The Barren Spinster Chronicles

Hello lovelies! Just checking in with a riveting life update.

This month I celebrated a one-year anniversary… with the stray cat I took in. I’m fully aware of what that looks like for my life and my proverbial dating profile. I’ve also noticed that I share striking personality traits with the cat. To date, he’s brought me two dead birds, a third bird that was just playing dead until released into my apartment, a partially digested lizard, and was gifted two hive breakouts. On my face.

I got a matching tattoo with my younger brother over Memorial Day weekend. I drove all the way to Albuquerque to get the tattoo. I had to wear a posture brace for the entire 6.5-hour drive to decrease my back and neck pain which is a cool new part of my life.

The second the needle touched my skin I felt nothing but regret. This isn’t my first tattoo but I guess my toleration of pain for unnecessary reasons has gone down. I’ve decided to stop making rash decisions that affect the entire remainder of my life. But the tattoo looks cool.

Tattoo artist Daniel F Ward, High Hands Tattoo in Albuquerque, NM.

I swapped out my rigorous cardio routine with walking 10,000 steps a day. The amount of joy and accomplishment I feel when my step counter indicates my goal has been reached… is worrisome.

My 80-something-year-old neighbor woke me up at 6:00 am on a Saturday to let me know he was going to check the roots of my succulent sitting outside my door. He then purchased a disposable turkey tin from the grocery store to use as a drainage plate, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him I really didn’t want him to do that. But it makes for a really unique aesthetic…

I got super into crafting my own holiday cards. It lasted about as long as it took to purchase all the glitter glue, card stock, two dimensional stickers, and organizing bins. My mom says my cards are beautiful and that she will keep them forever.

On a less facetious note, I’m doing quite well. Actually, I’m the best I’ve felt in a long time.

I finally transitioned from a mentally and physically grueling fitness and nutrition regimen, which I’ve followed more or less for a decade now, to a normal lifestyle. I exercise less frequently throughout the week which leads to better workouts when I do go. And I eat completely regular sized meals, as often as I want, and I revel in all my glorious carbohydrate intake. The crazy part — I look better now than I ever did! It’s the first time I’ve been able to curb my bingeing habits and I actually enjoy food.

My body had just been overly stressed for far too long which ultimately probably (obviously) contributed to my mental health struggles. So now, I’m happy, healthy, and living my best life. 🙂

I also cut all (most) of my hair off. Something about Latina/Hispanic culture of hair. It’s beautiful, and the longer it is, the better. I was obsessed all of my life with having my hair the longest it could possibly grow. The supplements, the extensions, the meticulous trimming (BUT NOT TOO SHORT!!!). Finally, I had enough — possibly due to the Arizona heat — and cut it the hell off. And I absolutely love it.

On a sad note, my paternal grandmother passed away in April. She’d been in poor health for a while, and near the end my family called me and told me I should make it to town as soon as possible if I wanted to say good bye. I made the drive and got there just in time; she died two hours after I saw her.

I flew back the following weekend for the funeral and it was a powerful, and absolutely insane weekend.

I was asked to be a pall bearer which blew me away. Apparently, my grandmother demanded that only women of the family carry her casket, NO BOYS ALLOWED. She was kind of a bad ass like that. Myself, and five of my beautiful cousins carried her down the aisle, to the hearse, and then finally over her grave. I wept, hard. I held their hands over the casket, cried, and kissed it goodbye. And shaking from the weight, we lowered her over the grave, placed our orchid corsages on top and that was the end.

It was a beautiful experience but it was also the beginning of the chaos and the reunion.

See, my dad’s side of the family… is BAT SHIT CRAZY (to put it delicately). It started with one crazy aunt taking a phone call in the middle of the service (she did not leave to take the call) — to the wake, where another aunt got high and drunk to the point that she vomited… INSIDE OF MY CLOSED SUIT CASE, all over every single item that I brought, including inside my makeup bag… to my grandfather and dad physically kicking both aunts out of the house in hysterics. All the while, all the cousins hung around completely unfazed, drinking beers, and swapping stories.

But it wasn’t all bad. Like I mentioned, there was the reunion. My cousins have all avoided “the family” for obvious reasons. I hadn’t seen any of my cousins since I was about 12-years-old and come to find out they hadn’t seen each other either. The funeral was the first time we were all together, all eight of us, and it was fantastic! To realize that we all fully understood and acknowledged how insane the family was, and that we were nothing like them was so liberating.

The tattoo mentioned above was a bit of a pact, between all of us. So Max and I were the first of the group to get it. And I look forward to seeing my cousins again.