It's all plot.

Dry your tears, darlings.

2025-11-29T09:42:51Z

Lately when people ask, "how are you doing these days!" I have taken to replying, I work in politics. So. Ha.

Then they make A Face and/or laugh a kind of horrified laugh? and/or say, oh my god I am so sorry.

But what I mean by "I work in politics" is that I volunteer in a horrifically high stress role.

I am a County Party Chair, which is a thankless job where you ask for money all the time and people yell at you for what your senators are doing and you constantly have to try and recruit volunteers for more thankless work and you help people get re-elected that you don't necessarily even LIKE but

Politically they align with your values enough that they're wildly better than the candidates bragging about calling the Nazis to report their neighbors and these days that means there's really no goddamn choice.

And I apparently have the self preservation instincts of a *snail* so in April I agreed to

Also be in charge of securing our statewide party elections.

I spend a LOT of fucking unpaid time working for other people's aspirations, hopes, and dreams.

It's worth it. Right now we are literally fighting every day to salvage what's left of our democracy.

But.

The thing is.

It's 1:30am and I am awake trying to reconcile this work that I do desperately trying to drag my party out of the rip currant of right-wing extremism disguised as that sexy fantasy called "bipartisanship"

And the fact that my friend has been dead for like, 60 hours but because she was a senator

the goddamn world feels entitled to the details of her family's grief.

Because her friends are legislators they started getting texts and phone calls from the press LESS THAN TWELVE HOURS after her life was tragically stolen

We're all fucking destroyed. But the work never stops.

Never pauses.

We've got state law dictating how long we get to grieve before we have to get back to electing people.

Human beings cannot survive the kind of sustained trauma we are all living with every day, anyway. How in the actual fuck are these wonderful people supposed to run without pause?

Let's face this way, then the winter sun catches the streaks in your makeup just-so on camera. Now wipe your tears, darlings, it's time to fight over what kind of life-saving medicine people are allowed to have!

The fucking rules say the clock is ticking down for when we're in violation of the law.

I hate my job.

My friend is dead.

And at the end of the day we saw each other so rarely that her absence will not leave a gaping hole in my day-to-day life. All I can do is use what energy I have to spare to try and support the people who will never be the same from this grief.

It's 1:50am and I'm still awake because I forgot to take my meds yesterday morning and didn't realize until the nausea hit at 10pm and I had no choice but to take them even though they'd make it hard to sleep.

Because I had to go sit at my (dead) friend's kitchen table to help make lists of how many death certificates will be needed for the insurance and the bank and the

And quietly keep her most beloved people from knowing that the law says we have to fill her fucking seat in 30 days and the fucking clock started ticking the *moment* she fucking died. So some of us are looking at fucking calendars while the tears streak our cheeks.

Dry those tears, darlings.

Get back to work.

I hate my job.

I can't quit my job.

I will not quit on the people breaking themselves every day to save as many lives as they can before their hearts give out and their spirits break.

Not even the ones I don't really like.

It's 2:00am and I can't sleep because when the sun comes up.

Well.

I'll have to go double check the statutes so I know how many ballots we'll have to count and how many of her friends will have to bury her one day and vote to replace her the next.

No person is replaceable.

I hate my job.

I will not give up.

I don't know how to quit.

When you return to the raw energy of the universe you are no longer constrained by the laws of time and space.

When you are stardust you can be anywhere and everywhere all at once.

I know she'll understand when the people broken by her loss are forced to dry their tears.

She had to do it too.

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I wrote a thing...

2022-01-05T06:25:07Z

( ...about the previous 38 days of my life, or the last 29 months. Five years. Nine years? )

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This is for the mothers

2020-01-13T03:27:30Z

Sometimes you have to stand shivering in the shower under the water long run cold, and write. Sometimes you have to type on a screen slippery with condensation while your teeth chatter, naked under the freezing spray because if you stop to get a towel the words are going to dissipate before you can trap them on the page. Sometimes you rinse the conditioner from your hair and wash the salt from your cheeks and sit on the toilet wrapped in a towel while you tap out the last fleeting words you were able to grasp because the room became too cold to bear so you had to move before you were done.

Sometimes the words come, and you follow.

