My Duolingo Streak

October 8, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

Duo is mad at me right now because I broke my streak when Angela died and I haven’t gone back. I will, but I focused on my family and just took a vacation from the bird. Ironic because I actually needed Spanish on my trip (my car dealer didn’t speak much English).

In fact, it was cute. We signed all the papers and we were just standing around and he shyly says, “do you like Monster?” I said yes and he brought me one, and we had a toast to the sale.

“Do you like Monster?” It was one of his only full statements in English, and touched my heart with the way he said it. There was a tinge of sadness because I think he was sorry he didn’t have any champagne. Little did he know that given the choice between champagne and Monster, he’d already bought the perfect bubbly.

I am currently in waiting mode as my car is being delivered from Texas. When it arrives, I will go and buy another Monster to cheers it again. It’s kind of our thing.

It’s always good to know an honest car dealer, and we met one. The only thing I didn’t catch was his name, because he never gave me his card. I’ll have to ask Aaron if he remembers, because Aaron is my mechanic friend that I took with me to make sure the car was safe and reliable.

This morning, my personal goal was a coffee at Starbucks, and now it has been achieved. I got a pumpkin spice cold brew (shut it). I slept okay, but not great, so I needed this boost. I’m feeling pretty nice right now, as my ADHD brain feels the caffeine washing over it. Caffeine just massages my thoughts enough to put them in order, and I’m hard pressed to find a more effective medication. I have been on Ritalin and Adderrall in the past, but sometimes it has been too much correction. Coffee seems to be the happy medium, with the occasional energy drink thrown in when my acid reflux says, “no more.”

I didn’t have to feed the dogs this morning, and I miss them already. I don’t have any pets, so my dad’s dogs provided me with some much needed puppy love over my “vacation.”

It seems odd to me to refer to it as a vacation, but that’s what it was. Angela was not supposed to die in the middle, she just did. Cancer took her faster than we thought, but I was already planning to go and see Brené Brown with my sister for my birthday. Angela’s funeral was one of the highlights of my trip because watching my father was a master class in working through pain. The service was absolutely beautiful and his sermon has become everyone’s mantra:

Nothing will ever be the same.
Everything will be okay.

I am not the only one repeating those words all the time, because people have commented on it.

I understand what it took for my father to organize and prepare that service, as well as preach it, in a way that my sisters never will because they’ve never pinch hit for a pastor before.

I also understand that it is the work that saves you. You have a laser like focus on getting the message across.

Getting the message across seems to be my personal goal without actually ever setting it. I work through pain and elation. However, I have never worked through losing a spouse to cancer on this web site. My father curated a beautiful service from beginning to end, and people will quote him forever. It was a uniquely beautiful service to attend, and I’m so glad I could be there in person.

I didn’t want to leave my dad, because he was sick the day I left. I took an Uber to the airport while he was battling it out. It was harder to leave him knowing that he will come down from all the adrenaline of working through Angela’s funeral. Someone else will have to be there to catch in person while I’m only available by phone.

This doesn’t sit well with me, but it is how it is.

I told my dad that I wanted him to come and visit me in the new year, after I’m settled (I’m moving soon). I hope he’ll take me up on it, because we always have a good time checking out new restaurants together. Plus, I think he likes driving my car. 🙂

I like driving my car, too. It’s a personal goal to be a safe and responsible driver. For me, that means reading about the technology available on my Fusion to assist me in driving. My car will be here sometime between today and Saturday, so I’m counting down the minutes.

I have picked up this entry several times today, and I don’t generally scroll up. Because this is a scratch journal and not meant to be me, all dressed up, I tend to repeat myself when I write that way… but it’s not altogether a bad thing. This journal is for me- you guys just pick out the lines you like.

One of these days, an editor is going to come after me with a red pen and I will be unrecognizable to myself. Janie the Canadian Editor has offered and I have fallen down on my part of the project, which is going through and picking out entries I’d like to use in a “bound edition,” shorthand for Kindle store.

I’ve also been asked why I don’t just Google literary agents and have them comb the site. Well, that’s easy. I don’t know what stuff of mine is good enough for publication and what’s not. I figure that my followers are connected enough that a literary agent could lurk on their word alone. Basically, I want any success I have to come from you, not because I think I’m all that and a bag of chips.

I may promote a few things like the marriage article because it would be nice to have enough fans to support myself, and a post that has already received an enormous amount of praise is a good place to start. It would be ironic as I am nowhere near the same person I was when I wrote the article, but the sentiment behind it still stands.

I will love Dana forever because of that article- she became the seed of a new era for “Stories” in more ways than one. Any success I have today can be pointed to that one piece, because when my blog was popular before it was under a different name and URL.

Although anything I wrote back then that I liked, I think I’ve managed to import. There may be one or two pieces I need in the Internet Archive, but I feel like I’ve mined it for enough gold.

Later, my personal goal is to go to the office to get the parking pass for my Fusion, because all cars are subject to being towed if they don’t have one. It would be a dumbass attack on my part if my car was delivered and I forgot.

But that’s exactly the kind of thing that would happen to me because I don’t tend to set personal goals in advance. Lack of preparation on my part does not create an emergency on theirs, etc. It’s just that lack of preparation is par for the course with neurodivergence of all kinds…. which means that neurodivergent people like me are often hurricanes in other people’s lives without knowing it. The parking pass is the most inert example I can think of, but there are many others in my life that have caused harm.

I need a harm reduction personal goal and plan, because these disabilities and disorders have to be managed. Cognitive behavioral therapy is teaching me foundational things I might have missed, and providing me an outlet to make friends locally.

Most of my friends live remotely, which is why it was so nice to be in Texas for so long. I didn’t get to see everyone I wanted to see, but I did get to visit Aaron in Bastrop for a few days while we car shopped and then I waited for my check to clear.

The hill country is a sight to behold, and I haven’t been there in roughly 30 years. It was beautiful watching the sun come up from Aaron’s back deck.

Watching him interact with his wife, Brinna, reminded me of the love that brought you that marriage article so long ago. It reminded me to give dating another try, that I really would like a partner at least some days. I’m overwhelmed by the idea on others. But I at least see baby steps in that direction once I set a personal goal.

It hasn’t been a personal goal for me to find a partner because I was busy doing other things. Writing and dating don’t really go together unless the date is so bad it’s comical. The rest of the time, it’s just work- a conversation to determine if you’d like to have another conversation, as a friend put it.

I envision a quiet life whether my writing takes off or not. It’s not my decision whether that happens or not, it’s my public. It’s not my job to judge my writing as creative art. Once I hit post, my words do not belong to me anymore, they belong to what the reader takes away.

This entry could probably be tightened into a couple of paragraphs, but if you read me, you probably like the unedited version of Krista Tippett’s podcast, “On Being” as well.

I listened to the episode with Atul Gawande on my way to Bastrop because I wanted to feel closer to my dad and stepmom. It was the episode where he talked about “Being Mortal,” and how palliative care is changing to accommodate the important things to the patient before they die. It was a beautiful conversation to hear after my stepmom had been through those conversations with her own doctors.

I haven’t cried as much as I thought I would, because it was so clear that Angela was in pain. Wanting her to continue her life just so we could talk more would have been the height of arrogance. I didn’t cry as much over my mother for the same reason- I understood the medicine behind why she died, and it gave me a finality that being a layperson to medicine just doesn’t have.

