J-Dub's Grin and Bear It

Friday Feels: The Ping

Published on 06/26/2026 by J-Dub2 Comments

During the work week, my phone is on silent. I sometimes remember to turn it back on when I get home. When I am home and over the weekend, my sound is on. That’s when I have a potential to hear a “ping.”

For me, that sound carries two completely different emotions at the same time. It creates intense anxiety and profound comfort.

The anxiety comes from wondering if it’s Lulu and she’s in distress—that old pattern where every notification could mean something was wrong.

And the comfort… is when I realize it’s just someone checking in.

Friday June, 26, 2026, 8:40 AM:

Good morning, Jill. How are you doing?

Seven ordinary words.

They arrived while my brain was pinballing from one thing to the next—my medical, now Lulu’s medical, work, generators, electric cars, all the ordinary decisions that don’t feel ordinary when they’re stacked on top of each other.

I didn’t unload.

I simply told him his timing was perfect. I was sitting in my head, and his text pulled me out of it for a little while.

Then we did something that seems increasingly rare.

We connected.

Not because either of us needed something. Not because there was an agenda. Just because we genuinely cared how the other was doing.

It lasted only a few minutes.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Sometimes being remembered is enough, and I won’t take that for granted. Thank you, Mike, for being my friend.

As always, more to come.

Haiku Fridays with J-Dub #9

Published on 06/26/202606/09/2026 by J-Dub8 Comments

Guttural moo, moo
Bellowing got me up here
I see everything

Esquire Tavern, Downtown SAT. I used to eat lunch there on Fridays with the Riverwalk Crew!!

Welcome to Haiku Fridays with J-Dub. Each week, I’ll post a haiku and a photo to spark reflection, emotion, or imagination.

Your challenge is simple: write your own haiku inspired by it—or on any theme that moves you—and share it in the comments.

Short, simple, powerful haiku—tiny poems that carry a big wallop. Capture a moment, a feeling, a memory—whatever comes through in 11 (3-5-3) or 17 (5-7-5) syllables. There’s no pressure, no judging, just a space to create and share.

This is about voice, reflection, and the quiet power of small poems.

Let the games continue.

As always, more to come.

Writer’s Workshop: Behind the Trash Can

Published on 06/25/202606/25/2026 by J-Dub10 Comments

AstroWorld in Houston, Texas was our freshman-year class trip. Close enough to do in a day. We left at the crack of dawn, arrived at opening, spent the entire day there, and didn’t get back to school until after midnight.

As I write this, I can still feel the excitement and anticipation from that morning on the bus. I didn’t really know many people yet—it was a larger school—but I had found a small group of friends. We formed a “six-pack” and stuck together. Over the next four years, we did everything together.

My high school crew before the Riverwalk crew

Pretty quickly it became clear that Lori didn’t want go on the rides. She wanted to “cool off” in the souvenir shops. We went along because she was steering the group, even though we had other ideas.

During the morning parade—with a full marching band, crowds everywhere, loud and bright—Bonnie pulled me behind a trash can. “Shhh,” she hissed, “don’t let them see us. I came here to have fun, not go to damn ‘snowbird’ shops.”

So we hid there while the parade went by, watching the rest of our group through the bushes next to the receptacles. It felt a little wild, a little conspiratorial—like a prison break.

For a while they called our names, but we ran the other direction until we couldn’t hear them anymore. Just the two of us moving through the park, spotting people from school here and there but never staying long enough to be pulled back in. No cell phones—just staying one step ahead.

The best part was near the end when we rode the Texas Cyclone roller coaster with some boys we’d been flirting with all day. It had rained earlier, the crowds had thinned, and we got back in line and rode it three times in a row.

At the end of the night, as we got back on the bus, Lori was fuming. Linda was upset too because she would’ve rather been with us. Rhonda and Jackie didn’t care either way.

Years later, when I rode the Texas Cyclone again, I came away hurting—payback maybe… or genetics. 🧬🤣 Either way, I still know how to slip out of sight when I need to.

