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  • 🧠 Brain Static #11: Crows Have Receipts

    Here’s an unnecessary fact for your Monday:

    Crows can remember human faces. For YEARS.

    Researchers at the University of Washington wore specific masks while capturing and banding crows. Later, the birds still reacted angrily to people wearing the “dangerous” masks—and other crows could learn that those faces were bad news just by watching the original crows react. 

    So basically…

    If you piss off a crow, you might not have just made one enemy.

    You may have created a whole little bird gossip network.

    Imagine walking outside and getting screamed at by a crow you have never met because his aunt told him you were an asshole in 2012.

    Absolutely not. 😂

    Anyway, be nice to crows.

    I do not have the emotional bandwidth for a multigenerational bird vendetta.

    You’re welcome for the unnecessary information. 🖤

    Until next time,

    -Destiny

    P.S. Be honest—if a crow started screaming at you every time you went outside, how long would it take before you started apologizing to it? 😂

  • Sunday Things #11

    This week felt like somebody put my life on shuffle.

    There was absolutely no transition between anything.

    One minute I was sick.

    The next I was dancing.

    Then there were children.

    So many children.

    A brand-new baby entered the world.

    Somebody threw a desk.

    Somebody else refused to nap.

    And apparently my boyfriend can sleep through me falling on the floor but possesses some kind of supernatural boob-detection system.

    So.

    You know.

    A normal week.

    😂

    Monday started at 2:30 in the damn morning with another visit from the tummy goblin.

    I spent the next five hours running back and forth to the bathroom wondering what the actual fuck was happening to me.

    Again.

    By 7:30, I had officially accepted defeat.

    I called out of work.

    And I spent essentially the entire day in bed.

    That was Monday.

    Beautiful.

    Thriving.

    Living my best life.

    😮‍💨

    Wednesday, I absolutely took the day off too—but that one was planned.

    Listen.

    If I get home at 12:30 in the morning, I am NOT waking up at six to spend eight hours chasing an autistic baby around.

    Could I?

    Probably.

    Was I going to?

    Absolutely fucking not.

    😂

    Apparently my alarm still went off, though.

    My boyfriend told me he had to climb over me to turn it off.

    I did not wake up.

    Not once.

    I regret nothing.

    Later that evening, Mom called because she wanted to go shopping with the kiddos and her fibromyalgia was acting up, so I went with her.

    Then I came home, turned on Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, and hid the remote from my boyfriend so he couldn’t change it.

    😂

    He walked in maybe three minutes after I started it, sat down, and actually watched the entire first episode with me.

    Then started asking questions.

    Lots of questions.

    Until eventually I realized something horrifying:

    this man did not know who Lizzie Borden was.

    😮🫣

    So apparently part of being in a relationship with me now includes mandatory historical true-crime education.

    I don’t make the rules.

    He went to bed after episode one because he was exhausted, and I stayed up for another episode like the responsible adult I am.

    Thursday was funny because when I first started writing my notes for the week, I genuinely wrote:

    I don’t remember Thursday.

    😂

    I thought maybe it had just been one of those completely average days where I worked, came home, showered, ate dinner, watched CaseOh, and went to bed.

    Then my brain slowly started handing me Thursday back.

    Oh yeah.

    I got my nails done.

    Then Doodoo called because he missed me, so I stopped at CVS to get the prenatal vitamins my doctor told me to start taking and went over to my sister’s house.

    I helped her feed the kids, do bath time, and get everybody ready for bed.

    Doodoo kept pointing at my watch saying:

    “Uncle.”

    So I video-called Uncle.

    I honestly didn’t expect him to answer because Thursdays are normally his late days.

    Except—

    he was home.

    He had the day off.

    Of course he did.

    😂

    Eventually I left my sister’s house, got all the way home, realized I forgot cat food, and had to leave AGAIN.

    Then I finally came home.

    Showered.

    Ate.

    Went to bed.

    Apparently Thursday wasn’t forgettable.

    Thursday was just long as hell.

    ☕ This Week’s Comfort

    Friday night, I came home from work, sat in my recliner for what felt like forever, took a shower…

    and realized something.

    The house didn’t feel right.

    The boys weren’t there.

    And apparently I have become so accustomed to spending my weekends surrounded by tiny people screaming, climbing on me, stealing my food, and demanding cartoons that silence now feels suspicious.

    😂

    So I went to my sister’s house and got them.

    We came home.

    We ate.

    And somehow—

    neither one fought sleep.

    Not even a little.

    They just went to bed.

    I almost checked their temperatures.

    😂

    But honestly?

    Having them there felt right.

    Even when they drive me absolutely insane, I notice when they aren’t around.

    Apparently my peaceful weekends have been permanently replaced by toddler chaos.

    And apparently—

    I’m okay with that.

    📷 Through My Lens

    Tuesday.

    Y’all.

    Tuesday.

    The Pretty Reckless is my favorite band.

    And my boyfriend made sure I got to see them.

    I have said this already and I will continue saying it forever:

    If that man never buys me another gift again, I am completely okay with that.

    Because he gave me that night.

    🥲🖤

    And I got to share it with someone I love dearly.

    One of my best friends trusted me enough to let his daughter come with me.

    I have watched her and her brother grow from little kids in booster seats who needed help bathing into teenagers with opinions and personalities approximately fourteen times larger than their actual bodies.

    😂

    And lately, she has been carrying some things.

    They are not my things to share.

    What people tell me in confidence stays with me.

    But watching her laugh?

    Dance?

    Cut loose?

    Forget everything else for a few hours and just enjoy herself?

    That meant more to me than I can explain.

    And somehow—

    we both got to touch Taylor Momsen.

    😭

    I still cannot believe that sentence is real.

    As for me?

    I was VIBING.

    That is genuinely the best description I have.

    I drank water all night and danced so hard that halfway through the show my hair was completely soaked.

    My friend’s daughter looked at me and started laughing.

    😂

    Afterward, people actually came up to me and told me they had fun watching me dance and enjoy myself.

    Apparently I became part of the entertainment.

    Whoops.

    I did have one man yell at me about where I was standing before The Pretty Reckless even came on.

    I apologized.

    Moved.

    And he proceeded to glare at me for the rest of the night.

    Okay.

    You do you, boo.

    We had shit to do.

    😂

    We were there to dance.

    Make memories.

    And scream songs we love at the top of our lungs.

    And that is exactly what we did.

    The next day, I went through all my pictures.

    And I got some really fucking good ones.

    My friend even told me I could tag him in my Facebook post.

    Which I hadn’t planned on doing because—

    well.

    Crazy ex-wife situations.

    😂

    Then he told me I could post some pictures of his daughter too, as long as her face wasn’t showing.

    Say less.

    I was ridiculously careful about which ones I chose, and he approved every single picture before I posted it.

    And I know that sounds like such a small thing.

    But it isn’t to me.

    Being trusted like that matters.

    A lot.

    I love photography.

    I love concerts.

    I love the weird little moments my camera catches.

    But I think some photographs become important because of everything happening outside the frame.

    And I think those pictures are going to be some of my favorites for a very long time.

    💭 A Thought I’ve Been Carrying

    Friday afternoon, one of my friends sent me:

    “wyd.?”

    And immediately—

    I KNEW.

    😂

    I told my sister:

    “Hold on. I might have to come get the boys later.”

    Because—

    MY FRIEND HAD HER BABY.

    MY FRIEND HAD HER BABY!!!!

    😭🖤

    I was so excited.

    But then I thought about it.

    She had literally just had a human being.

    And I had just survived one of the longest workdays of my life.

    So I decided not to immediately show up at the hospital and insert myself into her first day with her baby.

    Growth.

    😂

    Don’t misunderstand me.

    I am absolutely going to be all in her business.

    But I can give the woman a minute first.

    Saturday got completely consumed by toddler chaos, so I stayed home again.

    Then today I texted her because I felt bad that I hadn’t made it up there yet.

    She asked if I wanted to come visit once they’re home.

    Baby boy just needed to pee so they could hopefully get discharged.

    😂

    And she sent me pictures.

    Y’ALL.

    That baby is beautiful.

    I haven’t seen a baby that gorgeous since Doodoo was born.

    And now I’m sitting here ridiculously excited because I get to meet him soon.

    But I think there’s something I’m learning as I get older:

    loving people doesn’t always mean immediately showing up.

    Sometimes it means giving them room.

    Letting them breathe.

    Letting them settle.

    And letting them know:

    I’m here whenever you’re ready.

    I’m still going to squeeze that baby as soon as I’m allowed, though.

    Obviously.

    😂

    ❤️ This Week’s Gratitude

    My boyfriend’s mom.

    Easy.

    Saturday?

    Those boys were ON ONE.

    Hitting.

    Headbutting.

    Throwing shit.

    Fighting each other.

    Crying.

    Just being complete little assholes to one another all day.

    😮‍💨

    At one point, Doodoo finally went down for another nap.

    Pooh Boy eventually crawled into the recliner with us and passed out too.

    And when Mawmaw Nesi came through the door, I was terrified she was going to wake him.

    Thankfully—

    she didn’t.

    Doodoo woke up a little later when he heard water running in the kitchen.

    He sat up.

    Looked me dead in my eyes.

    And said:

    “Where is she?”

    Where is who, bub?

    “Mawmaw.”

    She’s in the kitchen doing dishes.

    This half-asleep child launched himself off my lap and stumbled toward the kitchen like a tiny drunk person.

    “Mawmaw!”

    😂

    She picked him up.

    He changed his mind and wanted me again.

    Naturally.

    But after a cake pop, both boys wandered into the kitchen and started “helping” her with dishes.

    And suddenly?

    Nobody was climbing on me.

    Nobody was crying in my face.

    Nobody needed anything.

    For approximately half an hour.

    Y’all.

    Bless that woman.

    😂

    I will never not appreciate those little breaks.

    Especially on weekends when the children apparently wake up and collectively decide:

    Today, we choose violence.

    Sometimes gratitude is deep and meaningful.

    Sometimes gratitude is somebody taking the toddlers into another room for thirty minutes.

    Both count.

    😂 This Week’s “Well…That Happened.”

    I had OPTIONS this week.

    Friday at work deserves honorable mention.

    My kiddo was having an absolutely horrible day.

    And when I say horrible—

    I mean I got hit by him.

    Hit by two other kiddos.

    And my kiddo threw his desk—and himself—at me three separate times.

    Lunch was running behind because they ran out of fries, and apparently that was enough to trigger the apocalypse.

    He had two bathroom accidents too, which was really unusual because he hasn’t had those with me in almost a year.

    By the end of the day?

    We figured it out.

    He was constipated.

    🤦🏻‍♀️

    Sir.

    You terrorized an entire building because you needed to poop.

    And yes.

    Once he finally did—

    his mood improved dramatically.

    Of course it did.

    😂

    Then Saturday happened.

    Pooh Boy’s visit got canceled because the person picking him up had car trouble.

    Okay.

    Whatever.

    Except Pooh Boy then decided he was simply not going to nap.

    At all.

    So by late afternoon, this child was operating entirely on spite.

    Eventually he passed out for maybe thirty minutes.

    And honestly?

    I celebrated that thirty minutes like I had personally won the lottery.

    😂

    Later, Uncle got home and cooked dinner.

    Everybody sat down.

    Doodoo pointed at the television.

    “BLAHBLAH! I watch!”

    You watch what?

    “CaseOh!”

    I had seven minutes left in my show.

    Seven.

    So I asked:

    Can BlahBlah finish this first?

    “No! CaseOh!”

    …

    Fine.

    CaseOh it is.

    Apparently I no longer own the television in my own house.

    Cool.

    😂

    And then Sunday morning?

    Uncle accidentally woke Pooh Boy up early.

    Pooh Boy immediately started yelling:

    “Guncle! Guncle!”

    Which is how he says Uncle and I’m sorry, but Guncle is the cutest damn thing ever.

    You cannot change my mind.

    Unfortunately, the yelling woke Doodoo.

    So suddenly all four of us were awake.

    Early.

    On.

    A.

    Sunday.

    Absolutely not.

    I grabbed Pooh Boy and put him in our bed.

    Now listen to me, little boy.

    Do NOT make this a habit.

    He nodded.

    We are all going back to sleep.

    He nodded again.

    Everybody understood the assignment.

    Doodoo went back to sleep.

    Uncle went back to sleep.

    I went back to sleep.

    Eventually I woke up halfway off the bed with my entire right arm asleep.

    I very carefully rolled over.

    Pooh Boy?

    Still asleep.

    Thank goodness.

    😂

    Around eight, I realized he was awake only because his breathing changed.

    I kept my eyes closed because if he was going to be quiet—

    I was going to enjoy it.

    Eventually he started rubbing my arm.

    “BlahBlah.”

    “BlahBlah.”

    Fine.

    I’m awake.

    😂

    Honestly?

    If that’s how I have to wake up on a Sunday morning, I guess I can live with it.

    And now it’s Sunday afternoon.

    Doodoo had smoked sausage and a baked potato for lunch and apparently approved of my cooking.

    Uncle has been playing his game.

    I’ve been sitting on the couch.

    Doodoo has alternated between playing peacefully and crying about whatever injustice toddlers are experiencing at any given moment.

    😂

    He even squeezed in one last little nap.

    I’m about to take him home.

    Then I’m coming back here.

    Cleaning the living room.

    Finishing laundry.

    And after that?

    I am doing absolutely fucking nothing.

    🤗

    This week started with me stuck in bed while my stomach attempted to ruin my life.

    Somewhere in the middle, I danced until my hair was soaked, watched someone I love forget her worries for a few hours, learned my boyfriend has never received adequate Lizzie Borden education, celebrated a brand-new baby entering the world, and spent the weekend surrounded by tiny people who apparently believe peace is optional.

    And somehow?

    I’m ending the week tired—

    but really fucking happy.

    I keep saying it lately, but I mean it:

    I love my little life.

    It’s loud.

    It’s chaotic.

    It rarely goes according to plan.

    And somebody almost always needs something from me.

    But there are people here I love.

    People who trust me.

    Kids who miss me when I’m gone.

    A man who makes ridiculous things possible for me.

    Friends whose lives I get to witness.

    Babies I get to watch grow.

    And a house that somehow feels a little too quiet when certain tiny feet aren’t running through it.

    That’s a pretty damn good life.

    Even with the tummy goblins.

    😂

    Until next time,

    —Destiny

    P.S. What’s one thing from your week—big or completely ordinary—that made you stop for a second and think, “I really love my little life”?

  • 🐇 Down the Rabbit Hole #3: The Color in Your Head Might Not Exist

    I want you to do something before we start.

    Pick something near you that has a distinct color.

    Your shirt.

    A coffee cup.

    A blanket.

    A book.

    Whatever.

    Look at it for a few seconds.

    Really look at the color.

