It’s devastating to find that the gathering of one’s own self can cause pain in tender places. Yet I must allow that gathering for it is there I find me.

“I notice that it is only when my mother is working in her flowers that she is radiant, almost to the point of being invisible—except as Creator: hand and eye. She is involved in work her soul must have. Ordering the universe in the image of her personal conception of beauty.” —Alice Walker, In Search of our Mother’s Gardens

I didn’t love to work amongst my flowers until I had a garden planted by my own hand and not my mother’s. I rejected hers, even though the starts she gave me sunk deep into the soil. Her hand could not fail and I burned with anger every time I went out to weed. I did not want the work nor did I want the flowers. But dutiful daughter that I was, they were planted anyway.

And then she died and I could see.

I took starts and dug deep to carry those precious-now-to-me offerings and guarded them over a winter as we moved towns and houses and gardens. Because they were offerings to a daughter that did everything opposite of what she wanted.

I caused my mother countless hours of stress, I’m now sure of it, because I wanted to do it on my own, seeking recognition from her I never did receive.

Morhering. One day their hair is yours to care for and one day you can’t touch it. One day you are the protector of all things and one day they no longer need you. The grief of that is visceral.

to be a mother

is to empty oneself

and allow space

for a human

to grow inside you

and when aged

to find out how

to sew that space up

so you can breathe

with stitches

just tight enough

not to leave a mark

—mh

Things we enable because of what our own mothers enabled and our grandmothers enabled are ribbons of grief and wonder we can trace through time. None of us knows what we’re doing, even though we try. In 25 years the next set of “why did you do it this way, mom?” will arrive, surprisingly.

It will bewilder and perplex. And we will sit inside that and feel the shape of it, either stretching to accept and examine, or reject and cause more pain.

“Who do you have to support you? It’s very hard to mother if you’re not looked after yourself” —Alice Walker

We all need looking after, or someone — at least — to check in on us and see if we’re still doing fine. Mothering doesn’t end, it just takes a different shape. And inside that shape is where we find who we once were — and what’s left to gather.

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“If I leave this whirling dervish of saccharine words, it will come back to me (because this person is popular) with a click and a follow.”

Commence typing.

Do we mean these words? Or is it a slow circular motion of word salad that might get us somewhere? Clicks and follows for monetary gain.

I once wrote about false positivity in my newspaper column and I stand by the sentiment 100% today. When words are forced out of my mouth or fingertips they ring false. My tongue feels bitter.

I can’t play the game. I love who I love, eat where I eat, and shop where I shop. I want to try new things without the pressure of having to promote them. If I love a thing I’ll leave a positive review. But we’ve become a world built on reviews, comments, praise. I understand it’s how we do world-building in 2026.

Don’t worry, Missy, someone will assuredly tell me. You are not someone anyone looks to for that information.

So who is? Who gets to decide?

In the gargantuan land of social media, it’s the popular crowd, the ones that wrangle every bit of their day and turn it into productivity and cash. Kudos to them if they can do it. Some folks are so insanely talented and creative that it comes easy for them.

They can spin a thing and turn it into gold at the drop of a hat. And because of this, people flock to them and give them the oomph they need to reach the top.

I’ve never been in the popular crowd, per se, but I’ve been adjacent. Being adjacent has no benefits and I never wanted to give false compliments just because I was nearby.

I guess that stands today.

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I understand the game and because I do, I will never have a massive following. I don’t think I’d want one. For me it’s too much work, too much doing, not enough existing inside the world we’ve been given.

If I’m documenting every minute, am I even living it?

The saying goes, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If we don’t document and promote every single thing we do, did we even do it?

I know that these circles have given women a broader platform to do what they’re good at. To sell, create, and yes, even write. I am for this. I had a singular lonely existence as a new mom and a place like this (to make money and be part of a community) can benefit everyone.

But not everyone is in the group with that crazy circular praise. Once in that group, no matter what you’re promoting, the praise and promotion will come.

I don’t know what I’m getting at this morning. Maybe I feel weary of what’s expected these days. Whirling and twirling and swirling our way to praise that may or may not be genuine — just another set of syllables. I write mostly in obscurity because to put myself out there in another way feels false.

Self promotion hasn’t and never will be easy for me. I’d rather sit on my bungalow porch and sip coffee while letting the words come to me. I’ve never used AI to write and I never will. It’s false and is only feeding back to us what is already out there. It has read the books and columns I’ve written and is regurgitating them to me. Only a human brain can put out new and innovative ideas. I’d rather struggle with my ideas and scratch them stubbornly out in blood.

I applaud the folks who are deemed worthy of circular praise. You’re doing amazing things. And while I’d wish that I was better at self promotion, I’m content to let my bones sink slowly into this chair with the dregs of my coffee settling in the cup beside me.

If I didn’t document my coffee cup this morning, did I even drink it?

Some Saturday morning observances. Now let’s go fill up that cup again.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

• I bought a book by Alice Walker titled ‘In Search of our Mother’s Gardens’ and let me say, the title was enough to make me cry let alone the “womanist prose” inside it. I am currently inhaling and will be back with a review.

• My eldest daughter has been after me to check old VHS tapes from a ‘94 Mexico trip to see if they are intact. We borrowed a big camcorder from my sister and videoed everything. I was able to locate and play them yesterday and was hurtled back in time. I’m looking for a place to digitize!

• Next week I’m visiting a newly-discovered (by me) thrift store called Claws Rescue. It’s literally 3 minutes from my house and I cannot wait to stop by. Cats and thrifting? Count me all the way in.

My husband and I have whole other personas when we travel together in a car, it’s like we’re washed clean of the detritus of real life. The words flow easier, more freely, when jobs and responsibilities are set aside.

If you’re from NE Ohio there’s two well-beaten paths that will take you to SoFla. And I didn’t want either one.

Our highway system is a very good one. It gets you where you need to go, but the interstates are like hurtling through a portal, an endless tube of sameness. I couldn’t bear the thought of driving that same damn road: I-77 to US 26 to I-95. We rarely take I-75 because our daughter lives on the east coast of Florida, near Miami.

I’m a map girl and the newest atlas version was always perched on my lap when we traveled. Sometimes we’d get a trip tik from AAA and use that to navigate. We traveled Route 66 to California back in 2000 and I used a book with all the sights we should stop and see: the blue whale, Cadillac Ranch, the petrified forest. It had step by step turning instructions. I wonder what happened to that book.

GPS is an amazing tool, but I’ve noticed that it makes me question my hard-won sense of direction. When we used to drive to Mexico every several years, I could get there with a piece of paper and jotted down interstates. Now I question myself every time the GPS thinks for me.

