I forget I ever had this blog until I type something into the address bar that auto-fills the link as a suggestion.

“Did you mean to type in this address, friend? Did you mean to go back ten years to this blog you kept? When you thought you had things to say that were worth recording? And which, friend, I hesitate to say this, friend, but which – oh dear – but which I cannot recommend strongly enough you do not re-read? You will not care for it. You will not enjoy who you were. You will be grateful the people who loved you, loved you. You will be grateful you have changed. But the reminders, and the context for how you have changed, will be awkward. Did you mean, friend, rather to simply build on to the old house, without ever revisiting the rooms you used to occupy? May I interest you in creating your own Winchester Mystery House with your past? May I please? Please.”

I’m just over 3 weeks short of ten years since I last updated this blog. Should I wait until September 21, 2025 to post this so it’s a full ten years?

Ten years. Goodness. So much has happened since then. So much has changed. Too much to paragraph, too much to bullet point. But what can I do but try? And if I fail to write something Complete, that’s okay too. Unturned stones are good for the landscape.

I’m at work, trying to finish things without all the details I need, tracking projects without all the updates, listening to a podcast about a couple that moved to San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato, Mexico, drinking an iced coffee, with a wax melt warmer on the table behind me, the overhead office light off because it hums, in my men’s department flannel from Walmart, trying to convince myself to switch to music so I can focus, knowing full well focus is too boring, wondering if I’m better off working distracted and allowing the tasks to expand to fill the day rather than lasering in and accomplishing everything in an hour.

That hasn’t changed in these ten years; I still think I can put everything off and finish in an hour.

I’ve switched to my Spotify Daylist — “gypsy jazz 1920s friday morning.” So I guess we’re not all skipping that word.

I work for my dad again. A few years in now. Worked for a private ambulance company 2017 – 2022, in billing. Creating claims. Most complicated work I’ve ever learned to do. I was sure I wouldn’t be able to ever figure it out. By the end I was listening to audiobooks while working, and finishing in 2 minutes what initially took me upwards of 30.

He’s still in commercial outer-envelope contracting, my dad; still primarily roofing, but there’s so much more to do on these buildings. There’s just so much that can be done, is the thing; so much that needs to be done, and clients will always need whatever is on offer, and then some. Miracles are for people, not roofing membranes. We – people and membranes both – are never far from needing repairs; get on it.

We’re based in New Berlin now, but moving to a larger facility in South Milwaukee this winter.

In the meantime – the meantime since 2015 – we moved from the house we built in Waukesha, to a house we rented in Waukesha for 3 or so years, to a house we rented in Brookfield for 7 or so years, to a house my parents bought in Delafield. That last move happened last weekend.

Clockwise below, L to R: 1. My old bedroom, from the doorway. It was so full, but so cozy. Surrounded by my journals and crafts and art supplies and my greens and my florals and my sticks and my dragonfly lamp from when I worked at Home Depot in 2001 and my green Ikea bookshelf from Facebook Marketplace. 2. My old bedroom, from the corner by the TV, with my desk from Victoria and my desk cover from Mary (an apron made from Supernatural fabric) and my throw blanket from Caitlin (crocheted skulls) and my colorful wall banner from Mimi (from Honduras). 3. Mom checking her phone on the floor of my bedroom of the last 7 years after we finished emptying out the house.

Clockwise above, continued: 4. Dad and Uncle Dave in the back of the truck dad rented to take my stuff from the old house to the office warehouse since our trailer was stolen the weekend before and his truck was at the dealership following a massive GMC recall. 5. Enjoying breakfast on the patio outside the walk-out basement where my room and bathroom are at the new house. Pictured: My beloved Aldi travel mug, and an oversized white hot chocolate mug from Mimi. Not pictured: Dozens of dead hornets from the nest mom had just had taken down under the deck above my head. 6. Mom cleaning cobwebs at the old house after finding the long duster attachment. 7. My things from the old house set out in my new room where I’m staying while I search for a house of my own.

The first week in the new house has been tiring, adjusting to such long morning commutes. I leave now at 7:25 am so I can hit Panera on Greenfield on my way in. I’m 5 or so years into the Panera Sip Club; I pay annually now that I’m so used to having this service that I can’t imagine cancelling it. These days I start the day with a large iced coffee. I added a bagel and cream cheese today. Splurge.

I’ve done some shows in these past ten years. How many I couldn’t say off the top of my head. Not so many, but enough I can’t remember them all. My participation has dropped off. Maybe a show a year. My usual haunt has shifted into more musicals than straight plays, and I’m regularly too old or too young for the plays, or they’re farces that would take up too much of my time when I’d rather be traipsing through Summer with friends. Been there, done that, would prefer earlier nights and open weekends if it’s all the same to you, Muses et al.

Those I’ve done have been fun though. Good shows, good work, good people, good times. It’s like pulling teeth to get friends to attend. A few are reliable for it, but most are ambivalent. I wish it mattered to me less, hurt less, that they have to be begged to come and then still don’t show. But there’s a lesson or five in it about carrying personal joy on an open palm instead of inside a closed fist. Let it come, let it go, live your own life, let others live theirs, we all remember and forget in our own ways and times.

