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Failure was always an option! I don’t know where the month went. I was waiting so much of the month, for something new to happen or to emerge from somewhere. And here, locked in to quiet of my room, nothing much happened at all. I feel a great sense of loss for the month that never began. I never quite seemed to find the right way to approach the days, and so many of them I spent sleeping… long indulgent sleeps. Were they brought on my depression, loneliness, laziness, seemingly chronic infections? I can’t rule any one of those things out I suppose. It’s everything. The weight of endings.

I think I’ve started to let go of the expectations I had of myself, but in doing so I find that the future is scary when it doesn’t come with those expectations. What do you mean by “I can do anything I want…”? Can I, though. What is all of this?

I’ve spent a few weeks now going through Mom’s 1968 diary, researching the references as I go, to try and understand Mom at 14. And that’s a bizarre thing to expect; I don’t understand myself at 14. How can I possibly understand her. Maybe I should pull out my own 14 year old writings, compare them to hers. It is only logical that the things going through my own mind would be similar to what might be going through hers. People are fundamentally the same over time. What terrible things would I discover about her? About myself? Maybe nothing. Maybe I’ll find nothing more than the innocent musings of childhood by two people who are not yet fully realized.

It’s so odd and arbitrary how we demarcate our lives with calendar months, but it still feels like a dawn is coming and the new month washes us clean of the old. It’s all just random nonsense, but I feel it so deeply. I hope this next period is fruitful. I love feeling alive, productive, busy. The routines I once cherished have unravelled, but I could start again; start to weave them back together until I find something new to gird my days.

To May, and to hopeful tomorrows.

30 April 2026  10:30 p.m.  57ºF/14ºC (cloudy)

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I WANT MY LIFE BACK

I stopped being myself in 2013. When I was talked into moving back to Oklahoma by Mom & Dad, I didn’t know I would do so at the cost of myself, but as I settled in to my new life in Stillwater & Glencoe, I disconnected from the activities and the people I love. I didn’t even realize I was doing that. This was caused a series of choices I made, and a series of inactions on my part. There was plenty of opportunity to find a path in Stillwater, at least at the start, but I was hung up on resentment and frustration. I found it so difficult to accept where I was. I did blame my parents for a while, but they didn’t force me to move. The didn’t fly up to Alaska and stuff me in a plane. They convinced me over time, and ultimately I chose to return. Partly, it was to help Mom & Dad, who had both been dealing with increasingly difficult medical situations, but also I wanted to be back to spend time with my niblings before they got too old. I dreaded being the uncle who they had no connection with because I was so far away, only to see them rarely in adulthood. I wanted to be there for their childhoods.

In the Summer of 2013, freshly moved back, I had my own apartment with Molly & Franz. It was upstairs from Brad, Conner & Jason, which was nice. Mom & Dad needed limited help, mostly with chores around the property and going with them to appointment and sometimes grocery shopping. Honestly, at first I felt duped. They didn’t need much from me, and that allowed me to start a business making a selling artwork, as well as art & craft supplies. And that was going pretty well. It wasn’t initially very profitable, but it was nice to have something to do that was creative and belonged to me. That lasted from June to August when things were disrupted slightly.

Justin, my good friend from Tulsa, called out of the blue one day in August. He knew I was back in Oklahoma, but we hadn’t seen one another yet. His sister had decided she needed the space in her house for her family, and Justin was in her way. She had offered to take him to a homeless shelter, and he needed a place to stay. Justin deals with some mental health issues and therefore cannot work, would be unable to find his own apartment, and isn’t even allowed to control his own money. Taking him somewhere like a shelter is just going to make his life infinitely more difficult. I do think it is fair that she wanted the space for her family. They lived in a modestly sized house with a family of seven people. It was crowded. However, it will never not baffle me that she wanted to take Justin to a shelter rather than help him find an apartment. She had been Justin’s representative payee while I was in Alaska, and I know she hated doing it. But there are people who do that as a job who could have taken over and helped. She did need to be involved in that transition. But she preferred the easiest way for her. Of course Justin could come stay with me. It wasn’t even really a question. He’s always been welcome.

Justin’s presence changed things in a couple of ways. First, I lost the separation between my home office and my bedroom. As much as I tried, it was such a small space that I never could maintain things as well as they had started and my new business struggled as a result. Secondly, Justin requires time and attention. He requires much more than most people, and at the time he had some other struggles that would cause him to absolutely demand attention, waking me up in the middle of the night to reassure him, or calling me to praise him. I’ve never been particularly bothered by these aspects of Justin’s personality, but it can be draining to deal with. My life became about him and my parents quickly, and I was okay with that. I didn’t even really notice I was doing it, but I was giving myself away in small bits.

INTO THE FIRE

My parents built their house in 2015, and I moved to the mobile home where they had been living. That was really nice. There was a bedroom on either end, so it was perfect to share with Justin. And it was spacious. I liked the mobile home, but there had been plans to build a home office. That never happened, and over time talks of that faded as my parents’ needs increased. Meanwhile, my house never got put together and the rooms started to fill up with my intentions and plans, boxes of products I would use in a better situation. My parents property was a twenty acre lot north of Stillwater on a gravel road. It was just far away enough to feel remote, but close enough to go to town frequently. And the property was perfect, completely surrounded by trees except for a natural clearing of about five acres where the mobile home sat and where the house was built. The mornings were frequented by birds, squirrels, deer, and armadillos. Other occasional visitors were rabbits, turkeys, bobcats, opossums, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, guinea fowl, bats, stray cats, stray dogs, the list goes on and on…. I loved that. But I had become so married to my own resentment that the years would go on and I would not.