P.S. My birth mother lived in Houston from 1972 until her passing in 2007. To think that we were that close geographically all those years and to imagine how we could’ve been at the same place at the same time is unnerving. Like she was hiding in plain sight. We visited Houston regularly when I was a kid. I’ll always wonder what if. Not in a bad way, in a sentimental way. 🥀

My Writer’s Workshop Entry: 6) Talk about a time you hid from someone. The rules and pingback are here . Badge/feature image by Patty, http://anothercookieplease.com

As always, more to come.

A Place To Put This: Book Worm

Published on 06/24/202606/24/2026 by J-Dub2 Comments

I don’t know if I’m just stretching the truth because I want so badly to feel connection. Even on the tiniest level, I want to see myself in others.

So when I see a picture of my nephew in his happy place, and it just so happens that his happy place is the same as mine, I feel this indescribable warmth and expansion. His cousins are readers too, and the idea that maybe all three of them got that from me makes me teary-eyed.

I’ve spent years trying to untangle what might have been passed down—addiction, osteoporosis, family medical histories that matter. So when I see a shared love of books, part of me wants to claim that inheritance too.

Then I remember my aunt telling me she loves to read and that she got it from Grandpa Eddie who was never without a book in his hand. If I got it from her, that kind of blows up my little theory anyway because she’s on a completely different side of my family tree.

And then I think about how many people love to read. It’s not like there are only a few of us on the planet. There are millions of readers out there.

So, yeah. My theory is shot.

This is what happens when you have time to kill before an appointment. Originally, I was going to go into work, leave for the appointment, and then go back. Instead, I decided just to go in late.

The filler time? Oh my gosh. Too much time on my hands is never a good thing.

So guess what I’m going to do?

I’m going back to my book.

As always, more to come.

#1linerWeds. Tired

Published on 06/24/2026 by J-Dub2 Comments

It’s very relatable to see Linda write that she’s tired of complaining. That’s me too. Though I don’t think it’s complaining about complaining. I think it’s being tired of having so many things hit the fan all at once. That’s exhausting y’all.

AnyWho, in an effort not to complain, I’m listening to an audiobook. It’s my newest distraction technique. Thank you SA public library system and the Libby app. It’s free too!!

The deal is never anyone’s fault but you control the way you play.

Shelby Van Pelt – Remarkably Bright Creatures

Written for #1linerWeds. Thanks for hosting Linda. The rule and pingback are here.

As always, more to come.

Tuesday Tales/Tune: The Weight Of Waiting

Published on 06/23/202606/23/2026 by J-Dub17 Comments

I told my therapist about my health anxiety. I joked that I want my mama. I mean, what kid doesn’t want their mama when they’re sick?

She said “wow, that’s a lot”—She helped see I’m not being immature. Life is hard. We all want someone older and wiser than us to have the answers.

Since my elders are gone, I wrote this–

It’s Too Much

I have spent an inordinate amount of my life waiting.

Waiting for test results.

Waiting for connection.

Waiting for people to tell the truth.

Waiting for people to come back.

Waiting for answers.

Waiting for someone to choose me without me chasing.

This year I quit chasing and I’m feeling the absence of it in ways I didn’t expect.

The funny thing about waiting is that it disguises itself as action. It feels like I’m doing something. Thinking. Planning. Preparing. Rehearsing conversations that never happen.

But waiting is not action.

Waiting is standing still while your mind runs in circles.

Lately I have been waiting on doctors, insurance approvals, lab results, and follow-up appointments.

I have been waiting on certainty.

I have been waiting on my own fear to settle down.

Maybe that’s why my life suddenly feels too crowded.

Maybe that’s the real exhaustion.

Not the appointments.

Not the overthinking.

Not even the diagnoses.

Maybe it’s carrying around a lifetime of waiting.

As always, more to come.

P.S.

This isn’t a contest for who has it worse but a “wow, that’s a lot,” soothed me. I’m not exaggerating. Being validated is priceless.

This is where I am right now. Ask me tomorrow and you may get a different answer.

Closing with a song 🎶

The Beatles

A Place To Put This: Living In The Moment

Published on 06/21/2026 by J-Dub13 Comments

Yesterday was one of those unexpected life lesson days.