I decided not to turn it on this trip. I studied the map, bucking all “let’s get there quickly” routes, and landed on US 23 south from Columbus, Ohio that would connect us to US 26 in South Carolina. From there we would connect to I-95 and zip down the coastline.

We left a day early knowing this route would add at least four hours. We had the time and with perfect road snacks packed, we headed south.

I’m not one to get misty-eyed over a road (maybe I should take that back), but it may have been the most beautiful drive we’ve ever taken. August in Ohio is lush, ethereal. As we dipped south from Columbus—over fertile, flat land that extended down towards Portsmouth and the Ohio river—we could see the lay of the land clearly. US 23 is four-lane highway and affords 360 degree views.

We love towns and houses and ramshackle buildings. We saw gorgeous scenery mixed with golden fields of swaying summer harvests. The longest train I’ve ever seen chugged along the road, taking goods to where they needed to go, and the endless sway of it was mesmerizing. After taking a wrong turn in Portsmouth, we made it back on the right road and crossed into Kentucky, where slowly the landscape changed and the hills started building into undulating hills, then Appalachian Mountains.

I have never driven this road and I was besotted. All around us was lush green with tiny houses dotting the hills. Each town was like driving through forgotten America. Tiny downtowns remained intact, lettering from neon signs still burning bright.

We stayed in a small motel near the Tennessee border that shall remain nameless. It was a rough night because we missed an exit and ended up with no choices. I love a small motel, but not this one. We got up early and got the heck out of Dodge where Tennessee greeted us with her splendor.

She wove and wound us through her hills, beautiful vistas on a road that didn’t hurtle us forward with speed and urgency. We drove like we didn’t have a care in the world. We eventually connected to US 26 that took us through South Carolina where we greeted the beast of I-95.

In Miami we stayed in a small cottage steps from the ocean, ate seafood, visited with our daughter, and had delicious cocktails. When we left a week later, we took the standard way home up I-77.

I’d drive US 23 again. I may never want to go the other way. There’s also so much of this country we’ve yet to explore. My heart feels like it won’t make it everywhere I want it to. Deciding that we are worthy to take the time to travel can be hard. Home, cats, kids, and grandkids always play a part in our decisions.

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But these days (and how many of them do I have left?) should be spent doing what needs done plus doing what I love. I’ve lost loved ones over the last ten years and the question is valid.

If we bog ourselves down with things that don’t matter, are we living?

I want to make sure that I trust my mind and heart to let me know what’s important. I haven’t lived this long in my own self to distrust her now.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

• If you get a chance and are in Miami, eat at Gramps on Biscayne Bay. The cocktail and view healed something inside me.

• What is going on with the thrift stores in South Florida and WHY are Ohio thrift stores so different? I’m talking about you Red, White, & Blue Thrift Store in North Miami. I could’ve lost myself inside them for days. I came away with some treasures.

• We’ve struggled with different movie/TV viewing habits the last several years. After George’s heart surgery he can’t seem to handle action or horror. Nothing heart-pounding. It’s been difficult as I’m usually the one to secure what we’re viewing. Last night we watched Stardust (2007) for the first time and I think we’ve hit on a happy medium: fantasy. I’m not a huge fantasy fan, but if we can find things to watch together I’m all for it. Suggestions welcome!

Interstellar: Lose Yourself

Much ado has been made about his practical effects and I’m in awe after actually seeing them in the scope of the movie. I couldn’t (and still don’t) believe how massive, monstrous, yet child-like the cyclops was. Or how trick shots like using shorter/taller actors can make a scene explode on the screen.

I love cinema and let the tricks to the makers. I love a good behind the scenes story though, and my son (who went to film school) had a bevy of thoughts on the IMAX aspect of it. As long as I don’t get nauseous by shaky cam, I’ll see a movie in whatever aspect suits it best. But we did see it in XD on a very large screen, so I’m sure Nolan would’ve been disappointed in me.

But as Maximus once said in ‘Gladiator’ the movie, “Are you not entertained?” And I was. It was everything I could have wanted for a mid-July movie.

Monsters! Action! Drama!

I’m still sorting through garage sale remnants and have been selling like a madwoman on marketplace. I think I’ve sold more on that platform than I did at the sale. I’ve found a bit of a niche, a price point really, that sells very well in my area. I also added shipping (about a year ago) to my listings. My thermal printer has been a game-changer for me.

Is this my future?

I’d be happy to put a bunch of thrifted junk in a building and sell. It’s fulfilling. I often wonder if the urge for more comes to everyone at a certain age. Maybe we’re staring down the coming end of our days and know there isn’t much time to fulfill everything. I’ve felt stagnant and need to break out of its vise grip.

I’ve been examining myself and my response to things outside my control. Some days I’d like to lie down in bed and not get up. But I know that to succumb to my emotions isn’t healthy. So I get up and do what I must. It’s been a floundering several months, yet I know that all the things bubbling in my brain are waiting for fruition. It’s a battle raging within myself.

It’s also reminded me that I’m alive.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

• I accepted this summer that I cannot grow marigolds. Blessed cempasuchil, the very flower that’s central to Dia de Muerte in Mexico. I am a killer of sacred flowers. What am I doing wrong? HELP.

• My new set up with old tech — DVD player and VCR — is giving me joy. I cannot describe why I pay more attention to a piece of physical media. Maybe it’s the intentional act of inserting it and pressing play. Streaming is too easy to change.

• Count this as the summer I almost went gray. I used to do color professionally every month. Now I do it myself (because pricey) and got lazy. I looked in the mirror and couldn’t decide whether to let go or apply the box color. I finally caved and put the box on and it was so, so dark. Shit. Why do I care so much?

•

My body is cool. As of late, the heat has been bruta…

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I hope my back doesn’t twist me into a writhing monster this week, ready to lash out at everyone. It’s yard sale week and I’ve been prepping for awhile.

So far, so good.

I’m not used to putting on a city sale and have always been privileged to set up and sell in a garage. I’ve been gathering canopies and tables and I’m praying for the slight rain in the forecast to disappear. Do your thing, rain gods.

Aside from yard sale mania, it’s also World Cup mania here. I wish I could explain my love of the game in words that would make sense, but it’s more a feeling — a vibration.

When I traveled to Mexico with my now husband, I wasn’t much of a futbol fan. My high school had a soccer team but I don’t think I ever attended a game. It just wasn’t on my radar.

But my husband, well, he was a different story. He grew up on the dusty streets of Mexico kicking around soccer balls until his feet could move like a slippery snake, the control and motion like a finely tuned twin engine. They ate futbol for desayuno y la comida. The concrete streets enveloped them like a hard shell, teaching them the ways and means of the beautiful game.

