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Update on Life in General, and Some Sad Goodbyes.

I don’t get a lot of time to myself these days, so I am happy (happy?) to report that around noon today I will be the proud owner of a completed colonoscopy (which I have had to reschedule three times since January) and the best nap of my life. As part of that I had black coffee yesterday as I wrote this, dark, black, full of caffeine with no dairy to mitigate the bitter, so, you know, I might bite. Be careful.

My little sister, some folks know, is dealing with mucosal melanoma, and it’s a beast. She’s incredibly healthy, looks better than ever, but the treatments are not the kindest, and the beast is always on the move, so her doctors are chasing it. We’re hoping to see TIL treatment work for her this summer. We tried in the fall, but various vagaries of disease resulted in it not being possible. She is the reason for the colonoscopy reschedules, not her fault, and certainly her treatments are a priority over my colon (which, let’s be honest, was hoping for a fourth reschedule).

There we are at Cyndi Lauper’s last tour right after my sister was diagnosed, November 2025. It’s important, I think, to write the dates, because they start to collapse in your mind, and you think, Can it have been that long ago? It can. So, date things people. Cyndi, by the way, was magnificent. I first saw her on a stage two feet off the ground in the middle of a walkway at Temple University when I was a freshman, about ten feet away from her, drinking Knickerbocker beer (hey, I was seriously broke. Really broke.). She was just as beautiful, feminist, and talented in 2024. And there were some years in between… something on the order of geez, forty. 1984, just as Orwell predicted, was one of the worst years in my life. 2024 was no banger either. In 2026 my sister has a different hairdo, and a smaller size of pants, so different a little, and is as beautiful as she is there. I was eight when she was born, in April, and when summer came my mom went back to work, and my grandmother and I shared baby-sitting. (Listen, 1970s parents did stuff like that. We survived.) So, in some ways, when I look at her I see my first daughter, and I love her face.

My own daughter is growing up relentlessly, no matter how much I wish otherwise.

Beginning of 10th grade, still a little baby left in that face.

And the end. So freaking adorable, but more grown.

She refused to take this photo, the morning of the last day of school. She just wanted me to drive her to school already. I told her, “No worries,” and tossed the car keys on the sofa.

“Fine. Be quick,” she said.

She’s crazy about me. We all know it.

We did do a sort of tradition for Mother’s Day, we went for dim sum. Another day where I took off from the world for myself.

When she was small, and one of her toes, this little piggy had none, was still curly. And she would sometimes let me kiss her feet.

The little toe has straightened up over the years, and now lives either wild and free or firmly in a pair of Doc Martens. She takes gym in her Docs. Hardcore. OMG how do I not smooch that face constantly? Nah. She’d straight-up smack me. She’s my colorful language buddy. Every mom needs one. We’re what they call salty, together. Long-suffering Dave is a colorful language teetotaler. He married poorly for that!

I have some pet updates as well since I last posted here. We have one guinea pig, two cats, and a dog. GP: Punkus, Cats: Finny and Patrick, and Dog: Oliver. Well, the last thirty or so days haven’t been the best time for us pet-wise.

Punkus left us in May, I think just a teensy bit after Mother’s Day, which it was lovely of her to hang on for. She was our third GP. GP’s act fine, playing, squeaking, eating constantly, and then, suddenly, they seem to not want their dandelion leaves anymore, their romaine goes untouched, and, only really hours later, they leave you. Punkus left. It breaks my heart every time. So little, so cute. GPs require a lot more care than pet stores lead you to believe, and there is a kind of lovely rhythm to having them and caring for them, and I will miss that as well as her sweet little face, and the feisty way she would grab treats from my hand, yank! It was really such a joy to have her. We miss all three of them, all very different in personality, so much. The produce section of the grocery store is now a very lonely place for me, and, as part of my spring gardening madness, I had planted sweet corn for her. She got the first cucumber I’d managed to grow, but she didn’t make it to the sweet corn, poor little girl.

We got our first GP, Addie, from the school when it had to close for Covid, 2020. Luckily we were able to trade the GP classroom teacher (science, and she didn’t want to take Addie home) the hermit crabs. Hermit crabs, worst pet ever. So complicated and difficult to keep happy and alive. No no no. GP was definitely the winning end of that trade.

OH MY GOODNESS those pink eyes! I could’ve drowned in them.
Addie and Baby.

But now our GP days are done. Dave had built this wonderful cage with levels and ramps (Punkus is peeking out from under a level, we called them condos, in that photo), and we found a young woman on FB marketplace who had just gotten her first apartment and two GPs to gift the cage to, precisely so that I would not fill it again.