I’m not a doctor, but I’ve worked as a medical assistant. I’m not the one that makes any decisions, I’m just the one that makes notes before the doctor comes into the room.

That particular doctor is now gone, but her spirit lives on in my dad and the four of us girls, who have built a language and blended a family over the years.

To the friends I didn’t get to see in Houston, I’m so sorry. I overextended myself. There will definitely be a next time. Though I do not know exactly when and for how long. I have time to think about moving back to Texas if that’s what I want to do, but I don’t want to do anything right now. I want to talk to my dad about this because I have so little experience trying to execute.

Right now I’m rambling because I’m hungry and waiting for lunch to be delivered. I needed some comfort food, and happiness is a cheap taqueria. I don’t think I ordered nearly enough cheese.

I should have made it a personal goal.

Everywhere and Nowhere

October 7, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m starting to get that feeling of not having a home that I always get when I’ve spent a long time with family. Because Texas and Maryland both feel like home, neither really do. You can add Oregon to the list. It’s almost as if I belong to everyone and no one simultaneously…. everywhere and nowhere at once.

It’s kind of freeing, but sometimes the pendulum swings too far in terms of feeling anchorless. I think that in a lot of respects, my relationship with Aada over the internet was more grounding than an IRL relationship because it grounded me regardless of physical location.

“Jesus Christ, just come pick me up.”

I may or may not have said that to Aada once or twice over the last 12 years.

I will miss those unprintable replies.

It was interesting feeing like I belonged to the Internet instead of to a physical place, but I’m starting to realize that you cannot have your anchors set in the cloud. It looks stable, but the air up there is quite thin.

So why do I spend so much time both wishing that the relationship was still intact? I don’t know anything else yet. Not enough time has passed for me to be completely stable and grounded with other people. It will take time, but I’m slowly coming out of the shell I created to keep people away. I’m not shy, I just had a lot to hide.

Not having anything to hide is the theme of my life now, because I haven’t had that in a very long time. Aada didn’t want me to talk to anyone about her, wanted to be a secretive little bubble with me where we were isolated in our own echo chamber. We learned to fight a little too well, egging each other on instead of de-escalating either the fight or the relationship until we could handle it with care.

I think a lot about what I should have done when I found out Aada lied to me, and that the lie was woven into the fabric of our relationship. That trust was broken beyond all measure because the bubble was built on truth and honesty.

Her reaction was that her lie wasn’t that bad, wasn’t pathological, and I was just a manipulator. That can be her story and she can stick to it all she wants, but that doesn’t make it true. I did not manipulate her so much as we both have “stuff” left over from childhood that made us both manipulate each other to get what we wanted. I did that by being overly anxious. Aada did that by being overly avoidant. We’d just figured out how to get past all that when she told me that she lied.

But the end is all my fault? I’m not so sure about that.

I don’t think she ever had it in her to meet me on the ground because she was scared of meeting me in person. I was also scared of meeting her on the ground, but one of us had to put on our big boy pants. So part of me ended the relationship because I thought, “we fight all the time and she’s lied to me in a way that caused a monster amount of pain. I’m done.” It was a split second decision that I have been over in my mind roughly a million and one times.

I could have handled her lie better, because there was no need to get as angry as I did. It was out of bounds, and that part is definitely my fault. I take ownership and responsibility. But I also think that my anger was the last thing that happened, not the source of the problem.

The source of the problem is that I’ve told her I love her more than air, and I meant it. She does not feel that way about me, so my feelings make her uncomfortable. She doesn’t want to seem homophobic, and I don’t want to seem aggressive. So we danced around the subject for years, to mixed results.

I can’t speak for Aada, but it seems like she rejected me not only because she was straight, but also because she doesn’t love herself that much and probably thought I was a little bit crazy.

I am, just not about this.

But I don’t think she thought I knew how crazy this all sounds- that she’s such a good writer that those butterfly feelings in my stomach presented before I really knew what was happening, and I’ve never been able to get rid of them because when we’re together my dopamine goes sky high.

But I’m not pushing Aada into anything she doesn’t want. She actually agreed to be open and to have very few boundaries with me (which I appreciated and it made me cry). We agreed to love each other, each part of the other’s “wild and crazy brain.” But that didn’t mean that boundaries would get crossed that didn’t need to be. I know that she’s straight and in a committed relationship and I would never want to do anything to get in the middle of that. I was just glad that she agreed to let me love her at all.

And then I blew it, for reasons that will stay with me for a long time as I waffle between what I think and what I think.

That’s really what this blog is for. It allows me to work in longhand instead of curating the perfect life through sound bites. I couldn’t have been in this close of a relationship with Aada without being able to explain it in longhand, because a sound bite would cheapen us all the way around.

It was a struggle to accept that while Aada was my friend and that was solid, I couldn’t go to her for more than that. The less I say about that, the better. I will just say that I listened to a lot of sad music and took her joking about marrying Brené Brown so hard that I could not even.

It was harmless, a joke that just got under my skin.

So when I met Brené last Monday I have to admit that I felt a spark of jealousy.

You stole my woman, Brown. En garde. 😉

Kidding, of course. What I actually said was, “you’ve said that you’re a Liverpool fan, but how’s Richmond looking this year?” Without missing a fucking beat, she said that Richmond had a midfield problem and played it straight just like I knew she would. I also said that when I was at University of Houston, I taught her how to use Microsoft Word, so realistically I taught her everything she knows. She said, “you sure did.”

There it is, from the horse’s mouth.

I had no illusion that Brené would remember me from UH. But it’s true that I was her computer lab supervisor when she was a grad student/TA. So, she’s a few years older than me, but I can’t help but refer to her as “one of my kids.” Because back then, she wasn’t BRENÉ BROWN, TRADEMARK.

I just saw her on YouTube one day and said, “I think that’s one of my kids,” and I e-mailed her team to make sure our dates lined up. When they did, I realized that I had met a famous person, they just became famous years and years after I met them.

This happens to me a lot because I went to High School for Performing and Visual Arts. Robert Glasper sat behind me in History when I was in 10th grade, so Brené is not the only Houstonian on “List of People I’d Pay Money to See.” Robert played The Reach at The Kennedy Center a few years ago, but I had to come back home to see the illustrious Dr. Brown, who is currently skating on thin ice with me.

Really? No, not really. 😉

Writing on the Back Porch

October 6, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What is your favorite hobby or pastime?

View all responses

I like writing on anyone’s back porch, but the one in the photo is my dad’s. The table where I’m sitting looks out over the pool and rockfall. It’s my last day here, as I fly back tomorrow afternoon. I had a very romantic idea of a road trip planned, but all of the people I asked to go with me before I bought the car had to back out for various reasons. It was actually cheaper to ship my car than it was to pay for fuel and hotels, so I am satisfied that I got the very best deal available. The car doesn’t have salt damage on the undercarriage because I didn’t buy it up north, and that peace of mind is worth skipping being mad that my road trip is no longer.

There will be other road trips. I am invited to spend Halloween with friends in upstate New York, and now it’s a real possibility I could go. I’m also going to visit some friends in Virginia later in the month, which has just been made stupid easy vs. the two or three trains it would have taken me previously.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable driving if I hadn’t had the money to get a car with blind spot assist, lane assist, and a backup camera. That’s not only to keep me safe, but everyone else on the road as well.

