Hey, psssssttttt, come here.You wanna know what I do on snap chat. I bet you do. Let me tell you, come closer, over here in the corner, I don’t want anyone else to find out…Noooo not that, there’s not enough filters in the world for that.

Relax, I text. Seriously, that’s all. I have a friend from Ohio, that I met in nursing school, a young friend. We text back and forth, she posts pictures cause she’s young and gorgeous.

I do not post pictures, ain’t nobody got time for it, ain’t nobody wants to see it.

I text her about all the phantom illnesses we each have thanks to nursing school, or to throw shade at people we both don’t like, it’s fun!

Right now she thinks she has MS and I’m scared I am diabetic, so cool! Also, the guy who made everyone feel like we were stupid in school with rambling posts to our study group on Facebook never graduated!!!

There’s so much for me to text her about!

But no pictures.

Tbh, (see I know the lingo) I don’t even know why I’m on it.

I have not taken one picture of myself for it, not one.

Isn’t FB messenger for texting idk, (more lingo).

Every time I get a notification that one of my contacts is on snapchat I have a mini heart attack. Please dont add me, please dont add me!

Why does it take from your phone contacts and announce this?

I don’t want everyone I work with knowing I’m on this crazy app.

Like there is no way I’m using it the way it was intended, no fucking way.

Snap chat please don’t tell them I’m here.Please for the love of all that is holy don’t out me!!!!Do y’all know this song?

********The old Rocker wore his hair too long,
wore his trouser cuffs too tight.
Unfashionable to the end — drank his ale too light.
Death’s head belt buckle — yesterday’s dreams —
the transport caf’ prophet of doom.
Ringing no change in his double-sewn seams
in his post-war-babe gloom.Now he’s too old to Rock’n’Roll but he’s too young to die.******

Of course, you dont, and it’s all good. It really is, this is a song from when I was young, and when my older cousin turned me on to Jethro Tull.

He had a denim jacket with their name embroidered on it, and I looked up to him for many reasons, one of them his music taste.

He also turned me on to Bob Marley, I miss him, he has since passed away, but when I hear certain songs, I am flooded with memories.

My Ramones cousin is still alive, Thank Christ!

Too Old to Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die is an amazing song though and it reminds me of summertime when there was no Snap Chat, there weren’t even cell phones.

Recently, I have turned off all notifications on my phone, I just don’t want to be so readily available.

The only people who can get through to me are my husband and kids, seriously.

Also, snap chat because I never want to miss an illness update or the chance to throw shade at garbage people.

When I was young his dirty hands made me think there was more out there for me, better. I told myself I was too young but that was not the whole truth.

I was not very smart when I was young, intelligent, yes, but smart, not so much and sometimes you pay a very hard price for thinking you know it all at the age of twenty.

Three years together and I was not convinced, mix in some drugs and alcohol and yeah, it was a disaster.

Years later I thought of his dirty hands and all of the things he must be doing, working on cars, getting married and having children. My husband had clean hands and a well paying job, but he was cruel.

I knew years later that I had made a mistake, the measure of a man is not in how clean his hands are, but what is in his soul.

Now I hold his dirty hands with joy, we came back to each other after many, many years apart.

My soulmate.

I remember the first time I set eyes on you,
in a smoky room, a party long ago.

A band was playing in the background.
You came and sat next to me,
and we talked for hours.

Later left the party together,
and my friend was pissed.

“How could you leave with a stranger?” he said.

“But he’s your friend,” I replied.

“Exactly,” My older brother/friend said to me,
and we were inseparable after that.

High school sweethearts, a prom, graduation, and a new car,
love like I had never known before, was all mine.

But I was young and afraid.

Years went by and led us in different directions.

You remember seeing me with a big diamond on my finger,
I remember seeing you with two children, yours but not mine.

Time went on and wasn’t kind to either of us.

But destiny will not be stopped, and it is never late.

A tragedy brought us together again.

My father was gone, you knew how devastated I would be
and so, after so many years, you reached out to me.

Now I hold your hand again through life,
through the best years that we will have at each other’s side.

The road we travel now is not easy,
but we are not apart anymore,
we walk that road together, grateful for each day.

We know, that it could have been so different, and, we are
not looking back on wasted time and wasted years.

