Onward Through The Fog

 I'm tired  of drinking weak coffee. I am tired of posting weak stories. I am tired of the insanity of my job. I am, to put it more simply, tired. It's 6:30 in the morning, I woke up on the couch. Whenever I wake up, be it from a middle-aged accidental nap at 3:00 in the afternoon or to nature's call at 4 a.m., Willow is instantly next to me, begging to be let outside or for a treat. This morning I stirred at 5:02 a.m. Willow was soon punching me--always with her left paw( the size of a children's catcher's mitt)--is she a southpaw? Can dogs be "handed?"

Work, which I never write about, is fucking relentlessly stupid. It constantly keeps me on edge. So many reasons. The current fiasco has the leaderless department--reassigning the work of my colleagues and I. I now have more territory than anyone else, and more difficult territory than my colleagues. They gave my smooth running turf--that took me years to get in order--to someone who isn't pulling their weight. In exchange, I got the disaster they were running which is broken beyond compare. I have investigations, demands to bargain, actual bargaining, training new people, rogue leadership that has yet to be trained, and on and on and on. If I were maintaining a private journal--something I really should be doing--I would be more explicit.  To quote David Gilmour (or is it Roger Waters?) of Pink Floyd, "Fuck all that, we've gotta get on with these."

My yard is a massive undertaking on any given day. I haven't put out new bark--something I hate by the way--a couple of years. Today, this very morning, a dump truck with ten yards of bark will arrive at my house and dump it in my driveway. Tomorrow, that 10 yards will be spread across the first and top slope of the yard. It is a lot of work. I will need another 20 yards to complete the refurbishment. I don't have time patience to figure out a redesign for the yard--nor the money really. I am looking forward to trying to employ strategies that will suck up the water in the lower yard, a swamp of nastiness on most days, and with the dog, a recipe for constantly needing to mop and steam clean between September and the end of July. 

I am hoping to buy just a few plants this spring. Mostly natives and--aside from a Willow, a red maple or any such like--native plants that attract butterflies, hummingbirds and bats, all of which live on my property. The bats eat the night bugs, which I am in favor of completely. Plus, given the massive deforestation, fill-in and paving of the Duwamish basin and Kent Valley by our forebears, bats need all the help they can get. Butterflies and hummingbirds also could benefit from increased varieties of plants and bushes that they like. We shall see. Meanwhile, I will need to get my ass outside, move my car and lay out tarps in the attempt to keep the bark, as best I can, off the driveway surface, which is where the 10 yards will reside until it is spread. I never imagined in my life I would be doing this. 

View from 54th floor, Key Tower, 3.30.2026.

I actually managed to get Abby a care package for the first time this year. I am pleased. It is a two-fer, containing gifts for both Easter and her 21st birthday, which is in a few short days. I pray to god I can afford to get her home via airplane next month. I fear, given our dear leader's ongoing madness, that plane tickets will be cost prohibitive quite soon and also that airlines will fail. Great Britain receives its last delivery of jet fuel today according to British reporting. Even if we have enough refinery capacity to create some jet fuel, it won't stop the catastrophic impact of a jet fuel shortage. I sure am tired of all this winning. Abby has applied for jobs at museums in NYC, Los Angeles and elsewhere, but given the youth unemployment numbers and the dubious economic environs, I expect she will be here this summer, perhaps doing a digital internship--an idea she (and I) hate. Not the being home part--huzzah for that! But digital internships really undermine and subvert (not like the subversion of the patriarchy) the purpose of such an enterprise. 

I haven't purchased gas since the invasion. It's nice having a car that gets far more than 10 m,p.g. Today, however, I will have to knuckle down, buckle down and do it do it do it.