When I lived with him there for inside of many months, I watched him play. Sometimes he’d be bloody from the rocky fields they played on as I watched with mesmerized intensity from my perch on the hood of my car. He was lightning quick, able to score goals easily, also passing off to others as they drove the ball up and down the field. His older brother and him like two whirling dervishes of skill.

I fell in love hard and fast (with him and futbol) watching him on that field. And if you learn to love futbol in Mexico, you’re a Mexican fan for life. Nothing, for me, came close to matching that love until the Landon Donovan teams of USMNT lore.

But El Tri, that’s who I love and will blow my vuvuzuela from my living room for. I make no excuses for why I love and cheer for them, it’s just the way that universe — and how — holds me.

There’s a lot in my brain right now: minor health issues, how to hand conflict and boundaries, when to decide I’m worth removing myself from a situation, when to decide something is worth salvaging, what to do with my life, what movie should I watch tonight from my extensive list.

Sometimes I just go mow my lawn and disassociate.

I understand that I want to fix everything and know that I can’t. Too often I think the small things I do aren’t accomplishments. The world calls them failures instead of wins.

And then there’s the window of ten years where we lay down what our parents showed us only to be told by the younger generation I have to change again to account for how to do things in this current day. I wanted to be the one that’s wise for more than ten years.

It’s exhausting, yet beautiful. A circle.

This week I’m focused on emptying the contents of my house out onto the yard to sell. I will make deals and money.

I am an expert at this.

No one can tell me otherwise.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

Here is my take on having different collections. Do it sparingly.

1) I went to an estate sale at a 200 year old brick farmhouse nearby. President McKinley visited there twice. It was beautiful and I loved exploring the rooms. But listen, no one wants your extensive record collection at very high prices. Also, you’re gone and your kids (great great grandkids?) are selling said record collections at high prices because of feelings. Also, get rid of things because it ends up in a musty basement and no one wants it. Scale back, my friend.

2) I should take my own above advice. As I churned through my house plucking things out for my yard sale, I uncovered MORE boxes of collected coffee cups I’d gathered. I have priced them to sell so my kids won’t have to when I’m gone. Also, I will haunt my own estate sale because that sounds like sublime fun.

3) I also have an unwise amount of amateur, framed artwork. I bet I have 25 framed pieces I’m selling. Why do I have them? Probably because they spoke to me. Now I don’t want to hear them anymore.

I’m also preparing for a garage sale. I can’t have a sale without it being big, so along with my daughter in law and neighbor, we passed out flyers and hope the whole neighborhood joins us. I have way more stuff than I thought.

I’ve been reminiscing on our country’s bicentennial in 1976. Our family was very entrenched in local Berlin, Ohio festivities and I dug up a picture I had of my mom, younger sister and I after a parade we walked in. Mom made us all dresses to fit the theme.

I wish I could feel the same for our 250th, but the joy has been sucked out of it. How can we celebrate when all we can do is lie about how this country treats others? We need to sit in a corner and reflect.

I pulled out this piece I wrote 10 years ago and how my summers as a child seemed filled with golden light. Sharing today:

When I was a kid, August signified the end of summer. Pencil boxes and fresh packs of crayons appeared at German Village and the Variety Store, and that slow rise of panic started to settle low in my stomach.

I would stack my pile of books-to-read ever higher, and stay out later in the backyard to watch every bit of sunlight drip slowly from the dusky sky. Then I would trek inside and watch all the TV movies I could into the dark slippery space of night, squeezing every inch of freedom that summer would allow.

I would wake up early in the hours just before dawn and turn off the TV manually, screen fuzzy with snow, and climb into my upstairs bed tucked under the eaves and my eyes would open somewhere in the forenoon and I would repeat the day.

These types of summers existed somewhere in my elementary school years when there wasn’t much expected of you except to wash the dishes once in a while and show up for supper. Freedom existed for me in the pages of books that whisked me away, or when mom would drop us off at the pool in Millersburgto while away a few hours.

Learning how to exist outside rigid boundaries and watchful eyes formed a very large part of who I was. With $2 in my pocket, enough for entry and to buy a drink and a candy bar, the vast expanse of concrete surrounding the tepid blue water made for many interesting afternoons. The hierarchy of kids from the east and west of the county was a palpable line, and the ripple and heft of water as I ducked myself under served to make the line disappear for soft moments.

Pioneer Days in Berlin, Ohio was the best part of any summer. I can’t recall now what month it was held in, but the anticipation of glorious minutes spent in its dreamy, sugary haze made for many sleepless nights of waiting.

On the day I would see packed up Ferris wheels and Tilt-a-Whirls buzzing by my house en route to the elementary school grounds, my excitement was uncontrollable.

My parents, as well as everyone from the community, took part in its festivities. My sister ran for queen once, and we all wore homemade pioneer dresses with pinafores. There was a craft fair inside the tiny school gym that mom and her friends made many a pre-Pinterest goodie for, and Dad was the barker a year or two as well as making Trail and Swiss in the ever-present Lion’s Club food trailer.

I remember being there every day – hot air of summer pressed around us - from the parade to the Queen contest. There was competition and performance acts with lots of music, in between eating the best barbecue chicken in the world and knowing we could walk around not being watched every second.

The rides, though, those were my favorite and on and off I would go, my friends and I, letting the wind whip our hair as we glided around those wooden slats with metal cars and hot seats.

The carnival workers always scared me, just for several thrilling moments, as their tattoos and cigarettes were seen by my smallish eyes and my even smaller world.

They were the most helpful, though, when a ride I was riding broke and one of the cars crashed to the ground. My friend and I were suspended high up in the arms of that Octopus ride, afraid to make one move for fear it too would fall, and when we finally came down I didn’t ride it again for years.

Pioneer Days holds for me a golden-hued memory, and when it disappeared somewhere as I grew older, a part of me was left in its cotton candy grip.

As I write this it’s August first. Somewhere near me, moms are packing up their kids to take them to soccer or volleyball practice and the countdown to school begins.

My August looks different now, with work that overwhelms and kids that don’t need new tablets or backpacks. I’m driven back in time to the space my summers were spent in, four houses down on the left from Berlin Mennonite Church.

I find myself on the swing in the big back tree, radio playing and book-marked tome awaiting my return inside. The world was still small and my minutes weren’t consumed with practices and the weight of high school years. I was free and the yellowed sky, slowly turning to a faint pink as the sun faded, told me to hang on to it for as long as I could.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

There are several summer movies I am HIGHLY ANTICIPATING settling myself into the theater for. The buttered popcorn has been doing a number on my stomach so I might need to reconsider which might actually be my end.

