I went out for sushi tonight. This is my favorite food, and I haven’t gone to this restaurant much lately because is it pretty pricey and I am trying to live lean. Small. At 5K per month, which is what my folks are giving me, which how can I possibly call it small?!?
And it still isn’t enough.
I’ve been using my credit card. A five hundred dollar vet bill…. My child care, at 450 per month over four months. Plus babysitters, shoes… none of which are covered by the 5K.
So yesterday, I cashed in a 401K that I got from my wasband in the divorce.
Here’s the thing. I don’t know when or how I’ll earn a living again.I can walk hills, again. And have sex, apparently. (!)_But still can’t sit more than a few hours a day.
But I don’t want to live in fear anymore. So I cashed it. It’s what I can do, today.
Also, I was doing PT on the living room floor the other day and the wire in my bra popped out.
I haven’t bought new bras in three years.
When I told Luckey this, she said “Have you thought about not wearing them?”
But I can’t do that. I am trying! I am trying to reject all the useless dictates of culture. And I remember on the way home from camp in 2012, how Luckey and Uncle Bear rode with me, and told me about a French study that said that underwire bras cause cancer and dementia and also frigidity. Or some such shit. Have you ever noticed that the French will say whatever perverse thing the researchers ask them to? But I love my bras. I am uncomfortable when my girls are bouncing around.
Also, I can’t recall the exact details of the study. Actually, I was so blissed out from camp that I could barely stay on the road, an object lesson for the stern admonition from the teachers that year: “Friends don’t let friends chant while driving home from witchcamp.”
We were driving along the hundreds-of-feet high cliffs of the west coast of BC, north of Vancouver. So I suppose it’s hundreds of meters… fucking Canadians. We weren’t chanting, but the road kept sort of moving around under the wheels in a most disconcerting way. Nothing was staying put as my wildly freed creative brain veered all over and so did my minivan.
I was scaring the shit out of my passengers.
I had to pull over to put my wild creative mind back in its place and to keep us all from plunging to our deaths. We got out of the car. We perched on a cliff. I thought about teaching storytelling in the world of politics, and creating new worlds, and being true and it was all too much for me. Luckey was sitting next to me. We were looking out over blue and gray and azure layers of islands and sea from a high vantage point.
Luckey said, “Is there anyone who can be an ally to you in taking this magic home?”
As soon as she asked, I knew. Isn’t it important to have friends who can ask the right question? “Spider,” I said. Spider has been my ally all my life. And, it was the symbol of my affinity group that year, where I met my love, thought I didn’t know it then.
We got back in the car. I could drive again. We made it to Seattle.
I showed Luckey and Uncle Bear the guest room.
20 minutes later they came upstairs. “Um, there are spiders? Everywhere?”
I went down to look. Hundreds and hundreds of baby spiders were hatching out of the light fixtures in the guest room. “Wow!! That’s so cool!!” I said. And left.
20 more minutes later.
“Um… The spiders? I know you don’t kill spiders in your house, but they are everywhere! They are in our hair and dropping down our collars… is there something you can do?”
I practically struck my forehead with my palm. “Oh goddess! I’m so sorry! Of course you don’t want baby spiders down your shirt.” I started laughing. “I’ll be right there.”
And I grabbed my feather duster.
This is the way to gather young spiders, by the way. Think of them as magical beads of possibility on cotton candy threads and wind them. Brush them lightly as you turn the feather duster, as if you were a carnie, twirling pink sugar. That’s how sweet the baby spiders are. They are the young spinners. They write the next words of our webbed alphabet. They know the coming pages.
I spun them all up in my feathered wand. I took them into the garden. It was August. Still warm, still insecty. Still wild for them and the next pages of the story.
They have been with me since.
So, you can see why I trust Luckey Bunny. But still. I am not going to give up my bras.