Baby’s First Bills Game

A lifelong Buffalonian such as I should be outright ashamed of herself.  Buffalo, New York, is a drinking town with a sports problem, as they like to say, yet I am a proud resident who does not drink and hates sports.  I have NEVER attended a major sporting event, despite us having 2 big ‘ol teams. Alas, I have, since youth, and likely through both grooming and peer pressure, found myself rooting for the Buffalo Bills football association.

It began with our Super Bowl runs back in the early 90s when I still thought Buffalo was the only cool place in the world-of course we were going to the Super Bowl.  “We’re gonna win, too!” I said, for four years.  As you probably know…we did not win.

Then, we sucked for a few decades, and I was all “phew, I hate sports anyway.”  Like, yay!  I don’t have to pretend to care anymore!  But, then I met Mark, and discovered that when you love someone, it’s nice to share in their hobbies on occasion.  And so, after being dragged to one too many Avant Garde theater outings, Mark sat me down to watch some football.

It took years for me to understand and thus appreciate the game, but if you are a real football fan, trust me when I tell you, you do not want me at your viewing party.  My absolute favorite thing to do is compare a football game to a theatrical performance and if you don’t want to hear me use the word “spectacle” repeatedly, then do not invite me over.

Anyhoo, all this said, I never went to a game.  I never went to The Ralph (Highmark Stadium) for anything growing up, not even a concert.  Neither has Mark. 

And neither had Kevin, so when he suggested we all get preseason tickets, I was very excited.  We invited Bernie, another newbie, and on Saturday afternoon the four of us set off to see our very first Bills game.  Dad dropped us off, and the sun was shining on a beautiful summer day.  I snapped the below picture of the boys as we walked towards the stadium.  I was happy and smiling.  Then, my feet felt hot.

A topic for another day, but I wish there had been testing for kids when I was younger regarding neurodivergence, because from what I understand I have very many “quirks” others seem to not have.  For instance, in this case, I was wearing hot shoes.  I mean, they were just my regular work shoes, good for walking, and I wasn’t in pain or anything.  I just felt like my feet were suffocating, and when I expressed this to Bernie (who shares my DNA and fully understands,) I had a feeling it was a bad omen.

But then…everything was fine.  We breezed through security and tickets, found our seats quickly enough, and sat down to survey the scene.  My first observation is that it is…small.  I see, now, why we have never hosted a Super Bowl.  Our stadium is wee.  Also, expensive, I learned, purchasing one 16-dollar beer and then wondering where they get off asking me to leave a tip.  My seat?  Uncomfortable, as wee as the stadium itself, and on fire as well since the sun was directly overhead of us.  I turn to Bern and say I can’t believe how well everything worked out and she says sure, until we all get sun poisoning.

Naturally, she was right.

I much enjoyed the spectacle of the players taking the field, and the first quarter was fine, though I didn’t really understand what was happening without announcers running their mouths the whole time.  By the second quarter, however, I was dying.  The sun was roasting me alive.  My feet were too hot.  I left the inside of the stadium for the cool shade of the hall, and eventually the rest of the crew came out.  Bern, Mark and I decided to go, and Kev was going to stay and meet up with his sister.  I had decided while I sat in that hallway during the second quarter that Bills Stadium was not for me.  Too much walking, too much sun, tiny seats, expensive, loud, so many people…and all over something I only moderately care about.  I would so much rather watch a game at home with my chicken wing dip.  I will wear my Bills shirt there and cheer at the screen in comfort.

Anyway…we schlepped back to where Dad was meeting us, and when we got in the car he asked what we did with Kevin, so I told him we sold Kev for water-then we went home.

It was exhausting.  Fun for a bit, but overall…not my jam. 

Next, I should go to my first Sabres game.

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Adventures in Adulting

Due to circumstances of the physical, mental, and social variety, there are many things that I, a fully formed adult, have not yet done on my own.  Given certain limitations over the past 20 years, I am a little late to some of the parties.  For instance, my credit score.  I don’t have one.  Well, I do, but I am what is called “credit unscorable,” meaning I have very little activity, credit-wise.  But, I do have a little debt.  My husband is “credit invisible,” meaning he has absolutely no credit history, and no debt attributed to his score.  That is at least something we can build on, I knew none of this until I started looking for an apartment, another grown-ass human thing I never really did before.

