apologies in advance for the next one

Just putting this here so I’m not starting with it. Heh.

not to jinx myself, but i think i already hit the low point of my year

In my last post I mentioned that I had finally attained an age where my big reward was getting a colonoscopy, and by and large, most folks mentioned to me that the worst part of getting a colonoscopy was the prep, especially drinking it and not puking. And while I will spare you almost every detail, I will say that HAHA IT IS SO FUNNY THAT YOU MENTION NOT PUKING because it turns out that the WORST PART is actually throwing up colonoscopy prep liquid onto your carpeted stairs while you are at home by yourself and then having to steam clean your own vomit out of your staircase while trying not to poop your pants.

And succeeding I might add.

Anyway I just want to say that was less than a week into being 46 and, despite everything that is happening in the world at large and at small, the rest of the year has to be better than that.

So I’m grateful that I already got the worst part over with.

Hooray for optimism!

you got a fast car

I am not a person that is Into Cars, per se, but I have always had a thing for Italian sports cars, because they purr like jungle cats and they are hot. And I definitely have a thing for driving fast, which I do not get to do because the fastest place I can regularly drive is I-94, where it’s impossible to maintain a speed for any length of time because it is horrible for several reasons that I will not enumerate, but if you know you know.

Anyway, as my birthday gift this year from my husband, I got to drive a Ferrari 488 GTB for 3 laps at MIS, or Michigan International Speedway, if you will, which is the fastest track in the US. When I imagined doing this, I thought it would be like doing NASCAR laps, but instead it was one long, fast section and then also a F1 road course with a lot of curves and braking that was more technical and less zoomy.

This is a clip of me and Jerry (my instructor/person to keep me from dying) coming out of the road course onto the straightaway. It was very fun, and I would absolutely do it again, though I simultaneously wish it had been all zooms. Though maybe that would’ve been too much of a liability?

birdwatching really does creep up on you as you age

A couple of days ago, while out walking the dog, I paused on the sidewalk and craned my neck looking up at the tree branches overhead. “I can hear the bird,” I said to my husband, while turning the opposite direction, still looking up, “but I can’t see the bird.”

We walked a few steps. “I probably have about a year before I start carrying binoculars with me for bird watching.”

We walked a few more steps. “Do you think I have that long?”

(I am pretty sure it was a northern flicker, even if I didn’t see it.)

(Here is a not-great picture I took of a northern flicker a couple of weeks ago, for reference.)

When I was young, I never needed anyone I did not give a single fuck about birds, and now just look at me (not literally; you are reading this on a glowing screen and I am not there) identifying them in the wild by the sound of their calls. I blame the Merlin app. It was a gateway drug.

this website

Guys, I don’t know. I have had this website since the early 2000s and it’s been through many iterations since then. I am screwing with it behind the scenes (apologies to everyone who saw eleventy hundred updates that led nowhere a couple of weeks ago — I was testing adding inventory to my still nonexistent store and I didn’t know that if I uploaded a spreadsheet that had all of the current print stock I have, it would publish every line item as its own thing to sell so that was cool). I am doing another art show next month and I should probably have something set up by then. But like… if you were going to a website to look at someone’s photos potentially to buy, would you really want to read about that person puking on their stairs?

Probably not, right? So maybe I need to rearrange some things? Or something? Do I need to be professional now?

Ha ha.

I would like to tell you to make sure that you are signed up for updates in case I move things around you will not miss out on my very important news, and to further tell you that it would be best if you are signed up for updates via email instead of however WordPress sends you updates, but I am not into telling people what to do. As you can see I will not spam you because while my updates are in fact Incredibly Important, they are also Wildly Infrequent.

But here’s the subscribe box just in case.

a poem

Meditations in an Emergency

By Cameron Awkward-Rich

I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.