospectors and socks. Please tell me you know what I'm talking about.

Looking a bit like a demented prospector himself...

Quite possibly our 2013 holiday card. Act surprised if you're on our list...

We saw a bear. I caught a fish. Ish. I threw it back. My feet are still grimy and Ozzy has a new word: ew.
We are back from camping.
xo,
S

Musical Interlude

Somewhere someone is having the best summer ever. That person is most definitely not yours truly, but that doesn't mean I don't blast this song and get down dancing silly with Zoey, Ozzy and Bryan at the end of the day.

 As an I guess I am, yeah, sure feminist and a mother, I am pretty positive I shouldn't like this song, the lyrics, and most certainly I should hate the video. The boobs! Those boobs. No, seriously. Those boobs. When Bryan asked I said yes, they are definitely fake, but I was just being horrible because I think they might be real. And I think they are amazing. See also: I love this song.

Anyway, carry on with your summer, fantastic or otherwise.
xo,
S

Lalalalalalalalala...

Let's not talk about it, ok? Instead let's buy stuff with a credit card on ModCloth. Let's eat a salted caramel cupcake for dinner and a red velvet cupcake for dessert. Let's read blogs, clean the house, pick at our pores, take an Excedrin PM and fall asleep reading that biography about Steve Jobs that everyone else read about two years ago, except, wait--in roughly 500 pages he dies of cancer, doesn't he? Fuck.

Not thinking about it is kind of like trying to smell the color 8 which is to say shut up already. Have you ever wondered if blind people can draw? I have. Like incessantly. Which is why I think this video is all sorts of riveting on a Wednesday night when I close my eyes and see too much.


xo,
S

This Is Happening (Not What You Think) (Unless You're Thinking of Pink Fluffy Unicorns)

Good god, people. Thank you for your comments and emails. Internet hugs are real, yo,' and if I sound flippant it's only because I don't know how else to act and thank you is not enough.

Cancer is still a total dick and I am still walking around wondering how I could possibly still need to buy more cat food when this is happening, but that's a lot of stills and let's face it--nothing stays still even when you are pretty sure your world has stopped. I asked my mom's oncologist the question we all see in movies, i.e. how much time, and he gave a very wide range of somewhere between I don't know and cover my ass. His ass. This sucks ass is pretty much the only thing we all know for sure. Titshitcocksucker, caught in a limbo of please, fuck no. I just might be in the anger stage of grief.

At the same time I have this song stuck in my head, something that Zoey showed me online, and I am trying very hard to make it my mantra seeing as how it makes as much sense as anything these days.

It's Monday morning. My mom is dying. There, I said it. Now go ahead and watch the video and try it with me. Pink fluffy unicorns, dancing on rainbows, pink fluffy unicorns dancing on, dancing on rainbows...

xo,
S

Sorry

I am trying so hard, you guys. To be happy, open, a picture full of smiles all hi! like this:

But I'm tired of trying when really I don't feel like smiling at all. When really all around me the world looks cross-eyed and sweaty, caught in mid-blink, imperfect and quite frankly fucked up like this:

The thing is, no one wants to read a blog that is relentlessly down. I know I don't. But I also don't want to read a blog that isn't honest. And honestly things are really sad and scary right now. My mom is not doing well, which is a euphemism for she's really not doing well. We got a PET scan back yesterday which showed that despite all the internal and external radiation, the chemo, the blood transfusions--that despite everything the tumor has grown and spread to lymph nodes. Which means that there is nothing left to do but manage the pain. Which means that--fuck. I'm fucking scared and cannot breathe and I have to make lunch for Zoey's camp tomorrow and write a press release and buy more milk and I love my mom so fucking much and when I whistle it sounds just like her.

So I don't know how to write here right now. I don't know how to do any of this.
xo,
S

p.s. You better believe I pressed this button over and over and over but I'm beginning to think it's just for fun. Fuck that.