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On This Day: Your History

Started by claws, November 10, 2022, 07:29:22 AM

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ER

February 28:

1990: Ash Wednesday and I declined the challenge to see who could leave ashes on longest.

1993: Moment of Silence at mass for WTC victims; my cousin Adam laughed about seeing a man OD at a White Zombie concert that night at Bogart's.

1994: Waiting on the fifth floor during my mom's evening class, I saw the elevator doors repeatedly open on their own, and no elevator was there; either ghosts or a mechanical issue. Reported it to campus police, who put up yellow tape, but ignored my suggestions for an exorcist.

1996: My AP advisor told me about his significant other, a man who worked for the ballet, and said if that got out he would lose his job, so I felt touched he trusted me to tell me that.

2006: Came close to a deer-bicycle collision.

2015 During Final Friday, a Rubenesque woman called my husband by name, and I could tell he was puzzled, though she clearly knew him, and finally he recalled her and talked a minute, but when she was gone he said he hadn't seen her since 1998 and didn't recognize her because she'd probably gained a hundred pounds.

2017: Dermaplaning with Clare, getting a scalpel scraped over our faces and necks, basically.

2018: Saw School of Rock downtown, on stage.

2019: Luke Perry had a massive stroke. Never was a 90210 fan, but it still shocked me.

2022: When her son invited other family members but not her to his nineteenth birthday party, my friend Edie grasped that unlike most Jewish mothers, she'd spoiled her daughter but was cold to her son. She got so drunk I drove her home, while she sobbed the whole way. It was disturbing and disgusting and pitiful.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

February 29:

1988: My third-grade teacher in Kentucky brought us cupcakes with little plastic frog rings on top, let us play a game called Leap Frog, and read us a story about a boy who only had a birthday every four years.

1992: Won a 10-8 tie-breaker in tennis, and the match. The girl clawed my hand when we shook at the net after serving right at me several times in the last set.

1996: My AP advisor called about my practice SATs results showing I needed to work on math, which stressed me out in those high-pressure "must get in the best college" days before I embraced scholastic nihilism. My dad said I was always too hard on myself, and when I was three I called myself stupid because I couldn't get my Peppermint Patty kite into the air, and wouldn't let anyone help me.

2000: Home on break, Gina's brother Mark tried to get me to come over and eat "hash oil brownies" with him, and I said I'd promised to watch Buffy and Angel with my bud Rob, and that eating hash oil brownies would be a waste of time, to which he said, "A worse waste of time than watching the WB with a nerd?" Frankly, yeah, Markie.

2004: Clare stayed overnight with Landon and me at his house near the Kentucky riverfront and we had tiramisu pancakes for breakfast, then went to Eden Park, where Clare balanced on the rim of the giant reflecting pool and walked entirely around its edge, then we all played frisbee and flew a kite. I realized I was increasingly thinking less of her as her brother's sister and more as my own valued friend. An extraordinarily nice day from my life.

2008: Found out I was pregnant with Daisy, so it was an even nicer day. To that time I'd never loved anyone as much as I loved her, even before she was born.

2012: After dozens of hours of effort, my husband beat Dark Souls for the first time. Best game ever!

2016: Our seven and three year-old daughters came running in and spent the night in our bed during a wild windstorm that howled til dawn (our son apparently slept through it) and we went out that morning and saw branches scattered everywhere.

2020 Talked to my on-job advocate about early retirement, then found out my friend finished his latest novel, the ending of which moved him to tears, he told me.

2024: Woke up to news that the IRS accepted our 2022 amended tax return after a year-long battle, and agreed we owed about 90% less than they said we did and will let us pay off that amount over several years, a rare victory our tax lawyer told us.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 1:

1992: Before mass a woman in confession was sobbing, which everyone, faithfully, ignored.

1994: So light-headed at school from not eating I mixed protein powder with water and still barely got through the day.

1995: Ash Wednesday, and I was the only person in the entire school who didn't go up for ashes. Felt cool but looking back my reasons were dumb.

1996: Brian and I went to little art theater and saw Beyond the Clouds, in Italian with English subtitles.

1997 Wrote a 12-page paper on the irony of posthumous fame, which I later recycled for a college class.

2005: A woman with whom my grandpa was involved and supported in the '80s contacted me, claiming he'd have wanted her to receive money from his will, which begged the question, if he'd wanted that, why wasn't she in his will? She was likable, clearly venal, and desperate, and I did eventually pay her something.