Today and every day we are always looking forward, to each day we get to be here, with each other.

I hold your dirty hands with pride, you are the one.

My child is bisexual.

I hope that there isn’t another mother here among my friends that feel the way I do right now. Because I wouldn’t wish this fear on anyone.

It wasn’t bad enough that my daughter can’t live in a world where she doesn’t get dirty looks every time she holds a girls hand.

It wasn’t bad enough that people say things under their breath to her because they are too cowardly to say them out loud. Because that shit happened before Trump was elected.

But now? Well, we have a president who wants to take away the rights of a few select groups and he reminds me of someone. Now my kid comes home and tells me that she is afraid to go anywhere because this country is taking a turn towards indifference and intolerance.

I agree with her. Don’t say it isn’t true, because it is, there are reports all over the country about men saying they’re going out p**sy grabbing, and taking out n**g**s. So what comes next?

People always beat up the gay kid in school, don’t even lie to yourselves and say that didn’t happen, cause it did. That is what I fear. I have two daughters, and this man has set a horrible example of behavior towards women, and people who are not his ideal(Straight and White) not to mention his feelings about women’s value.

He doesn’t like gay people, and he wants to take their rights away. I ask you what’s next??? “Relocation” All of the minorities in our country are under attack, and so that includes my child, which makes him my enemy. His supporters will look to him for how to act now and sadly some are not smart enough to distinguish right from wrong and bad things will happen.

I fear him, yes because of who he is, but I fear the mindless masses much more. It wasn’t bad enough that if she was in a partnership with someone that they couldn’t be married legally, until recently.

It wasn’t bad enough that she couldn’t be insured on a policy held by her life partner or have family leave if one of them was sick or having a child. But Mike Pence sees nothing wrong with conversion therapy that he feels will fix my child WHO IS NOT BROKEN.

That is akin to mental and physical torture that he sees nothing wrong with, as a nurse and a mother I am horrified. But he will make sure insurance covers it. I addressed that one paragraph up so I won’t go into how ridiculous this is. I realize there are other issues, but we all voted according to the things that were on our individual hearts and should stop fighting. But do not say my issue isn’t important, it is important to me and my family. I hope you never have to feel the way I feel right now.

Written the day Trump was elected.

I tend to keep all my shit inside…

I have always had a strange relationship with my mother. It had always been so complex and so convoluted that I wondered if all mothers were this way. They aren’t I have come to find out, which is fine now as an adult but it was not fine when I was growing up and needed direction and love.

I made a lot of mistakes due to no one telling me what was right or caring. I have chronic anxiety that I feel like I wouldn’t have if I had grown up differently. For sure I wouldn’t have picked up a drink at age 13 and descended into that ten year hell I was in. I dont blame her for my alcoholism or my drug abuse, that’s on me.

But I wonder if I would have cared more about myself if she had.

It’s very hard to understand, trust me I have tried all my life to figure out what I did. I was born I guess and that was enough.

I really thought I was too old to be hurt by her, but it turns out I was wrong.

To people that are not me, she puts on a good show and sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who knows the real her. I was there for all her drunken tirades when I was a kid, I was the one she said she wished I had never been born to.

I am the one who had walked through life without a mother’s love though, but I gave it abundantly to my children. They have what I never had.

To people outside the family and even my brother, she is mother of the year. Some of my childhood friends don’t remember, a lot of people think there’s something wrong with me. She’s so nice and caring, to everyone else but me.

My brother is visiting my mother from NY state this weekend. I live in NJ and my mother lives 45 min away from me. My brother lives four hours away and we don’t see each other very much at all.

Tomorrow is my birthday and neither of them reached out to tell me he was coming to visit or even thought to invite me over. So now I get to see them tagging each other on FB about all the fun stuff they are doing. I took this weekend off because it was my birthday and my mother knew it…

She won’t hesitate to call me when she wants me or needs something though and she wonders why I never pick up the phone. And she tells everyone she just doesn’t understand what’s wrong with Kristin.

I’m sorry. You own this machine just because your pink sports bottle is there; forgive me. I didn’t know. I was unaware that it was common to have a place holder while you go pee? Since when? Am I missing something? Do I need you Google this?

Ok, I Googled it and oh look, Google says you’re a cunt. I mean the gym is mostly empty and there are fifty other machines. Why the fuck do you have to leave your shit on them while you go take a pee.

