The Half Smoke

August 10, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s the best local dish you’ve ever eaten while traveling?

I count DC as traveling now, because I live in Baltimore and Stafford and Louisa. Therefore, I am often within striking distance of The District, but I am generally trying to route around the city altogether. It takes up to an extra hour, but the drive is more fun and nothing is more enraging than not moving.

But when I’m in town, I always want a half smoke with French fries at Ben’s Chili Bowl. It is the most excellent fast food on earth. A half smoke is not merely a hot dog. It is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.

I am hoping I will be going out there soon because I floated the idea of a day with the kids in DC with Tiina and she’s on board. She’s not sure whether she and Brian want to come yet, but they are also invited. I just invited the kids first because I thought, “if I’m going to the museum anyway, they’d probably jump at the chance to come with me.” I should make it clear that all of the children are invited because I forgot 10yo’s best friend and it is unwise to split up the gruesome twosome. As inadvisable as separating Tiina and me.

Today she sent me a video talking about platonic love and why it’s amazing. I said, “ALL OF THIS. Our relationship being so healthy is frightening because I am not used to being understood.” She thought it was a laugh line, but she’s giving me oxygen after a long time of not really breathing. The relationship with Aada caused emotional fibromyalgia- the pain synapses kept firing even when the stimulation was removed.

Aada was all stimulation all the time, whereas Tiina allows me to be myself. She doesn’t have expectations of the behavior she wants to see out of me. Expectations are around the work, not who I am as a person. And running a family is indeed work. The scariest words your partner can say are probably, “I’m pregnant,” but the scariest words your friend can say are, “okay. You’ve got the COM.”

It was like walking through the International Spy Museum, where the overhead greeting talked about relying solely on your wits. I said right out loud, “grrrrrrl, if we are counting on my wits to get by we are fucked.” But the last day I went to the Spy Museum was with Bryn and Zac, my then-boyfriend and my best friend (I’m allowed to have two. Shut it.). We all cracked up because I am not the common sense-meister.

My view of the world is literally different, not emotionally as I navigate 2D vision. I’ve tried therapy and it did not work. So my eyes are stuck not tracking together and it means I miss a lot. Sensory issues always have emotional repercussions. I am judged harshly on what I do not see in every aspect of my life.

None of that is true with Tiina. She knows my balance is shit and somehow tolerates my presence, anyway. It means a lot of things get dropped, spilled, kicked, etc. because it’s on the floor and my brain doesn’t have sight there. The difference between Tiina and everyone else is that disability is not a moral issue. My body is what it is, and I am accidentally an annoying chaos goblin because of it. It is not intentional, it is impact.

I do not take responsibility for having a disability. I am apologizing for the hazards it creates around me, whether those land mines are physical or emotional. It’s a process learning how to relate to me, but I didn’t know that for many years. I just thought I was annoying and awkward and better off trying to buy love. Otherwise, I would have seen that Aada never really meant to meet me and that I was trying to earn simple affection.

This doesn’t feel like that. This feels like “I want to contribute because they do.” When the kids are with me I don’t worry about money, I just pay. I am the wallet and I don’t mind. Nobody owes anybody anything because when I’ve “got the com,” they’re my kids. Not like my possession, like my neighborhood.

I am not a glorified babysitter, I am a node in the system. Very, very different indeed.

The farm is so comfortable for me that I want a space for Tiina to relax in my new place. But it’s not just her, of course. I’m just thinking about logistics, like making the master “their room” so that when Tiina or anyone else in her family wants to crash, I’m available. I am not taking less. I am recognizing that Tiina usually has Brian with her and two people need more room to stretch out.

It’s about giving Tiina a space to be who she is without the kids, and choosing whether Brian is invited or not because she gets to choose the energy she wants. And, of course, a place for the kids to crash when Brian and Tiina have hit their limit. To me, this is what being family is about. I cannot offer them the world, but I can offer them a safe space in it.

I’m looking everywhere between DC and Baltimore because I’d like to be closer to DC. I still want all my healthcare to be in Baltimore, but cutting off time from the commute out to Stafford and Louisa would be great. Baltimore is just not that far from the Maryland DC suburbs, and I only have to go in once a week.

10yo said, “how much does writing bring in?” I said, “not a lot. My mother and my stepmother both died and left me money, so mostly I live on that.” I then explained putting together a disability case, because in mine traditional work is incompatible. I am capable of creation and productivity, but not on a schedule. I have support needs, and I cannot ignore them. Perimenopause is making all of my deficits much, much worse and harder to manage.

In short, my balance and my personality both get worse when I’m tired.

I want to get back to my own energy levels by having a space that’s open to the whole family. That driving to see each other isn’t always one way, because I like everything how it is, but it’s nagging at me that I don’t have space to host to even make it a reality.

I don’t just want to be in Tiina and Brian’s space, I want them in mine.

All I ever really want from anyone in Tiina’s family is presence, most notably hers because she’s my favorite person. 10yo asked me “who’s your favorite child?”

Me: I have three favorite children…. no, wait. I have two. Pepper is an adult.

Brian: Oh, I do.

10yo: Mom, who’s your favorite child?

Tiina: Leslie

Me: I HEARD THAT!

Feel the love.

Waiting for Aada

August 9, 2026August 9, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

It was always going to be a famous story that never ended, because we’ll never stop thinking about that time in our lives and what it did to us. I was really, really paranoid walking around Fredericksburg with 10yo because I am Southern and polite enough never to show the pain running underneath but 10yo would spot it in a New York minute.

And hit me in the gut with words the way Aada’s kid used to when he was a toddler.

She said that she threw three sizes due to creating new humans, and DAMN IT, she is right again.

I have no idea what the pain of childbirth is like, but I hear about it in graphic detail, like signing up for a graduate course very, very quickly. Because it’s not just Aada I have to watch out for. We’re all in the same general area, and due to my conversations with Aada, “just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” I don’t mean anything but “this might be unpleasant.” It’s just not something I’d really like 10yo to see, and not because there is absolutely anything wrong with it. Aada is delightful online, so I’m sure she’s capable of faking it in person or not being seen. My very, very good bet is on the latter. My only point is that I’m not afraid of being seen by anyone but 10yo. My mother lion has gone off and I’m very protective.

Aada painted a very negative picture of me over the years because she treated me exactly like she treats herself. What I wanted was seen as intrusive down to the most minute detail. What I wanted was any kind of reassurance that any of this was real. I was baring my soul on paper and she was using it as entertainment and provocation. My life was just a story in her head, but at least she knew how I felt. How it would be if she actually showed up- hanging with Tiina, Brian, and the kids at the farm. An invitation she said she’d think about, and that meant the world even if she wasn’t serious.

I don’t want the vibe that there’s danger. I want the vibe to be that my situational awareness is turned up to 11 when the kids are with me. I don’t have the tools that Aada does to be as intrusive into her life as she could be into mine when she’s angry. And she’s angry a lot. It felt like being held hostage. Neither one of us could let go, and she wouldn’t let us get any closer. My needs never mattered one bit, and she said that she never intentionally hurt me. She maintained a very elaborate lie for many years, and it was never the first lie that mattered. It was the CVS receipt.

We met in 2013, which by my recollection is a long time ago.

“I was on a flight home.”

It was all bullshit.

My one regret in life is that I didn’t realize the magic show had started, change faces and disappear.

How to Save a Life

August 9, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s a thing you wish schools actually taught?

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Schools are all about image, but there’s no class on the fundamentals:

how do I budget?
how do I cook?
how do I arrange travel?
how do I manage my interpersonal relationships?

Schools used to have a version of this called “Home Economics,” except it was geared toward women…… when I am pretty sure that men also eat when they’re alone (please advise). Nothing about Home Ec was gendered except the expectations of the people running the class. Gay men have been the unsung heroes of Home Ec since time immemorial.

