Mom is reading Dad all the lovely birthday messages people have posted for him on Facebook

... while Bitch Kitty sits in her favorite perch on his shoulder to help him listen.

Well, shit

I was THIS CLOSE to posting that I’d gone all day without having a bandage on my wrist with nobody noticing my still-hideous-but-no-longer-gaping wound UNTIL! someone who will not be named (because she isn’t on Facebook so there’s really no reason to shame her here there or here) noticed as we were leaving rehearsal tonight.

(Apparently I’d at one point very creatively described my wound to her as looking like a vagina because her first observation was that it doesn’t look like a vagina. I’d truly forgotten that I’d ever made that comparison. But I cannot disagree with the poetic imagery.)

So the key takeaways here are:
1. My wound is so much better that I feel safe leaving it unbandaged for a day.
2. It’s still gross enough, though, that I’m politely refraining from posting a photo of it here for fear you’d vomit all over yourself when you innocently scrolled by it.
3. HOLY SHIT DONALD TRUMP IS SO FUCKING BBEEYYOONNDD OFF THE RAILS TODAY WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH HIM OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD

Welp. I’ve emptied the cat box and taken out the garbage for the last time as a 50-year-old.

So the bloom’s off THAT lily.

Facebook has reminded me that I’ve apparently begun commemorating the night before each birthday with a selfie next to the girls. So here we are again. Looking gay as a purse full of kittens.

What I want for my birthday, in no particular order:
• Less stuff
• Someone objective to help me have less stuff
• A hellfire-damning Mueller report
• A fresh start with a normal kitten
• One single little sentence in which autocorrect hasn’t Needlessly capitalized something
• Less stuff
• A bedroom that I’ve finally painted rich-people blue to cover its current state of urine-sample gold
• Someone to help me find the right shade of rich-people blue
• My old abs
• Lots of cake
• But without compromising my old abs
• A Broadway dance career
• Less stuff
• Abs

I’m kind of a big thing over at Politicked ...

Why did Facebook randomly put my friend Sage's picture next to this bright blue top-of-my-feed you-have-memories-of-cats-to-look-back-on-today cat-photo-compilation-that-you-just-KNOW-will-be-all-about-Bitch-Kitty alert?

More importantly, why is Facebook sending me a bright blue top-of-my-feed you-have-memories-of-cats-to-look-back-on-today cat-photo-compilation-that-you-just-KNOW-will-be-all-about-Bitch-Kitty alert?

As usual, my friend Dale nails it

“I see it in the Facebook feeds today and hear it in the locker room all of the time, you know the 'both parties are wrong, all politicians are crooks'. Nope sorry, not having it, there are differences. Let’s just talk about El Presidente, I mean Individual One. How about: attacks the Intelligence services, praise dictators, sides with White Nationalists, fails to disavow the KKK, attacks women based on their weight and looks, uses twitter to conduct foreign policy, asks foreign enemies to hack into a Presidential candidate’s email, fabricates a racist story about the former President’s birthplace (birtherism) , already has played more than 138% more golf than Obama, failure to criticize the Saudi Prince for the killing of an American journalist, on pace to beat Obama’s travel record (bigly), failed to release his taxes like he said he would, Trump’s use of Executive Orders, lied about Inauguration crowd size, lied on his business dealings with Russia, said Mexico would pay for the wall and then claimed he never said it, criticized a former decorated Prisoner of War, criticized the family of a deceased Gold Star family, criticized Navy admiral, William H. McRaven the former Navy SEAL commander who oversaw the mission to kill Osama Bin Laden, talk of grabbing women by their genitals, made fun of reporter with disabilities, attacks the media daily, pulling out of International Treaties on Climate Change, Nuclear weapons, and International Trade, attacked a Judge because of his ethnicity, virtually curtailed press conferences, large swaths of executive time, wait I almost forgot about lying about paying off porn stars and now a fake National emergency. I mean what will it take? This is your guy? Thirty-six indictments, nine guilty pleas so far, campaign chair going to jail for the rest of his life. These are all great guys, the kind you want running the country, right? Please don't say both sides do it ever again...this is not apples to apples, this is comparing apples to treason. There are differences and they matter."