Now, this is not my first apartment, but in the past it was different.  It was desperate.  First, there was an emotionally unstable anciet landlady who barely spoke English and tried to evict us for “no GD reason,” as per the cops that showed up Easter Sunday to make sure we were out.  So, we moved quickly to a dump that was available and rented out by an LLC who kicked us out 2 years later to renovate (I’ve yet to see that happen, PS.)  So, again, desperate, we move to a place owned by a landlord who makes unstable landlady look like my lovable grandmother and literally causes both my husband and I to catch a PTSD diagnosis from our respective psychiatrists.  Desperation again, and I find this place:  a nice apartment just the right size at the right price with a good landlord who makes me feel at ease. 

Now, six years later, and time for change.  The rent elsewhere has skyrocketed, and they know they are losing money on us.  We know we have outgrown where we are.  And so, I make the decision, for the first time, to move on.  What I want is for them to fix this place up and get more money for it.  That might sound weird, but this has been my home for six years, and I want only good things for it and the people who provided it to me.  When the billion bucks was on the table for all of us last week, Mark and I were talking about what we would do with a bunch of money…not even a billion, but enough.  I’d leave some for my landlords, so they could update.  Like a thank you, because it might be their house, but for a while, it was my home.  And their kindness over the years helped heal some of the scars left on me from my previous landlord.  I am appreciative. 

But I am broke, so instead I’m just going to try to clean the hell out of the carpet, which has seen 6 years of my kids growing up and God knows how long of the family of toddlers that lived here before us.  I am PRAYING there are decent hardwoods underneath this thing for them.

But I digress…

So in looking for an apartment, sans desperation for once, I am encountering moments of adulthood I was not previously familiar with.  Like, credit scores, and their total ineffectuality when it comes to renting property.  Why, landlords of Buffalo, does my credit score apply? Just ask for a rental receipt.  I don’t know how you budget, but rent always gets priority in my house.  I will take a shutoff notification from the electric company and I will take a deferral on my student loan and I will take some bread from the food pantry, but you can be absolutely certain I paid my rent.  But no one keeps track of that.

Then I go to a showing and learn of a software called Avail that lets landlords use rent payments to apply to your credit score.  I don’t know why EVERYONE isn’t using this, but if they were…I wouldn’t be looking to rent an apartment right now.  I’d be taking out a loan with my good credit to put a down payment on a house that’s mortgage is HALF MY CURRENT RENT.

It’s a flippin’ scam, kids.  Adulthood is a scam.

Y’know, I’ve yet to buy a car that I didn’t find on Craigslist, also.  I can’t wait for that day, I’m sure my head will explode in a similar fashion.

Anyhoo…I continue with my apartment hunt.  I plan to be out the last week of September, so if anyone in the Buffalo area knows of anything available then…hit me up.  Unless they want a credit score, in which case they can GTFO.

Solicitous Histrionics

Open a dictionary. Pick a word. Now close it.

Open it again.  Pick another word.  Close it.

Now, write a poem using those two words.

This is a fun little game taught to me by my favorite local poet, Justin Karcher.  Back in January, I discovered he would be doing a workshop at the Just Buffalo Literary Center, and my mother was kind enough to purchase me a ticket.  It was in May, so it was a long wait.  There were only 9 or 10 of us, but it was great…to me at least, who had never been to a writing workshop of any kind. 

One of the first questions he posed was what poetry meant to us.  It’s a simple concept, I suppose, but if you don’t have a grasp of what your craft means to you, then what are you even doing? I responded to this question with a poem of my own, naturally:

Poetry
By Brigid Hannon

Poetry is my voice, 
louder in word than in action.
My pen on paper. 
or my mouth and teeth and tongue,
no different from each other.
Each meter should lift darkness into light. 
Each verse should move a heart to break, 
each stanza another gasp from muted lips-
poetry is power and 
opinion and 
might-
the never ceasing beat 
of our living hearts.

Now, a lot of Justin’s stuff has to do with our shared home of Buffalo, NY, which may be why I love it so much.  I have long held a hope to write a collection of just Buffalo poems, so when he said we would be writing poems about “home” in some fashion, I was delighted.  I started free writing some thoughts down, and eventually I took those bones and pieced them together into a skeleton of a poem, which I took home with me to work on further.  I knew it wasn’t the sort I could pound out in an hour-long class.  I did, however, write this little guy as well, which I have no intention of doing anything with, so I might as well share it with you here:

Safe Shoes
Also by Brigid Hannon

No flip-flops today;
no sandals.
Sneakers?  But no...
laces come untied.
Little ones, so scared,
and yet prepared,
and I cannot choose a shoe.

