Avoid social media of all forms.  It bleeds in on you, before you write, leaves one overwhelmed with impressions and haywire thoughts.  It's within human nature not to be able to resist it, to not be shaken by it, coerced by it, finding contrary self-image...


So, I wake up, again with the cold, the same one, and it's back to work tonight.  Staff Fogo D'Chao luncheon party tomorrow, and I am sick...  I wake up feeling the same huge irresponsibility...  I call mom.  Who is very lonesome, so that I feel worse, rather, about myself, until she is feeling somewhat better, which takes some patience.  I ask about her wine supply, her food store.  Will Mary be coming by?  What about the new cat people have been talking about...  Well, I called the Humane Society...

Mom, could you keep an eye out for your pink iPhone?  "But I've been moved around so much.  I'm not in my home..."  Well, look around, I'm sure it's there somewhere...

But all seems dark and black this time of year, spurted out the other side of the holidays to our own problems.

I think of what I've read the night before, and it was a break at least from staring into my iPhone expecting something to happen.


The staff party...  I will end up having the night off.  I'll take it.

I'll mourn about not moving back to Central New York as I wake.   I'm at my Dad's, the little home with the garden he shared with Patricia...  Hilde and I...  We'd been up to the reservoir, an early summer night.  We're in bed.  Mom's moving day is here.  I'm up late.  She's crying.  I have to run.

Later, Hilde, I thought you would spread eagle me...

Mom is there over the sink, clinking cups around in soapy water, crying...  I'm sorry I'm late...

I have a runny nose today.  I should have put my foot down then.  I'd have had a happier life, children, a career.  A life closer to mom and dad...    Normalcy.