---------------------

This is for the mothers
By S.R. Davis

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who made lunches this morning.
Or dinner tonight.
Breakfast yesterday.
This is for the mothers who filled their child's lunch account and hurried out the door.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who did laundry today.
And the ones who didn't.
This is for the mothers walking down the sidewalks and driving up the road.
In grocery stores and on sandy shores.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who don't remember if they've eaten today.
This is for the mothers who took their meds and the ones who can't remember, because it's been That Kind Of Day.
This is for the mothers who managed to feed the children today and nothing more.
This is for the mothers who could not.
Or went hungry so they could.
This is for the mothers with dead babies.
This is for the mothers of sick children.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers sitting on the porch with a glass of white wine clutched in their hands, who laugh weakly and say, well at least I kept the kids alive today.
This is for those of us who are sitting the same but weeping, because we could not manage even that.

This is for the mothers.

Some days we are given so much.
So much love.
So many hugs they start to hurt.
So many sticky kisses.
So many tissues.
So many baskets of laundry and messy dishes and so, so much glitter on the carpet.

We are given so little, sometimes.
So few tantrums, unlike last week.
So little argument, just tonight, at bedtime.
So little accolades, so little thanks, so little time.
So little sleep.

Let me give you this.

Let me give you your name.

Look into a mirror.
Are you alone?
Now look into a mirror and say, I am...
And say your name.

Look yourself in the eye and say, I am...
And say your name.

Say your name, to yourself.
Say your name, in the silence.
Say your name.

Say your name until you're crying, or laughing, or until it doesn't even sound like a word anymore.
Say your name until you're sobbing on the floor because you've forgotten what it sounds like.

This is for the mothers.
This is for the mothers who learned how to do things the right way by doing it all wrong before.
This is for the mothers who made every mistake with the very best of intentions.
This is for the mothers who struggle, and suffer, and fail.
This is for the mothers who succeed.
Who have it all.
Who are joyous and content and calm...
And still feel like they're forgetting something.

This is for the mothers.
The mothers of foster children.
Adopted children.
Step-children.
Biological children.
Adult children.
Missing children.
Dead children.

This is for the mothers.

Let me give you this.

Let me give you your name.

Look into the mirror and say, my name is...

And say it.

Say. Your. Name.

This is for the mothers
Who sometimes forget who we are.

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the snow continues to fall

2019-11-26T14:10:27Z

"mommy?" he says, as the gate in the hallway closes. "it's four-oh-four so I came in for snuggles, I didn't want to wake you at three."

"is everything okay?" I ask as he snuggles into my side of the bed for the first time in the three months since the injury. busted knees don't lend themselves well to sleeping next to boys who kick in their sleep.

"yup, just wanted snuggles."

eventually he wandered back to bed, but unfortunately the gate locked noisily, and in only another moment the dogs let me know they were awake and would very much like a potty break. my robe waits by my bed for these occasions.

just as they came back in, the lovely child in the next room closed the door behind him and said, "i decided i'd get up and take care of them so you can go back to sleep."

which was very thoughtful, since he woke them up. but, "they are going back to bed, my dude, and you need to s l e e p."

it was nearly six before I was able to fall back to sleep, and six fifteen when my darling girl woke for the day, like she always does. i ignored her for a minute and she settled back down...just in time for the cat to vomit in the bedroom doorway.

it's nearly seven now. my vantablack boy has been out four times to play in the eight or so inches of snow, coming back in damp from the flakes still falling.

as I sit here in the quiet, tucked under my blanket in the soft glow of my pretty electric fireplace, I can't help but think, why didn't he just come in at three? three is the magical hour of snuggles and conversation that always leads back to sleep. when he wakes again I'm going to tell him that: not to wait in the future, just to come get me when he needs me. especially at three.

the dogs are at the door again, asking to track in more snow, to drip on the floor and jump damply into my lap. the alarm is going off to wake the kid for school he doesn't have today.

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So I went back to school

2019-02-28T05:02:30Z

I'm only taking one class, a writing class because LOL. But I have to start somewhere and a class that will be relatively easy for me to get my feet wet seemed like a good idea.

So far the teacher changed her syllabus on the first day and told us she would be changing it regularly the whole time and that? Has me feeling more than a little dubious.

