An Ode to Red Pants

I am zen af right now

Oh Reader….I am engaged, and in all the easy breezy, stress free 

paradise of wedding planning (Are you married, Reader?  Yeah, you know what I’m talking about!  Remember how simple and care free this was?!) I would like to take a moment to tell you about someone I love very dearly, and why.

His name is Red Pants. I have mentioned him once or twice before.

That’s not really his name, really his name is Shinsuke Nakamura, and he is marvelous.  He is a professional wrestler.  He is my favorite professional wrestler.

He is perfect.

I mean it’s hard to pick a favorite, I know.  There’s Khal Drogo, and I like him a lot but he’s on sick leave.

The Swamp Witches were...memorable, but have been gone for a while. 

Other-Prince is a delight.  

Bouncy Guy is a joy to watch.  

Jericho seems like the best kind of wise-ass.  

Asuka is my second favorite wrestler, because she looks so dang cool, her mask-makeup-thing gives me chills, her coat is flawless, her costume looks like Lisa Frank designed it, but she's not cutesy and she'll kill you.  She gets to go by her real name in my head because “Wears her underwear on the outside” is a lot.  

Anyway, there are many iconic wrestlers from whom to pick.

But Red Pants is the best, and don’t worry, I am going to tell you why.

Here’s why:

1. I appreciate his body.  Don’t make it weird, Reader.  I don’t mean I sit over here staring at him like everyone stares at Aquaman.  What I do mean is that he just looks like a dude.  A fit dude, yes, absolutely— a dude who works out, sure.  But also a dude who gets excited when girl scout cookie season starts, and has hobbies outside of

 the gym, with a body you might encounter irl.  He has better things to do than slavishly pursue some crazy cut-like-a-diamond, look-at-all-my-veins, slathered-in-baby-oil, once-had-a-regular-body-but-then-someone-filled-him-up-with-helium-like-a-balloon-and-now-he-has-no-neck-and-a-solid-B-cup, hard-body ridiculousness.  He just looks like a dude. 

2. BUT THEN HIS STYLE COMES POURING OUT AND HE IS LARGER THAN LIFE AND AMAZING.  

He is called The Artist Known as Shinsuke Nakamura, and he is aptly named—he is an artist.  He is a performance artist, giving his audience everything within him in every match.  People think all kinds of things about wrestling, but you can’t pretend it is not a performance art.  This man leaves it all on the floor whenever he does anything.  He gives 110%-- and holler if you hear me, any Reading performers out there—he doesn’t just give it to himself.  He works hard to make everyone else shine. 

Takes it like a boss.

He takes his hits hard, he makes his opponents look good.  He is a PROFESSIONAL.  Which means that when I watch him, I begin to respect wrestling as a profession ß NOT A THING I EVER THOUGHT I WOULD EXPERIENCE.  

Look Reader, I know next to nothing about wrestling but I know something about performance and this is a man anyone would beg to work beside.  

"Does he even sing?"
"Don't worry, this is going to be amazing."

Just look at that joy!

3.  He has so much fun doing all this, and that is refreshing.  So many of these guys are super hyper angry and intense and it's just boring to watch.  But Shinske Nakamura, the King of Strong Style, is having fun.  He is full of joy, and his joy is contagious.  

4. Finally, and this is really the clincher, let’s just talk about his intro for a minute.

I am.

All wrestlers have their own special intro, when they enter the arena and approach the sacred ring to hurl themselves around for the benefit of bloodthirsty fans.  Some intros are funny, some are Super Serious, some are Very Hard To Take Super Seriously, but all are intended to capture the flavor of the wrestler and prime the crowd for the scripted violence that is about to go down.

Red Pants has an intro too and….Look, you’re just going to have to watch it.  I’ll wait.

DID YOU WATCH IT??  DO YOU NEED TO WATCH ANOTHER ONE??

ONE MORE AGAIN BECAUSE IT IS SO GOOD??!?!!!?!

