candles for remembrance.

Lit candles for so many loved ones, tonight. used up all the tealights, ha. one can be amused about this.

Mom
Dad
Grandma and grandpa (I never met the ones on my dad's side, they were dead before I was born, so I honor my mom's parents, the ones I knew, though never very well)
Grandma Rodway, my step-dad's mom, whom I never gave enough credit or spent enough time with.
Delores, my skating coach and the one who turned me into at least a semi-decent human, teaching me politeness, discipline, respectfulness, posture, grace (well, she tried).
Madoc.
Molly, dad's second wife. She asked.
Laurie Flora, my best friend's mom growing up, the one who taught us how to carve pumpkins and roast pumpkin seeds, the one who went all out with the most creative handmade costumes, the one who made Halloween complete magic, the one who always fed and comforted me when my mom couldn't.
and so many pets are running around leaving ghostly paw prints all over my heart, tonight.
Darwin, my little old man cat
P-Funk, my beloved street kitten who lived to be 20
Willow, who slept on my chest every night
Newcat, who taught me how to love an animal with complete purity
Boo-boo, my doggo from age 6-22, my best friend, my everything, who slept curled under the covers with me in that perfect little crescent against my center, a feeling nobody else can replicate

I put out cat treats for the animals (Boo would also love these) and pumpkin spice madeleines for everyone else, they are sugary and perfect.

It's important to honor the loss and remember and celebrate what they gave me, but it's also so sad. trying to soothe with some soft piano. I should have taken a bath tonight but it's too late now, I'm in a not small amount of physical pain, but not unbearable.

The veil is thin and my heart is heavy but with so much goodness that I was able to experience in this life. I've been wearing my "grateful" shirt all day, the one I bought after picking up my mom's ashes. I'm so grateful for my friends, and my husband, my cat, my step-family that is still here, this precious, painful, fleeting little life filled with more beauty and wonder than I can ever hold in my little hurting heart.

Halloween weekend.

Halloween was overflowing with magic. I should have journaled earlier but I was just too tired. I also failed to take photos because I was too caught up in everything, it was all just so wonderful.

...

Saturday was bright and sunny and WINDY and freezing cold. I got up early and Josh made me run, lol. I actually wanted to? Got into zombie faery attire and headed out just like, 2 minutes late, to an outdoor sparkle party with some people I've done Halloween parties for in the past. I froze but it was still fun, the girls were great, I worked my ass off for two hours straight and had a blast and made enough money to say I had a good weekend so who can complain about that.

Came home and ate some foods and got the speaker in the car for Thriller.

...

Side note that I just need to vent about: I was tasked with bringing it since the regular DJ was working in Seattle over the weekend. It was very, very kind of him to lend the speaker, a very fancy expensive thing. But what I didn't understand when I agreed to transport it, was that he would try to get me to DJ the thing as if I were hosting. He gave me two wireless mircophones in a fancy case, and a giant stand that barely fit in my little Fit to put the speaker (which weights well over 50lbs) on "because the higher it is the better the sound quality". He lectured me about what kind of cord to get for the best sound. I was completely unprepared for this, overwhelmed, and annoyed. I was there to pick up a speaker, I thought, not get trained in how to DJ.

What ended up happening was because he spent so much time teaching me how to be a DJ, I was late (well, on time but they were early) to meet some customers who went to the Overlook House for sparkles. And in my rush to get out of there earlier in the day because I had to go GET the speaker, I had left the front door unlocked. I think I had assumed since Margaret was still there, maybe she would lock it before she left, but she wasn't the one who opened the front door, so why would she lock it? So, my customers let themselves inside and set off the alarm and the security company called Margaret, so when I got there she was grilling them about why they were in the house, aaaauuugghhhhhh. And then I felt MORTIFIED about leaving the place unlocked. That has never happened. I need a checklist for sure. But anyway, she was super nice about it and my customers rolled with it and I was able to smooth it over. erf. STRESS.

So, I realized, wait, I'm not a DJ. I don't want or need this stand, I don't want to be responsible for these microphones, I don't want to try to figure out what kind of auxiliary cord works on this thing, we're outside on a freakin' basketball court, this is not a professional setting, this is all volunteer donated time putting this event together, the sound quality does not matter. I am bluetoothing it with my phone and that will be more than adequate.

I already put so much into this event, sacrificing every weekend to teach FOR FREE when I could have been rock climbing or mountain biking with my husband, getting extra work piled on me was just kind of awful.

