I feel hollow and unreal. Bruce has been very sweet. I am watching Under the Dome and thinking about tomorrow. I have my 16 year old dog Spice tomorrow at 9 am and then I agreed, probably not wisely, to go to the home of another client to do her yorkies. that's a LOT of gear to pack up (and ten unpack) I offered to go get the dogs and bring them home when they are done, but she very much wants to be present when they are groomed. She is in a wheelchair and she and her husband stay the whole time in my now EXTREMELY hot garage for the 2 grooms. Tomorrow is going to be very hot and this is a LOT of effort. I want to be accommodating but I only have one day off and I am donating the proceeds to my friend with cancer. I have a feeling i will be way overextended. Well, maybe something will teach me to actually say "no" when I really don't want to do something. Not that I don't like them! I do! and I like the dogs though I think they would be easier to do alone. Just, too much effort for the energy I have. I guess we will see. Maybe it will go ok.

yesterday

yesterday my car would not start and a man closed his shop to come install a battery for me . I was impressed with his kindness and many other attributes. It cost me just under $203 (including the $20 tip I gave him) This and a couple other things were enough to nearly max my one and only credit card with its $1000 limit. I had been assiduously working to get it paid down and was almost halfway there. My checking account currently boasts a balance of under $10. As you can guess, I am not a financially successful person. I have no savings. I do work a lot but it is not nearly enough to even put me on footing anywhere away from the edge of the edge. But good enough. I feel ready to leave this life and I say that because there is little help for the poor who need it. I am amazed at that. I have a friend, one of two that I did a grooming fundraiser for last summer to help (in my very puny way) her fight against cervical cancer. She won the initial round, and while never feeling good, she WAS cancer free at her 3 month check up. But not so by the 6 month checkup. Now, her cancer is termed "incurable" and treatment is going to consist of trying to slow its spread. Her daughter reopened a fundraising site for her and so far it has 2 contributors, me at $170 and another person at $50. Wooohooo! that's gonna do her A LOT of good, huh? Even though it isn't much I at least wanted her to know I was making an effort for her. It is so pitiably little that I wonder if I even should because it might buy her gas to get from Price to Salt Lake but it isn't going to touch her need. I wanted to donate dog grooming proceeds on Wednesdays (my only "day off") and I will for tomorrow and I have 3 dogs so that should be another $105 but then I will have to divert my efforts to saving to pay for my auto insurance and try to get the card back down some.

The other person I did the fundraiser for last summer was fired yesterday. By another friend. She briefly worked with me and I was finally relaxing just a little about her situation. She has 5 kids and lives by what i can only think is Grace. I love both friends and here I am trying not to spill every thought in my head because, well, people's privacy. We are ALL imperfect and most of us are developing (I say "most" because I don't feel I have changed significantly for a very long time) Part of me wanted to quit in solidarity with my fired friend. Not from anger at my firing friend, analyzing my feelings there and trying to sort out what happened will take time. I know it will be worthwhile time because thoughts associated with this friend are always worthwhile but they are going to be hard for me. I am sure she felt it was something along the lines of "needs of the business" I hear that phrase a lot from many corners. I can see that businesses do have needs, but I cannot consider them paramount. To me, businesses exist to serve needs of people, both as consumers and as producers. One of the reasons I like my current job (which I ONLY have because my firing friend who manages this business actually hired me when I would not have applied. I thought I was probably never going to be able to work for anyone else ever again-because of my last job. Long story) I am woven through with love and shock with each of these friends. but from my perspective one is falling off the precipice and I never would have fired her. She was trying hard to learn the job. But it's not my decision at ALL and I am trying to keep my feelings and responses closely controlled. It's hard. If I wasn't SO broke I would be giving money to my fired friend as much as I could. Right now I can't. I have no idea what is going to happen to her because she is losing her subsidized housing. /where is she going to go? We met in school. She is not well founded scholastically but she has a quick bright native intelligence that keeps getting squelched because she has 5 kids, all difficult in one way or another and no money. To me it is the saddest story. and I dont want to come off like I am blaming my other friend. I deeply value that friendship. She is also very intelligent, capable and ambitious and the best thing about her was discovering her heart. I didn't know my fired friend was going to be fired until minutes before it happened but in another way I was fearful that it would. Complex thoughts here. Anyway, I don't know what to do. I don't know what I CAN do. I'd beg from some rich person but a) I don;t know any an b) rich people do not fucking CARE. And while money would help my fired friend, is there maybe some, like, soul reason she is experiencing what she is? Or is it just rotten luck and totally deficient economics?