    Now look away.

    Don’t cheat.

    Try to picture the exact color you just saw.

    Not blue.

    Not green.

    Not red.

    The exact shade.

    Got it?

    Okay.

    Now look back at it.

    Is that actually the color you were picturing?

    Because this week’s rabbit hole started with a question that seemed incredibly simple:

    How well do we actually remember color?

    And apparently the answer is:

    Not nearly as literally as I thought.

    Which is how I ended up reading research papers about whether the color in my head is lying to me.

    Because apparently even remembering the color green couldn’t just be simple.

    Your Brain Apparently Has a “Close Enough” Button

    When we look at a color, it feels like our brain should be taking a little mental screenshot.

    That’s blue.

    Save.

    We’ll need that later.

    Except that’s not really how color memory seems to work.

    In experiments where people see a particular color and later have to reproduce it, their memories can shift toward the more typical version of the color category it belongs to.

    So instead of your brain perfectly preserving:

    that exact green

    it may be hanging onto a combination of the actual shade and:

    GREEN.

    Researchers have found evidence that these categories can bias what we remember. Our memories aren’t necessarily storing a perfect copy of the color we originally saw.

    Basically, your brain may remember:

    GREEN.

    Meanwhile, the actual green is standing in the corner screaming:

    “BITCH, I WAS SAGE.”

    And honestly?

    Rude.

    But this is where it starts getting interesting.

    There Are a Lot of Colors and We’re Out Here Calling Them Like Eleven Things

    Think about how many versions of green you can recognize.

    Mint.

    Forest.

    Olive.

    Emerald.

    Lime.

    Sage.

    Seafoam.

    Kelly green.

    Chartreuse.

    And those are just the ones we’ve bothered naming.

    Color itself exists along continuous dimensions, but our brains are really fond of categories. Research into categorical color perception has found that the boundaries we use to separate colors can influence how we distinguish them. The relationship between the colors we physically see, the categories our brains create, and the words we use for them is complicated—and researchers are still arguing about parts of it.

    Which creates a weird problem for memory.

    If I show you one particular shade for a few seconds and then take it away, you have to hold onto something that isn’t actually in front of you anymore.

    And your brain likes shortcuts.

    So you may lose some of the exact shade while keeping:

    purple.

    Or:

    green.

    Or:

    blue.

    Which means two people could look at the same object, walk away, and later disagree about exactly what color it was.

    And neither one necessarily has a perfect little photograph stored in their head to settle the argument.

    They’re reconstructing it.

    You Don’t Necessarily Remember the Color. You Remember What Color It Should Be.

    Imagine a banana.

    What color is it?

    Yellow.

    You probably didn’t have to work very hard for that one.

    You’ve seen enough bananas in your life that banana = yellow is already sitting comfortably inside your brain.

    And apparently those associations can get involved in how we deal with color too.

    One particularly interesting experiment asked people to adjust images of familiar objects until they appeared gray.

    If memory had nothing to do with what people were seeing, you’d expect them to stop at neutral gray.

    They didn’t.

    For familiar objects strongly associated with a particular color, people tended to adjust the image slightly toward the opposite color before they thought it looked gray—as though their knowledge of the object’s usual color was still influencing what they saw.

    So if the object was normally yellow, the brain seemed to be bringing a little bit of yellow to the party whether anybody invited it or not.

    Which is fascinating.

    Except—

    Of course it couldn’t be that simple.

    Later research has questioned how consistently that effect appears and found that it doesn’t necessarily reproduce the same way across different objects and experimental conditions.

    And THAT is exactly the kind of thing that gets me.

    Because the answer isn’t:

    Your brain automatically paints bananas yellow.

    It’s more like:

    What you see, what you know, what you expect, and what you remember may all be interacting in ways we’re still trying to untangle.

    Great.

    Can’t even trust the banana.

    Apparently Some Colors Stick Better Than Others

    Then I found another study that personally offended me.

    Researchers ran several experiments looking at memory for objects and their colors.

    They used four:

    Red.

    Blue.

    Yellow.

    Green.

    And memory for the colors wasn’t equal.

    Across the experiments, red and yellow tended to be remembered particularly well.

    Green?

    Green did poorly.

    As someone whose favorite color is green:

    Excuse the fuck out of me.

    😂

    Now, this doesn’t mean we’ve discovered some universal law declaring green the world’s most forgettable color.

    Memory depends on what you’re looking at, what you’re being asked to remember, attention, context, shade, associations, and a whole pile of other variables.

    But the experiments demonstrate something I hadn’t really thought about before:

    Remembering an object and remembering the color attached to that object aren’t necessarily the exact same memory problem.

    You can remember what you saw without perfectly remembering exactly what it looked like.

    Which sounds obvious when I say it like that.

    It did not feel obvious before I fell down this rabbit hole.

    And Then Language Walked Into the Room

    This is where I almost lost the plot completely.

    Because if our brains categorize colors…

    what happens when different languages don’t divide colors into exactly the same categories?

    The visible spectrum doesn’t come with labels.

    There isn’t a little line floating through nature that says:

    BLUE | GREEN

    Humans did that part.

    And different languages haven’t necessarily drawn all of those lines in exactly the same places.

    That has made color a fascinating testing ground for a much bigger question:

    Does language affect the way we perceive the world?

    There is evidence that the color categories and labels we learn can influence how we distinguish and organize colors. But that’s very different from saying someone literally can’t see a color because their language doesn’t have the same word for it. The relationship between language and color perception is considerably messier than that.

    So now the innocent question:

    “What color was it?”

    has somehow become a question involving vision, memory, categories, language, expectation, and culture.

    This is why I can’t Google anything like a normal person.

    So…What Color Was It?

    And this is where my perfectly reasonable question completely fell apart.

    I started with:

    How accurately do we remember colors?

    Now I’m thinking about the fact that our eyes receive light.

    Our visual system processes it.

    Our brains organize colors into categories.

    Objects come with learned associations.

    Language gives us words for those categories.

    Memory has to hold onto the information after the original color disappears.

    And then, sometime later, we confidently announce:

    “It was green.”

    Ma’am.

    There were approximately seventeen things happening between the green and that sentence.

    😂

    None of this means color isn’t real.

    And it doesn’t mean we’re all wandering around inside completely separate color universes where your red could secretly be my green and we’ll never know.

    That’s an entirely different rabbit hole, and I am not going down there today.

    I have boundaries.

    Sometimes.

    What this does show is that seeing something and remembering seeing it aren’t the same process.

    Memory isn’t a perfect recording.

    It’s a reconstruction.

    And color gives us a really simple way to watch that reconstruction get messy.

    That wall you swear was darker?

    Maybe it was.

    That shirt your friend insists was blue when you remember teal?

    Well…

    That extremely specific shade of green you’re convinced you can match at the store without bringing a sample?

    Good fucking luck.

    So go back to the object I told you to look at in the beginning.

    Look at it again.

    Really look.

    Because a few seconds ago, when it wasn’t in front of you anymore, you weren’t necessarily holding its exact color inside your head.

    You were holding your brain’s reconstruction of it.

    And those aren’t always the same thing.

    Well.

    That answers the question I started with.

    Unfortunately, it has also given me about twelve new ones.

    See you down the next rabbit hole.

    —Destiny

    P.S. What completely random question should I fall down the rabbit hole with next?

  • 📷 Learning to Look Closer #12: Between the Songs

    Concert photography makes you want to chase the obvious moments.

    The singer at the microphone.

    The lights hitting perfectly.

    The crowd with their hands in the air.

    The big moments.

    But sometimes I like the ones in between better.

    I took this photo at the concert, and there isn’t actually a whole lot happening in it.

    She isn’t singing into a microphone.

    There isn’t a giant explosion of lights behind her.

    There aren’t a hundred things fighting for your attention.

    It’s just her.

    Standing on the edge of the stage.

    Arms stretched toward the ceiling.

    Purple light and smoke filling almost everything around her.

    And somehow, that makes her feel even smaller and the moment feel even bigger.

    That’s what I keep coming back to when I look at this picture.

    The space.

    I could have cropped most of it away.

    I could have brought her closer and made her fill the frame.

    But I don’t think I want to.

    Because the empty space is part of the photograph.

    It shows how big that stage felt.

    How much atmosphere was hanging in the air.

    How one person can take up such a tiny part of a photograph and still be the first thing your eye finds.

    And I love the way she’s reaching into all of it.

    There’s something about concerts that photographs never quite capture.

    You can photograph the artist.

    You can photograph the lights.

    You can photograph the smoke.

    But you can’t really photograph the bass vibrating through your chest or the sound of hundreds of people singing the same words.

    You can’t photograph what it feels like to hear a song you love performed right in front of you.

    But every once in a while, I take a picture that feels like it caught a tiny piece of that feeling anyway.

    I think this is one of those.

    Not because I caught the biggest moment.

    Because I noticed the smaller one.

    And sometimes, when I look closer, those are the pictures I end up loving most.

    Until next time,
    —Destiny

    P.S. When you take pictures at concerts or events, do you usually photograph the big moments—or the little ones happening in between?

  • Between the Lines #9: The Missing Second

    Some poems begin with a story already attached to them.

    This one didn’t.

    It started with one line:

    The clock skipped a tick
    and my heart skipped a beat.

    I liked the way those two things mirrored each other—the clock and the heart both missing something at exactly the same moment.

    But then I started thinking about the second itself.

    If the clock skipped it…

    where did it go?

    And what if it wasn’t actually empty?

    What if, somewhere between one tick and the next, time stopped long enough to show you everything that could still happen?

    That question became The Missing Second.

    The Missing Second

    The clock skipped a tick
    and my heart skipped a beat.

    For one second,

    time forgot
    what it was supposed to do.

    The room stopped breathing.

    The curtains hung
    perfectly still.

    The dust suspended itself
    in the sunlight

    like even gravity
    had been told

    to wait.

    And somewhere

    between one second
    and the next,

    I lived an entire life.

    I saw myself older.

    Laugh lines
    where worry used to live.

    Silver threaded
    through my hair.

    Hands that finally stopped
    apologizing
    for taking up space.

    I saw people
    I haven’t met yet.

    Rooms
    I’ve never entered.

    Photographs
    that haven’t been taken.

    I heard laughter
    belonging to voices

    I don’t know.

    Yet.

    I watched myself
    lose people.

    Find others.

    Break.

    Heal.

    Break again.

    I learned
    that some promises last.

    Some don’t.

    Some people leave
    without becoming villains.

    Some people stay
    without needing to become heroes.

    I forgave things
    I still swear
    I never will.

    I stopped waiting
    for apologies

    that were never coming.

    I looked into a mirror

    and recognized

    the woman

    looking back.

    For once,

    I didn’t ask her

    what was wrong with her.

    I asked

    if she was happy.

    She smiled.

    Then—

    tick.

    The curtains moved.

    The dust fell.

    The world continued

    as though nothing

    had happened.

    No one looked up.

    No one asked

    where I’d been.

    The clock simply moved

    from one second

    to another.

    But I couldn’t.

    Because somewhere

    inside the second

    that never existed,

    I had met

    every version of myself

    I could still become.

    And suddenly

    I understood

    why my heart

    had skipped too.

    For one impossible moment,

    it wasn’t afraid

    of running out of time.

    It had simply

    seen

    how much life

    could still fit

    inside it.

    Between the Lines

    For a poem about the future, I didn’t want The Missing Second to predict anything.

    There are no names.

    No specific places.

    No exact future waiting at the end of it.

    Instead, there are pieces.

    People I haven’t met.

    Rooms I haven’t entered.

    Photographs that haven’t been taken.

    Voices I don’t recognize.

    I think that’s what makes the future in this poem feel possible to me. It isn’t promising that everything works out exactly the way I want it to.

    Actually, it very specifically doesn’t.

    I lose people.

    I break.

    I heal.

    And then I break again.

    Because seeing an entire life inside that second wouldn’t mean seeing a perfect one.

    It would mean seeing a whole one.

    There’s a difference.

    Yet.

    There’s one tiny word sitting by itself in this poem:

    I heard laughter
    belonging to voices

    I don’t know.

    Yet.

    I gave “Yet.” its own line because I wanted it to interrupt the thought.

    “I don’t know” feels complete.

    “I don’t know yet” doesn’t.

    That one word leaves something open.

    Somewhere in the future could be a person I’ve never met who will eventually become impossible to imagine my life without.

    There could be a room I’ve never entered that someday feels like home.

    There could be a photograph I haven’t taken yet that someday becomes one I can’t look at without remembering everything surrounding it.

    I can’t know any of that from where I’m standing now.

    That’s the point.

    Yet.

    Not Everyone Has to Be a Villain or a Hero

    These are probably some of my favorite lines in the poem:

    Some people leave
    without becoming villains.

    Some people stay
    without needing to become heroes.

    I didn’t want the future life inside that second divided neatly between people who stayed and people who hurt me.

    Some people are only meant to exist in certain parts of our lives.

    Someone leaving doesn’t automatically erase everything that came before it.

    And someone staying doesn’t mean they have to save us.

    Sometimes people are simply part of the story for however long they’re part of it.

    I think there’s something peaceful about imagining a future where I understand that.

    The Woman Waiting Inside the Second

    Then there’s the mirror.

    Of everything that happens inside this enormous life squeezed into one impossible second, this is one of the quietest moments:

    I looked into a mirror

    and recognized

    the woman

    looking back.

    For once,

    I didn’t ask her

    what was wrong with her.

    I asked

    if she was happy.

    She smiled.

    She doesn’t tell me what happens.

    She doesn’t explain how I got there.

    She doesn’t warn me about anything coming.

    She just smiles.

    And I think I like it better that way.

    Because the missing second isn’t supposed to hand me a map of my future.

    It’s only supposed to show me that there is one.

    Then—Tick.

    The clock eventually has to move again.

    I knew from the beginning that whatever happened inside that second couldn’t follow the speaker back into the room.

    The curtains move.

    The dust falls.

    Nobody notices anything happened.

    The clock simply continues doing what clocks do.

    But the person watching it doesn’t return quite as easily.

    That’s why the opening line comes back in a different way at the end.

    At first:

    The clock skipped a tick
    and my heart skipped a beat.

    It sounds like something is wrong.

    By the end, we finally understand why the heart followed the clock.

    For one impossible moment,

    it wasn’t afraid

    of running out of time.

    It had simply

    seen

    how much life

    could still fit

    inside it.

    And that’s what this poem eventually became for me.

    It isn’t really about stopping time.

    It’s about having more of it.

    Not knowing how much.

    Not knowing what happens inside it.

    Not knowing who comes, who goes, what hurts, what heals, or who I’ll be when I reach the other side of all those years.

    Just knowing there are still blank spaces.

    There are still people I don’t know.

    There are still photographs that haven’t been taken.

