Tomorrow (the 13th) is my birthday. My 48th birthday, to be exact. Today marks three years since I sat in the orange leather chair in the living room of our sweet little cottage in Shreveport and listened to my (now) ex-husband enumerate the many ways he felt I had failed him and our two children. Three years since I had to hold my breath and swallow my rage.

(Trigger warning: Vegans, beware. Lots of, uh, shall we say, "farm-to-table"-type meat talk ahead.) The lack of a very specific type of impulse control, it would seem, runs in my family. Because we're not all genetically related to one another (my mother, for example, has no biological connection to my brothers' half-brother), I must assume this trait is cultural in its origin.

I'm bad at titles, OK? Just ask any editor I've ever had. In this writer's humble opinion, thinking up catchy titles should be in someone else's job description. You want me to birth the baby AND give it a name? Has no one except me heard of delegating responsibilities? My therapist would say that bit was subconsciously intended to distract from the meaning behind the title, which is that, for the first time in 16 years, I live alone.

Getting a blog post out this week has been hard. Charlotte and her daughter move next week, and I start a new part-time job (!) two days before they do. Add in a full schedule of classes and life in 2025 (Jesus, just this WEEK), and I have been struck with the worst anxiety I've had since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when I slept with all the lights on, including the big one, for a year.

Lately, I've been contemplating why, exactly, it's so important to me to live in New Orleans. Unfortunately, this is something I've had to give a lot of thought lately. The federal attack on transgender rights, along with those in the legislatures of Louisiana, Texas, and just about every other Southern state have made it necessary for Charlotte and her younger daughter to move to a Northeast Atlantic blue state that's much more willing to fight for the rights of its trans citizens.

When I was younger, before I met my kids' father, I dreamed of - was sort of obsessed with, really - finding The Great Love of My Life. As a lonely, bookish teenager, I devoured love stories. They weren't just romance novels, although, as a voracious reader at the mercy of my rural school library, the county library, and the meager selection at the Winn Dixie, I couldn't afford to be overly discerning.

Neither the threat of a looming recession nor monthly economic blackouts can keep a real clothes horse down, so, at the start of Mardi Gras Break, I committed to doing less doomscrolling and more sewing. In addition to keeping my wardrobe nice and full, sewing calms my mind in a way even writing can't. Writing needs intense thinking, after all, and I can't speak for anyone else, but my own thoughts are often my worst enemies.

A few days ago, Charlotte came across this quote by Toni Morrison and sent it to me. Authoritarian regimes, dictators, despots are often, but not always, fools. But none is foolish enough to give perceptive, dissident writers free range to publish their judgments or follow their creative instincts. They know they do so at their own peril. They are not stupid enough to abandon control (overt or insidious) over media.

The past couple of weeks have tested my ability to manage my course load, writing, working (or trying to), my contributions to The Resistance, my commitment to overdressing, cultivating community/a social life, and, most importantly, being a mom. There's obviously the challenge of being present in Harper and Truman's lives when I live six hours away from them (tomorrow, I'm driving to Shreveport for the second time in two weeks), but then there's also co-parenting.

Let me preface this: I'm not saying anything supernatural is happening here, but I'm not not saying that, either. But when I wish for things, sometimes the Universe cranks it up to 11. For instance, I feel mildly responsible for the current state of...<gestures wildly at everything>. You see, even as a wee Phelan, I was a giant nerd, and I read LITERALLY everything I could get my hands on, which once included a pornographic novel at the age of 7 or so, but that's a thankfully-hilarious story for another day.

Your grammy, your aunty, your momma, your mammyI’ll take those flannel zebra jammies, secondhand, and rock that motherfuckerThe built-in onesie with the socks on that motherfuckerI hit the pa…

Your grammy, your aunty, your momma, your mammyI'll take those flannel zebra jammies, secondhand, and rock that motherfuckerThe built-in onesie with the socks on that motherfuckerI hit the party and they stop in that motherfuckerThey be like, "Oh that Gucci, that's hella tight"I'm like, "Yo, that's 50 dollars for a t-shirt" Limited edition, let's do some simple addition…

YouTube video by PBS NewsHour