An adult counterpart,
I've no active training.
"Where's the exit," I ask myself,
looking to the black sturdy Sketchers
I picked out,
with rubber soles and no laces-
shoes that keep me safe,
like I keep little souls who find me,
willing to sacrifice for such.

She tells me she likes her school;
she feels safe:
"We hardly ever have a lockdown." 
Hardly.
Look to the ground to keep from crying, 
seeing only sturdy safe shoes-
shoes that make me RUN.

Anyway, the workshop was lovely.  I went home and worked on my main poem for a bit, and when it was done, I emailed it to Justin to show him.  A few days later, he got back to me and asked if he could publish it in the June edition of Ghost City Press, which is the mag where I published my first poem, so, I mean…yeah, dude.  Of course.
So, in honor of that, I made a TikTok for it, which I will share at the end of this post.  It is a poem about my city, but also about my grandparents.  We were supposed to write about what home means to us, and my city is my home, where I would not live were it not for my grandparents, who gave me this wonderful home without even realizing it.  
Finally, I tried to write a poem using the dictionary game, and I tell you, friend-I have failed.  I have been drowning in the words “solicitous histrionics” for weeks now, because those are the two words that noodled their way out of the book and into my brain.  Eventually, I will write that poem-it will probably be a weird one.
So, that’s all for today, I think.  Happy Monday!

@hamneggs716

#poem #poetry #poetrytok #buffalo #ireland #grandparents #irish #poetsoftiktok

♬ original sound – Brigid Hannon

Salt in the Wound

How is it that I am back here after only 2 weeks to write about another massacre?  Oh, that’s right…I live in America.

Whenever I go to the grocery store now, and probably for the rest of my life, I will think of the ten people who lost their lives on Jefferson Ave.  I know many of my fellow Buffalonians can echo that sentiment.  And now, whenever I go to work, I will think of the dozens dead or injured in Uvalde.  And I know my fellow educators feel the same way.

Listen…no teacher is out there receiving combat pay, so stop acting like they are the first line of defense.  I saw a meme yesterday that said not to even suggest arming teachers, because apparently y’all can’t even trust them to choose books.

When I graduated high school, I was told there would be a teaching shortage right about now, and there is.  There were many incentives in place at the time for those who wanted to pursue education, such as reduced tuitions and 5-year Master’s programs. Naturally, I jumped at this, as I had wanted to work with children and teaching seemed to be the obvious answer.

Ooooh boy am I glad I dropped out of college now!

As if teaching through a pandemic wouldn’t have been hard enough, you finally get back into the school setting and now you have to worry about “active shooters.”  No, thank you.  Yet…I look at these kids I teach and the crazy thing about it is that they know what to do in the event of a gunman, better than I do.  I’ve had no training; they’ve been doing it since pre-k.  So while I am the one expected to lay my life on the line for a child, they are the ones more likely to save me.  I have a better chance following a third-grader’s directions than they would have following mine and ouch…I think I just found a blind spot in our program.

Last Saturday, I took a CPR and First Aid course.  It’s required for work, but it’s also something I like to have.  It’s a skill I have thankfully never had to use, but I am prepared in case it happens, and I guess that’s how we are spinning shooter drills to the kids.  Except it seems more and more of them assume they are preparing for “when” it happens, not “if.”

Listen, I hate guns, and if you’ve read a lot of my stuff, you probably already know that.  However, I am pro-choice on pretty much all topics…so if you like guns or own one, whatever…that’s your right.  HOWEVER, I do think we should have common sense gun laws.  I mean, why do you need a AR15?  Explain it to me like I’m a child, and don’t use the words “target practice.”  Oh, and as soon as you mention killing humans, even if in defense, you are proving my point.  I don’t care about your shotgun, your handgun, your hunting rifle; I care about your semi-automatic assault rifle.  ASSAULT is right there in the name!

Anyway…I wrote a poem, video below, about the events in Uvalde.  Too much to process, and far too soon.