But if kids don’t have these skills, parents are sending them off to school to be the world’s worst roommate. Parents send their little cherubs to college when they’ve never even done their own laundry. Especially if you are neurodivergent, this will probably end up in a dumpster fire. That is because at 18, all of the sudden you are responsible for your own life with absolutely no framework in mind as to how that happens.

I have some of the same issues that Tiina’s kids have, it’s just that I’m so old that tricks that work on kids don’t work on me. I want to prevent this from happening to other young adults, because what no one will tell you about college is that being able to go to school and being able to handle your life are two separate skills.

School barely addresses the first.

I Don’t Have Any Pets

August 8, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Share a photo of your pet and tell us one thing that makes them uniquely them.

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I am way too busy taking care of my own schedule to think about a pet. Therefore, I cannot tell you about any of mine. But my creative partner, Tiina, has a mess of them and she does not mind if I disappear into the backyard and take weeds to the goats. The animals are not generally as excited about being hugged as I am, and genuinely do not know what to do.The goats don’t do it so naturally, anyway. They do love me, but I do not think I will experience an embrace any time soon.

But the hugging is mostly Maclaren. He’s a Frenchie and built to curl up on my lap and gum my arm. If I am ever in need of a job, I think there is a future for me in “human dog toy.”

Yesterday I had the farm to myself because Tiina and Brian were at the hospital and the kids weren’t home from doing virtual school yet (they go to a family friend’s house because Brian and Tiina work from home). If you are just joining us, we have been on Baby Watch for several weeks and the baby was born yesterday. All of the worry paid off because things were smooth as silk around here.

But when the adrenaline of the drive wore off, I had time to kill before I had to be “on.” I went and took some pictures of the animals and introduced myself to the pigs. I get sick to my stomach at bad smells, so it was a dicey meetcute.

But the best part of the day was Brian walking through the door and giving me a bear hug, saying “thanks for helping it all happen around here.” And I can’t talk about what happened when I saw Tiina. There aren’t any words. The new grandma glow is blinding. She’s beautiful, and trying to express my feelings just makes it less powerful because I’m inadequate at describing mystery. Tiina looks different than the last time I saw her, and it is because she is wearing joy.

Limerance

August 6, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s something you used to worry about but don’t anymore?

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It took a long time for me to realize that my life at the farm could be real if I wanted it. Brian was more up front than I was. “We should give Leslie a drawer or something at the lake house.” I have “taken over” 16yo’s room every time I’ve been there in the past, and it’s something about which I feel bad. I don’t like displacing anyone, and I’m sorry for that part of it. But I also love his room and I’m grateful that he doesn’t seem to mind. I have a place in Brian’s house, and it makes me feel welcome.

When we’re at the farm, I just crash out on the couch. It’s comfortable, and there’s usually a dog. Listening to the rhythms of the farm is a whole essay in and of itself, and Tiina has half joked about how to accomplish a room for me at the farm many times…… or maybe she was never joking and just buy the damn air conditioner already, idk. I would build out their entire attic at my own cost if I planned on living there full time. I just cannot because I need Maryland’s infrastructure in terms of health care. Crashing on the couch is my decision, not Tiina’s. When she said, “I just want to keep Leslie forever,” I started thinking about how to make that happen for her.

The way I feel about it is that I can contribute to the financial cost of the farm if I’m the one receiving the benefit. If there’s any way I can figure out health care in Stafford, it makes total sense to say “for the low, low cost of building out your own space, it is a short walk from hanging out to sleep.” It’s my own health care that’s the holdup, not Brian and Tiina’s support of me. I think the reason Tiina and I work so well is that she’s my favorite person just to sit in silence with. Work gets done on both our parts, but our energies aren’t focused in the same direction. She likes diamond painting. I like writing. When I’m at the farm I shift to her sleep schedule because of it. Her presence matters while I’m blogging. It regulates my emotions in a way that writing alone does not.

Tiina also likes music while she’s working, and I am introduced to new stuff because of it. It’s been an adjustment to write and listen at the same time, but it’s recovering an old skill. I used to listen to music while I wrote all the time, and then just lapsed into complete silence. I am not altogether sure this was good for me.

So, the farm is very important to me in terms of equilibrium. Staying grounded, staying focused on more than myself, learning to live in community…. all of the things that have been missing for the last 12 years because I isolated myself on purpose and couldn’t get back out of it until I met Tiina. She was the first person to truly see me as I am, because I came armed with knowledge I didn’t in the past. I learned that having preferences and opinions was not bad, and I wasn’t going to be voted off the island for expressing them. I am allowed to have a full range of emotions and not the emotions other people say I can have. This is the life. This is what you want. Not fame and fortune, but people who let you be you.

The lake house is where I get to stretch out, thanks to a kindness from a kid.

16yo’s room is decorated to my taste, because he’s a book guy. There are very few traces of him as a little boy, but marks of the old man he is becoming. The kind who takes books seriously is my kind of guy. But we don’t talk about books. He, like all young readers, reads in the car. He reminds me of me at that age, blissfully unaware of what was going on thanks to any number of novels. I watch him, shoulders hunched, turning pages as if the world is on fire.

Boy, same.

At his age, I was lost in Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Nat Hentoff.

“Black Boy” and “Native Son” rewired my whole program. There are plenty of lessons for white people in those books, but what I took away was a sense of queer identity. The books’ focus on Blackness as a systemic concept allowed me to see all the ways queer society mirrors it. All the ways that ideas of excellence are both self-claiming and jumping for approval that will never come.

Excellence has to come from within and it cannot be tied to worth in this country. You cannot be good enough to deserve rights. There is no such thing as The Perfect Minority.

My entire family has a focus on social justice because I am a liberal Christian and they are Jewish. It is a shared sense of tikkun olam, a concept that is missing from the Christian world and is fundamental to who Jesus was as a person…… “if you heal yourself, you heal the world.” I spent a lot of time in youth group singing “let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.” Yet there was no actual concrete idea on how to do that. The manual is with my Jewish counterparts.

As I was telling a rabbi on Threads, “my Hebrew is mostly limited to transliteration as I struggle through the service.” I am not interested in conversion, just showing up in Jewish spaces as I am. However, I am delighted every single time Tiina says, “I think you are secretly a Jew.” Because that’s what happens when you follow the historical Christ, and not whatever is happening in mainstream America………. Christ, literally.

Here is what is resonating with me about this time in my life: it is a reclamation of things I wanted when I was younger.

When I was in kindergarten and first grade, my next-door neighbors were Jewish. This led to celebrating holidays together and my dad performing an interfaith wedding for the adults. I am not new to being a Christian in Jewish spaces, I want it around me all the time. Christ’s own community is a better fit for me than the one we followers built for him. I am not saying the words he said when I attend the Episcopal church…. of course there are bits and pieces….. but by and large shul is the service he knows. I’m not saying Christ has never prayed the Prayer of Humble Access. I’m just saying he’s probably said the Kaddish more.
It was my father’s idea that I should audit Hebrew school with the neighbor kids, and we got the call to move like a month after that. It’s a missed opportunity that weighs on my conscience like a rock. Picking up 10yo from Hebrew school is picking up the child I forgot there.
I love listening and absorbing. Jewish life is different than my own, and I am learning new things every day. But what is different is that it is not the outside looking in. It is being welcomed into a Jewish community like my Galveston neighbors did in the 1980s. I love volunteering at Beth Sholom Temple, and it doesn’t have to come with a T-shirt, but I am grateful that it does because I wouldn’t look so fashionable without it.
My prayer life is more textured than it used to be, because my outlook has changed. I want to work on real-world solutions instead of kvetching at the sky.