• DISCLOSURE DAY (opens 6/12): Listen, all you have to say is aliens and I’m already in my seat.

• THE ODYSSEY (opens 7/17): Christopher Nolan and the greatest epic ever written + monsters? Give it to me now.

• WORLD CUP (starts 6/11): This is obviously not a movie but it IS the World Cup and I’ll be glued to my set for the weeks it’ll be on. GO MEXICO! GO USA!

• I’m trying to work on my Letterboxd movie reviews and I’m years behind. This is a goal for my summer. Check me out at MelissaKay on Letterboxd.

who loved me first aloofly,

now unceasingly.

And I, no longer 20

and sweetly young,

brain now collected and lucid.

Hang onto me so I don’t

slip into space.

— Me, May 2016

Happy thirty-six years to my love and also to the poetry I’ve written throughout those years. So many different levels of emotion.

I’ll keep loving you through the disparities we conjure, the off hours where we bicker, and the haze of medications that are now part of lives for four years now. Because the parts that are good outweigh the parts that are hard.

💜

I’ve mostly melted into the fabric of my life since I stopped my newspaper column. I don’t have to be “out there” with the syrupy sweet words I felt inclined to write every other week. The ones in between those I packed with heat.

These days, despite paying $4.59 for gas while cursing the people who should be cursed, I am out here filling my coffers with junk to sell. Marketplace is a great place to sell stuff to locals, but I also sell on eBay and Mercari.

How dare I think about myself when the government is combing through long time green card holders files in hopes of finding something deportable. As well as bragging about having won the war in Iran when my debit card says different.

It’s about power and enriching oneself. It isn’t about us. It never was and I’m sorry you thought that.

I want a president and congress that are boring and just do their jobs. I’m too old for this shit. I made it through the 80s without the USSR nuking us, despite every movie telling us otherwise. There’s a reason I have the original Red Dawn still sitting on my shelf where I can keep an eye on it.

Did we ever stop to think they might have been afraid of us nuking them? Do we think about that now?

Yesterday I went to nearby town wide garage sales. I found a few goodies: two concrete planters, a small table for my porch, a pair of ADIDAS tennis shoes for $2, some shorts for my grandson.) I wouldn’t say I was disappointed, but maybe a little. I see an influx of goods that were bought at TJ Maxx and Home Goods and less of the older stuff I pine for.

I think about my Berlin Junk Fling days (early aughts, 2-3 sales per year, curated selection, mailing list, long line on opening day) when I shopped with abandon, slapping white paint on anything and everything. My husband has PTSD from remembering those sales, but I think of them with fondness. It was heavy work, but so satisfying buying and selling something I upscaled.

That word wasn’t used in the thrift/resell world then. In fact, it was mostly antique dealers selling out of their extra fancy barns they’d open up on a Sunday or by appointment in those days.

Now, Berlin has sales on the exact weekend in April we’d open up, with food trucks and sales galore. Honestly good for them. I learned all about garage sales from watching my mom and neighbor set up in our old garage. I looked forward to the coneys we’d eat from the dairy after a long day of selling homemade curtains and coffee cups. It was an event. It was special.

And I want to think about anything else except how piece by piece this experiment of a country is being taken apart by a madman in a red tie. Not even my dad had ties that long when he wore them every day in the 70s.

All this in time for our 250th birthday.

We almost made it.

So while we’re fighting fascism (don’t deny it) and being told we need AI and the big data centers that suck our resources like a giant leech from a 50s monster movie, I’ll be out here plucking treasures from obscurity and keeping my eye on what needs done.

We shouldn’t have to buck up and pay this much for gas because a vanity war was started. I will pay because I have to, some won’t be able to. Don’t think I don’t remember the complaints about eggs.

If he says, “Iran can’t ever have a nuclear weapon” enough times, will you believe him? Why do we get to have them? Does the world still trust us? Should we be inspected? These many years later can we finally say that Vietnam was a failure that cost us many lives?

If we think ourselves too powerful, can we ever admit when we’re wrong?

If we deny what’s happening often enough, we make it normal. And it isn’t normal. We’ve been in this too long for anyone to still support it. And that goes for the ones who think he may go down as the greatest president ever. How sad for you. Tell me truthfully, what is the greatest thing he’s ever done?

I want to buy some annuals for my pots today. It’s Saturday and the vessels are waiting outside to be filled with beauty. I want to tuck miniature worlds into each one so I can bask in them, a reminder of the intricacies of humanity and nature. The combination of them.

I’m sick of power and money and the people who want it. I wish money was cast out as a way to pay, and we could barter and trade. I’m sick of someone telling me they’re making the best decisions ever when I can see with my own eyes they are not. When I can see what is being taken away from the least of us so others can gain.

I want to lay on the ground and hear the earth humming with life, not the sounds of data centers churning up our resources so we can make stupid pictures and deep fakes that mean nothing. So that we can create sentient soldiers to fight in our bleak future wars.

Leave me behind if that’s what it’s coming to. Let me sink into the grass until I am a memory in the stomachs of the bugs that digested me. I don’t want to witness what is coming.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

George and I do not agree on movies these days. I am still a horror fan and he decidedly is not. On Mother’s Day evening, I chose two movies because it was my day. The first one was a dud, so we stopped it. Unsure why I thought a remake of Dracula (2025) that wasn’t within any sort of reach of Nosferatu (2024) would be good.

• Undertone, 2025: I put this movie on whilst George was sleeping last Mother’s Day evening. I looooved it. A24 does a bang up job on new horror. I’m not a fan of all “new horror” movies (looking at you Longlegs). It was a build up to the end, but George awoke during some loud chanting and was not impressed. I however, was.

• OBSESSION, 2026: I hadn’t heard much about this movie, but I had a theater craving and will often choose horror if I’m going in alone. Let me say that the sound effects alone will stay with me for awhile. I enjoyed this movie and as a friend who is a movie critic said, “This one has some meat on it.” She is correct.

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I dreamt about Mandy Patinkin the other night and told him Homeland was the best show I had ever watched. (I binged all 8 seasons this winter and am still not over it.) He was a younger version of himself and I handed him something over a table. The dream didn’t reveal what that something was.

This past Monday I dreamt that I was redoing the inside of a house. Many people were there helping me, but when I turned a corner there was my mom holding a paint brush.

She fancied herself a pro painter (in the sense that she’d done it a lot), until I married one, and they butted heads on techniques. He never did think putting brushes in a baggie and into the freezer after using oil paint was a stellar idea.