Mom died in 2018. I hadn’t unpacked my house. And I spent a year barely even leaving my bed after that. And Dad became increasingly in need of care, prompting Justin to spend most of his time being nearby to help Dad if needed. I was allowed to start trying to put myself together. I started another company in 2019, made friends online, started a career. It was great, but around me were the reminders of my failure. But that was changing. I was feeling like it was going to start getting together. I started finally putting my house together in 2020, if not pleased with my situation, at least resigned. But I had gained a lot of weight. I didn’t even realize how out of control my weight had become, but I was having trouble standing or walking. When I took Dad to get his COVID shot, I was in so much pain from standing in line that I genuinely almost needed medical attention. I was getting my company going, but I was getting nowhere physically. And what I started on my house stalled quickly. The bed frame for Justin’s room was never opened. Many things I had purchased, furniture and sheets and curtains, remained in their packages for the rest of my time there. The house would never be unpacked. And in 2022, Dad was diagnosed with cancer. Everything stopped and my life became about that until January 2023 when Dad died.

THE HOARD

When Dad died, I was confronted with the massive quantities of stuff he had amassed. Dad was a hoarder. That term gets thrown around a lot to refer to untidy homes or houses with a few too many items of one type or another. That isn’t hoarding. Hoarding is a stack of empty insulated cardboard boxes in the corner of a bedroom that went all the way to the ceiling. Hoarding is a once beautiful velvet sofa covered in raccoon droppings and rat urine because it was too precious for people to use and it was better to put the sofa in the shed. Hoarding is long-expired food that nobody is allowed to throw away from the refrigerator or pantry. Hoarding is frequent trips to Goodwill for random dishes, Halloween decor, dolls, etc. Dad had built a farm shed, a 20’x60’ metal building that he quickly filled with his finds. By the time I moved out there, the shed was pretty packed with stuff, a lot of it mine from Tulsa, but also some of my brothers’ and niblings’ stuff. Most was Dads. Very, very little was Mom’s. But it was still navigable in 2013. By 2015, it required some work to organize it, which I did. But as life spiraled, things got worse and Dad would add things up until about 2020. The building became so packed with stuff that you couldn’t get around anymore. Sometime after that, raccoons started living in there and eventually everything would be covered in droppings.

In August 2023, after months of waiting for my brothers to help with clearing things out, I decided I need to lose weight so I could get things done myself. I needed to clear the hoard completely, but it was such a daunting task. That would start with dieting.

In October, we hired a family friend and her husband to start the process of emptying the shed. They made a lot of progress, but it took many hours of work by myself and Justin to go through everything and determine what needed to be tossed and what should be kept. While I didn’t intend to keep much, I knew there would be a few things I wasn’t prepared to sort out as trash. We had a decent system. They would drag all the stuff out onto a tarp in the yard and I would spend the next two weeks going through box by box, which I did. I was initially resentful of even that because I was doing it alone, but I got to relive a lot of memories in that process.

Hoarding is boxes that contain both stacks of old junk mail, washed fast food containers, and family photos. Hoarding a photo album covered in dust and urine. Hoarding is a missing wedding ring supposedly in a hollowed piece of wood, somewhere in a box in an enormous warehouse of a shed, never to be located.

I wasn’t properly warned about decision fatigue. I didn’t even know it was a thing until I was well into sorting through our lives and felt so drained I couldn’t even get out of bed. It’s draining. And while I love that I got to do it, neither of my brothers ever really did show up to assist. They actually have no idea what it took to do that job, how after a few hours you wouldn’t know how to separate a receipt from 1992 from an oil painting by a grandparent. Everything would devolve into “I better just save this, I can’t figure out what to do.” And then I needed a break for a couple of days. It was overwhelming.

When the decisions in the shed were done, we started making decisions in the house. The cabinets were stuffed with dishes, the closets with linens. My brother had someone take all of the clothes, which was both good and bad. I later learned that Dad had kept the jacket his dad was wearing when he died, and that he kept in hung in the closet. I never knew that; it was written in a letter to someone else. And it got swept into a bag, carted off to Goodwill. That feels like a regret, but ultimately it is both just a jacket and one I didn’t know anything about. He had kept it hanging with his clothes from 1975, but he didn’t share that memory. He hadn’t shown the jacket to his children. With the rest of the house, I made quick and sometimes harsh decisions. My time in the shed had seasoned me, hardened me. I threw out things I should have kept, but I couldn’t keep the energy up for doing that work. We needed to empty the house to sell it.

CHANGED BY CIRCUMSTANCE

I’m a different person after that experience. By the time we listed the house, I had lost 160lb. I had vowed to never keep anything. I had filled up two storage units with stuff that I kept because that vow was not as strong as it could have been. And I moved on to dealing with my house, largely unpacked since 2015. I didn’t have as much of an emotional response to my own house as I did to my parents’ house and shed. I had accepted my failures by that point and just sorted through things as quickly as I could, discarding or saving unopened boxes of things I had looked forward to enjoying. I had a frame hung up that still had the original paper insert, boxes of clothes from Alaska, and several appliances that I had purchased with good intentions, but which never even got opened once to check and make sure they weren’t broken. I started my house meticulously organized, but by the end I was shoveling things into boxes and shoving them in the the nooks & crannies of the storage unit. The third one, just housing things from my own place.

I purchased my own house in July 2025. I didn’t have time to shop for the specific this or that to make it perfect. My list of needs was short and as long as I could see myself living in a house, I was almost certainly going to buy it. After a few houses I loved, but for one reason or another wouldn’t work out, I found my house in Guthrie. It’s got the new roof I wanted, the new insulation I required, and the neighborhood is quiet. It’s a 1940s neighborhood, and reminds me of Sayre. The yards are small and the neighbors are all in view, but everyone keeps up with their yards and is generally very friendly. It feels like a safe place to be, and I find a lot of comfort in being in a neighborhood so filled with diversity. I had decision fatigue after years of picking through boxes, so I started my life in Guthrie by setting up simply and doing nothing to get it together.