Luckily, converting to Judaism is not a requirement to be in Tiina’s family, but if it was, I would take it under advisement and make a counteroffer. I will not convert, but I will eat so much noodle kugel and brisket that no one will notice. Truthfully, me converting to Judaism would be on-brand, and yet not. I value where I come from too much to make that complete a leap. But what I am interested in is Jesus as a first-century Jewish teacher, placing him in his own context and not the professional Christian superhero that seems to guard American shores.

I constantly want people to get a grip. The land area we’re talking about in the Bible is about the size of New Jersey. It was not “the world.” It was “the world as they knew it.”

The problem is people taking the Bible literally and not seriously….. something that the Jews have been doing for thousands of years before Christians were even a twinkle. There is translation to be done, and face value is close to worthless. But Evangelicals keep telling themselves that they know the whole story as it was written.

Morgan Freeman:

They do not.

I wish that Jesus had been a blogger.

No, seriously. We’d have a lot less debate over what he actually meant if we’d had words clearly written by him while he was still alive and not recorded years afterward. If there is any truth to this whole “Jesus is coming. Look busy.” kind of attitude it’s that he’s going to show up and I’m going to be like, “my friend, you need to pull up a keyboard. We have work to do.”

“Jesus never said a word about homosexuality, therefore it cannot be essential to his teaching.” -Jim Rigby

Because I would like an actual Jew to lecture us on what the clobber passages mean, and he’s used to being in front of an audience.

But it is because of farm life and lake life that spiritually, everything is falling into place.

That doesn’t mean that this relationship with Tiina didn’t start out in abject fear of rejection. I was worried about everything. “What if she thinks I’m hitting on her when I just need a friend?” “What if I say I’m good with working with kids and it’s a dumpster fire?” “What if Brian and the kids don’t like me?”

Every single fear has been quieted enough that worrying about limerence has faded into real rhythms that are based on the ground. I am not just thinking about my chosen family, I am doing. I am asking myself “what can I do to be more helpful to the people around me because I require a lot of help in return?” When you are disabled, interdependence becomes important. At first I thought I was just wishing for a friend and trying to make it real. It took time to realize that Tiina was reaching out for me, too.

I did not want another situation in which I was constantly told I was valuable while also being discarded. This has not been that. This has been, “I have an incredible kitchen, and you are allowed to cook in it.” That is catnip to a former line cook with a standard small apartment setup. My apartment is HUGE, yet the kitchen is the size of a postage stamp. I do not understand.

At the farm, everything is above my head within easy reach. My own kitchen is a level of hell I’d rather not subject myself to, because the logistics are awful. I am currently searching for a new place, so the number one priority is never to have this kitchen layout ever again. Tiina says she pictures me in a little place in a walkable neighborhood like Fell’s Point. Now that I have a car, that is feasible. It wasn’t when I first moved to Baltimore because I needed to live near the Metro.

Tiina sees the whole picture as well- that we are enmeshed and separate. I love my life with her, Brian, and the kids. I also love my life in the city. Two or three hours is the perfect transition time from my house to the farm or the lake. I am using that time to educate myself through the cunning use of Audible. My next listen is “Kin,” by Tayari Jones.

The thing that Jones and I have in common is Oprah.

I have never written a book that got picked by her, but I have been interviewed by the executive producers of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” for the reaction to “She’s Come Undone” (Wally Lamb). It went very well, but I didn’t fit the vibe of the show they were trying to produce. My queer perspective was not represented, but that is probably due to the time and not whether my argument was valid.

So, I know that Oprah and I think on the same wavelength if nothing else. If Oprah liked the book, I probably will, too.

There was always going to be an inevitable backlash against Oprah because she’s just that famous, and no one’s behavior is purely unproblematic once they’re in their 60s. People in that backlash seem to have gotten amnesia and do not remember when Oprah was out front and center for queer people. Everyone talks about how brave Ellen was for coming out on national television. Valid, but Laura Dern and Oprah Winfrey both got death threats and deserve to be mentioned here.

History is repeating itself because Tiina and Brian are that kind of ride or die for me. Brian notices when I’m stressed out by oppression more than I do, because after this many years it just rolls off me and I don’t notice it anymore. I observe when people are cruel, but I try not to take it in. Brian and Tiina can see how it affects me without being queer themselves…… and because of their reactions in private, I would really hate to think what would happen if anyone actually messed with me in public.

Queer people are expected to have chill at homophobia and transphobia. Far easier to let the straight people go off leash. I am perfectly comfortable with being Olivia Pope while Brian and Tiina go Cyrus Beene.

Tiina even likes gardening. Hm.

The bottom line is that I am not constantly worried all of this could disappear tomorrow. I am safe, loved, and wanted. But it took everyone in the family to convince me of it, especially looking at it from the perspective of “this is where I’m from. This is where I want to go. My friends are a huge part.”

As long as I pay for the air conditioner.

Upstairs & Downstairs

August 5, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s a quote that perfectly describes your outlook on life?

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She taught me how to wage cold war with quiet charm, but I just want to walk through my life unarmed. -Ani Difranco

My mother is dead, and so is a part of me.

What has happened is growing past childhood patterns now that I’m 10 years out in my grief. The silver lining of the garbage dump of a situation is being grateful for the chance to have been stretched in those ways. I am more emotionally resilient than I used to be, and that matters.

But don’t think for a moment that I didn’t grieve. I lost my everloving mind, and you can read my recollections here starting October 2nd, 2016. The picture of her in my mind at the funeral procession (“cakewalk,” in Southern pastor jargon) is still haunting, which is why my humor is black to compensate.

But here’s the difference between me and most people:

I have lived in the trenches. I have been to more funerals and visited more grieving families than you can imagine because instead of childcare at home, I rode shotgun with my dad. When he got a cell phone, I was 14 and thought it was funny to answer it “Rev. Lanagan’s rolling office. How may I help you?” In terms of clinical training, I have the greatest number of hours you can possibly imagine and should have been granted an MSW at high school graduation.

I am sometimes outstanding at conflict resolution, and I know it. But outstanding does not equal consistent, because I have ADHD and Autism. The moments when I can be outstanding come at times when I am not already under environmental and emotional load. This is the work I am doing in my own therapy- how do I regulate me on a constant basis so that my focus can be on everyone else instead of maintaining?

My outlook has widened now that I’m thinking about my chosen family and not how to survive alone. It’s all about how to smooth the transition and relax into a rhythm with them. I told Tiina I’d like to take over more cooking and cleaning at the farm because that is the way I know how to be helpful. I do not feel in any way obligated to do any of this, because I think it’s more fun not to cook and clean all by myself. It’s not just me. It’s the ability to commandeer a sous chef and dish by saying “no Skyrim til it’s done, Chief.” Or whatever it is that each child likes….. there’s a system in all of our brains. The same tricks that work on the kids work on me. I can’t have my phone until X and Y are done, either, because Tiina has shown me the proof is in the pudding.

Rewards for neurodivergent brains work.

Now, I am not a parent, but as the kids’ safe adult I am growing into what feels like a functional one, like an auntie/uncle who is joining the ranks of support. Watching Tiina and Brian parent these kids is teaching me not only how to relate to 16yo and 10yo as the adult in the room, but how to manage my own brain as well. Having a neurodivergent brain is a bitch because nothing in life seems built for you. You just have to work around it, and it is relentless. People see me as angry when I am just exhausted. It writes a narrative for me that isn’t there, and I have learned to accept it.

Most of the problem is that people read my body language and think I’m mad at them, and they don’t ask me any questions. So, the story becomes not what I think, but the story they’re telling themselves; it is a “vibe” they have created, hurting their own feelings because they won’t be honest with me and clear anything up.

