Day 68 - The Times They Are A-Changin' in These Foolish Things

Good late morning! I have done nothing but eff around this morning because I want to! We lost an hour last night due to daylight savings (ughhh), and so I decided to be lazy this morning and read entries and scroll socials and generally screw off.

And I am about to make myself an egg scramble with ground turkey, black beans, mozzarella (because I don’t have any cheddar), and homemade salsa with cort tortillas for brunch. OMG YUM.

Later today, when it warms up a little bit (major cold front blew through yesterday!), I’ll strap on my weighted vest and wrist weights and take the dog out for her “good walk” and then we’ll go to the grocery store like lunatics. Why do I wait until Sunday afternoons to go to the grocery store with the throngs of others? I work from home so I have the luxury to go at odd times, but nooooooo…I wait until everyone else in the world wants to go.

There are lots of things going on in the city over the next couple of weeks. Yesterday I went to an event for International Women’s Day, even though Zuckerberg, Musk, Google, et al. don’t recognize this day anymore. FUCK the patriarchy, man. FUCK every last one of them.

I really wanted to attend a special textile mending class that was taking place during the event (there were several things going on) because of my recent interest in sashiko, so I went and signed up for the class early and grabbed a cute mending kit. The class was going to be held at 2:30pm, and I got there at noon to make sure I got all the swag (and I did) and hear the panel speakers, but after the first panel, about 1:00, the cold front started to blow in and I was wearing the thinnest little sundress known to mankind and didn’t bring a jacket.

So I ghosted the class. I just left. What a bummer because i really wanted to do it, but it would have been 1.5 hours of waiting in the cold, blowing wind, so I was like, hell no and split.

Got a good walk in downtown. I’d parked about a mile and a half away for two reasons: (1) because I know where I can get secret free parking downtown in a city that charges for parking by the freaking second, and (2) because I wanted to get my steps in, so that was good.

And then I drove by Joann Fabrics because they are going out of business and closing ALL of their stores! Did you know that after I graduated from college, I managed a fabric store for about a year? Long, long story, but it was wild as hell. I loved/hated that job! But anyway, the sale pretty much sucked because the store was trashed and everything was already picked over, and I decided to go to the Natural Grocers in the same strip shopping center, but at that point, the wind was whipping and my nips were freaking FROZEN so I didn’t even have it in my to walk two doors down!

I RAN to my car and went home and vegged for a few hours binging Love is Blind, Season 8 and my bird families outside (did you know I’ve become a bird-watcher since installing two birdfeeders on my patio?) before picking up Martini at her doggie daycare. Oh, the guilty, guilty pleasure of it all!

I have been a bit of a waste this weekend. Again, OH WELL. I’ve relished every minute.

This week I have been talking with my dad (I call nearly every night and my dad puts the phone on speaker so my mom can listen, even though she never contributes to the convo anymore due to her dementia - sad face) about the Oscars. He told me they hadn’t seen any of the movies and neither had I, but we both kinda want to see the Bob Dylan movie.

Then I told him that I’d seen Bob Dylan in concert before. I knew I’d seen him during a tour he did with Willie Nelson back in the day. They did a tour together one summer at Minor League Baseball stadiums (stadia?) all across the United States. I remember seeing him, but I couldn’t remember the details, so I looked it all up, and sure enough, back in 2004 when I lived in the Great Midwest, I saw him there - and the articles I found had me remembering a lot of the details.

Long, LONG time readers from OD Land, do you remember a guy I called LDL (Long Distance Love)? This was several lifetimes ago. I can’t remember what I called him before we were long distance, but he was a horrible human being, and I loved him desperately when I was in my early 30s until I could take it no longer. He was emotionally highly manipulative and abusive and isolated me from my friends and family for a good long few YEARS.

He LOVED Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead and Jethro Tull and that whole genre. He introduced me to a lot of that music, and if truth be told, I sort of get a lingering icky taste in my mouth when I hear that music. It’s not terrible, I can still somewhat enjoy that music, but it just brings back sights, sounds and smells from that era of my life and I shudder to think about what I let him do to me before I knew what boundaries meant.

I still feel bad about all of the things I missed out on with my friends and family because he had me so locked down and sequestered. It was WEIRD, y’all!!

And then he had that ex-convict brother who lived with him after 10 YEARS in prison. He was released from the maximum security state penitentiary and went DIRECTLY to my boyfriend’s HOUSE! We had to reintegrate him into society for a while until he could get into some halfway house situation. WHAT A BIZARRE TIME!! I was TERRIFIED!!

And then, after LDL lost his job and refused to get another one, I was paying ALL of his fucking bills! Except for his mortgage. I refused that. And then he lost his fucking HOUSE! And told me that he was going to have to move in with me in my tiny one-bedroom apartment. That’s when I finally, finally grew the balls to say no.

And he cried and cried. He even picked up the phone to cry to his momma.

OH LORD. And we sold all of his stuff and turned over the house and I drove him and his dogs across the country to move in with mom!!

GAH. All these crazy memories flooding back to me from just thinking about that Bob Dylan movie. How many lives have I lived?? I feel like seven or eight already!

Anyway, I asked my dad if he remembered LDL, and he said no, he didn’t.

And that kinda blew my mind because LDL was the longest romantic relationship of my life!! He and I were on and off but we were involved for seven years. And the fact that neither one of my parents remember him just shows how much the dude isolated me. Of course, mom has memory issues, but my dad not remembering him is HUGE. Because my dad remembers everything.

Want to know the funny thing? LDL follows my Instagram. He watches every single one of my stories. I haven’t blocked him because I want to show his ass that I have moved on several more lifetimes since then. I do NOT follow him at all, but I know where he lives (not in this country anymore…just like another major ex of mine…interesting, hmmm).

And I’m doing a 30-day music challenge (props to very special OD friend who was the inspo for the challenge!) where you post a song every day that corresponds to the daily prompts. Today’s prompt is “a song that reminds you of someone you’d rather forget” so I posted Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall. I know he’s gonna know it was aimed at him, and in some ways, he’ll probably love it because he knows I’m thinking about him.

Our memories are so interesting.

That guy had a HUGE effect on my whole, entire life. And yet, he was nearly invisible to the people I care about.

I am forever changed because of that time. For the better? I guess. I learned what boundaries are and I will NEVER let anyone do that to me again, but I’m also very, very overprotective of my heart, and I know he contributed a lot to that.

Anyway. So many thoughts on this quiet weekend. I hope your weekend is lovely and you’re spending it in the way that makes you feel your best.

xox,
GS