    There are still versions of me I haven’t met.

    The clock is going to keep ticking either way.

    But maybe every once in a while, it’s worth remembering how much life can happen between one tick and the next.

    Until next time,
    —Destiny

    P.S. If time skipped one second and let you glimpse your future, would you look—or would you rather not know?

  • 🧠 Brain Static #10

    The speed of a computer mouse is measured in “mickeys.”

    Yes.

    Mickeys.

    A British scientist first invented the roller-ball device in 1946 while working for the Royal Navy, but the word “mouse” didn’t come along until 1965.

    Which means somewhere along the way, somebody looked at the computer mouse and apparently decided its movement needed its own unit of measurement.

    And they called it a fucking mickey.

    This really takes Mickey Mouse to a whole new level. 😂

    I don’t know what to do with this information.

    But now every time I move my mouse, I’m going to wonder how many mickeys I just moved it.

    …and now you know.

    So if I had to carry it around…

    You do too.

    Until next time,
    —Destiny

    P.S. Did you know a computer mouse was measured in mickeys, or is this information ruining Mickey Mouse for you too? 😂

  • Sunday Things #10

    Some weeks make absolutely no sense while you’re living them.

    You just keep moving from one thing to the next, wondering what the hell could possibly happen now.

    And then Sunday gets here.

    You look back at everything that happened over the last seven days and realize…

    Oh.

    Apparently the answer was a lot.

    😂

    This week had some really good moments.

    Some really shitty ones.

    A few that were both.

    And several that I’m pretty sure could only happen to me.

    But somewhere in the middle of all of it, I kept finding these little moments that made everything else feel a little less heavy.

    A kid who’s getting way too big crawling into my lap like he still fits there perfectly.

    A friend who knew when I needed somebody to listen instead of give advice.

    A four-year-old noticing that one of my nails didn’t match and deciding she needed to fix it for me.

    Nothing huge.

    Just little things.

    And apparently those are the things I carried with me the most this week.

    ☕ This Week’s Comfort

    Monday, my kiddo at work crawled into my lap while I was sitting in the rocker.

    My immediate thought was:

    Awh! He wants cuddles! Sweet boy!

    Nope.

    Well…

    Kind of.

    He wrapped his hand around my throat—

    and fell asleep.

    🥲😂

    Literally put himself to sleep.

    This boy has not taken a nap at school in almost a year, aside from the occasional one when he’s sick.

    I don’t know if he missed me that much while I was gone.

    I don’t know if he was just exhausted.

    Maybe both.

    But he slept in my lap for about 45 minutes while I rocked him.

    I moved his hand from my throat because, you know…

    breathing.

    But other than that?

    I didn’t move him.

    My arm fell asleep.

    My legs fell asleep.

    I stayed exactly where I was.

    When he finally woke up, he started giggling, nuzzled into me, and stayed there for another half hour.

    And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized something.

    He’s gotten so big.

    Like…

    when the hell did that happen?

    I remember when holding him was easy.

    Picking him up was easy.

    Carrying him around was easy.

    Now this child is almost my height.

    Granted, I’m literally five feet tall and most fifth graders are probably going to tower over me soon, but STILL.

    😂

    He isn’t the little baby I originally started working with anymore.

    He’s growing up.

    Fast.

    And nobody really warns you about that part.

    Did I slowly watch him grow and somehow not notice?

    Did he hit some massive growth spurt while I was recovering from surgery?

    When exactly did this happen?

    I have questions.

    And I think the universe owes me some answers.

    Of course, the universe responded by making my muffler fall off my car as I was leaving work.

    ☠️

    Because apparently we couldn’t just have a sweet Monday.

    My friend from maintenance came and helped me tie it up well enough to get home, and I parked the car there for the night because my boyfriend worked late and I was NOT about to have that man crawling underneath my car at ten o’clock at night.

    Then came the game of:

    How the fuck am I getting to work tomorrow?

    Mom could take me, but I’d be two and a half hours late.

    My sister’s best friend couldn’t.

    Eventually, one of my coworkers texted me around ten that night and said he could pick me up.

    Problem solved.

    For approximately eight hours.

    Because then Tuesday happened.

    💭 A Thought I’ve Been Carrying

    Tuesday morning started with my mom.

    I called to tell her I didn’t need the ride to work anymore.

    She huffed.

    “Okay.”

    And hung up.

    Welllllll…

    OKKKKAAAAYYYYY then.

    I called her back because I still needed a ride home, and she literally has to pass my house anyway.

    She huffed again.

    “Okay.”

    I asked what was wrong.

    And suddenly we were having an entire argument about me being a bad daughter, having an attitude, yelling at her…

    Meanwhile, my boyfriend was in the bathroom with the door closed and could hear every word she was yelling through the phone I was holding to my ear.

    Then she hung up on me.

    So I called her back.

    And apparently Tuesday’s theme became:

    MATCHING ENERGY.

    I told her if she wanted to be a rude ass bitch to me that morning, she didn’t have to worry about giving me a ride.

    I didn’t need her.

    Just because she’s my mom doesn’t mean she has to be part of my life.

    She started to say something.

    I told her I didn’t give a fuck what she had to say anymore.

    And I hung up.

    Yay me.

    🙃

    So naturally, I called my best friend to vent.

    “I don’t know what to tell you. I told you so.”

    …

    Ma’am.

    I did not call for an I-told-you-so.

    Click.

    😂

    She texted me afterward.

    I opened the messages.

    Didn’t read them.

    I had reached my quota.

    Then another friend called me.

    The first thing she said was:

    “Your mom?”

    YES.

    MY MOM.

    😂

    “What happened?”

    And I told her.

    She didn’t tell me what I should have done.

    She didn’t give me an “I told you so.”

    She just listened.

    By the end of the conversation, she had me smiling and giggling.

    And I was okay again.

    That stayed with me.

    Sometimes you don’t need somebody to solve anything.

    Sometimes you don’t even need advice.

    Sometimes you just need somebody to let you be pissed off for a minute.

    Unfortunately, the universe was not finished with Tuesday.

    My doctor’s office messaged me saying my medication had been denied by insurance and that the delay was because I gave them the wrong pharmacy.

    So.

    Again.

    MATCHING ENERGY.

    I called.

    I spent about an hour on the phone trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

    The woman who answered offered to transfer me to the nurse who had sent the message.

    I specifically said:

    Absolutely not.

    I was not in the mood to give that woman a piece of my mind.

    Guess who she transferred me to?

    That exact nurse.

    “Imagine that. She transferred me to the one nurse I told her I don’t want to talk to today.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “You heard me right.”

    She tried to apologize.

    At that point, I didn’t want an apology.

    I wanted to know what the hell was happening with my shots and what my options were now.

    Then I talked to another nurse who kept interrupting me.

    “Ma’am! Please do NOT interrupt me while I’m talking to you. That’s very rude.”

    And then—

    “Okay.”

    With a huff.

    THAT FUCKING HUFFED ‘OKAY.’

    Apparently that was just the sound of Tuesday.

    😭

    Then I found out my gynecologist quit to work closer to home.

    Which…

    I completely understand.

    Good for her.

    Terrible for me.

    Because I actually liked her.

    Now I’m apparently being passed between the other four doctors at the practice, and I’m sorry, but the idea of four different gynecologists taking turns looking at my vagina does NOT sit right with me.

    At all.

    By this point, I was at work, stressed, overstimulated, playing phone tag with the doctor’s office—

    and my kiddo had decided that because I was on my phone, obviously he needed to participate.

    Trying to take my phone.

    Putting his ear against mine.

    Trying to listen.

    Trying to talk.

    Sir.

    You are nonverbal.

    This is not FaceTime.

    What are you trying to accomplish here?

    😭😂

    I was DONE.

    And then my boyfriend texted me.

    I opened it.

    And immediately started crying.

    Happy tears this time.

    He bought me two tickets to see The Pretty Reckless.

    MY FAVORITE BAND.

    I had already accepted that I was probably going to miss them because my first paycheck since surgery comes the day after the concert.

    I’d been upset about it all month.

    And on one of the shittiest mornings I’d had in a while, that man bought the tickets.

    My entire fucking day changed.

    I can die happy now.

    Well.

    After the concert.

    Obviously.

    😂

    And if I don’t?

    That man might be getting an engagement ring for Christmas because apparently I have decided I’m marrying him ASAP.

    The rest of Tuesday?

    Completely different day.

    My kiddo was on his best behavior.

    No more drama at work.

    I gave him a free day, and we had fun.

    My sister’s best friend picked me up.

    I went home.

    Showered.

    Picked out my outfit for Breaking Benjamin AND my outfit for The Pretty Reckless.

    And then Sissy called me.

    We stayed on the phone for an hour and a half.

    We barely talked.

    Every once in a while, one of us would say:

    “I love you.”

    And then we’d go right back to whatever we were doing.

    😂

    She’s four.

    Apparently we have already reached the stage of our relationship where neither of us needs to actually contribute anything to the phone call.

    We just need to know the other one is still there.

    And honestly?

    I kind of love that.

    My boyfriend eventually got home, and we spent the next hour and a half underneath my car trying to pull the muffler up enough for me to drive.

    I had to take a second shower because I was covered in dirt.

    By 9:40, I was finally ready to eat dinner and take my ass to bed.

    For a crappy-ass morning?

    It ended pretty nicely.

    📷 Through My Lens

    Wednesday morning began with one of the most horrifying situations I have ever found myself in.

    You are not ready for this story.

    I slept naked Tuesday night.

    And when I say naked, I mean—

    booty-ass fucking naked.

    We did the deed.

    I rolled over.

    Passed the fuck out.

    Fantastic ending to the night.

    Then my alarm went off Wednesday morning.

    I snoozed it.

    And slowly…

    my stomach started rumbling.

    Not hunger.

    No.

    This was a goblin.

    Something inside of me was trying to escape.

    I tried to get out of bed.

    I COULDN’T.

    My belly ring was attached to the bed.

    I’m lying on my stomach.

    Ass in the air.

    Completely naked.

    A gastrointestinal demon is rapidly approaching the exit.

    And I am physically tethered to my fucking bed by my belly button.

    😭😭😭

    I’m squeezing muscles I didn’t know I had.

    Fighting the bed.

    Trying to determine whether ripping my belly ring out would be preferable to what was about to happen.

    And finally—

    THE BED RELEASED ME.

    I ran to the bathroom naked.

    Sat down.

    And…

    shit started flying.

    Actual shit.

    From my asshole.

    It wasn’t a goblin.

    It was diarrhea.

    😩

    My stomach hurt.

    I was nauseous.

    I was sweating.

    I didn’t know which end was going to betray me next.

    I sat on that toilet for about an hour.

    I never puked.

    But I was prepared for war.

    And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I had another horrifying realization.

    Imagine if that bed hadn’t let me go.

    Imagine being stuck by my belly ring while I shit all over myself.

    The blankets.

    The bed.

    MY SLEEPING BOYFRIEND.

    No.

    Absolutely not.

    There is no recovering from that.

    I would have had to break up with him.

    Move.

    Change my name.

    Start an entirely new life.

    😭☠️

    I called my mom—

    YES, I KNOW.

    —and asked if she had Pepto.

    She didn’t.

    Thankfully my boyfriend was off work, so once he woke up, he went to CVS and got me some.

    I chugged it in the car.

    And then I found out my niece and both nephews had the exact same stomach symptoms.

    Cool.

    So apparently the tummy goblin was contagious.

    I called off work.

    And yes.

    I still went to the Breaking Benjamin concert that night.

    I had disposable period underwear.

    That’s basically a diaper.

    We were going to be fine.

    🤣

    By the time we left, my stomach was still upset but nowhere near as bad.

    We went to Texas Roadhouse.

    I ate very little.

    And realized I had forgotten the Pepto at home.

    Good thing I had my diaper.

    ☠️😂

    And then?

    The concert was SO GOOD.

    Kami Kehoe was better than I expected.

    Starset?

    WOW.

    They put on such a good show. They kept my attention on that stage the entire time.

    Chevelle was basically a giant blast of childhood memories I didn’t know I needed.

    And, of course—

    Breaking Benjamin.

    Worth risking the tummy goblin.

    😂

    Getting home was considerably less fun.

    It took almost half an hour just to get out of the venue.

    We got rerouted.

    Drove in circles.

    And at one point my boyfriend turned into the wrong lane while another car was coming toward us.

    It barely missed us.

    That part was terrifying.

    Once we finally got onto the interstate, I could relax.

    Apparently I relaxed a little too much because I fell asleep before we got home.

    Thursday was considerably quieter.

    Thank fuck.

    My stomach still hurt, but it was more of a leftover hurt.

    No goblin.

    We spent the morning cuddled up in the living room, my boyfriend in the recliner and me on the couch, watching CaRtOoNz on YouTube.

    I stayed on that couch basically all day.

    Worked on my blog.

    Started researching my next History After Dark topic.

    Got a slight headache and tried lying down in the dark.

    Then my sister called.

    And somehow I discovered that I apparently live in an alternate universe.

    I told her:

    “I asked my boyfriend if he would take me to see Practical Magic 2, and do you know what he said?”

    “No?”

    “Nope.”

    “What’s that?”

    …

    WHAT’S THAT!?

    Practical Magic!

    🎶 You put the lime in the coconut… 🎶

    MIDNIGHT MARGARITAS!?

    NONE OF THIS!?

    She tells me she knows the song from Daddy Daycare.

    I add my best friend to the call.

    SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT PRACTICAL MAGIC IS EITHER.

    She adds one of her friends.

    HE DOESN’T KNOW.

    I add my sister’s best friend.

    Surely SHE knows.

    The movie came out in 1998.

    She’s older than me.

    SHE DIDN’T KNOW EITHER.

    WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!?

    Is this a glitch in the Matrix?

    Did I accidentally cross into another timeline?

    Am I the only person left who remembers midnight margaritas!?

    I have never felt so alone.

    😭😂

    ❤️ This Week’s Gratitude

    There were a lot of little things this week.

    People giving me rides when my car decided it no longer required a muffler.

    A friend letting me vent until I could laugh again.

    My boyfriend buying me concert tickets because he knew how badly I wanted to go.

    But one of my favorite little things happened Friday.

    I was roughhousing with my kiddo while we waited for his bus, and he turned just right and broke one of my nails basically in half.

    Now.

    I have really long nails.

    They are ALWAYS done.

    So when I say I broke it in half, I still technically had a fingernail.

    To some people?

    Normal nail.

    To me?

    THERE WAS NO NAIL.

    😭

    It was basically a nub.

    My finger hurt, and I’m getting a whole new set next week anyway, so I went to my nail tech and just had her cut it down.

    Later, I went to my sister’s house.

    Sissy saw my finger.

    She asked what happened.

    I told her.

    And that little girl decided she was going to fix it.

