Selfie posts show up on Mondays, right? That’s the plan. Well, for the last week or two plans have been… Let’s just say I’m playing it by ear these days.

So what happened? You probably could see the fissures in last week’s Paisley Pig Selfie. I alluded to the meeting I had upcoming that week with a financial planner. I went into that meeting just as terrified as I expected to. She was nice, extremely knowledgeable and… not what I need right now. She pointed out that which I suspected – there’s no magic trick to get out of the situation I’m in. But that’s life, right?

She did give me a few specific strategies to consider. In addition, she wanted me to list what I like to do in a column, and then next to it what I’m good at and use that table to consider ways to better utilize my, as Liam Neeson would say, my special set of skills… whatever those might be (spoiler: it’s not rescuing people in third world countries while racking up a huge body count – though I can write that!).

I haven’t done it yet. Maybe I’m afraid of seeing where I should be and too terrified to go there?

The rest of the week sort of blurred out. Come the weekend, I wasn’t bartending, but I said yes to a lot of things without putting myself first. I’d love to tell you it’s because I’m an inherently selfless person, but deep down I think it’s because it’s easier to help someone else then deal with my own stuff.

Like, you know, updating my blog?

Yeah, that…

I put up a brief posting last week on Story day that I’ve been sort of spinning my creative wheels, and that’s still true. A funny thing, though: lately some of my characters from the two novels I’ve been working on (the first-draft Banshees story, and the I-need-to-get-back-to January June story) have been visiting me, asking when we can hang out. Not literally – please don’t think me that far gone – but, you know, their stories intrigue me and I do want to play in their worlds. If nothing else, maybe I’ll tell some stories there just until I can get creative traction.

But after that “Nothing to see here” post last week… nothing. I missed a Five Things This Week which is just… dumb. Those are fun! And I missed the mark on this selfie post…

Until now.

Potius sero quam nunquam – better late than never.

Feeling lost again today, I decided to take The Long Way Home. Of course I stopped at the ocean. Portuguese Beach. Normally I’m content to sit at the scarred picnic table at the edge of the bluff and watch the waves batter the shore, but today I decided to change into shorts (sorry any onlookers!) and head down to the waves. I took the above picture after making first contact with the waves. I’ve lived in Northern California for nearly my entire life, but when waves of a Northern Beach first hit my legs I’m always shocked how bracingly cold it is. Shocking. Refreshing. Nourishing. Okay, yeah, Nourishing, but you’ve got to get past that goddamn cold first.

I did. And it was – both cold and nourishing. I don’t go out there near enough, particularly seeing that it’s just 15 minutes away. But that’s going to change. After all, I could use all the bracing nourishment I can get these days. Also, it’s free – something that financial planner would no doubt approve of.

Potius sero quam nunquam.

That’s me and Paisley the Pig tonight at the Coinstar in Safeway. Paisley has been with me a long time. He was cashed in once before – I don’t even remember when. But I do remember we cashed him in for something fun – I seem to think it was to throw a party or something.

I’m sorry to say, Paisley, that wasn’t the case tonight.

I’m going to talk about money here in a fairly general sense and I know that makes some people uncomfortable, me especially. I recognize that’s probably part of the problem – unless you face finances frankly and unafraid you can’t get ahead of them. I hope I’m going to get there, but I can at least say that I’m not there yet.

I’ve been scraping by for a lot longer than I care to think about. I work a good job 40 hours a week, and I’ve tried to supplement that by working every Saturday bartending gig I can pick up. And, for the most part, that strategy has worked out, barely. Until last week.

I wasn’t paying as close attention to my bank account as I should have, and the pay period cycles are in their catawampus stage right now such that when I checked my balance for the first time in a week I saw something I hadn’t seen in more than twenty years – a negative.

Stages of grief: denial (short lived), anger (hot, fierce, and laceratingly self-deprecating), bargaining (without much to bargain with, this was short lived), depression (oh, this one stuck around and rooted in my self-inflicted wounds (see anger). I went to some sobbingly dark, dark places…). and acceptance.

Acceptance.

For me money has always been more than cash, it’s been an elusive thing that’s tied up in my life-long history and torments me. I used to love the Jimmy Buffett line, “Made enough money to buy Miami, but I pissed it all away so fast…” For me, it’s probably a much lesser suburb of Miami. Lauderhill, Florida, maybe?

I joke, but that’s about the only way I can talk about money – abstractly, obliquely, metaphorically. I don’t have it – more so right now than just about ever – and I’ve got myself to blame. That’s the other part of that Jimmy Buffett song, “Never meant to last…”

I try to separate self-worth from wealth, but I’ll admit I’m having a hell of time (see depression, above). I don’t think I live an extravagant lifestyle. And I work hard – very hard – for what I have. But I can’t seem to get myself out of this hole. And reconciling the notion that I work at least fifty hours a week just to barely get by, and then tripping and failing even that… it’s tough to believe I have worth when I’m wondering how I’m going to put gas in the car – a car that’s got some deferred maintenance needed and, crap, I still have to pay the registration, and… and… and…

I don’t think I’m saying anything that you can’t relate to. A cursory glance at macro economics will tell you that real wages have been utterly stagnant for the last thirty to forty years. When Boomers complain that Millennials are living at home longer and they didn’t stay at their parent when they were younger, it’s important to remember that the economic world was a whole lot rosier then. Take those stagnant wages and add crippling student debt and, yes, your 2018 dollar isn’t going nearly as far as their 1980 dollar did.