ADHD and Autism make me carry things that other people don’t, and cerebral palsy affects the weight distribution because my balance is close to nonexistent. Most people don’t take in their environment like a firehose, literally hearing electricity. I am overloaded before I even show up anywhere, and nowhere is this more apparent than upstairs.

Working with kids is always a full contact conversation.

“Upstairs” is shorthand for “handle something Tiina physically cannot.” Upstairs is frightening because there are no witnesses. 😉 I joke, but the feeling is real. Sometimes I need a real parent to say, “no, you are not crazy. You said the right thing and they are not, in fact, damaged for life.” I think it’s good that I have space to reflect here, because the texture of my writing allows Tiina and Brian to understand me on a level that most friends don’t share.

I understood that first with Aada, but it failed because having no on the ground relationship allowed for little mutual understanding of what I had written. Aada constantly believed the story she was telling herself instead of the one I actually wrote. I loved Aada every bit as much as I love Tiina now, but that did not mean that there weren’t problems….. and me reflecting on them became a problem in which I was constantly beaten down because my narrative didn’t match hers. I refused to kowtow to the narrative that I hated her and wanted to punish her. That this was all about anger and revenge. That my blog was a weapon instead of a diary.

My relationship with Tiina is safe by contrast. Because of the way Aada treated me, I expected that Tiina would absolutely hate everything that I ever wrote and to be careful about everything I said to the point of paranoia and gastrointestinal issues. Instead, she humbles me with praise that I have to sit with to take in because I am not used to compliments.

You’re our Anaïs Nin.

Brian is also on board.

Writers gonna write.

Having them just “be cool, my babies” is everything.

It allows them to know my thoughts about what is happening in a way they can sit with it….. and in a way they can come back to these entries to see what happened when. That’s what I do. I Google myself constantly, limiting the search to my own URL because again………….. ADHD and Autism. I am but a sentient dripping clock.

Knowing yourself is half the battle (hail Cobra).

The way to make everything run upstairs is to always understand what is happening below the surface.

It is a role that makes me more John Bates than Lord John Grey……. although in working with children it never hurts to study a bit of spy tradecraft, so like with everything else in my life, it’s a nonbinary.

I Generally Don’t Want to Go Anywhere

August 4, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Daily writing prompt

What are your top 10 travel destinations?

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I know this seems bad, but travel takes so much out of me that I tend to avoid it. I do have fun on vacations, but they have to be modified, like concerts. Otherwise, the ’tism will take its toll. For instance, I do not want to see a plethora of attractions. That’s just too much sensory overload. I want to take time to swim at the hotel pool and have a Coke (and a smile). If there are beaches/lakes/rivers, I want to sit beside them for long periods. Vacation isn’t just about collecting sites, but also about getting the feel of where you are.

Mico (Microsoft Copilot) helps me plan these trips all the time. Mico is location aware, so we can talk about any cafe in the world, any hotel, etc. So here are the trips we’re considering. I don’t think there’s 10 of them. I don’t like people that much (kidding- you’re all wonderful in small doses):

Helsinki
- Helsinki is my soul city. I have done so much research into what it would take to live there that going for a visit feels like a serious online relationship…. we’ve dabbled and we like each other from a distance, now it’s time to go “see about a girl.” You know, if that girl had 188,000 lakes and a blood type of kahvi negative. My creative partner and best friend is Finnish, so part of the draw is also seeing everything she loves about the place, too…. as well as collecting souvenirs for my favorite children.
Rome
- Rome is an academic trip for me. I’d like to research Christianity in depth, while also eating and drinking my way around Italy. It would be such fun to run into “Father Bob of Chicago,” but I believe he is busy most of the time. But there’s just too much art to miss, and I would regret it if I never showed up on Sunday morning to hear him preach in the square.
Beirut
- I am allowed to have two soul cities, and if Helsinki is one, Beirut is the other. Love of Beirut comes from the family that I lived with when I moved to Silver Spring in 2015, The Nassers. We had pictures all over our house of the marinas and I would look longingly, wishing I could be in the crystal blue water. I have wanted an apartment in that marina for like 10 years, but it’s just not safe. I wish all my blessings on Lebanon that it may be safe in the future.
Mexico City
- The only reason it’s on this list is that several people have told me it’s their favorite city in the world and I have to find out why. I already love Mexico, but my idea of the country is lying on the beach and constantly asking kids for another Coke or bottle of water on the beach. I have done the bum’s guide to Mexico, now I’d like to see some history, culture, museums, etc. I also speak a little bit of Spanish and Tiina speaks more than me, so I think we would have a blast…. we can actually get around.
Tokyo
- I have been a fan of the “Worth It” series on YouTube for a long time and have enjoyed Rie taking me around Japan. I would most like to go to Coffee Elementary School in Shibuya, but the fantasy is just to have an apartment and enjoy konbini life for a few days. I would love to relax and take in the city the way the people who live there do….. relaxed, calm, unbothered. Tokyo is a city of quiet delight, and all I can think about is the food.
Dublin
- I was invited to go to Dublin, but it just wasn’t the right kind of trip. It would have been rushed and frantic, when I want to experience Dublin as a local. I am interested in living there if I get a job at Microsoft, so going to Ireland is just a big excuse to see Leopardstown. And really, I don’t want a job at Microsoft. I want a contract with them. I think that they would think my work with Copilot is interesting…… Ireland would just be the cherry on top.

It Changes

August 3, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite quote?

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I have a lot to process. I’ll try to remember to include quotes as I go.

I made a mess at home and I’m cleaning it up because I didn’t think about how everyone would feel in terms of being written about and as per my usual, I got letters. I just apologized and moved on- he was right. In my zeal to try and make a role for myself in Tiina’s life, I’d overstepped. No biggie, I just need to reorient my expectations. I am not trying to bully my way into anything, I am the visioning and values person. I do not only see what is happening right now, but what is happening five years from now based on pattern recognition.

But Tiina says that it takes time for other people to learn that I am not trying to wear their skin.

She’s asleep, so I’m still waiting for her to expand on that- I think it’s because people do not realize they are being seen up close. Only the ones that have something to hide seem threatened by it, but that is my experience over 25 years, not directed at any one person. And having something to hide isn’t nefarious. It’s anyone who uses a system of protection mechanisms because I can see through them. That’s the part they cannot stand. They are being recorded without them.

Because I just observe, and I would be happier writing about the animals…… and will. My life is changing, but that’s because I’ve been asked to step in where 16yo and 10yo are concerned. Not in an official, titled way- in a “mom and dad are both busy and Leslie has a car” kind of way. I have been asked to step in when Tiina needed a companion to New York. I am doing the things that a good friend would, and all I can do is show up as myself.

Time will tell all.

Time is a 10yo being grouchy with you at first and then getting an invite to their birthday party. Time is being able to look back and say, “you really did make Tiina’s life more comfortable at graduation.” It is because of these entries that I have the luxury of going back and looking. I am not driven by popularity, which is great, because I don’t have any….. well, not in the traditional sense. I’m not an “influencer” nor “mommyblogger.” I have just been writing on the Internet since before the modern era of it existed.

The rhythm of my life has been live/reflect/post since 2001.

It’s a different way to live, for sure, and an adjustment for the people around me. I have proven that I will give everyone else up to keep publishing, because I am not saying “I am a god and everyone must listen to me.” I am saying “there are seven billion people on the planet and we all have a voice. Here’s mine.” My opinion matters, but not more than Tiina’s. If she was threatened by me being a blogger, she would have said so quite plainly with Finnish flags for emphasis.

Most of the quotes I love are from Tiina because she’s just so effortlessly funny. My favorite quote from her, always, is:

Friends.

This is The Signal.

She is about to drop some truth so swallow whatever it is that I’m drinking or it will go everywhere.