Ok ok…Let us unpack: First, you see what I mean about his joy, his showmanship, his beautiful ridiculousness, and those red pants.  But on a deeper note.....Shinsuke Nakamura brought the violin to the World Wrestling Entertainment crowd.  He could have chosen anything, and he chose culture....and made it cool.  The violin is the nerdiest instrument.  I know, I used to play it and have utmost respect for it.  It can draw tears out of a stone, but it is not widely considered cool.  But now it IS cool.  How cool?  SO COOL.  Are there little WWE fans appreciating the violin now?  Thinking about playing the violin now?  Or at least thinking about not bullying violinists now?  I believe there are.

Furthermore, his violinist is a black dude.  Who he bows to, out of one artist’s respect for another.   He brought a black nerd violin player into the WWE and MADE HIM COOL and goes out of his way to show him respect.  Are there little (and big) WWE fans, a predominantly but not exclusively white crowd, taking in this respect that Mr. Nakamura, this gem of a human, has for a black man, a black violinist man?  I BELIEVE THERE ARE. 

FURTHER furthermore, he is ridiculous, and he manages to be so purely genuinely ridiculous that you believe it, and you believe in it, and you believe in him.

I mean just look at this man.  Behold him, and my love for him.

Just some anecdotes about Red Pants: he is Japanese and came to the WWE in the last few years.  His English is not great so they almost never give him a mic, and never for long.  Having said that, he’s been here for years.  And yet, still very little mic time.  One time, at an interview, when he was just ready to be done being interviewed, he said “No speak English.”

Then, at a different interview, he was totally having a conversation in English.  When that interviewer said, a little snidely I might add, “Oh, I thought you no speak English?” he REPLIED IN SPANISH.

THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THIS MAN I DO NOT LOVE. 

Some dear friends got me a Red Pants figurine last year, and it has shared some important moments with me: a harrowing airplane ride, a trip to Denver, graduating from Space Camp, and Christmas.  My King of Strong Style t shirt is featured prominently in the engagement video.  I am a fan, is what I am saying.

You can't really see, but that's
him in a place of honor

Welcome to my adventures, tiny person.

Red Pants in Space!!!

Talking me down from airplane anxiety

Talking me right back up in airplane anxiety

Peaceful contemplation

Trains are better than airplanes

Denver!

More Denver

Hotel party

Somebody get this champion a drink

I'm not the only Red pants fan (I mean, they make a figurine for crying out loud).  He has a
following because he's good.  He recently won a very big fancy belt that I assume he and his lovely wife used as a centerpiece at dinner parties.  In fact, just this week, he won that fancy belt again, rocking a red Elvis-style jumpsuit and reminding me yet again what a gift to humanity he is.

So here’s where all this came from: “Andy”, my beloved betrothed who lives in the garden of my heart, knows a guy who knows a guy who is legit a wrestler in WWE

Specifically, this guy, Xavier Woods.

Who is a part of this group, the New Day, who also get high honors for style and fun

(Xavier Woods is also a DnD nerd so we love him extra for that.)

who knows Red Pants.  They work in different…divisions?  Idk how this stuff is organized, but while they aren’t in the same part of the organization structure, they do cross paths.  And “Andy” asked his guy to ask his guy to ask Shinsuke if he would record a little cell phone video wishing me a happy wedding.

This did not occur.

This did not occur because WWE’s legal team apparently hate fun and abhor weddings.  (That is why I know about this—it was a secret, but then “Andy” got the official no, so he figured he may as well tell me he’d been working on it for the last six weeks.  Six weeks, people.  I’m going to marry the crap out of this man.)

But that’s not the point.  The point is: it got to the legal team because it got to Shinsuke.  The point is: he said yes, until lawyers decided that both love and fandom are for chumps and nobody can have nice things.  Shinsuke said yes.

SHINSUKE SAID YES.

SHINSUKZE NAKAMURA KNOWS MY NAME.  He knows I’m getting married, and wanted to wish me well. 

omgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomgomg

As I lay here freaking out (there is not enough oxygen in the world for my gasping), just some updates for the burgeoning new Red Pants fan I know you are:

Before

After

He recently went from face to heel (a little industry jargon for you: face is for babyface and it means they’re good guys in the wrestling story arch.  Heel is for tarheel, the bad guys, because apparently wrestlers are Duke fans) for match-after-match punching Mom Hair, another popular wrestler, in the nuts.  