But that argument feels like tilting at windmills. Raging against the machine doesn’t pull your balance out of the gutter. No, tonight that was Paisley the Pig’s job. And his sacrifice should – please knock on wood – carry me to payday at the end of the week. For the record, I will be able to tell you my balance at any given time of day – watching it like a hawk.

Fern had been trying to get me to make an appointment with her financial adviser for… well, at least the better part of a year – she’ll probably tell you longer. A few weeks ago I finally bit the bullet and made an appointment. Coincidentally, it’s Wednesday – this Wednesday. The gods have a really sick sense of humor.

Acceptance.

And a promise to a certain piggy bank that next time I cash him in it will be for something fun – like a party.

Since my mom passed four years ago, we have a family tradition of getting ice cream on this day, her birthday. We all take selfies and text them to each other. It’s a wonderful tradition and my mom would love it.

I’ve been treating my word processor like a rattlesnake tonight, cautiously approaching to write, then hurriedly stepping back. I’ve sought distractions from all directions. I watched the end of the Boston/76ers game. I watched the new woodworking video from April Wilkerson. I watched an episode of Ghost Adventures (in hindsight, in my little house in the woods, that might not have been the best idea…). I watched an inning of the Giant’s game.

I know I’m going to cry writing this.

…Okay, let’s do this.

Happy birthday, mom! I miss you so much.

There’s a number of reasons I have trouble writing about my mom. First and foremost of which is I have a lot of regrets. I regret that I didn’t visit her more. I regret that I didn’t take her up on visiting for what would be her last Thanksgiving. I regret not calling more. None of us know how much time we have left, but I guess I never thought mom would be… gone.

Even when we didn’t talk I knew she was there. My mom was such an important figure in my life. She got me. If you’re reading this you have probably known me for a while, and so you know that I’m not normal – in the best sense, I would maintain! But my mom got that. Case in point: in high school, a friend’s dad gave me his old moped. I loved it because it was quirky and weird. It had a front rack I could bungee my Little Mermaid lunchbox to. I affixed a milk crate to the back and would ride the thing to school in my Birkenstocks. Where does my mom come in here? She sewed me a tiger-striped seat cover.

Another story: for my birthday one year my aunt Jean bought me this awesome 6-foot tall blow-up Godzilla. I love that thing, but it developed a leak and I relegated it to my closet. Fast forward a few years and my buddies and I went to see Jurassic Park on opening night. Naturally I got home late, and the lights by the side door were off. No big deal. I opened the door and Godzilla, all six feet of him lurched at me from the open door. I’m not ashamed to say I screamed like a little girl. My mom hit the lights as she laughed hysterically. “I’m so glad you finally came home,” she said. “Do you know how many times I had to pump that thing up?!” This was a trend: a few years later I returned from seeing Blair Witch Project to find stick figures like in the movie menacingly decorating my room.

Mom came to visit Anna and I when we were living in Utah. She did her research and decided we had to hit up the enormous local corn maze. The three of us ventured in and got hopelessly lost almost immediately. We never found the exit – we ended up going out the way we came in. “You can’t go out this way!” one of the employees said. “We just did!” Mom replied as we hurried to the car. That same trip she and I drove out to Bear Lake (on the way we might have – at her urging – ventured up a few 4×4 trails…) and had their incredible raspberry milkshakes.

My ice cream picture above came from here in town. They encourage you to sample the different unique flavors, and as soon as I tried the blueberry limoncello, the tart blueberry reminded me just a little of that raspberry milkshake for just a moment…

…These moments…

She was always supportive of my writing. Always. She read all my clips from my high school paper and insisted I bring her home City on a Hill Press from UCSC when I started writing there. And then after college… I pretty much stopped writing for a long time. No one likes to think that they might not have lived up to their parents’ expectations, but I’m genuinely saddened to think of everything she’ll never read. I thought of that when I started this blog and, in a lot of ways, it’s dedicated to her. She might not get the opportunity to read it, but that’s not the point. What’s important is that I am writing again, and that’s enough.

The fall before she passed, she and her sister, my aunt Jean, went on my mom’s dream Greek cruise. She compiled the pictures of the trip into a huge album. Here’s another regret: I only got a few minutes to flip through it with her that February day when I came up to be with my family as my mom went in for exploratory surgery. Before we took her to the hospital I asked if we could look at it later. She agreed, but then a few hours later we got the terrible news, and nineteen days later, she was gone…

I promised myself I wouldn’t write about that time today. But I have a reason for this one – a few months before that she sent me the journal she kept throughout the trip about the excursions and the locations they visited and some of the colorful characters they me along the way. I re-read the journal recently, and heard her voice in my head again, so clear. I was surprised I didn’t cry – but then why would I? It was clear she was having the time of her life!

These moments.

I know she’s still around. There are moments I feel her distinctly. I know she’s with me when I’m on the motorcycle. I feel her when I’m off adventuring. She was in a dream recently – we were having a big family party and she was making a feast of our favorites, but was concerned there wasn’t enough food. I offered to make my oven fajitas and she agreed. That’s a dish I made only after she passed. At the risk of reading too much into a dream, I think it suggested that not only is she still around, but she’s aware of the things I make – be they oven fajitas or, well, this blog.

Happy birthday, mom! You are loved, you are remembered, and you are missed. Thank you for everything! See you in my dreams!