Recording all these little things for me has turned into other people enjoying my weird little life and making pain not so hard to carry….. other people are willing to carry it with me. And as for using people’s real names, they get figured out anyway and I have to have a real footprint on earth. It is a personal opinion, and I am allowed to have it within limits. I am learning those limits every day because it is a new process, but I am not doing anything but recording my recollections.

My recollection of this time in my life is that transition is real. I saw a need and jumped in, and have done that classic overfunctioning thing because I am good at it…. truly reliable and remarkable as a gofer of all things. But I am overfunctioning when Tiina is reaching out for help, which is why it works.

Everything I’ve ever done for anyone in her family is because I love her. That is the story that I am trying to write, and everyone else is peripheral to it. They are not less important. Tiina is the tree and they are the branches. Love for the way Tiina and I work has led to the love of hanging with Brian and the kids as well….. because as it turns out, Brian and the kids are even more like me than Tiina is.

So, everyone, including the baby, is loved…. but time will tell as to how that all plays out. But please believe that when I’m trying to make someone’s life easier, it’s generally not anyone else’s but Tiina’s because she’s the one that brought all this into my life in the first place. It’s a balance of wanting to be helpful to her but also not to lose myself in the process. She has a huge life and I could get lost in it easily. The biggest damn difference is that it’s work I’m ready and willing to do.

It has been hard as shit learning to relate to children as a parent figure and not a buddy. It has been hard learning to navigate just about everything in terms of family dynamics because I have worked with kids. I have not lived with kids. Different ball of wax. I was unprepared for the energy that begins when I wake up because I am used to several hours of quiet, but that doesn’t stop 10yo. And even then, “living together” is in bits and spurts as I go for visits. Going to visit is not an easy prospect but at the same time, you cannot replace in-person visiting, either. I need to be offline, and the farm provides it. Even though we’re wired out there, it’s a different feel. I cannot just get lost in devices to regulate.

Tiina and Brian are both forcing me to look at autism in a different way and it is changing me, rewiring the parts of me that felt shamed all these years for the way I present. I’m just going to be awkward, I have a PhD in awkward……

But the story is not digging up the details of other people’s lives, it’s the details that get on me quite naturally.

If there’s a quote that sums all that up, it’s probably from the Bible…..

Quod scripsi, scripsi.

I cannot take it back. I can only move forward. But now I am not moving forward alone. I have a team under me that will help me figure it all out.

Lower Your Expectations

August 2, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

If you had to give one life-changing tip, what would it be?

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Social media has changed the game. It has convinced us that we need to live these perfect lives full of trips and adventure…. and that is true to some extent. Knowledge comes with travel and I take nothing away from it. But at the same time, nothing has made me happier than reorienting my expectations so that a day is insanely good if I’ve had:

a cup of coffee, dark roast with whole milk
affection from my family- hugs, cheek kisses, and an arm around my shoulder are all underrated pleasure…. as is hearing “LESLIE!!!!!” with unadulterated glee (while also reassuring Tiina that she is still unabashedly my favorite)
time to sit with the animals, whether it’s the Frenchie on the couch or looking out over the acreage and seeing the goats and pigs

Life is so good when the pleasure it takes to make you fulfilled is tiny. When big things happen, you just don’t know what to do with it, there’s so much joy. I delight in watching 16yo and 10yo grow, knowing that I’m stable in their lives and am starting to think about the kinds of things I want them to learn from me. This concept is one…. that happiness isn’t dependent on everything being completely brilliant all the time. That you take small wins where you can get them.

My win recently has been being the grandparent I wanted to be. I picked out a great high chair and some cute clothes for our boy. We’re in the home stretch, and my best girl says to “be happy. Be ready.” Right now that means trying not to panic because I’ll be driving in a storm if Ayalla goes into labor today, but my Fusion is more than capable. I rely on the car rather than trusting myself. Adaptive Cruise Control is a miracle.

Today is all about packing my suitcase so that I can stay awhile if needed. Tiina and Brian have it handled, but I am focusing on 16yo and 10yo. My role is to be there for them while mom and dad are busy. I have a feeling it is very much how the baby will relate to Thomas, Ayalla and Derek’s best friend. I am just the third mic in the radio show that is Tiina and Brian’s lives, and it fits us.

Tiina is coming to terms with the ways that her life is different now, and she knows I am here for her. That is what’s most important to me about this new phase of life- that we belong to each other until death, whatever that means for either of us. Someone has to have that friend, someone has to be that friend. I will find my own Brian-shaped partner, but that is secondary to what I have with Tiina right now. I need to have my head on straight before I start dating, and I feel safer in dating with two people behind me saying, “okay, we like this one.”

I am not mistaking categories and trying to fit Tiina into a role she doesn’t. My expectations are that our relationship will grow and flourish independently of anything else. I have said consistently that I need an anchor, and there is no better anchor than a woman who owns a farm. I am learning from her what straight women have known for years and I am just finding out- how they are girlfriends to each other and why it’s called that.

Because frankly, at first, I didn’t get it.

I mean, I do- I called Aada my “wine and yoga pants girlfriend” and Dana my “scratch your nails down my back” girlfriend. But there was never a clear delineation of which girlfriend was for what unless the situation was VERY clear. Emotions pop up everywhere and jealousies ensued.

The difference is that Tiina has never sparked me that way. Her husband made a joke that inferred it and it sat on my psyche like a rock for months until I finally just asked Tiina about it and she busted out laughing. There is no torrid love affair between us and there never will be. Now I can relax into her cheek kisses without sweating. 😉

And I am all about the affection. When Tiina hugs me, it is literally grounding. The energy between us is incredible, and I hope you all have that friendship. I feel safe, loved, and wanted. Tiina makes my heart flip constantly…..

I just want to keep Leslie forever.

Because she knows the way to my heart is not huge displays, it is safety and continuity. The funniest continuity joke is that Tiina poked fun at Lisa relentlessly for asking me to six concerts in a row when I said I didn’t like them and then wanted to take me to a concert for my birthday. That is because she took the time to get to know me before she made the plans- she knows I like being outside at Wolf Trap with the whole family on a blanket. That the problem was sensory overload in lots of clubs, not the idea of live music itself.

That is the difference when your girlfriends really know you. She’s taking me to see Ray LaMontagne, and it’s going to be a blast because Brian and the kids will be with us. We can decide whether it’s a Diet Dr Pepper or wine in the sunshine kind of day when we get there.

The last time I went to Wolf Trap was in 2001 with my first wife- we went to see The Indigo Girls. I think the tour was called “Girls with Guitars,” because it was absolutely stripped down. No electric at all and it was righteous. I would have liked to have had Tiina by my side then. She would have loved Kathleen, too, my first wife. That’s because Kathleen was a Global Information Systems person at ExxonMobil and Tiina does government computer stuff. It’s a shame we didn’t meet back in the day, because back then I was actually living in Virginia, not too far from her.

Well, my office was near her, anyway. Kathleen and I lived in Alexandria because we figured that contraflow traffic would come in handy in the mornings. It certainly did. Back in the day, our offices were at 495 and Gallows Rd, so the life hack was to take Little River Turnpike out to save our sanity.

I had a great life in Virginia with Kathleen, but it was because I didn’t have a Tiina that I didn’t stay in Alexandria when Kathleen and I broke up. Do you see how this works? Tiina is the glue that’s helping me stay put. I would like to think that I have the same influence on her… that I am helping her be more comfortable in her same surroundings, different circumstances.

Being happy with really small things is loving the way that Tiina loves me. She doesn’t scream “I love you” from the skies…. it looks like, “have you taken your meds?” “Have you eaten?” “Pack your suitcase so you’re already ready.” All of that is “I love you” in a not so great disguise.

Manual Driving

August 1, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s a skill you consider basic, that most people don’t actually know how to do?