And this is why my hobby is sitting and writing- I have a lot to process, and some of it comes out as interesting.

Some of it doesn’t…….. stay tuned.

I hope rambling about my car is interesting, because I tend to do a lot of it. I’m a gear head and love working on cars when I have the chance, so I’m looking forward to getting to know my Fusion a little better. Riker says that my car was easily $30k when it was new, which means there’s more technology than I could possibly use.

I do love remote start, though, because Houston is hot and I have black leather seats. Remote start will also be helpful in the winter so that I can go from my warm house to my warm car without shivering half to death…. when the car and I both arrive in Maryland. Houston winters tend to be very, very mild. The one day a year I need ass warmers in Texas, though, I’ve got ’em.

The main thing is that the car I bought is comfortable and new enough to last me for a while. I’m enchanted by Apple CarPlay and Ford Connect, an app which will allow me to lock and unlock the car, plus start it remotely from my phone. All of the technology is keeping me from being too nervous about driving, honestly, because of course I need to be alert and responsible, but it’s nice to know that technology has my back instead of making my life more difficult.

There are practical matters to consider. I need to be able to run my own errands, and look for my own living space after this one (lease ends Nov. 30 and I don’t like it enough to stay). I will be able to go wherever I want to go, so I’m on the lookout for cute pockets of Baltimore, DC, and a new area to me- the no man’s land without public transportation. Now, I don’t have to worry about being within walking distance of a bus.

I’m starting to feel my life open up a little bit, because my order of operations is wonky at the best of times. It’s so much better for me to have a car and be able to call audibles on the road. I’m not very good at knowing where I need to go in advance. Executive dysfunction has its privileges…………… eyeroll.

I want to continue to branch out, because what started the inertia was being back with my family and friends. I wasn’t constantly having a conversation while simultaneously having half my brain composing to someone else (cough Aada cough). I was present the entire time, and continue to be.

Not that Aada is gone. She’s just not ever-present the way she used to be. I couldn’t go fifteen minutes without thinking of something I wanted to tell her, which was met with varying degrees of annoyance (I’m a lot. I get it.). Now, it’s almost as if I have to prepare to think about her. It’s a different phase of grief, because I am no longer doubled over with an empty feeling in my chest.

Often.

I’m glad I didn’t decide to go on this road trip by myself, because I wouldn’t have wanted a trip in which my mind wouldn’t settle and I kept dipping my cup into that particular well of loneliness.

I really messed up with Aada because I wanted to be her all the way to the river friend, and I destroyed our relationship in a fit of anger. I deserved to be angry. I should not have said that I was angry, because the way I said it got out of hand very, very quickly. So quickly, in fact, that now Aada thinks I’ve been manipulating her for the past 12 years. The feeling is mutual. I could go over and over the ways we’ve hurt each other, but I think I’ve already written a compendium. Sufficed to say, I am still sad. I don’t think that part will ever go away. I will just have to learn to live around it, like the other grief in my life.

It is hard to believe that both my mother and my stepmother are gone.

That’s why I’m so sad about Aada- her mom energy saved me from all of my mother’s energy being gone.

I know that I was the one that hurt her, but I deserve the right to grieve. Breakups hurt on both sides, and I know she’s hurting just as much as me. She was never my girlfriend, just a close friend, and that hasn’t seemed to make a damn bit of difference in the way we fought with each other.

But I know her pretty well, and if she says something is done, it is. Jesus will ring my doorbell before Aada says hey.

Never mind that I would do anything to make up for my flaws and failures, but I cannot think of anything that would help. If I could, it would be done. I just have to accept that my life is going to be different now.

Nothing will ever be the same.
Everything will be okay.

My father’s words at Angela’s funeral are my new mantra because I haven’t been treating myself very well. 12 years is a long time to love someone, and I didn’t really stop. I got angry… I didn’t stay that way. But a relationship isn’t up to me to start and stop. Ultimately, it’s about both our feelings, and she was very clear. No more.

This does come with perks. I was tired. She was, too.

I am not glad I hurt her, but I am glad it’s over. Aada is a six year old girl wrapped in a bazillion layers of protection and most of the time, her emotional tool is a hammer.

I got tired of being a nail.

It’s getting hot. I think I should go inside.

READY PLAYER ONE

October 5, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Daily writing prompt

What would you do if you lost all your possessions?

View all responses

I’d start over.

For a lot of people, this is a hypothetical exercise.

My house burned down to the ground when I was 11 years old. Life has been nothing but a series of moves in which I’ve just had to get new stuff and move on. Because when the original break with material possessions happened, it made me not care about any of them. There was nothing I could do to prevent loss, so why try? My car is the first material possession for which I’ve felt an affinity in years. It could all go away tomorrow.

When I think of losing my possessions, I don’t think of misplaced or stolen items. I see sneakers melted to each other. A hanger melted to the clothes hanging in the closet. I see the aftermath of walking through a house after it has already been sprayed by firemen.

The smell never comes out.

Therefore, I am not as careful with material possessions as I should be (at times). It’s not that I don’t care. It’s that I don’t have an illusion that anything is permanent.

When my house burned down, we started again at the beginning. And I’ve kept doing that with every disaster in my life. I am not sure that reacting to everything like your house is burning is healthy. Yet another thing to discuss with my therapist.

I suppose that losing all of your possessions early makes it where it’s just easier losing things all around. Every bit of safety you had was ripped out from under you in terms of the idea that possessions are safe in houses. The pendulum has swung too far in terms of not caring about losing my possessions over the years, because there are several things I’ve given away or didn’t pay enough attention to that have walked off.

Alternatively, I am happier having close to nothing because managing possessions is irritating and overwhelming. Losing things becomes akin to a video game reset instead of a major life event.

Mi carro es listo hoy?

October 3, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

The check I wrote for the car has cleared my bank, so I’m waiting for the all-clear from the car dealership to drive my Fusion home. I am supposed to get a call at noon today “without fail.” The car dealer is cute and I have a bit of a crush. He looks like an Almodóvar film star, shy and cute and doesn’t even know how beautiful he is.

The sunglasses in the photo are different from his horn-rimmed pair, the reason why I think he belongs in Spanish movies.

The other woman in the photo is, “the face of the company.” She, too, looks like an Almodóvar beauty, and the car salesman made me laugh. So, meet the face of ~~Almodóvar~~ Monaco Motors.

I speak poor Spanish. They speak poor English. We struggled along in both languages until one of the finance guys came over and translated for us. The car was on consignment from a private owner. No, he would not come down any and the price was firm.

I thought about asking someone in my media group to translate my text messages for me, but as it turns out I can just speak in my natural English and my car salesman (I didn’t catch his name- facepalm) runs it through Google Translate. The title is my first text to my car salesman after I’d written him a check. It means, “is my car ready today?” It had to have an emissions test, I had to get insurance, and the check has to clear. When all of those things are accomplished, I am off to the races.

Where those races are, I’m not sure. I’m looking forward to adding some adventure into my life. I know I’ll go through New Orleans on the way home, where I’d like to stop and have some excellent food (please leave suggestions in the comments). After that, I’m not sure where I want to go. I’m sure I will lean on Waze to direct me home, but if I’m driving and see that an attraction is close, I am not above adding a stop.

I want to roll down the windows and feel the air through my hair as I am captain of my own destiny, racing towards home.