This happy (relatively) warm-weather memory popped up in my Facebook memories today

(The Chicago Marathon is in October, so I have no idea why I initially posted this memory in January. Perhaps because it warmed my heart.) I still have this shirt, but I have no idea when or where I'd wear it again. I tried to give it to my nephew and niece to sleep in when they were kids, but they WEREN'T HAVING IT. Draw your boundaries where you can, I guess. Just don't expect me to ever call you Jake and cheer you on, you two ...

Throwback Tuesday: Close Shave Edition

I'm in The Full Monty now ... then 9 to 5 ... then my 15th year in Cedar Rapids' annual Follies song-and-dance extravaganza. I've spread myself a bit too thin this spring as far as rehearsal availability goes though, so I'll be a pit singer in this year's Follies--where I won't have to wear costumes, worry about my hair or even shave. But Facebook just reminded me there was a time when I not only had to worry about shaving for the show BUT I HAD TO DO IT ONSTAGE. I can't quite remember why, though.

So apparently I’ve consistently been pretty naked on stage every January since time immemorial

because Facebook just gave me THIS memory from seven years ago when I tapped to “Rubber Ducky” in a flesh-colored speedo covered in soap-suds-colored tulle with a bunch of equally almost-naked tappers wearing rubber-duckie butts:

Pro tip: Never tap in the presence of bubbles ... unless you want to put yourself at risk for slipping during your Maxie Fords, breaking every bone in your body and ending up in the ER wearing nothing but soap-suds-colored tulle.

My Facebook How Hard Has Aging Hit Me Challenge didn’t stray from the genre of headshots.

Nor of scruffy-dude-I-woke-up-like-this. And it took me 15 years, but at least I’ve stopped smirking like a wannabe-badass.

It's January 11 and I've already broken my resolution to not engage with dipshit assholes on social media

But I didn't specify RACIST dipshit assholes in my resolution, and I'm not putting up with any of their cousin-curious bullshit ... especially from this first dude, who's too chicken to show his Master Race face in his profile when he defends racist shitholes like Steve King.

DO. NOT. BE. RACIST. Especially in front of me.

So. Not. True.

(Back, shoulders and biceps tonight at the gym, if anyone wants to join me. Or see the pictures I post on Facebook.)

WHEW.

I'm OK

Nobody thought it would be one of the kids

Nobody probably thought the Boat Crew would last this long, actually.

When four young couples from the same Cedar Rapids Lutheran church rented a houseboat and sailed up and down the Mississippi River for a long weekend in the summer of 1971, nobody probably even thought it was more than a one-time vacation.

But the couples invited more couples and did it again the next summer, and the next. Over time, a few couples came and went, but the tradition lived on summer after summer. Eventually a core group of seven couples emerged, and the Boat Crew was established … and a vital extended family was born.

Unofficially (or officially, depending on your personal opinion) the group’s name was the Mississippi River Marching and Drinking Society. But “Boat Crew” was easier to say. And less complicated to explain to the couples’ children, who were all about the age of the Boat Crew tradition itself.

As lives and careers evolved, many of the couples moved away … but everyone came back summer after summer for what had become an annual gathering of Boat Crew family with bonds as strong as any biological family.

And that family bond extended beyond the relationship between the seven couples; their children often spent the Boat Crew weekends together in one couple’s house, under the probably exhausted watch of two or three weekend-long babysitters.

Naturally, the kids developed a family bond as strong as their parents’. They were unofficial siblings in an extended family network, and they felt confident in the parental love they received from every member of the Boat Crew.

As the summers passed, the Boat Crew bond continued to grow and strengthen, especially over a developing collection of in-jokes, funny stories and traditions that became almost sacred. The most prominent tradition was Joy. It started when one couple brought a large white flag emblazoned with the word Joy in bright colors and displayed it on the ship’s mast. The flag appeared every summer, and eventually it inspired the regular exchanging of Joy-festooned knickknacks, shirts, Christmas ornaments (all collectively over the years described as "Joy shit") and even one summer little bottles of Joy dishwashing soap.

Music – an integral part of the Lutheran church where they all met – was just as important to the Boat Crew. The group contained many talented singers, and as they gathered under the stars with a guitar and a couple bottles of wine each summer, they sang hymns and folk songs and show tunes and whatever else they could think of. Their unofficial anthem was “Beautiful Savior,” which they sang together – in full, glorious harmony – on every gathering.