So now he occasionally wears blue pants—do not be fooled, it is still the man we all know and love.  Also, when he switched from good guy to bad guy, he switched his music from the black violinist to an all Japanese hip hop/rock band that raps in Japanese and offers no translation.  It is dope.  Also also, the original intro song was known as the Rising Sun, and the darker, bad-guyish revamped version is called Shadows of the Setting Sun.  See what they did there?  I say again, there is nothing about this man I do not love.

Thank you Red Pants, from the bottom of my adoring heart, for trying.

Now I have to find a Japanese translator who can turn this into readable Japanese so I can send it along with a wedding invitation to my favorite wrestler.

Until then we will start with:

どうもすみません、ありがとうございます  

 

RED PANTS FOR LIFE!!!!

Goin' to the Chapel

Hello, Gentle Reader!  Guess what!  I’ve finally gotten past the eight-ish weeks of craziness and now have free evenings again!  Not…many, but more than I had, and I’ll take it.  I’ve missed you.

Moment of silence for those we lost.

And while I’ve been busy, there have been murders and midterms and I did some experiments with Spackle and a blow torch but we’re not going to talk about all that today.  We’re going to take a moment for the bad, then focus on something good in the world—or at least, in my world.

I’m getting married!!  Well, assuming he says yes.  At the time of writing this we’re less than a week out, but I want this junk ready to go – if I posted this on Sunday, Nov 11, I did something right. 

So because I’m me, when I could have just found a quiet sweet special moment to propose, I have instead made an elaborate, ridiculous plan.  Let me tell you about this elaborate, ridiculous project, which has filled my few free moments and I have been unable to share with the person I giggle over elaborate, ridiculous things with.

Back when we first started dating, I told “Andy” to never get it in his head that he gets to ask me to marry him.  *I* am commitment-phobic.  *I* don’t like feeling cornered.  *I* get to ask.  And “Andy,” he knows who I am.  I mean we’ve been friends for like 20 years now and only romantic for the last few.  So he gets it.  

"You guys are weird."

When we started dating, and I wouldn’t admit we were boyf and girlf until…like, wayyyyyyyy down the line.  We weren’t dating, we were just…dolphins.  That was our word for it, because I don’t care what you call it, it is what it is, but don’t rush me and don’t tell me what to do.  For our first Christmas he got me a necklace with dolphins on it and I wear it every day and people think I’m from Florida and dolphins are my spirit animal but no, dolphins are not my spirit animal,




this goose is my spirit animal, but also it took a really long time to admit the person I was in love with who was in love with me and we were going on dates and having romance-times together was someone I might call my “boyfriend”.

And we moved in together, and he secretly loves my cats (BOTH CATS, “Andy,” if you’re reading), and everything has been super great.  Turns out, it helps a lot when you’ve known each other since you were like 18.  You already know things like “what’s he like when he’s angry?” and “is he a good friend?” and “does she lie about money?” and “is she nice to dogs?”.  Over the last year or so my niece has been non-stop with the when are you getting married as though her biological clock is ticking like this when really, she’s eight, and she’s just really worried about being a flower girl.  Additionally my sister has been a little, hurry it up you’re not getting any younger.  And “Andy” himself has recently been like, “Man we really love each other, if only there was sommmmmething we could do about that…” and I have been like, “Get off my junk, we talked about this.” 

My other niece apparently burst into very genuine tears last week because it was so sad and unfair
that I am unmarried and have no kids…but she also burst into
equally sincere tears the week before that because it wasn’t fair
 that the ground gets to have all the trees.
  So.  Take it with a grain of salt.

But I have also been like, man, I want to marry this guy.  And I sat on that for a while being like BUT COMMITMENTTTTTTT!!!! before I was like, ok, but also marriage, let’s get serious about it.  And after that it took a while to say it out loud to someone (my sister), and since then it’s been kinda non-stop. 

Real Convo:

Me: *Deep Breath*  I’m going to ask “Andy” to marry me.

Sis: Oh GOOD! I have been wanting to go to a wedding!  How about a destination wedding in the Bahamas, I would love that!