It’s December. The living room is still full of boxes from moving in. The storage units are largely untouched. I have since had a shed built, but I haven’t put in shelves and really earnestly started to fill the space up. I don’t want to hoard. I need storage, but I don’t want the long term storage that had plagued my parents. I don’t want to amass so much stuff! I worry constantly that I will, that I’ve save too much from my parents, that I will run out of space and have to figure out what to do next. I don’t love the idea of repeating the cycle.

SIMPLIFY, SIMPLIFY

I’ve been reading books and watching videos on organization and minimalism. Aesthetically, I hate minimalism. I am a maximalist, but a maximalist can sometimes be a hoarder waiting to emerge. I want my house to reflect me, but I need to be cautious. I think there are a lot of principles of minimalism that can really help, and I do think it is a misconception that minimalism necessarily requires one to have nothing. I think it’s more about intention and overconsumption. It’s about reigning in capitalist urge to acquire more of everything.

I decided I needed a year spent reducing. In all of the ways I can. I have gained back some of the lost weight, and I want to lose it. I have amassed too many candles, spices, teas, body sprays, lotions, etc. Things build up quickly. I want to spend 2026 doing two things: not buying much & reducing what I have.

I started by identifying the categories of excess that would make the biggest impact for me, as well as strategies for maintaining some that I am not interested in eliminating, but managing quantities of. The biggest offender is the most recent, body sprays. I got out of hand over the summer. I had gone years without the means to buy things like that for myself and I wanted it all. I have so many now that there is no way I will ever use it all up. It’s on the list, of course. Next was candles. I have been known to use candles, but not as often as I would like. And I acquired Mom’s stash of candles. I had my own going, so it felt like a lot. Once I got them all together, it’s a little less that expected, but it is still a lot. It’s on the list. Spices reproduce; I’m convinced they are multiplying when we aren’t looking. And I use the same handful. Where did the random ones come from? It’s on the list. But I was cautious to not overpromise to myself. I have too many art supplies, paper and canvases. I’m not ready to commit to using those up. It’s not on the list for now. Neither are things that need reduced, but aren’t really consumables: things like DVDs, books, clothes. There is purging to do in all categories and I will add those things in the future, but that’s not where I’m starting.

I know there are many names for doing a reduction challenge, but I’m not actually doing someone else’s challenge per se. I’m working on my own self, my own mind. What I’m doing is a bit more holistic and complete.

In Walden, Thoreau said

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluding that it is the chief end of man here to “glorify God and enjoy him forever.”
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; …we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon cloud, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous end editable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not found and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so-called internal improvements, which, by the way, are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them in a rigid economy, a stern and a more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men thing that it is essential the the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not want to get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and night to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven is season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on railroads; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper int he wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were the exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.
Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus’ dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is , without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his fam in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire, — or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were to parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half hour’s nap after dinner, but when he wakes up holds up his head and asks, “What’s the news?” as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and the, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night’s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. “Pray tell me anything new that has happened to a man anywhere on this globe,” — and he read s it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wichita River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.

I could go on. Maybe I should. Thoreau was right so much of the time that just posting his own words would be worthwhile. Maybe I should do just that as well. We’ll see.

A MUSEUM OF MY WHIMS

I’m very interested in simplifying. I’m interested in living my life, not curating a museum of my whims. And I would love to give it a try instead of just wishing I could start.

I don’t like the idea of “New Years Resolutions.” They tend to be promises you haven’t been able to keep and so you tie them to the start of the year, knowing full well you aren’t likely to continue with them in perpetuity. I didn’t plan my Project Simplify as a resolution for 2026, and in fact I did a soft start on 1 December 2025. This month has been something of a failure, but I’ve learned some things in that failure.

The Plan

1. Reduce spending. I am going to mark days I spend money & those I do not. Excluding utilities & taxes. The goal is to have as few days as possible where money has been spent… or rather to go as many days at a time as possible without having spent money. That isn’t to say I won’t spend frivolously at all; I know I will. But I don’t need to stop by a store every time I am near one.
2. Use up what I have. I have made a list of the items in specific categories that need to be used up. They are all things I enjoy, so I will want to repurchased when I have used things up, but I have specific criteria for that. For each candle I want to acquire, for example, I have to have used up and discarded three from my stash until I am replacing at one to one. The same ratio applies to spices, lotion, air fresheners, and odd foods. For flavored syrups, I can order a case of 12 after using up 18. And for body sprays, there are two scent exceptions on the list (so I am allowed to buy them), but regardless of how many are used, I cannot buy anymore. Those rules should work for now. I might even increase the spices to 4 out, 1 in. I’ll make a chart that shows what has been “banked” and that should help.
3. Add new categories or revise current ratios monthly. Not everything is going to work as well as I hope, so I would like to revisit monthly to make sure I’m staying on track. And if I have reduced anything fully then I can add a new category from the list of future categories.
4. Travel. Read. Relax.
5. Lose weight. I’ve been struggling to stay on track. I go through binges a lot lately, which has caused a lot of weight gain. I need to recommit myself to the plans that work, the lifestyle that makes me feel best, and to enjoying living in my body.
6. Record everything. It was the secret to losing weight before, and I think it might be the secret to simplifying. Write it down, make charts, make lists. Hoard words, not stuff. Amass ideas, not trash. Collect memories, not memorials.
7. Share my progress. I think writing about this might be helpful. On the one hand, I think who would want to hear about my journey through getting rid of stuff I don’t need. On the other hand, and this is a good reminder for me, journaling is never really about others knowing things. It’s about the telling. It’s good to get out the thoughts, to revisit them, to remember the person I have been through the events of my life, even when they are mundane. And maybe someone will get something out of it as well.

CONCLUSION

I’m looking forward to 2026. I think I can really make some improvements to my life that will set me up for success in the future. I think embracing some of the principles of minimalism, while trying to not lose myself, will be positive.