2017: Domestic violence charges against my cousin Celia were dismissed, but within days she again attacked her son's father.

2019: Put makeup on only one side of my face, to see who would notice.

2022: Fat Tuesday, so we ate Polish paczkis til we were sugar crazy.

2023: Saw a nocturnal storm too far away for thunder but with amazing displays of lightning.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

#603
March 2:

1991 Read an appalling account of a Roman emperor who wanted his advisor executed along with his family, but the man's child was a virgin, and the law said a female citizen who was a virgin couldn't be put to death, so the legalistic emperor had her raped before she was killed.

1992: My mom suggested a science experiment to track what conditions make good hair days.

1993: I was given a t-shirt with Oscar Wilde on it captioned Flaming Poet's Society.

1994: After telling me at the end of summer, before he left for his second year in college, that hanging around with me was playing with fire, I heard from Brian for the first time in six months, which instantly felt like hooking into a drug.

1995: Took Mark's Remington air-pistol apart to get a stuck BB out, and he was surprised how much I knew about guns, as I didn't seem the type.

1997: Twelve inches of rain fell, making the river rise thirteen feet in mere hours.

2000: Five months before he died of lung cancer, I saw my grandpa for the final time, and I was the last person in the family he let come see him, something that would later be used against me in a twisted lawsuit.

2012: The Weather Channel put a Tor-Con rating of 9 out of 10 over us, only the second time a number so high had ever been issued, and that afternoon a tornado destroyed a nearby town called Moscow, damaging a power plant that was originally built to be nuclear. That same afternoon mail from a distant zip code fell into our back yard out of an eerie, jade-hued sky.

2013:
Not exactly shocking us, Tyler, my cousins' son, whom I helped raise, came out as gay, at age thirteen and a half.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 3:

1995: My grandma had a stroke and never regained consciousness, nor was life ever the same.

1996: My cousin sent me a picture of an alleged ghost taken at what was at that time the most dangerous roadway in Europe. The picture was creating a sensation because it looked just like a recent victim of a wreck there.

1997: In theology class I said I always figured the Romans probably kicked Jesus in the balls, so men who disregard his suffering should think about that.

1999 My college roommate, Jackie, came home with me and I took her all over downtown.

2007: Went to the Home & Garden Show and saw Alton Brown.

2008: Talked most of the night with Hugh, but held back from telling him I was going to have a baby, because he'd spent years telling me how being with Landon was going to ruin my life, and I didn't want to hear more of that. When I would finally tell him I was pregnant, he got very mad at me for making him among the last of my friends to know, and didn't talk to me for about a year.

2010: Told Landon about some big changes that were going to be imposed on my life by the people I worked for, and offered him a karma-free chance to cancel our wedding, slated to happen in less than three weeks, but after hearing me out he said no, absolutely not, he wanted us to get married, no matter what, and so "for better or worse as long as we both shall love" went on to happen as scheduled.

2016: Got an awesome Nigerian scam email from someone claiming to be "Mr. Donald J. Trump, New York City billionaire."

2018: Went to the scattering of someone's ashes into the Ohio River, and recited Yeats' The Four Ages of Man during the ceremony.

2023: Amid a gale which gave us our highest winds since a hurricane impacted us in 2008, Landon and I saw The Crash Test Dummies at a little urban venue, then caught the end of opening night of the local Bock Beer Fest. (Bock beer is atrocious stuff.)
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 4:

1992: In the eighties, breaking a weather record. A girl named Verity came to dinner with her family, and told me eight-digit phone numbers would be a thing by 1995.

1993: In class, this boy from Georgia named Ron turned to me and announced, "You know, there's not one girl in this class I'd kick out of bed, including the teacher." I had to hold my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing.

1996: Played darts with Brian and this guy from his college named Ansel, who was from Rotterdam, and very openly bi-sexual. He hit on the both of us.

2001: The Real IRA set off a bomb in front of the BBC, something that was known about well before it happened, but which "they" had to let happen, lest it upset a longer operation against the group, a deliberate form of inaction out of higher motives which is called a "Coventry." Why am I putting this among my recollections? Long story.

2004: The longest separation between Landon and me, basically a breakup, had its roots in this day, and bad judgment on his part.

2008 Voted for Senator Clinton in my state's primary, which she won by a landslide, one of her last hurrahs in a year that was supposed to be hers on a silver platter.