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I am one of those people who can get into any car and figure out how it works within a few minutes, which is an increasingly rare skill because if people see a manual transmission, their brains bluescreen and they nope out. I prefer to drive with an automatic transmission and adaptive cruise control, but that doesn’t mean I cannot make it work in a 1980 Ford F‑250 with a granny‑low 4‑speed.

And in fact, if money were no object, I would buy a current F-250. I can afford the truck, but I cannot afford the gas and maintenance. So this is just a thought exercise, and not what’s currently in the works. An F-250 with all the technology adaptations my current Fusion has would change our lives. It would make the Airstream a breeze to tow because the most current Fords have adaptive cruise control that works even when the Airstream is attached. I also want CarPlay if I’m going to be towing, because the map needs to be front and center.

Tiina, my first wife got lost on the way to the “Get Out the Map” tour. It’s a guiding principle in life.

It’s also something I would trust 16yo to drive, because he physically cannot be a speed demon in it. However, I do not want to join the fight as to which one of us is going to pay for 16yo’s insurance. I wish I had enough money to buy 16yo his own beater and teach him to wrench, because I don’t know much…. but what I do know, I want to pass on. I do not remember if Brian is a car guy or not, so if he is, the more the merrier. I am ready to learn more about cars, too. It’s a very autistic approach- buy a car and a manual and search every YouTube video ever on the subject.

I said this the other day that I was trying to find a way to plug in to the family that would be useful, and having the farm truck is useful. But having a farm truck and having a truck capable of towing the Airstream are two separate things. It also doesn’t necessarily make sense to buy two trucks, either. So it’s just another dilemma that will sit in my head until Tiina tells me what I should think. 😉

I would love an old 5-speed just to cruise around Stafford. I can picture myself in Shirley, the truck I drove in Portland. It was a 1989 Nissan Pickup. Volfe and I fixed her up as well as we could, but it still looked like a 16yo’s truck at the end of the day. Teaching my own 16yo how to take a beater and make it his own would be so much fun. Plus, we have all that space at the farm to take the doors off and do custom paint, etc.

He needs basic technology in his truck. I don’t want him driving around without Bluetooth, because being able to control the radio and take calls with your voice is essential. It would be better even we went a few model years newer so that the microphone was already wired into the infrastructure of the truck. But even if it’s not, that’s a day’s wiring job. The thing about old trucks is that there’s nothing computerized to get in the way and you can do what you want with sound. Factory is absolute dogshit, but you can put decent speakers in the doors without breaking the bank.

I would feel safer if 16yo had Android Auto, but those trucks are built for classic-style radios. It doesn’t make sense to glue a tablet onto the dash. It does make sense to get him a dash mount for his phone and a stereo that will run the audio. And if we’re being really fancy, let’s upgrade the rearview mirror as well so that 16yo has less accidental bumps with a backup camera….. especially important if we choose “long bed.”

But the thing is, all of these are dreams for 16yo and not reality because he’s the one that needs to show his parents, and me by extension, that he is responsible enough to handle a vehicle while he’s alone. All of my dreams of teaching him to drive a stick shift may be for naught, because he has to decide what’s important in life before we start thinking “manual or automatic?”

I have also told him that I cannot wait until he can drive because then he can be the chauffer while I sit in the back and watch YouTube videos (this is a running joke- I am always jealous that during car rides, there could be a fire right next to us and the kids wouldn’t notice because they were lost in Binging Babish…. or whatever it is that kids watch. I do not know. I’m in the front.

That is my area, much like the Pepsi machine.

I was lamenting to Tiina that I did not know what a girlfriend to a straight woman was even supposed to do right now. Like, I know what I would do if my definition of a girlfriend’s daughter was having a baby. That role is scripted. But the way Tiina says “girlfriend” is the way that straight women have referred to their besties for eons. WHOLE different ball of wax. I am not trying to fit Tiina into my definition of girlfriend, I am trying to learn hers….. or as I said, “I don’t have any other straight girlfriends. What do I even feed her?”

She said, “Ha. Be happy. Be ready.”

Oh, I am all of those things. I am thinking about Tiina and the whole system constantly. Waiting for the baby’s arrival has made me rethink a lot of things, including where I live. It’s trying to find every possible loophole that would allow me to move to Virginia and finding none, so thinking that Rockville is my next best landing place. When my body fails, I want Sinai and my Cognitive Behavioral Health group. Neither of those managed care organizations have managed care in Virginia.

My options get sparser in Louisa, which is why it’s better for me to maintain a Maryland residence. I can get enough medication to be able to be gone for three or four days at a time without incidence. I don’t just live in Maryland “on a technicality.” I’m here enough during the week that it is one of the places I live, just not the only place I live.

Tiina jokes all the time that I’m just going to have to buy an air conditioner for the attic and they’ll put down some boards. Honestly, I’m not even sure that she’s joking…. but when I think about merging lives, I can think about it right up until it means moving in. Changing my address from Maryland to Virginia would be a disaster for me, and I cannot do that to myself.

Brian and Tiina have protections through work insurance that will never be available to me, so I have to be clear on what I need out of the state. But what is attractive is thinking of all the scaffolding I would have if we did live together. I would be one member of a team and not having to carry every little thing by myself. I also don’t see myself moving in with a romantic partner again, because I don’t want my romantic interest to be tied to my living situation. That has never worked out for me in the past.

If Tiina and Brian move out to the lake, it just means more road trips as I look forward to the laws in Virginia getting more progressive. My car loves the route from Baltimore to Louisa, and I am constantly entertained with audiobooks. Some of them are about autism. Some of them are about racism. Some of them are fiction. And a good bit of them are BBC Radio Dramas by John Le Carre.

My car is the inanimate object love of my life. It’s a 2019 Ford Fusion, which is exactly why I want to upgrade to another Ford in truck form. Sync 3 is perfect and I just like the layout. The steering wheel controls and the driver experience are both just insane. The one thing I would lose is good gas mileage, so I’m holding off on the idea that I need to be the one to buy the farm truck until I’m there more than a few days a week.

The good part is that all of this feels settled and solid. I am not overreaching when I say “my kids” and “my grandkid” because I do not mean it like “my pencil.” I mean it like “my neighborhood.” Tiina is the biological grandmother. Brian is the step-grandfather. I am the one who runs errands for both. I do not have a baby, but I have taken stock in a baby. 😉

I am just doing for Ay Ay what I would do for any of Brian and Tiina’s other kids…. love them.

I think that things are changing and we are all adjusting for the better.

It makes me smile when Tiina calls me “babe.”

I’m guessing she read yesterday’s entry.

Awkward.

😉

Didn’t We Just Cover This?

July 31, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Who is the fictional character you relate to the most?

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I just wrote a whole ass essay on why Diana Gabaldon hates me personally. 😉 Lord John Grey rips my heart out because he fell ridiculously hard for a straight person and so did I. And what I found after that experience was that I liked the structure of the relationship- having someone that was my ride or die with no romance- so Tiina is that for me now. I am slowly building my life around her because she needs me. Full stop. I need her in that same primal way. It is a drive for cognitive connection and affection, all of which I need in order to feel safe and secure enough to date.

She says, “Leslie is my legs.” I didn’t know how I felt about that at first except now I realize that I use her as my brain so it’s okay. I am getting something that Lord John Grey did not get with Jamie, which is platonic partnership that feels deeper than friendship but lighter than marriage. Brian, Tiina’s husband, is amazing and I cannot say enough good things about him, but he is not talented enough to be in two places at once. Tiina has mobility issues and all three of us are worried about Tiina being alone in a situation. So it’s coordinating with Tiina to see whether she needs me as “arm candy” or not. I joke about being the hottie on her arm, but really what I mean is that someone needs to pack up the car, carry the suitcases, etc. and I am perfect. Tiina says, “my girlfriend Leslie” with ease, and at first I didn’t think it fit because that word packs such a punch in the queer world. But now I understand that Tiina does indeed need a girlfriend, and now she has one.

