Remember a couple of posts ago how a couple of my friends plotted and found me a new blue glass baking dish, and I cried because that’s love?
These showed up a few days after Christmas from the same two friends.
My mind is blown. I had casually mentioned around the time I mentioned the baking dish that I used to have 6 blue glass wine glasses, but 4 of them had broken over the years. They just latched onto that and did what they do.
This has been a hellacious 12 months. It was exactly 12 months ago (plus a few days) that my car got totaled when I hit that 17yo on a brand new license that ran a stop sign. I fucked myself up pretty good in that wreck too. No lasting physical damage, but I still can’t approach intersections where I have the right of way in confidence.
And the thing of it is, the bad things just kept happening again and again, not just one after the other, but with a frequent overlap in the months that followed. I still haven’t really caught a break.
2021 truly has been a shitty year!
Except, it’s also been the year where I learned how much the people in my friend group love me, and each other. There are really, by this point, dozens of examples, such as how we’re working hard to master communication skills so that we can navigate any conflict with love, compassion, and understanding. We all require a slightly different form of communication as we are all neurodivergent, and we are also all trauma victims, but we are dedicated to figuring our shit out and resolving conflict in ways that validates everyone and doesn’t lead to actual huge fights.
But that’s not even the love I’m here to talk about. I want to talk about Scissors. Scissors is an important member of our friend group, but he’s very reserved. This is fine, but I honestly kind of thought that when it came to our relationship, he tolerated me. We weren’t not friends, but I wouldn’t have assumed he REALLY cared about me, even if he didn’t not care.
Then a week and a half ago, he warned me that he predicted I would cry in roughly 2 days. Well, the two days came and he cursed that whatever he had sent was late. It showed up another 2 days later. It was a large somewhat flat box. Scissors, and my best friend who was in on the shenanigans, as he wanted to be sure it would have the desired effect (happy tears) were almost giddy with anticipation while they waited for me to get home to open the package. Finally, my shift ended, and made my way home. When I opened the package and saw what it was, I started bawling.
See, roughly 9 months ago, or so, Iris learned a physics lesson the hard way. Sammy sent me a message at work and told me Iris had broken my blue glass baking dish, and to please not be mad, it was an accident. Iris was scared to tell me themself because they come from an upbringing full of abuse and is still learning to trust me that I won’t abuse them over a mistake or accident. I took a deep breath, knew Iris wasn’t careless, and while I was devasted, I wasn’t mad. I love blue glass more than anything, and that baking dish was the favorite thing in my kitchen, but it just wasn’t worth being mad over an accident.
I messaged Iris and learned that it had gone from hot oven to cold rinse with water, and shattered. Ah. Ok. I made sure no one was hurt, assured Iris this was a failing on their bio mom’s part, and that I knew it was an accident and that I wasn’t mad. Then I went ahead and told them the physics lesson that was to be had out of this.
Then I went to amazon to see about replacing the damn thing and they had nothing. Ceramic? Sure. But not blue glass.
I told a few of my friends what happened, then basically let it go. Until it happened to come up in conversation like a month ago. Scissors asked a couple of questions at the time, but I didn’t think anything of it.
Until I opened that package on my bed a few weeks later and found a blue glass pyrex baking dish in the exact size I had lost that looked brand new, despite me being pretty sure Pyrex doesn’t make them anymore. I don’t know where he found it, but he did. And he was right, I did have a good (happy) cry about it.
Some of us are loud in our love. Some of us are just hurt from trauma and more reserved, and therefore quieter in our love. But when those who are reserved with their love show it, it is a grand statement. Like a blue glass baking dish.
This will be short. It’s been a crazy week where few things have gone as planned and there aren’t enough hours in the day. Nothing bad has happened. In fact some good has happened. But I’m tired.
Anyway
My maternal grandmother had a super green thumb. So does my mom. I honestly thought it had skipped me because I spent the first 30 something years of my life unable to keep a single plant alive.
But I don’t know. Something happened in the last few years and suddenly I can keep most anything alive. Sure some things die, but I’m having more success than not.
I want to show some of my latest successes.
I have an extensive garden growing out back, but these are what I currently find the most exciting. I’ll show off the rest of the fruits of my labor (pun intended) later when I have things to harvest.
It’s been a minute since I last really wrote. March started out rough and just kept on going. But I’m determined to bring life back to a sense of normal and that includes writing. I’m going to ease my way in by starting not with the trauma of March 2021, but instead what kept me going.
I got my 3rd stimulus, I’m not even sure when, and did a lot of important things with that money. One of those things was to set aside money for my 2021 garden. I hesitated to garden this year. I won’t have Robin’s help and it just feels overwhelming knowing that I alone am in charge of making sure things like watering it daily happen. But those who love my made it clear I needed a garden, so I set the money aside.
Then in the thick of things in late March, I started planning. My first goal was the little flower bed out back that sits along between the back porch and patio. My hibiscus and rose from last year didn’t make it. But surprisingly, my blueberry bush is already showing signs of green. After hemming and hawing over it for a bit, I decided to plant two more blueberry bushes with the goal of having a thick wall of blueberries about 3-5 years from now. Next up was mulch. Only, last year when I watered my bushes, the mulch in the bed kept floating away. So I decided this year I would buy and install edging to keep the mulch into place.
Again, I am really glad those who love me made me set aside money for my garden from my stimulus. I set aside way more than I need for plants and pots and dirt. Which means I can do little things beyond those that encourage growth. I bought two beautiful sets of wind chimes because I wanted a set for my garden, but I won’t be able to hear them from my room, so I want a set for there too. I also bought this 3-foot high birdbath that will live amongst the plants. I’m going to put rocks at the bottom of it and turn it into a bee watering station. Because there is no life without bees, so we must do our best for them always. I also bought a compost bin with my tax return so I can make good rich dirt. I’m already filling it with things like eggshells and produce that went bad before we could eat it. While my garden will feed my belly, the things like the wind chimes and bee watering station will fill my soul.