@hamneggs716

#Uvalde by Brigid Hannon #poetsoftiktok #poetry #poem #poetrytok #guncontrol #commonsensegunreform #usa #uvaldetexas #buffalony #educatorsoftiktok #teachersoftiktok

♬ original sound – Brigid Hannon

Buffalo Strong

I had a plan, you see.  I was going to write today about the Bans Off Our Bodies rally I attended on Saturday morning.  Then, for Thursday, I was going to post about how I caught my biggest fish yet, and how nature has replaced church for me. 

But then, after fishing, I stopped at the Tops on Harlem real quick to get some milk, and then I headed home and curled up with my phone…y’know, to check my socials and messages and such.  I saw a Facebook post from a friend about the local hospital, and suddenly the world crashed down and the fish, and even the rally, seemed insignificant.

On Saturday afternoon, 13 people we shot and 10 people died at the Tops on Jefferson, fifteen minutes from my house, because a self-proclaimed 18-year-old white supremacist decided that was the place in the state of New York where he could murder the most black people.

That is a lot to unpack, and I don’t know how much I will get to in just one post.

I had just walked out of a Tops.  I texted Jaime…she had just walked out of a Wegmans.  How many of us went grocery shopping on Saturday afternoon? It may seem silly, but knowing that I was doing the same thing as my neighbors on the east side of town when they were gunned down…it just turned my stomach.

As details came out, we learned the shooter had posted a manifesto online, as well as livestreamed the attack on Twitch.  We discovered that he had selected the Tops on Jefferson because that zip code has the highest black population in the state.  Our elected officials made it very clear that he was an “outsider.”

Cute.

Listen, I love my city, deeply.  But we have a racism problem…deeply.  We are on the list of the most segregated cities in the nation, and even a tourist can tell, folks.  Have you EVER taken a visiting friend to the east side for any reason, white Buffalonian reading this?  Ok, actually, I have done this…I took a friend there because they wanted to get some weed.  That’s the reputation the east side has in white Buffalo.  Drugs, crime…and black people. 

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t white folks on the east side, because there are certainly black people in my mostly white south side neighborhood as well, There’s just less.  Everyone who lives here knows: the whites live in North and South Buffalo, the blacks live on the east side, and the Hispanics are to the west.  All of this sounds super racist, and it is.  It’s also a fact. 

My neighborhood is strongly Irish, and therefore mostly white.  We live within ten minutes of 6 grocery stores…3 of them are Tops.  The Masten neighborhood is mostly black, and they have one.  Wegmans won’t set foot over there.  There’s an Aldi’s not too far away, but you would definitely need a car to get there, and Masten is a lower income neighborhood, so that’s not an option for everyone.  People in that area live with food insecurity everyday…I don’t.  I might feel like it lately, while money is very tight and I can’t get the things I want, but I do have enough food in my cupboard to survive.  I’m not worried about where my next meal is coming from.

And I’m not worried about being shot at my grocery store, either.  Probably should be, but I’m not, at least not by a Nazi.  I am never worried about being attacked by a hate group, because I am a white woman, and no one wants a dead white girl on their hands.  Generally, I don’t worry about gun violence at all…because I am privileged.  The people in that grocery store are more worried about it than I am, because someone gets hurt on that side of town from gun violence nearly every day.  My point here is that I worry about neither guns nor white supremacy, because I live in a “safe” (read: white) neighborhood.  I put “safe” in quotes, because it isn’t, exactly.  We have crime, too.  We have our low-income section, and we have folks who just don’t give a crap sometimes, also.  Overall, though, my neighborhood is definitely considered “better” than theirs, here in Western New York.

Anyway, like I was saying, mayor Byron Brown was adamant that the terrorist came from outside the community.  Here’s the thing…I know more than one person who was betting on which suburb this asshole came out of, because we all automatically assumed he was a WNYer.  EVERYBODY knows we have a racism problem in the area.  We had a crapton of arrests in Erie County related to Jan. 6^th.  I remember seeing tour buses carrying folks down to DC.  Yes, my city is mostly democratic, but the outlying areas are abundant with MAGA republicans.  And while Buffalo itself tends to vote blue, we do have a fairly dodgy police force to contend with, along with the basic segregated setup of the city.  I mean, my first thought when I heard about this shooting was: we need to check on our black friends.  Might sound racist because I was thinking about their skin color, but the truth of it is that they all use that grocery store, because they all live on the east side.