    She colored the nail green to match the rest.

    Then she looked at it and apparently decided:

    No.

    Too boring.

    So she added a little pink paw print.

    🥹

    And I know that sounds like such a tiny thing.

    But my nails are always done.

    They’re never just plain.

    And she noticed.

    She wanted it to match.

    Then she wanted to give it a little extra something because she knows NeeNee’s nails aren’t boring.

    She’s four.

    And she noticed.

    I love that kid.

    😂 This Week’s “Well…That Happened.”

    Oh, I have options.

    SO MANY OPTIONS.

    Friday morning, my kiddo came into work and immediately chose chaos.

    Looked at the teacher.

    Started throwing things.

    Tantrum.

    Cool.

    It’s going to be one of those days.

    Turns out?

    He was tired.

    Of course he was.

    Later, I was playing Monopoly Go on my phone.

    Yes, I was at work.

    No, I’m not supposed to be on my phone.

    It was Fun Friday, my kiddo was running around the classroom, and I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.

    Don’t worry about me.

    😂

    He came over and touched my phone.

    “No.”

    He walked away.

    Got his speaking device.

    Came back.

    Pressed:

    “I play.”

    And looked at me.

    At first I told him, “Yes, you can go play.”

    Then I looked at him.

    He looked at me.

    …

    OH.

    You want to play MY game.

    😂

    “Okay. Come here.”

    He climbed into my lap, and we played Monopoly Go together.

    “One finger. Press here.”

    Good job.

    “Now we wait.”

    Good.

    “One finger. Press this one.”

    Good job, buddy.

    You’re doing it.

    🥹

    After work, I called my sister to see if the boys still wanted to stay the night.

    She said yes, but Pooh Boy wouldn’t be home until around 6:30, so she asked if I wanted to wait and pick them both up together.

    Fine by me.

    Then I hear Doodoo in the background:

    “NOOOOO!”

    No?

    “NOW!”

    Now?

    “Yeah!”

    Okay.

    Say less. I’m on my way.

    🤣

    I get there.

    I’m barely through the door.

    This boy comes running at me with his shoes.

    I put them on.

    He climbs up my leg.

    Looks at his mother.

    “Bye!”

    Waves.

    Blows her a kiss.

    ☠️😂

    We stayed a little longer so I could love on Sissy after she finished painting her dad’s nails.

    Then Doodoo, Mawmaw Nesi, and I went outside.

    I looked down for approximately two seconds to text my sister.

    Looked back up.

    There was RED STUFF ALL OVER DOODOO’S LEG.

    Internally:

    OH MY GOD. BLOOD.

    How are you bleeding!?

    Where are you bleeding!?

    Why is there so much!?

    I’m investigating while trying to stay calm.

    Then I notice some hanging out of his mouth around his binky.

    …

    “Doodoo, did you puke?”

    “Puke.”

    Oh.

    Cool.

    He had been drinking red juice.

    So my nephew had apparently just spontaneously vomited all over himself outside.

    That’s enough outdoor time for today.

    Bath.

    Immediately.

    😭

    Later, Pooh Boy got home.

    I checked my boyfriend’s location.

    Work.

    I asked if he could grab Pooh Boy on the way home.

    Yep.

    My sister asked how far away he was.

    I checked.

    “Twenty-five minutes.”

    She sits down on the couch.

    “Cool. I can sit for a minute.”

    KNOCK KNOCK.

    She considers not answering because she JUST sat down and isn’t expecting anyone yet.

    Maybe Pooh Boy’s grandma forgot something.

    She answers.

    Looks back at me through the phone.

    “How long before Uncle gets here?”

    “Twenty-five minutes. I just checked.”

    She turns the phone toward the door.

    “Uncle is here now.”

    …

    WHAT!?

    🤣🤣🤣

    Apparently I didn’t give Maps enough time to update his actual location.

    My bad.

    That night I went to put Pooh Boy’s pajamas on him.

    First problem:

    His entire butt cheek was hanging out of his diaper.

    How?

    Apparently his grandma had changed him before bringing him home.

    This is also the woman who once put his diaper on BACKWARDS, so…

    There’s that.

    😂

    Second problem:

    The pajamas he wore at my house LAST WEEKEND no longer fit.

    His belly was hanging out.

    The pants didn’t cover his legs.

    BRO.

    You did NOT get that big in a week.

    My sister just laughed and said she’d send more pajamas for my house next weekend.

    They were both asleep by eight.

    We LOVE an easy bedtime.

    Then around two in the morning:

    DONK.

    Followed immediately by Pooh Boy screaming bloody murder.

    I flew out of bed.

    Checked his head.

    No blood.

    No bumps.

    No obvious injury.

    Apparently he had managed to headbutt the wall.

    I cuddled him.

    Calmed him down.

    Put him back to bed.

    Crisis over.

    For that night.

    Because Saturday night?

    Saturday night that child declared war on sleep.

    He didn’t go down easily to begin with.

    He was yelling and playing until ten.

    Then at ONE IN THE MORNING, he woke up.

    And from one until after four, it was:

    Up.

    Down.

    Spin.

    Spin.

    Spin.

    Yell.

    Giggle.

    Throw things.

    Smack the bed.

    Run around the pack-n-play.

    Headbutt the wall.

    Scream.

    Giggle some more.

    Climb underneath the pillows.

    Climb underneath the blankets.

    Climb underneath the MAT in the pack-n-play.

    Reach over and try to pull the blanket off of us.

    FROM ONE UNTIL AFTER FOUR IN THE FUCKING MORNING.

    I finally started dozing around four because he had managed to stay quiet for longer than three minutes.

    I could still hear him moving.

    Still giggling.

    I have no idea what time he actually went back to sleep.

    Do you know what time he woke up?

    EIGHT.

    WHY!?

    😩😩😩

    Meanwhile, Doodoo had been super clingy Saturday.

    He’d puked Friday.

    He slept for hours Saturday morning.

    And the rest of the day, he basically wanted to become part of my body.

    Arms around me.

    Legs around me.

    Holding on for dear life.

    If I put him down?

    Throw himself backward.

    Stomp.

    Run straight back at me.

    Cling again.

    Cry.

    Okay.

    Okay.

    Come here.

    🥲

    So we spent most of Saturday cuddled in the recliner watching Jurassic World.

    My best friend who moved out of state was also back for the weekend because she finally got an apartment and came with a U-Haul to get the rest of her things.

    Naturally, being the wonderful best friend she is, she came to visit me.

    Well…

    “Visit me” might be generous.

    🤣

    She’s gained a little weight, so we spent approximately an hour playing dress-up in my dresses.

    She LOVES my dresses, but most of them have always been too big on her.

    Because I have huge-ass boobs.

    And hers are basically nonexistent.

    Yes, I know you read these posts. Hi. Love you. 🤣

    But now she can fit some of them, so she finally got to try on a bunch she’s been wanting to wear.

    And every single time she came out in another dress, Doodoo was sitting there going:

    “BlahBlah! That’s pretty!”

    😭😂

    Maybe this is where it starts.

    Women spend their childhoods watching other women try on dresses while everyone around them goes:

    “Ooooooh! That’s so pretty!”

    Then adulthood arrives and we’re fully trained.

    Friend comes out of dressing room.

    Automatic response:

    “THAT’S SO PRETTY.”

    Doodoo is simply getting an early education.

    Sunday morning, after approximately seventeen minutes of sleep—

    Okay.

    Slight exaggeration.

    But that’s what it felt like.

    I got up with Pooh Boy and went to the bathroom.

    I had to poop.

    He decided I was not allowed to do that alone.

    Fine.

    Whatever.

    At least I was the only one awake.

    While I’m sitting there, I hear the bed moving.

    Then little feet running across the floor.

    Bedroom door opens.

    More little feet.

    I open the bathroom door.

    Doodoo comes running in.

    Stops.

    Smiles.

    “Hi!”

    “Were you a big boy?”

    “Yeah!”

    “Did you wake up, get off the bed, and come find me all by yourself?”

    “Yeah!”

    He spends the rest of my bathroom trip hugging and lying on my leg.

    Awh.

    My big boy.

    🥹

    We come out.

    Uncle is sitting in the recliner.

    “Uncle! Doodoo said he was a big boy and did all of that by himself this morning!”

    My boyfriend looks at me.

    “That little motherfucker lied!”

    ☠️☠️☠️

    Apparently Doodoo had woken him up by karate chopping him in the throat and yelling:

    “UNCLE!”

    Then:

    “UP!”

    My boyfriend got him out of bed.

    So the only thing this child actually accomplished independently that morning was assaulting his uncle.

    🤣🤣🤣

    Sir.

    Why did you lie directly to my face?

    Later, I took Doodoo home.

    Sissy was having a VERY difficult time listening to her mom.

    Like…

    at all.

    So I talked to her about listening and told her that if she couldn’t listen to her mom, I was taking all of the princess stuff she got that day home with me.

    She could earn it back.

    She apologized to her mom.

    And then immediately went back to not listening.

    🫠

    Okay.

    “Get your shoes on. You’re going home with me.”

    TEARS.

    Suddenly we remembered how listening works.

    😂

    She apologized again.

    I gave her one more chance.

    She was still listening when I left, so she didn’t have to come home with me.

    Princess privileges maintained.

    I finally got home.

    And my boyfriend was sitting in the middle of the living room floor surrounded by all of our clothes.

    Great.

    Laundry.

    I was going to shower first.

    Apparently not.

    😂

    We finished the laundry.

    I showered.

    He went to play PalWorld with his best friend.

    And I went into the bedroom.

    Then I sent him a text:

    “I know you’re gaming, but do you want to come see if I participated in No Shave September? lol”

    Y’all.

    That man came running into that bedroom so fucking fast.

    🤣🤣🤣

    I knew exactly what I was doing.

    🥵

    And now it’s Sunday evening.

    The kids are home.

    The laundry is done.

    I’m showered.

    My boyfriend is playing PalWorld with his friend.

    And I’m on the couch.

    Not moving.

    Not answering any summons.

    Not fixing anything.

    Not crawling underneath a car.

    And hopefully not being attacked by any more stomach goblins.

    😂

    I’m tired.

    Very tired.

    But it was a good week.

    Not an easy one.

    Definitely not a quiet one.

    But a good one.

    There were concerts and cuddles and dinosaurs and people who showed up when I needed them.

    There were also bodily fluids, broken car parts, a broken nail, approximately three hours of sleep, and a shocking number of incidents involving somebody’s throat.

    Balance.

    😂

    And right now?

    The couch is comfortable.

    Everybody is where they’re supposed to be.

    I have nowhere else I need to go.

    I’ll take it.

    Until next time,
    —Destiny

    P.S. What was the most completely unhinged thing that happened in your week? Because I feel like I’ve set the bar pretty high this time. 😂

    Some weeks make absolutely no sense while you’re living them.

    You just keep moving from one thing to the next, wondering what the hell could possibly happen now.

    And then Sunday gets here.

    You look back at everything that happened over the last seven days and realize…

    Oh.

    Apparently the answer was a lot.

    😂

    This week had some really good moments.

    Some really shitty ones.

    A few that were both.

    And several that I’m pretty sure could only happen to me.

    But somewhere in the middle of all of it, I kept finding these little moments that made everything else feel a little less heavy.

    A kid who’s getting way too big crawling into my lap like he still fits there perfectly.

    A friend who knew when I needed somebody to listen instead of give advice.

    A four-year-old noticing that one of my nails didn’t match and deciding she needed to fix it for me.

    Nothing huge.

    Just little things.

    And apparently those are the things I carried with me the most this week.

    ☕ This Week’s Comfort

    Monday, my kiddo at work crawled into my lap while I was sitting in the rocker.

    My immediate thought was:

    Awh! He wants cuddles! Sweet boy!

    Nope.

    Well…

    Kind of.

    He wrapped his hand around my throat—

    and fell asleep.

    🥲😂

    Literally put himself to sleep.

    This boy has not taken a nap at school in almost a year, aside from the occasional one when he’s sick.

    I don’t know if he missed me that much while I was gone.

    I don’t know if he was just exhausted.

    Maybe both.

    But he slept in my lap for about 45 minutes while I rocked him.

    I moved his hand from my throat because, you know…

    breathing.

    But other than that?

    I didn’t move him.

    My arm fell asleep.

    My legs fell asleep.

    I stayed exactly where I was.

    When he finally woke up, he started giggling, nuzzled into me, and stayed there for another half hour.

    And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I realized something.

    He’s gotten so big.

    Like…

    when the hell did that happen?

    I remember when holding him was easy.

    Picking him up was easy.

    Carrying him around was easy.

    Now this child is almost my height.

    Granted, I’m literally five feet tall and most fifth graders are probably going to tower over me soon, but STILL.

    😂

    He isn’t the little baby I originally started working with anymore.

    He’s growing up.

    Fast.

    And nobody really warns you about that part.

    Did I slowly watch him grow and somehow not notice?

    Did he hit some massive growth spurt while I was recovering from surgery?

    When exactly did this happen?

    I have questions.

    And I think the universe owes me some answers.

    Of course, the universe responded by making my muffler fall off my car as I was leaving work.

    ☠️

    Because apparently we couldn’t just have a sweet Monday.

    My friend from maintenance came and helped me tie it up well enough to get home, and I parked the car there for the night because my boyfriend worked late and I was NOT about to have that man crawling underneath my car at ten o’clock at night.

    Then came the game of:

    How the fuck am I getting to work tomorrow?

    Mom could take me, but I’d be two and a half hours late.

    My sister’s best friend couldn’t.

    Eventually, one of my coworkers texted me around ten that night and said he could pick me up.

    Problem solved.

    For approximately eight hours.

    Because then Tuesday happened.

    💭 A Thought I’ve Been Carrying

    Tuesday morning started with my mom.

    I called to tell her I didn’t need the ride to work anymore.

    She huffed.

    “Okay.”

    And hung up.

    Welllllll…

    OKKKKAAAAYYYYY then.

    I called her back because I still needed a ride home, and she literally has to pass my house anyway.

    She huffed again.

    “Okay.”

    I asked what was wrong.

    And suddenly we were having an entire argument about me being a bad daughter, having an attitude, yelling at her…

    Meanwhile, my boyfriend was in the bathroom with the door closed and could hear every word she was yelling through the phone I was holding to my ear.

    Then she hung up on me.

    So I called her back.

    And apparently Tuesday’s theme became:

    MATCHING ENERGY.

    I told her if she wanted to be a rude ass bitch to me that morning, she didn’t have to worry about giving me a ride.

    I didn’t need her.

    Just because she’s my mom doesn’t mean she has to be part of my life.

    She started to say something.

    I told her I didn’t give a fuck what she had to say anymore.

    And I hung up.

    Yay me.

    🙃

    So naturally, I called my best friend to vent.

