Kimberly Hirsh

I’m exhausted. My mom has gone to the ER once a week for the past 5 weeks. My kid has not been in school for a full week since the beginning of the month. I’m still tweaking my thyroid meds. I will gladly accept your sympathy & empathy. I do not require your advice or questions.

Yesterday, W, M, my sister ME, and I went for a little hike at the Eno River State Park. I’d planned a little flat loop, but we didn’t know which access to use to get to it. We ended up at the Few’s Ford access and just walked the closest trail to where we parked, which turned out to be the Buckquarter Creek Trail.

We happened upon some folks from the Eno River Association, who had set up a tent, nets and water shoes, and little bins with water in them so people could catch little water animals and learn about them. It was a beautiful serendipitous occurrence and we had nowhere to be, so we stopped to join in. M found some water striders and a snail.

After they packed up, we continued down the trail, then stopped for a break so M could play on the rocks and fallen logs. While he was doing that, a great blue heron landed a ways from us. We watched it stretch its neck down to the water, then pull its neck upright. It was huge. Eventually it flew from one side of us to the other. Its wingspan was incredible. It’s a majestic bird.

Eventually, a tree wobbled under M and he fell in the water. We didn’t have a change of clothes, so we ended our break and started walking again. We made our way to the pedestrian bridge. It was a suspension bridge, and walking across it gave me a bit of vertigo. We continued on the other side of the river, then crossed the river on rocks when I heard a family ahead of us talking about an animal on the ground. I thought it might be a snake and W hates snakes, so we went ahead and crossed.

We finished up the trail and came home for a late lunch from Domino’s.

This was a super successful adventure, so I think we’ll try a hike every weekend while the weather is favorable.

Want to read: Ghosts of the Forbidden (Glazier’s Gap Book 1) by Leanna Renee Hieber 📚

My currently-planned NaNoWriMo novel is a YA supernatural rom-com set at musical theatre camp in the late 90s. It miiiiiiight have some autobiographical elements.

I just ordered a 20 ft inflatable black cat. It will dominate the culdesac. I’m kind of hoping it becomes haunted. (RIP The Best Cat, 11/1999 - 6/2017)

You can have all of the research that funding agencies can possibly provide us but if we can’t talk about what it means for our actual lived experiences and put it into perspective with our real lives, it’s not worth much.

• Chelsea Conaboy

I love today’s issue of Publish Not Perish in which Jenn McClearen draws a connection between Joli Jensen’s idea of communal writing and rejecting the narcissistic individualism of the academy.

I just played D&D for the first time in 3+ years and it was so great I almost cried.

Day 3 of a garbage migraine. Hate it. Rarely get them this bad anymore.

I rarely watch actual play TTRPG shows because Life Circumstances have made a 3-hr viewing a real challenge. I backed DesiQuest at the Town Folk level anyway because an all-Desi liveplay sounds amazing.

🎮 Things from today’s Nintendo Direct that feel like gifts they’re making for me, specifically:

• Theatrhythm Final Bar Line
• Harvestella demo today
• Tales of Symphonia remastered (I never finished the original on GameCube but I loved what of it I played)

📺 Will I need to watch The Book of Boba Fett to follow what’s happening in the next season of The Mandalorian?

We took a little walk on the trail behind our house this morning. Here are some pictures of what we saw: misty trees, a red leaf, an acorn cap, a yellow leaf bigger than M’s foot, and an earthworm.

Dark academia is too emotionally bleak an aesthetic for me right now, but I enjoy the ability to admire pretty pictures and have a list of new hobbies & media to try, so I’m playing with adventurecore right now.

📺 Watched The Sandman. It’s so great. I don’t think a better adaptation would be possible. I missed the black speech bubbles but I know those couldn’t really be done in this medium.

📺 Excuse me, I am watching The Rings of Power and Disa is my new fave, thought you should know. (And that’s a big deal because Galadriel, Nori, and Bronwyn are all great, too.)

Currently reading: Fabric by Victoria Finlay 📚

I hate when my brain won’t read, which it won’t today. Reading is my core way of interfacing with the world. The tools we use shape our thought processes, and writing and reading have been my primary tools since I was a small child. Reading heals me, distracts me from pain, comforts me when I’m lonely, and gives me new ways of thinking.

I know this inability to turn other people’s words into things that cohere for me will pass. And I can do audiobooks some. But there’s also something about the physicality of reading that I miss when I do that. So it is a great companion to reading text, especially for times it’s not smart to focus on texts like when I’m driving or trying to fall asleep.

Maybe I’ll try reading something middle grade instead of YA or adult and see if that helps.

Peace and long life, y’all. Happy Star Trek Day! 🖖🏻

I don’t write a lot of lengthy blog posts lately, partly because there’s a lot going on with my mom’s health that wears me out. But I want to write more, so watch this space!

Kirby Howell-Baptiste is brilliant in The Sandman. I need all the Death spin-offs: High Cost of Living, At Death’s Door, all of it. She’s got brilliant big sister energy. 🖤 📺

Just spent a minute staring at all the app icons on my phone trying to figure out why the Star Trek app wasn’t in alphabetical order in the S section, but of course, the name of the Star Trek app is Paramount+. 📺🖖🏻

I’m very sorry for the colleague of my interviewee who was sick today and thus meant interviewee couldn’t get time off-desk and had to reschedule, but I’m really not in a great headspace for an interview today anyway so I will happily do other work instead.

John Cameron Mitchell doing Ethel Merman singing “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” is all I have ever wanted. A mid-90s musical theatre nerd’s dream come true. Thank you, The Sandman. 📺

I can suspend my disbelief enough to believe that entities like Dream, Death, Desire, & Despair exist, ravens can talk, nightmares can walk the earth… but I can NOT believe that people from NJ wear heavy layers while staying on the Space Coast.