As the kids grew over the next four decades, the Boat Crew also started convening off-season for confirmations and graduations and weddings and grandchildren and the occasional family tragedy … and the inevitable deaths of the Boat Crew couples’ elderly parents.

And through it all, the Boat Crew became a bit of a statistical anomaly: seven couples who lived into their 50s and 60s and 70s and now 80s … and stayed friends … and stayed married … and stayed alive.

As they started to retire from their jobs and prioritize grandparent obligations over Boat Crew gatherings, the group wasn’t always able to find a summer weekend that all seven couples could attend. And the “boat” part of Boat Crew became a bit of an anachronism; the summer reunions were happening now in Bed and Breakfasts overlooking the Mississippi instead of boats on the Mississippi.

And as they started to navigate the medical infirmities and physical indignities that come with age, the Boat Crew members started to contemplate their own mortality. Never ones to face life with fear or even reverence, they were realistic that eventually they were going to start dying … and they were not above having betting pools over who would go first.

But it never occurred to anyone that the first to die might not be one of the adults.

Robbie (who as an adult called himself Robert but I’d known him since we were toddlers and I could never think of him as anyone but Robbie) was 42, pretty much right in the middle of the range of ages of the Boat Crew kids. He started getting sick seven years ago last summer, but he didn’t think it was much to worry about: just some lower back pain, fatigue and abdominal discomfort. But then the guy behind the Chicago neighborhood deli counter where he went every day told him he looked yellow. And he became painfully constipated. And on a trip home to see his parents in Iowa, he decided to see a doctor.

And that’s where he found out.

Colon cancer.

Stage 4.

Colon cancer patients at stage 4 have an 8-15% chance of being alive five years after diagnosis. And Robbie, forever the optimist, dove right into surgery and chemotherapy while his parents took care of him in their home.

But it quickly became obvious that he was losing the battle. And as he eventually slipped into a coma, his parents – buoyed by the love and calls and texts and emails of Boat Crew members across the country – kept a vigil by his bed.

And six weeks after his diagnosis – six weeks after driving himself and his two cats seven hours from Chicago to his parents’ house, five weeks after walking into the doctor’s office with what he thought were just stomach pains, three weeks after cheering on friends in the Chicago Marathon via Facebook – Robbie drew his last breath, sending waves of shock and devastation throughout his extended Boat Crew family.

Robbie’s father had died of cancer 40 years earlier, before the Boat Crew had been officially established. His widowed mother and the man who eventually became her next husband had been regular Boat Crew members from nearly the beginning.

While she was still single, though, she and Robbie had taken vacations with our family a number of times, often to Adventureland amusement park in Des Moines, Iowa, and once on a Bicentennial road trip to Philadelphia to see the Liberty Bell and to Washington, D.C., to see pretty much everything else associated with America’s birth.

Robbie and I went to different high schools and colleges, but we eventually both found our ways to Chicago. We kept seeing each other at Boat Crew gatherings, but we’d slowly drifted apart … as had many of the Boat Crew kids as we scattered about the country and built our own families.

Robbie’s parents and mine, of course, had stayed fast Boat Crew friends. And when Robbie was facing the first weeks of his cancer treatments, my parents made a trip to Des Moines to stay with them.

Robbie died seven years ago today. Even though I knew it was inevitable, I was more choked up than I’d expected to be when I got the call. We hadn’t seen each other in probably eight years. And I knew that he was no longer suffering through an excruciating illness. But his death – especially as a Boat Crew kid and not an adult – was a shock to all of us … and an indescribable devastation to his parents. And though nobody in the extended Boat Crew family has died since Robbie did, we are all tacitly preparing ourselves for the next passing.

But for the first time in many years, the entire Boat Crew – along with a handful of Boat Crew kids – dropped everything in their lives and appeared at the funeral. Forever part of the family, we walked in with Robbie’s parents and biological family members and were seated right behind them. And when the congregation sang “Beautiful Savior,” the Boat Crew’s beautiful harmonies rose above the music as if to lift Robbie to whatever awaited him in the afterlife and remind him of the loving extended family he’d been a part of on earth.