Me: 

And then we got down to the serious business of planning elaborate ridiculousness, because we are cut from the same cloth.

So of course this video popped into our heads…but getting all my friends together to plan some sort of coordinated dance routine is not real life, and also as I mentioned, I have been super overbooked for two months.  Like, very few free hours, weekday or weekend. 

He loves baseball, which I will politely say I do not love and leave it at that, so we thought about doing one of those jumbo-tron proposals at the baseball stadium, but here’s the thing.  First, I’d have to go to a game.  I’d have to sit through not-my-favorite 72 hours of boredom on what should be a special day.  More importantly, it would baaaasically sign me up for a lifetime of him trying to get me to go to further, future baseball games because “that’s our special thing” and me crushing the hope in his eyes like Godzilla in Tokyo because no, obviously not, never, again and again, til death do us part.  Seems like a lose-lose sitch, so we moved on.

He ALSO loves movies…and I recently learned there is a completely adorable old-school drive-in movie theater in the mountains a few hours away, and fall in the mountains is my *most favorite* thing. Also recently a bunch of us all went to the mountains together and did I listen to the Last of the Mohicans Soundtrack?  

I know it's problematic but it is so good

Did I make everyone listen to the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack?  

I did. 

So I call the drive-in, and they’re like, sure, come on up, bring your friends.  I tell them I am asking the boyf for his hand, and they’re very sweet and excited, and 

basically tell me I can put a little video or something on the screen before the movie.  Now we are, as they say, cooking with gas.

I start to plan a movie, and asking friends to help.  Turns out, I have contacts in the film industry, who know how to do this.  What contacts?  His contacts.  He works at a production studio, where they have real cameras and real editing equipment and know what they are doing and are down to keep a secret. 

The joy, perhaps, is in the secret...

Let me be clear, when I say movie—I do not mean movie.  

Spoiler alert: this preview has not been
approved by anyone.

I perhaps mean trailer.  I mean a few brief minutes, and less of a plot and more of the hint of a plot.  I want it to start like a horror movie, because he’s way into that, and for him to not know what’s going on at first, til suddenly he does.  I want the green screen that says, this preview has been approved for all audiences, and a voice-over saying “In a world gone mad…” like Don Lafontaine (or my cousin) (who recently did a fabo music thing just btw), etc.  So I start trying to put this together.

Let me tell you a few things I have learned.  First, when deciding to do something you have no skill set in, it helps to get a professional.  I mean, the director, we’ll call her “Molly,” (except we won’t call her “Molly,”  we will call her “Carpenter,” like John Carpenter, because what fun is a secret movie project if you don’t have secret code names and also what if "Andy" sees a text pop up and 

Me waiting for Saturday,
when me and "Molly"
can be facebook friends....

he’s like, how do you know “Molly?” and I would rather deal with “Who is this Carpenter guy and why is he asking if you can meet tomorrow after work?”) is a MOTHERTRUCKING PROFESSIONAL.  

She went to grad school for this, she knows what she’s doing, she knows lenses and angles and “clean exits” and directs like it’s her job because it is, and also she’s just generally a joy to be around.  By the time you read this we are allowed to publicly be friends.

It would have the movie version of this fine art.

Worth noting: if it were just me this would have been recorded on an iPhone, probably portrait not landscape, and edited together with the Microsoft Paint equivalent of editing software.  And it would have been fine!  But this...it’s better. 

Like this, but honestly we were at a Starbucks with
a notebook so...slightly lower production value.

Then another professional, we’ll call her “Sammie” (code name “Tina” for Tina Fey) helps produce.  I don’t even know what that means but it means the day we got all our friends together to do a busy scene went WAY BETTER than it would have otherwise.  It also means I got to watch them plan out said busy scene, complete with little paper doodle scraps to represent all the people and a sketch of the area based on Google Satellite and a plan for all the cuts and angles. 