Me, I went to that Tops once at 8am to use the bathroom on the way home from a doctor’s appointment.  I have never had any reason to be there, other than that.  I only ever go to that particular neighborhood if I am visiting the Science Museum there.  I have often wanted to…they have a big park with an amazing splash pad that my kids would have loved in their youth.  Alas…we never went. 

Racism is a huge problem in my city and if you don’t believe that then you either don’t live here or you’re a racist.  It’s as plain as day to anyone with a conscience that we need to change the way we do things around here.  Because that murderer wasn’t from here…but he could have been.  He oh-so-easily could have been.

Buffalo is known as the City of Good Neighbors, and it is.  One time my car got stuck in a snowbank on the east side, and four very large black men approached.  I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly nervous (of course, their gender trumped their skin color in my mind, but still.)  These gentlemen pushed me out of the snowbank and got me on my way.  I was exceedingly grateful.  Yeah, maybe it’s true that nobody wants a dead white girl on their hands, but I’d also like to believe that nobody in this city wants anyone to be in trouble if they can help.  Do you have any idea how many snowbanks a stranger has pushed me out of, or how many times a neighbor mowed my lawn just to be nice, or helped shovel the sidewalk?  Tons and tons and tons.  All we do is help each other, which is why I have no doubt that we as a community will make it through this crisis.

So sadly, I can’t tell you about how great the rally was, or how big the fish was.  Maybe I will save those for later this week, but they have become afterthoughts in my mind.  And I’m nowhere close to being done talking about what happened in my city, because I am a firm believer that if you want change you have to stay and fight for it.  All I know right now is that my heart hurts for this place I love so dearly.  I only hope we can all find a way to heal.

Too Cold

Good god, it is cold.  I mean, I live in Buffalo, so I am adept at navigating the winter months, but perhaps as I get older, I get colder.  I look at M, who came home from school yesterday in 18-degree weather wearing only a sweatshirt.  “Aren’t you freezing?!” I yell.  He shrugs.  “It’s a little chilly.”  Understatement!

And the snow.  Every morning, more snow to brush off the car.  Not a lot the last few days, but enough to make me groan when I open the front door and step onto the porch.  And have they plowed?  No, they have not.  My street hasn’t seen a plow except one time after the snowstorm a week or so ago.  Still, it snows, layering the streets.

Then my office, which is an icebox right now.  It is situated by the front porch which is lovely in summer and terrible in winter.  I might as well be outside.  The vent at my feet brings no relief.  My hoodie and blanket and coffee do not do enough.  Were my office not in here, I would shut this room off all winter.  Alas, here I sit, with frozen fingers.

So, forgive me for today’s short post, because I am cold.  May you have a day full of dry boots and fuzzy blankets and hot beverages.  That’s what I’m aiming for.

Eulogy of an Actor

It is 9:30am on a Saturday, and my nose is running because I have been crying a little.  You of course won’t read this until Monday, but I’m writing now because the thoughts are raw and fresh, and I need to put them down on paper.

This morning I woke up and went on Facebook, as I do, and the first post I saw was my friend Tilke’s headshot.  What surprised me, was that it was on another friend’s page, not her own.  At first, I thought it must be a promotional for their new movie, but closer inspection proved me wrong-Tilke had passed away, and the photo was a memorial to her.

Wait, what?

Down the Facebook rabbit hole I went, in search of any information and hoping this wasn’t true, although this mutual friend would not have been wrong…and he wasn’t.  She was gone.

One night, many years ago, we were standing in front of a bar in the February cold smoking cigarettes and practicing Russian accents.  We had just done a show, Cowboy Mouth, and she was the female lead.  It was the first time we worked together, and I saw immense talent in her.  Really, if you asked me who in the Buffalo theater scene could have ridden the rocket all the way to Hollywood, I would have told you that person was Tilke Hill.  Anyway, she said something to me about how I wasn’t pursuing my other interests at the time, which was true.  She saw no reason why I was still stage managing without also directing, acting, writing, etc.  She had great plans for us to do a show together, where we would act and direct ourselves-we picked The Kathy and Mo Show.  This didn’t work out, because…well you know when a person is in a toxic relationship, and they’ve got a friend who calls it out?  Tilke called it out to me.  The company we planned to perform with was a problem, and she saw it before I did. 

And, as the true friend, when I left that toxic situation, she was there to help pick me up, by asking me to do props and help her direct some scenes in a show at a different theater.  It is the last show I worked on, and to this day I don’t fully understand what it was about, but I do know that it showed me I didn’t need to be tethered to something that was holding me back.