    “I don’t know what to tell you. I told you so.”

    …

    Ma’am.

    I did not call for an I-told-you-so.

    Click.

    😂

    She texted me afterward.

    I opened the messages.

    Didn’t read them.

    I had reached my quota.

    Then another friend called me.

    The first thing she said was:

    “Your mom?”

    YES.

    MY MOM.

    😂

    “What happened?”

    And I told her.

    She didn’t tell me what I should have done.

    She didn’t give me an “I told you so.”

    She just listened.

    By the end of the conversation, she had me smiling and giggling.

    And I was okay again.

    That stayed with me.

    Sometimes you don’t need somebody to solve anything.

    Sometimes you don’t even need advice.

    Sometimes you just need somebody to let you be pissed off for a minute.

    Unfortunately, the universe was not finished with Tuesday.

    My doctor’s office messaged me saying my medication had been denied by insurance and that the delay was because I gave them the wrong pharmacy.

    So.

    Again.

    MATCHING ENERGY.

    I called.

    I spent about an hour on the phone trying to figure out what the hell was happening.

    The woman who answered offered to transfer me to the nurse who had sent the message.

    I specifically said:

    Absolutely not.

    I was not in the mood to give that woman a piece of my mind.

    Guess who she transferred me to?

    That exact nurse.

    “Imagine that. She transferred me to the one nurse I told her I don’t want to talk to today.”

    “Excuse me?”

    “You heard me right.”

    She tried to apologize.

    At that point, I didn’t want an apology.

    I wanted to know what the hell was happening with my shots and what my options were now.

    Then I talked to another nurse who kept interrupting me.

    “Ma’am! Please do NOT interrupt me while I’m talking to you. That’s very rude.”

    And then—

    “Okay.”

    With a huff.

    THAT FUCKING HUFFED ‘OKAY.’

    Apparently that was just the sound of Tuesday.

    😭

    Then I found out my gynecologist quit to work closer to home.

    Which…

    I completely understand.

    Good for her.

    Terrible for me.

    Because I actually liked her.

    Now I’m apparently being passed between the other four doctors at the practice, and I’m sorry, but the idea of four different gynecologists taking turns looking at my vagina does NOT sit right with me.

    At all.

    By this point, I was at work, stressed, overstimulated, playing phone tag with the doctor’s office—

    and my kiddo had decided that because I was on my phone, obviously he needed to participate.

    Trying to take my phone.

    Putting his ear against mine.

    Trying to listen.

    Trying to talk.

    Sir.

    You are nonverbal.

    This is not FaceTime.

    What are you trying to accomplish here?

    😭😂

    I was DONE.

    And then my boyfriend texted me.

    I opened it.

    And immediately started crying.

    Happy tears this time.

    He bought me two tickets to see The Pretty Reckless.

    MY FAVORITE BAND.

    I had already accepted that I was probably going to miss them because my first paycheck since surgery comes the day after the concert.

    I’d been upset about it all month.

    And on one of the shittiest mornings I’d had in a while, that man bought the tickets.

    My entire fucking day changed.

    I can die happy now.

    Well.

    After the concert.

    Obviously.

    😂

    And if I don’t?

    That man might be getting an engagement ring for Christmas because apparently I have decided I’m marrying him ASAP.

    The rest of Tuesday?

    Completely different day.

    My kiddo was on his best behavior.

    No more drama at work.

    I gave him a free day, and we had fun.

    My sister’s best friend picked me up.

    I went home.

    Showered.

    Picked out my outfit for Breaking Benjamin AND my outfit for The Pretty Reckless.

    And then Sissy called me.

    We stayed on the phone for an hour and a half.

    We barely talked.

    Every once in a while, one of us would say:

    “I love you.”

    And then we’d go right back to whatever we were doing.

    😂

    She’s four.

    Apparently we have already reached the stage of our relationship where neither of us needs to actually contribute anything to the phone call.

    We just need to know the other one is still there.

    And honestly?

    I kind of love that.

    My boyfriend eventually got home, and we spent the next hour and a half underneath my car trying to pull the muffler up enough for me to drive.

    I had to take a second shower because I was covered in dirt.

    By 9:40, I was finally ready to eat dinner and take my ass to bed.

    For a crappy-ass morning?

    It ended pretty nicely.

    📷 Through My Lens

    Wednesday morning began with one of the most horrifying situations I have ever found myself in.

    You are not ready for this story.

    I slept naked Tuesday night.

    And when I say naked, I mean—

    booty-ass fucking naked.

    We did the deed.

    I rolled over.

    Passed the fuck out.

    Fantastic ending to the night.

    Then my alarm went off Wednesday morning.

    I snoozed it.

    And slowly…

    my stomach started rumbling.

    Not hunger.

    No.

    This was a goblin.

    Something inside of me was trying to escape.

    I tried to get out of bed.

    I COULDN’T.

    My belly ring was attached to the bed.

    I’m lying on my stomach.

    Ass in the air.

    Completely naked.

    A gastrointestinal demon is rapidly approaching the exit.

    And I am physically tethered to my fucking bed by my belly button.

    😭😭😭

    I’m squeezing muscles I didn’t know I had.

    Fighting the bed.

    Trying to determine whether ripping my belly ring out would be preferable to what was about to happen.

    And finally—

    THE BED RELEASED ME.

    I ran to the bathroom naked.

    Sat down.

    And…

    shit started flying.

    Actual shit.

    From my asshole.

    It wasn’t a goblin.

    It was diarrhea.

    😩

    My stomach hurt.

    I was nauseous.

    I was sweating.

    I didn’t know which end was going to betray me next.

    I sat on that toilet for about an hour.

    I never puked.

    But I was prepared for war.

    And somewhere in the middle of all of this, I had another horrifying realization.

    Imagine if that bed hadn’t let me go.

    Imagine being stuck by my belly ring while I shit all over myself.

    The blankets.

    The bed.

    MY SLEEPING BOYFRIEND.

    No.

    Absolutely not.

    There is no recovering from that.

    I would have had to break up with him.

    Move.

    Change my name.

    Start an entirely new life.

    😭☠️

    I called my mom—

    YES, I KNOW.

    —and asked if she had Pepto.

    She didn’t.

    Thankfully my boyfriend was off work, so once he woke up, he went to CVS and got me some.

    I chugged it in the car.

    And then I found out my niece and both nephews had the exact same stomach symptoms.

    Cool.

    So apparently the tummy goblin was contagious.

    I called off work.

    And yes.

    I still went to the Breaking Benjamin concert that night.

    I had disposable period underwear.

    That’s basically a diaper.

    We were going to be fine.

    🤣

    By the time we left, my stomach was still upset but nowhere near as bad.

    We went to Texas Roadhouse.

    I ate very little.

    And realized I had forgotten the Pepto at home.

    Good thing I had my diaper.

    ☠️😂

    And then?

    The concert was SO GOOD.

    Kami Kehoe was better than I expected.

    Starset?

    WOW.

    They put on such a good show. They kept my attention on that stage the entire time.

    Chevelle was basically a giant blast of childhood memories I didn’t know I needed.

    And, of course—

    Breaking Benjamin.

    Worth risking the tummy goblin.

    😂

    Getting home was considerably less fun.

    It took almost half an hour just to get out of the venue.

    We got rerouted.

    Drove in circles.

    And at one point my boyfriend turned into the wrong lane while another car was coming toward us.

    It barely missed us.

    That part was terrifying.

    Once we finally got onto the interstate, I could relax.

    Apparently I relaxed a little too much because I fell asleep before we got home.

    Thursday was considerably quieter.

    Thank fuck.

    My stomach still hurt, but it was more of a leftover hurt.

    No goblin.

    We spent the morning cuddled up in the living room, my boyfriend in the recliner and me on the couch, watching CaRtOoNz on YouTube.

    I stayed on that couch basically all day.

    Worked on my blog.

    Started researching my next History After Dark topic.

    Got a slight headache and tried lying down in the dark.

    Then my sister called.

    And somehow I discovered that I apparently live in an alternate universe.

    I told her:

    “I asked my boyfriend if he would take me to see Practical Magic 2, and do you know what he said?”

    “No?”

    “Nope.”

    “What’s that?”

    …

    WHAT’S THAT!?

    Practical Magic!

    🎶 You put the lime in the coconut… 🎶

    MIDNIGHT MARGARITAS!?

    NONE OF THIS!?

    She tells me she knows the song from Daddy Daycare.

    I add my best friend to the call.

    SHE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT PRACTICAL MAGIC IS EITHER.

    She adds one of her friends.

    HE DOESN’T KNOW.

    I add my sister’s best friend.

    Surely SHE knows.

    The movie came out in 1998.

    She’s older than me.

    SHE DIDN’T KNOW EITHER.

    WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING!?

    Is this a glitch in the Matrix?

    Did I accidentally cross into another timeline?

    Am I the only person left who remembers midnight margaritas!?

    I have never felt so alone.

    😭😂

    ❤️ This Week’s Gratitude

    There were a lot of little things this week.

    People giving me rides when my car decided it no longer required a muffler.

    A friend letting me vent until I could laugh again.

    My boyfriend buying me concert tickets because he knew how badly I wanted to go.

    But one of my favorite little things happened Friday.

    I was roughhousing with my kiddo while we waited for his bus, and he turned just right and broke one of my nails basically in half.

    Now.

    I have really long nails.

    They are ALWAYS done.

    So when I say I broke it in half, I still technically had a fingernail.

    To some people?

    Normal nail.

    To me?

    THERE WAS NO NAIL.

    😭

    It was basically a nub.

    My finger hurt, and I’m getting a whole new set next week anyway, so I went to my nail tech and just had her cut it down.

    Later, I went to my sister’s house.

    Sissy saw my finger.

    She asked what happened.

    I told her.

    And that little girl decided she was going to fix it.

    She colored the nail green to match the rest.

    Then she looked at it and apparently decided:

    No.

    Too boring.

    So she added a little pink paw print.

    🥹

    And I know that sounds like such a tiny thing.

    But my nails are always done.

    They’re never just plain.

    And she noticed.

    She wanted it to match.

    Then she wanted to give it a little extra something because she knows NeeNee’s nails aren’t boring.

    She’s four.

    And she noticed.

    I love that kid.

    😂 This Week’s “Well…That Happened.”

    Oh, I have options.

    SO MANY OPTIONS.

    Friday morning, my kiddo came into work and immediately chose chaos.

    Looked at the teacher.

    Started throwing things.

    Tantrum.

    Cool.

    It’s going to be one of those days.

    Turns out?

    He was tired.

    Of course he was.

    Later, I was playing Monopoly Go on my phone.

    Yes, I was at work.

    No, I’m not supposed to be on my phone.

    It was Fun Friday, my kiddo was running around the classroom, and I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.

    Don’t worry about me.

    😂

    He came over and touched my phone.

    “No.”

    He walked away.

    Got his speaking device.

    Came back.

    Pressed:

    “I play.”

    And looked at me.

    At first I told him, “Yes, you can go play.”

    Then I looked at him.

    He looked at me.

    …

    OH.

    You want to play MY game.

    😂

    “Okay. Come here.”

    He climbed into my lap, and we played Monopoly Go together.

    “One finger. Press here.”

    Good job.

    “Now we wait.”

    Good.

    “One finger. Press this one.”

    Good job, buddy.

    You’re doing it.

    🥹

    After work, I called my sister to see if the boys still wanted to stay the night.

    She said yes, but Pooh Boy wouldn’t be home until around 6:30, so she asked if I wanted to wait and pick them both up together.

    Fine by me.

    Then I hear Doodoo in the background:

    “NOOOOO!”

    No?

    “NOW!”

    Now?

    “Yeah!”

    Okay.

    Say less. I’m on my way.

    🤣

    I get there.

    I’m barely through the door.

    This boy comes running at me with his shoes.

    I put them on.

    He climbs up my leg.

    Looks at his mother.

    “Bye!”

    Waves.

    Blows her a kiss.

    ☠️😂

    We stayed a little longer so I could love on Sissy after she finished painting her dad’s nails.

    Then Doodoo, Mawmaw Nesi, and I went outside.

    I looked down for approximately two seconds to text my sister.

    Looked back up.

    There was RED STUFF ALL OVER DOODOO’S LEG.

    Internally:

    OH MY GOD. BLOOD.

    How are you bleeding!?

    Where are you bleeding!?

    Why is there so much!?

    I’m investigating while trying to stay calm.

    Then I notice some hanging out of his mouth around his binky.

    …

    “Doodoo, did you puke?”

    “Puke.”

    Oh.

    Cool.

    He had been drinking red juice.

    So my nephew had apparently just spontaneously vomited all over himself outside.

    That’s enough outdoor time for today.

    Bath.

    Immediately.

    😭

    Later, Pooh Boy got home.

    I checked my boyfriend’s location.

    Work.

    I asked if he could grab Pooh Boy on the way home.

    Yep.

    My sister asked how far away he was.

    I checked.

    “Twenty-five minutes.”

    She sits down on the couch.

    “Cool. I can sit for a minute.”

    KNOCK KNOCK.

    She considers not answering because she JUST sat down and isn’t expecting anyone yet.

    Maybe Pooh Boy’s grandma forgot something.

    She answers.

    Looks back at me through the phone.

    “How long before Uncle gets here?”

    “Twenty-five minutes. I just checked.”

    She turns the phone toward the door.

    “Uncle is here now.”

    …

    WHAT!?

    🤣🤣🤣

    Apparently I didn’t give Maps enough time to update his actual location.

    My bad.

    That night I went to put Pooh Boy’s pajamas on him.

    First problem:

    His entire butt cheek was hanging out of his diaper.

    How?

    Apparently his grandma had changed him before bringing him home.

    This is also the woman who once put his diaper on BACKWARDS, so…

    There’s that.

    😂

    Second problem:

    The pajamas he wore at my house LAST WEEKEND no longer fit.

    His belly was hanging out.

    The pants didn’t cover his legs.

    BRO.

    You did NOT get that big in a week.

    My sister just laughed and said she’d send more pajamas for my house next weekend.

    They were both asleep by eight.

    We LOVE an easy bedtime.

    Then around two in the morning:

    DONK.

    Followed immediately by Pooh Boy screaming bloody murder.

    I flew out of bed.

    Checked his head.

    No blood.

    No bumps.

    No obvious injury.

    Apparently he had managed to headbutt the wall.

    I cuddled him.

    Calmed him down.

    Put him back to bed.

    Crisis over.

    For that night.

    Because Saturday night?

    Saturday night that child declared war on sleep.

    He didn’t go down easily to begin with.

    He was yelling and playing until ten.

    Then at ONE IN THE MORNING, he woke up.

    And from one until after four, it was:

    Up.

    Down.

    Spin.

    Spin.

    Spin.

    Yell.