Innocently, I got on said machine after waiting five fucking minutes for you to return and asked me to vacate the machine you were saving because your water bottle was there.

I always complete my time on a machine and then go pee, like a lady. I feel no need to be so self-important and superior that I have to save a machine while I go pee.

Or I take the chance and take my water bottle with me to pee, then go get my machine.

If it’s not available when I get out of the bathroom I wait. Because I’m not an asshole.

You can’t fuck up my day bitch in the hot pink pants, because I’m going home to take a nap and go see OAR tonight.

I’m gonna ride the bike and try and get my hamstring to reattach to my femur, then go home to my wonderful life where I’m not a nasty witch.

Unlike you. I feel like you have a miserable life and want to bring everyone down. I get it, but I’m not receiving it. You and your negative energy need to stay far, far away from me.

After I leave here I’m calling gorgeous husband for some phone sex and then taking a nap.

OAR tonight with my girl, fuck off gym lady. You suck.

It’s summertime so I’ll probably wear my Converse to go see OAR. In the winter I wear Doc’s everywhere except to work, (sometimes I wear them there too) and this got me thinking. I mean I know I am perpetually stuck in the ’90’s everything about me screams that. Everyone who knows me knows about my love for grunge music and My So-Called Life. Yup, I loved me some Jordan Catalano and some Buffalo Tom music.

I play “Late at Night” in the shower sometimes, and wear way too much flannel, I might have a flannel shirt on right now at 5 am as I type. I told you it’s bad.

But, really here is my question, am I too old for Converse and Doc Martens? I don’t feel too old, I’ve always worn them. Well, not when I was married to my ex-husband because he was a douche but before and after yes.

Is age just a number or are we dead after forty and should act accordingly? The thing is I feel comfortable in my old standbys, they’re comfortable and familiar and in the end, I still want to be a little Emo wherever I go. It’s who I am after all, and today I love who I have become and if I have a few wrinkles and grey hair so be it.

I’m wearing the converse to my grave people, I think I want to be buried in them too!

Thursday can’t come soon enough, I mean I cannot wait!!. I’m going on see OAR again. Happy Birthday to me!!

This is my all time favorite band. I would quit my job and follow them like the Grateful Dead if I could. I wouldn’t even think twice about it.

This is how much I love them and I have loved them for what seems like forever now. I still remember the first time I heard their unique sound and not just because I got insulted that day.

Way back in 2003 or 2004 I was in Best Buy to get a GPS for my new job as a public health nurse and I heard this band on the stereo system in the store. I just had to know who they were!

They had a unique reggae/ rock sound that intrigued me from the jump. That is my genre of choice usually. There’s just something so relaxing about reggae. I love Sublime also and Badfish, but OAR just hits me in a different way.

Anyway, with great joy, I found someone who worked there in hopes of finding out who this band was.

“Who is this band playing?” I asked with glee.

The teenager behind the counter was like “Oh, you like that? It’s OAR ma’am.”

Wait a minute! Ma’am? Ma’am? What?

This happened to me at TicketMaster once too trying to get Pearl Jam tickets. I was only 29, why was the snotty kid asking me if I knew who Pearl Jam was? OF COURSE, I knew who they were. Wasn’t I trying to get tickets to see them? Come on kid work with me here.

Anyway, I digress. This happened a few years after OAR at Best Buy but still…

Now I was no teenager, but I did have to use face cream at that stage in my life and I guess it showed?

I swallowed a sarcastic remark and moved on. I needed this music in my life.

Once listened to more I didn’t care. She pointed me to the rack of CDs and I then began my sixteen-year love affair with OAR.

I see them every year and only missed once when I had to study for a nursing exam.

This Thursday I am going with my daughter, not the YouTube daughter, my other one. She is my concert buddy and has been since she was a little kid. I have a few friends that I call concert friends, people I see at the concerts. But only at the concerts, you know. But she is by far my first choice to be with, always.

Every year for my birthday she takes me to see OAR. One year we switched it up and went to see Metallica on Mother’s day. This is a child after my own heart.

I have two daughters that I dragged to concerts all their lives but only one chooses to go with me now. That’s fine. My other girl and I do things together too that don’t include getting smashed in a mosh pit or going deaf from loud music, maybe she’s the smart one, I dont know.

