Seven Things

in lieu of six links, which i don’t have, because there is only one, because i have been doing only one thing

my camera roll is currently full of screenshots (bellwork the app, bellwork the site, bellwork the notifications) and stuff I threw away during my dad’s and mine Great Garage Purge. this is the most interesting image I could find from recently. it makes me very sad.

Hello! My uterus is bleeding, which is something that seems to happen every four weeks, aka every other time I write this newsletter. Conveniently, this is a time during which my mind pulls all the stops to convince me that nothing I think about is worth thinking about, much less share. Anyway, here are some things I’ve been thinking about the past few days.

1. It’s my birthday next week, happy yay to me. Kiryll planned a little trip for us. I am looking forward to this so much, I cannot even tell you. It’s been a long time since I went anywhere on my own terms.

2. For most of these past two weeks, I have been working on the website for my workout app. It’s not perfect, but I have no energy left to tend to the last couple details that require tending to for a felt sense of perfection right now, so. I’m proud of it. I kinda wanted to talk about the creative process leading up to this point, but I don’t have the energy to do those thoughts justice. So, maybe next time.

3. It’s also this Youtuber’s birthday next week, who I came upon by chance yesterday. Seems we are both creative Cross of Laws babies/cats who just want a nice cardboard box to exist inside. It also seems we finally committed to doing something in regular intervals — no matter how “mediocre” the results — around the exact same time this year. I am jealous of her version for many reasons, most of them petty and embarrassing. But she seems like a really cool person. So. Good for her. (Post-publish edit: And now I just randomly stumbled across her aka Savannah Brown on Substack. What in the world)

4. I have been unspeakably sad for minutes at a time in random intervals about the old baby stuff I deleted from the garage last week, like the formula/breast milk bottles from the unspeakably difficult first three months in my kid’s life. I don’t know how I will ever process the fact that they aren’t there anymore, waiting for me to look at them one more time. But I also couldn’t justify keeping them around for another ten years. Wtd

5. The kid is, as of yesterday, no longer a third-grader.

6. I made so much fun of Kiryll’s heretical-investigation-cross-of-preventionpreparation-ways weeks ago when he made an itinerary *website* for his family’s visit to Cologne. Poor guy had to defend his planning itch so hard. I realized the error of my ways when he did it again for my birthday trip. It is very practical indeed to have all the links and everything in one place, all laid out nicely. So, when it turned out my son couldn’t stay at his dad’s the first week of summer break, I followed in Kiryll’s footsteps and had the robot mock up a small itinerary for the alternative he’d been wary of till then — a trip to Berlin with his grandma. He was delighted with the visual promise of seeing a huge rock collection and eating authentic ramen and cannot wait.¹

7. There is no seventh thing. This was initially true about the fourth thing too, but then it morphed into the sadness thing, so there is actually a fourth thing. There is truly no seventh thing though, idk what else to tell ya

8. The eight thing is that my kid has been very insistent that I finally launch the TMW store. I consistently don’t know what to tell him except that I really, really hope it happens soon, but it’s just not there yet. Life is life-ing. ugh

Alright, I bid you farewell from my little cloud of mope. Let’s hope some semblance of a balance between depressing stuff and fun stuff will exist next time. Until then,

1. He’s outer vision cognition, so show-don’t-tell is the number one rule for interacting with him, I think. Also he’s a projector, so asking him “wanna go to berlin with grandma” or, worse, telling him “you will go to berlin with grandma” are not viable options in the slightest

I wonder if his being a projector has something to do with how immensely I have been enjoying his presence since right around his ninth birthday. It’s like, this kid was an accident, he was not officially invited to Earth. He appeared anyway and so the first few years of his existence were tough for him and everyone close to him. Now he’s been here for a while (maybe bc his ego has had a chance to prove itself? and his brain is developed enough that the conversations we have are truly productive? and, this is the big one — I am not constantly tasked with taking care of him) what can I say, the dude is a delight. I miss him every second he’s not here.