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In a lot of ways, it feels like things are starting to make sense for me.  And it a lot of other ways, it feels like things are as chaotic as always.  Everyone seems just a little frustrated, but I’m not sure most of them can articulate why.  I know I can’t.

I finished Okie Dokie last month, and I have done a couple of edits to it since.  I hope I’m at a point where I can leave it alone now.  My copies come in the mail Saturday, and I’ll really know then.  I’m both excited and terrified to have my writing available for others.  That was always the goal, but I’m just so nervous about these things.  I hope others can appreciate my point of view and I’m looking forward to getting feedback, even if that feedback is negative.  Constructive criticism is always welcome.  I actually just assume that if someone doesn’t like something I’ve written, then that is just a preference they have and does not reflect on my writing in any real way.  If the consensus is negative, then I’m just writing the wrong things for current audiences.  I will have to wait and see.  The really difficult thing will be critiques by those I admire or grammatical errors pointed out by those I don’t.

I’ve started working on my next book, which will be similar to Okie Dokie in that it will contain selections of poetry from the past twenty years, as well as a few new poems to pull the book together.  I’ll have one or two more like that before relegating unpublished poetry to a “remnants” book of some sort in the future.  I have some things I’ve written that I really love, but I’m not sure how to make them work in any of these projects.  I do want a story to emerge from the collection, even if only loosely.  Okie Dokie was about myself and about how I see the world around me.  The second book will be about family and the places from which they came.  The third book is about friendship and love.  If I need fourth or fifth, I’ll do another about myself and then a last one about family, as those are the two subjects I’ve written the most about.  I’m also not limiting my writing.  I have other things I want to write and those things will fall into the projects that make the most sense for them.

For October, I’m enjoying some spooky stories and songs throughout the month, and I am of course bothering family with those things.  I miss sharing things with people.  I find everyone becoming increasingly isolated, and not just in my own family.  I’ll post some of those things on here during the month.

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Tomorrow I turn 40.  I don’t know that I’m reacting at all.  Maybe part of getting older is that these milestones mean less than they did.  That sounds right.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of legacy lately.  I recently watched a talk by an older woman who had been diagnosed with cancer and knew she would be dying soon.  She didn’t want a legacy; she was so excited to return to the Earth, to be a part of the natural world.  She talked about how beautiful that was.  That really resonated with me and I had never heard anyone talk about it like that before.  I find that I want both.

I’ve been working on my family tree for the past couple of years.  It’s fascinating to discover these people from the past, people whose existence influences my life in ways I will never understand.  They would have passed on lessons to their children, and those children to theirs, and so on.  How far back would I have to go to find the genesis of my belief in fairness, my general work ethic, and my independent spirit?  What would I find that wouldn’t be passed on?  It’s such an interesting space to live in.

I have no children.  Does that mean I will have no legacy?  I admit that it is hard to see a situation three generations from now where there are descendants of my brothers working on their own genealogy and giving much thought to their distant uncle.  But I do that for my own tree.  Some of the most interesting people I find on my own tree are those who did not have children of their own.  That is at least a little bit comforting.  And I hope they find me interesting.

That isn’t at all to write off having children of my own.  I still want that.  I’m not sure at what age it becomes a selfish pursuit, but I don’t think forty is it.  I make many excuses, but adoption is something I should really think about.

I’ll be forty tomorrow, and I’ve been talking about the loss of my youth.  I don’t actually believe that.  I think I’m trying to convince myself somehow that I have to grow up now.  Most days I feel like I’m twenty, but I have days when I feel sixty.

I thought I would be panicky, but I’m not.  I thought I would be coupled, but I’m not.  I thought I would be settled, but I’m not.  I thought I would be a lot of things.  But I am where I am.  And I’m okay with that.

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Welcome To My Oklahoma Family

I was looking for something fun to blog about in 2019 and I thought getting into my family’s history might be interesting. I’ve always been interested in the stories that make up our family, and I am particularly interested in the real lives of the folks without a strong an obvious record. I want to know the things I can never know. What sorts of things did my 4th great grandma think about? Was my 6th great uncle happy? What were the sounds and smells of the house of the young families? It’s unfortunate that legal documents form the understanding of the vast majority of our families. I long for journals or diaries, and maybe more of those will be discovered. Until then, I have only the facts and I will try to present as much as I can to try and help understand the various branches of my family.

I’ve been careful to avoid the words ancestry and genealogy until now, but after this explanation, I will use them. I consider myself a family historian and not a genealogist. I find DNA an interesting part of studying one’s own story, but it isn’t the complete story. Who I share genetics with in a lot of cases have less to do with who I am and who my family has been than close friends and communities, or even pets. There are more ways of facing what a family is than simply tracing one’s ancestry. And I’m also not saying that isn’t valid. If you are only interested in that, go for it. Do your thing. I am not trying to prove a pedigree or show how I am related to anyone in particular, so I’m going to look at the whole. I will definitely look at ancestry and trace my family lines, but I just won’t stop there or be defined by what that is.

DNA

I recently got a DNA test from Ancestry.com The broad results are fairly expected. For those who don’t know, DNA tests do not show where someone comes from, but where people with similar DNA can be found today. It might sound like a minor distinction, but it can help understand why results don’t seem 100% what you might expect.

As you can see from my results, I am 69% “England, Wales & Northwestern Europe”, 28% “Ireland & Scotland”, and 3% “Sweden.” The latter two are clear, but “England, Wales & Northwestern Europe” is a large area and does not show distinctions between Germany, Denmark, England, or France. It’s a large area with a lot of countries. I do know generally speaking that my family came to the United States from Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, and England. I am the cliché American profile.