In other thoughts I was very touched 3 times by things Bruce did yesterday. They are little things, but big to me. One was that I was in bed and had a oad of laundry going. I wanted it moved to the dryer  but I didn't want to get up, partly because i am just exhausted lately and partly because our old dog was napping in his bed beside me and i didn't want HIM to have to get up. I asked Bruce to move the clothes to the dryer and he did it in a heartbeat. Later I was trying to find my glasses which had fallen off the nightstand and having searched by hand (I am blind as as can be without them) I couldn't find them even though the space they were in was small. So I asked him to help me and again he came immediately and found them. Then, when I was late coming home, he thought I was working 2-6 yesterday because I had been given time to get my car attended to (which I greatly appreciated) he called and left a message, somehow my phone ringer was off and when I got home he let me tell my story of the day and he FELT about it. I am so grateful for Bruce.

As I was in bed this morning considering life I was thinking about an idea I came across from reading The Tao of Equus (I had looked at this once in a shop when Bruce and i were so rarely out together, but had put it back not wanting to spend the money and Bruce saw this and bought it for me. It's a really good book. Anyway, the idea was that nomadic societies are morally superior to permanently based societies. At first I guffawed at this but the more I think about it the more i agree. nomadic societies make themselves fit in the world, they do not fit the world to their comfort. And relationships are more important than possessions. Possessions are vey liited due to the need to be mobile. If I were a fit person I would seek this kind of life.

And so goes another post which just skms the surface of what I would like to say but never effetively do. Oh well

A friend who, with her husband, recently became a trucker just posted some pictures near Echo Utah. And seeing them filled me with a rush of gratitude, love and Miles memories. I remembered the big swooping circles of drives we'd take. Up Emigration Pass, out through Henefee to East Canyon (where we first made love after more than 15 years for me of thinking I would never love a man again) Heber and Charleston and Echo.  Oh how I miss our trips!

Oh how I would like to vent. But I can't. One of these days I am going to explode from not venting. it will be messy.

On the other hand I am still thinking about Wild, Cheryl Strayed's book which was the last book I finished in it's entirety (I am still reading little bits of Treblinka and just in disbelief at how low humans ca go) But Wild is good fantasy fodder. I have long toyed with the idea of a name change. Now I am trying to think of a name I would like to be called. And it's not like you can jettison DNA or certain ingrained ways of thinking very easily but I do not have to b attached by name to a man I think was unnecessarily and asshole. I could be wrong. Maybe it was, somehow, utterly necessary but I really don't care to be linked any more than is absolutely requisite.
And I have to admire her stance as "the Girl Who Says Yes" I don't  think she continued it forever in destructive ways but there are some things I wish I'd said yes to. And the audacious undertaking of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail when it was fairly new. I am sure it is still quite a feat. I've tried to imagine how I might do it, or something like it and without massive, committed lifestyle changes and unfathomable amounts of preparation, maybe, but certainly not off the cuff. Kudos Cheryl! I love what I see in you!

Fighting a mix of wild anger an despair right now. Its immediate trigger it what is happening with Twila. I am just so depressed that this is happening to someone who has, for years, made love action. when I see the flurry of words on her page unbacked by action (as far as I can tell) it makes me furious. People seem to be pretty dispensable nowadays. Our government really does not care if we live or die, evidenced by poor health care. I was listening to an NPR story yesterday where a man had a colonscopy in Beverly Hills and was charge in excess of $12,000 for the procedure but because HE had good health insurance which disputed the amount it was reduced to six hundred something dollars.

If this is a recurrence of Twila's cancer as she has been told (but they can't biospy or do much testing because her platelets are so low she would not be able to stop bleeding- she's getting a transfusion but I don't know how long before they can really test.) She was on Cymbalta and apparently it can cause the low platelets, bruising and other symptoms she is having. I am hoping that might be the case but not very optimistic because she was told of three masses after a CAT scan. As she notes in her journal, recurrent cervical cancer is incurable I don't know if that is strictly true, but i do know that as she does NOT have good insurance it is probably de facto.

And me, well I a seething with disgust at people who mouth what they think are pretty words but who don't put actin behind it.

