Category Archives: General

A look at my antiquated WordPress dashboard leads the weekly recap (and gives a sneak peek of several future Dazzlers). This was a week where my body forced me to not just slow down, but completely stop, as a non-COVID flu-like thing ravaged me for a full seven days. My body tends to do that every few years, as I’m not prone to sickness like this (I can count two bouts of COVID since 2020 and maybe one flu in all that time). Luckily, most of the weekly posts were written before I was out of commission – have a gander at that nonsense and let’s start 2026 the right way this week.

A new tea cup proved a good friend during times of sickness.

For the love of lunacy.

My 3 AM vice. What’s yours?

“Even when I feel like shit, they still love me.“

A seemingly-unadorned bundt.

“You don’t have to ask us to forget what you just said. It’s the damn default.”

Look who’s killing the white women.

Abstract obscura.

How do you eat an English muffin?

I am Woodstock, hear me chirp.

Smells like Madonna.

The lost art of cursive.

In sickness and in mess.

The age-old battle: who’s hotter, David Beckham or Ben Cohen?

Saturday night right.

The road to the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy begins with this spotlight on Ilia Malinin.

Our country is a cartoon, and I say that with hard love.

A wonderful winter read.

Dazzlers of the Day included Ari Seth Cohen and Alysa Liu.

We’ve seen it with our own eyes.

Over and over again.

White men killing innocent people.

And everybody else getting the blame.

Don’t look away now.

This is us.

Whoa, this has been a week.

From physical illness to the emotional sickness that the current state of our country has brought to anyone with a brain and a heart, this year has already proven to be a doozy. Personally, I’m going to have to unplug from everything, and everyone, at some point, because it’s all too much. That sucks to say, but it’s ok to say, and ok to do from time to time. Making it through the work day and exercising the requirements of adulthood will constitute just about all I can handle – the rest is going to have be about escapism and distance from the reality around us.

Andy and I don’t have any children of our own, and that’s always been our deliberate choice. While I’ve wondered about it at times, I’m not sorry about it, especially when considering the world we would be leaving them. The United States is in a death spiral, especially on the world stage, and I don’t think we’ll see a time when we will be like we once were. I feel lucky to have been around when we were respected. When we were beloved. When we were celebrated.

Tonight, I feel exhaustion at caring this much about a country that is now ruled by people who clearly have issues with a person like me – and so I lean into time with Andy. I shut the door to a world unwelcoming to difference. I cut myself off from people who go along with it because they either choose not to know anything, or choose to ignore it.

Inside our home, there is warmth and love and kindness and acceptance. Comfort and safety and light. It will get us through this night, it will get us through this winter, and it will get us through this world.

In the midst of whatever flu-type thing I’ve had this past week, the cellar sofa is a mess of pillows and blankets and discarded robes. One moment I would be chilled – shaking and shivering and piling on a robe and blankets and cranking the fireplace – and the next I would be overheating and sweating like I was back in menopause. Oh how the jokes come when you’re sick and nothing seems funny.

The one happy note in all the sadness and frustration of being sick has been Andy’s help in making our home a comfort and a haven. We had to let our Christmas tree go after what had been a banner year for beauty, and he put the room back together, vacuuming more pine needles than any previous year that either of us could remember. More importantly, he’s been kind enough to make up the bed before I get back into it at night – there’s something so much more comfortable about a bed that’s been made and turned down for bedtime than one that is left undone form the morning. I know there is no scientific basis for this, it’s all in my head, and that doesn’t make it less moving.

Lucy’s great.

Snoopy’s a trip.

But it is Woodstock who is my favorite.

(Do note that his puffer is not basic black.)

Our winter of obscura moves slowly forward, though it may not feel like it. We are somewhere near the saddest day of the year, but not wanting to dwell or get stuck in such muck, I’m not going to look it up to determine certainty. This is not the winter for that. We live in the haze; we honor the abstract. This post, and its accompanying visuals, will attest to that.

A wave crashing its sudsy body across the shore.

A ghost gradually assuming plasma form.

A microcosmic take on the edges of a crepe, more torn and fringed than our naked eye could ever make out.

Or the mesmerizing motions of a car wash.

Life is beauty, and beauty’s where you find it.

Outside, I watch a blue jay and a squirrel make their way through the winter. The squirrel has greater difficulty in getting across the yard – all that snow and ice – while the blue jay just flits and flies above the wintry wreckage. There is beauty there too. In the winter…

I saw the video, so if you are hearing anything other than the fact that an ICE officer shot a US citizen in the face as she was trying to drive away from them you need to seek the video out to see for yourself. She’s dead now, so the immutable fact remains that ICE has killed an innocent American citizen who was only using her 1st Amendment rights.

This is all on Trump.

This is all on the GOP.

This is all on anyone who voted for him, or chose not to vote against him.

This is all on everyone who refuses to say anything beyond this point.

In many ways, we are all complicit, but some much more than others, and I’m not going to be silent about it. When history records this disgusting period of American government, my voice will be, and has been, consistently against this current administration and what they are doing. Where is your voice? What will you tell your children? What will your actions show them?