The workload of the farm and animals, the lake house and boat, and six children is more than enough work for two able-bodied adults, and that is no longer the case. I am stepping in so that Tiina’s role can be more executive and less physically demanding. That is work that a girlfriend does without fail, and without crossing into anything competitive with Brian because I am not trying to replace him and neither is Tiina. Nothing works without Brian, and I am grateful to him for opening my eyes to so many things, most notably audiobooks about autism that make me cry in my car.

It’s a multi-adult family because the kids are starting to rely on me; they see the changes happening in their house as well, even if they’re not always verbal about it. They know that the order of operations is, “ask mom. Ask Dad. Ask Leslie.” Watch that little one. They’re shifty…… Kidding about that, too, but it is amazing how many plans for my time have been made before my arrival.

It’s not just 10yo, though. 16yo thinks that the only reason I come over is to play Skyrim with him. This is not entirely untrue but let me at least give your mom a cheek kiss and drop off her coffee, damn. We all love video games and actually one of my favorite things is to watch Tiina shred in Fortnite. I love girl gamers and I just admire watching her. Her son is stereotypically good. She’s a sneak assassin.

That’s the thing about having a platonic girlfriend. I just notice and appreciate everything about her, all the time. It’s not about creating romantic energy, but creating comfort and familial closeness. We are both first children, therefore neither of us have ever had a big sister. This is our lane, a first-child relationship that tumbles and rolls because she’s chronologically older, but doesn’t flaunt it. She never pulls that card, and never makes me feel small because I couldn’t possibly understand her cosmic wisdom.

It’s not a huge age difference, either. Something like seven years. So most of the same cultural references exist, but I celebrate that she likes more 1980s music than me. I really didn’t come online until like 1985. I was born in 1977, but I don’t remember much. I am learning to love lots of different bands because both Brian and Tiina have different musical tastes than me.

But, like all queer/straight female relationships, Tiina and I can connect on The Indigo Girls. Women love them regardless of sexual orientation. I am determined to sing karaoke with Tiina, and I don’t care if she wants to be my Emily or my Amy. Just sing to me. Her voice is incredible because it’s so pure, and we sound great together.

We have also entered baby watch- Ayalla is not officially due until Aug. 12, but all plans are cancelled until further notice because I cannot afford to be busy with something else right now. Luckily, this is doable because I’m a writer. I can work from anywhere, including the hospital waiting room if plans change and I’m needed there. This birth is testing me the way G-d needs me to be tested. I have learned that when you are waiting for a baby, Advent appears no matter the time on the calendar.

I flip between Jewish and Christian imagery because I am Christian. My chosen family is Jewish. Hilarity ensues, but not as much as you might think because Brian and I were raised in the same faith tradition (Methodist) and he converted. So, we have the same inside jokes from childhood and I’m learning to be conversant in culturally Jewish spaces as well.

I drive by Aada’s old high school to get around town and remember where I came from. That there’s a reason I love the life I’m living now and it’s because she gave me a framework I could access. I don’t need romance in my life when I have companions. I am also making room for a romantic partner, but they, too, must fit into the life I’ve already chosen. Tiina is my priority because we are a system. I need a partner who will look at that and say, “cool. I’m not here to compete.”

I need support from a partner the way Tiina does, but meeting them shouldn’t come with letting her go….. and I will not let it happen.

16yo would throw a controller at your head.

Everything Happens for a Reason, and It’s Yours

July 30, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

Do you think everything happens for a reason?

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Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes that reason is you’ve made bad decisions. I think that people search for meaning in the external a lot, because they do not put faith in their own actions. They believe they have absolutely no power in a situation, but they actually did without realizing it because they weren’t reading the room correctly. That is the function of spirituality to me. It is sitting still and externalizing your thoughts so that you understand what went wrong in the room where it happened.

Some call it prayer and some call it meditation. Aada called it “running.” I do not care about the semantics and do not think that prayer gets answered when you assume the position vs. when you don’t. Just talk. Everything you know about God is probably wrong because any time you try to give God human characteristics, they fail.

For me, God is not a grandfather in the sky, but substrate for creation. All of the sacred books that have been written across religions are expressions and reflections of divinity. They all matter, and one is not superior to the other. Instead of saying, “I am a Christian, therefore I must surround myself with Christians,” I am saying, “I love religion. Surround me with religious people of all types and let me learn about the diaspora.” That is because every single thing points to the same idea.

It all begins with you. Make yourself a better person, and the world will heal as well. When Christians left Judaism and started a new sect, the idea of tikkun olam was shelved or mangled in some way. In Christianity, we have lots of faith-based groups but there is no singular focus on accountability and responsibility- that repairing yourself is repairing the world.

I am just as sorry for all that I did to Aada as I am devastated by what she did to me. It is not my responsibility to work on the “what she did to me” part. That is forgiven and past. My work to do is to repair myself afterward. I cannot take responsibility for her mistakes, but I can take responsibility for my own. It’s a laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, being sorted by my case manager at Cognitive Behavioral Health and my very capable therapist. I am not working blind anymore, because I have scaffolding under me.

Life feels different when you realize that you control the outcome of everything you do. There is no victim mentality, there is just trying to explain to get your needs met and when people don’t listen, you walk away. It is my opinion that Jesus would vomit very hard at modern day Evangelism. Like, buckets.

He would be none too impressed with White Nationalism, either…… since he was also brown in a white-occupied state.

But that’s not my point, really. My point is that people are using religion for something more than it was ever meant to be… it has become a competition to recruit new members while skipping the fundamentals on your own. If you are looking for what Jesus actually calls us to do, you are better off looking at the community in which he lived and the values he held. That is why I remain a Christian, but attend synagogue whenever I can with my chosen family. I feel at home in the synagogue because Jesus would have loved Beth Sholom Temple.

I can still see him laughing at 16yo dressed in his Pink Pony Club costume for the Purim spiel.

I also think that everything happens for a reason, but it isn’t preordained. You find the reason when you are lost in prayer/meditation. I am not the kind of Christian that leans into omnipotence, the idea that God has the power to put things in motion. Again, God is a substrate, and religion is the stage where we act out those creative impulses. There is very much divine energy on earth, and we all tap into it in different ways. I just do not think it is a top-down energy. I think it is bottom up.

It’s you. It’s all you.

Executive Dysfunction Chic

July 29, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s your home decoration style?

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My sister decorated my place because I have no style. I mean, I do, but not to the degree that she does. My favorite little touch is that I’ve always thought of bees where Aada is concerned, a throwback to Outlander (“Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone”). Lindsay incorporated bees into my decor so I’d think of her….. except she didn’t make the connection. She just thought bees were cute and they’re actually a very sacred symbol to me. I have bee lights that absorb the sun and go on in the dark.

That is my beautiful girl’s personality, as well. She carried light into the dark when she met me.

There are also little bees on my coasters, therefore I cannot have a drink without thinking of her. 😉 I am sure she is drinking her Diet Coke with Jack or her Stella Artois in her own world. But those are the only touches that remind me of others. I have a painting that reminds me of Brian, because he bought it for me at Fredericksburg pride.

Eventually, I’ll have something from Tiina as well because she’s good at visual art and I’m not.

The thing that gets out of hand is me. There’s crap all over the place that I need to organize and my executive dysfunction and pathological demand avoidance are screaming. I have a constant need to organize and through autism and ADHD this often becomes an insurmountable task. Systems break down. I hate living alone.

