I dreamed Steve Martin killed us both

By driving the car off a cliff, Steve Martin caused me to witness my own death in a dream. I'm having a hard time forgiving him for that, but I'm pretty sure he had a good reason. I just wish I could remember what it was.

We were in a white convertible, but the top was up and all the windows were rolled up. The car hit asphalt at the bottom and the human bodies inside it exploded like dropped water balloons full of blood.

So all I saw was white car, red windows. It wasn't the most graphic death dream.

This blog is pretty much just running and deadmom. It's like, "OMG you guys I ran SO FAR and my mom's dead and I'm SO SAD." That's the long and short of it, anyway. Still, I get enough complimentary email to keep my ego fluttering its eyelashes and fanning its plump little face (for the record, it takes about one email every six months to get me punchdrunk on praise). Y'all seem to like this weird thing I do. So okay. I like it too.

Loki spent yesterday at the vet, getting neutered. I don't guess it really took all day, but the vet's staff informed me when I picked him up that he had spent the whole day cussing them out. He seems fine now. He was sleeping on my chest when the lady from the vet's office called me this morning to check on him. He's okay. Sleeping a little more than usual, maybe. Maybe a little drunk on the pain medicine. Not unhappy, as far as I can tell, to be missing his manhood.

I've talked a lot lately about forgiveness.

I talk a lot in general. I'm practicing. One day I will be good at saying things out loud, and when that day comes, I may suddenly be succinct. But probably not. I'm used to talking a lot by now.

But I talk about forgiveness like a freshly recruited cult member, because it has recently come up in my life over and over.

Working as a CASA, I've met people I might have only read about before. People who have abused their children, people who have killed children.

Not like, a whole bunch of them. It's not a club or anything. Far as I know.

The first time I found myself in a room with such a person, I stared incredulously, furtively, for a few seconds at a time. I couldn't maintain a steady gaze. I kept dropping my head and looking at my hands. I tried to keep my composure while I looked for the man's horns. I tried to keep my face neutral, but if I looked too long I knew I would start to cry.

I cried all the way home, feeling childish and naive and silly. This is the world, I reminded myself, trying to be kind but come on get a grip on yourself. Grow up. Even my hands looked shocked on the steering wheel, fingers splayed, knuckles white. It took a lot of deep breaths, a lot of pacing around my apartment to finally calm down. I remember thinking, "I don't know if I can do this." Right on the heels of that slippery thought came, "I really need to do this."

And so I continued. And I still feel pretty childish and naive and silly, but I'm forming a thought or two about a thing or two. I'm starting to wonder about the absolute value of a person. Whether a person can be judged by the worst thing he or she has ever done. I'm starting to think that maybe, we are more than what we do.

I've always believed that actions speak louder than words. It's only recently occurred to me that louder does not necessarily equal truer.

It was so simple before. Who you are equals what you've done.

I said, out loud, "Nobody ever helped anybody by kneeling on rice."

I liked living like a nun. Self denial seemed logical after years of indulgence, but it wasn't enough. It wasn't enough to stop being destructive, I felt a need to start building something good. Something small and good and warm like humans, nothing too ambitious, just a little bit of something -- something better.

Maybe it will help. Someone. I don't know.

I picked up my race packet today for a 5-mile trail run out at Turkey Mountain. The race is Monday. I don't go back to work until Tuesday. I also bought new trail runners today. I still need new running shoes for regular running, but maybe if I have a dedicated pair of trail runners, I can keep my regular running shoes kind of clean. We'll see. My running shoes are pretty filthy from stomping through mud puddles and streams and whatnot.

The anniversary of my mom's death came and went. I worked that day. Texted my sister to make sure she was holding up okay and to let her know I was okay. Five years. You know what's funny? Someday, if I'm lucky and live to be older than 54, I will have lived more years without my mom than I had with her. That seems an odd thing to call lucky.

Blah blah blah, my family my family, bullshit bullshit.

I can't BELIEVE it's September already. Geez.