a sacrifice to the bike gods

For the third time in as many days, I replaced the front tube on Miss Indigo Bike. Yeah, it took me three tries to pull a piece of surprisingly fine steel wire out of the tire. It was almost certainly debris from one of the two construction sites on my usual bike ride, both less than two blocks from my place. I could have avoided them by riding an extra block, but neau, I pushed my luck. I wonder at which stage of construction the danger of this sort of thing largely goes away. They're not quite done framing.

Ex's mother has passed away.

My Ex went to California on Thursday because her mother was going to make use of that state's assisted suicide statute. This morning, my son texted me to tell me that she was vomiting so much that that was no longer an option. He said that if her high blood pressure didn't kill her soon, malnutrition would.

Five hours later, the Wendling texted me to tell me she'd passed away. He didn't convey any details, and I didn't ask for any. I figure that if Ex wants to talk to me, she'll call. She surely has a lot of calls to make right now.

And she has reasons not to call me: first, we're divorced, and second, Exmother hated me for transitioning, and she's she was certainly not one of my favorite people. My son once called her a bitch to her face for how she spoke of me. I told him he didn't get to do that to his grandmother, but neither was he wrong in his assessment. She really was by turns manipulative, overbearing, narcissistic, and two-faced. That's right: I just spoke ill of the dead.

I will not attend the memorial.

Nevertheless, she was facing a level of mental and physical suffering that I'd only wish on Trump, Putin, and their minions. I wasn't even aware of how bad things were for her until not much more than a week ago. If she did finally get help in ending that suffering, I do not judge her for it.

Anyone in Ex's family who thinks it's unfair that my mother, with her snobbery and racism, hasn't suffered as much as Ex's can consider that my mother spent several years living the horror of losing her mind. My mother's small-town Southern upbringing, in which appearances of one's own normality were everything, probably magnified that horror.