I don’t know that I would have had these realizations without Tilke.

Now, I left the theater world, and when I did, I lost some friends.  It’s no one’s fault, just that life pulls you apart.  However, there are certainly people from the theater community that hold very special places in my heart, and Tilke was one of them.  These are people you always kind of hope you will work with again someday, and that’s how I felt about her.  I always thought, maybe someday, we can throw together Kathy and Mo and achieve a dream. 

But then, life…and death.  The sudden sucker punch that takes someone out of existence and leaves you feeling hollow and sad.  Sometimes in life, people come into your world for a brief moment and set it on fire, and when you sift through the ashes, you can find the real treasure. Tilke was that sort of person. What I would not give to be standing outside a bar in the cold, having one last cigarette, and practicing our Russian accents.

Rest in peace, my friend.

Two sides of Tilke…a caring friend and an amazing actress.

Soup and Sandwich

I’m a day behind schedule in everything this week, because of the endoscopy I had on Tuesday.  So here is Thursday’s blog, on Friday.

Yesterday I had lunch at my mom’s house, and she made egg salad sandwiches.  I contributed a can of minestrone soup to the equation, and truly all that was missing was a glass of chocolate milk.  Why?  Because that is the lunch of my childhood.

When I was small, we lived with my grandmother, Lois.  She took care of me during the day while my parents worked, and often we would take an outing.  Lois didn’t drive, so we would take the Metro bus to the nearest little plaza, the only one in the neighborhood.  There, we found three businesses: Super Duper, McCrory’s, and Your Host.

First, we would go to McCrory’s, which I can only describe as a sort of tiny Target.  The selling point for me was the pet shop it contained, with the talking bird that Kevin and I had befriended.  We would look at the fish and the hamsters, and then Gran would drag me over to the kid clothes and pick me out an itchy sweater or something.  We would walk over to Super Duper, the local grocery store, and she would buy milk or bread or whatever was needed, and always made sure that I got a slice of bologna from the deli counter.  I remember two distinct things about this market, the first being the long poles attached to the shopping carts that had wheels that ran along the celling and occasionally made sparks.  Also, this is where she bought me Honey Joe.

After the grocery store it was off to lunch at Your Host.  It was a little diner that had tiny jukeboxes on the table, and for a dime I could play Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” for her.  We would order egg salad and minestrone and the best chocolate milk in the world, and we would listen to our tunes and enjoy our food before calling for a taxi home.  The cab would come and take us back to the house, where we would unload our goodies and settle in for an afternoon nap.

When I eat that meal, I vividly remember these mornings with my grandma, who left us when I was still quite young.  Mom and I don’t listen to Sinatra while we eat, but I like to think that she is there with us in that moment, enjoying a luncheon with her daughter and granddaughter.  I like to think that people who have passed stay with us in a way, and the feeling I get from egg salad and minestrone soup just strengthens that belief.

That’s all for today, just a little memory.  I have a project or two that needs working on, so I must bid adieu.  Enjoy your weekend!

Creating Flavors

Back before the world got sick, I forced myself to attend an open mic poetry reading at a local bookstore.  Then, that ended because of the pandemic, and I retreated back into my little anxiety shell and didn’t come out for a year and a half.  Then, last week I saw an ad in the paper for a writing workshop.  There were only a few slots available, but I figured what the heck and threw my name into the hat.  Two days later I received an email saying I was registered.  Turns out, it was also a free event, so I was even more pumped because in case you were wondering, poetry collections are not best sellers. 

But then, as it does, my stomach came out to play on Friday and sent me into a tizzy.  Saturday, the day of the workshop, I felt better physically, but terrible mentally.  Firstly, I did not take my meds the night before because I was fearful of throwing up again.  Secondly, they pumped me full of the strong stuff at the ER and it was still wearing away come Saturday afternoon.

At 3pm, I was near tears, scared to go, unprepared, rushed…all the feelings of anxiety that like to stop me in my tracks.  I was even a little sick to my stomach, which made me all the more worried.  Mark did what he always does, and that is get me through it.  He remined me how excited I as when I got the registration email.  He reminded me how badly I wanted to get out into the world again, and he reassured me of my talents, as he does every day.  So, I got dressed and drank some coffee and got in the car and went.