2021: Enjoying the warm evening air, we left our back door open, and a garter snake crawled in. My fearless daughter returned it to the woods.

2023: Went to the Frogman Festival, a celebration of our area's best known cryptid, a mellow man-sized frog who calls an east-side river home.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 5:

1991: The best arthouse movie theater in the city shut down.

1992: Got a fortune cookie----If you sense a change in the wind, build a windmill, not a windbreak---I always remembered.

1994: To push myself to my limits I played four best-of-three-set tennis matches, plus three games of a fifth.

1995: I melted down in a special intentions mass my Aunt Judith was having for my hospitalized grandma, and AJ still holds my regrettably voluble behavior against me.

1997: Third-worst flooding in city history was still a day away from cresting when Brian and I drove to its edge, then to a hilltop we often visited, and gazed down at the immensity of the dirty-brown river swollen to a half-dozen times its size.

1998: Started reading The Sandman start to finish, for the first of many times.

1999: Home on break I took my roommate to my Aunt Christie's house and asked how Brian was, and she said more upset than he tried to show, leaving me wondering if I was awful for feeling glad/hopeful. I didn't call him though, and he didn't call me either. I just felt broken.

2004: Broke up with Landon, and talked to Hugh, who said I should take a leave and come to Austin and stay with him and his wife for a while, which...sounded appealing.

2016: About a decade after I was approached by a woman who used to be involved with my grandpa, I saw her for the last time, in a hospital, where she was dying of cancer. She thanked me for what she said was the kindness I'd shown her, actually had an anecdote about my grandpa mentioning to her when I was born, and then proceeded to tell me things that have stuck with me, that when you're the other woman, no matter how much you love a man, you're only second-best in importance to a wife, you never get to see him at Christmas or other holidays, and you get ignored except on someone else's schedule, all while people tell you how bad a person you are. I hated the idea my grandma got cheated on, and with a lot more women than her, but I also felt sorry for Laura, and how after all she'd said, she was even dying alone.

2017: Sold the house we'd rented, where a man killed himself, getting about 25% below market value because of its history.

2019 Somehow got into emailing back and forth for days with an LDS apologist I met through my friend Mandy, whose life's work was building a case to support The Book of Mormon. A nice fellow but absolutely obsessed.

2023: Walked yawning into dawn mass, and there stood the woman who probably dislikes me more than anyone else in the world, my friend Clare's mom, my godson's grandma, my almost mother in law, back home after a couple years as a missionary in Israel, and seeing her jolted me plenty awake.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 6:

1992: My mom put a twelve-pack of toilet paper on top of our cart, which at that delicate age embarrassed me, so I asked it be put on the bottom of the cart, and she said, "I guess the bottom is where toilet paper goes."

1994 Before mass my mom asked me if I ever thought how she feels to have it be her kid who is the only person in the entire church who doesn't go up and take communion, so I said for her I would.

1995: My actions at my aunt's special intentions mass had the whole family fighting. I hadn't meant to melt down like I did, but I was sixteen, my mom had left me, my grandma was dying, I had extreme school stress, and personal problems on top of that. My dad was unhappy with me but took up for me against his bulldog lawyer sister, and Dana said I made her mom look bad in front of her friends, and her reputation was the thing she cared most for in life.

1998: Asked Brian if he thought Gollum ever pleasured himself while wearing the Ring. He wasn't ready for that question, but hey, I live for weird questions, what can I say?

2001: For the first time in a tradition which would continue for decades, Hugh sent me a reminder that the Alamo fell this day in 1836.

2020: Clare's dad said a friend who worked at ABC claimed Roseanne Barr orchestrated her own firing because she didn't want to keep doing the series but wanted the others to have jobs. No idea if that's true, but he's usually good with inside information.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 7:

1994 Spring break, stayed with my cousin Dana in her college town, and while we were walking back about eleven o' clock, a cop pulled up slowly beside us, and Dana whispered, "You're eighteen and you left your purse at the apartment..." Cop went on though.

1995: Upset about my grandma, I went up the road to talk to my perhaps plotting tutor, who said to keep my grandma in my thoughts, then proceeded to do my homework for me.

1996: Read Clive Barker's play The History of the Devil; saw Ninja Scroll at my friend's house.

1997: Spent the day writing EMMR '97 in various semi-hidden places around my high school. Wonder if some are still there?