Feeling like a dishrag. One that needs to be washed. Last night i had FOUR ghost dreams. Can only remember tiny bits. In one, the color pink figured prominently, don't ask me why. Because it was the same shade of pink as the panties on Orange is the New Black (after the prison is turned to a private for profit venture) I am guessing it is somehow related to that. In another there was a painting that looked like a treasure map with 2 paths. The one of family and another that deadends and warns of "Jinny" that's all i can remember. Except the usual feeling of complete exhaustion after ONE ghost dream. I got up a little early after a tangent cloud of thoughts about changing my name. I'm 55 and I was thinking I'd really rather not carry my father's name with me to the grave. I hear it and every now and then I think of how much he hurt me. Some by the molestation but much much more because of how he treated my mom ad my brother and because I had loved him so. But I thought, it would be a real pain in the ass to legally change it too and then I thought and if I WAS going to change it I might as well change my first name too. I was supposed to have been David. In the days before prenatal sex determination that's what my parents had chosen. My femaleness was a surprise and LeAnn came from my father's name (LeRoy) my maternal grandfather's middle name (Clarence Lee) and we can sort of throw my mom's sister (LeEllen, who it seems she never liked) into the mix. Yup, I could be rid of the whole name. What would i choose instead? No idea but I am sure the idea will come back around for more consideration. I had wanted to get up because I had promised to send a broke and ailing friend some flea shampoo for her beloved chihuahua and I wanted it too be shipped today if possible. But the leftover dream stuff made getting up hard. Bruce came in and made me smile and as he left he noted VERY fresh Dude poop in the hall. I knew I should get up but I just couldn't. So, he tried to clean it up. I have scoopers on long poles (we used the in the kennel where i used to work and I liked them) You don't need to be anywhere near the poop. But Bruce, who only this morning had decided to try some of what i assumed would be godawful stuff called The Ultimate Meal- which he mixed with CHOCOLATE MILK and managed to swallow three ounces of before declaring the $30 canister a bust, well Bruce tried to clean up the Dude poop. Now Bruce has about the most sensitive gag reflex you can imagine and when I heard him start gagging in the hall could not help but laugh, it's hilarious, but in pity I told him to just walk away and i would do it. But he didn't. And so the hard swallowed three ounces which he said tasted like a garden, dirt and all. Said it tasted like an uncooked black eyed pea or lentil that you accidentally put in your mouth an bit.... well the retching turned to vomit and NO I was NOT prepared to clean that up and by ten from laughing and lingering in bed i really had to use the bathroom where he had thrown up oo the bathroom on the floor, not being able to make it to the toilet. He armed himself with 409 and paper towels and I, without problem, scooped the Dudie poop, transferred t to a bag and plunked it in the trashcan. Then I ordered the expensive flea shampoo which I hope works as well as the Adams i used to use when I lived in California. That was effective on fleas but when I got it on my hands it made me feel aggressive and it made my dogs drool. A bit later I was able to get to the bathroom and then we watched one episode of Orange is the New Black before i had to get ready for work. I wanted to mail the TWO t-shirts (didn't know what color he might like and couldn't contact him from the cafe i went to with a lady I worked with (she was one of my managers) in Salt Lake. I hadn't seen her in fifteen years and I'd never met her husband before. I had a good time and felt i knew her more from tthat brunch than in all te yearrs we had worked together. So, I mailed Joe's tshirts this morning and then went to work. While there I had facebook up for the skow moments and read soe really terrible news. The friend sho last summer had been diagnosed with cervical cancer and who was told she had beaten it is in the hospital. The cancer has relapsed and metastasized. She's something like 15 years younger than me. She takes care of her paraplegic uncle who I am sure would be dead without her. He ends up in the hospital a lot with sepsis and it's Twila who makes sure things are done right for him. I have a terrible feeling for her prognosis and if she goes i think Jaime won't be far behind because the hospitals just really don't pay attention. Twila's daughter is a CNA and trying to get through nursing school and she has a young daughter. I was thinking I am vitally importantt to one human on this Earth, Bruce and our dogs. Not that i want to die but if thre is a plan wouldn't it seem better that someone like me should die than a young woman crucial to her family. And then I watch people post things like "Love and Light" and i hope they actually do something more useful for her than that lip service.
Later i got to do a recommedation for a friend that I wholeheartedly think deserves a position she is applying for. That was a good part of the day.