Our cats are Patrick and Finny. Patrick is what is called a Turkish Van, and was one of the last cats my brother, who died in 2020, rescued as a kitten. Bill was a crazy cat lady. Patrick is long-haired, which is not the best for a highly allergic woman like me. Because he has long hair he has the furriest back legs, like a pair of furry chaps, so I also call him Mr. Pants. He is absolutely devoted to me, and has little to no time for the other humans in the world. He chatters at Dave the way he chatters at birds outside, “I will kill you. I will kill you. Soon you will be eaten by me.” Patrick often tells me when it is time to go to bed. The other night it was time, but I just flopped back on the sofa, too lazy to get up in the moment, and, as you can see in this video, he dealt with it the best he could.

Our other cat is Finney, a TUOS (tuxedo of unusual size). He’s always been a big boy. We got him almost the same time as Oliver, our dog, and he and Oliver have always been besties.

Which brings me to my second bit of sad news. Wednesday Oliver crossed the rainbow bridge.

Oliver acted like a terrier, and a puppy, right up to last Friday. And then he stopped eating, and flopped like a wrung out rag on the floor, and had no interest in pets, or walks (he absolutely loved walks!) or treats, or anything. It appeared he had a very swollen stomach on one side as well, which, as a boy who loved his belly rubs, he had not had before. Ollie, btw, was a life-long allergy sufferer, so he had monthly vet check ups. He was diagnosed with lymphoma, and a very swollen spleen. The vet told me that cancer is sneaky in dogs, and one day just explodes, and basically lays them out flat. I gave Ollie a day off medical visits, the day after his diagnosis, because he was so tired. On his day off he had a little energy and seemed glad to go on a very short walk. Wednesday we went again to the vet, who told me Ollie could do chemo, and maybe get another six months, or steroids, and maybe get another six weeks. But Oliver, who never was comfortable at the vet, dropped down flat out on that exam room floor, like he was just going to nap where he was, so calm, and refused to rise to show the vet his gait. He did take us up on water, but otherwise he really just was flat out, the life-long puppy, somehow, finally, exhausted. I called Dave and Sophie, and we discussed it. They came to meet us at the vet, and we discussed it some more, and we all decided we couldn’t keep pushing him simply because we wanted more from him. Our vet agreed with us that Ollie was very uncomfortable and not sick with something that could be fixed, only held back for a small amount. We just couldn’t bring ourselves to make him keep going for us. Our vet was so sweet, got down on the floor with all of us, and we all hugged our Oliver as he relaxed at long last, into the spirit realm where he was able to be a kooky puppy again.

Finny doesn’t want to eat, which is unheard of; he is depressed, and we’ll have to keep an eye on him. And, of course, all of us share his depression. Well, honestly, not Patrick. Oh Patrick….

This is Ollie when we adopted him from his foster mom at one year old. He’d been dumped in a shelter in North Philly. His wonderful beautiful foster mom, who has fostered over 100 dogs while being a mom to two physically disabled sons, saved him. We love her so much. She chose us over several other applicants, because our previous dog, Chad, had been a very high energy and feisty schnauzer mutt, so we convinced her we could handle Ollie’s high spirits.

Ollie and his waffle.

My two favorites, as my perennial screen saver.

Ollie as he always was, sweet, happy, puppy. And me singing to him in my funny “I’m singing to my pets” voice. He loved my singing, as you can clearly see.

We loved Ollie. We feel his loss acutely. I got up from my desk yesterday and was able to easily push my chair back, because he wasn’t up against it. I’d rather struggle to get out of my chair in a haze of dog farts, honestly.

Oliver Possibly Pearce, aka Ollie Bollie, we’ll miss you and think of you with nothing but pleasure, forever.

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I Can Buy Myself Flowers, But This Time Susan Did It!

If you don’t know, I run Current Words Publishing, a very small partner publishing house. I do primarily editing for authors who have completed books, fiction or non-fiction, and if they want to seek out traditional publishing, Dave writes them a query letter. If they just want to get their book out there, Dave creates an interior file and a cover, and we get the book published and distributed. The second option is one a lot of non-traditional authors take (sometimes authors are older, or young but with no publishing credits, experience, or MFA program mentors to help out, or poets, or diverse in some other way, so not as tasty for the traditional publishers and agents who are only considering the book in terms of its money-generating ability, and not at all choosing books solely based on quality of story, as we all wish they would. Sad, and very true.).

