Alice In Chains blasted from the wireless speaker that her sister-in-law gave them years ago. The Trapped Butterfly was having a meltdown and her husband was helpless to help again after the meeting with the marketing agent working with her to get her children’s book published and out there!
The book is beautiful! The illustrator is excellent and got it all done in roughly 8 months. It’s now ready to be uploaded to Amazon. This will be happening this week. It’s still a few weeks away from being ready to be available to the public. She is grateful for that because, again, she feels like she doesn’t know if it’s the right time to publish the book.
Covid has gotten better the past few months but people are still dying from it when the flu is not around yet. There’s yet to be a week with no deaths in the country and world. Plus, long Covid is still an issue. People are accepting the unacceptable. Sure, 500 deaths per week is so much better than the thousands of deaths per week earlier in the pandemic. In March of this year, it was 1800 deaths per week. But people are still dying!
Her marketing agent is wonderful! However, in order to try to get people to come to events that will have to be outside, no “trigger words” can be used. She knows that the idiots get all mean and stupid when Covid and anything related to Covid is mentioned. Fewer people are masking regularly. She isn’t able to mask because of spasms and even if they are able to get it to stay on, it will further impede her ability to speak. She has wracked her brain to try to figure out how to do some events in person safely. Masking appropriately would make it safer for her and her husband to do so. Yet, it appears that that’s not possible from the marketing standpoint. So a bunch of people who may or may not be up to date with the vaccines will be interacting with them. Her husband will be taking credit cards and money from them. He is going to be helping her sign books. This puts him (and her since he is her 24 hour caregiver) at risk even though he will be masked as usual.
She watches other people live their lives in blissful chosen ignorance. She doesn’t know if she’s able to tolerate watching other authors doing the local events. She feels so robbed of something that is supposed to be joyful and fun!!
Thankfully, a little over a week ago she finally got some freedom safely. She sat in the cozy room that they were able to enter from the outside to avoid the rest of the tattoo shop. It was decorated with various weird things and artwork. The artist is so nice and willing to accommodate them! He finished the lizard leg that had been an open wound for 2 years. The needle stabbed her millions of times over the course of almost 3 hours. They could hear people talking in the main area of the shop. It felt wonderful!
Every time she looked at the progress of her leg, she was so happy and blown away. The artist wasn’t even fazed by her spasms. He created a beautiful piece out of a shitty outline. When it was finished, she was raw, but just stared at it especially when they had to go to the front desk to pay. Her husband remained masked and didn’t get close to anyone. While she waited for them to come back, she just kept staring at it and smiling.
Dark purple flower pedals. Green iguana with a grayish blue background. Bright peach desert flowers with green leaves and more grayish blue shading with the desert flower fauna. It could not have come out better—even if the original artist had finished it.
It’s still healing. Every time she sees it, she smiles at it instead of cursing it in her head or telling her late iguana that it will get done soon. She is so happy to have ink back in her life with an artist that is up to date with the Covid shots. He is also very like-minded about a number of other issues that are going on right now.
Why can’t there be more people like him? Also, she has been promoting the fact that July is Disability Pride Month. Until a couple years ago she didn’t even know about Disability Pride Month because the damn mainstream media ignores it. People with disabilities have been the most ignored minority with laws that used to not even allow them to be in public. Disability rights are constantly in jeopardy, especially now with the right wing cult trying to take away women’s rights and the LBGTQ+ community is also being attacked by the right wing cult. Taking away the rights of transgender individuals to get gender affirming care, not allowing transgender people to use the bathroom of the gender in which they identify, and not allowing them to change their gender on their driver’s licenses or ID cards. She is grateful to live in a state where these rights are protected.
She tries to calm her heart and anxiety. But as Alice In Chains sings, she is “down in a hole. Feeling so small. She wants to flllllyyyyy.”
The Trapped Butterfly 