i am having major surgery on october 26

so much has changed in the last year. my aunt died in november of last year and it was utterly devastating.

then my little brother and two of our mutual friends contracted COVID-19. my little brother survived (thankfully) but the scare was very much a real 
thing. my brother smokes and drinks and has very bad eating habits. i had to plead with him to lose weight if he got over COVID-19 if not for 
recontracting this terrible illness and he thinks i am being crazy. our other two friends--they were very fat and had a number of health 
conditions--they contracted it and died within weeks. i remember that the last thing i told them before they contracted was that weight was a 
predisposing factor in whether a person could survive COVID-19 or not. 

they'd been bedridden in their house for sometime; they both died of ARDS which is a complication of COVID-19.

my company is letting me work from home which is a blessing; i can't go to the gym these days so i follow a HIIT workout via youtube and lift 
weights and go on three walks a day

i became a vegan, if only for just a few months before this major life-altering surgery

i still think about jumblesale 

i still try to keep in touch with ~vilmibm and i fondly miss them

bobby and me are working on changes to sereno so when they hit i will post the pdf here

i miss old days of tilde. six years and the town has changed so much; i wonder who is new here. i have so many folks to say hello to. 

chris found me in march and we've been talking. i had such a huge crush on him about five years ago. he's a firefighter. 

the smoke here was terrible and we all suffered for nearly two weeks with awful AQIs in the thousands, the sky was obscured, the birds did not sing, 
everything was in mourning

now it's raining and normal and i couldn't be happier. 

god help my country, which is suffering from so much. america is dying and it is dying hard in a mire of racism and xenophobia and capitalism. i 
hope it cracks and burns and i hope it takes every evil thing it brought with it

(edit) i failed to mention that i am in therapy now and i am getting the help i've needed for a while. i have complex ptsd