So one fun thing that happened was that the next day, I was so busy preparing for Thriller and working and decorating for the party I hosted on Sunday and everything else, that I must have forgotten to hit the lock button on my car when I came in for the night with massive amounts of stuff in my hands, and although the speaker and stand had been pulled into the apartment, the microphones were on the backseat with a blanket over them. And Portland being what it is now, of course someone got into my car and took them, and rifled through all of my stuff. I discovered this walking back to the apartment after our run in the morning on Friday, as I noticed that things I had kept in my car were strewn across the sidewalk. I didn't lose anything of personal value, but I have no idea how much the microphones will set me back. I was so angry for a couple hours, because I did not want them nor ask for them nor plan to even use them, no one consulted me on whether I wanted this job, it was just handed to me - if we'd discussed it then sure, I could have been prepared, but anyway. With all the things I had going on over the weekend, I knew I'd forget them for the event which is why I chose to leave them in my car. What a nightmare. Anyway, I owe the DJ a bunch of money I guess - he still hasn't told me how much. I haven't even bothered to file a police report, the police in Portland are totally done serving and protecting, they've even said as much. After all the protests it's kind of hard to blame them, I'm not saying I side with them, I don't at all, but since they genuinely don't care about other people, they have us in a bind and anyone with that sort of proclivity to hate who was in their position would take the same advantage if they could. it leaves our city in a bit of an unpleasant condition and it's really sad.

Anyway. I got over the microphone thing. I'm just so grateful that a financial loss like that is not a massive setback for me or something that threatens my quality of life, like it used to.

sigh.

...

Thriller as an event went well, we had about 50 zombies, apparently there's a decent youtube video of the dance, I'll try to find it before I end this entry. It was super fun in the windy sunshine. Worth it.

aha - see if you can spot the zombie faery lol:

Watch on YouTube

...

We were scheduled to carve pumpkins with Andrea, Adam, and Tyler afterward, and I was so exhausted and underslept and stressed that we were a bit late - we had to drop off the speaker to the Overlook House where I was hosting my Halloween gathering, and get pumpkins and everything. But we managed, it was super fun, Andrea and Adam are just such incredibly beautiful charming kind creative people, there is no way to make it not delightful if we are in their presence. Adam and Josh got to bond over their respective travels to Africa and central America, Josh carved the most adorable little bat pumpkin. I have to compost those in the morning, oops, lol. They looked so great lit! I carved the tiny pumpkin the squirrels planted for us with a little squirrel holding a tiny pumpkin, and I did my classic Jack Skellington white pumpkin that I do every year now. This is Halloween Halloween Halloween Halloween!



furp.

...

I wanted to dance at two places Saturday night but only made it to Kizomba, it was just a much closer venue. I should have gone over to the Ballroom but I didn't knooooooow. Next time. I am glad I went to Berretin though because yay Barretin and also I got to dance with Anil a LOT and two other really spectacular dances. It was funny, we were dancing tandas kind of? Nobody wanted to end it after one or two or sometimes even three songs. It's that sort of cuddly melty dance, we just don't want to let go. So nice. It's probably for the best that it ended at 11pm.

...

Saturday night I tried to sleep but I was so worried about the party on Sunday, there was so much left to do to get ready. But I pointedly made time for our current weekly habit of getting up Sunday morning and running in a park (usually Fernhill) followed by coffee and a light breakfast at a café just ahead of the sunday rush. We sat inside at Guilder this time after running, and had such wonderful food and conversation, Josh with chai and me with my Miracle Pill almond milk latte, Miracle Pill is their version of pumpkin spice but heavy on the ginger and I LOVE it, it was such a gloriously beautiful day, still breezy and the sky was this spectacular white and blue and gold and grey dappled cloud thing that broke into brilliant scattered glittering sunshine. The leaves blowing everywhere, it was so so fun to run through them! Such a pretty morning. We had the upstairs part of the café to ourselves for the most part. So lucky. (The they who looks like Sloane was there again but I'm pretty sure they're not the same human, now.)

We came home happily buzzed and tired and I showred and cooked and packed up snacks and finished my haphazard spotify playlist and got my 3rd backup phone set up to run music - this is a phone a friend gifted that I thought I would switch over to, but it clearly has a virus so I don't want to use it as a phone, but it is perfectly fine as a wifi device so I dedicated it to music for the party which worked great. Here's my spoopy dance spotify list that I threw together in 2 hours if anybody cares to see what I chose to play. There is a chunk in the middle there where we all got down and danced, me, Josh, JP, Eric, and Natasha, song 23 is the Don't Wanna Talk (I Just Wanna Dance) one from Glass Animals and then Halsey really got things fiery. And so on and so forth through Living Dead Girl and beyond. There was so much dancing!

