I’m going to work with the climber for a couple of hours the week after next on our book. I’m looking forward to her feedback and seeing her illustrations. I told her that I’m also amenable to story changes. I want to have a couple of pictures out too, because I’m a little married to the idea of a couple of scenes that are autobiographical, so I want to show her the context of them when I was growing up and a child. I’m interested in her childhood too. We should add some elements from hers.

She and I commuted without the guy from work on Monday. I was talking to her about my dog and then my Dad. I said, “It’s going to be much more difficult to lose my dog than it was my Dad. I think that you know that my Dad was abusive.” She was pretty quiet. I told her that I’d done 5-years of analysis and it fixed everything and I was able to show up for everything until he died of COVID. I didn’t really grieve him per se, and made peace with all the yelling, some limited hitting and aggression, and also intimidation. I did what was right. I didn’t give these specifics that I’m writing about here, but left it at “abusive” and making peace with my childhood. Finally, I said, “I don’t want you to feel like my therapist. I want to make sure that it’s ok that you know these things about me.” She said that I know her well too, and I said, “I don’t feel like I know you very well. I just want you to feel comfortable with me when I share.”

I took her home because she doesn’t have a car right now and sometimes borrows her partner’s car. We wished each other well and we have a time and day scheduled after work on the 15th for our book. I still get fluttery with her, but I don’t make any moves because I don’t know what is on or off the table with respect to her partner and don’t want to be disrespectful. I don’t know either if she has another partner currently. Regardless, she is smart and a brilliant artist and I’m so glad to get the book going!

I went to a book launch on Thursday and it was nice. I was incredibly tired though. I left right after it was over because I had already socialized with my friend (The author who I see when I go to the co-ed discussion group.) and met a new friend. The new friend lives near me, so when I go to this group again, I’ll text her to see if she’d like me to pick her up. I’m going to the Women’s Discussion group at the end of the month. My friend who leads it is out of town with her family currently, so I’m going to bring whey protein to drink because the other facilitator doesn’t do any food.

I have my car back. It looks like a cyclops. I have a man who restores headlights on luxury cars coming to my house today to work on the passenger headlight. I’ll have to move out all of my bikes. I’m bringing my Mountain Bike inside. It’s really rainy today. It feels like April. I’m so glad to be out of the monstrous rental car with front wheel drive. It was terrible and really noisy with actual bells and whistles. It barely fit in my garage!

I got the door of my hall closet repaired. I got the sheetrock in the entryway to my basement repaired too. Oddly, right before the potluck the mirror above my stairs fell. It didn’t break and was lodged onto the cat perch where they eat and drink. The paint behind it was bright white. Who paints a house and tapes over a mirror? So careless and lazy! The contractors textured the wall, painted primer over it, and hung the mirror with subtle metal clips. The next project is finding three nice door knobs, painting all the doors, and painting the stairwell where I had a new retractable gate installed. I’ll have the painter also paint behind the mirror in the same color and match the paint that is on most of the accent wall behind my hutch. I want to do projects in my house now that I am alone in it.