But there she was and she smiled at me as I moved through the house. She was wearing a white blouse. When I woke up the next morning I couldn’t shake the dream. My eyes were tiny slits as I opened them to the weak sunlight coming through the window, my brain still moving around that dream house.

My dreams have been especially vivid of late. I haven’t jotted them down like I normally do and I’m unsure why. For a long time I didn’t dream things I remembered. Maybe a whisper of a dream, a faint slice of what was so big inside it.

If I’m being honest, I forget things in my waking hours too, the words on my tongue slipping away within seconds if I don’t say it. I need to buy myself a Gameboy and start playing that brain game or Tetris again.

But I am encumbered by my mom’s things.

I can’t let any of them go.

I should retract that and remind myself that my sisters and I DID go through her entire house and divvy up all her maximalist leavings.

But the things I did take, the metal measuring spoons, the baskets of lace and trims, her old scarves — they’re alive because she’s in them.

And she’s alive in my dreams.

I told a friend that I no longer feel the pull of constant mothering. I am a mother and always will be, but I don’t feel I have to be emotionally invested in every decision. When they include me in what they’re thinking about, it’s a sharing of ideas — not something I need to weigh in on as an authority figure.

I feel light.

Some of us have a hard time reaching that point with our children, our hands become so tangled up in their lives we can’t distinguish them from our own. We can’t stop thinking that something may hurt them, or that they’re doing it wrong.

But who said we know what the right choice is? I made so many mistakes I should write a book about them. But I also needed the freedom to make them.

As of late last week, my kids have all reached their 30s. This brought a sharp pang that I thoughtfully considered. And I realized it’s just another level of life that I hadn’t felt before.

Because most days I still feel 30.

Maybe mom wanted to tell me something. I think she just wanted to see my face again and make sure I’m doing ok.

Happy Mother’s Day to those who celebrate.

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TORN FRAGMENTS:

I’ve gone back to physical media and tracked down used VHS/DVD and Blu-Ray players. There’s something soothing about putting a movie in and turning it on. The remote that came with one of the players has batteries from 2012 — and they still work. Proof that a spark resides in something other than the intrusive AI.

Movies I watched this week on DVD:

1) The Forgotten, 2004: I’d forgotten this was a whisper of an alien-themed movie. I ate it up and wanted more like it. I want to find ‘Dark Skies’ on video to add to my collection.

2) The Day the Earth Stood Still, 2008: I’ll watch Keanu in anything and this movie held up. I didn’t remember it being quite this good. I also love a good world-destroying movie. We could use a good cleanse.

I’m being tested in a big way.

More of that later.

I’ve let myself slide into a kind of semi abyss after all the niceties of hugging 300 people at a calling hours or dare I say viewing. It wasn’t really a viewing because my sister said (well before she passed) that “no one gets to look at me except family.”

God bless because that’s the way I want to go out — on my own terms. I’m thinking about cremation and having myself sprinkled in my favorite hollow, Panther’s Hollow. I want to learn its secrets. I also want my kids to save a bit of the finer remains and sift me into a Boggle timer so I’ll never miss a lively game. No one wants to play with us because we mean business. We’re a little serious (and mean) when we play.

My sister was buried by her mom and our brother in a beautiful cemetery on a hill that will be gorgeous in fall. Scenic views abound.

But I’ve been a bit of a limp noodle getting back into the game of life.

I’m ok. I am.

It’s just hard after eating sandwiches and funeral noodles and attempting to dip back into life like everything is normal, because it’s not.

I saw so many people that I haven’t seen in 30 years and it startled me for a minute. My eyes had to focus and settle, remembering peoples faces.

I had a beautiful arrangement that was mine to take home from the funeral and the next day I had to pitch it. It smelled like a funeral home and my nose and brain was rejecting it in a fierce way.

A new family moved in across the street from us. The house had been empty for close to three years, maybe haunted, maybe not. Someone bought it, flipped it, and rented it while we were in Mexico at Christmas. We came home to new neighbors.

As the weather has warmed they’ve been spilling out onto their porch…and into the sidewalk and street. Their method of communication is loud—yelling and cursing. Lots of fighting. I’m not sure anyone is resting over there.

I’ve chatted with myself and reminded her that this is what city life brings. So far our street has been quiet, but no more. Our other neighbors are not too fond of the increasing decibel of the street.

So I’m being tested in a way that draws me to my window each evening as they spill out to loudly declare what they’re upset at, what has wronged them that day. I see the dad of the bunch raise his voice so loud that I split the shutters to see if everyone is ok.

Maybe the loud voices are keeping me alive as I mourn. And maybe they’re too much. But I know I’m alive in a chaotic sort of way.

I can live with that.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

I am solidly on the Dollar Tree TikTok train. I do not apologize. Some of their items have made my skincare routine affordable. Creams that are $40 and up are out of my reach and I don’t see the reasoning in spending the money on them. Here are my top 3 products. All these products are $1.25 a piece. If you’re paying more you shouldn’t be.

1) The B.Pure day and night cream, a dupe of Olay Regenerist, has changed the game for me. The ingredients are the same and have made a huge difference in hydrating my skin. Highly recommend.

2) The B.Pure Eye Serum, a dupe of Olay Eyes Eye-Lifting serum, is most likely the exact same thing. It made the most difference out of any serum I’ve tried.

3) Spa.Centials Smooth Retinol Repair Face & Body Oil, smooth like butter on my face, helps me go to sleep at night. I can feel it funneling into my pores and making me young…uh…more confident again.

Don’t sleep on Dollar Tree, fam. ✨

Now there are four of us.

“How many of you are there?” people would ask. And the answer was always five sisters and one brother who died. 

Five. Now four, which will never roll off my tongue in any sort of proper way.

When we called home, before our parents passed, dad would hand the phone to mom and say it was, “Number 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5.” I was number 4. Now there’s no longer a number 1. 

She was always creating something. When her husband was in the hospital, inside the depths of this past brutally cold winter, she began to stay up into the wee hours of the night. She couldn’t sleep, so her aching fingers gravitated towards the wealth of parts spread out on her craft table: mismatched earring pieces, leather belts, buttons, metal pieces she could disassemble. Her knack for bringing them together into cohesive pieces like earrings, collages, and necklaces—each was a miniature piece of art. 

Her craft room, in my eyes, was everything. Like her, I am a maximalist at heart, and what would look like chaos to some is a space that beautiful things are made in. We had coffee at her house this winter, and I wandered into this room and could feel any sense of worry melt away. This room is a museum of found objects and beautiful things and is filled with her presence.

She told me to bring out some pieces she had been making. I scooped them up and lay them on the table for all of us to look at. Tiny collages bursting with color and light, carefully curated and pieced together in the hours where the cold can snatch your feet right up. 