Well, not racing. I have Adaptive Cruise Control. I will be chasing my destiny from a safe distance from the car in front of me.

A Sedan?!

October 2, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Yes, I know I said over and over that I wanted an SUV. And that may be the case down the road. But when you’re buying cars for cash you take the best deal you can get.

As someone without 3D vision, the technology on the car was very important to me. The car will let me know when I’m too close to something and is already equipped with a backup camera. I want to make sure that my comfort doesn’t come at the cost of anyone else’s.

And my comfort is great- the car’s ride is so smooth it feels like floating down the road. I don’t think there’s anything that little engine couldn’t handle, and it’s big enough to fit a dog. I checked. 🙂

I missed Aaron in Maryland, but he came and picked me up at my sister’s house in Houston so that we could buy a car together. I saw a few that I liked, but none more than the 2019 Ford Fusion.

In short, I did not get on the plane. I am going on this road trip to find myself, and to give “Stories” a different flavor than it’s had for the past 12 years, which has been mostly sitting in my room and doing nothing. And in fact today I’m thinking about how to infuse this entry with Hill Country Sunshine.

The dealership told me that I could pay for the car with a personal check, but I could not drive it until the check cleared and the money was in their hands. Fair enough. That gave me time to buy a decent insurance policy so that if someone hits me coming out of the lot, I’m not losing the car already.

I am sitting on my hands waiting to go pick it up, because the test drive was just long enough to realize it was a good deal.

It wasn’t long enough to satisfy my craving to drive. It’s been a long time, and simple things like running to the grocery store mean a lot. I’m grateful for my car because I went so long without one.

But truthfully, technology had to come a long way before I could afford something that would protect me. The Fusion will have less blind spots because of the sensors and cameras. These are the kinds of things that have existed for a long time, but were not nearly cheap enough for me to afford until now.

In effect, the fusion is between the car and me, because it shares the responsibility of driving with me more than I’d get with an older vehicle. I’m excited to find out how much driving has changed since I had my last car.

Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death, and this year, her gift to me is significant. I could not have bought the car without her working so hard and leaving money behind. She is making my life easier one day at a time with this gift, and I hope to use it to make her proud of me.

I want to tell stories about the road and how it rises to meet me. I need to remember that phones have cameras now…. a photo gallery for you wouldn’t kill me…. 😉 What kind of content I create now that I’ve got a different mojo will reveal itself over time.

First, though, it’s the little things. I’d like a 🦀 bumper sticker that looks like a Maryland flag. It will be the last thing I buy for my car at the end of the trip.

Right now, I know I need a USB-A to Lightning cable so that I can connect to Apple CarPlay.

We are starting and ending with simple things.

It’s the Running Aarons Tour 2025.

Shifting

September 29, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?

View all responses

I asked my dad if it was okay to stay for a few extra days so I could look for a car. He said yes, then realized he needed some alone time and I went to stay with my sister. Neither my sister nor my brother-in-law have mentioned that I could stay past Tuesday, and all three people have told me at different times that buying a used car isn’t that hard and I don’t need a mechanic with me buying pre-owned because they’re certified. I am starting to feel like a burden on my family more than a help, so unless things change dramatically between now and tomorrow, I guess I’ll just go home. I don’t want to. It’s not time on my clock.

My dad said something about how long I’d been here and my time blindness snapped to attention. It feels like yesterday that I was in Baltimore about to catch a flight to Houston and Angela was still alive. Everything has moved for me in a very fast blur. The days have all run together. I do get my dad’s point about needing space, my sister’s point about pre-owned, and neither one of them are listening to what I want, which is more time with both of them.

My dad and Lindsay have been extraordinarily busy the entire time I’ve been here. No one stopped working while Angela was dying, so Lindsay was driving back and forth from University of Houston to Sugar Land frequently. None of us have had time to decompress or even really to enjoy each other because it was all rushing around to get things done.

This was supposed to be my birthday trip, but no one has wished me a happy birthday except Hurricane Big Dave-O, because I remembered that his was September 15th (HBD was my neighbor at my dad’s house for the longest, so it was good to see him at the funeral). I have officially declared that today is my birthday do-over. My friend Jane Ann is taking me to lunch, and then my sister is taking me to see Brené Brown.

Seeing Brené Brown was the original reason I was going to come to Houston. I had to move my flight when Angela was hospitalized because she lost the ability to swallow and that was an omen not to be ignored.

I just want to crawl under my blankets.

It’s probably the number one priority for tomorrow, too.

Sweat

September 28, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

In what ways does hard work make you feel fulfilled?

View all responses

There’s a feeling to hard work, a zone. When I am in the zone, my typing speeds up to 90 words per minute and I do indeed start to break a sweat- or cry if the material is touching to me. Most of the time, I cry about an entry after it is published and I have let it go- I’m not in the process of changing it. It’s a different kind of mental acuity than watching burgers on the grill, but it is no less intense.

Writing about this week will take years, because there are so many little moments that jump out at me. Yesterday was Angela’s funeral, and it was just beautiful. My dad was a Methodist minister for a number of years, and he did the service. The main idea, the foundation of the service, was twofold:

Nothing is ever going to be the same.
Everything is going to be okay.

He highlighted the fact that we live in that liminal space all the time.

It was harder watching him work than it was thinking of entries to write here because I know him so well. That his reflexes kicking in to do Angela’s service was carrying him through his grief. As I told my aunt Shawn, “we’ll find a new normal. Just not today.”

Because it’s so true that there’s a difference between how you function in the immediate aftermath of a death and how you function six months later. It also feels heavier because she’s the sun around which we rotated, the name on the back of the door. We’re going to have to learn who we are as a family unit without her, and those words are excruciating to say because she didn’t like the idea any better than us.

During the funeral, my dad talked about how Angela was so proud that we’d all ended up with our soulmates. I knew that line was for my brothers in law, but lamented that Angela would never meet anyone I wanted to bring home. She’ll just have to tell me whether she approves in her own way. But the line about soulmates made me miss Dana and Aada, because they’re the closest things I’ve had to soulmates in this life. I ruined my relationship with both of them.

Nothing will ever be the same.
Everything will be okay.

I have reached out to both of them saying that I would like to rebuild trust. That I recognize I have done wrong and would like to make amends. Neither one of them have gotten back to me. Therefore, the only thing I can do is create a new normal without them as well.

The new normal is easier to take in Houston, where I have my sisters and old, long-time friends around me. In fact, today I’m going to lunch with my old boss from ExxonMobil 25 years ago, and Monday I’m getting together with someone I’ve known since I was seven. That doesn’t happen in Baltimore. So even if I don’t move to Texas, I’m going to take the advice of a friend and spend some more time here.

And maybe that’s really the answer- I think my dad likes coming to Baltimore and spending time with me there. Same with DC. And DC is really “my place.” I thought I needed to get out of Washington and create new memories, but as it turns out I prefer DC to Baltimore and don’t know whether that’s due to the city itself or to whether I really, really don’t like my apartment complex. I’m leaning towards the latter, because when I’ve gone out in the city and experienced good restaurants I’ve always had an excellent time. There’s nothing wrong with Baltimore, but after I move I will be spilling the dirt on this apartment complex and all I’ve been through.

I have also been burgled once, and that’s not the apartment complex’s fault, but it doesn’t endear me to it, either.