His parents asked me to be one of his pall bearers, which I accepted as an honor. Escorting a lifelong friend to his grave is overwhelming – especially when we’re both so young – but I felt giving him a solemn, respectful final journey was the best gift I could give him. He was family, after all.

Remember this photo?

It circulated on social media two years ago toward the end of trump's campaign. I wrote about how disturbing it was at the time--disturbing for its vulgarity, disturbing for its public invitation to apparently consensual rape, disturbing for the Zeitgeist of near-normalized, something-to-be-seen-as-humorous sexual assault that it represented.

It popped up in my Facebook memories this morning ... just as we as a country are being newly assaulted by avalanches of revelations about institutionalized, systemic, cavalierly-dismissed-male-privilege sexual assault wrought by Brett Kavanaugh and his ilk. The coincidence that this Facebook memory appeared now is odd in itself for its almost-years-to-the-date timing, but it's also horrifyingly disturbing for the fact that trump's 2016 pussy-grabbing braggadocio has been buried--albeit under two full years of his almost daily acts of catastrophic, psychopathic incompetence--to the point that we as a society have almost forgotten about it ... or at least become numbly inured to it.

Many of the facts of what I wrote two years ago have changed--I am now among the legions of people who have all but permanently ended relationships with trump-defending friends and trump-apologist newsfeeds, and I cringed as I saw that in this post I'd tempered my outrage over this picture and what it represented by mentioning cat videos and me looking at pictures of men in speedos--but my underlying incredulity, repulse and outrage have only grown in the last year.

Here is what I wrote, without being edited to reframe the snapshot of my mindframe and emotion a year ago. Re-reading it has both shown me how I've evolved in my white-male-privilege-I'm-never-going-to-do-it-and-it's-never-going-to-happen-to-me subconscious attitudes on the issue in the last 12 months and alerted me to the fact that I'm still not done purging those subconscious attitudes:

I subscribe to both liberal and conservative newsfeeds on Facebook and I have thoughtful, principled friends and acquaintances on here from multiple locations across the political continuum. As such, when I scroll through my personal Facebook feed, I see about 3% share-if-you-love-your-sister memes, 4% I-bet-you're-not-smart-enough-to-pass-this-egregiously-stupid-quiz clickholes, 9% adorable cat videos, 17% pictures of hot guys in speedos, and 943% political memes, forwards, rants and breathlessly dire warnings about the future of our very galaxy if X or Y becomes president. Aside from the occasional legitimate news article or mini essay from a thoughtful friend, most of what's on my feed is just noise between adorable cat videos. But it's still noise I pay attention to.

It's no secret that I have a visceral loathing for everything related to Donald Trump, from his willful ignorance to his inability to form a coherent sentence to his national isolationism to the sense of legitimacy he gives to racists, misogynists, homophobes and proud low-information voters. I realize there are deplorables on both sides of the aisle--along with gotcha pictures and footage documenting their collective stupidity--and I'm inured enough that I'm able to ignore the extremes in an attempt to form what I admit is a highly biased but still open-eared personal knowledge base as a citizen and voter.

But.

This picture of a Trump supporter in her hand-lettered shirt has appeared from multiple sources in my feed. At first I just scrolled past it like it was so much extremist noise. But it kept appearing, as more and more sexual-assault accusations piled up against Trump. It kept appearing as Trump dismissed some of his accusers as not hot enough for his tastes. It kept appearing as the idea of consent was thoroughly parsed by everyone from Morning Joe to Rush Limbaugh.

And this picture ... this gleeful woman giving pretty explicit consent for Donald Trump to sexually assault her ... this overweight woman presumably knowing full well that her body is nowhere near Donald Trump's beauty-pageant-level standards of attractiveness ... this judgment-impaired woman who not only found nothing wrong with wearing her message of consent with an arrow pointing to her vagina in public but who happily let herself be photographed in it by someone who obviously let it go viral on the Internet ... this picture thoroughly sickened me.

This woman willingly lowered herself to Donald Trump's lowest form of low. She let herself be mocked and vilified and humiliated on the world stage. And for what? Did she change anyone's vote? Did she elevate the national dialogue? Did she impress her family and friends? Did she advance her cause?