Our power went out sometime around 1:00 a.m. Saturday morning and for a while there was nothing to do but deal with what was directly in front of us. No planning three steps ahead. No worrying about next week. No scrolling. Just the next thing.

B suggested breakfast at Denny’s. I thought he was crazy. We ended up lingering over endless coffee refills and enjoying a slow morning. Later, I escaped to the library to cool off in what felt like an Arctic tundra compared to the Texas heat.

When I got home, B greeted me with a hug and announced that the power company had apparently decided I was too mean to deserve electricity. Walking into a house full of lights and spinning ceiling fans, I had to laugh because, honestly, I am a little mean.

It was almost 14 hours without electricity.

In that time, life stripped itself down to the essentials. There was no room for my usual mental inventory of MRIs, labs, specialists, osteoporosis injections, cysts, pain management appointments, thyroid questions, A1c numbers, and whatever new item gets added to the list next.

There was only: What needs doing right now?

Short answer?

Not much, except decide when to move food from the fridge and freezers into ice chests and wait for the power to return.

Yesterday reminded me how much I take for granted—electricity, air conditioning, coffee, and especially a dependable partner who knows when the answer is simply, “Well, what else are we going to do?”

Not a bad reminder.

As always, more to come.

Song Lyric Sunday – Dad or Grad

Published on 06/21/202606/20/2026 by J-Dub24 Comments

I was four years old when my mother married the only daddy I ever knew, a wonderful man who loved me as his own, unconditionally. I know he held a soft spot for me, partly because he felt sympathy for me—a girl whose adoptive father died of lung cancer—but also because that was simply who he was. He loved his family. His job was to protect and support us. He taught us right from wrong and lived by example.

He wasn’t perfect. None of us were. There were struggles, and moments that showed his humanness in ways I could name if I needed to—but that is not what defines him, because what defines him is this: he was our father, and we were his most proud achievement.

Everyone who knows me has always understood that when I speak of my daddy, I mean him—the man who raised me, the man who showed up as love in action. And “How Sweet It Is” was his phrase for life, borrowed from Jackie Gleason but lived in him more than it was ever just said, a way of meeting the world with gratitude, humor, and presence.

He worked hard from the beginning, a farm boy life where nothing came easy, a restaurant and Navy cook, later a mechanic with grease under his nails, responsibility carried early and long, and through cancer scares and spousal loss, grief and all the ordinary weight of a working life, he still built something steady for us—private education, opportunity, a life he constructed with his own hands.

And still, the way he moved through the world stayed the same. He loved to dance. My mother didn’t. She sat at the table—cigarette burning steady—talking with whoever landed nearby, while he moved through the room with larger-than-life energy, not performing, not explaining, just dancing with whoever would dance with him, no agenda in it, just joy, just motion.

So when I hear Waltz Across Texas, I don’t just hear a song—I remember him.

Waltz Across Texas

I can still see him circling the dance floor, one partner after another, smiling with the brightness that would light up a room.

The space he left behind is filled with music I will be singing and dancing to for the rest of my life.

How sweet it was to be loved by him.

As always, more to come.

Written for SLS. Thanks Jim for hosting. The rules and pingback are here.

A Place To Put This: Outage

Published on 06/20/202606/21/2026 by J-Dub6 Comments

First off I get that this is a first world problem. I also understand that it’s temporary. So if I understand all of this, why am I still on edge?

Probably because I’m in pain physically. I am carrying a lot and this is just one more thing to top off the list of never-ending stuff. I just need a rest a small tiny little rest.

I just don’t know how to. I can’t slow down. I feel like if I slow down, everything will implode. Because if I keep moving, if I keep out racing the demons, I win.

If I slow down, I may have to look in the mirror and I’ve been avoiding mirrors my entire life. Not sure I wanna see what’s on the other side.

We have been without power all morning. Even during snowmaggeddon we kept power. We had talked about solar or a generator for years without acting on it. Now we can kick ourselves for not investing in a Generac like our neighbors have.

OK, well I’m gonna go somewhere, anywhere but here. Maybe while I’m gone things will go back to normal. Here’s hoping.

As always, more to come.