Oh forget it. I’m looking them up. I have to know. Here we are. In no particular order: Clue (Miss Scarlet), Steel Magnolias (Annelle), Tartuffe (Elmire), Miss Holmes (Dr. Dorothy Watson), Other Desert Cities (Brooke Lyman), Little Wars (Muriel Gardiner), 33 Variations (Clara Brandt), Rabbit Hole (Becca)… and I think that might be it. God only knows. There were plenty of Radio WHT (Exactly!) shows on WMSE, and a few staged performances at the Alchemist in Bay View, but those days are over for any number of reasons. Least among them is that the Alchemist closed, and the building was sold and remodeled into a new Honeypie location. Middlest among them is that Charlie got married and moved to upstate New York. And greatest of them is that Randall passed from Covid in summer of ’22. There can be no Milwaukee Radio WHT without our dear Jack Farwell.

These ten years also took Aunt Dolly from us, also from Covid. She had a stroke shortly after Thanksgiving in 2023, spent two months in the hospital, then returned home for a month or so of in-home hospice care in a bed in her living room before passing away in the night.

Left: June 2019 at the old house; Jayden, Mimi, Brea, Ava, Aunt Dolly. Right: Dolly in her living room January 2023, still decorated from Christmas, with Gunny sleeping at her bedside, attended by Aunt Sharon, with Mimi on the couch, and Mom bringing in Bekah, Ava, and Jayden after they arrive to say their hellos? Goodbyes? Andrew was there as well, and dad and Uncle Dave. It was all so much.

Should I address Covid here? now? I’m tired of it. But that may also be the long-Covid talking. I had it three times. The second time was the weekend Randall died; I missed his funeral. A number of us did – we all had Covid. So it goes. I’ve never been sicker in that particular way. In my lungs, in my heart. At first I thought it was grief, then I tested positive and slept sitting in a recliner for a week, in so much pain when breathing I wondered if I’d wake up. My other two bouts were unmemorable. I know easily a dozen people who got it and died, so two unmemorable bouts is a blessing. There was my former principal, a former boss, a few former teachers’ spouses. So many lost so much. The world shut down. And then it was like it never happened, except for how it stunted the social growth of Gens Z and A for a couple of years when they did school from home.

Who’s died since September 2015? Let’s see. Well there was David Bowie of cancer, and Prince of an overdose, and Chris Cornell of suicide, and Sinead O’Connor of a heart attack. There was Robin Williams of suicide (following years of secretly enduring debilitating pain), Alan Rickman of cancer, Carrie Fisher of a heart attack, Steve Jobs of cancer, Matthew Perry of a drug-induced heart attack, Pope Francis of a stroke (following seeing JD Vance too soon after prolonged illness), Anthony Bourdain of suicide, Luke Perry of a stroke, Tom Petty of an accidental medication overdose, Aretha Franklin of pancreatic cancer, Alex Trebek of pancreatic cancer, Penny Marshall of heart failure, Gene Wilder of Alzheimers, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg of pancreatic cancer, Bob Saget of a head injury from a fall alone, and Kate Spade of suicide.

In the past ten years I’ve wanted to move to Paraguay, Belize, Ireland, and Mexico, which includes obsessively listening to podcasts about others who’ve done so, researching places I might enjoy living, looking into digital nomad work options, pricing apartment rentals, and daydreaming about reading, writing, and making art ~outside~.

In the past ten years I’ve spent months off-and-on living in Los Angeles on an air mattress at Becca’s. In the past ten years I also spent three months in a guest room in Cape Town with James and Laura. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough. Being connected to a place is a beautiful comfort. Being tied to a place is like having the dust brushed from my mothy little wings and watching so many lights pass and pass and pass, like a string of Christmas bulbs speeding through the hand of a dad in that final moment before deciding to let go to use both hands to grip the leaning ladder. Maybe that light would’ve been The One! Or maybe it was just a security light near a doorway! But maybe it was The One!

And I couldn’t fly to that light because of all the same reasons everyone else can’t either. Resources, work, so on. But maybe again some day? Maybe I can work twenty more years and then I can fly again? Twenty more years of my leg muscles shortening in my desk chair(s), and then when I am tired earlier and later I can spend a few hours mid-day at cafes struggling with menus and noon heat until I feel I’ve been outside my rented room long enough to merit going back to it to nap and scroll on my phone.

I fear I will save all the years in between just to one day rent a few square feet of linoleum floor in a beautiful little town I am too tired to dance through. But then — that’s 2049 for you.

I had my gallbladder removed in Fall 2023 following a year and a half of terrible pain that I couldn’t explain or identify. One morning dad called to see how I was feeling and I was still in bed and I guess I sounded pretty bad because he said to get dressed because he was calling mom to leave work and take me to the ER. They admitted me immediately, said my gallbladder was packed with stones, my labs were terrible, my liver was struggling, and I needed it out asap. Oops.

I’m earning a living wage, and it’s a beautiful thing. I have health insurance, and it’s expensive, but I have it. No gallbladders left to pop out, but I’m sure it’ll be useful for other things at some point. I’m saving to buy a house, but the current market isn’t great for buyers. Apparently it’s not great for sellers either. I can find around 1,000 sq ft of a rectangle with siding for an average of $275,000 on a high traffic street in Milwaukee County with $5k/year in property taxes.

I’m not currently reading anything, but after getting into audiobooks during Covid lockdown from 2020-2022 I listened to several hundred and it was life-affirming. I couldn’t begin to tell you all of what I’ve read, or “read”, in the last ten years. Or watched. Or where I’ve eaten. Or visited. It’s just all so much. So much. Ten years. They should’ve been among my ten best, no? But I feel like they were mostly wasted. Not wasted, that’s not right. “Unused” might be more appropriate. What makes time feel well-used? Traveling to new places, learning new places, visiting friends far away. Just being “away,” apparently. It’s a novelty thing I think. Not everything needs to be novel. But I do miss the comfort of the beautiful unfamiliar.

Well. It’s lunch time. See you in ten years.