As Current Words Publishing I try to give authors what they tell me they need, so just an edit, okay. Advice only, okay, and always free. Full publication, sure. Publication, by any publisher, does not include promotion. Promotion, unless you already have a large following, comes from the author. The author must pivot from writer to marketer, and learn how to sell the book, even when given a shot by a traditional publisher. This is part of the inequality and difficulty of publishing for authors. It’s definitely not in the author’s favor. We do not contract for marketing, meaning authors cannot buy marketing services from us. Buying marketing services (getting a publicist) is incredibly expensive, and much of the time they simply give you a road map for DIY, so the author is still responsible for the book’s sales.

Dave and I charge for editing, and publishing, because sales for new authors are low, and we’re not college or grant-funded, so we have to stay in business in some way. But, we try to balance that with a lot of free advice, resources for our authors, monthly marketing meetings, and events to help promote them.

Yesterday we had a live event for Susan Burgess-Lent’s wonderful novel, When All the Girls Stopped Singing.

Susan has a long history of work in Sudan, where some of the book takes place. She also gave away three signed copies to attendees chosen at random.

Soon Dave will give us the video from the event. You’ll be able to see Susan read, and she’ll have a video she can share on her socials.

Me, asking Susan some questions about her book, and how she wrote it.
Susan, giving her usual thoughtful answer.

We had such a lovely time. I think everyone who attended (it was on Zoom) enjoyed it. Keep up with our events (always free and on Zoom) here.

Today I had the delightful surprise of a flower delivery from Susan. (Susan, if you’re reading this, I think this may be the first time in my life I have ever gotten flowers delivered!) What a surprise. I filled my lady-head vase with the bouquet, because that’s where flowers go around here.

The bouquet also came with a little succulent. I had recently bought a little Lucky Cat tea cup just perfect for a little plant, so in it went. Now I’ll be able to enjoy the flowers for some time, and the succulent forever.

Thank you so much Susan. I really appreciate your kindness.

If you’re interested in meeting Dave and I just to talk about your project, we are always happy to do a Zoom and talk. We always have a half hour to chat about what publishing is like, and give advice on setting up a website, social media, how to approach trying to land a traditional publisher. So if that’s something you’d like to consider, email me (dianne @ currentwords dot com). Just put that all together like an email address would typically be. Writing a book is a very “by myself” process. Editing and publishing doesn’t have to be. Helping authors like Susan is really one of the lucky joys of my life.

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I Buy Myself Flowers: Iris~

Today my beautiful lady has been filled with what I believe is chamomile, and purple asters, which you can’t quite see in this photo, but maybe the top-down one below, and iris.. Cost for flowers, about $20 @ Trader Joe’s(TJs).

Sometimes I buy flowers at other places, Sprouts, Von’s, Whole Foods, or a garden center, but TJs flowers last the longest, typically, for me, two weeks. I don’t put the flower food packets in, but I do put in ice cubes, and add some every other day. I think the cold helps (though I do not know what I think that!). I also strip off any leaves that might hit the water level and go mush. Yuck! I think TJs must get their flowers in from the farm quicker than other stores for them to last so well.

Just an extra heads-up, TJs had one of my favorite things this week:

The smell of a tomato plant, the leaves, the stem, is one of my favorite smells on Earth. This is exactly it. I’m a bit allergic to the plants, so I cannot rub it on my pulse points, but if you’re not, you could! Like rosemary, the scent transfers well to skin!

I grabbed three of those candles (greedy), and turned to my cart, and one leapt from my hands, and I accidentally punted it, trying to catch it. I found it two rows over. Yes, Philadelphia Eagles, you can call me. I’m so glad I didn’t bean anyone in the brain!

Anywho… if you love flowers, buy yourself some. It’s okay to make your world pretty, no matter who you are.

xo~

Di

PS. Most flowers I buy last a full two weeks! Just keep the water clean, cold, & fresh.

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 20: In Praise of “Lola.”

I mean, to know me is to know I love The Kinks. I remember in high school a stoner girl in gym class said she was going to see The Kinks, and she was super excited. Even though I probably knew a lot of their songs back then, I don’t know that I knew them, The Kinks. I was pretty Beatle-centric in high school though, and more than a little grumpy that there wasn’t any Beatles tour planned.

The Kinks can be very Beatle-esque with some of their harmonies, and general vibe, but they also have more of an edge, and are funny. I mean, how can you not laugh at “Superman” or “I’m an Ape Man?” My favorite song might be “Waterloo Sunset,” or, frankly, “Lola.”