    Giggle.

    Throw things.

    Smack the bed.

    Run around the pack-n-play.

    Headbutt the wall.

    Scream.

    Giggle some more.

    Climb underneath the pillows.

    Climb underneath the blankets.

    Climb underneath the MAT in the pack-n-play.

    Reach over and try to pull the blanket off of us.

    FROM ONE UNTIL AFTER FOUR IN THE FUCKING MORNING.

    I finally started dozing around four because he had managed to stay quiet for longer than three minutes.

    I could still hear him moving.

    Still giggling.

    I have no idea what time he actually went back to sleep.

    Do you know what time he woke up?

    EIGHT.

    WHY!?

    😩😩😩

    Meanwhile, Doodoo had been super clingy Saturday.

    He’d puked Friday.

    He slept for hours Saturday morning.

    And the rest of the day, he basically wanted to become part of my body.

    Arms around me.

    Legs around me.

    Holding on for dear life.

    If I put him down?

    Throw himself backward.

    Stomp.

    Run straight back at me.

    Cling again.

    Cry.

    Okay.

    Okay.

    Come here.

    🥲

    So we spent most of Saturday cuddled in the recliner watching Jurassic World.

    My best friend who moved out of state was also back for the weekend because she finally got an apartment and came with a U-Haul to get the rest of her things.

    Naturally, being the wonderful best friend she is, she came to visit me.

    Well…

    “Visit me” might be generous.

    🤣

    She’s gained a little weight, so we spent approximately an hour playing dress-up in my dresses.

    She LOVES my dresses, but most of them have always been too big on her.

    Because I have huge-ass boobs.

    And hers are basically nonexistent.

    Yes, I know you read these posts. Hi. Love you. 🤣

    But now she can fit some of them, so she finally got to try on a bunch she’s been wanting to wear.

    And every single time she came out in another dress, Doodoo was sitting there going:

    “BlahBlah! That’s pretty!”

    😭😂

    Maybe this is where it starts.

    Women spend their childhoods watching other women try on dresses while everyone around them goes:

    “Ooooooh! That’s so pretty!”

    Then adulthood arrives and we’re fully trained.

    Friend comes out of dressing room.

    Automatic response:

    “THAT’S SO PRETTY.”

    Doodoo is simply getting an early education.

    Sunday morning, after approximately seventeen minutes of sleep—

    Okay.

    Slight exaggeration.

    But that’s what it felt like.

    I got up with Pooh Boy and went to the bathroom.

    I had to poop.

    He decided I was not allowed to do that alone.

    Fine.

    Whatever.

    At least I was the only one awake.

    While I’m sitting there, I hear the bed moving.

    Then little feet running across the floor.

    Bedroom door opens.

    More little feet.

    I open the bathroom door.

    Doodoo comes running in.

    Stops.

    Smiles.

    “Hi!”

    “Were you a big boy?”

    “Yeah!”

    “Did you wake up, get off the bed, and come find me all by yourself?”

    “Yeah!”

    He spends the rest of my bathroom trip hugging and lying on my leg.

    Awh.

    My big boy.

    🥹

    We come out.

    Uncle is sitting in the recliner.

    “Uncle! Doodoo said he was a big boy and did all of that by himself this morning!”

    My boyfriend looks at me.

    “That little motherfucker lied!”

    ☠️☠️☠️

    Apparently Doodoo had woken him up by karate chopping him in the throat and yelling:

    “UNCLE!”

    Then:

    “UP!”

    My boyfriend got him out of bed.

    So the only thing this child actually accomplished independently that morning was assaulting his uncle.

    🤣🤣🤣

    Sir.

    Why did you lie directly to my face?

    Later, I took Doodoo home.

    Sissy was having a VERY difficult time listening to her mom.

    Like…

    at all.

    So I talked to her about listening and told her that if she couldn’t listen to her mom, I was taking all of the princess stuff she got that day home with me.

    She could earn it back.

    She apologized to her mom.

    And then immediately went back to not listening.

    🫠

    Okay.

    “Get your shoes on. You’re going home with me.”

    TEARS.

    Suddenly we remembered how listening works.

    😂

    She apologized again.

    I gave her one more chance.

    She was still listening when I left, so she didn’t have to come home with me.

    Princess privileges maintained.

    I finally got home.

    And my boyfriend was sitting in the middle of the living room floor surrounded by all of our clothes.

    Great.

    Laundry.

    I was going to shower first.

    Apparently not.

    😂

    We finished the laundry.

    I showered.

    He went to play PalWorld with his best friend.

    And I went into the bedroom.

    Then I sent him a text:

    “I know you’re gaming, but do you want to come see if I participated in No Shave September? lol”

    Y’all.

    That man came running into that bedroom so fucking fast.

    🤣🤣🤣

    I knew exactly what I was doing.

    🥵

    And now it’s Sunday evening.

    The kids are home.

    The laundry is done.

    I’m showered.

    My boyfriend is playing PalWorld with his friend.

    And I’m on the couch.

    Not moving.

    Not answering any summons.

    Not fixing anything.

    Not crawling underneath a car.

    And hopefully not being attacked by any more stomach goblins.

    😂

    I’m tired.

    Very tired.

    But it was a good week.

    Not an easy one.

    Definitely not a quiet one.

    But a good one.

    There were concerts and cuddles and dinosaurs and people who showed up when I needed them.

    There were also bodily fluids, broken car parts, a broken nail, approximately three hours of sleep, and a shocking number of incidents involving somebody’s throat.

    Balance.

    😂

    And right now?

    The couch is comfortable.

    Everybody is where they’re supposed to be.

    I have nowhere else I need to go.

    I’ll take it.

    Until next time,
    —Destiny

    P.S. What was the most completely unhinged thing that happened in your week? Because I feel like I’ve set the bar pretty high this time. 😂

  • History After Dark #5: Was 536 Really the Worst Year to Be Alive?

    Imagine waking up one morning and realizing the sun looks wrong.

    Not gone.

    Not hidden behind an ordinary layer of clouds.

    Just…wrong.

    The light is there, but it doesn’t seem to have the strength it should. Days pass, and whatever is happening doesn’t go away. The sun keeps rising, but its brightness doesn’t fully return.

    Then the weather starts behaving strangely too.

    The seasons don’t feel right.

    Temperatures drop when they shouldn’t.

    Crops struggle.

    And nobody has any idea why.

    That was the world Procopius of Caesarea was looking at in 536.

    Procopius was a Byzantine historian living during the reign of Emperor Justinian. While writing about the wars of his own time, he stopped long enough to record something happening above everybody’s heads.

    The sun had changed.

    He described it as giving off light without its usual brightness, almost like the sun during an eclipse.

    Except an eclipse ends.

    This didn’t.

    The strange dimness lasted for months.

    And Procopius wasn’t sitting fifteen hundred years later with ice-core data, temperature reconstructions and a team of volcanologists trying to figure out what had happened.

    He was there.

    Looking up.

    Whatever was blocking or scattering that sunlight was invisible to him as a cause. There was no weather satellite to pull up. No global monitoring network. No news report explaining that something enormous had happened somewhere else on the planet.

    As far as the people underneath that strange sky were concerned, the sun had simply stopped behaving like the sun.

    And Procopius wasn’t the only person who noticed.

    In Italy, the Roman statesman Cassiodorus described a world that seemed slightly broken.

    The sun appeared weak.

    Shadows were diminished.

    The moon seemed strange.

    The seasons weren’t behaving the way people expected them to.

    These weren’t two men sitting next to each other comparing notes. They were describing what they saw from different places around the Mediterranean.

    Something had happened.

    They just couldn’t see the source of it.

    We can.

    Well…

    Sort of.

    Because almost fifteen hundred years later, scientists found part of the answer buried in places Procopius and Cassiodorus could never have imagined.

    Inside glaciers.

    Inside tree trunks.

    Inside layers of ice that had been quietly keeping records the entire time.

    And that is where this story gets really fucking interesting.

    Welcome to History After Dark.

    The kind of history that didn’t quite make it into your textbooks.

    If you’ve ever stumbled across the year 536 online, there’s a decent chance you’ve seen it introduced with some version of the same claim:

    536 was the worst year in human history.

    Which is a hell of a title to give a year.

    We have had wars.

    Pandemics.

    Famines.

    Genocides.

    Natural disasters.

    Entire cities destroyed.

    So naturally, when I kept seeing one random year from the sixth century being handed the trophy for Worst Year to Be Alive, I had questions.

    What happened in 536 that was supposedly bad enough to beat all of that?

    And, more importantly:

    Do we actually know it happened?

    Because the popular version of this story gets dramatic very quickly.

    A giant volcano erupts.

    The world goes dark.

    Temperatures crash.

    Crops fail.

    People starve.

    Civilizations struggle.

    Then plague arrives.

    Congratulations.

    Worst year ever.

    Except history is almost never that cooperative.

    The farther I followed this one, the messier it became.

    We still don’t know for certain which volcano caused the initial atmospheric disturbance. More major volcanic events followed. Not every place experienced exactly the same conditions. Not every famine, war, migration or political change afterward can be dropped at the feet of a volcano.

    And the Justinianic Plague didn’t even begin in 536.

    So no, I’m not going to tell you that one mystery volcano erupted and immediately broke civilization.

    The actual story is better than that anyway.

    Because whatever happened around 536 left evidence in places separated by thousands of miles.

    Some of it was written down by people.

    Some of it grew inside trees.

    And some of it fell as snow.

    When the Sun Lost Its Light

    Procopius gives us one of the most famous descriptions of 536, but Cassiodorus helps show us that the strange sky wasn’t simply one writer being dramatic.

    His description from Italy includes a weakened sun and seasons that seemed confused.

    That last part matters.

    A dim sun is unsettling.

    A failed growing season can kill you.

    People in the sixth century depended on seasonal patterns in ways that most of us can comfortably ignore now. If summer is unusually cold in 2026, I might complain about it.

    I’m still going to the grocery store.

    For agricultural communities in the sixth century, a badly disrupted growing season was something entirely different.

    And eventually, other records begin giving us glimpses of what food shortages looked like.

    In Ireland, medieval annals preserve two brutally short notices from the late 530s:

    “Failure of bread.”

    That’s it.

    Three words.

    And somehow I think they’re more effective because of it.

    There’s no dramatic description of starving families. No paragraph about fields. No explanation of what caused the shortage.

    Just:

    Failure of bread.

    The Irish annals do need to be handled carefully. The surviving texts were compiled and transmitted after the events they describe, so I’m not going to pretend somebody sat down in Ireland in 536 and wrote those exact words while staring at a failed harvest.

    But the notices preserve a record of serious food shortages during the same broader period in which other evidence tells us growing conditions had become unusually bad.

    And Ireland wasn’t the only place recording strange conditions.

    Historical records from China preserve reports from around the same period involving abnormal cold, frost, snow, drought, crop failures and famine.

    You’ll sometimes see those records summarized online as something like:

    “It snowed in China during the summer.”

    Which sounds appropriately apocalyptic.

    The actual evidence is more complicated.

    China is enormous. The reports come from different regions and different moments, and they shouldn’t all be blended together into one giant weather report for an entire country.

    There are also descriptions of yellow dust or material falling from the sky around this period.

    And before we decide we have found volcanic ash raining over China—

    we haven’t.

    It might be related to atmospheric disturbances.

    It might be dust.

    Individual reports have to be considered in their own geographic and historical context.

    This is one of those places where 536 gets more dramatic every time somebody retells it.

    But we don’t need to exaggerate what the Chinese records say.

    Abnormal cold.

    Frost.

    Snow.

    Drought.

    Crop failure.

    Famine.

    That’s plenty.

    By this point, we have people in widely separated places leaving behind descriptions of a world that wasn’t behaving normally.

    But written records can only take us so far.

    The people recording these events could tell us what they saw.

    They couldn’t tell us what was happening in the atmosphere.

    For that, we have to stop reading documents for a minute.

    And start reading trees.

    The Trees Remembered

    This might be my favorite part of the entire 536 rabbit hole.

    Because historical documents are messy.

    People exaggerate.

    People misunderstand things.

    Writers have agendas.

    Documents disappear.

    Copies get changed.

    Dates get confused.

    Sometimes you spend an unreasonable amount of time chasing one sentence backward through three languages only to discover that the original source apparently fell into a historical black hole.

    If you read the last History After Dark, you already know how I feel about that.

    Trees, thankfully, are significantly less annoying.

    Every year, a tree adds another layer of growth.

    The amount and characteristics of that growth can preserve information about the conditions the tree experienced. Good growing conditions can produce stronger growth. Bad growing conditions leave their own signature.

    And trees that were alive during the sixth century recorded something.

    Researchers studying long tree-ring chronologies from places including the European Alps and the Altai region found evidence of exceptionally poor growing conditions beginning around 536.

    The summers had become unusually cold.

    Then came more cooling.

    The year 536 wasn’t standing alone.

    Another major volcanic event followed only a few years later, around 540.

    That changed the story considerably.

    Because suddenly we weren’t looking at one terrible summer caused by one mysterious eruption.

    We were looking at repeated climatic shocks.

    Researchers have used the term Late Antique Little Ice Age for a longer period of cooling beginning in the sixth century and continuing, with variation, for generations.

    And before we turn that into “the entire Northern Hemisphere froze for a century”—

    no.

    Climate doesn’t work that neatly.

    The effects varied by region, and the term itself is part of a modern scientific interpretation of a complicated climatic period.

    But the tree rings give us something the written sources can’t.

    Physical evidence that growing conditions really did deteriorate dramatically around the same time people were writing about strange skies, abnormal seasons and food shortages.

    And then scientists went looking in the ice.

    The Ice Kept Receipts

    Snow falls.

    Another layer falls on top of it.

    Then another.

    And another.

    Under the right conditions, those layers become compressed into ice.

    Year after year.

    Century after century.

    And trapped inside them are traces of the atmosphere that existed when that snow fell.

    Scientists can drill deep into ice sheets and glaciers and pull out cores containing layer after layer of environmental history.

    Which is already cool as hell.

    But for our purposes, the important thing hiding inside sixth-century ice is volcanic sulfate.

    Major volcanic eruptions can blast sulfur-containing gases high into the atmosphere. Those gases can form sulfate aerosols capable of spreading over enormous distances and reflecting incoming sunlight.

    Eventually, some of that sulfate returns to the surface.

    Some of it lands on ice.

    Then more snow covers it.

    And nearly fifteen hundred years later, somebody drills it back out.

    Research comparing Greenland and Antarctic ice cores with tree-ring records has identified major volcanic aerosol events corresponding with the severe climatic disturbances beginning around 536.

    And this is where we finally get a physical explanation for that strange sun.

    Procopius couldn’t see volcanic sulfate.

    He could see what it did to the light.