The beauty of them took my breath away. I used to have more of a crafting bone, but the words in my head overtook that.

Writing is my art now. 

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She sat at that table with a fuzzy blanket around her shoulders, watching us peruse them. I know she never accepted how talented an artist she was and was very humble when given praise. Sometimes she outright rejected it. 

I like to envision her hunched over that table, a single light to guide her, putting pieces together as the winds howled outside. True artists create when they feel it. Time doesn’t matter.

She was sixteen years older than me due to life’s unforgiving swells. She lost her mom at the tender age of 13 and when my dad married my mom, had to reckon with my birth (and my younger sister’s) several years later. We never talked of that impact until she was close to death. 

“Were you bitter that I was born?” I asked her, as she lay hooked up to beeping machines.

“I loved babies,” she said. “And I loved you Melissa Kay.”

Life is stubborn, beautiful, and messy and we should slide into the end having lived life our way. I know she did. 

So while I sit here three days after she died, I sip my second cup of strong coffee, because aside from being a creative, she loved coffee. Her table was an open canvas and she extended it to family and a plethora of others. To me it felt like important knowledge passed between souls at that table. You didn’t want to miss out on what was said there.

And amidst my own grief, because we each experience it in different ways, I find the thread of her creative force of nature and tug on it slightly, hoping to snip off just a little bit—enough to nurture me—and tuck it inside my heart for later.

Instead, mid-step in the grocery store I start to cry, the tears in my throat like hot lava. There is no stopping the weirdly cathartic grief tears that spring to your eyes.

Grief is an imperfect word to describe love with nowhere to go. She had a well-lived life, but there is no hanging on when the body is done.

My mom and I had an at-odds relationship the last ten years or more of her life. Things I don’t want to talk about here, but being at odds is okay. It doesn’t mean you don’t love someone. This is something I’ve had to learn in hard and soft ways.

Boundaries and conflicts and love.

I sometimes think about it and wonder if I could’ve done something differently, but I know the answer and am okay.

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I’ve woken up drenched in sweat over the past 9 years, knowing mom had been in the room. She wasn’t in my dream, yet I knew she was there. I’d wake my husband to tell him what I felt and he’d say, “Yep, Mary was here.”

He comes from a place where knowing someone has been in the room, albeit from a different realm, is normal. Expected.

Then he’d turn over and fall asleep, leaving me with the faintest imaginings of what mom may have wanted to say. The sweat having dried on my skin, I’d tunnel into my dreams and hope to find her there.

I wish I could tell others that when your parents die, you’ll be ok. We may feel as if life will end and it does — but just how we’ve known it. It will be a new normal and I know that’s infuriating to those who have to step through that portal, the one without your parents inside it.

I could tie these transient thoughts on death to Good Friday tomorrow, but I won’t. I have reasons for these feelings. And Easter feels complicated these days as I walk through and question a belief system so ingrained I could spring up from a dead sleep and sing “Up from the grave He arose” without missing a beat.

Spring pierces my soul in ways I can’t describe. The cycle of tender growth and the putting away of dark, cold memories. New birth and the onset of wisdom for the coming warmth. I’m sitting inside knowledge that has been hard won and know that at some point in my future death will also come for me.

And no matter how it comes, I’ll look it in the eye and know that I have lived.

I’m a big cinephile, but TV series are my bread and butter. Here are some I’ve recently finished bingeing:

• Homeland: I buzzed through 8 seasons in 2 months and I’m still in mourning that it’s over. Nothing can replace that heart-pounding thrill. Here is where I admit I’m a political thriller junkie, I.E. shows like The Diplomat and 24. Inject it into my veins.

• Call the Midwife: I’m a big fan and just finished season 14 last evening. After I finish a big adrenaline-filled show I come back to this show to soothe my ruffled brain. Also, this show is church for me. I cry at the tenderness and validity of it.

• All Her Fault: The twists and turns of this limited series had me finishing it in two days. Every woman should see this show and process it. Highly recommend.

• For All Mankind: Just send me into space, now. I love this series (and need to catch up) and with all the space mania with the Artemis II, this show is a gem. I love anything space and cold-war related.

A 12 ounce bag of coffee costs over ten dollars now. Even Maxwell House, coffee I don’t drink, is roughly $20 for a 32 ounce canister.

Ohio’s minimum wage was just upped to $11 per hour, with our federal minimum wage still knee-capped at $7.25 since the year of our Lord two-thousand and nine. 

In 2009 a 32 ounce canister of Maxwell House, on average, cost $7.50. 

I was gathering some groceries for a sleepover with our grandkids this past weekend: eggs, bananas, yogurt in tubes. My cart was not even half full. Ten years ago I could fill a cart at Aldi for $150 and come home with enough groceries. This cart was $120 at 1/4 full.

Work harder. Work longer. Don’t stop.

I’d like to live long enough to see my grandkids grow up and not have to sacrifice my body to the crushing wheels of just getting by, or having to work until I’m 70, so I can fully receive the money I paid in all these years. 

How dare they tell me how long I have to wait to get my own money? It’s already been spent on more bombs for Iran fired through another country’s canons. Or Gaza. Or Afghanistan. Or Iraq. 

I had a guy stop by this morning for an estimate on grinding the stump in our backyard. He said it was a huge pine tree that most likely stood 60 foot tall. 

He said he could grind the large roots and turn it over into wood chips. The price was neither low nor high and we will most likely have him do it. I’d love to have a small deck built where the stump sits. I’m envisioning a place for our patio table with possibly a step down and some nice pavers extending out.

But I feel a bit like the pile of wood chips being ground up and spit out. We shouldn’t have to grind so hard that we can’t afford a bag of coffee that costs more than the minimum wage. 

I’ve been hearing a woodpecker outside all morning. He’s busy drilling holes in the profusion of dead trees in our alley. He knows his purpose and goes about it. Nothing changes for him except the amount of dead trees available. Maybe to him the monotonous drilling is a comfort. I’d like to feel more alive than banging my head against a tree.

My husband is nearly done with this garage he flipped into a livable space. His goal is to sell, buy another place, and flip again. We’ve been receiving lots of advice on keeping it to rent out short or long term, and my head is spinning .

What differentiates people in different income levels is vast. For us, carrying this property as a rental would cost more and earn us less. After my husband’s heart surgery, it’s imperative we sell and put the money away. We don’t have disposable income to hold onto extra properties. We feel lucky to have afforded this flip and the ability to make it over. I’m so proud of him, but I know how hard it’s been on him to finish. He wants to flip again and we will do that if the right one comes along. And knowing how much the rising cost of coffee is makes us eager to sell.