1998: Knowing I was going back to college soon, I raided Brian's closet and got him to dress in clothes from his senior year at St. X. so I could see him look like he did when I first met him in seventh grade. His hair was longer, he was six years older, but it was astonishing how much the clothes made him became who he used to be.

2008: A rare blizzard warning issued here, upgraded from a winter storm warning. 45 MPH winds and 15 inches of snow forecast, practically caused riots in grocery stores.

2015: Landon and I saw the movie version of The Last Five Years, so beautifully sad, and he said, "See, you made it through without crying this time." Then I cried.

2017: After the kids were in bed Landon and I split this THC-laden chocolate bar from Colorado, then twiddled our thumbs waiting to feel something, and about an hour later I noticed things seemed much funnier than usual, and the arrangement of items atop my dresser became fascinating. Then amidst my mono no aware, I started thinking about pain and death, because that's what lurks in my shadowy mind, I guess. (And why I once passed up the chance to experience ayahuasca.)

2019: Asked the interns to join me in composing emails asking that pistachio Chap-Stick become a thing. When no one wanted to I said I'd take them out for sushi if they did, so that motivated them to join the cause.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 8:

1996: Saw Farewell My Concubine.

1997: Volunteered with Brian for flood cleanup, came back got showered, ordered pizza and watched the odious Tommy Boy.

1998: Brian's ever-clingy dad talked to me alone for over an hour about how since his miraculous recovery from illness, God was directing his life.

2005
Friend in Austin was trying to buy the blood-speckled scarf Bonnie Parker was wearing when she was gunned down, and even sent me pictures of the item. Years later he'd also try for the watch Buddy Holly had on when he died, but scrupled at Lee Harvey Oswald's casket.

2008: Blizzard emptied a foot and a half of snow on us, and visibility was a hundred feet. Everything was closed and there was a fine for being on the streets. Expressways were parking lots for miles.

2012: Saw red-tailed hawks in their mating ritual, holding onto one another and free-falling almost to the ground.

2018: Woke up to news of cops raiding four massage parlors in a suburb near us.

2020: Dreamed I was with Jim Morrison and Pam Courson and they were tripping and cooking food and eating with their hands and smearing it on each other, a gross but interesting dream.

2021:
My oldest and I decided to try kintsugi, a Japanese art of filling in a broken object with silver or gold, making it more beautiful in its restored state.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 13:

1989: Field trip to see The Happy Prince on stage, beginning my lifelong Oscar Wilde fandom.

1990: Got Martina Navratilova's instruction video, and back in the age of serve and volley, it helped improve my drop returns.

1992: It was Friday the 13th, and I read The Haunting of Hill House for the first time, at age thirteen.

1993: While she was talking on the phone, I heard my mom say "boobs" and til then had no proof she knew the word existed.

1994:
Found out some man wanted to fight my dad over a parking space but my dad just walked past him. I asked what he'd have done if the man had touched him, and he said, "Broken his arm." Appropriate.

1997: Didn't see the car that had disconcertingly been following me around for several days, in what I'd eventually learn was a psychological exercise in a job I was up for.

2001: I had to go work in a distant place, and it meant leaving my dog, Charlotte Sometimes, while she was sick. She died six days later, and I wasn't with her. I sometimes hate the people I worked for, because they cost me so much.

2012: Unhappy to hear Britannica announced it was discontinuing its print encyclopedias.

2013: Pope Francis was elected, and I read about him and remarked that he'd be the first non-Catholic Pope: pretty much right.

2017: Worn out after our children had the flu all weekend, we somehow managed not to get it ourselves.

2018: To the Jewish Community Center for an ongoing class in Talmudic study for non-Jews.

2019 Weather forecast was for "bomb cyclone" to hit the next day, which would turn out to be among the most dangerous weather in the area in seven years.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 15:

1994: On the Ides of March, I advanced the theory Julius Caesar orchestrated his own murder.

1995: Carnally possessed another person for the first time. Was told I was a prodigy, but that could have been self-serving praise on the other person's part.

1996: Finished reading Gone with the Wind.

1997 Musica Antiqua Koln came to Saint Peter in Chains Cathedral for a concert.

2005: My friend Gajen said she had Greta Van Sustern's phone number and was helping her with a show about her former dentist, a serial murderer. I had no idea who Greta Van Sustern was.

2006: At SXSW a local blackgrass band called The Mini-Thinns played.

