Brie in a Pumpkin

I hollowed out this small pumpkin and added Brie, cream cheese, fig jam, thyme, walnuts, and honey. I baked it at 350 for about an hour. I also baked bread from scratch. It’s amazing! 

 

20 Years Ago Today

 October 6, 2006 was the day I took a pregnancy test and it came back positive!  8 months later, I held Anna in my arms. 

I was working at the children’s museum. We had walked talkees and a coworker who was pregnant and due at Thanksgiving. That morning on the walkee talkee, our supervisor announced that she had the baby that morning. We were surprised. He was early. He spent quite a bit of time in the NICU, but was ultimately healthy. 

I started realizing I could be pregnant. I didn’t think it was possible, though, because my old church seven years earlier had convinced me that it wasn’t the will of God for me to have a family. Yes I was married, but I felt like I was living against God’s will if I was married. It was complicated. God definitely wouldn’t allow a baby to be conceived if having a family wasn’t his will. 

After work, I went to Walgreens and got a pregnancy test. I decided to test anyway because it had been a long while. However, Walgreens didn’t have a bathroom. I went across the street to Kroger. I used their bathroom, and the positive sign came up immediately!  Not “in three minutes” 

I walked out of Kroger and the alarmS went off. The store manager approached me and asked what I had in my bag. I told him it was a pregnancy test I got at Walgreens across the street. I swore I didn’t get it there. He asked for a receipt, but I’d left it on the passenger seat of my car. He was really tough with me and didn’t believe me. I was embarrassed showing it to him because I had peed on it. 

After that, he begrudgingly let me go. I was 28 years old, but looked young for my age. There was a teenage runaway shelter around the corner from that Kroger- it seemed like he thought I came from there. 

I ran to my car, grabbed the receipt, ran back in and showed it to him. He immediately felt bad and went to the floral department and gave me a yellow carnation. My first husband and I had that carnation on our kitchen counter for two whole weeks. 

Years later, I described him to someone I knew who was a Kroger manager. She knew him and said he was tough on everyone. No one liked him. Someone damaged his car in retaliation for being by tough. His insurance wouldn’t cover it, so he drove around with the damage. I can’t judge him for that, because a deer did that to me and I’m still driving around with the smash door. 

One Day-

Kevin and I earned a $1,000 prepaid card when we signed the lease, but it’s only good for online purchases. This is because it’s not an actual card to swipe, just numbers. When we walked out of the leasing office from claiming it, Kevin announced to me that he was giving it to me as a “thank you”. Kevin is really happy to have moved here and credits me with having the idea. He told me that I have “bursts of genius”.  

I used the card to pay my cell phone bill, then I paid off the rest of my car insurance policy. I added it to my Uber Eats wallet and have been getting food delivery with it a couple times. I don’t have any other bills except for the student loans. But I can’t use this for those- those payments need a checking account and routing number. So I started buying things on Amazon.  

Amazon has grocery delivery!  It sucks though. I bought 8 things, and they came in four separate deliveries. Eventually, everything comes!  I got some books and accessories. I got a microphone because I want to start recording myself talking. 

This morning I was browsing for more books and found this- it’s a book written by a Palestinian about October, 2023. I love the title so much. 

“One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This”. 

That’s a great title. It’s based on a tweet he made in 2023. That’s in the screenshot below. 

 I have not been following that war lately, because I was distracted by the Lindsay Clancy trial. The media hype of the Lindsay Clancy trial is dying down now, but it was really triggering for me when it was everywhere. 

My mom claims that she had postpartum depression for 15 years. This would make sense if she kept having children for 15 years, but I was an only child. My mom was very physically abusive in my early childhood and verbally and emotionally abusive to this day.  She always blamed postpartum, and subsequently me. I was her scapegoat for everything, and when I see women murdering their kids and blame postpartum, I actually feel grateful to be alive. I caught my mom saying once that she threw me in my crib when I was 20 months old, and I started “jerking around.”  I asked her if I was having a seizure. She replied, “No you didn’t have a seizure, you were just jerking around and being dramatic!” 

I tried to ask her later on about this event, because obviously I have no memory of it, but she now denies it and tells me I’m making up the story of her talking about it that one time. So it’s no use giving it any credence. 

It’s even more triggering to hear millions of women saying, “I am Lindsay Clancy” and “I stand with Lindsay Clancy.”  I can one thousand percent say that I do not stand with her, nor am I her. I had one child, and I suffered depression during my pregnancy. Once Anna was born, that depression went away completely, and I was elated for about 9-10 months. Then when she was about ten months old old, I was depressed for another reason. I think that’s when we started having marital problems? I’m not sure why I was depressed, but it wasn’t because of my daughter. But a doctor still diagnosed me with postpartum depression because “it’s been less than twelve months, and postpartum depression can onset up to a year after giving birth.”  I wasn’t having it at all. To me that was BS and I didn’t want them blaming my innocent daughter. 