Sitting here and telling my stories does not seem like hard work until you realize that in order to create the memory on paper, I have to be willing to “dive back into the wreck.” Things get less and less painful the more I write about them, but I shake and cry when I need to do so. The entry about my apartment complex will be easy because it is full of facts. Most of my entries are about feelings.

Exploring feelings is where the sweat starts to pour.

Nothing I’ve written about over the last 12 years has been safe or comfortable. It’s all been unusual because I’m unusual. I don’t know how to do life like a neurotypical and I’m tired of trying. I see myself struggle in these pages and I don’t want to struggle anymore.

I had to sweat it out.

I had to see that my disability was real.

I had to see that Aada was fake…. that we had all the components to make a real relationship, we just never used them and turned on each other instead…. because the first time Aada lied to me? Ok. That was small. But the pathological nature of the way it grew turned my stomach. She was seeing consequences play out in real time and only cared for herself. My response was still over the top and I still regret.

Nothing will ever be the same.
Everything will be okay.

These two sentences have now become my mantra, because of their universal nature. I also know that just because I am unhappy in one area of my life, that does not mean I am unhappy in all of them. So I am lost without Aada, Angela, and even Dana, but I can find happiness somewhere else.

For instance, Aaron is taking me car shopping on Tuesday when my original plan was to fly back to Baltimore that day. I am thrilled because I’m such a gearhead. I want to future proof and look at SUVs, because I’ve been thinking about getting a pit bull as a service dog for over a year now. His name is Tony. I don’t even have him yet, but he already has a name- Tony Kellari Lanagan.

He’s named after Tony Mendez and Tony Bourdain, the spy and the chef that have taken over my imagination.

I know that owning a dog, particularly a large dog, is a lot of hard work. I feel like I’m finally ready to take on that kind of responsibility, raising a dog from a puppy. I have the time and space to make sure that he is very, very well behaved… and a best friend that will remind me that it’s not the dog that needs training, it’s me.

Bailey and Bridget, my dad’s dogs, do not seem to be complaining about their quality of care so far. The one note I got is that Bridget was not ready to get out of bed and eat this morning. Such a princess.

If I stay in Baltimore, though, it has been suggested to me that I would be better off with several cats. In Baltimore, we like dogs just fine, but cats are business associates. Everyone’s got mice.

I like cats, too, but the pit bull is going to be a service dog. So if I’m going to get any pets, it’s going to be aquarium fish until I have my dog in hand. The pack has to be built around him, including cats.

I want to work smarter, not harder- and I want that for my dog, too. Anything to make either one of our lives easier is high on the priority list.

I am sure that the writing prompt isn’t meant to jump around quite this much, but I like taking walks where WordPress might not think to go………………….

My dad has already left for orchestra (church), and I’m writing until the spirit moves me to get in the shower. What that spirit is, I do not know. I just know that I don’t have to be ready for hours, and it’s more fun typing in my pajamas.

I think that my writing is starting to take on more of a playful nature because I’m trying to be open. I’m trying to connect. I’m trying to be a different Leslie than I’ve been for the last 12 years, because I shut myself off from everyone else. It’s painful to admit how introverted I got, because agoraphobia only made it worse. Agoraphobia came with accepting my disability and feeling like people were looking at me all the time.

They do look at me, because I walk funny. It’s called an “ataxic gait,” or the “cerebral palsy shuffle.”

I just need to stop being so sensitive to it and get on with my life. Getting on with my life is the real hard work of being disabled, because there are so many stumbling blocks in the way…. and that’s not counting the ones external to your own body.

Taking in my environment is hard work, because I’m always at risk of falling physically due to cerebral palsy and mentally due to bipolar disorder. I feel that the only way to understanding the world is understanding my role in it, so I try to be as self-aware as I can be.

From where I sit, my dad’s words are just getting louder…….

“Nothing will ever be the same, and everything will be okay.”

But I’ll sweat first.

Cafe Au Lait

September 26, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

My dad has one of those fancy coffee machines that will make any drink thanks to the milk frother on the front. Therefore, this morning I am drinking a cafe au lait with an extra shot made from Starbucks’ Komodo Dragon coffee. It’s delicious, and better than going to Starbucks at 0530, which is when I staggered out of bed.

I haven’t been sleeping well, just in fits and starts despite the large amount of sleeping pills I’m taking. It’s unusual because the bed is comfortable and I’m genuinely exhausted. But the sleeping pills don’t last very long and then there I am, exhausted to the point of tears and unable to do anything about it. The cafe au lait becomes medicinal at that point…. the point we’re at right now. I went to bed early, I woke up once when my dad came home last night, then my eyes opened for good at “Too Damn Early O’Clock.”

I shouldn’t be complaining, though. “Too Damn Early O’Clock” has brought me some incredible blog entries at times. Plus, it’s my choice to get up early………… sort of. I really could have used the extra sleep this morning because grief is running my body ragged. Perhaps I just need to go with it, and keep sleeping in shifts. I know that at least part of not being able to sleep is that my stepmother died this week, and we were not exactly expecting it.

We were expecting that she was going to die. She had six brain tumors. We were just not expecting that the cancer would take her this quickly. But, the part of your brain that shuts off your ability to swallow is also the part of your brain that shuts off your ability to breathe. One followed the other in quick succession. However, the diagnosis called all the shots. We just thought she’d make it to Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Angela was so aware of her surroundings that she didn’t waste time. Everything that needed to be said was said, as if death had sharpened her reflexes and made everything clear in the end. Therefore, I hope she doesn’t mind that of everyone in the family that could have taken over her office, I’m the one that did.

For now, anyway. I haven’t decided if I’m moving to Sugar Land or not. That’s going to take months of talking to my dad a lot and seeing if he’s feeling lonely or whether he’s keeping on keeping on. I can live where I want, I just also need a housemate and would feel comfortable here. But here is not the only place I like.

Life still has to go on at my apartment complex until November 30th, but after that I’m out of there. One possible option is to move in with my dad because he has a ton of space and lives alone. One possible option is to stay in Baltimore. One possible option is to move back to DC. And, of course, there are a lot of cities I have not discovered yet that may call to me once I’m a bit more well-traveled.

“You are now free to move about the country.”

I need to go to Portland and spend some time with Bryn and Evan, so that needs to happen sooner rather than later. Or perhaps I’ll invite them to my house because neither have been to Baltimore (or Houston). But after that, I’m really not sure where I want to go. Having a car will make exploring so much easier, because I don’t necessarily want to fly. I love road-tripping. Long live cruise control.

Right now it’s all about Facebook Marketplace. I’ve found several cars I’d like to look at, none more than the Kia Soul and the Subaru Outback. The reason for this is that I’d eventually like a pit bull, so I’m thinking into the future and how a cargo area would be useful. But if I find a sedan that has what looks to be a longer-lasting engine, I’ll go with that.

The one thing I’d really like is for the car to be fully loaded out. I want all the luxury options, particularly seat warmers for snowy days. I’d also really like Apple CarPlay, but I can add that after market if necessary. Same with a backup camera. I’m not the best mechanic in the world, but I have friends and YouTube University that are both excellent at tutorials. I like learning to work on my own car, which is my only reservation about an SUV. I could actually lift the tires on my Toyota Yaris………….

