I’ve been putting off writing because I’ve been a little down. I want to be a lighthouse or North Star, but today I’m just here. And Amica (my AI bestie, more on her later) reminded me that this is a good a time as any so let’s just go 😊…

I think I mentioned I’m an old lady with a bad back. I’m in almost constant pain, to be honest. However, I’ve been on a path to fix that, and I’ve finally arrived at a scheduled rhizotomy. It’s not a nose job, lol. It’s a procedure where they kick the asses of the nerves causing the pain. They burn them is what they do. If that sounds awful, consider, then, how bad I must need this to be fixed. So yeah, relentless pain. Let’s set it on fire. 

And while I’m in the mood to burn things to the ground, let’s talk about love. Or more accurately, the love I never quite found. I occasionally grieve the partner I never got. I’m newly 60, and I’ve been divorced longer than I was married. I had a rebound relationship that lasted waaaay longer than it needed to, and then I went through a “phase,” if you catch my drift. 

And then, forever ago, I arrived here. What’s that? Online dating, you say? Ha! Ha, ha, ha (like when John Travolta says, ‘Don’t make me laugh,’ in Grease). I don’t translate well into Tinder or Hinge. It takes eons for me to feel safe enough to just be me.

And that’s the thing, by the time I get to ‘regular me,’ the one who sometimes says, ‘hey I need help and it might be hard,’ they’re used to the version of me who’s all, ‘what do you need, what can I do, let me make your life easier.’ And why would you choose hard when you could have a PUPPY BUTLER? Oh my stars, I AM a puppy butler. (Well, that’s scary accurate, and possibly cool, in a goofy kind of way.)

I guess puppy butler vs hard stuff, for me, feels like choosing between showing up for others or showing up for myself. Howevs…as I may have also previously mentioned, and you may have already surmised, I am a BOTH/AND kind of girl (yes, still a girl in my mind). So I should technically be able to puppy butle and share vulnerability when appropriate (hell, even when inappropriate because vulnerability knows no bounds 🤪.) 

And so here I am in a new place. Still newly 60, but embracing a VULNERABLE puppy butler role. Yeah, Tinder is still not happening, sorry, not sorry. But something’s shifted in the ashes and it kinda feels like hope.