TORN FRAGMENTS:

There have been so many house fires of late. My good friend and her family lost their entire house to a devastating fire. And our other good friends lost their rental property to fire. A multi-generational Ukrainian family that came several years ago was renting from them and lost everything.

We suffered a fire in 2007 and lost so much. I was thankful for good insurance and am still a bit bitter that it wasn’t declared a loss. The smoke and water damage was immense and my husband redid the entire house himself to save money. Sometimes I stop and think of something I’m looking for, then remember we must have lost it in the fire.

If you’re so moved and want to give to my friend, send donations to:

First Mennonite Church

c/o Amy & Paul McNutt

113 West Main Street

Sugarcreek, OH 44681

Or you can send them to me via Venmo or CashApp and I’ll make sure they receive:

CashApp: $Junkbabe

Venmo: @Melissa-Herrera-15

Spring is here. 

Welcome Equinox.

I greet the light.

My daffodils have opened and their yellow is a balm to my soul. The winter chafed and bit with its never ending cold, little icy talons around my ankles. I’m always ready for winter, cozy and soft things bundling me to the elements, but this year spring is a delicious sight. 

I overly tended my garden last year and all I need to do is plump and fluff the mulch. There are a few hardy weeds poking their heads, but they’re small. I’m going to move a few things around for good measure so I don’t tire of the arrangement.

My forum talk at Bluffton University went very well. I learned a lot about workshops and that I didn’t have enough content to fill the time frame. It was my first time doing one and luckily the Professor had a wealth of info to step in with. 

But my forum talk. I really enjoyed it. 

I realized that it could be something I enjoy doing as much as writing. That’s a tall order, but my words felt good being spoken out loud. I leaned into them as I never have before. I’m sharing them here. 

Below is the full speech with two opening introductions plus Q&A after:

Uncensored: writing beyond the conservative bubble I lived in

Things from my “TO MANIFEST” list. I keep 100s of lists in my phone and on this list are ideas. Maybe I’m looking at my shadow self and willing her into the light:

• Heavy metal cooking sessions: I love metal and was baking our fave fam dessert the other day, One Egg Cake with Chocolate Sauce, while listening to Missy’s Metal list on Spotify. I lose myself in the music and wondered, hmmm, maybe someone would enjoy seeing me go crazy whilst whipping up sauce?

• My grandson Nico, who is 5 years old, came up with some great kid lit titles when he was maybe 3 years old: Chocolate Milk Eyes and Slimeballs in Space. I’m going to write these stories because kids and their imaginations have no boundaries. Tapping into their intellect can kickstart my creativity.

• Track down my husband’s artisan walls and make a short documentary: My husband is an artist. He’s been a painter for over 33 years until heart surgery slowed him down. Many people have hired him to do walls in their home with texture and some have been accent walls that stand alone. They are gorgeous and so is he. If I could track them all down and put them in a video my life would be complete.

I was in Holmes County for a baby shower yesterday. The drive down was beautiful and my windows were open. I ate a bunch of mini croissants with chicken salad and watched my niece open presents for her upcoming baby girl.

I sat with family and chatted over mimosas, coffee, and delicious mini pavlovas. I even snuck in a thrift run to my favorite store with my daughter in law and grandson. I found a nice blouse for summer and my grandson picked out some cars and a book called Peanut Butter & Cupcake.

Then I drove home and noticed the lawns. The road from Millersburg to Canton is curvy and passes through many rural homes. Their freshly mown lines glaring at me like the smartest kid in the class who didn’t wait for the night before to do their homework.

And I knew I had to get outta there because I could feel the old anxiety tickling the back of my neck.

I had just chatted about this very thing with someone at the shower. Both in our 50s, we realize that to rest and care for ourselves is most important. But it’s insanely impossible to completely shake how we were raised — that to rest means you’re lazy. There’s something that can ALWAYS be done and those straight as hell lawn lines show you the way.

There’s nothing wrong with hard work and my parents had beautiful perennial gardens in my childhood home. They had curving beds and mulch they’d made to keep down the weeds. And I learned to mow around those beds and make sure the lines looked cut, fresh, imprinted on the land. Like a tattoo. I don’t remember dad ever saying this out loud, but it seemed to be expected.

And in Holmes County you are judged by the lushness and lines of your lawn. I didn’t make the rules, but they were sure as hell in place.

Despite the fact that I love mowing, it became something I had to do to keep up. If someone drove past my house and my lawn was a mess, I knew the grapevine would be chattering.

“Missy’s lawn looked a bit haggard. And did you see those weeds?”

I would kill myself just to keep them looking decent and worthy.

Two years ago we moved an hour north. Our little bungalow has a tiny yard that takes me 20 minutes to mow. The perennials are hedged in close to the house by a a small stone wall and I’ve relished filling up the narrow strip of soil with flowers and tending it like a madwoman. No one glares at me on this street about my lawn and the anxiety has slowly faded away. I am finally at peace.

That is until last summer when a neighbor drove by in their truck and stopped to yell out their window, “Hey, just letting you know we will get our yard mowed soon!”

And I turned to look at their very untidy yard and realized by keeping my yard tidy at my own pace, I’d given everyone else anxiety about theirs.

And that’s how I became the lawn and garden general on my block. Some things you can’t unlearn and let go, I guess.

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Things I’ve discovered lately:

• Project Hail Mary: This movie was amazing and here I admit that I hadn’t heard of the book before. It was deep science fiction and fresh characters and that theater was PACKED last Friday evening. I love a big crowd.

• I ordered Anne Lamott’s book titled ‘Bird by Bird.’ Unsure how I’ve made it through life without knowing about this book. Maybe because I read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ and didn’t think I needed more?

• I discovered the viral Easter baskets on TikTok and have had an adventure acquiring them for my grandkids. This meant multiple weekly stops at every Dollar Tree near me to find them. And it took me a month to secure them. I am not immune to a cute trend!

no one asks for war

or the uprooting of souls

who did what they could to be here

or there

who ticked all the right boxes

until realizing it’s their skin color

not the content of their character.

or the slow terror

of realizing people you know

did wish for it

and scrubbing your eyes out

with soap to rid the image

of your neighbor

their brother

your friend’s sister

who voted one way

and got another

not even they can abide

and wars rage

while i play war pigs

by black sabbath

and scream where no one

can hear me

war is here

and there

in different

and same ways

do not blink

because we are

in the thick of it

This week I’m traveling to Bluffton University to be the featured author for their 40th English Festival. I’m ready, my 6000 words neatly written and waiting, pried out of me like a prisoner of war finally freed.