2007: Landon asked what Brian would have thought of him and I said, "That you were a Nancy Boy who'd had too easy a life." He said, "Wait, how was my life any easier than his? His dad was rich!" Don't like the answer, don't ask the question, bro.

2010: Long before the Red Wedding set the standard, a week before I was to get married, I went on YouTube and saw how incredibly many shows from Dynasty, to Kill Bill had wedding massacres. Ugh.

2011: Big pregnant in France, I saw the Roman ruins around Arles, and ran my fingers along the stones, touching where Roman stone carvers had set their own hands, and I could even see their chisel marks.

2012: Eight months pregnant a-gain, I had a nightmare that I gave birth to a baby I knew was my insane cousin Celia.

2017: Gave permission for the woman who would go on to punch me in the face in another two years, to have lunch with my daughter at her school. Scoff, where was the gratitude, I ask you?

2021: Spent the day at the empty apartment which had a connection to this day in 1995, and while the last time I was there, in February, there'd been an inexplicably creepy vibe, it was fine that day, just kind of sad.

2022:
Went back to the same apartment, still leasing it just to sit empty, and was alone there for hours, playing Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Spoiler: you can't go backwards in time.

2023: And now for the extra banal: tried Hidden Valley Ranch ice cream. Also on this day, I nearly puked.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 16:

1987 To a birthday party and saw ET on a projection TV, but unless you were sitting dead-center, everything looked smeared.

1994: Watched Dead Again, read half of No One Here Gets Out Alive, and began Joyce Carol Oates' short story collection, Heat. March Madness started the next day and my mom and I knew my dad would become a strange, obsessed creature for a few weeks.

1996: Went ziplining. Awesome.

1997: Figured out Beetlejuice was lying about going to Julliard.

2008: Palm Sunday, went to a passion play with my mom at an 1850s church.

2010: In a running joke, one of my mom's (ahem, flaming) bosses at the glass-art studio kept telling me he had Elton John to play our wedding.

2012: Saw the play Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

2019: The wretched unfairness of having a cold on the Saturday before spring break filled my youngest's soul with manifested misery.

2020: Despite Tyler spending most of his twenty years being into boffing boys 99% of the time, his beautiful son Giovanni was born this day.

2022: At Giovanni's second birthday this guy named Duncan, an LGBTetc activist who cannot ever take a day off, went around picking arguments. Tyler said Duncan was insecure and wasn't usually like that.

2023: Took my children and two of my daughters' school friends to the zoo, and a 19th century park afterward, and showed them the lake where my first fiancĂ©'s father proposed to his pregnant mother in 1973.  It was a block from where I had a heat stroke on a 100-degree day in 1999, my life possibly saved by a passing nurse.

What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 17:

1992: Brian was waiting for me before my mom picked me up from school, and an 8th grade girl was flirting with him when I got there, and when she left he said, "She needs a life." Hearing that was better than OSU beating Michigan.

1993: An inch of slushy snow fell on Saint Patrick's Day, drunks were slipping everywhere, and I read Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates, then could barely sleep that night.

1994: Ate 500 calories that day, and stressed out over an AP Algebra II exam to the point my mom took my book away and said to relax before I had a stroke. Why she couldn't see making me eat might've also helped, I don't know.

1995: After reading a lurid Lafcadio Hearn account about a man at Spring Grove Cemetery who was disinterred in the 1870s to verify whether he was a murder victim, I talked my boyfriend into going there with me, and we found the grave.

1996: Asked my Jesuit teacher if Mother Theresa really had a luxury hotel suite cleared of furniture so she could be in bare surroundings, and doing that ended up costing thousands of dollars, and he said he'd heard that too.

2004: Creep in Austin hit on me by telling about shooting snakes as they came out of hibernation, then bragged about gay bashing in high school. Not smooth!

2009: After hearing Natasha Richardson was in a coma, Tyler came over and watched The Parent Trap with me, one of our favorites, and at age nine he said it was "like our old days."

2016: Friend sent me pictures from inside the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and described being there as a powerful experience.

2017 Left before dawn and flew to a meeting in Cleveland on a private plane; back by lunch.

2018: Went to a dedication of a new library, but left because the festival atmosphere disgusted me. My oldest daughter said libraries are holy ground, and I stopped and hugged her.

2019: Asked why I ignore St. Patrick's Day, I said I wasn't into Irish celebrating an Englishman by getting drunk. Then I won a bet that Saint Patrick was English, something this person was absolutely mind-blown to find out.