When you look at the migrations map, you will see that there too I am incredibly broadly American, having family that settled everywhere from Pennsylvania to Texas, from Wisconsin to Georgia. I’ve got family who followed Brigham Young to what would become Utah, and family that took up arms on both sides of the Civil War. There are farmers and ministers, grocers and teachers, housewives and merchants. It would be easy to look at my family and find nothing much worth mentioning, but it’s actually the fact that there aren’t a whole lot of notable figures that interests me even more. Who were these everyday folks?

I hope you’ll stick with me. Leave me comments, and if I am talking about a relative we share in common, please add your own stories and photos.

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I’ve recently done several things with my books — first, I ordered a few books I’ve been interested in reading (in spite of the dozens of books I have and have not yet read).  Also, I rearranged the books in the house to have rough categories.  I am hoping that makes finding a particular book I want to read easier to find, which is should.  Lastly, I unpacked two boxes of books I had stored away for a while and I intend to unpack all books from boxes over the coming weeks.  I’ve always had a large number of books, but it’s time to purge a few of those.  Purging is always a nice feeling, so I’m not anticipating any problems exactly.  If pushed, I could let go of at least half of the books I currently have out on shelves, so I shouldn’t even be terribly pressed for space.

Here are a few books I’m excited to start reading.  Some of these are new to me & some are books I’ve had for years and I just haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

Memoirs

These are some newer memoirs I’ve been excited to get into.  Even though I rarely keep up with celebrities, I do enjoy a good celebrity memoir.  Jim Grimsley is one of my favorite authors, and I’m very excited that he has released a memoir.  The subject is pretty heavy, but necessarily so.

Fiction

I have such an extremely long list of fiction books I want to read, but these are sort of queued up as the next ones on the list.  I have read books by Graham Rawle and Bob Smith before, but the other authors are all new to me.  I hope for some good things.

Novels by Raymond Queneau

I’ve really enjoyed the Raymond Queneau books I have read in the past, and I have a few others to try.

Poetry

Since I’ve been working on my own poetry, I’ve been into reading poetry more than normal.  I’ve read some pretty interesting stuff so far; these are the next three on my list

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My week was pretty much defined by allergies, which is a little frustrating.  The pollen levels were very high, so I was trying to get through with puffy eyes and a scratchy throat all week.  I used to take a ton of allergy medicine to get through a day, and I guess it is a positive thing that I actually take none now.  This was probably the worst allergy week of the year, and honestly it wasn’t as bad as I’ve experienced in the past.  I’ve had allergies for a long time, but they seemed particularly pronounced when I moved to Oklahoma from Alaska.  I was spending my spring and summer months feeling just terrible, and taking a daily regimen of allergy pills, as I said.  The pills would make me very sleepy, as most medications do.  My allergies really changed for the better when I became vegan, which was curious to me at the time.  Apparently, the science looks like it backs that up.  Several studies suggest that those who eat a vegan diet are less likely to report having environmental allergies (as well as chemical, food, drug, and bee-sting).  I’ve heard anecdotally from other vegans that their allergy symptoms were also improved when they switch to a vegan diet.  It’s so interesting to explore the links between food and health.  Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that a vegan diet cured me of allergies — clearly not.  This has been a bit of a rough week; however, since they aren’t so bad I don’t have to deal with the side effects of allergy meds.

I’m pretty happy with my yard this week.  Unfortunately, due to the unusually wet August we had, I have black spot on many of the trees, and on one of my roses.  The problem is too widespread to completely correct, and I hope that everything is able to put on some stronger growth next year, as there are so many trees losing leaves.  The rose just needs to dry out, which will help.  Right now, about 20% of it is infected, but it’s a very tall climber and it isn’t possible for me to remove all of the infected canes.  I’m just going to treat it and hope for the best.  I’ll treat it next spring as well, and hopefully the problem will correct.  My Fourth of July rose had black spot earlier this year, and will some TLC it is now disease-free.  I think the Golden Shower rose is healthy enough that it will be okay, but it’ll be a bit ugly for the rest of this year.

The upcoming week looks like it’s going to be a wet one again!!  I’m amazed at the number of rainy days we’ve had.  I love those days, but it is so unusual and not great for my plants apparently.  It also really can help with my pollen allergies, but of course then the mold allergies increase with the moisture, so you never really totally win that fight.

I’ve been editing and rewriting, trying to put together collections of poetry for the books I have planned.  I’m really happy with the direction I’m going with them at the moment, and some of my rewrites make me very happy.  I think I am much more honest with myself now than I was in my twenties.  Maybe that is just an obvious statement.  I have such a lot of poetry from that decade of my life that is really great and requires no work to be exactly what I wanted it to be, and then there are others that almost certainly didn’t work at the time.  If I could have seen that then, or if I had been willing to say that to myself at the time, those poems could have been greatly improved and would not need my rewrites so many years later.  It’s been interesting to see my style over periods of time.  I tend to write in two or three different styles, and I can go months or years focused on just one of them.  At the moment, the poems seem to be naturally dividing themselves into four themes, which will be the books.  The fourth category is one that isn’t fully realized, so that one will need more time to fully develop, but the other three I do really understand well.

I need a schedule!  I am so bad about following a set schedule, but when I don’t have one I tend to forget certain tasks, or get into situations where I am spending far too much time on one thing and not enough on another thing.  So, for the millionth time, I am working on making myself a schedule.  I have too many different things to accomplish to just play it by ear at this point, and I need to make sure nobody feels like things are being neglected.  Some things are, but more importantly there are times when it probably feels like I am not focused on tasks around the property that need to be done, when in reality I am aware of them and not making any show of it.  Sometimes people need to see your work to believe you are doing it.  I hope that goes well.  I really want to get these books done and I think this helps with that goal, while ensuring that everything is still running smoothly.

The “update” category blog posts seem to be posting a day later than they should.  I’m trying to resolve this, but I’m not entirely sure what the problem is.  It’s almost certainly something I am doing wrong.  Bleh.