    Aerosols high in the atmosphere can reduce the amount of sunlight reaching the surface. Suddenly, a description of a sun shining without its usual brightness doesn’t sound quite so mysterious.

    Even better—or worse, depending on whether you’re a sixth-century farmer—the ice shows that this wasn’t over after the first event.

    Another major volcanic eruption followed around 540, delivering another climatic hit before conditions had fully recovered.

    One disaster had apparently arrived with a sequel.

    But there’s still a fairly enormous question sitting in the middle of all this.

    Which volcano did it?

    We don’t know.

    There have been attempts to connect microscopic volcanic material preserved in ice with particular volcanic regions, including Iceland, but the source of the initial 536 eruption has not been settled.

    And I actually love that we don’t know.

    Not because I enjoy researchers suffering.

    But because there’s something bizarre about an eruption powerful enough to affect climate across huge portions of the Northern Hemisphere while the volcano responsible can still basically sit there fifteen hundred years later going:

    Prove it was me.

    We have evidence of the eruption’s effects in ice.

    We have the cooling in trees.

    We have people describing what happened to the sky.

    But the exact source?

    Still being investigated.

    History gave us the crime scene.

    The culprit didn’t leave a signed confession.

    So…How Bad Did It Get?

    Bad.

    That’s the easy answer.

    The harder answer is that it depended on where you lived.

    Modern climate reconstructions indicate exceptionally cold summers across parts of the Northern Hemisphere beginning in 536. Some research has reconstructed summer cooling in affected regions on the order of roughly 1.5 to 2.5°C.

    That might not sound terrifying.

    A couple of degrees?

    Okay.

    Except we’re talking about average seasonal temperatures across large regions, not whether you needed a hoodie one afternoon.

    Plants care.

    Growing seasons care.

    Harvests care.

    And when the cold arrives suddenly enough and lasts long enough, people care very quickly too.

    Reduced sunlight and lower temperatures can interfere with plant growth. Frost at the wrong time can damage crops. A shortened growing season can mean less food.

    And if another major eruption happens before agricultural systems have fully recovered?

    Now you’re stacking problems.

    Historical records preserve evidence of food shortages and famine in multiple regions during the broader sixth-century downturn.

    But this is also where I want to be careful.

    We cannot look at every bad thing that happened after 536 and write:

    VOLCANO DID IT.

    Climate can put pressure on societies.

    Crop failure can contribute to hunger.

    Hunger can make already vulnerable populations more vulnerable.

    Environmental stress can interact with warfare, politics, trade, migration, disease and about a thousand other things human beings are already doing to one another.

    But interaction isn’t the same thing as a single cause.

    Which brings us to the disaster that almost always gets attached to this story.

    The plague.

    And Then Came the Plague

    A few years after the strange sun appeared, plague reached the Mediterranean world.

    The Justinianic Plague began in the 540s and became the first historically documented plague pandemic.

    And if you’re trying to write the most dramatic version of 536 possible, this is almost too convenient.

    Volcano.

    Darkness.

    Cold.

    Famine.

    Plague.

    Done.

    Apocalypse.

    Except we don’t get to do that.

    The plague did not begin in 536, and the fact that it appeared several years after the climatic downturn began does not prove that one caused the other.

    Researchers have investigated possible relationships between climate, ecology and plague transmission, and the environmental disruptions of the sixth century form part of the world in which the pandemic emerged.

    But there is a very large difference between saying:

    the plague emerged during a period already experiencing serious climatic disruption

    and saying:

    the volcano caused the plague.

    The first is chronology.

    The second is causation.

    And history gets into trouble when we pretend those are interchangeable.

    The same caution applies to political upheaval, migration and social change.

    The sixth century was difficult for a lot of people for a lot of reasons.

    Climate was one of them.

    It doesn’t have to be the explanation for everything.

    So before we decide whether 536 deserves the title it has been given, we need to separate the things the evidence actually tells us from the things we still can’t answer.

    What We Know

    Something extraordinary happened to the atmosphere around 536.

    People in the Mediterranean described a weakened sun and abnormal seasons. Irish annals preserve evidence of serious food shortages during the broader period, while Chinese historical traditions record episodes of abnormal cold, frost, snow, drought, crop failure and famine.

    Those written records are supported by something the people creating them knew nothing about.

    Tree-ring evidence shows severe cooling and poor growing conditions beginning around this time, while polar ice preserves volcanic sulfate from major eruptions capable of producing large-scale atmospheric cooling.

    And the initial disturbance wasn’t the end of it.

    Another major eruption followed around 540, contributing to further cooling before conditions had fully recovered.

    536 wasn’t simply one weird year.

    It was the beginning of a much longer climatic disturbance.

    What We Don’t Know

    We still don’t know exactly which volcano was responsible for the initial 536 event.

    Scientists have proposed possible sources and examined microscopic volcanic material preserved in ice, but the case isn’t closed.

    We also can’t reconstruct the experience of every person or community living through this period.

    The written record is uneven. Some regions left far more evidence than others. Environmental proxies can show us temperature changes, volcanic forcing and difficult growing conditions, but they can’t tell us what dinner looked like in every sixth-century household.

    And we cannot confidently blame every famine, migration, war, political transformation or disease outbreak of the following decades on volcanic eruptions.

    Climate history is not a giant domino setup where one eruption knocks over civilization.

    Human societies are messier than that.

    What Probably Happened

    Sometime around 536, a major volcanic eruption injected sulfur-containing gases high into the atmosphere.

    Those gases formed sulfate aerosols capable of reflecting sunlight and reducing the amount reaching the Earth’s surface.

    People noticed the result.

    The sun looked weak.

    Temperatures dropped.

    Growing conditions deteriorated across substantial parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

    Then, before the climate had fully recovered, another major eruption occurred around 540.

    More cooling followed.

    In some places, crops failed and food became scarce. All of this happened inside societies already dealing with their own wars, politics, diseases and inequalities, which meant the consequences were never going to look exactly the same everywhere.

    There was no single worldwide experience of 536.

    But there was a very real climatic shock.

    The people living through it recorded what they could see.

    The natural world preserved the rest.

    Which finally brings me back to the question that started this whole rabbit hole.

    Was 536 Really the Worst Year to Be Alive?

    After spending this much time with 536, I think the thing that bothers me most about calling it the “worst year to be alive” is how clean that phrase makes everything sound.

    One year.

    One disaster.

    One winner in the historical misery Olympics.

    That’s not really what the evidence gives us.

    536 didn’t arrive on January 1 with a sign announcing:

    Congratulations. This year is going to fucking suck.

    Something happened to the atmosphere.

    People noticed the sun behaving strangely.

    Temperatures fell.

    Growing conditions deteriorated.

    Then another major eruption followed only a few years later.

    The Justinianic Plague arrived after that.

    And the people living through all of this didn’t know they were inside something historians and scientists would eventually give names to.

    There was no Volcanic Winter of 536 to them.

    No Late Antique Little Ice Age.

    No chart showing reconstructed summer temperatures.

    No ice-core chronology.

    They just had the weather.

    The harvest.

    The sky.

    And whatever happened next.

    I keep thinking about that.

    Imagine looking at the sun and realizing it hasn’t looked right for months.

    You don’t know there’s been an enormous volcanic eruption somewhere.

    You don’t even know where “somewhere” is.

    You don’t know particles high in the atmosphere are scattering sunlight.

    You don’t know the cold summer you’re experiencing is being recorded inside the tree growing outside your home.

    You don’t know snow falling thousands of miles away is trapping chemical evidence of the thing you’re living through.

    You just know the seasons aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do.

    And you need the crops to grow.

    That’s frightening enough.

    We don’t need to turn 536 into the apocalypse.

    We don’t need to blame every sixth-century catastrophe on one volcano.

    And we definitely don’t need to pretend there is some objective scoreboard proving that one year was worse than every other year humans have survived.

    Maybe 536 wasn’t the worst year to be alive.

    There probably isn’t such a thing.

    But I understand why the phrase stuck.

    Because something happened that year that people could see but couldn’t explain.

    And then, centuries later, we found witnesses they never knew they had left behind.

    The trees remembered.

    The ice remembered.

    The chroniclers remembered.

    None of them knew they were recording pieces of the same story.

    Procopius couldn’t know that someone almost fifteen hundred years later would compare his strange sun with sulfate buried beneath Greenland ice.

    The people preserving records of failed bread couldn’t know that trees growing hundreds or thousands of miles away were recording the same period of climatic stress.

    Chinese chroniclers couldn’t know that their reports would eventually be placed beside Mediterranean accounts and modern climate reconstructions.

    The trees didn’t know about Procopius.

    The ice didn’t know about Cassiodorus.

    And Procopius sure as hell didn’t know about ice cores.

    They were independent witnesses.

    One wrote with ink.

    One grew rings.

    One fell as snow.

    And almost fifteen hundred years later, we finally introduced them to each other.

    Sources & Further Reading

    Every History After Dark article is built from multiple sources whenever possible.

    The year 536 presents an unusual research problem because no single source tells the entire story. Contemporary writers described a strangely dimmed sun and abnormal seasons without knowing their cause. Other historical traditions preserve evidence of food shortages and unusual weather during the broader period. Centuries later, tree rings, ice cores and other environmental evidence gave researchers an entirely different record to compare with those written accounts.

    For this article, I compared ancient and medieval written sources with modern research in volcanology, paleoclimatology, dendrochronology, archaeology and plague history. Particular care was taken to distinguish what people living through the sixth century actually recorded from what modern researchers infer from the physical evidence.

    Primary & Near-Contemporary Sources

    Procopius of Caesarea. History of the Wars, Books III–IV.

    Procopius was a sixth-century Byzantine historian and one of the most important contemporary witnesses used in this article. During the reign of Justinian, he recorded the extraordinary appearance of the sun in 536, describing light without its usual brightness and comparing it with the sun during an eclipse.

    His account is especially valuable because he was writing during the period in which the disturbance occurred rather than reconstructing it centuries later.

    The English translation consulted was H. B. Dewing’s edition of History of the Wars, alongside an older English edition available through Project Gutenberg.

    Cassiodorus. Variae / The Letters of Cassiodorus.

    Cassiodorus, a Roman statesman working in Ostrogothic Italy, left another important description of unusual atmospheric and seasonal conditions.

    In a letter traditionally associated with the disturbance of 536, he described a weakened or strangely colored sun, diminished shadows, abnormal weather and seasons that no longer behaved as expected.

    Thomas Hodgkin’s English translation of The Letters of Cassiodorus was consulted alongside historical material on Cassiodorus hosted by Georgetown University.

    The Annals of Ulster.

    The medieval Irish annals preserve entries describing severe food shortages during the sixth-century climatic downturn, including the famous references to a “failure of bread.”

    Because the surviving annals were compiled and transmitted after the events they describe, they should not be treated exactly like an eyewitness account written in 536. They are nevertheless important evidence for records or memories of serious subsistence crises during this period.

    The electronic edition consulted was produced by CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College Cork.

    The Annals of Inisfallen.

    Another Irish annalistic tradition consulted while investigating sixth-century famine, weather and social disruption.

    Like the Annals of Ulster, these records require caution because the surviving texts were compiled after the events they record. They are most useful when compared with other historical and environmental evidence rather than treated as stand-alone proof.

    The electronic edition consulted was produced by CELT: The Corpus of Electronic Texts, University College Cork.

    Chinese historical records, including the Wei shu, Nan shi and Liang historical traditions.

    Chinese chronicles preserve reports of unusual atmospheric and climatic events during the period surrounding 536, including yellow dust or material falling from the sky, abnormal cold, frost, snow, drought, crop failures and famine.

    Rather than relying on isolated translations from popular retellings, these records were investigated through modern scholarly work identifying the underlying Chinese historical sources and placing individual reports within their chronological and geographic context.

    The reported yellow dust or material should not automatically be interpreted as volcanic ash. Dust storms and other atmospheric phenomena were also recorded, and the exact cause of individual observations remains uncertain.

    Ice Cores, Volcanic Eruptions & Climate

    Michael Sigl et al. “Timing and Climate Forcing of Volcanic Eruptions for the Past 2,500 Years.” Nature 523, 2015.

    One of the most important scientific sources used for this article.

    Sigl and colleagues reconstructed volcanic activity over approximately 2,500 years using multiple Greenland and Antarctic ice cores and compared the resulting chronology with tree-ring evidence.

    Their work identified major volcanic aerosol events associated with the severe climatic disturbances of the sixth century and provided strong evidence that the extraordinary cooling beginning around 536 was volcanic in origin.

    The research also demonstrates why the sixth-century crisis should not be treated as the consequence of one isolated eruption. Evidence points toward multiple major eruptions occurring within a relatively short period, producing repeated climatic forcing.

    The supplementary datasets were also consulted to better understand the ice-core chronologies, volcanic sulfate deposition and reconstruction of eruption dates.

    Ulf Büntgen et al. “Cooling and Societal Change during the Late Antique Little Ice Age from 536 to around 660 AD.” Nature Geoscience 9, 2016, pp. 231–236.

    A major paleoclimate study combining long tree-ring chronologies from the European Alps and Altai region.

    Büntgen and colleagues identified exceptionally cold conditions beginning in 536 and additional cooling associated with later volcanic events. They proposed the term Late Antique Little Ice Age for the prolonged period of Northern Hemisphere cooling beginning in the sixth century.

    This source is particularly important for placing 536 within a longer climatic episode instead of presenting the famous “dark year” as an isolated twelve-month disaster.

    The authors also explore possible relationships between climatic change and social transformation. Those interpretations require more caution than the underlying climate reconstruction itself.

    “Volcanic dust veils from sixth century tree-ring isotopes linked to reduced irradiance, primary production and human health.” Scientific Reports, 2018.

    This study examines sixth-century tree-ring isotope evidence for reductions in solar radiation associated with volcanic aerosols.

    It provides another independent line of evidence for the environmental effects of the sixth-century atmospheric disturbances and helps explain how reduced sunlight affected plant productivity and growing conditions.

    Additional peer-reviewed research in Nature Communications concerning sixth-century climate and environmental change was also consulted as supporting scientific context.

    Tree Rings & the Natural Archive

    Tree rings were particularly important to this research because they provide evidence entirely independent of ancient written accounts.

    Trees growing during the sixth century physically recorded unusually poor growing conditions. Narrow rings and later wood-anatomical and isotope studies allow researchers to reconstruct exceptionally cold summers and reduced growing conditions across parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

    The tree-ring evidence used here was examined primarily through the work of Büntgen and colleagues, Sigl and colleagues, and subsequent scientific studies of sixth-century volcanic forcing.

    East Asian Evidence

    David W. Pankenier. “The Climate Downturns in China Caused by Volcanic Eruptions in 535–40 CE.” Asiatische Studien / Études Asiatiques, 2023.