But whatevs, man. I shall endure and do my damn best regardless.

How are you?

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For My Son, On Your Second Deathday

2018-09-16T16:06:32Z

Before my son died he asked me to do five things for him.

1. Get his tumors to Dr. Foreman so that he could save the other children. I did.

2. To NOT bury his body: he was having nightmares about "rotting in the ground" - a direct quote, mind you - because he knew too much. So I had him cremated.

3. To scatter his bones across the world so he could be like the dinosaurs he cherished so much. I do, and many of you have helped.

4. To give Grace and Charlie the specific stuffed animals he wanted them to keep safe for him. I did that too.

5. To visit his grave every Tuesday.

Which is a weird request period, and at odds with number two besides.

I put him in a cabinet in the living room instead, and called it good. But as we draw closer to two years without him I've found that leaving that last request unfinished has made me uncomfortable. The simplest explanation is that a child's understanding of death according to society is that when you die you are buried in a grave and people visit. And Gus wanted that of me specifically. But he also knew too much about death to be comfortable with those societal standards. I assume he had enough faith in me to figure out a way to achieve both, he expected the impossible of me a lot.

Through sheer happenstance I discovered we can inter his ashes in a niche above the ground in the cemetery that he'd indicated he'd like to have for his final resting place.

Not burying his body, not in the ground, and a place to visit every Tuesday. Boom. Go me.

And there's no requirement that we place ALL of his ashes there. So we can continue with number three as well.

When he made that Tuesday request I had promised him a year of visits. In my head, of course. I'd been setting requirements for myself as well. That I would focus on doing the hard work of grieving for a year - I would give myself space and peace and grace to grieve however I needed for one year. And after that time was up I could continue in whatever way I wanted, but I HAD to for that first year. That worked out really well, honestly. I felt free on October first. Which isn't to say that I have stopped grieving, or feeling awful. Just that I hadn't been repressing any of it, hadn't let anyone make me feel like I should start "moving on."

There's a reason I'm doing as well as I am, you know.

And a year of cemetery visits felt like it fit just right.

This year for G's Deathday we are not throwing a party - I'm trying to get the house really truly finally finished and I don't want to rush. And besides that we found something we need to do more.

On September 29th we will be placing Gus' ashes in his permanent home, a marker sharing his life with all who come to visit their loved ones in the years to come. For as long as the granite lasts everyone who sees it will know he lived.

There will be no ceremony, it won't be An Event. Just us, quietly fulfilling his final unfinished request. Another step on the path through grief. One last thing for me to do for my stardust child, who had more faith in me than I did sometimes.

He never asked me to save him, just to make him immortal.

I think I've done pretty well.

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The Things That Happen

2018-03-11T23:32:52Z

There's this thing that happens, more often lately than before. It's not a bad thing or a good thing, it's just...a thing.

As we've started focusing really hard on cleaning and sorting and shedding all of the *stuff* we collected over the years we're uncovering all sorts of things. Stuff that makes me say, "why on earth did we keep that!?" or, "oh wow, I've been wondering where that went."

We don't need this anymore, that was a stress purchase, this is from when they were toddlers, wow.

Those jeans haven't fit in ten years! Heh.

But the thing that happens as I pull boxes out and sift through the usual opened credit card applications I meant to shred, and the water bill from two years ago - the piles of paper that were covering the counter and you just don't have the energy to sort so you chuck it in a box and call it good.

There's a drawing with Gus written on the back. And all of the air leaves the room in a flash.

It's a box you put together purposely before he even died, of things that you knew you'd want later.

And it's just unexpected. You forget you'd been stashing those things since May of 2015.

You had his signature tattooed over your heart because you knew deep inside that one day you would let go of the papers he'd written on and it would never get any more advanced.

And now you were just going to shred all those old bills but without warning you have to decide whether to keep this piece of paper or put it in the recycling bin. It's easy with Charlie's. His will be replaced over and over again, only the really unique things are kept so that he can look back many years from now and see his history. Then decide if it's memories he wants to keep longer or let them go.

Memorializing your child changes your perspective on letting go. Some parents can never let go of anything again. Sometimes it gets easier.