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This has been a wonderful week.  Once again, Justin and Conner were impressive workers and we made some excellent progress with the yard.  We did get a little rain this week, but nothing like we had been getting.  This next week looks warm and dry, which is both good and bad.  I also won’t be at all surprised if there is unexpected rain.  Why not!?

I’ve started to assemble things with the goal of creating a book of my poetry.  It’s really crazy that I have never done that, but it’s going to happen this year.  I’m trying to decide if I want to do short books focused on a theme, or if I should just chuck everything in together and have a slightly longer book.  I can see the value in both.

Senator John McCain died.  Whatever one thinks of his politics, I think we can agree that he deserves our respect as a veteran and POW.  I also really do believe he always fought for what he thought was right.  I didn’t always agree with what he thought was right, but what I’ve seen in the past decade has been the rise of Republican obstructionism, senators and congressmen who are no longer striving to move us forward as a country.  Instead, they try to gum up the machine, fight to keep people down, and cheat to retain power.  They are unAmerican.  I’m reminded of McCain’s town hall during which a woman asked about Obama, disparaging him.  McCain, being a fundamentally good person, defended his colleague.  It was about advancing their ideas, not about tearing one another down.  That election would include some less honorable moments, and arguably was the unintentionally handing of the Republican party that John McCain was a member of to the Tea Party obstructionists like his running mate.  He had a long career and was a well-loved patriot; my thoughts and prayers are with his family at this time.

This has been the third week in a row when I lacked focus on the blog, but I’ve got plenty to write about.  I just need to get with it!

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You’d have a hard time finding someone who loves rain more than I do.  It relaxes me and even the slightest drizzle will cause me to throw open my windows in the hopes that I will hear the patter of raindrops.  It’s one of the things that makes me act crazy, but something I’m not apologizing for.  I love thunderstorms, light showers, sudden downpours.

I remember when I was a kid it rained on my birthday a couple of times.  By the beginning of August in Oklahoma, things can start to look pretty bleak.  Grasses start turning brown from lack of rain, and gardens become increasingly difficult to keep alive (in my experience anyway).  It’s been months since the storms of April and May, and it really feels unbearably hot and dry.  So, on those occasions when it rained on August 5, I remember being excited to have a break from the heat.

We had a fairly hot June this year, and while I hoped for below average temperatures for the rest of the summer, I didn’t have any hope of that happening.  I have been pleasantly surprised.  It’s been very warm at times, but the blistering heat has really stayed away this year.  At the end of July, it started to rain even.  That was so nice.

And the rain just kept coming.  It’s August 19 now.  The last rain we had was yesterday.  That was the last of almost 20 days of the rain I love.  Some days it would just rain a little in the middle of the day, and other days would see a large storm come through during the night.  Ultimately, I’d take that over no rain any day.  But I’m glad to have a break from it just now.  The plants need time to dry out, get some sun, etc.  We’ve got more rain in the forecast for next week.

This week was brilliant in some ways, but very sad in others.  Opie & Laura announced they are having a baby.  It was nice to have some good news, but I am having trouble with the knowing that Mom would want to have seen these two start their family.  And they are going to be great parents.  Opie had a few issues, and ten years ago I would have been worried about him becoming a father.  He’s really proven himself to be a wonderful person, and has a fantastic future ahead of him.  I’m so proud to have people like him in my family.

Brent turned 40.  I don’t think I will handle it well when I turn 40 next year, but it isn’t because I’m afraid to be in my 40s.  It brings up so many issues.  I don’t know how Brent dealt with it, but he does usually deal with things well.  I wish we would have had a party for him, but I’ve had some trouble keeping up with things like that.

I’m looking forward to a great week.  I’m starting to think it’s okay to do things… that seems vague, but I’ll elaborate in the future.

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Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

A few days ago, while organizing paperwork and whatnot, I came across my writing journals from college.  It’s interesting to revisit oneself after 20 years.  It felt familiar, but not so much that I recognized the author.  I could remember writing the words, but the fact that I had done so struck me as bizarre.  For the most part, I didn’t like the person who had written those poems and fragments and notes.  He seemed silly, immature, and at times overly serious.  I wish I could go back and tell him the things I have learned on my journey.

That said, I haven’t been writing much lately.  I haven’t even journaled this summer for obvious reasons.  But I’m very much feeling the words gathering into lines in my head, and I am eager to write more poetry.  I’d been in a dry spell on poetry, but mostly that was due to the lack of quiet I had been dealing with.  Quiet seems easier to achieve recently.  That should help.

When I was studying literature, it was easy to fall for specific authors who I just connected with.  It wasn’t always clear why those connections happened, but it was this that introduced me to Galway Kinnell, Sylvia Plath, Frank O’Hara, Geoffrey Chaucer, & Tim O’Brien.  I latched on to these, and to others, quickly and they helped guide the type of writer I would be.  I was also discovering contemporary authors at that time in my life and their words would guide me as well — Jim Grimsley, Bob Smith, Gary Reed.  Gertrude Stein was one of the authors I discovered in class, having been aware of her for most of my life.  It’s odd how little one can know about someone who has such a well-known name.

Gertrude Stein wrote in several different styles, but all of it was filled with her characteristic repetition and rhythm.  I was especially interested in added that to my own work, and I gave it a try many times.  It’s something that still comes up.  A nod to Stein is a very common practice for me, and I thank her for being one of my muses.

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Happy Birthday To Me!  Today is my 39th birthday, and while it has been a mostly peaceful day, I have found myself avoiding a lot of memories and feelings that are just under the surface.  I just wasn’t in a place to deal.

