What's new is nothing, except:
The restaurant where I baked pies closed for good in October.
I watch football every Sunday after a lifetime of disinterest.
People buy my pies directly from me now. I place them in a red pie safe on my porch, and when I check again, they're gone. Let me brag a second. Some people say my pies are among the best in Kansas City.
Josh and Shawn's hair is longer and wilder. Hair ties are found in every room. Josh can pull his hair back himself. Shawn always asks if I can do it for him. I cut off all my hair in the summer. It's back to a length that just looks normal to me. When I'm right out of the shower and see my reflection, I'm fooled into thinking it's any other year.
None of us has gotten sick yet because none of us has traveled because where would we go? How would we begin to escape this? I've tried to escape it by buying toys that remind me of when I had fun 25 years ago and my bedroom alone contained the borders of the world. Mostly, I buy Transformers because they're toys but also puzzles. They're as addictive as cigarettes. And like cigarettes, they soothe fidgeting.
When I watch football, the stadiums are empty. Maybe that's why I can watch now. There's space for me where there wasn't before. I told a friend it's been like learning a new language, except I've known the words my whole life. I just didn't know what they meant. I was surrounded by people who used them. Now, I can use them, too. Go Chiefs.
Every night, I spend a couple hours in Shawn's room. I smoke from a weed pen and get just high enough to laugh again. It's the most important ritual of my day. If I don't do it, I can't sleep.
Josh and Shawn and I read the news separately and then talk about it when we eat. "Did you see?" We all saw. The other night at 3 AM, someone in the neighborhood shot off a couple rounds. The story that formed in my half-asleep mind was that they were going house to house and killing everyone inside. How horrifying is it that instead of keeping me awake until morning, I accepted the thought and fell back to sleep?
We're all fine here in that we're all fucked up and successfully pushing off the reckoning of it. We have each other, at least. I cried one night a couple weeks ago, a sadness whose threads led back to a million sources. Those sources are bigger than I can do anything about, so I cleaned out a closet that's been needing it. I told myself it was a world I could control. I took what I hated about it, put it in black garbage bags, threw it outside, and I let it go.