The Ghost of Thanksgivings Past

It's actually the thing that holds turkey legs together, but it looks like my dear departed Cody Beast.
Turkey butt was always his favorite.

So my Syrian friend isn't dead, but his cousin is. Things were bad in Damascus over the weekend.

 Despite the proposed cease-fire for the Eid-al-Adha holiday, government airstrikes killed over 500.
I've no clue what to do about that, other than post a gif of candles for those killed. I'm sad for my friend, and unable to wrap my head around the reality he's living and attending university in.

April 19th

My grandpa had a tattoo.

a reasonable facsimile

 of his own middle name. Sounds like indigestion, he said. Your name? I asked. It's the name of someone I'll always love, he said.
He died 17 years ago today in the Oklahoma City bombing. We waited too long to hear news of him, with a rain of dust and rubble and tiny shards of glass falling silently on our hopes.
I will not make the trip to lay flowers on his chair, for I have been there many times, and today I am busy in loving my living ones. But I'll proudly wear my Sharpie tattoo, and tell as many of his awful cornball jokes as I can remember.

and also it's the feast day of St Alfege of Youtube.

And Then This Happened!

what made that?!?



no school for you, sideways child!



A thing I saw today

It's blurry...and it makes me glad i'm not a pear.

intense waspage!

I got stung by one of these when I was 10 and it swelled up horribly. My Mom, a nurse, dosed me w/ benadryl, then kept waking me to make sure I hadn't died. I told her I was fine; she said of the swelling, "You've got cellulite!" (she was slightly overwrought) I corrected her: "It's cellulitis, Mom"

The diagnosis: too clever for my own good. I suffer from it to this day.

But I did get stung yesterday on my right social finger whilst gathering pears and suffered only a burning/itching that resolved itself without dramatic incident.

Maybe there's hope.