I spent the first half of the day listening to episodes of the podcast Frangela: The Final Word.  TOO FUNNY!  I love these two, and have for a long time on The Stephanie Miller Show.  I don’t know why it took me so long to get into their podcast.  I’m glad I did though.  After a bit of that, I took a nice nap on the front porch, where I discovered one of the kittens had returned.  I don’t have faith in the survival of the others, but his return offered at least a glimmer of hope.  My nap was followed by going up to spend time with my dad, brother, nephew, and roommate.  Justin made vegan chicken burgers and fries and the rest of us gave Conner a hard time.  I know he was getting frustrated, but it was kinda fun anyway.

The gathering was fairly brief, a little chaotic, but okay.  I do find myself needing to manage my expectations of others in these situations.  I have a tendency to want people to put their own issues away for a few hours, and at least give the appearance that they care to spend time with me.  But they don’t.  I should know better.  I don’t mean to sound accusatory at all; they are just living their lives as normal.  It’s me who is expecting too much.

I’ve had a wonderfully productive week.  I got the shelving assembled and put in that goes along the east wall of my bedroom.  I’m putting things together slowly with it in; I don’t want it to just feel like a pile of stuff, so I’m going through things and purging a little as I go… very little.  I did identify some books on ikebana that I intend to find a new home for… if I don’t change my mind.  Those books are so thin that it will hardly make a difference in the end!  I finally put some books on the shelves in the living room as well; I’ve had three shelves empty for the past year or so, which is silly really since I had books in boxes waiting to be put out.

Justin helped me put in a row of junipers that will hopefully mature into a nice hedge to break up the front yard, and we also put in another chaste tree up at the house.  Things seem to be coming together slowly in the yards.  I need to spend some time cleaning up the flowerbeds at the house;  they are covered in weeds, need mulch, and the plants could be pruned.

Plants showed up!  I’m not sure why they were sent so early, but part of the order that was supposed to arrive in November showed up in the mail.  It isn’t a good time for planting.  I might look at how to hold them until fall; they are bare root plants.  If I can’t easily wait, I’ll need to get those in the ground or at least in planters in the next couple of days.  I’m not sure how well things will do if they are planted in August, but it does look like we will have a rather mild week and that will help.

The orange rose, which had put on very pink blooms before, has changed and the newer blooms are much more orange.  Maybe it needs to mature before the roses will be their true color, and maybe they will be pale.  Either way, I’m really liking the look of these and I’m glad I put them near the porch.  In time they will be tall enough to tie to the side of the porch and they can be enjoyed like the ‘Fourth of July’ or ‘Golden Showers’ roses are.

So this next week’s plans are all about figuring out those plants that arrived early.  I do need to mow and get started on the flowerbeds as well, but I will also spend some time uploading more blog posts.  It’s nice to be ahead of the game.  I usually stay three or four weeks ahead, but I’m only a few days ahead at the moment and need to manage things better to make sure the blog is always active.  On that note, I’m looking for feedback on what is working and what isn’t.  Leave me comments on this post or on any post you want so I know what people are thinking.

Artists Featured This Week

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Crepemyrtle (Lagerstroemia)

When I moved to Alaska in 2005 I was struck by those things that were different from my life in Oklahoma.  After getting through that first winter, it became apparent that it wasn’t just the conifer trees that provided a striking contrast to the landscapes of the places I consider home.  The perennials that popped up in the gardens of the area were exotic to me.  They were plants I had known about, but had no experience with.  Columbine, dahlia, lobelia, rhubarb, bleeding hearts, raspberries, wild roses, poppies.  It was a fascinating experience to be surrounded by these new plants, as well as by the old familiar dandelions and lilacs.

I was in Alaska for a number of years and loved those summer months and the beautiful flowers of the area.  What I didn’t expect was how much I would fall in love with the plants of Oklahoma when I returned for vacation.

I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on 5 August 1979 and I lived in the state until 2005 when I left for Alaska.  My uncle is a landscape architect, my grandpa was a professor of agronomy and a consultant on soils.  He spent hours daily working on his flowerbeds and vegetable garden on his one acre lot, an oasis of green in the middle of ordinary yards.  Plants were a part of our DNA.  All parts of my family had been farmers, growing broom corn and cotton.  It had never been my world and I barely paid attention to the things growing around me.  I was aware of the various plants in the landscape, but I didn’t know much about those plants.

What I was most struck with on coming back to Oklahoma on a vacation in 2007 was how amazing crepemyrtles are.  They’ve long been a favorite, especially of my grandpa who had them planted heavily around his house and as a backdrop/transition between the trees and flowers in the flowerbeds.  It felt like I was discovering these plants for the first time.

In 2013, I loved back to Oklahoma and these crepemyrtles felt like a focus of my thoughts when I was

at my parents house or at a business.  They are one of the most commonly used plants in Oklahoma, and it’s pretty easy to see why.

Crepemyrtles are native to southeast Asia, with some hybrids being crossed with a taller species from Japan.  They have been a common ornamental plant in America since before the revolution, with both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson’s gardens having at least one specimen plant.  They quickly became a staple in the South, but as they are not generally cold hardy past zone 6 or 7, they were not a part of the gardens of the North and as a result they do not feature in very many of the early seed or nursery catalogs.  When they do start popping up, it is clear that several cultivars have been established from the original pink flowering tree.  You see white, pink, purple, and red listed in those early catalogs.  The purples were what we now refer to as lavender and the red were dark pink.  It took a long time to achieve a true red crepemyrtle.

The cultivars did not change significantly for a long time, with sporadic new plants being introduced a couple each decade until the 1950s.  It was then that hybridization started in more earnest, and the numbers of plants available really exploded.  By the 1970s, new plants were being released at a rate of six to twelve per year, a speed that has only been matched in recent years.  These plants had all started off as trees that grow 20-25 feet, filled from June to September with large panicles of pink flowers.  Now there were bright reds, fuchsias, deep purples, blush pinks, and picotees of white and pink.  Some of them still reached 20 feet or more, while other varieties had been selected to weep only 1-2 feet off the ground.