That thing cannot replace my child. How much of his memory does it hold, and does it bring me joy.

The seventeenth "weekly work" page is easy. No, jesus, chuck it.

But this drawing, do I know when he made it? Do I know what it is? Is it just his name that catches me?

Once the first page pops up and you breathe through the surprise and make the choice, you spend the rest of your sorting preparing to find more, to choose. The further you get the easier it is to smile and file it in the recycling.

It's a thing that happens that every parent goes through to some extent, usually at the end of the school year when everything comes home.

But it's just slightly different for us.

It's a thing.

Do I keep the last prescriptions he was given for the intense drugs we used to keep him comfortable while he died?

Or not.

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So now what?

2017-01-01T08:03:18Z

There it goes, the last minute.

Every single person I love now resides in 2017.

2016 will forever be the worst year of my life, and 2017 has the distinction of being the first year of my life I will live through entirely with only one living child.

I think, though, that I will be okay.

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Cancer doesn't play nice

2015-05-16T03:04:53Z

https://www.facebook.com/GusGreyMatters/posts/544168295723832

I'm just. I don't even have words left.

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You can take the girl out of the desert...

2014-09-19T20:55:32Z

I've lived in Colorado for eight years in October. It is my home, I love it here so fiercely I cannot imagine living anywhere else, and that includes my hometown even though I love it dearly. I am continually in awe as we drive just about anywhere. Coming around a curve, or over a hill on a side street can be breathtaking. It hasn't gotten old and I doubt it ever will.

I have often heard people who didn't grow up in southern Arizona wax poetic about the landscape that I took for granted my entire life. It's brown, guys. Even the green of the trees is brown. The saguaros are cool, I guess, but they are EVERYWHERE. We decorate with rocks. We wear flip flops on Christmas day. I've never quite understood people (particularly those from the eastern part of the country) who called our boring desert "ethereal" and "beautifully alien" and "it's like being on a completely different planet" and "the sky is so BIG and so BLUE." Uh, okay?

But I've been away just long enough, I've visited huge cities just enough, I've grown so used to my new environment that despite my frequent visits home, it has finally sunk in.
A few weeks ago I snuck into Arizona for a week to hang out with my dad after his knee surgery. We took the back roads from Sky Harbor to Oracle Junction and as I drove along quiet, tidy blacktop - mostly alone on the road with the music of my childhood softly playing on the radio, my dad silent and sleeping in the passenger seat - my breath caught, gooseflesh raised on my arms, and I felt a little teary eyed.

The whole area had been drenched in unseasonable rain in the week preceding my visit and the desert was alive in a way we usually only see in the spare weeks right before it hits a hundred degrees. The sky was crisp and brightly blue, wild flowers lined the roadside. It was good there was absolutely no one else on the road because I caught myself many times leaning far forward over the steering wheel and gazing in awe at the pristine white clouds; massive blinding thunderheads building higher and higher, climbing far into the cobalt that stretched all the way to the horizon.

We don't really get clouds like that here. Our storms tend to crawl across the sky in a great grey mass, overtaking the pale blue steadily, light drizzles giving way to heavier rainfall.

It was breathtaking. It was ethereal. It was alien. It made me so homesick I nearly shook with it.

It was hot that weekend, right before I left. It wasn't so bad in Mammoth, dad lives right next to the river, but I drove into Oro Valley to have lunch with Amanda (we've gotten to see each other three times this year. It's kind of surreal to be honest) and get some groceries for dad and it was hot.

It wasn't quite a pleasant sort of hot, especially since fall was beginning to march its way steadily into Colorado, but it was a familiar kind of heat. Hot in Colorado is sharp, occasionally damp and cloying. But it *is* only a couple of months.

Hot in southern Arizona is total. It envelops you completely, not just where the sun touches your skin. It radiates from the ground, the plants, the *air* is furnace-like. It wasn't comfortable, but it was *comforting*.

Today I got caught in a link spiral through a series of lists about the truths of Tucson. They're funny because they're so true. The end result, however, is that now I'm sitting here waxing poetic about the place I grew up even though I was glad to leave and am glad to be where I am.

I present, in a vague sort of numerical order, a glimpse of my hometown to amuse my Tucson-native friends, and those who've never been there, alike.