Lola is just an amazing song. I realized when quite young that the woman, Lola, was probably trans, though I doubt I knew what trans was as a thing, but I knew that some men felt like women. And frankly I didn’t know it could happen in reverse, though I have spent a lot of my own life feeling more masculine than feminine. I would not call myself trans, but I would say that I understand that gender is fluid, and probably freaking hormonal as well. Plus, we’ve spent centuries demonizing “female” traits as weak or unserious, so it’s easy to imagine women attempting to be taken seriously would feel more masculine, or masculine leaning, and how any man wanting to have an emotional life might be afraid of being called weak.

It’s funny, this song has been in my head since I awoke this morning, and then, when I went to look up the YouTube video, I saw that Moby doesn’t like it.

But there it is, an article in the Irish Times about it:

Click the photo above to go to the article.

I love this, from the article:

“Who the f**k is Moby?” Ray Davies, of The Kinks, said on hearing that the musician had taken issue with one of the band’s signature hits.

“He’s someone who does quite well,’ his brother, Dave, explained. “I don’t know anything about the guy.”

HA! I feel the same. I have little to no experience of Moby, and what I have heard has not interested me. My gosh, how grown is Moby? Does he not understand that “Lola” being released, getting played, and becoming incredibly popular, in 1970, was groundbreaking? Yes, it’s a little bit funny, but The Kinks are funny. Funny people are better than serious ones, just sayin’ Moby. Often first forays into things are imperfect, and not what we would want maybe in a modern view, but to deny that it took on a lot of taboos and normalized them, I mean the song never gets worried about masculinity or societal norms. “That’s the way that I want it to stay, and I always want to be that way for my Lola.” Doesn’t sound anti-trans to me.

I could listen to this all damn day.

Lola

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I Might Have a Secret, or, Bet You Bastards Are Sorry You’re Not Following Me Now….

Here’s me and my dad when I am about four months old:

Which, if the woman I am meeting over Zoom tomorrow is my sister, would have made her about four years old then.

I have a younger sister:

And tomorrow I might meet my older sister.

My dad was a bit of a man-about-town, which I knew probably from the time I was about …. ten? I mean, as much as you know that kind of stuff when you’re ten. If we count all the times I knew, from say age four, that my mother was borderline murderously angry at my father, then there could be an entire Brady Bunch out there.

We knew my father’s mother was Irish, my father’s father, Pearce, British, my mother’s mother Irish with a little Scottish mixed in, and my mother’s father, Italian. A cousin or someone had told my sister there was a little French in there, so she had done Ancestry, confirming, oui, French, which I think makes us official European mutts, and, yes, there seems to be a sister. I was (in my head) bemoaning not being able to say brother from another mother, because I love stupid things and rhymes, when I realized I could say, sister from the same mister. Which is a very weird thing for me to think of, I think, in the circumstances, while also being exactly like me to think of. And there you go.

I am an adoptive mom, so if I have a sister out there who wishes to know me, she certainly should get to. It does bring up a lot of thoughts because I spent my entire childhood as a daddy’s girl, and there was another little girl out there. Hmmmm…. Complicated father-feelings, right? Was my dad aware? Was he letting another little girl grow up without him? As an adult who knew him (who is different from the little girl who knew him) I can imagine he would have done whatever he felt complicated his life the least. I’m so sorry not to be able to think there is a more stellar version of him who I can present to his daughter.

Well, tomorrow, we’ll see.

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IT SHOULD BE LIKE A HALF AN HOUR VOLUME 19: KNITTING

I am a knitter.

I mean, don’t ask me for a sweater or an Afghan, because I cannot make things out of yarn. But I am a knitter. By which I mean that I think I have a very relational brain. The old girl is always looking for how things relate to each other.

Which brings me to a new song that I heard a snippet of in a Facebook post, and I knew, as soon as I heard the snippet, that it was for me, and I loved it. It turns out, that I figured out (lots of outs!) over the last few days, that everybody loves it, and that’s okay, because it’s great. Everybody loves it, and I love it too, and, last night, in my sleep, my brain knitted it irrevocably to another song that I (but not everybody) also love.

