11 July 2020> After reading in our journal we transcribed from May 1993 how we weighed 150 lbs, we decided we needed to lose weight, as we're now getting over 170. In January we said we wanted to lose 5-10 lbs, back then we was around 165 + we did lose a few pounds at first but then covid came along + we injured our heel so haven't been running or walking these past few months cuz we keep re-injuring it everytime we do. We're aiming for 1 pound a week for 10 weeks, dat's the goal. The past few days we've been fasting til noon, but yesterday we were up to 172. This mourning—the morning our mom died—we weighed 169. We had a strawberry smoothie for breakfast + a piece of toast. Burned 500 calories in 40 minutes on the elliptical (lately rather than going for a specified amount of time (usually 45 min) we go by calories).

15 July> 168 lbs. Ate salmon w/ lentils + quinoa last night. Had vertigo, not sure why (hardly any salt, sugar or alcohol, etc. + on other days we've had plenty + felt fine)... there's really no rhyme or reason to our mineareye d-zzz. More than anything think it has to do w/ lack of sleep, or good quality sleep, as the past few nights we ain't bin sleeping so well.

19 July> We haven't used The Daily Noose as a journihilistic diary in a while, dear Inurnet... for processing the quotidian going thru our noggin day to day, during this pandemic, or since our mom died last week. We're still on our new regiment of 16-hour fasting, eating less + exorcising more, but w/ nothing to show for it. Like w/ the onset of our Ménière's, our wait is pertty randumb, we haven't bin logging daily #s, but if we had to guess over this past week, it wd go something like 172 - 169 - 168 - 169 - 170 - 168 - 169 - 171 ... + for the most part we way ourselves at the same time, after we work out + before we eat our mid-day meal (the 168 weight was actually after we ate)... if we weighed ourself after dinner weed probly be pushing 175. Probly has to do w/ water weight fluctuations, wich is also at the root of our Ménière's. Spose we shd do like what they do w/ covid + take a 7-day avg, but we ain't dat organized, ox... we just want to see our wait oscillate between 155–160, stead of 165–170+.

Still managing to keep relatively sane despite the world around us going to hell in a hand-basket, our bedder-½ is the 1 having a hard time coping, she's gotta function more in this strange new world + has to keep up on current events. We're just a hermit turtle in our shell, trying our best to be oblivious to el moondough. We read the daily NEWS, but it reads the same 1 day to the next, usually we just skip to the daily # of covid cases/deaths, as an indicator to everything else + right now seams like a grim world out there, at least in the U.S... meanwhile things are business as usual in most of the silivized world + dare's 1 reason for it + dat's lack of sighence...

Our last post transcribed from a 1993 journal we also talked about the appeal of creative/fiction writing + art, as opposed to physics (wich we was studying at the time), how we was sick of halving to be rational + sighingtific... but sighence is still at the core of our belief system. We understand the importance of sighence + rational thinking in the day to day of el moondough, whereas the majority of Amerikins still believe in creationism—the highest percentage in the western world (besides Turkey)—+ deny evolution, climate change, covid, etc. This lack of sighingtific rigor is what drove us away from our family + it ain't nessysorrily cuz of religion, but more that new age post-hippie dogma dat seamed to permeate the circle of family + friends we found ourselves in in California. Used to drive us bonkers when our mom would spout misinformation gleened from the National Inquirer (the only newspaper we ever saw her read). She was in d-Nile of world events cuz she thought it was all negative + we get dat (why we started calling this The Daily Noose)... she wanted to believe what she wanted to believe, just how we want to make weird art dat don't make no ¢ense to no 1 else. B-sides the likes of Natl Inquirer, her belief system was informed by laying around in bed + smoking weed. We ain't talked about her much here before cuz she used to read this, or at least skim thru it + find something she could misconstrue as being about her. Perhaps a large part of why we write in this fucked-up voice is cuz we knew the likes of her wouldn't have the patience to read thru this to decipher what it means... does this mean wheel start writing w/ regular rational landgauge now now dat our mom ain't around? Vamos a ver...

Weird to think she can't read this now, so we kin speak our mined + say what we want... or maybe she still can, maybe Inurnet is accessible to the dead? See, like when we say thinks like dat it don't mean we believe in ghosts, but «mom» is a concept in our noggin, an entitty of our one self-consciousness, or dat we project onto the collective uncounscious... + rite before she died when we said she was «going to a bedder place» + that «maybe 1 day wheel see u there» it don't mean we believe u go nowhere when u die, but it's just a meta4, something to put her mind at eaze + make her feel bedder. Sew now we can say whatever we want about her w/o worrying dat she might come along + read it... not that we din't always tell her exactly what we thought. We could tell her things like we didn't think she was our mother cuz she wasn't around during our formative years or perhaps we said even meaner things to her in our juvenile rage, but it would just go in 1 ear + out the other. She'd just sit there w/ a glazed smile on her face + say everything was «wonderful»... that was her favorite word. No matter what we told her, she'd say «wonderful!» + had a lame justification for everything, how everything was meant to bee. We could tell her we were in jail being raped + she'd likely just say «wonderful» + try to put a positive spin on it, that it was a learning experience. If we were in a predicament + called her for motherly advice, she would say «wonderful, now u need to figure out for yourself what to do!» When we got suspended from shcool in Mexico in 8th grade + came home to tell her, she just said «wonderful!» + rewarded us by taking us skiiing in California for a week (a week of our lives that we could probly turn into a novel, the same week her father, our grandfather, Cal (½ the namesake of Calamari), died... April fools, 1982). We're glad now, it's made us more indeependant, but our brother Kevin had a harder time dealing w/ such laissez-faire parenting + needed more structure.

Our self-conchusness is not just about our mother, but what how society thinks we shd think act about our mother... there's probly folks out there that think we're ungrateful + mean-spirited, or that expect us to grieve or mourn her loss in whatever prescribed weigh. Even when our dad died (wich mos def was a shock, unlike our mom's passing wich was expected) we cried cuz we was expected to, cuz we felt guilty if we din't. Don't get us wrong, there's bin times later on when we were alone + cried or was sad about our dad + maybe the same will be true of our mom, but right now nothing feels diffrent except we feel we weigh a little less (even tho the scale says otherwise). We ain't angry, we ain't sad (tho our last conversation where she couldn't talk was a bit sad), nothing feels unresolved (there was no resolving anything w/ her) or lacking «closure» (another new-age psycho-babble word we don't care much for). We just feel relieved more than anything. Not that we would of wanted it any other weigh, we're glad we had the mother we did. She may have abandoned us + spent her life smoking mota in Mexico, but can u blame her? Sounds like a perty good life right about now. Maybe we'll light a doobie now in her honor.