Nine Things Only People From Tucson Will Understand
Ten Tucson Stereotypes that are completely accurate
Twenty-nine Things People From Tucson Have To Explain To Out-of-towners
Thirty Things You Need To Know About Tucson Before You Move There
Fifty Things You Probably Didn't Know About Tucson

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One Thousand Words On Losing Faith

2014-08-17T04:01:17Z

( On January seventeenth of two thousand thirteen I stopped believing in God. Here are one thousand words precisely on what that feels like. )

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There is no Amber Alert for children taken by cancer.

2014-08-05T20:15:48Z

They are simply gone.

Hazel Anne was seven months old when she was diagnosed with Anaplastic Ependymoma. She and Gus shared the same doctors, and nurses. From diagnoses to surgery, to radiation and on, we have shared our entire journey with the lovely Miss Hazel. Sadly, she had recurrent tumors diagnosed when Gus started chemo in January of 2013.

I put her MRIs on my calendar so I knew when to be there to support her mom through the stress. Her mother was who I reached out to when I scheduled Gus' - only she knows what that day feels like. It was through Hazel's mother I knew of Campbell Hoyt, whom I spoke of previously.

Recently Hazel's disease progressed and she had another round of radiation to hopefully shrink the tumors a bit, and give her relief. She was doing so well.

Last night Hazel was admitted to the hospital for pain control and quite unexpectedly...left. She was just three years old.

There are not words enough in any language to express what the loss of a child does to your heart. There is no way to say "I am so sorry" to her parents with the weight if what it feels like to know that she is gone, and there is nothing at all that will console them, and her grandparents, her entire family.

There is a hole in the world today.

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Harry Styles Is A Good Man.

2014-08-03T22:56:26Z

( I'm going to talk about a very sick child right now, not mine, thank god. But I'm gonna talk about him too. )

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I may have figured it out

2014-04-28T19:59:29Z

I wound up rambling at dine a couple days ago about my need for a project. It rather helpfully pointed me in the right direction, so thank you. :)

Camping and fishing and cleaning. These are my projects, in addition to my writing challenges.

( I'll tuck all this musing behind a cut, kay? )

So. Do you go camping? Tell me things. It's been a long time for me, and I was never in charge.

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I need a project

2014-04-27T01:37:41Z

I realized today I was contemplating adopting a puppy because it would take a lot of attention and work.

My house is relatively clean, the Cup is a slow build to the gut wrenching anxiety part, the garden is in the spring holding pattern that always happens until early May, the pigs don't require a whole lot, I'm not writing, and I'm taking a break from fandom.

I need something to do.

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Plans

2014-04-22T23:21:37Z

There's a thing I want to do and I wonder if I have the ability to follow through.

( I want to record a video on my birthday every year until I die, for my children. )

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Cancer never really goes away

2014-03-25T19:13:11Z

( It's been a year since the last chemo bag was hung. I'm still not really okay. )

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My four year old is a cancer survivor.

2013-05-22T03:11:54Z

We got the call today, his bloodwork has already returned to normal, a full month+ sooner than expected.

Until one of the many many (many) MRI's he has in the next 6 years says otherwise, my child has survived, beaten, and fully recovered from BRAIN CANCER.

I? Am a proud and relieved mother today.

Yay.

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indeliblesasha @ 2012-10-10T14:53:00

2012-10-10T20:55:19Z

( My three year old was just diagnosed with brain cancer. )

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Things I would ordinarily have posted to FB #3

2012-08-10T15:35:56Z

I'm a little back on Facebook, but not really because it's that horrible time of year where people get sick of the heat and everyone is fucking grouchy about everything and the political climate in the US is basically poisoning everything.

So even people I like are posting shit that irritates me. So I'm largely avoiding.