Crepemyrtles have a couple of drawbacks.  The most obvious is that they don’t put on new leaves until late May or June.  It’s glaring when the rest of the trees have woken up, many of which have gone through their flowering and are now greening out for the summer and the crepemyrtles still are just a cluster of sticks.  It almost feels like nothing will ever happen with them, and then over the course of a few days leaves start popping up from branches that seemed dead for sure.  They grow fast and in less than a month, the plant has put on so much growth that it’s easy to forget that it had waited for so long.  And then it flowers and that wait was worth it, most of them covering themselves in blooms.  Many will stay in bloom until frost, so it’s a showy plant.

They other problem is not so much with crepemyrtles themselves as it is with people who don’t know how to take care of them.  It is very common for crepemyrtles to be cut back heavily by landscapers, often dramatically.  The result is thickly trunked trees with thin branches, often referred to as a witch’s broom effect.  There are two goals these people are trying to accomplish.  One, it keeps the plant small and contained.  Many varieties can grow to 15-25 feet.  Business don’t always want that.  The other thing this does is increase the new growth branches, which is where the flowering occurs on crepemyrtles.  The do not bloom on last years growth.  First, the size of a crepemyrtle can be maintained by planting the correct variety.  Choose the one that fits your space.  Secondly, new growth and blooming can be encouraged by pruning a crepemyrtle by removing old branches that aren’t growing, dead heading panicles, and cutting back weak growth.  Nobody needs to engage in “crapemurders”.

Crepemyrtles may not be native to Oklahoma, or indeed anywhere in zones 7, 8, or 9, but they might as well be.  These flowering trees and shrubs are a part of us now, and I am so glad to have rediscovered them and appreciate them immensely.

Crapemyrtle Database

Please note also that there are different spellings.  The plant is botanically known as Lagerstroemia, but is commonly known as crepemyrtle, crepe myrtle, crapemyrtle, or crape myrtle.  I used the one I prefer above.

Southern Living: Grumpy Gardener’s Crepe Murders 2018

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The week started out very hot.  I actually lost a rose bush to the heat; it had been struggling to grow anyway, so I’m not terribly surprised.  I was still not feeling great part of the week, so it felt a little like I was getting back to life in slow motion.  I did manage to get the lawn mowed, which was more exciting than it should have been, and cut down one small tree.  Other than that, my only real efforts in my garden were pruning and deadheading.  Oh, and lamenting the loss of that rose.  I was looking forward to that one, but the heat was even stressing some of the crapemyrtles, and they can handle heat pretty well.  We had a storm come through last night and that pretty much took the worst of the heat with it.  We can enjoy a couple of cooler days now.  I have not seen most of the youngest kittens for a couple of days, which is a worry.  Sometimes they do disappear for a few, but I’m worried that they didn’t make it.  The property is so large and wooded, and the cats all spend time exploring, that I might never really know what happened unless they show back up on the porch.

Dad’s birthday was Friday and we all had dinner made by Conner, which was nice.  We also had a variety of cakes, including one failure by me and Justin.  I don’t know why it just wasn’t working, but my third attempt was good.  It actually stayed at home because it was too hot to take.  At least I know I can make a cake, even if it took me three tries!

Featured Artists this week:

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Blackjack Oak

Quercus marilandica ashei

Just outside my bedroom window is a rugged Blackjack Oak.  She isn’t fancy or flashy; neither is she demanding.  She takes care of herself and has a pioneering look about her.

When my parents moved to this property in 2006, most of the native trees were cleared from the areas where they would be living, being replaced with more pleasing fruit trees, crapemyrtles, and one Bradford pear.  Along with a few other trees, they did leave one small oak tree.  That tree offered a shaded spot to sit and enjoy the property, while being a fairly compact plant.  It has not stayed that way.

I moved into this place in 2015.  At that time, the once diminutive oak had become a little more of a presence.  The branches had arched and reached the house, occasionally scraping against the siding.  Ultimately it needed to be trimmed a little, but it’s increased size had created even more of a shaded area, some of its lower branches now no longer putting on leaves.  She had started looking a little bit raggedy.  It made me wonder about how long lived blackjack oaks are, worrying that she had only a limited time left and that I would need to think about  what to do when a replacement or removal was needed.

Blackjack oaks are a type of red oak common from New Jersey to Eastern Kansas and as far south as Georgia and Central Texas.  They are small and hardy trees, happily growing is poor soils and dry areas.  They don’t represent the prettiest of trees, consisting of crooked and twisted branches, many of which stop putting on leaves when those above them block the light.  It gives them a distinctive half-dead appearance that my oak now suffers from, but it does not indicate any sort of problem with the tree itself.  It does have a tendency to droop the leafless branches, making it hard to walk under and requiring annual pruning, but it’s a manageable problem.

These trees are slower growing, but longer lived oaks, especially the western subspecies in Northern Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  These individuals make up a significant percentage of The Cross Timbers, the oak savannah that bisects Oklahoma, separating the heavily wooded East from the arid West.  It’s a forest made up of post oaks, blackjack oaks, and eastern redcedars.  Blackjack oaks can live for more than 200 years, averaging about 80 years.  My fears of needing to replace my tree are unfounded.

No, this isn’t the world’s most beautiful tree.  It’s leaves even feel like they haven’t fully formed, as if they can quite figure out how to evolve into something clear.  The acorns are tiny, barely worth talking about.  The limbs are crooked and bare, at least the lower ones.  They don’t have the lush growth of most of the other trees that surround the house.  However, the tree is home to many birds and those tiny acorns are enjoyed by squirrels and even brazen deer who venture up to the house to graze on them along with the crabapples that grow next to the oak.  And it provides much of my house with shade, having expanded from a shady spot in the center of the yard to a defining feature of the property.

This tree has its issues, but I love her and I’m glad she’s here.