I am often two opposite things at once, If I had time I'd elaborate but I have a dog at 8 am and I need to wind down from work and I want to listen a bit to Wild, which I am enjoying so very much. One of the aspects of it I enjoy most is her description of how she feels about family. I remember having such a strong sense of family when i was a child and longing for familial and other long term relationships so much. Heck, my idea of a perfect lifestyle was a group of long term friends who lived in a communal lifestyle. Nowadays I number my family as two humans. And really I'm not so sure about them. So I was thinking m tangent cloud of thoughts of family while simultaneously considering buying one of those DNA tests that purport to tell you about your ancestry. The irony is not lost on me. Maybe I wish to feel a connection to a "people" if I am not connected firmly to many actual people. Makes me sort of laugh.

I have a dog coming at 8:30 and then I work from 1-5 and I am so tired I was literally having trouble walking. I told myself to get up at 6:30 but it's 7. That's not something I really do. Hoping I might feel enough energy to eat something before Lily gets here. She's a bichon and she is such a sweet dog but someone shot her in the hip with buckshot and so she has pain and I try really hard to be careful with with her. Bichons are also probably my hardest breed to do well, so I angst. But Bichon angst is not why I am so tired. That was another night spent railing to the ether. The ghost kept me occupied all.fucking.night. It seemed to me that the ghost was considering whether it might be better to leave the tiny thread we have connecting us. An image came to my mind for myself in this stint- it's useable in a lot of ways- I called myself the zombie. I told the ghost to please himself as clearly I have been. and would be. haunted as I have been all these many years whether or not there is a tiny element of his present in my life or not. The ghost seemed concerned with healing, i asked the ghost if zombies "heal". Zombies are reduced creatures of insatiable, irrational appetite. Whereas in a previous LIFE they may have craved devouring mind, soul, experience the appetite now was of a grosser nature and are zombies ever "nourished"? The Ghost thought I might feel abandoned. That made me laugh. I felt abandoned when I WAS abandoned, though it felt more like discarded for newer interests without even polite notification of such a fact. The ghost did not want to break trust. I don't trust the ghost. The ghost is not wholly responsible for my lack of trust, which is pronounced but accounts for a significant portion of the condition. Trust is also something i do not see as healable. I reminded the ghost of an agreement we had and my belief that is was quite broken. Trust seems a funny issue for the ghost to bring up to me. This brought up the empathy that the ghost often seems to express. I saw that long before and I believed it then but now it seems to be a life focus. Where i wondered idly, did that come from? Anyway, it was a long, emotionally fraught night,, and it came down to Do Whatever You Want- I am a zombie. I will now try to collect myself into being a functional zombie

Symbols ?

Symbolism fascinates me. I think there are no coincidences. I think there are sometimes strange communications. Bruce just told me that for 3 days in à row he has seen a spider in the toilet water. He said it looks like the same spider each time. He thought I was putting them there.  But no, I don't think I've ever seen such a sight. And my response to spiders is usually to take them outside and let them go though yesterday I did vacuum up 2 black widows, I think a male and female, together in one web. They were in my groomery and near the tub. I am hoping they are alive in there and will be free when I empty the canister which I thought I would do today. But I slept till 11 am and had to be at work by 1, so I didn't get to it. Anyway, tomorrow I plan to look up symbolism for spiders, water and spiders in water. Maybe also three. I also mean to ask Bruce what he thinks it might mean. How odd it would be if it continued!

I wonder if it is related, or I should say how it is related to an experience I had last night. I found myself in a sensual, free state that I have not experienced for many years. Closest to whole I remember feeling because I was broken so early, in stages and so thoroughly that I don't really remember ever feeling whole. It was exhilarating, peaceful and powerful at once. It had an alone quality, like independence but also a strong yearning to share deep experience with another. It was very surprising. Again, I can't tell if it was a waking or sleeping state. I've been so tired lately but also restless and unable to sleep much or with a feeling of refreshment. Last night I did feel refreshed. I would like to feel that feeling again.

Ghost night. I feel utterly drained. Where do those come from? I can't imagine I would inflict such an experience on myself and I don't for a moment believe the ghost would either. So from where? I can never remember much about it, just the feeling of the person, intense feelings of betrayal, worthlessness and sadness and a feeling of physical drain like nothing else, I can't even tell you whether it is a waking state or a sleep state but it seems to go on for hours. Last night's was topped with the cherry of a dream about 2 lost friends. WTF?