Here's some more stuff I'm not posting on FB (and that I'm also not a hrefing to make pretty because I want to knit):

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jtes/jared-loughner-pleads-guilty-wont-face-death This pleases me. That he was found competent, that he has the wherewithal to see that pleading guilty will save his life, and that there was never any chance he was going to get off.

http://www.dailycamera.com/editorials/ci_21266181/third-time-is-not-charm-personhood-measure-puts I'm really sick of the freaking Personhood Amendment.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/14509384/beautiful-photo-goes-viral-online/ A man and his dog. And the things we will do for our furry family members in order to help them feel less pain. ♥

http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/the-gay-rights-revolution-arrives-at-fox-news This is a pretty cool article about the winds of change in media where gay rights are concerned.

http://tankisclean.tumblr.com/post/29127193857/ireallyhatecornnuts-calico-kat Go watch this video and revel in the greatness of humanity, and send a silent congratulations to the people who raised this young man.

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This is the BEFORE post of my massive plant-assault.

2012-03-23T04:37:04Z

This is what my yard looked like in June of 2011. Isn't it gorgeous and lush and amazing? We had watered nothing, in fact we had been gone for 6 weeks, and our good friend and contractor had mowed for us, in the narrow window that it was dry enough. It rained a LOT last year,

Now the thing is, it looks really pretty in this picture. Hell, it took my breath away after 6 weeks in Southern Arizona.

But that's a lot of over grown plants. They are starting to choke each other out and invade into the yard, and so the time has come for me to go to war with the plant life. It's for its own good, honest.

I have no pictures of the front yard, sadly, because the transformation out there has been amazing. We basically had a thicket growing on the front corner, and our contractors very kindly took it all out using chain saws. It took them half a day. Two of them. With chainsaws. The pile of branches and trunks is epic. (And hopefully gone soon. Because the neighbors are starting to look at us funny. Oops.)

Anyway, this is largely for my own amusement, a retrospective of what the yard has looked like the last few years, so this June I can compare and see if I did good, or just, you know, made a total mess of things. :D

( There's a bunch of large pictures of my yard under here. )

So there you have it. My green and rather lovely but horrifically over grown yard. I promise I'll take more pictures when it grows in. :)

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Breastfeeding

2011-08-15T17:20:21Z

If you have breastfed, are breastfeeding, will breastfeed, or love someone who has/is/will, please read this article:

Dysphoric milk ejection reflex: A case report

This was my hell while I breastfed my sons. I have thought there was something wrong with me for more than two years because I was ashamed to talk about it, and when I did I was assured that we all have our bad days and it would pass.

It never passed.

By the time I got to this quote from a mother who suffered the same thing,

"If you read Harry Potter they talk about the creatures that suck the soul out of you and when they are around it makes you cold and you start to focus on negative things and fall into this abyss of negative thoughts - that is how D-MER was for me at times. I hope the research you are doing helps you come to some conclusions. Please let me know if there is anything else I can do."

I was sobbing so hard my oldest climbed into my chair and wrapped his arms around me repeating he yuvs me over and over, my husband was trying to figure out what was wrong and I couldn't tell him, I could only hand him the computer and make him read.

I remember standing in the shower when Charlie was a week, maybe two, old and bawling and shaking and hating myself and my children and resenting the hell out of everything in the universe as milk ran down my torso because early in breastfeeding you have spontaneous letdown sometimes.

And then it would pass. I would feel normal again, aside from the intense guilt from having had those thoughts to begin with.

If I had only known. If someone had been able to say to me "this happens. It's not *you*, and it can be *helped*" it would have completely changed my life.

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I make beautiful people.

2010-06-26T16:55:30Z

Hi! I owe a vacation wrap up and, like, a billion pictures, and, um, the story of how it came to be we have a teenager again.

But I'm hoping to placate you with pictures of my gorgeous kids.( Pictures, they are big. )

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omg

2010-05-28T15:47:21Z

My camera is a Nikon D3000. It's listed as a $550.00 camera, but I got it on sale at Target for less, and you can get it on Amazon for as low as $400.00. For a couple hundred more you can go up to a D5000. But. Um. I'm glad I didn't? Cause this one is already a little out of my league. Or, a lot.

( Do I need to specify that there are pictures behind this cut? )

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Holy Crap.

2010-05-28T03:58:09Z

Received my birthday present from husband today.

Is dSLR I picked out.

Is AMAZING.

Am intimidated.

Am not easily intimidated by anything, ever.

This is one bad-ass camera.

Glad I bought the "newbie-friendly" and not the "omfgwow" version.

Did I mention the intimidated?

*LOVESLIKEPUPPIES*

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