Awkward at first, as always, I was maybe the second person to arrive.  I settled in and we got a box full of goodies (photo below) with a notebook and a journal in it, along with supplies for making tea bags.  First, Julio (whom I met once before at that bookstore, so it was a little easing to see a face I knew in the room,) gave a talk about the histories of tea and the cultural and religious significances, and then discussed the tea flavors we had and what they symbolized, which was very interesting.  I jotted down my combinations I wanted to try: hibiscus mint for mom, lemongrass mint for Bernie, and lavender chamomile for me.

After our selections, we took to writing about our flavors.  I didn’t get anything very good, because I was writing longhand which is just TORTURE in my opinion.  But I of course typed it up and then cleaned it a little, so you can find it below.  Everyone else shared their pieces, and they were lovely.  I like open mic style things because everyone’s flow is so different.  You have free form, traditionalists, rhymers, alliteraters, slam poets…so much variety.

After the journaling and sharing, we put our tea in the bags and decorated tea boxes.  Then, Bianca, who seemed to be the one in charge, gave everyone a personalized cup (and you just know I love stuff with my name on it.)  We had a little open mic, where you could share whatever, and I read Sick Since Sixteen because it was the first poem that came up on my phone.  It was a good choice though, because I received both snaps and “mmmh’s” which is like a standing ovation in the poetry world. Then everything broke up and most people started heading over to The Gypsy Parlor across the street for an iced tea tasting, and that’s when my brain screamed “NO.  GO HOME.”

So, I gathered my things and thanked my hosts and left, dejected.

See, the mingling bit was the part I was looking forward to the most.  I barely know any local writers, and it is so hard for me to get out of my shell and find actual humans.  And my stupid brain said no, then triggered my stomach to agree with it, causing me to gag on the corner of Grant and Potomac.  Sometimes I feel like that stupid brain-gut connection is truly ruining everything good and exciting in my life.

Anyway, I went home.  I made my tea, and it was delicious.  Soothing chamomile and destressing lavender.  Very helpful.  Then I typed up what I wrote in my journal, and texted Sahar to tell her of my woes.  She suggested I try to network virtually, which I don’t know if I would be better at.  I decided to follow the hosts of the events fb pages.  Hopefully that will keep me on the radar for upcoming things.

Julio is having an ugly Christmas sweater open mic, which seems pretty cool, but who knows if anxiety will let me attend.  I will try, though.  I will always keep trying.  In the meantime, I shall sip my tea and write in my journal and hope to make a new friend that I can talk about the business of words with.  Someday…

4pm
Gram was British, 
so 4pm meant tea time.
Our cups, 
filled with cream and sugar, 
(honey and lemon if you were sick.) 
Biscuits were a necessity, 
though mother would say 
“It’s too close to dinnertime!”  
“She’s already overweight!”  
No mind paid by Gram, 
tea and cookies at 4pm.
Rose Red tea, 
so I could collect the porcelain figurines, 
and terrible shortbread 
from a blue metal tin,  
She would have been one-hundred on Saturday, 
but I lost her when I was eight, 
her body as cold 
as the cup of leftover tea 
on her nightstand.

my goodies.

Autumn Housekeeping

Originally, I was going to do NaNo updates on Thursdays like I did the past two years, but then I realized I already wrote about it on Monday, and also that’s when it started, so if I cover it on Mondays, it makes more sense.

So, what am I supposed to write about today?

I could write about the mayoral election which resulted in Byron Brown declaring victory before the votes were counted, which really plays right into what I expect from that guy.  Can’t accept that primary loss but will jump right in and assume he’s the winner after a write-in campaign that has yet to be certified.  Whatever.  I can wait.

I could write about my stomach, which has been quite good lately, knock on wood.  I’ve been on a new pill for about a month and have had few problems and am both optimistic and waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Overall, I feel pretty good and am trying to do things like live a normal life and eat the occasional cheeseburger.

I could write about writing, of course, in the non-NaNo sense…but not much there.  Just the blog, and the weekly Patreon.  Oh!  I did get a TikTok and you can find me @hamneggs716 (of course.)  I will occasionally read poetry for you, if you’re interested.  Other than regular old promoting myself (which I can’t stand, but do admit I’m getting better at,) I’ve just been doing research and work on my NaNo WIP.  Which I will tell you about on Monday.

So, that leaves nothing else to write about, so I will say goodbye and go back to work on my book and maybe make a fresh pot of coffee.

Happy Thursday!