Happy Hearts Day

Written yesterday while sitting in the lobby of Alaska Women's Clinic and waiting for my glucose test blood draw. There's this viscous, sweet liquid that you have to/get to drink around 27 weeks in which they tell you if you have gestational diabetes or not. We'll see! I had all these plans to eat protein this morning and make damn sure I pass the test (although it probably does not work this way), but I had a Zoom meeting and have to look presentable for the rest of the day and make breakfast and pack lunch for L so it just didn't pan out. I ate what I normally ate: oatmeal with peanut butter and collagen with black coffee. Hopefully it's fine? We'll see.

My parents travel between Alaska and Texas at least once per year, and when they're in Texas they stay with one of my dad's old friends, K. I vaguely remember K from growing up. You know how it is: they stand around talking to your dad, you're friends with their kid, and that's about it. He didn't make a particular impact on me, I just know that I got in trouble (kind of) because I told his oldest daughter that Santa Claus didn't exist when I was five and she was three or so. Over the years, my parents would kind of talk trash about his wife at the dinner table (they were constantly talking trash about people and it stressed me out then and really impacted me), and eventually they got divorced. At one point, when I was in college, my parents mentioned in passing that the daughters had come out with allegations of sexual abuse against K, and wasn't that terrible? Not that the daughters were sexually abused, but that they were accusing their dad of such a thing - and wasn't it terrible that his ex-wife was turning them against him? God forbid they engage in reflection about the possibility that their friend might be ill in this way. No, automatic disbelief of the children. And they still stay with him. They've recently bought land from him. And the invited their other set of grandchildren to visit on his farm. He's estranged from all but one or two of his children. And truly? I don't really know what happened Of course I don't. But I don't automatically think children are lying about something like that.