So I'm not  Lindsay. Technically, I’m her kids. The thing is that saying you aren’t Lindsay has awarded women with a label of having internalized misogyny. Internalized misogyny?  I just don’t believe in murdering children. If that makes me a pick me or “not a girls girl” then so be it. Why would I want to be something else if it means “understanding what it’s like to want to kill your kids”?  Who wants to understand that?  

“Educate yourself about mental illness.”

“Educate yourself about postpartum depression and the difference between postpartum psychosis.”  

How about No?

I loved the title of that book, because I would like to believe that someday in the future, preferably in my lifetime, people will look back on the Lindsay case and see how wrong it is for this large group of women to react that way. I hope they see that it sets women back. It’s not the people who are choosing to be stay at home moms, have large families, choose female dominated careers, grow long hair, marry men etc who set women back. These people who “are Lindsay Clancy” are. Because regardless of what you suffer from, it’s wrong to murder kids, and I cant believe I have to say that. We aren’t going to be taken seriously in the long run if we are excusing murder. 

And I will never in a million years believe that “It’s not an excuse it’s a reason.”  

All of the nonverbal communication around that disclaimer screams that yes, you want it to be an excuse. Excuse/reason/whatever. Seems like the same thing. 

When children die, it’s a loss for everyone. Children have so much potential. It’s not that “they would have cured cancer.”  The cure for cancer is already known- catch it early and remove it. Cancer is diverse, “the cure” isn’t a one time event, and when people say that, they are being smart asses. They aren’t talking about curing cancer, they’re saying that each child isn’t that special. But they are. They could have become anything. Maybe one of them would have made universal full body imaging more accessible to non-extremely-wealthy people. Not the “cure for cancer”, but an increase in catching things at stage 1. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe Cora would have become a caregiver like me, and maybe she would have made your end of life experience enjoyable and with dignity and joy. 

The constant trigger from that news story has affected me a lot the past couple months. I’m trying to move forward, but I’m realizing I need to advocate for children more. It rips me apart to see women standing by a child killer like those kids didn’t matter. I’m not sure if I need to become someone who doesn’t watch the news. The news is everywhere. I don’t know how to tune it out. Maybe I can teach myself to transform that energy into advocacy. And maybe- one day, everyone will have always been against this. 

Visit from Anna

 Anna came to visit me at my apartment for the first time since I moved in on July 6. Any other time I’ve seen her since then, it’s been in San Marcos. 

She absolutely loved the fitness center. Here’s a short clip of our visit to the fitness center. She also loved the pool, hot tub, the park nearby, the built in desk in my room, the food truck complex nearby, and the quilting store near me. I think she wants her own apartment here.  Maybe when she graduates! 

New Things

I got myself a kitchen counter seed sprouter!  I used to have one of these in my old-old apartment when it was just me and my daughter. We love to put sprouts on sandwiches. 

Also today I made vegetarian lasagna. It came out great!  I got 8 boxes of oven ready lasagna noodles on clearance for 79 cents a box. 

My Mom is Hilarious

 My mom can’t stop talking about her new recliner chair. It’s one of those that lifts you all the way up, can lay all the way back, and has several other bells and whistles. 

This morning she told me how she got it. She called lazy boy and told them what she wanted and that she needed it delivered and assembled. They said they couldn’t. 

So my mom called the main number for Gallery Furniture and asked to speak to The one and only Jim McInvale, otherwise known as “Mattress Mack”. Mattress Mack is very well known in Houston for his philanthropy, and he is the owner of Gallery Furniture Stores. 

Well. They put her through!  I said, Wait. You spoke to THE Mattress Mack?  She said “Yes!  THE MattressMack!”  She said, “I could totally tell it was him!”  And she probably could tell it was really him, because he talks very loud and with a specific accent. She told him the same thing she told Lazy Boy and then added that Lazy Boy couldn’t help her, and she said as soon as Mattress Mack heard that Lazy Boy wouldn’t do it, he was on it. Lol!  

My mom is set to have a medical procedure (as soon as the orders get off of some scheduler’s desk). I guarantee that she exaggerated the situation to Mack, and she said he proceeded to tell her how he slept in one of these chairs for three weeks following major surgery. I was laughing so hard. My mom and Mattress Mack had one of those elderly people conversations where they compare aches and pains!  

The chair was delivered today, and she wants to give me her old one. Even when I go back, I’m not going to have a vehicle that I can put it in. 

I still can’t believe the store staff let her talk to him. 

Great Wall Cat

 I saw this cat on TikTok and fell in love. It basically lives at the Great Wall of China and is very personable with all of the tourists. My mother in law’s cat Buck was like this. He would just run up to you like you were his long lost friend. 

In the comments of that video, most people who’ve been to China have their own pictures of that same cat. I love that he’s so famous!  Some people actually commented to rescue him. 

No, please never move that cat. That cat was meant to be there. That’s the reincarnation of an ancient guard. There are other cats you can rescue!