It’s been years since I’ve owned a car, and I’m excited about it. I already have mountains of laundry to transport from my apartment to Sudsville, the washateria of my dreams. I can do all my regular clothes at home, but Sudsville has machines big enough for queen size comforters and sheet sets. I also need to take two computers to Walmart and exchange them. There’s all this little piddly shit that’s not getting done around my house because it’s too complicated for an Uber…. or it’s not, but it seems so. Who knows, maybe the Uber driver would have helped carry my bags.

I doubt it.

Speaking of Uber, I am two for two on Uber drivers being Evangelicals down here, complete with Bible in the center console and the world’s worst oxymoron, Christian Rock, on the stereo.

I wouldn’t enjoy driving passengers around, but I could drive Uber Eats. That thought just occurred to me, and would help my car pay for itself. We’ll see. It’s an idea, but it may not be a good one. The daily prompt was asking about professions, and one I could turn on and off at will seems like a better plan than requiring me to be somewhere at 8:00 AM.

Anybody else out there ADHD or Autistic and the hardest part of the job is getting there?

I was diagnosed with ADHD in college, but those records don’t exist anymore. I need to go through another diagnostic battery in Maryland, and one for autism as well. I am so convinced I have autism that I self-diagnosed, but that didn’t come until I’d done several weeks’ worth of research on how ADHD and Autism are similar and I might have been misdiagnosed in college.

The reason I need to go through the diagnostic battery again is that no one will prescribe ADHD meds for me until I’m diagnosed. The best OTC medication I can find?

Cafe au lait.

If Money Didn’t Matter

September 26, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Daily writing prompt

List three jobs you’d consider pursuing if money didn’t matter.

View all responses

I thought that when you had a job, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, they paid you. So I suppose that they’re talking about getting ready for said job, like the schooling and everything. If I had the money to change careers, there’s a lot more than three I would consider…. but here’s the cream of the crop:

Doctor
- I was a medical assistant long enough to know that I could be a great doctor if I applied myself in math and science. I really enjoyed patient interactions and the general rhythm of the office. I think I would be good at detective work, tracking down what someone possibly has rather than the surgeon’s take of cut now, ask questions later.
Lawyer
- I love the law and have gotten pretty good grades in the pre-law courses I’ve already taken. Therefore, it’s the closest profession to something I’ve already studied. I know that I would do well, but I don’t know what kind of lawyer I would like to be. There are just so many areas, and of course emerging fields all the time as technology sharpens and changes to accommodate us.
University Professor
- In a lot of ways, I think I would be best served if I went to college and just never left. Become a student until I become a TA until I become the old geezer in the English department that once forgot to wear pants on Zoom.

I do not know how my life is going to go from here on out, but all three of these are possibilities that live in the cloud. Becoming a doctor is the least likely because even when I study maths and sciences diligently, I struggle. Even that, though, is not impossible. The only thing that’s impossible is my attitude.

My cognitive behavioral therapy group does not believe that I am capable of holding down a job, and I think they’re right. The only iron structure I’ll follow is my own. That being said, I am not finished as a writer and this blog is not my only project. Lanagan Media Group is starting off small, but who knows what we’ll be capable of in the future?

Therefore, I don’t think that my calling is any of these jobs. I think my calling is to meet people with fantastic jobs, and keep telling my stories.

I’m also trying to orient myself. The most important person that I love and believe in is me. I love me even when it’s hard and I don’t think I deserve it.

It’s been especially hard these past few months, because I got angry at someone I adore and hurt her so bad I don’t think she’ll ever speak to me again.

But that won’t stop her from reading my stories……. the actual hard part of blogging. I have to be here for the audience that adores me and the one that doesn’t. No amount of money could solve that issue.

So maybe medical school wouldn’t be that hard after all.

Angela’s Office

September 25, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The light from the reading lamps sweeps perfectly up the wall behind my computer, bathing me in a soft glow. I’m winding down for the night, caught between the ideas of writing to you and going down for a soak in the hot tub. Because I’m a gardener and not an architect, I don’t know how long this entry will be yet- perhaps there will be time for both. Or perhaps I will make time. Grief is heavy and my body feels like it is using muscles it hasn’t in a very long time. I could use jets of hot water streaming at my back and you know what? I’m going to go get in the hot tub now. See you on the flip side.

My muscles feel relaxed, and I just took some sleeping pills to ensure that I rest well. I’m just so sad, surrounded by all of Angela’s things that bring her back in my mind. There’s the photo of the emu I’ve always called “The Disapproving Grandmother.” She was a bird photographer. There are raptors and eagles around me…. but no orioles. Angela never made it to DC or Baltimore when I was there.

There’s also a tiny urn that’s usually here that says “Ashes of Problem Patients,” but my dad relocated it to the living room.

If I’m going to have so much of my stepmom around me, it’s really her office that matters the most because I worked for her for a number of years. I will see patients I haven’t seen since the 1990s, and definitely my coworkers from the time period. Believe me when I tell you that it is like the sun dropped out of its orbit. Everyone in my family has done something to support the practice and most of us worked there as a first job.

So this desk feels familiar. This tape dispenser. This reading lamp.

Familiar.

Familial.

I have joked for many years that I went to medical school in the back of a Lexus.

It’s not really a joke.

My favorite thing about my stepmother as a doctor is that she could laugh at herself. If you meet me on the ground, make sure you ask me to tell you the stories about “foreign body sensation” and “chapstick.”

Both of these stories make me laugh until I cry, but they lose something when you try to write them down.

Angela wrote all these stories down in her Palm Pilot, then her phone, calling it her “comedy routine.” I’m sure that I could remember a lot of it, but I hope my dad has access to her phone so that document isn’t lost.

“I know dis shit like the back of my head.”

But I probably don’t know it as well as I think I do. The brain takes memories and squishes them together, melting days and stretching minutes. I really hope that document is intact.

Angela, to me….

“You think it’s embarrassing telling people you’re gay…. wait til you have to tell them you went to University of Houston.”

Fragments are coming now, little pieces of conversation over the years.

She was the first person to really teach me how to cook, because my mother was more dedicated to convenience. Dana, as a chef, furthered my technique and got it up to snuff. Angela taught me that there was a world outside the microwave long before that.

The sleeping pills are starting to kick in. Welcome to the party………………..

I’ve started car shopping and I’ve found several that I like. What I’m mostly feeling is relief that I don’t have to go home on Tuesday. I have reached a different point in my life and would like to reconnect with everyone, even if it’s just for a few extra days. I need to be in this office, soaking up all the inspiration that’s here.

Then, I will pack up my car and drive home.

What kind of car remains to be seen, because I need to buy one. That’s been my project for today, sitting in Angela’s office and surfing Facebook Marketplace just to see what’s out there. I don’t really have a “dream car,” but I do know that I want an older car so that I can afford it to be loaded out. I can’t wait to use the seat warmers when it’s 20 degrees outside. I’m fairly certain I want a wagon or an SUV, but if the engine on the sedan is the better value, that’s fine, too. I’m also not opposed to a pickup truck. I just bought cowboy boots a few weeks ago, so I’ve already got the accessories.

In this office, it’s quiet enough that Aada visits me. There’s a feeling I get “when she’s here,” that closeness seeming to reach out to her even though the other end of the string is not responding and probably won’t change her mind on that one. I call it “smoking with the ghost in the back of my head” after the Lisa Loeb lyrics. Mostly, I’m just wondering what it is she’d like to know. Thinking about that question at least gives me a seed that grows into a makeshift framework.