Another thing I have learned is what a terrible liar I am.  Again, I’ve had very few available daylight hours, and this kinda needs to get done by Nov 10 because that’s when we’re scheduled at the drive-in.  “Andy” knows we’re going to the drive-in, and everyone is invited, and he thinks it’s just cuz hey, cool drive-in and mountains.  Fine.  But coming up with things I’ve been doing in the meantime that are not “sitting at home covered with cats” on the one unscheduled evening I have wrested away from my anxious over-scheduling is not easy for me.  I’d rather “Andy” ask about “Carpenter” than “Molly” because I can laugh off the “Carpenter” questions and I would freeze cold if asked about “Molly”.  I am a terrible liar.

Luckily, I can outsource that. 

Real friends help you hide the
body first, and then ask why.

Me: Give me a lie for why I’m not going home at the normal time tonight.

“Jen”: You’re picking something up from a client. Your boss needed something at the last minute.  You had to finish a project that you forgot was due.  You met up with your coworkers for drinks.  You are stuck in ridiculous traffic. 

Me: Ok, we can make this work.

“Jen”:  Great!  Wait, where will you really be?

Other lesson: I hate keeping secrets.  Or wait, no—that’s not entirely it.  I can keep a secret.  I hate not telling good stories.  The difference is subtle but potent.  I mean, I started a blog because I love telling stories.  If you’re reading this, then I’m at least not super terrible at it.  I have been doing this ridiculous, complex project—my favorite kind—and I can’t tell the person I love to tell about my ridiculous, complex projects.  I have been having big hilarious convos with my parents (don't worry Dad, you can menace him about being a #provider in December)—and I can’t tell the person I tell about hilarious convos with my parents.  I have been planning this event with the drive-in people, the film crew, “Carpenter” and “Tina”—and I can’t tell the person I tell about all the interesting-ranging-to-mildly-interesting-ranging-to-totally-not-interesting things that I do or that happen to me.  The pay off on this had better be great, because sitting on it for 6 weeks has been a real pain.  I have a great story to tell about my day—and instead, I have to be like, no, hanging out at my sister’s house where I have totally absolutely I'm-not-lying been since last time you saw me was boring, nothing much happened.

(I HAVE GREAT STORIES TO TELL, READER.)

This one I didn’t learn, this one I knew—but our friends are solid gold.  People interrupted their New York vacations for this.  People showed up in the rain.  People drove hours out of their way.  People wore fake beards, terrible terrible $3.00 fake beards.  

They gave their time and their energy, their voices and their bodies, offered up their houses and their talents, interrupted their schedules, wrangled their kids and/or dogs, and all I gave them was maybe a donut but mostly a “Hey, thanks so much!” and billing in the credits of our definitely-going-to-make-it-to-the-big-time faux-horror trailer. 

We have low standards of hygiene.

I also learned that eating chocolate filled donuts through a fake beards is revolting, and that is coming from me, and I am a goblin. 

If you’re reading this, he said yes ᴥ ß I was looking for a heart symbol but instead I found this tiny octopusy thing.  Watch our dumb trailer; it is dumb for love.

We're such nerds :)

Super Fun Stress Times

Hello, gentle Reader.  I know this is just words on a screen, but I ask you sincerely—how are you?  You doing ok?  You holding it together out there? 

It’s been a rough patch, these last few (years) weeks.  There’s a lot to that, both personally and across the country, but I’m not here to rant.  I was coming in hot last post and then the world was like, you think you got heat?  I’ll show you heat!  It’s been…a lot, for me and perhaps for you.  

So take a moment, take a deep breath, know you are loved and not alone.  Cuz things are tough right now.

Which manifests in some weird ways.  For example, on my drive home today, I pulled into the gas station and turned off my car and couldn’t find my keys.

She likes my car.

My car is a rolling garbage pile, at least the front seats.  It slowly accumulates knock-off la croix cans, and empty cups I take coffee to work in, and fast food bags that, if anyone else just left in my car, they would hear choice words about.  I give myself permission.  It’s my car, and the chorus of rattling that accompanies sharp turns sounds like home. 

But there I am, and I don’t know where my keys are.  I look in all the regular places, and I mean—I just got in the car at work, it’s not like I was on some odyssey that started on Neptune.  So I think back.

But I have no idea. 

Like some kind of statement...

