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The beauty berries are ripening or are ripe. If there was ever a perfect name for anything, it would be "beauty berry." That color is everything in a color I could want. It is so rich. When I was a very young child I had a book about some bunnies who were drawing pictures and one of the bunnies was using a crayon just that color and I would go to that page over and over because I loved the color so much. Would we call it magenta or fuschia? I always think of it as magenta but I have a feeling it may be more of a fuschia.

I believe I was an odd child but many children are, having not yet been schooled in how to act and seem normal. I had an imaginary friend who to this day, I think may have actually been a presence only I could feel and talk to. I know many people have imaginary friends as children but it doesn't seem to come up so much any more. Have you noticed that? Is it true? 
I don't know. I just know that I had one and she was older than me, an adult, and once she brought her husband to visit. And all of this coincided with the era of time I fell in love with that color. 
My imaginary friend did not follow me to Roseland from Chattanooga as far as I can remember which must have been a great sorrow although sadly, I can't remember. Lord knows I needed all the friends I could get, corporeal or non- at that time of my life. 

Interesting what one branch of beauty berries can unlock in a brain. 

I have felt pretty shitty today. I need to find some answers to my kidney stone issues. I've asked my urologist so many questions that I'm sure he's tired of me but there are so many things I want to know. 
Why does a stone get to a place where it literally makes me sick and causes muscle pain and internal pain and gastric distress and then, for the most part, quits? Has it drifted? How is a stone lodged in there? How does it travel? And why is there no way to address them before they cause all the pain they cause when they do get stuck in passage down the ureter? I guess there is, in lithotripsy but sending shocks waves into the body is not to be taken lightly, and one is usually medicated before the procedure to avoid discomfort, as they say. But what the lithotripsy is trying to accomplish is to break up the stones into teeny-tiny bits that will then "easily" pass with the urine but I know for a fact that even the smallest grit of a kidney stone can cause almost unbearable pain so there is that. My last stone was lasered while it was in the ureter because it was too big to pass on its own. That is how I know about the grit. For about two weeks after the treatment, every morning I would experience about forty-five minutes of agony wherein I would walk around the yard, over and over, drinking as much water as I could get in me. When the body's trying to pass a stone or a piece of a stone, it creates a terrible dry mouth which I suppose is the body's way of getting us to drink all the water we can to help with the flushing. 

So I know a little bit, obviously, but there are so many things I don't know and would it really help anything if I did? The only way a stone or stones can be visualized is through a CT scan and you can't just get a freaking CT scan every time you feel that pre-stone pain. My doctor is a firm believer that unless you have blood in your urine things are not dire. This may be true. But I want to know why. And I want to know why a stone can affect so many different body parts even when it's not trying to pass. Or IS it trying to pass? 
ARRRGGHHHH! 

Any urologists out there? 

All right. Let's move on. No pun intended. 

I picked up Jessie this morning hoping that the distraction of pottery class would be good for me and I guess it was although, not really. 

Y'all. Everyone in the class, including the complete newbies, are using the wheel, making bowls, trimming bowls, glazing bowls, and I am not. 
I went back to work on the flower petal bowl I was working on last week but...well...I screwed it up. And not screwed it up like, Hey! Imperfection is fine! No. More like there was no way to fire it without it exploding due to various major flaws. 
So. I finally just smashed it and returned it to its original blob. 
I'm going to try again next week with the same project and at least now I know far more about what I'll be doing than I did two weeks ago. We still had some time left in the class so I started working on a very small coil pot and I may or may not finish that. 
I did enjoy the conversation of the ladies. Two of the new students were sitting by me, working on their BEAUTIFUL BOWLS and I learned a bit about each of them. Both women are dedicated class-takers. One of them is taking painting and crochet and the pottery and some other thing too. I am in awe and wonder. Getting to pottery once a week is almost beyond my capability and anxiety is always part of the process. But these ladies go to all the different classes and they travel to all parts of the world and they have ART ROOMS so it was interesting, hearing about the lives of women who live such full lives. They are younger than I am but not by a whole lot. Well, maybe ten years and that is sort of a lot. 

One of the ladies I've been in classes with for three sessions now is about to head off to London where her sweetheart is going to fly over to meet her and stay for five days. She is so excited. I feel a special connection with this lady although we are quite different. Recently, she had a party and invited all of her sweetheart's friends. She said, "There were fifty people there!" and I said, "He has fifty friends?" 
"No!" she said. "He has eight friends. I have forty-two." 

My god. But she is funny and irreverent and uses profanity properly and often. This morning when she came in she said, "You're May's mother?" and I said, "Yes, I am." "Are you everybody's mother?" she asked. 
"Well, sort of," I said. "Especially if you're gay or trans." 

Turns out she goes to the restaurant where May works at least once a week and loves May. Of course. They got to talking about pottery, I guess, and she told May she takes classes. May said, "I wonder if you've ever met my mother and sisters?" And this lady said, "Oh my god! Mary's your mother too?" 
I have reached the point in life where I am known almost exclusively as someone's mother and that, my friends, is fine with me. 

Jessie and I went to lunch afterwards. I really wanted a bowl of Tom Kha soup and so we went to a Thai place. That soup tasted so good. I stopped by the library on my way home, drove back to Lloyd and did all the things I needed to do when I got here. 

And of course, I heard the news about the children in Minneapolis  sitting in pews at Mass being shot, two killed. The killer shot through the stained glass windows. 
The mayor of the city said, "Don't say this is about thoughts and prayers. These kids were literally praying." But don't worry, Donny's got it all figured out- he's ordered all the flags to be flown at half-mast on Sunday. 
Yeah. That'll fix our problem. 

How do any of us go on? 
Because we have to, I guess. 

Going to go make supper. 

Love...Ms. Moon