Was it worth it? Did she get her wish?

The Kaine-Pence VP debate was two years ago tonight

Facebook just reminded me that I live-blogged my incredulous condescension toward the hypocritical vile-queen evil that is Mike Pence as I watched. Looking back, I seemed to be preternaturally composed:

8:15 PM
Pence sure is good at changing the subject to avoid answering an awkward question. I'll give him that.

8:37 PM
Pence seems alarmingly controlled -- which is quite an accomplishment given that his biggest challenge is to spin Donald's worm shit into silk.

8:52 PM
"Basket of deplorables" does NOT equal an "insult-driven campaign," Pence. But it was cute of you to act like your tender lotus-blossom feelings got hurt over it. Kaine gave you a mile-long list of shit that's sprayed daily out of Trump's for-real insult-driven campaign and "basket of deplorables" is all you can come up with as a response? FAIL.

9:04 PM
"If you don't know the difference between a dictatorship and leadership, then you need to go back to a fifth-grade civics class." Nicely played, Kaine. Except I would have ended with a more withering insult. Seriously. Hire me to write your speeches. I have a degree in wither.

9:10 PM
Seriously, Pence? "That was beneath you and Hillary Clinton"? You and Trump are the national grand champions on going sewer-level low. You have zero credibility for trying to look like you've ever taken a high road in your life.

9:16 PM
ENOUGH with the butthurt whimpering, Pence. Reciting televised Trump quotes and lists of documented facts is NOT an "insult-driven campaign," no matter how loudly you whine that it is.

9:30 PM
NOBODY wants abortions, Mike. Don't make it sound like you protect life and Democrats feed on the souls of dead babies. We ALL want fewer unwanted pregnancies, which in turn would result in fewer abortions. Hillary herself has said as much on the Senate floor.

The Hillary/Horse'sAss debate was two years ago today

Facebook memories shows that I live-blogged my color commentary as I watched it. I didn't realize Snifflin' Don's "very good people" blather has been an established through line in the fiction of his presidency.

The highlights:

8:24 pm
Hillary's talking in paragraphs. Donald's just yelling the same interruptions over and over. #SniffingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:35 pm
"Trumped-Up Trickle Down" gets points for alliteration and conceptual clarity, but it's too rhythmically bumpy to catch on. My money's on "Deplorable Don." #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:44 pm
When did #SnifflingDonald suddenly get interested in infrastructure? That's a four-syllable word. And it's nothing he can electroplate with gold and slap his name on in seven-foot letters. #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

8:48 pm
"Law and Order"! He finally said it. Now I can mark it off on my bingo card. Next up? My money's on "The Generals." #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate

9:00 pm
UGH. Here we go again. The NRA is "very very good people and they're protecting the Second Amendment." Since when do "very very good people" insist that "a well-regulated militia" means "citizens with assault rifles"? That's bastardizing the Second Amendment, not protecting it. Only an anus-lipped sociopath would confuse "bastardizing" with "protecting."

9:06 pm
Birther bullshit? Still? It was--and continues to be--a meaningless distraction for people too stupid and lazy to understand NATO. But it does have the bonus benefit of being a convenient code for helping sentient people suss out racists. #SnifflingDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:25 pm
OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. #SnifflingDonald just spent 90 seconds yelling like a feral boob monkey about his temperament! And also his temperament! Plus his temperament! #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:36 pm
"She doesn't have the stamina," says the guy hemorrhaging snot like a man with end-stage syphilis. #SnifflingDonald #DeplorableDonald #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

9:46 pm
#SnifflingDonald postulates that the DNC could have been hacked by "someone sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds." What does it matter how much the bed weighs? #SniffleGate #TrumpTrainWreck

2018
Look! I made a calendar that says I didn't rape anybody for a whole month in college! (Oops. That was Kavanaugh. I get my rapists mixed up sometimes.)

....aaaand just to rub it in

This successful-Disney-half-marathon memory popped up today on Facebook. But check out those big yellow Mickey buttons I made for my Mickey-red shorts!

The five stages of a delicious afternoon nap:

1. Sleepytime thoughts.
2. I am asleep.
3. What IS this wondrous dream world?
4. I am awake.
5. Facebook.