Immediately I decide I have dropped them back in the parking garage and left them there.  Not dropped them, like accidentally—I, in the gas station, imagine throwing them to the ground with purpose and intent, because that makes sense, then leaving them there like a statement.

  See, my car is an ooo-la-la fancy keyless push-to-start car and so it is absolutely possible to turn it on then drive off without the key.  So in my gas station moment, I am picturing me getting in my car, turning it on, getting out of my car to load my trunk with some work stuff, and tossing my keys onto the ground in defiance before getting back into my car and driving away.  I am not remembering this, I am imagining it, because it makes sense.  Of course it does, it is the worst case scenario, and so of course it is plausible. 

But I try to be rational about it, so I clean out my car.  Wrappers, McDonalds bags, used dental floss (don’t judge me), etc.  It’s like four loads.  No keys. 

I clean out the back seat, a space I have not accessed at all in three weeks, while imagining how I’m going to hop the privacy fence in the back yard at the house to wait til “Andy” gets home. 

I go into the trunk, and look inside the boxes from work that I have not opened at any point since they came in my possession, to see if I stuck my keys inside of them.  While doing this, I wonder how to get in touch with the parking garage people to ask them to go look for my keys.  

The keys of defiance.

I go through the stuff that has nested in the box I keep back there for Aldi runs, and I barely stop myself before actually checking the pockets of the rain coat I have not worn in months.

I check through my work bag, wondering how I am going to explain to the gas station attendants that yes, I have filled my car up, but I am not moving it—potentially ever.  I go through the bag again.

Eventually I find my keys—they are in a corner of the trunk, like below the fake floor over the spare, as though maybe I did throw them down in defiance and with intent, which I do not remember doing and is an objectively dumb thing to do in the trunk, but here we are.

And then I come home.  And all this makes perfect sense, because stress is a hell of a drug.

This is how I felt about it.

Related story, remember how the Ass Vampires were trying to keep my money from me?  Well, we got it worked out eventually, and they mailed me my rollover check.  It got here last week.  And I was soooo happy to have it-- you may remember I had some strong feelings about that process.   

And now I don’t know where it is.  Oh, I got the check!  I received it, I pulled it out of the envelope, I double checked the amount.  I have clear memories of all of that….and then I put it “somewhere safe” and now it, I assume, is still there living a life of peaceful serenity far from the hands of greedy money-grubbing financial professionals and also me.  I am really looking forward to having to call them and ask them to resend it, that’ll be fun for everyone. 

Right, Reader??

When super stressed out I also do perfectly reasonable and not alarming things like suddenly check back in with myself while I am driving and become convinced that I am doing something wrong.  Not “I just realized I have forgotten my turn signal” wrong, more like “I am suddenly certain I am going the wrong way down a one way street” wrong.  It’s cool.  Happens to everyone.

Both entering and leaving sleep is a chore—and I find that one particularly unfair.  Brain, if you are going to be filled with the level of –whatever this is—that won’t let you turn off, then you do not also get to be mad when you turn back on.  

Wait tho, but what is it?  Is there a word for this?  Not angst but not fear but not anxiety but not anger
 but also all of those things.  It is sludgy but slimy but clumpy, sticky,
 and it burns.  It smells bad—not like death
 or like garbage or like acridity
 or like hate but also
like all of those things.  New word.  We’re calling it…Kevin.
Get it together, Kevin.

PICK A TEAM—asleep or awake.  Save it for 6:30 am plsthx and leave 10:30 pm alone.  But noooooo sleep has no master, sleep does what it wants, sleep is better friends with Kevin than with me and then I have dreams where I get in a very angry fight with an acquaintance in my childhood home and have to go hide from him in the bushes (where I met a very nice stray cat who was happy I brought blankets, so…well, that was nice).  Kevin doesn’t want sleep, Kevin doesn’t know what he wants, but what he wants is fickle and has a lot of middle fingers in play. 

Related note, if anyone is interested in
going in on a run of "burn it all down"
shirts, lmk.

Sigh. 

Articles like this don’t help, but I am trying not to turn this into a rant.

Oh that Kevin!