My friends were so helpful! They brought and handed out candy, Fredrick came early to help set up and he was the most adorable scary haunted killer clown I've ever seen. Friendshelped me decorate the huge house (I did way more than necessary), they brought so much food (so did I, I even cooked quesadillas when we got home from our run and breakfast time, which all got devoured), they dressed up, they rolled with whatever, Natasha did most of the heavy lifting with not only perfect costumes for herself and Matt (they were Natasha and Boris from Rocky and Bullwinkle) but also cookies, a movie projector, candy, she lit my pumpkins with candles that didn't blow out in the wind, did candy duty, served grapes and I feel like ten other super helpful things. Plus Natasha was the only other follow there - the guys couldn't complain though because she is an amazing follow. :)

Eric brought tons of food, Tyler was the sexiest pirate, Alessandra the most magical faery, Gregory showed up in a plague mask, so perfect, Josh dressed up like our cat Lunar, he had so much fun with his tail, lol. I love that I can doll him up with pieces of my old costumes, it's so great. JP was a fuzzy panda bear. My step brother showed up as a love bug?!? And his fiancée Gretchen as the sexiest witch. My friend Andi was also a slinky kitty, and Earl a magical fairy creature basically as himself. A few other Thriller friends stopped by and we danced in the street and hung out, so rad. Nobody carved pumpkins but that was fine. We all ate too much which was great. Eric took home a lot of uneaten food as did Tyler, thankfully. I let him into the basement to play piano and Alessandra was completely enchanted. I know, I know. Don't let him cast his spell on you, it's already too late for me, lol.

(This was all masks required and vaccinations required during the event. Any mask off photos were taken either before or after the official event times when only a handful of us were there in a very large open space.)

I was a ghost fairy and took it a little too far into zombie, not very pretty - I'll do better next year, I think I just wanted to be really all the way dead? lol.

I love my little ghosty dress, anyway. I'll add a couple photos.

(ghost faery haunting with the most adorable killer clown friend)


(Me photobombing Getchen, my brother's spooky red lights add a neat effect here, very cool)

Cleanup was a bit much but Eric stayed and cleaned up and worked so hard, I was so grateful. I put poor Josh to work too and he was so exhausted but such a trooper, no hard words or feelings, everything went smoothly, it was overwhelming and exhausting and he was irritated that I had done so much but he stayed patient and helpful and I cannot tell you how grateful I was, I was so blissed out at the wild success of everything. (TMI but We had the best Halloween sex evaaaarrrrr lol)

Halloween is such a comforting time for me because I've had so much death and loss in my time on this earth and this is sort of about acknowledging that and putting it in everyone's face but in a gentle playful way and it's just so needed and heartwarming and feels so right, it makes me appreciate my little life and everything in it so much more. I get to eat sweet food. I get to hang out with sweet people. I get to listen to sweet music, and look at sweet visual delights, and dance, and breathe, and love everything and everyone to swooning. How did I get so lucky.

...

The only really tough thing was my brother, which I feel like I need to vent about before I go to bed. But I sort of don't want to hash out all the painful details. I'll try to summarize. He offered to light the event - it's a new project he's been working on lately and wants to start a side business of doing lighting for smaller events and shows and venues and such. So he offered, and I was just happy he wanted to participate at all. He asked to do a walkthrough and ask me what I wanted for the space. It was kind of him. I asked if he wanted any compensation, and he said, "I dunno, a hundred bucks?" I agreed to this because it's a lot of work and I wanted to be supportive, even though my event did not warrant a hundred dollars of lighting equipment at all, I wanted to let him play and show off his thing. sigh.

So he texts me day of and says he needs access before 2pm to charge his lights. I was going to get there at 3pm at the very earliest to start prepping for the 5pm start time, so I said no, sorry, 3 at the earliest. I didn't make it by quite 3, more like 3:30, so he went without me and left his lights outside in the back to charge and told me to bring them in when I got there. They are HUGE and I had a million other things to do, so we were already off to a bad start. He caused me stress by trying to rush me, then gave me a job to do that I had no time or bandwidth for.