    One of the most useful sources found during this project for understanding what happened in China.

    Pankenier reviews Chinese historical evidence for climatic disturbances during the 530s and 540s, including unusual cold, frost and snow, drought, crop failure and famine.

    The article is particularly valuable because it works directly with Chinese historical traditions rather than merely repeating the common modern claim that “China experienced summer snow.” It also distinguishes the chronology and geography of different reported events instead of treating China as though the entire region experienced identical conditions simultaneously.

    This became the principal modern scholarly source used for the Chinese historical evidence.

    Dallas H. Abbott, Dee Breger, Pierre E. Biscaye and Robert A. Juhl. “Calendar-year dating of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) ice core from the early sixth century using historical, ion, and particulate data.” Geosphere, 2014.

    Abbott and colleagues compare GISP2 ice-core evidence with historical observations, including Chinese records.

    Of particular interest is their table of dust-related events recorded in China between AD 500 and 560. The study identifies reports in sources including the Wei shu, Nan shi and Liang historical records and provides references allowing those observations to be traced toward the underlying historical texts.

    The paper was useful for locating the Chinese source tradition and constructing a chronology. Its arguments concerning possible extraterrestrial material, however, were not treated as an established explanation for the 536 event.

    Additional work by Abbott and colleagues concerning unusual particles recovered from Greenland ice was consulted while investigating alternative hypotheses. Current evidence for major volcanic forcing is substantially stronger, so an extraterrestrial explanation is not used in this article.

    The Justinianic Plague

    Merle Eisenberg and collaborators — research on the Justinianic Plague and the construction of the “plague pandemic” concept.

    Modern plague scholarship was consulted because the first historically documented plague pandemic reached the Mediterranean several years after the climatic downturn began.

    This research was particularly important for resisting an extremely tempting narrative:

    volcano → cooling → famine → plague

    The chronology makes climatic conditions relevant to the world in which the Justinianic Plague emerged, but temporal proximity does not prove that the eruptions caused the pandemic.

    For that reason, the plague is treated here as another catastrophe occurring during an already difficult sixth century—not as the inevitable final step in a volcanic chain reaction.

    Alpine Ice Cores, Archaeology & Economic Change

    Michael McCormick et al. “Alpine ice-core evidence for the transformation of the European monetary system, AD 640–670.” Antiquity.

    Research involving the Colle Gnifetti Alpine ice core was consulted while investigating how high-resolution ice-core records can be connected with historical and archaeological evidence.

    Although the central subject of the study is later European silver production and monetary change, the ice core preserves environmental evidence extending into the sixth century and became part of the modern discussion surrounding 536.

    Claims that this research conclusively identified a particular Icelandic volcano as the source of the 536 eruption should be treated cautiously. Later volcanic research has continued to investigate the source.

    Historical & Institutional Sources

    University of Cambridge — “Silent Witnesses.”

    Cambridge material concerning ice-core research, archaeological science and the reconstruction of past environmental and economic events was consulted as accessible institutional context for some of the scientific work used in this article.

    Sarah Zielinski. “Sixth-Century Misery Tied to Not One, But Two, Volcanic Eruptions.” Smithsonian Magazine, July 8, 2015.

    A useful public-facing explanation of research published by Sigl and colleagues. It helped identify the underlying scientific literature, which was then consulted directly.

    Becky Little. “Why Much of the World Went Dark for 18 Months in 536 A.D.” HISTORY.

    This provided an overview of the commonly told version of the 536 story, including Procopius, Cassiodorus, Michael McCormick, volcanic research and the later Justinianic Plague.

    It was used primarily as a starting point for identifying claims that could then be checked against primary sources and scholarly research rather than as principal evidence.

    Science — “Why 536 Was ‘the Worst Year to Be Alive.’”

    This article was particularly useful for tracing the modern popularity of the phrase “worst year to be alive.”

    Historian Michael McCormick’s description of 536 as the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive—and possibly the worst year—became widely repeated in popular coverage.

    Here, that phrase is treated as a provocative historical assessment to investigate rather than an objectively measurable fact.

    Other modern sources consulted during the exploratory stage included coverage from Newsweek, ExplorersWeb and Socrates Journey. These were useful for identifying claims and research leads, but stronger primary and scholarly sources were preferred wherever available.

    Sources Consulted but Not Relied Upon

    Not everything encountered during the research process ultimately deserved a place in the evidence behind the article.

    Material from IrishCentral concerning Irish famine history turned out to concern the much later Great Hunger and was not useful for establishing conditions in sixth-century Ireland.

    An article by Ian Adamson / Colin Dykes, “The Myth of Gaelic Ireland,” was also investigated because it discusses the sixth-century climatic catastrophe and attempts to connect it with political changes in Ireland. Its broader historical arguments are controversial, and stronger annalistic, archaeological and scientific sources were available, so it was not relied upon.

    A number of popular retellings were also consulted during the early research stage. Dramatic claims about worldwide famine, civilizational collapse, volcanic ash, plague and the “worst year in history” were checked against stronger sources before being included—or left out.

    The Research Trail

    This article started with a deceptively simple question:

    Was 536 really the worst year to be alive?

    The answer got considerably messier the farther I followed it.

    The biggest problem was separating an extraordinary historical event from the enormous pile of disasters that have been attached to it afterward.

    The evidence strongly supports major volcanic forcing and severe climatic disruption beginning around 536. What it doesn’t give us is permission to turn every bad thing that happened during the following decades into another consequence of the same eruption.

    The source volcano remains uncertain.

    Reports of yellow material in Chinese records cannot simply be labeled volcanic ash.

    The climatic effects were geographically uneven.

    Later famine, migration, warfare and political change have to be investigated on their own evidence.

    And the Justinianic Plague, which began several years later, cannot simply be reduced to the final step in a neat volcanic chain reaction.

    That distinction ended up mattering much more than I expected when I started.

    Because the real history of 536 is already strange enough.

    It doesn’t need our help.

    A Note on Sources

    “The worst year to be alive” makes an excellent question.

    It makes a much poorer historical fact.

    There is no objective way to rank every year of human history according to misery, and the experience of someone living in 536 depended enormously on where they lived and what their circumstances were.

    What we can establish is remarkable enough.

    Beginning around 536, people in widely separated parts of the Northern Hemisphere experienced unusual atmospheric conditions and severe climatic disruption. Modern tree-ring and ice-core evidence confirms major volcanic forcing during the period. Additional eruptions followed, contributing to an extended period of cooling that some researchers have called the Late Antique Little Ice Age.

    But the different kinds of evidence don’t all tell us the same thing.

    Written sources tell us what people noticed.

    Physical evidence tells us what happened to the environment.

    Modern researchers try to connect the two.

    And none of those records is perfect.

    Written sources survive unevenly and were created by people interpreting events through the knowledge and beliefs of their own cultures. Environmental proxies require dating, calibration and interpretation. Scientific reconstructions can change as new evidence appears.

    So throughout this article, I’ve tried to keep three things separate:

    what sixth-century people recorded,

    what the physical evidence demonstrates,

    and what modern researchers infer from the combination of the two.

    Because we don’t need to turn 536 into an apocalypse to make it frightening.

    For the people who watched the sun lose its brightness, crops fail and familiar seasons stop behaving normally, the reality was strange enough.

    History is often stranger than fiction.
    See you next Friday.
    — Destiny

     

  • Between the Lines #8: Little Star

    Some poems start with an idea.

    Others start with a line you’ve known so long that you almost don’t hear the words anymore.

    “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

    It’s one of the first songs a lot of us learn as children. We sing it before we know what stars actually are. Before we understand distance. Before we understand that the light reaching us might have been traveling for years.

    And before we learn that sometimes, the thing we’re looking at may already be gone.

    That thought stuck with me.

    Because there’s something strangely human about that.

    So I followed it.

    And it got darker than the nursery rhyme. 😅

    Little Star

    Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

    I used to wonder
    what you are.

    Before I learned
    that some lights

    are already dead.

    That sometimes
    we spend our whole lives

    looking at something

    that disappeared
    centuries ago.

    No one tells children that.

    We point toward the sky
    and call it beautiful.

    Make wishes
    on burning things.

    Teach them
    to close their eyes

    and ask the universe

    for whatever
    their tiny hearts desire.

    I wonder

    how many wishes

    were sent

    to something

    that wasn’t there

    to receive them.

    Maybe that’s why
    mine never came true.

    I used to lie
    beneath my blankets

    and watch the stars
    through my window.

    I thought

    they were watching back.

    Guardians.

    Tiny holes in heaven

    letting the light through.

    I didn’t know yet

    that darkness

    was the natural state
    of things.

    That light

    had to fight

    just to reach us.

    Sometimes,

    I still look up.

    Not to wish.

    I stopped doing that
    a long time ago.

    Now I count

    the dead things

    still shining.

    One.

    Two.

    Three.

    There are too many.

    And I wonder

    how long

    a person can disappear

    before everyone else

    notices

    their light

    is only a memory.

    How many times

    have I smiled

    after something inside me

    had already gone dark?

    How many people

    have looked at me

    and thought,

    She’s doing so well.

    Because they were seeing

    light

    that left me

    years ago?

    Maybe we are all

    a little like stars.

    Carrying old versions
    of ourselves

    across impossible distances.

    Letting people

    make wishes

    on pieces of us

    that no longer exist.

    Twinkle, twinkle,

    little star.

    I finally know

    what you are.

    Proof

    that something

    doesn’t have to be alive

    for its absence

    to take years

    to reach us.

    Between the Lines

    What got me about the idea behind this poem wasn’t really the stars.

    It was the delay.

    The idea that light can keep traveling after its source has changed—or disappeared entirely.

    And I started thinking about how often people do that, too.

    There are versions of ourselves that other people continue to see long after we’ve stopped being them.

    Maybe they remember the version of you who tolerated things you don’t tolerate anymore.

    The version who trusted more easily.

    The version who was louder.

    Softer.

    Happier.

    More naive.

    Maybe they’re looking at who you were five years ago and assuming that person is still standing in front of them.

    And sometimes, it happens in reverse.

    Sometimes we’re the ones sending out old light.

    We smile.

    We go to work.

    We answer messages.

    We make jokes.

    We tell people we’re fine.

    And from where everyone else is standing, we might genuinely look fine.

    They aren’t necessarily ignoring what’s happening inside us.

    They may simply be seeing the light that reached them.

    That’s where the line—

    How many people
    have looked at me
    and thought,

    She’s doing so well.

    —came from.

    There’s something sad about realizing that someone can look directly at you and still be seeing an older version of you.

    But I don’t think Little Star is entirely about sadness.

    I think it’s also about change.

    We spend our lives leaving versions of ourselves behind.

    Some disappear quietly.

    Some take years to let go of.

    Some probably still exist in somebody else’s memory exactly as we were when they last knew us.

    And maybe that’s okay.

    Because the person I was isn’t necessarily gone just because I’m not her anymore.

    Some of her light made it here.

    I carry pieces of her.

    Other people carry pieces of her.

    And someday, the person I am right now will probably become another one of those distant versions too.

    Still visible.

    Still affecting something.

    Just no longer the whole story.

    Maybe that’s what I like most about the stars.

    We look up and think we’re seeing what is.

    Sometimes we’re actually seeing what was.

    And unless we look a little closer, we may never know the difference.

    Until next time,

    —Destiny

    P.S. Some things keep shining long after they’ve changed. Maybe people do, too.

  • 📷 Learning to Look Closer #10

    I think one of my favorite things about doing this series is realizing that I don’t actually have to go looking for something worth photographing.

    Most of the time, it’s already there.

    I just have to notice it.

    And apparently this week, the things that made me stop ranged from a tiny gothic sticker on a gas pump to Batman secretly being an alarm clock.

    So.

    You know.

    A very normal assortment of things. 😂

    A Tiny Gas-Pump Stranger

    I stopped for gas this week and noticed this little lady hanging out on the pump.

    That’s it.

    That’s the entire story. 😂

    I have absolutely no idea who put her there.

    I don’t know how long she’s been there.

    But there was something about this tiny, gothic, horned woman sitting directly above a giant WARNING sign that made me stop for a second.

    Someone had this sticker.

    Someone decided this gas pump was where she belonged.

    And now everybody who stops there gets a tiny piece of that stranger’s personality without ever knowing who they were.

    I kinda love that.

    Lunch, According to Tiny Humans

    This one is not pretty.

    There is absolutely no artistic arrangement happening here. 😂

    But this is what happens when you let a four-year-old and two one-year-olds have opinions about lunch.

    Reese’s-filled pretzels.

    Mandarin oranges—or, judging by the crime scene, what used to be mandarin oranges.

    And whatever else apparently made sense at the time.

    There are peels everywhere.

    Containers everywhere.

    Wipes in the background.

    Random cups.

    Absolute chaos.

    And I almost wouldn’t have thought to take a picture of it because it’s just a messy table.

    Except…

    it’s also one of those pictures I think I’ll like more later than I do right now.

    Because someday there won’t be tiny people making absolute disasters out of lunch.

    And this?

    This is what life looked like while there were.

    Messy counts, too.

    The Sky Was Showing Off

    And then there was this morning.

    Nothing particularly interesting was happening underneath that sky.

    Buildings.

    A fence.

    A basketball hoop.

    Trees.

    Just ordinary things I see all the time.

    But above all of it?

    That.

    Pink.

    Orange.

    Purple.

    One of those sunrises that makes you stop whatever you’re doing for a second because apparently the sky has decided to be dramatic before you’ve even fully started your day.

    And I’m glad I noticed.

    Because a few minutes later, it was gone.

    Wait…That’s a Clock?

    And finally:

    Batman.

    One of my kiddos brought this into class today, and at first I didn’t think anything of it.

    It was LEGO Batman.

    Cool.

    Then I looked again.

    Wait.

    Is Batman telling me what time it is?

    😂

    Apparently, yes.

    It was an alarm clock.

    I had looked directly at the giant digital numbers in his stomach and somehow my brain had decided those were simply none of my business.

    And weirdly enough, I think Batman might sum up this entire series better than anything else I photographed this week.

    Because Learning to Look Closer doesn’t always mean finding something beautiful.

    Sometimes it does.

    Sometimes you look up and catch a sunrise before it disappears.

    But sometimes it means noticing a tiny sticker somebody left behind.

    Sometimes it means realizing that the messy table in front of you is evidence of a very specific season of your life.

    And sometimes…

    it means looking at LEGO Batman twice before realizing the man has been telling you the time this entire time.

    😂

    There are things worth noticing everywhere.

    Beautiful things.

    Funny things.

    Messy things.

    Completely pointless little things that make you smile for half a second.

    You just have to actually look at them.

    Until next time,

    —Destiny

    P.S. What’s something you’ve looked directly at before realizing what you were actually looking at? 😂