My house is a mess—I mean we don’t operate at “ready to receive the Queen” levels here regularly but these days, when I get ready to leave the house in the morning, I note that we have slumped from our own standards.  And in that moment, I am actually quite excited that my project when I get home will be to straighten up and mayyyyybe take my space suit and boxing gloves and 900 pairs of shoes upstairs, and mayyyybe get my food processor and Tupperware and spilled coffee grains and junk mail off the kitchen counter. 

Kevin laughs sweetly during my earnest, over-tired dream-boarding.   I think he thinks I'm cute.

And then when I get home I am like, I HATE TODAY I HATE EVERYTHING DISTRACT ME INTERNET AND PROJECTS THAT CREATE MORE MESS BUT ALSO WHO EVEN NEEDS TO DO LAUNDRY and also I’d like a beer please and I'm def not doing the dishes and Kevin laughs again but now it’s a different…tone.  And then the process starts again, but it’s tomorrow.

So this is what happens when things are messed up.  Look, a long time ago I was in a long term situation where things were bad, life was bad, and I learned an important lesson about—never do that again.  Care about yourself, body, mind, and spirit.  Do what it takes to be ok.  And I do, I am really trying.  But these days, it’s not...so internal?  It’s not situations in my everyday life that I can just do something about—my everyday life is pretty great, a state for which I am profoundly grateful.  My job is fine; I am spending time with loved ones. I am being active and eating well.  It’s fall and I put out cheerful seasonal decorations.

But MAN.  Things with “Andy” are super great and my friends are lovely and I have almost totally avoided understanding that we are creating refugee concentration camps of children and the weather is really starting to cool off so, I’m not complaining, not that it matters, because I’m just a lady person, and btw men are getting mad too (It’s the same article but I’m still on it, Reader) which is great because then they drive cars over people in Toronto but now I feel like I’m getting off topic, and I have been getting a lot of cuddle time with my monsters and it’s almost time to change the garden over, at least it should be except climate change is throwing the entire ecosystem of the planet out of balance but at least my family is healthy and speaking of family, my grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge but now, on my watch, our president dog whistles white supremacists but again, I am only a lady, obvs I don’t really count but hey!  I got a copy of my insurance card today, which is a totally adult and competent person thing to do!  So things are great!

There is room for self-care in here.  Like I went for a real run on Sunday, and I’ve been eating all my vegetables.  (Which is good for more than just the reasons I was taught as a child but for microbiome prebiotic reasons and – you know what, let’s just say it’s good for actual health reasons and reasons of satisfying a personal mental obsession.  I’ll let you go on your own rabbit hole journey here if you’re interested.  It’s a great distraction.)  

And things like that do help in the moment, but for the moments after that, it’s more of a faith thing.  Faith that, well, this sucks but I believe it would otherwise have been worse.  Also I have great village, I have a wonderful community around me of friends and loved ones, and that matters.  (I mean, “Andy” just redid the whole dining room on his own bc I low key hated it and he wanted to be sweet.  That is ridiculous and amazing.)  It matters a lot.

Plus it’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year, so in the spirit of self-care, I have already completely overscheduled myself through Thanksgiving doing fun fall stuff like mountain trips and going to the national fair (they have two midways, people) and canning with friends and whatever.  You won’t take my season from me, Distopia-World.  Kevin still laughs, because overscheduling is not the right answer, but neither is unstructured free time.  

There is no right answer, I am saying. 

Part of this process has been about being willing and able to recognize when it’s not ok, and I am not ok.  Turns out, that’s not surrender, it’s strength.  That is the moment I can take action to care for myself—when I stop pretending I don’t have to.  That is the lesson of not letting it be that bad again….

So Kevin can suck it.  I’m stuck with him, but he’s stuck with me, and I’m not in it alone.  Neither are you, Reader.  We get to laugh and look at nature’s fireworks and listen to powerful music and take long walks.  Be gentle to each other and to yourselves.  I don’t know what that means for you, for me it means ima pet my cats and carve a pumpkin and host a canning party and take my niece out for brunch and giggle with the boyf and put my chin in the air.  This is hard but none of us are in it alone, and it is ok to not be ok.  Drink your water, take your pills, call your person (and listen to this podcast).

I literally cried when they stopped making new episodes.