Excerpt from the other day:

I rode in the car today with a woman who took me to my doctor’s appointment and talked about Jesus a lot. She also talked a lot about a man who broke her heart.

Bad.

Broke it so bad that she still told strangers about it decades later, and even though she’d been married to another man for over 30 years. That blew my mind right there. But I know how hard it is to forgive someone when all you want them to do is to say that they’re sorry, and they just won’t.

They just…won’t.

And maybe they never will, and maybe they just keep on treating you like shit for your whole entire life.

I know exactly what that’s like.

For sure I do.

The other night, when my mother texted me the Band Boosters meeting was at 6:30pm, and then I asked her if she could just pick me up, and we could go together, like we were a family, she said, “Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I said, “Well, why don’t you just pick me up, and we can all go to the Band Boosters together?”

So she said, “Well, that just doesn’t work for me.”

So I said, “So you just don’t feel like it.”

So she said, “Well, if you can’t get there—well—that just doesn’t work for me.”

Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t work for you, would it, when you’ve told everyone around you that your daughter just isn’t INTERESTED in being a part of her children’ s lives for the past 10 years, I guess that wouldn’t work for you, to be seen walking in with her to the Band Boosters meeting, as if you were a family, together, with her.

As if you loved, and supported her, and as if she were a part of your family.

I guess that just wouldn’t work for you.

And that’s why it’s so hard to forgive people who are still doing the bad things to you.

Because it’s still happening.

All the time.

When all you want is for it to stop happening, and for them to say they’re sorry.

But that’s just never going to happen.

Because that just doesn’t work for them.

The lady driver in the van today cried when I told her about my mother, and she cried good and hard, and she looked at me through her tears with her big, soft, blue-grey eyes, and she said, “Pray for her. You just pray really, really hard for her, okay? Just pray for her.”

So I guess that’s what I’ll do.

I will do just that.

I wonder if she prays for that man who broke her heart so bad.

I told her I was really sorry about that, and that I, in a way, knew how she felt, because I had trouble with forgiveness too, in a situation that could be compared to that.

And that’s how we women bond, we talk about our sorrows, and our troubles, and we work through them, and we connect that way, and forge a sisterhood, and no, that is not, “Making it about yourself,” or being selfish in any way.

That is called compassion.

That is called identifying with someone.

That is called empathy.

And this is how the fabric of our society is woven–by us sharing our stories with each other, and by identifying with each other, and it is in this way that we heal.

Not by ourselves, but together.

This is important to know, as women and men.

We heal only together, and never alone.

November 7th, 2026

Superman and King’s 13th Birthday

Saturday

2:46pm

I didn’t get the boys anything for their birthday, except for a huge amount of food, which I hope is good enough.

I wanted to get them guitar strings for that guitar that is sitting in their basement, which I will, as soon as I have the $15.

Superman, after seeing what all was in the bag of food that I brought over, ran back outside to say, breathlessly, “Thank you!!” with his bright blue eyes all big and beautiful and wide. I gave him a big goodbye hug and whispered, “You’re so welcome.”

The bag was heavy, and I gave them a giant homemade (half-made, I should say) fruit salad to go with it. I hadn’t had time to cut up the watermelon or the pears and apples yet, so the watermelon was weighing down the heavy bag of food. In the fruit salad was blackberries, fresh pineapple, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries (you can’t go wrong with berries and boys, I’ve learned–they just go together 🙂), two kinds of kiwi, and then the watermelon, apples, and pears were to be added–if they could fit in the bowl!

In the bag besides the watermelon were some caramel apples, organic, sustainably-farmed chocolate (Hooray for Aldi’s!!), some oatmeal cream pies, organic fruit snacks, organic string cheese, and a giant gourmet meat and cheese platter-thing that looked like it would be delicious for a 13-year old boy or two, (and a Motorcycle and Dad too, for that matter–those boys can EAT, when it comes to meat!).

We have to leave in about an hour to go to their house.

I hope the boys won’t be too disappointed that I only got them food and guitar-strings-to-be. I’m working tonight at the Speakeasy, so we’ll see how that goes. Last night I felt like crap, so I didn’t go in.

No Reading Film Festival this weekend.

Radiohead from next door did donate $50, but that just went to my overdrawn bank account.

Ugh.

Paul didn’t talk to me all last week because he was mad at me for writing about him what I did.

It sometimes baffles me that the people around me don’t take care of themselves, and so that translates into a general apathy about taking care of the people around them, and then to the planet, and wow, look at us now–the planet is burning down, and I’m the only one who seems to ever give a shit–in my circle of people, anyway–and when I point it out, then I’m the one who ends up apologizing.

Riddle me that one, willya?

Cuz I just don’t get it.

My intention is NOT to go around hurting people’s feelings and making them mad.

And I AM sorry that I did that to my dear friend of, well, 13 fucking years now, who supports me, and loves me, and follows me, and cherishes me as a person.

My intention IS to tell the truth and get people to CHANGE their behavior so that we can, collectively, CHANGE THE FUCKING WORLD, DUH.

And if that makes you mad, and hurts your feelings, well, so be it, and I guess I’m just about done apologizing for telling the truth.

Because it’s not mean, and nasty, and “spreading hate,” like people like to say.

It’s ACTUALLY just pointing out YOUR BAD BEHAVIOR that is HURTING THE PEOPLE and the PLANET AROUND YOU, and YOU SHOULD PROBABLY FUCKING CHANGE THAT, OR ELSE WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, LIKE REALLY, REALLY SOON, AND NOT IN A FUN WAY, EITHER.

Like in a natural disaster sort of way, where it’s every fucking man for himself–because if you think that the people around you who don’t give a shit about you now are going to give a shit about you later, when the shit hits the fan–AND YES, I AM TALKING TO YOU–well, YOU ARE JUST ABOUT DEAD WRONG, SWEETHEART.

And it’s coming.

And it’s coming soon.

Do you know when the last time that the military dug mass graves was?

1950.

During the Korean War.

When so many people died that they couldn’t fucking identify everyone, and so everybody went into like, a human garbage dump.

They dug some mass graves in North Carolina last month.

Called it “Operation Dragon Covenant Phase II.”

I wonder what the fuck THAT means.

“Operation Dragon Covenant Phase I was the initial conceptual and tabletop planning phase of the U.S. Army’s roadmap to modernize its large-scale battlefield fatality management doctrine.”

That’s what AI says.

Phase I: Plan it on paper.

Phase II: Dig mass graves.

Phase III: WAR. DUH.

Please, for the love of everything holy, store some food and water for your families.