The Easter holiday came and went without notice. My mother in law had Joe tell me and Kaitie that we were welcome to join them for dinner, but I’m not Catholic or Christian or any flavor of religion related to those belief systems, and now that I’m separated from Joe and I don’t celebrate any holidays with my mother’s family and very few with my father’s family… I don’t feel the need to observe the holiday. We were also never directly asked IF we were planning to attend, so I have no remorse over my absence.

So we went out for dinner at our favorite Lebanese restaurant. I was shocked at how busy the place was and with large parties scattered throughout the establishment. It was a good meal, reasonable price for the amount of food that we were given (as usual) and we got to see our favorite waitress.

All in all, it was a good day. Even if I wasn’t celebrating anything.

I exist in an almost constant state of music consumption, sometimes it shapes my mood and other times it echoes it, a soundtrack from a blip in my life.

My child and I were listening to the broadcast of the Artemis II mission on their approach to the moon. The crew asked to be informed when their families showed up, and when they families started arriving and the crew began shouting out to their families, my eyes started to fill up with tears. I was cooking and Kaitie was standing in my peripheral view and I could tell that she was also crying, by the way she kept wiping at her eyes. I stepped over and gave her a big hug, which she returned wetting my shoulder with her tears.

As they broke the record for being the humans to have traveled the furthest from the earth they asked that an unnamed crater on the moon’s surface be named after their ship, The Integrity, and that a bright spot on the cusp between the far side and near sides of the moon be named after their mission commander’s late wife whom was lost during the time that the mission commander was training for the mission.

So much excitement, hope and grief wrapped up into one experience, and probably the most empathy I’ve ever experienced.

When I was a kid, I was exposed to a LOT of philosophical concepts. Most of these things went way over my head at the time. But sometimes through the recent excavation of my past, these concepts reveal themselves again… for the first time.

… This is NOT one of those times…

Way back… like during high school, maybe right after, I used to use a platform called Live Journal. My friend Jenny and I started a community called Flying Whales.

The following is the conversation that led to the creation community of “flying whales”.
As you may have noticed, our humour is a bit odd, get used to it, just never complain about it, you will disturb the power of the flying butter.

bee016: bee016: i wonder what they do with shamu in the winter...
bee016: harah_cookie: dunno
harah_cookie: maybe he migrates
harah_cookie: with the birds
harah_cookie: hehe
bee016: shamu flies now
harah_cookie: i should say like the birds
bee016: great
harah_cookie: that'd be scary
harah_cookie: a flying whale
harah_cookie: "look mommy!"
harah_cookie: its a bird
harah_cookie: its a plane
harah_cookie: no
harah_cookie: its a flying whale!!
harah_cookie: run for your lives
harah_cookie: splat
harah_cookie: oops!
harah_cookie: hehe
bee016: what did he hit?
harah_cookie: good question
bee016: have you seen the new fantasia?
bee016: they have flying whales in there!!!
harah_cookie: how bout rabid sharks?
harah_cookie: i bet that's next
bee016: naw
bee016: just nice flying whales
bee016: and butterflies
bee016: possesed butterflies
bee016: but butterflies none-the-less
harah_cookie: butter flys too?
bee016: and fire fighting with mother nature
harah_cookie: there was butter flying with the whales
harah_cookie: cool
harah_cookie: i guess they'd be kinda greasy then huh?
bee016: yeah
bee016: which is why they could fly
bee016: the butter helped them
bee016: it was like magic flying butter packets that looked like cingular symbols
harah_cookie: butter makes you fly?
bee016: and they had good reception in their eats
harah_cookie: hahaha
bee016: ears
bee016: and could receieve phonecalls from other flying butter packets
harah_cookie: what kind of butter do you use?!?
harah_cookie: and why don't you share
harah_cookie: i want to fly
bee016: it only works on whales
bee016: sarah, we might be portly but we ARE NOT whales

DIY

I started the process of moving my garden to my mother’s house in preparation to sell my house. So far we’ve moved like 90% of my container garden and the difference is pretty obvious already. Eventually we are going to move the cinder blocks that make up my 2 raised beds, and most of the dirt. The dirt that I leave will be spread out over the area that surrounded the garden and be used to cultivate grass. And eventually we will partially disassemble the pergola and take it over to my mom’s to be used as garden structures for trellising Morning Glory or some other pleasant flowering plants.

It sucks to have to move a garden that I built to grow into my aging. But I made mistakes when I was initially constructing it, so this give me a chance to correct those mistakes… even if it is going to be extremely labor intensive.

The hope is that I will be able to keep a garden well into my “golden years” and not have to worry about the extra strain on my back that gardening on ground level would cause.

Last year’s strawberries have already gotten going and the asparagus that I planted last year has also started sending up shoots already. And I can’t forget the patch of green onions that has come back for 2 years so far!

These are all going to require some care in moving them.

About the Author

I am Sarah, a late blooming queer individual exploring my past experiences through introspection and internal work as well as talking to others and having conversations that lead to further thought experiments. This is an evolution of being in real time.

I’ve written heavily on the grief of losing my father suddenly and how that has resulted in my transformation, and the grief of losing my friend and brother to cancer. I’m writing more recently on my experiences and realizations and incorporating some DIY and hobby content where I can.

Thank you for reading 🙂

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