Day After Day After Day

My husband and my therapist are both encouraging me to try and write something. My brain doesn't want to do it. Log dreams, my husband said this morning after I woke up from a particularly fraught dream. Log your moods, my therapist says, wanting me to remember that I have good days. I'm struggling. I don't find joy in anything. I'm having a hard time even putting these words in a row. I mark days by when I can next sleep. I mark weeks by Sundays...

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What Do You Say To "How Are You"?

I say "we're okay" or I say "Hanging in there." I ask "How about you?" and get more of the same. Because what can you say. Can you say "Me? I fantasize about how I could just kill myself if I had to, and I lie to my psychiatrist when she asks me if I have thoughts like that.  I have to keep my days simple, because any stress at all would trigger me to stay in bed, have fraught nightmares, or cry and have a panic attack. I can make it...

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Amy Winehouse died 9 years ago today

Pencil on paper...

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Quarantine Thoughts: Everyone Is A Comedian

#QuarantineThoughts Michael Marotta It's weird that my cat doesn't know what Europe is. @vexedinthecity Is cereal, technically, considered a breakfast soup? Sean Drinkwater Are Burritos why we were put on this planet? Daniel Bernal I've had a few ambitions. I think I found a new one. I just want to grow up to be Christopher Walken-ish. Lamont Price Any time Fred Flinstone calls Barney "Barn" you know some shit's about TO GO...

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Tee Shirt: Allston Rat City

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There's Something About X (Clever Subtitle Here)

If I could write a book it would be about why members of Generation X are the way we are, and it would *be packaged like a Trapper Keeper. It would be a three-volume encyclopedia of X, and it might even have a coloring book in the back pocket. It would be called There's Something About X (Clever Subtitle Here), by the blogger known as Low Budget Superhero (@SuperLowBudge). In my book if I could write a book my thesis would prove that Generation...

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Tatters

I'm not working right now because I can't pull myself into the right frame of mind, so to speak. I'm in tatters. My brain broke. Before my brain broke, I worked a lot. I worked A LOT and then I went insane. It took nine years, but what I want to figure out (in therapy every week) is why I stayed in such a toxic situation for so long. They say my nightmares and panic attacks indicate PTSD. I think I did this to myself. I willingly let a small, annoying...

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Imperfection is beauty

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” —Marilyn Mon...

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Shhh! Don't Wake the Undertoad.

Today was a therapy day. That's all. ...

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Beautiful Day at the End of the World

All the windows are open and sending warm breezes.  Overheard a nearby neighbor who said: "ARRGHHHhaaahh!" Now he's singing loud to RUN DMC. Me too, buddy. Me too. #COVID19 ...

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Oscar Wilde

I drew Oscar Wilde and put him on a tee shirt. ...

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#ThrowbackThursday: July 2008 MOVIE SPOILERS

On July 22, 2008 my friends started to lob "movie spoilers" at each other. Here's the list.   It was a sled.   It was earth all along.   He WAS Kaiser Soze.   He was dead the whole time.   He's actually Luke's father.   They shoot the dog.   She leaves Rick and escapes the Nazis.   It's people!   She's a dude.   His wife's head is in the box   It...

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Three Ghost Stories

When I was sixteen, we lived in the middle of the woods in a super tiny town in an 1860s house. The whole town was haunted, if you ask me. One day, my girlfriend Renee rode her bike over with her Oujia Board. Dead serious, we were meeting after school for this dead serious ghost session and we were both like, totally dead serious about it...that is how we sounded. Well, it was serious in the sense that we weren't merely fooling around with the...

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The reasons we are weird will become clear to you

Some of you never wrote a little number above each word in a 500-word essay to make the point to the 5th grade teacher that assigning word count is a crime against writing. "So a page?" I had asked. "Five. Hundred. Words," Mr. Flaherty replied icily. I thought the idea was ludicrous but said nothing further. If he wanted 500 words exactly, I figured I'd save him some work by numbering each word.  My fifth grade friend Ken talks about that...

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Monday Afternoon

1 I gave myself a new short, flippy haircut this weekend. I was going for Charlize Theron but it came out a little Elizabeth Warren. It'll grow out in a few months to look like what my friend Jenny calls my "real estate portrait." Maybe the next time I go short, I'll buzz one side. I always think I'll do that, but then I think about the in-between time, what's it like growing THAT out? Don't you look deranged for quite a long time? What do you...

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Who Art Thou?

The art that has impacted your life the most since childhood comprises a whole entire pillar of your adulthood. The sum total of what art you have absorbed accounts for an incredibly important part of Who You Are. It's right there in the name: "Art." Art helps each of us "become," and by that I mean stories, pictures, plays, television, puppet shows, novels, games, comics, paintings, poems, comedy, song, dance and music. I imagine Hell is a...

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On The Vital Importance of Hairdressers

Are you sitting down? Because in my experience, people are shocked when I tell them: I cut my own hair. In fact, I'm about to do it again. I've done it hundreds of times. There are Reasons I can do it, but because I do it myself, I had never fully appreciated the tremendous impact on society hairdressers have! Based on the depths of desperation on social media vis a vis haircuts, formally genial citizenry are positively freaking out without their...

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Lockdown Notes: Assembling Jigsaw Puzzles

Joe finished our Boston puzzle today. It's a graphic illustration of the city drawn in black and colored in, bearing names of all the landmark buildings and attractions such as Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall and the State House. He finished it so fast. It feels so strange to finally see this Boston puzzle assembled. The box is like an old friend that's just kind of always hung around. For about a decade it was the only puzzle in the house until...

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Wednesday Morning

1 At the age of 50, I have discovered that my husband of 17 years is good at jigsaw puzzles. Like really good at jigsaw puzzles. I feel a little weird about it. I thought I was good at jigsaw puzzles. I am not, as it turns out, good at jigsaw puzzles. We may have tapped some hidden talent here. What if this is our ship finally coming in, because I can never do anything the normal way. Is there such a job as Competitive Jigsaw Puzzler Manager Wife?...

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I Wish I Could Give My Brain A New Battery

Six years ago my brain broke. I had a breakdown, several stays in the mental ward, so much therapy, both one-on-one and in group. Though I've experienced some good periods, for example I held a part-time job for two and a half years, it's been mostly a grim struggle. I have therapy once a week, sometimes more often. I'm on medication. Every day I feel like I have to start all over again finding my way. My settings got out of whack and there's no...

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Remember DrawSomething?

Here is a gallery of my favorite DrawSomething drawings from a long time ago when I used to play this game. ...

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