Song #1: The New Song “I Just Might” by Bruno Mars

Oh sweet lord Bruno Mars. If you don’t love Bruno Mars, well I don’t even know. You must be a grumpy AF old white guy, that’s the only option. Or my mother, lol, but that’s a whole other story for another time.
*sigh* Bruno…. Bruno brings it every single time, IMHO: the funk, the fun, the little bit of wickedly sexy. And this song also brings the “vintage.” It sounds like a song from another place in time, which isn’t the 1950s. The 1950s are probably my least favorite period in pop music since the 1850s, lol. Sure, “Duke of Earl” is a banger, but most of it is too… bland. This song from Bruno feels like the late 60s early 70s to me, so it doesn’t surprise me that my brain has knitted it to a song from Jefferson Starship, which also (because JS is made from Jefferson Airplane) spans that 60s-70s vibe.

Song #2:The Old Song “Lovely, Lovely Love” by Jefferson Starship


I was born to be a fan of Grace Slick. I mean she just embodied cool as a female performer, so I’d always been a fan of hers from the second I heard “Somebody to Love.” But this song is a Marty Balin song (RIP Marty). Marty was, I think, a romantic, and Bruno clearly is too.

Yes, when you first hear them you may be like, “What?” “Love Lovely Love” is a little bit overwrought, and it certainly does not have the pace that “I Just Might” has, but they do share a similar melody when you compare this section of “Love Lovely Love”:

Hey, why don’t you take
Whatever you want from me?
I’m in the mood
For all the lovin’ that I can’t see.
Is this for real now?
Oh, I ask you now, can it be?

To this section of “I Just Might”:

Hey, Mr. DJ (Oh, oh, oh)
Play a song for this pretty little lady (Oh, oh, oh)
‘Cause if she dance as good as she look right now (Oh, oh, oh)
I just might, I just might make her my baby
I just might make her my baby, hey

The lyrics, of “Love Lovely Love,” well Marty was definitely looking to get some, a lot, by the sounds of it. Ha! Could he put the word love in the title a little more?

And so is Bruno in many many of his songs, and that’s okay. I am still wishing uptown funk was gonna give it to me. Bruno, slide into my DMs please.

I first heard “Love Lovely Love” in a weird way. My college English teacher in the 80s was a graduate student who was, like Marty, also looking to get some, and after I met with him for the obligatory “Let’s have a conference to discuss your writing,” conference (a practice I did also for many years when I became a writing teacher, which we were all taught to do, and which was probably an ill-advised and awkward practice for everyone involved because of the intimacy it forced on teacher and student) he presented me with an “I want to get with you” mixed tape. To give you the short version, I had made the mistake of asking my teacher if the photo on his wall was Lene Lovich, and it was not, but it was Nina Hagen, and they’re not too dissimilar, and the teacher was thrilled that someone new some music beyond top-40, and he also thought I was cute, and, who knows, maybe I was, and he made me a mixed tape, which was a 1970s-1980s mating ritual that never should have gone out of style. I did not, by any stretch of the imagination, want to date this teacher, who was incredibly strange and had a blond mustache that he explained to me was groomed to emulate Fu Manchu. But that man was buying records from the UK before there was internet, when there was only college radio and moldy damp basement record stores under the El to find non-top 40 music. That teacher loved Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship, and so did I, but I had a lot less access to collecting music as my mother had put her foot down on that when I was 15, so every album I ever bought had to be smuggled in and hidden so she would not find them and throw them away. Yeah. Cultural oppression! That’s what I grew up under. Anyway, I digress, and the point here is to say that the mixed tape that man made me was the greatest freaking mixed tape I have ever had, and I wish I still had it, and also his carefully-hand-written-on-a-sheet-of-notebook-paper track listing, and one of the amazing songs on that Memorex tape was, “Love Lovely Love.” If you come from the 70s and you want to get into a girl’s pants, you could do a lot worse than Marty Balin: “It’s No Secret,” “Plastic Fantastic Lover” “Come up the Years” “With Your Love,” “Miracles,” yeah, Marty was single-minded. The teacher was not, and while some of the songs definitely were trying to woo me, many more of them were just damn good music by any aficionado’s standard, because it was, for him, probably more about crafting the perfect tape than it was laying the perfect girl. Those kinds of guys, there is no perfect girl; there is only the perfect girl in that moment. Mixed tapes were always more about the guy than the girl the guys gave them to, but they were awesome.

Music is awesome. Marty Balin was awesome. Bruno Mars is a wonder, and sexy, and fun.

I have to wake up my daughter for school, so I’m going to go play a song for that pretty little lady. Who will not want to hear it, and who will not enjoy her mother’s eclectic taste in music (she likes Vocaloid! Lord save us!) And who will, someday, play me an old, old song by this creaky band called Jefferson Starship that the guy trying to get with her will have played for her, and she will play it for me, and it will all come around full circle. I hope.