My husband isn’t too much into it either, he likes live music but only a certain kind. Truth be told I broke up with him in high school and one of the reasons was that we could never agree on music back then and it seemed so important at the time.

Now that we are older and wiser, and I have taken him to OAR and Badfish and some others but he is not a huge fan. That’s ok, there’s much more to our relationship now.

Actually, he and I only agree on a certain genre of music (punk rock) and usually, he listens to *OMG* country music.

I listen to everything but.

This Thursday is going to rock. We have pit seats and I am so excited!!

It’s Monday and already the week is going to drag but also it’s a short week for me and at the end is OAR. Come on Thursday get here soon!!

Today there is some kind of glitch that is pissing everyone in my house off. Even as I type this my words are not flowing onto the page the way they usually do. It’s like my computer has slowed down to a snail’s pace. There are many unhappy campers in my house today including me.

I’m typing at my usual speed but the letters are taking forever to appear, not good. I’m already minutes ahead in my brain, this will drive me nuts. I want to see the words as soon as I type them, is that too much to ask?

My youngest has a YouTube channel and to be honest I’m not really all that sure of how it all works. She does makeup tutorials and has quite a good following, I am so proud of her! So, apparently, it’s important to upload on time and today it wasn’t happening. There’s a weird kind of dynamic going on today, my google home couldn’t find my favorite OAR song and my air conditioner (brand new last year) is acting up.

For me, it’s just another day in the life. We really need the air conditioner to be working though, I might melt you know. I’m not usually cranky, but I could be if I get too warm, it’s a possibility.

Meanwhile, my husband was taking way too long in the garage, and I was sweltering as I wrote, despite Google’s poor cooperation.

Finally, I said fuck it and went to Wawa for some Diet Iced Tea, it’s bomb. This made me wonder what we, as a society would do if our creature comforts suddenly vanished. No more air conditioning, no Wifi, no Wawa Iced Tea?

We are all so used to having exactly what we want when we want it that our world turns upside down if anything even minute goes wrong. None of us would make it through the apocalypse, not a one.

Once we all said I want my MTV and now it’s I want my Netflix.

There’s just so much that we are used to having, I mean I need my ibuprofen, my Keurig coffee, and my computer. I also can’t see without my contact lenses, so I’m beat when it all goes down.

Back to the YouTube thing though, it’s so easy to become dependent on all of these things without really thinking about it. Even our cars don’t run the same as they used to, that’s all computerized too, when we buy gas it’s all by a computer as well.

So what if, right? Sounds like a good dystopian novel doesn’t it? Yup I agree, I think I’ll write one. The downfall of man brought on by a YouTube glitch, film at eleven.

Why do you notify me of the same damn thing fifty million times a day? I used to say this until Facebook stopped updating and made my fucking year. I turned off all notifications long ago, but it shows up when you log in and then you have to clear each one and it’s so damn tedious. Now it just doesn’t update, hurray!!!

It’s just that I don’t want to be notified of every little thing, it gives me anxiety.

Also, I don’t care. Not even a little bit. I don’t care about your kid’s soccer game, your dinner, or your life, not unless you are one of ma peeps, sad but true. I have my own life to live, and my tribe that I am close to, who I care about immensely. But everyone else is just chatter, as it should be. There’s no reason to be so available, all the time, for everybody and it wasn’t always this way. You see, I come from the time before, * audible gasp* cell phones.

It’s true.

Listen, I’m as hip as the next over forty woman, don’t you worry. But I remember what it was like to go out and not have something attached to your hand 24/7. I know what it was like to be unreachable and I took it for granted. My mother could never stalk me to the Pt. Pleasant Inlet with an App, hell, we didn’t even know what an App was!

I wasn’t all up in my friends bizznizz all day long, and there was no political divide, no pictures of everyone’s Starbucks order. Actually, there was no Starbucks. Imagine a world without Starbucks latte and free Wifi. It used to exist and I remember it.

Now, don’t misunderstand, I have spent more than my share of time hiding in the bathroom at work updating my status and reading fanfiction, I sure have. But when my updates stopped, my anxiety stopped, mostly.

I stopped sharing my shit constantly, I got a life.