Then during set-up, he literally came over and shined a light in my face while I was trying to set up the speaker, saying "You're in my way." he was setting up 10 different lights in that room, I was setting up ONE speaker. Why did he have to do that light at that time when I was standing in that corner, I wonder? It's not even that it's unprofessional, because what he was providing was admittedly way more work than $100 could pay for, but that it was just flat out rude and mean. It was really the only bad thing about the night at all, that guy. Who I was just trying to help out and humor by letting him do his lighting thing that wasn't really necessary at all. It was supposed to just be for fun.

He brought way too much stuff and completely blocked off a room so I had to drag things around just to get from the main room to the kitchen, and he kept all the boxes and wires and everything out until 6pm. Our event started at 5 and he knew this.

He decided to try this "hazer" thing that he had been bragging about, that's "better" than a fog machine. Okay sure whatever. But then he asked for some sort of metal sheet to put it on? Fortunately for Overlook they locked all that stuff away. So he used a rubber door mat instead. Still, bring your own mat? But whatever. The hazer set off the smoke alarm. Which took forever to disarm. But instead of turning the hazer off and taking it away, he set it up on the porch, where it still blew smoke inside and set off another smoke alarm, for another round of struggling to disarm ear piercing alarm sounds. It was total chaos and so stressful and unpleasant. Imagine if he had done this at a high end hotel or a wedding or something? What a disaster.

Then he bailed and didn't stay for the party at all.

Then he came back and got all his stuff and complained that he brought too much and had to leave a bunch of boxes in my work space and said he'd pick them up "tomorrow" which would be today, Monday.

This morning (said Monday), I texted him to ask when he could come get his stuff. He said Saturday. I explained that I was, as I told him before, required to leave the hallway clear and needed to move that stuff today. I only made an exception last night because it was just for one night. They have events and need access to the hall for supplies in the storage area behind my space. (Also I don't want a bunch of boxes in my studio while I'm trying to work, but that's a separate issue.) He didn't answer for several hours and then said just, "I am not available this week." wtf. So I had to ask Josh to help me move it all into our garage, which we will do Wednesday, and I will just deal with my workspace looking like shit while I sparkle Tuesday and Wednesday which is unacceptable really. I might have time in the morning to grab the stuff myself, we'll see.

THEN, just to rub salt in the wound, I went to silks class at 4pm after working and cleaning the studio a little and cooking and scheduling and all the work I do on Mondays, and at 4:02 he started sending paragraphs of texts about how he was sick of everyone being too demanding of him or whatever. Then when I was just getting out of class around 6pm he called 3 times. Apparently he did have some time to collect his things. But only right then. Then he texted me, "Well you can't say I didn't try."

I'm supposed to be grateful, now?

I somehow did not take any of this bate, to be honest I didn't even read any of the nine multiple-paragraph texts he sent. I just replied, "I was in class 4-6pm. I appreciate you trying."

thankfully I haven't heard anything.

I just, I really wish he understood how close he is to driving me away permanently. He means so much to me because he's the only other person on this planet who remembers or cares about mom and dad and grandma and grandpa, but his lifestyle choices and behavior are so toxic and his influence is so perpetually negative with only a few little respites of positivity that I'm just exhausted with trying to still love him. I need a break, definitely.

I am still not recovered from giving him my entire weekend to help him move, when he could have just hired someone, and then getting a bunch of horrific accusatory texts about how I totally flaked and wasn't there for him "at all." He never helped ME move! What in the actual fuck. And now this bullshit. I'm so sick of it. I just want him out of my life. Part of me is looking forward to when he dies. Which is the saddest thing to say. But he's in terrible health and refuses to do anything about it other than complain. And make empty promises to himself every time he's with me that he's going to take time off and work less and eat better and start exercising. He never does. He did whole 30 3 years ago and that lasted for several months and I was so hopeful for a minute, and then he dropped it and got even worse than he was before.

I just can't anymore.

I didn't let any of this ruin my Halloween, or my day today. It's just sad, that, this day when I'm honoring all of my lost beloveds, that I can't enjoy the one close family member i have still left in this world.

I'm sure it'll blow over soon. I love him to the moon and back really, there is so much about him that is so wonderful. But I feel like his behavior gets worse and worse. His treatment of me gets worse and worse. His forgetfulness definitely does. I have to be so careful to make sure anything we communicate is backed up in writing, because he switches it around in his head or forgets entirely and then blames me for not doing whatever he made up in his head that we never agreed to.

sigh.

okay venting complete. That feels better.

I'm tired tired and still craving that bath. Maybe I can go soaking tomorrow? Hmmmmmmm <3

The car thieves did not take my soaking gift certificate! I am grateful for that.

(I'll probably lock this down later.)