“Even when I feel like shit, they still love me.” – Madonna, ‘Truth or Dare’

The good news is that I tested negative for COVID for the second day in a row; the bad news is I have some wretched flu thing that has left me with a fever and chills and all sorts of body aches that I haven’t felt in years. It’s even left me with a headache, and I never get headaches. It’s more than a little frustrating – 2026 was supposed to be a good year for Virgos and some sort of shit, but here I type in agony and totally over it already.

And so we find solace in Madonna, who has always exhibited that age-old entertainment adage: the show must go on. In ‘Truth or Dare‘, the prototype for reality television, for better or worse, we find her high in a hotel room overlooking her throngs of fans, sipping some tea as she mutters the opening line of this post… and then she launches into ‘Vogue’, because when all else fails…

Some people wake up at 3 AM in a trancelike state to sleep-walk their way to the fridge for some ice cream.

I groggily reach over to the phone and start scrolling through fragrance reviews, signing up for the 15% off for joining some fancy department’s store mailing list, then ordering an expensive perfume I don’t need the very same night I just had a stern talk with myself about not buying unnecessary items.

Waking the next morning to a bunch of e-mails confirming my purchases is a chilly reminder that I’ll need to give up a few lunches and leave the credit card at home for a bit.

But the way I smell will make it all worthwhile…

The full Wolf Moon almost stopped me in my tracks, quite literally as I slowed my car to a stop – so stunning was its form and color against a gorgeously lavender-blue sky. I’d just turned onto the street that led to my street when it appeared directly before me, hovering right above a house on the horizon – impossibly huge when plopped into such worldly perspective. As a child, I’d have believed in the possibility of driving toward the moon, leaping over houses and trees, climbing the most gradual and languid incline as the car made its magical nighttime journey all the way to the glowing orb in the sky.

As with so many other journeys, it wouldn’t be about what was on the moon when we got there, but all the adventures we’d encounter on the way. At night, perched seriously on the border between sleep and wake, part of me still believes in such whimsy.

Anyone interested in retaining some spark of creativity should always be able to access this path to the moon.

When the tea comes scalding hot, it’s time for a new tea cup.
This beautiful one was a gift from a co-worker, where several of my cherished teacups have originated.
Some might balk or remain unimpressed by such a gift – I embrace any form of generosity, even the forced kind. In this instance, I trust it was well-intended. It was certainly well-received. Unlike tote bags, the tea cup will always be welcomed in this house.

It’s the time for tea in these parts – tea and contemplation.

Tea and meditation.

Tea and the slow waltz of winter days leading us into spring.

Our very first weekly recap of 2026 has arrived, and this one included the bridge between 2025 and 2026, year in review and all. That’s an awful lot of recapping, so I won’t belabor such an onerous proposition of links any longer – have at it.

I am a clown. And no one should fuck with a clown.

Letting there be light at the darkest time of the year.

Sometimes my friend Chris is correct. This was one of those times.

A final, hopeful gasp of 2025.

The 2025 Year in Review (boooooooooooooo).

2026 begins with The Cleaving, whatever that means to you.

Welcome to Winter Obscura.

The early sounds of Obscura.

Older obscurity at last acknowledged.

Savoring selfishness and going feral for 2026.

Render me asunder with destruction.

The price of not listening to the universe is currently going for a cool $325.

Back on fucking track.

A year of 13 full moons, just what we need.

Flying by the crotch of my pants.

The next FAFO award goes to those who voted for this Peace President (LOL).

Crocheted Speedo.

Dazzlers of the Day included the stars of ‘Heated Rivalry’: Connor Storie and Hudson Williams.

A view not unknown if you’ve seen this crazy Christmas card.

A stance not unfamiliar for a winter weekend morning.

A moment of laziness beneath one of the most deliciously soft blankets we’ve had in years.

It’s always the most cozy and comfortable mornings that require us to get out of bed before we are ready. The luxury of sleeping in happens maybe once a week if I’m lucky – there is usually too much to be done, though I find myself wasting time at many other given moments in a day. The mind travels more the older I get. It’s harder to focus, more difficult to stay engaged. Part older age, part decreased attention span, part general malaise and madness. The colorfully eccentric kind-hearted old lady with an edge I’d always fancied myself to be as I entered the latter stages of a lifetime is starting out as a basic, cranky old man devoid of passion or patience.

I dive back under the blankets for a few more minutes of not having to face the world.

Where is this wretched winter taking us? I wish I knew – or maybe I just think I wish I knew, because to know might actually ruin my life entirely. I once read of someone who was going to a psychic medium who knew so much and was so eerily accurate that they had to stop going.

If we all knew exactly what was in store for us, how many would bother going through the motions? An exercise in futility is just another exercise of which I want no part.

That said, a little guidance is always appreciated, so I’ll heed the mystics and soothsayers, and take cues from astrological signs and events. Today is the Wolf Supermoon – one of the three supermoons for 2026, so we are starting out with a bang. This year there will also be thirteen full moons (two in the month of May) so my plan is to harness the benefits of these, while rolling with the lunacy that typically accompanies them. As Violet Newstead once proclaimed, “I’m a tree I can bend!

Granted, that came right before she thought she poisoned her boss, but the sentiment is valid.

I’d vowed to myself to be less long-winded this season on the blog, and I’ve already broken it.

Let this post put us back on fucking track.