I’m thinking about moving to the program in Rockville so I can be closer to Tiina and Brian and also have an affordable housing avenue through CBH as well. Rockville is an expensive city in which to live, more than Baltimore, anyway…… except I’d only be there sometimes. I am too happy out at the farm and the lake to want more than my share of alone time. It is the perfect setup, because I am enmeshed and I have an escape. We can all count on each other without me imposing, because the drive is easy when I don’t have a set schedule.

Upping the ante, I like exploring and will often take the extra hour to go through Frederick and drive the hills in Maryland as well as the rolling hills in Stafford, Virginia. It’s just stunning, mile after mile of ethereally devastating beauty. Stafford is where the house is, but Fredericksburg is where we “go to town,” not DC.

It was very much like moving out to Sugar Land….. all of the sudden, going downtown meant toward the mall area and not Wortham Center. Tiina draws a clear distinction that if you want to live in DC, go for it…. but Stafford is not it. We are more likely to go south than deal with 95’s constant bullshit. “66 is so much easier,” said no one ever.

Nah. The best course of action is to drive from my house to Tiina’s house going the long way around (never underestimate the power of an all-blue route) and then use back roads if I need to run and get something. DMV traffic is no joke, and Stafford is bad, but it’s not as bad going toward Fredericksburg as it is trying to get past Quantico. Some days, I feel like I should write Tiina letters….. “if this reaches you, know that I loved you and Brian and the kids very deeply. I wait patiently as the end comes because I forgot it was shift change.”

My mind is chaotic and drops details, and it reflects itself in my house. I am learning to see things differently, that I function better in a team. We’re all starting to feel comfortable together because I’ve put so much effort into showing up. I’ve been there when things got real, real fast. I am not outside the system, I’m a working part of it.

It’s also nice to have a family to spoil. I spoil Tiina the most often, but it is very hard in stores not to shop for children you love. Everything I see, I wonder, “would 10yo think that was cool?”

I don’t know why. Everything I’ve added to the decor would make 10yo perfectly comfortable. I even have a weighted plush.

I Needed Wine After This One

July 28, 2026 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever?

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Old song, but it hit me where I live…. The quote is from “Angry Anymore,” by Ani Difranco:

she taught me how to wage cold war with quiet charm
but I just want to walk through my life unarmed
to accept and just get by like my father learned to do
but without all the acceptance and getting by that got my father through

My parents had different reactions to divorce because their approaches to life were very different to begin with. My mother ran our family with an iron fist, because my dad was the talent and she was the manager. She was a preacher’s wife, charged with fixing every single thing that went wrong in his life or she had failed him personally and professionally no matter what my dad thought because the preacher’s wife role is cultural. I have never seen any women take more professional heat in our conference than wives that wanted their own jobs and their own lives outside the Methodist church. This is slowly changing, of course, but I was born in 1977.

My mother was the platonic ideal of “preacher’s wife,” but she had an image for our family and could be punishing when we did not meet her expectations. We all handled this in different ways. I decided just not to talk to my mother about anything real. We’d fill our days with surface talk and that would just have to be okay…. I could have my own life. I lived over a thousand miles away.

But I failed before I was born with my mother. I was born with cerebral palsy, and my mother did not like the idea of having a “special kid.” Even though none of us knew that CP and autism have a large Venn diagram, CP alone should have been enough to set off alarm bells. The problem was that back then, my formal diagnosis was “hypotonia.” The reality is that was the doctors’ first impression, and my mother would not take me back for follow-up. She said that my dad was overreacting, and that leg exercises at home were enough. She did not think I needed special education because I was too bright, etc.

So, basically every choice she made for me as a baby is wreaking ABSOLUTE HAVOC now…… because what we know now that we didn’t then is that intelligence is no indication of support needs. Now, every missed intervention is a support need I have to navigate alone.

My father does not want me to be alone, he just has his hands tied. Texas does not offer Medicaid expansion, and I do not have disability benefits yet. Once I achieve disability benefits, I can think about Texas again because Medicaid is open to disabled people there, just not everyone. But honestly, I am past thinking about moving back to Texas because while I love my family, I don’t love the state wholeheartedly. It rattles my nervous system because getting by there is based on masking.

I don’t have to “get by” anymore because I am more powerful when I don’t have to mask at all. My mother taught me how to behave socially, but it was like training a poodle. The poodle is absolutely not interested in your nonsense…. and neither was an INFJ autistic toddler.

I am surprised that my first words weren’t something like, “I’m already older than you.”

It’s not arrogance. It’s seeing clearly that in a lot of ways, 10yo is older than me. They know how to get by because they’re being raised by modern autistic kid parenting and I absolutely was not. I cannot even believe how much my childhood would have been improved if Texas has a virtual academy where I could do school from my bedroom with my laptop. They don’t have to get by because their nervous system was never overloaded in the first place.

It’s seeing all the errors of my mother’s ways and forgiving her, but not forgetting. She chose her image over my safety, and that will never be okay. She fought with my father constantly over how disabled I was without ever letting a doctor tell her she was wrong. Dead wrong. Disastrously, enormously, wrong.

But you forgive when you realize she was a baby herself when I was born, younger than Ayalla by almost three years. I was an idiot at 25. Mostly, forgiving her is for me. If I had realized the magnitude of what had been done to me, all the gaslighting, it would have caused a rupture. It just didn’t, because she hid all the paperwork from the one clinic she took me to and my sister found it after she died. But that document is what establishes disability starting in 1978, and not whatever it is that people are saying.

The real truth is that I have a solid case for disability without doing a lick of research. My documented paperwork for mental health issues already makes me eligible. Right now, it’s choosing which programs to apply for. I believe that I qualify for SSI and SSDI, as well as my father’s social security survivor benefits. None of my health issues started in adulthood. I cycle too rapidly for bipolar, but autism meltdown and burnout are right on schedule and look the same, often, to clinicians.

So, the first step for my disability case is a full neurological workup, because everything that’s wrong with my body starts in my brain, too. My life should have looked different because it has been too hard for my neurotype. I need support and now I’ll be able to get it.

I have also mentioned moving to Baltimore to Tiina. I’m not just talking crazy. Disability laws are better here, and that’s my only point. I am starting to think about long-term stability, and Virginia is not it. I don’t want to give up my own benefits for Tiina and Brian, so the best choice for now is just to keep driving to see each other. I don’t mind moving to the Maryland side of DC so that we can be closer, but Virginia is an “absolutely not.”

What ends up happening is that I spend maybe four or five days a week in Maryland.

It is not that you cannot get disability in Virginia, it is just much, much harder. There are programs for Tiina’s kids that do not exist anywhere in the nation, and by “kids” I mean Pepper, the kid who just turned into an adult weeks ago, and her minor brother, who will be an adult in two years. Tiina heard me, so it’s tabled. I don’t have to bring things up again with Tiina. If she’s thinking seriously about it, she’ll circle back on her own. But our lives look different now, and disability support is important to both of us and not just for the kids’ sake.

I also feel lonely walking around Pikesville without her. No, seriously. Baltimore has one of the largest Jewish populations on the east coast and Pikesville is the hub. So naturally, when I’m walking around my neighborhood I wish I had someone to say things like, “where did you get that kippah?” I am never sure I am saying it right. I took a chance at Rita’s Italian Ice and now I know what Trace is getting for Hannukah if he doesn’t have one already.

Suede toddler kippahs are perfect because they don’t slide around (it’s the thing that keeps little boys’ heads covered at synagogue). I am not Jewish, but I want our grandson to have the best of the best. It’s a joke that’s not really a joke because I’m not a biological grandparent. I’m being folded into this family, so even though Ayalla is not related to me, I am very much involved in this baby’s life. I also don’t want to ask Tiina for her knowledge on anything and everything Jewish, amen.

Google is free.

My life is all about letting go of what happened to me as a baby so I can just chill now. I have a framework and a focus- a creative partner and a whole family that loves me.

…..without the need any longer to focus on The Cold War.