2020: Because of Covid, Tyler told me the day before, his son had been born, examined, vaccinated, circumcised, and sent home within eight hours of birth, which I thought amounted to negligence outweighing any risks of the disease.

2021: To my absolute surprise, in the face of my impending retirement I got offered a position overseas working a similar job for someone else, but I wasn't interested.

2023:
Went to a Vanessa Carlton concert, and thought how one-hit wonders have gifted us with many good songs.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.

ER

March 23:

1992: Rented three movies for spring break, $15.99. The Handmaid's Tale, Hamlet, and Silence of the Lambs, concerning which my mom said, "Watch it if you feel you must."

1993: I used to try to read whatever the object of my obsession was reading in his college classes, so I read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and loved these lines: "Make the most of what you yet may spend, before you too to dust descend, dust unto dust and under dust to lie, without wine, song, singer, or end."

1995: Went with Aunt Christie's to her book club where they discussed The English Patient, and made me determined never to join a book club.

1997: Another disturbing note left on my car's windshield.

1999 Boy at school named Greg showed me a cartoon called Danger Mouse. Definitely not my cuppa.

2000: With my roommate I saw American Beauty again, a creepy but zeitgeisty film; later sent a picture of a stone point I found to a site, that ID'd it as a 7K year old archaic artifact.

2005: Saw The Ring TwO which sucked as much as The Ring was great.

2006: Moron named Kurt, who was going out with someone I knew, sent me a picture of his favorite organ with my name scrawled on it with a marker. Guess the thrill he got was sufficient in itself, because why he'd think that'd get him anywhere with any woman puzzled me.

2007: Weird moment in a bank when this old man with a German accent told the teller his name was "Witt, rhymes with s**t." Everyone started giggling.

2008: Told my parents about the baby coming, and both seemed happy and oddly unsurprised.

2013: After much discussion, Clare and I decided people probably would eat rat sushi if it was sold for $59.00 an ounce.

2015: Mini-trip to Chicago. Mid-day at a Bulgarian tea room, dinner at Petterino's, and saw the Blue Men that night.

2016: Suicide bombings in Belgium automatically ramped up security at the Air Force base where I worked, which meant longer checks at the gates, so I didn't get home til almost two hours after I was supposed to. Swear to you, this translator from Yemen, who gave us all the creeps in the best of times, got passed right through the gate, so afraid of accusations of profiling were the MPs.

2017: My dad, not a Trump supporter, had been telling me that Trump Tower was riddled with listening devices, and the story broke that it was. It generally pays to heed what my dad tells about such things, since he used to oversee covert eavesdropping operations concerning East Germany in the late Cold Wars years (a young KGB officer named Vladimir Putin was right across the Wall listening back). In fact if he commits to stating something, he's almost always right, a fact it took me many rebellious years to admit.

2018: Got schooled in racquetball, not my sport, and also saw a dead-on Doors tribute band called The Doors of Chicago, playing down the same street where this girl named Paige sang beautifully back in 1994. Ever notice it's much easier to appreciate music when the singer isn't f**king the person you're in love with?

2019: To a macaron festival downtown and stayed sugar-buzzed the rest of the day off far too many of the little pastel-hued cookies.

2020: After having been apart from my family for months around the beginning of the year, I was actually enjoying the Covid lockdown, and when I had to go to a store, an older man was standing outside telling people: "I want to wish you a fine day! God bless you and your family! This will pass, keep your spirits up! I hope you have a wonderful day!" I thought that was exceptionally kind of him.

2021: Drove to Fort Campbell, Kentucky to see a former co-worker who was badly hurt in a military plane crash, and somehow his bravado about his injuries made me mad. He also threw his latest purple heart away, as he had two others he'd gotten. I think they somehow twist human emotions out of special forces personnel.

2022: Went to our cabin in eastern Kentucky, and spent part of the afternoon flipping over logs and hiking through brush to see if we could find a copperhead for my son to observe. I wasn't entirely disappointed when we did not.

2023: Found out another IRS audit was coming, but had no idea it'd be the worst ever.

2024: Following a couple days of things being unpleasant over our differing opinions on something concerning our daughter, I told my husband he was a has-been pretty boy who measured his worth by his sex life in his twenties. Not a fine moment, even if he did seem almost flattered somehow. It's the people we love the most who can also bring out the worst in us.
What does not kill me makes me stranger.