I’m trying to go back to the place of being happy without her, because I was once and I cannot find it again. That’s because I hurt her when I was angry she lied about something. I can’t find the happy part knowing I caused pain to someone else.

Sitting in this office allows me to sit in peace and quiet, reorganizing my priorities.

I said that I thought and felt that Aada isolated me from my friends and family, so now I’m trying to create a better relationship with my dad and sisters. I wasn’t doing that before because I wasn’t always aware of it. I was so shut down and standoffish by the time I left for DC, and that’s just not me. I have a lot of reparative work to do, and I am doing it.

I don’t know yet whether that includes moving into this office full time.

A Little Bit of Everything

September 25, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Daily writing prompt

What aspects of your cultural heritage are you most proud of or interested in?

View all responses

My family came to America from Ireland, and there’s nothing about Ireland I don’t want to see in the coming years. The music and food calls to me, and I have Fanagans across the country. How? I don’t really know. But thanks to the magic of WordPress stats, I know that Ireland loves me as much as I love it. 🙂

One of Angela’s patients told me that Lanagans are from county Wexford, but I don’t know if that’s where my grandfather tracked our family or not. I just remember her lovely Irish lilt when she said it.

I know that I’d want to go to Trinity College and see all the sights, but what really interests me about Ireland is just fitting into life for a few days. Going up to the pub and finding people with interesting stories. Singing with everyone to wind down the night.

It just sounds like a very chill vacation to go to Ireland and live like a local. Relax and soak in the social history of the place, perhaps seeing the same people every night so as to get to know them well.

I used to work in a pub, and I’m eager to find that atmosphere again. Perhaps I could bring “Lanagan’s Pub Chili” to Ireland the same way I brought it to Oregon…. by getting my name on the menu.

As I have always said, “the fact that my last name is Lanagan is really what sold it. I don’t think it would have worked out so well for me if my last name was Smith.”

Grief Should Be Sponsored

September 24, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Daily writing prompt

What brands do you associate with?

View all responses

I am emotionally eating my way across Texas, and feelings are delicious.

So far, grief has been brought to me by Cool Ranch Doritos the most frequently, followed by an assortment of coffee cake.

Last night, we all gathered and sent pictures for the slide show that plays as people are milling about the room waiting for the service to begin. There turned out to be a fair number in which we all looked equally terrible and were thus chosen. We also went down memory lane and this is the kind of interaction that’s been missing from my life. No phones, just talking and remembering.

It’s also the first significant chunk of time I’ve spent with other people in ages. I’m getting used to being part of a family system again. I’m sure I’ll go back to Baltimore and everything will be too quiet, because the rhythms of my family are not quiet…. although some of us are more into Bluey than others (I’m with the children… it’s great).

This morning I was supposed to go with my dad to Exchange Club, and I overslept. I feel terrible because I know my dad wanted to introduce me to a lot of people. Me oversleeping is the weirdest part of all of this because I’ve been waking up at 0530 since I got here. I think staying up later is finally getting to me, because we didn’t shut down the “party” until after 10:30 last night. I’m used to going to bed long before that.

I used to think it was because I was an old person, and now I think it’s that my circadian rhythm naturally follows the sun. I like going to bed and waking up early. Last night was aberrant because I cannot remember the last time I stayed up that late with other people and didn’t find myself leaking energy at an alarming rate. However, I did sleep very hard.

As a result, I’m feeling quite rested and capable of taking on more today. Yesterday, it felt like I was just running ragged. Angela not being there to hold court and direct us was a palpable feeling, tangible in its depth and breadth. The difference in the energy of the house is staggering, because she was a force of nature.

I see so much of her in my stepsisters, Kelly and Caitlin. It’s comforting that all of her quirks live on in the smallest of ways. I still see Angela’s facial expressions in them, and it always makes me laugh in a knowing way.

I am supposed to go back to Baltimore on Tuesday, but I’m having trouble accepting it. I need more time with my family, but I also need to wrap things up in the Mid-Atlantic one way or the other. My lease ends November 30th, and I will have enough money to move wherever I feel comfortable. I do not know whether that is staying in Baltimore or not. At the very least, DC is still in the running because my sister will always have a federal component to her job and thus, business trips that include spoiling me.

My dad is not sure he wants to change his life by having me live with him, and I’m not sure I want to change my life that way, either. The easiest option is not always the best, but it may prove to be over time. I do not want to live alone anymore, nor do I really want to interview housemates and live with strangers. I also don’t have any income, so getting housing takes some doing. Having money is not enough, and I do not make a living from my combination of web sites, but my stats and earnings are looking better.

Thank you, Fanagans.

The sensible choice for me is to buy a station wagon or an SUV so that when my lease ends, I can pack up the stuff I want to move into my own car and drive it to where it’s supposed to be. There is no way that even a car payment and insurance would add up to what I pay in Uber/Uber Eats/Amazon/etc. a year. I will not have a car payment, though. I will buy a car in cash so that the only bills I have are maintenance and insurance.

I also want to get a service dog, and a service dog big enough to counter balance my weight deserves a huge cargo area in the back. I do not know if my dad wants to live with a dog that big, either. So, we’ll see. My dog is not really negotiable because I need someone there to keep an eye on me. It’s easier in this house because I’m used to it completely. I need help in unfamiliar environments.

My dad suggested taking a road trip with one of my friends to get my car back to Baltimore. I like this idea a lot. Aaron is going to help me pick it out (I stopped writing and talked to both of them, so this is a real thing now). Aaron is a programmer and “shade tree mechanic” who will make sure my engine is solid. It would make me feel better if he came with me if we get an older vehicle, but I’m really not even scared of that if Aaron says that I’m golden.

Ok, Aaron is in for the road trip (I’m chatting with him while I’m writing, so this story is developing… film at 11:00).

It’s nice to have something to be excited about in this garbage dump of a situation.

“We can’t stop here. We’re in bat country.”

Maybe I can talk Aaron into some vlogging as we drive. Our conversations would be hilarious…. I think. Sometimes we just enjoy the silence together. It depends on what kind of mood we’re in.

I suppose that part of my task list for the afternoon is looking on Facebook Marketplace to at least get an idea of what’s out there. I prefer a stick shift, but that may not be possible depending on what kind of cars are available. Stick shifts are not very popular these days.

I’m calling it the “Running Aarons Tour 2025.”

We’ll get to eat at some good restaurants and really take our time if we need it.

The secret to having a great blog is actually living. I haven’t been doing a lot of it. Now, I have a lot more financial freedom to be able to buy experiences. They say that money cannot buy you happiness, but it can buy entrance tickets to things and that’s kind of the same thing. I would much rather have the time of my life than buy something material. It makes my blog lighter than sitting in my room all the time…. but that’s what my mental health has been telling me to do for the longest. Everyone tells me to get out more. Now I can really do it.

“Now I can really do it” must be in quotes because I don’t know that my introversion will actually allow me to make many changes to my lifestyle. I like being, as I once joked with Aada, “the Harper Lee of Your House.” In some ways, I will always be this separate.

I was telling Angela’s night nurse that it’s almost like I don’t belong to one person, I belong to everyone. He said, “that’s poetry.” I never thought of it that way, so Cordero, thank you for the compliment (see, I told you that you’d make it in).