Next up, as soon as it’s consistently above freezing at night, I have some pots of herbs to put out. I put 3 out about a week ago, but was over eager and it froze a few nights in a row. I should have checked the weather. They may still live, but I bought 3 more just in case. If anything I’ll have twice as many. Otherwise, I still have the 3 new ones.
I’m waiting to see if my strawberry survived. It’s too early to tell. In the meantime, I’ve decided that one strawberry plant is not near enough and bought myself a fancy stacking pot system.
I bought the 4 petal in purple and that bad boy will be able to hold 20 strawberry plants. As an added bonus, it’s compact enough that if my strawberries can’t survive the Ohio winter, I can pull them inside. That said, there is a strawberry farm like 5 miles from here, so I have every reason to believe my berries with survive and thrive.
I’m about 5 weeks off from being able to buy any plants for my garden. Mother’s Day is when I’ll begin in earnest. I have big plans for this year’s garden though. I’m going to grow beefsteak tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes for all my red sauce needs. I’m growing Thomas some jalapeno peppers. I’m growing cucumbers for Iris. And finally, Sammy will get a pot of flowers as payment for helping me.
I’m depressed right now. March 2021 was nonstop trauma. I’ll be ok, but I’m using this garden and planning for it as self-care. I’m deeply looking forward to dirt under my nails and I grow and eat my efforts.
Are you growing anything this year?
As you may know, I wrote a memoir about 6 years ago. However, I’m far enough out from the project that I know I could have done better. Like better editing for one.
Anyway, I paid the editors that my friend Joy Demora works with (read her book!) to give it a read to see if I had, I don’t know, I guess solid bones. Did I have a book worth spending hundreds of dollars and hours to edit was the question?
Turns out I in fact do!
My initial book is too ambitious trying to be like 3 things at once and that is not working. But they like my voice and they suggested a focus that will potentially sell.
So I’m going to spend the next year or so in rewrites with that focus in mind and resubmit my book to them and get started on editing with my tax return that I’ll see next year.
I have a lot of work to do but I feel confident that I have a story worth telling and the voice needed to tell it. I feel really good about this.
In related news, I also have a children’s picture book I released around that time that is currently undergoing a major art overhaul featuring the art of my good friend @ain-individual. I have seen sketches and concept work and am really excited for this project! I’m not sure when that book will be re-released into the wild as art takes time and 2020 was shit so it’s only recently been kicked into gear but it’s cute and I’m excited to share it when it’s done!
This is late because I failed to write a post on Wednesday to schedule for the usual time Thursday, but I’m just going to let that be ok.
Physically I’m on the mend. I got an iron infusion on Wednesday so here soon I should have some blood. I already have more than I did when I went to the ER a couple of weeks ago. Not a lot more, but when I got labs done right before the infusion, I was up a tenth of a point. This means the mass amounts of B12 I’m taking is actually working. There was just no recovering from Covid without an infusion, no matter how much B12 I take.
Ziggy is doing better. We have hired a trainer to give him 4 private lessons. As of this point, he’s just had his third lesson, and while he still has work to do, he’s come a long way. He’s 95% stopped being aggressive and we’ve had the start of a breakthrough with the chewing on people to play and show affection. Again, we have work to do still, but I feel hope.
We had a setback for a couple of weeks there where despite taking him out hourly he was peeing in the house. But it didn’t seem to me like he was marking. It seemed like he legit had to pee all the time and couldn’t hold it any longer so he’d just stop what he was doing and pee where he was. So I took him to the vet so they could check for a UTI. While his pee looked clear and healthy, there was noticeable swelling still from when he was neutered a few weeks prior, so the vet went ahead and put him on antibiotics. And within a day he stopped peeing all over my house. After a week of taking him out hourly, and him not having accidents, we pushed things back to where we were taking him out every 90 minutes, and still, he wasn’t having accidents. We’re now on the first day of taking him out every 2 hours. Here in a handful of days, if he still isn’t peeing all over my house, we’ll inch it back to every 2.5 hours. Eventually, we’ll get to where he can go 6-8 hours without being taken out. I know it’s possible because he can make it overnight as long as he’s taken out at 9 pm and again at 7:30 am. That’s a long stretch and he does it well. I am taking it slowly during the day though because while he’s a dog and doesn’t notice the difference between 90 minutes and a full 2 hours, he will notice the difference if we jump from, let’s say, every 2 hours to 4. I need him to have faith that we are aware he needs to potty regularly and we’re never going to fail to take him outside to do so.
I don’t think his previous owner was as thoughtful. While Ziggy is obviously housebroken, I don’t think he spent his first year of life in a loving and thoughtful environment. If he had, they would have trained him. I think they just bought a dog expecting it to be easy and then when they didn’t train Ziggy became a handful, and then when he was a handful he was abandoned. Now we have an energetic untrained dog with separation anxiety.
So we’re doing what should have happened a year ago. We’re loving him. We’re training him. We’re using positive reinforcement. He’s a good boy and we’re helping him be his best self.
Finally, a story to tie the physical health beginning of this post to the Ziggins update.
Ziggy tends to his momma at night when she’s going to bed. Her anxiety is at it’s worse then and he helps comfort her. But Zigs is aware that I’m not well and he’s very fussy about me. Anyway, when I got home from my iron infusion on Wednesday I sat down on the sofa with him and Sammy and I must have smelled different with that much pure iron coursing through me because he thoroughly smelled me all over investigating the difference. He’s a good boy and will make a good ESA.