I’m trying to expand myself, do things that make me nervous, so I don’t become wedged into my chair—held in place by the powers that be. To expand we must grow.

If our country insists on war, then my vocabulary is my arsenal and I’m loading up my words.

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I woke up to the news that we’re bombing Iran and I don’t know man, the gravity of this world seems to be releasing me. I thought we obliterated their nuclear program last summer. I was told they couldn’t rebuild for years.

Last Tuesday we were also told the state of the union is good, despite evidence that we’re being run by pedophiles. Despite evidence that our president’s mindset is only rooted in the power and money he can gather, not reality.

Three times I never voted for him because I could see his character. That he had none.

Also BOOM. He likes BOOMS that make him feel powerful. Tiny boats exploded into shards with the big BOOMS. Make us look away for a moment to watch buildings and boats and people blow up. 

People with small minds and empty hearts make unnecessary stupid war. 

A delicate work has begun in my garden. Small shoots are sending their tendrils up to test the air. Is it safe to grow? Is it time to begin our ascent above ground?

I wonder if the flowers still grow in Gaza where bombs sent by us and fired by others obliterated the earth? Nature finds a way in the bleakest of circumstances. If only it could regrow the human lives lost.

I’m floating in the atmosphere now, all gravity stripped away, because what’s tethered me to this sphere has evaporated.

Aside from my family, there is no foundation to hold onto, just greed and malice. Just money and power, the rest of our bodies are used as fallout, squashed underfoot.

And pretending nothing is happening won’t work for me.

I once wrote about false positivity. About why it grated against my soul to post a cheery saying when it’s raining bombs and we’re setting up fundraisers for healthcare because we’re not cared for. 

I can’t pretend. 

The softness of a baby’s cheek while sitting in grandma’s arms or the fleeting glance that tells you your lover wants you, later…or now. The green of a perennial flower breaking through the earth like a long-buried treasure chest. These are what tether me to the earth, slowly dropping me back down, slowly releasing me from zero gravity. 

And I startle awake to my little bungalow on a quiet street, safe — for now — while bombs reign in another part of the world. Sent by us, for nothing. Sent for nothing more than power. And lies. 

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I’m reading several books at once. I can’t focus on one these days, so I jump around to several. While we were spending time in Mexico (another topic I didn’t have the words to write about this week) with family, I finished two books plus several others that were halfway read. I’ve discovered the author Grady Hendrix and oh my gosh, he’s just my style.

• How to Sell a Haunted House: I finished this on a cold night in central Mexico in my kindle under a tiger blanket. IYKYK. Wild and spooky, an amazing read.

• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls: A delicious read. I couldn’t stop and it has stuck with ever since.

• My Best Friend’s Exorcism: This is on my kindle waiting to be read. I can’t wait.

YET TO BUY: HORRORSTÖR, The Final Girl Support Group, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires

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My feet are toasty inside my red slippers this morning. There’s a fresh 3” of snow in my driveway and it’s still snowing. They were calling for a trace to 1” and I’m not upset about it.

March might bring more snow and ice or tiny curled plant-lings springing up in my perennial beds. It might bring gentle rains and soil that is slowly softening from its winter slumber. When that time comes I’ll gently snip the dead of winter away and welcome the dreamy green.

We had a false spring last week and my live-forevers were poking their tiny coiled heads from the frosty earth. I know whatever comes, I’m going to exist softly inside my winter cocoon. Outside work can wait while I rest.

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I’m preparing to be the featured speaker at Bluffton University and their annual English Festival. I feel almost ready with a touch of nerves.

My friend, who is a business teacher, said this to me after I expressed nerves:

“You have trod through the complexities of life with your head high and straddled that chasm of seeing people for who they are, loving the parts of them that can be loved, speaking your truth, uplifting the good and right, shedding light on wrongdoing, fear and you have developed your own process of what works for you as a writer and woman/mother/friend/spouse/advocate over the years and in these times.”

It’s good to have good friends.

The English festival is two weeks away, but for today this is my agenda: look out the window at the snow, drink another strong pot of coffee, make 7-Layer Bars for a gathering tonight, all whilst listening to my favorite podcasts.

The current chaotic landscape has made it difficult to focus on being creative. These are a few pods that are getting me through:

• Don’t Listen to Us / I am obsessed with this podcast because I love this family. And I love Mandy Patinkin. They make me laugh and cry.

• Good Hang with Amy Poehler / Amy has a way of pulling guests inside a cozy atmosphere. She’s so subtle and funny.

• Spooked / I am a spooky podcast girl and this pod has some of the best stories (and sound effects) anywhere.

• Criminal / This podcast covers quirky criminal stories that vary wildly. A very polished and absorbing listen.

I’ve left up my twinkly white Christmas lights on the porch and with all the snow we’ve had this winter they’re keeping me (and my cat) alive. Seeing them each morning as I pad downstairs in the pre-dawn darkness has lightened my soul. It’s one tiny thing I can do for myself.

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I’m late in writing about this. That doesn’t mean I’m not over here bopping out to Bad Bunny. I’ve been listening to him for several years now thanks to my daughter. I may have seen/appreciated him in Bullet Train before she did, but I’m glad the outer rings got a taste of him.

I said what I said.

He has never centered anyone else but his own audience and we could all learn a lesson from that. We sing, write, and work within our own corners and if it spills over?

Yes ma’am. This is who I am.

White people (and others) are mad that they don’t know Bad Bunny. They’re used to being the circle that knows and is catered to, serving up their faves on a silver platter — no matter the venue.

Bad Bunny became famous outside their sphere. He isn’t their norm, or at least what they think should be the norm at a Super Bowl halftime show.

Gimme a break. You’re stuffing your face with pizza, guacamole, and queso dip while demanding an American Citizen speak English instead of his Spanish mother tongue. Blame the colonizers instead of inserting your foot into mouth.

Or at least learn that Puerto Ricans are American citizens.

And the other halftime show? Heavy sigh. That anyone felt we needed another show that brought a “Christian message” is sending me into orbit.

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The Super Bowl isn’t church. There should be no expectation that whoever performs needs to be a unifier OR a Christian. Period.

When Michael Jackson performed at the halftime show in 1993, the entire makeup of the event changed. It got bigger, brighter, and full of expensive pyrotechnics.

But it was never meant to deliver you a sermon onstage with a side of salsa and a Bud Light.

Go to church if you want that.

Don’t ask for it from the Super Bowl.

We’re too much in our heads, America. We’ve got an ICE problem to melt along with the complete disintegration of our country into something behind the iron curtain.

And if you’re more worried about the halftime show than what’s happening currently on our streets, swing by — we will drink a glass of coquito (or a Corona Extra) and discuss it.