I fell asleep at like 11PM and woke up to bird songs at 5:50AM. Well, those first halting bird cries - "I feel the sun approach, and someone has to be first- BREEk no no um glad no one heard that. BRAEK? ... ... BRAEK! ... BRAEK!"
I needed to meet someone at 8 and showered last night, so I lounged and woke up for a bit. I actually browsed over it-he again, a classic true fans remember.
System Shock 1 specifically.I cleaned up and met my mom and we went hiking. Well first we visited my first home, and my cat's grave in the forest nearby. The white quartz I placed on top her cairn still pokes out of the bed of wet leaves. So much is changing in that area, but a cairn tends to last... possibly for generations?
The walk was lovely and most of it was me listening. I learned things about my mother and her time with my godmother. This
old lady was *awesome*. She had some financial advantages but she worked her butt off - she spent a few years in New York, met a WW2 soldier after V-day, came home, and a few years later he died. Congenital heart failure, not even a war thing. But she had children, and she took care of her ailing father, and of her family's land out home in the boonies. She took on boarders, elderly people who didn't have today's industrial "retirement homes". She met my mom while hosting a game of gin rummy. My mom was studying to be a nurse. They shook hands, and that's why I grew up in an incomplete but comfy tuberculosis sanitarium outside of town.
Okay.
After the walk it was somehow already 10:30AM, I guess I was engrossed in mom's stories. We had trouble finding a place open to eat (we tried CRACKER BARREL, and I had to hold my tongue about boomer and white-person jokes. TBH the interior reminded me more of mountain-NC eateries, what with all the... swag? loot? gewgaws.) We waited for a cajun seafood to open and had delicious catfish.
I ate the slaw with hushpuppies... I didn't want to break open the plastic diningware packet, saving it. My mom was very polite about that gross bit of goblinism, mentioning it in a positive way.
She wanted to hang out later, but I had been telling her I needed to be in Raleigh soon. True, if not the whole truth. Raleigh is where my dad lives, so I shouldn't have had to say more.
And yet she asked, and I'm glad circumstances helped me stall. She probably knows. I did tell her, last week, even though I was panicking and crying. This is support.
Technically I had a separate item of business in Raleigh, truly important financial business, but I'm still glad she didn't press me and make me lie by misdirection. I made the drive (traffic be crazy even at lunch hour) and took care of the business. Frick though, some of those roads are so thin.
Then I stopped by Planned Parenthood and made an appointment.
Then I was driving, just, driving - and saw Dorothea Dix, a park that used to be a mental institution. I stopped and went wandering until I found a remote spot, then lotused in the the noonday sun. Lay down a bit. Soaked it all in.
Feeling pleasantly reddened and oddly fired up, I navigated to
Planet Fitness some health club I "definitely" go to all the time. I actually do feel okay about my body. It's fine in every technical sense, I'm actually very lucky, I just
RokoGODDSSSS that felt good. It wasn't the best workout - I just did 30 minutes on a recliner-style exercise bike. Initially I was reading a webstory (the one about the bug-girl Skitter) but once my heart rate hit 160 I couldn't really focus on anything other than the captions on the TVs. Whenever I pushed 180 I backed off a bit. It was... so good. Part of that was endorphins, but part was caring about my body again.
When I got home, my ex-housemate was still there and helping to clean stuff up.
We talked about my day and it was nice.
Then I watched some Seinfeld and maybe got a little high on delta-8