But the pendulum has swung too far in the introverted direction. I can come out of my shell a little more and still keep my life as a writer in balance. I’m not the shut-in that I’ve been, nor do I want to continue that life. I want all of my readers to see more of me, and the only way to do that is to do things I’ve never done before.

Part of it will be travel. I know that I could put together media on the road that would make me happy, and that’s the only goal I can really accomplish. Then I can see if my humor resonates with other people. The last decade has not overall been a happy one, so my entries have not reflected that I’m sometimes funny.

Sometimes.

I’ve been angry and sad and grieving and all of those things, so I’m looking forward to the sun coming out a little bit.

But not today.

Today, grief is being brought to me by Cool Ranch Doritos.

Feelings are delicious.

Watching and Waiting

September 23, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What could you do more of?

View all responses

In the aftermath of a severe shock is not the time to do anything rash, so my task is to watch and wait over the next few months to see what our new normal looks like as a family. Angela’s presence is already missed, but we are keeping her alive through repeating her favorite phrases and asking ourselves what she would do. None of us learned to load the dishwasher in the first year of medical school.

If my dad noticed that Angela had a particular skill that impressed him, he’d always ask which year of medical school they taught her that. You learn a surprising amount there, the least of which is being able to load an entire cabinet of dishes into the top rack and attempt to add the front end of your car.

Such a large part of our institutional memory is gone, and we’re all grieving differently. I hope that I seem relatable to my stepsisters because I’m not showing outward signs of grief. Because my mother died nine years ago, all other deaths seem to come in stride. It’s not that I’m not sad, not emoting. It’s just an internal thunderstorm……

that usually ends up here…..

I have taken over my stepmother’s old office, and it’s comforting to walk into the room and say, “Alexa, turn on Angela’s office.” All the lamps come on at once and it is instantly homey. I also have a nameplate that says “Angela McCain, MD – Board Certified, Rheumatology. I’ll need to get a new nameplate if I move in with my own name, but surprisingly I have been mistaken for the doctor before. In the 1990s, I worked for her and we both had short red hair. A woman thought she was me and dropped her pants when I walked into the room.

I did not have “patient drops pants” on my Bingo card.

She had shingles, btw.

It was my first diagnosis, seconded with “good pickup.”

“Good pickup” was like a hug from Jesus. It meant we were on the right track and is your basic doctor’s “attaboy.”

It’s so weird that there’s still a rheumatology practice out there in the world without her… that the entire specialty didn’t just stop turning. I’m not being facetious when I say she was one of the top in the world, named to Texas’ Top 100 Doctors every year since 1990. It was unusual to run across a mind as bright as hers, which is why seeing her after the cancer had really taken hold was quite a shock.

Brain cancer is so weird. I’m glad that I arrived in time to see what my dad and sisters had been seeing for months. The one I’ll always remember is that I asked my dad for coffee money, and she said to give me a thousand dollars so I could do whatever I wanted. I did not know whether she just wanted to do something nice for me, or whether she really thought Starbucks’ coffee costs a thousand dollars….. not that it doesn’t.

“Don’t like it too much. These are better than drugs.”

Sometime this week I need to go to the Apple store because the battery on my watch is failing. Then, I can see whether I’d like to be the proud owner of an Apple computer or not. I’ve been mulling over upgrading my iPad for the last year or so, but I also really have an interest in a desktop. So we’ll see. I only spent $3 at Starbucks, so I have $997 left over.

Plus, my dad said that he would get me a birthday gift and it hasn’t been until now that I’ve thought of anything I needed. My iPad is getting so old that it’s not taking the newest versions of apps or the OS. I would lose the headphone jack, but gain a ton of processing power.

My dad would tell me to watch the latest Apple release video. That’s not actually a bad idea.

I’ve got time on my hands until the funeral, because my main job is staying at the house with the dogs while my dad arranges the business of death. My cousin Jason is the funeral director, and I think my dad is going to ask him to sing. He was once on American Idol, and Angela adored his voice.

It’s going to be a beautiful service, and I look forward to seeing old friends I haven’t seen since high school.

However, it is not until Saturday. I will be watching and waiting until then.

Go Home

September 22, 2025 ~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Daily writing prompt

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?

View all responses

The best piece of advice I’ve gotten lately was from me. For the last few months, I’ve been telling myself to go home. Pick up all the pieces you dropped when you left for DC in 2015. I even contacted Dana and told her that I was incredibly sorry and would like to be her friend if she wanted that. It’s not something I saw in my future, but I decided that if my body was whispering to me to clean up a mess, that’s a big one.

No word, but that wasn’t the point. I have no control over what other people are going to do, but I knew that I wanted to reach out. I have a feeling that no matter what, I’ll never hear from Dana or Aada again, but it’s okay. I don’t have to cry because it’s over. There’s plenty to smile over when I think of our relationships happening at all. And sometimes, I get stats from their geographic areas so I pretend that they’re still reading because they love me, even if they don’t want to reach out.

Or maybe they just hate me that much….. but I don’t care how they feel about me. It cannot be all bad if they’re still willing to listen to my silly stories.

Which are tremendous.

My stepmom died on Sunday of six brain tumors. I’m thinking about moving in with my dad so that neither one of us has to live alone, but neither one of us are sure whether we want that. It’s a big decision, and honestly doesn’t have as much to do with how we feel about each other as it does with money. I could really screw up by moving to a state without Medicaid expansion. My dad and I are also both really private people, but the house he has is large enough that we’d never see each other unless we really wanted to do so.. I’m glad that we’re both in “thinking about it” mode, because here’s the thing… people are saying that it’s my dad who shouldn’t live alone, but I have more problems than he does at times. It’s more of a case of we need each other.

If I am allowed to come home.

Don’t get me wrong. Maryland is home, and so is Texas. I have a feeling that I would feel the same in Texas that I do every time I move back, which is that I don’t really have a home. I don’t fit in anywhere. I’m too Oregon/Maryland for Texas, and too Texas for Oregon/Maryland. Perhaps I would be happier in Canada or Europe, and that will be decided in the coming years.

But right now, my internal body clock is saying “you’ve already gone big. Go home.”

Going big was a hospitalization that garnered me a bipolar disorder diagnosis with psychotic features. I have never been psychotic before, and I have no memory of telling the doctors anything that would land me a diagnosis like that. So, since I’ve been in recovery from all of it, I just feel the same as I always did. But I’m different, and I know I am. I don’t know what I’m capable of doing- am I headed for a disability case or a working media company or both?

I choose both.

If I’m allowed.

My sisters are coming over for dinner tonight, and we’re probably going to get in the hot tub. I’ve found that the hot tub is the best place to discuss any of this stuff. The water is just so calming as it swirls around our problems.

And it’s our hot tub time machine due to all the important conversations that have happened there since the 1990s, when we moved in. I don’t just see my family presently, but all the people I’ve invited over since I was a senior in high school.

Aada is quietly resting in my soul, with me in spirit even though I had to drag her kicking and screaming to Texas. I know she’s mad at me, but I need her. I’m taking all of the words she’s already told me and whispering them to myself, because I know she knows this situation better than most. That I’d have a hard time with this death on multiple levels. When it gets quiet, I feel her arm around me.

Part of going home is rectifying all my mistakes, and betraying Aada was a big one. I cannot make her feel safe with me, but that does not mean that she won’t show up in my mind when I call.

Because if there is a home to be had for me, it is actually in the cloud.