rainbow hoodie

1/18/26

I was telling Hunter how it’s really hard sleeping with him, how he changes positions a lot and kicks me off the bed. He said, “it’s OK, I’m just dreaming that a villain is chasing me. if I kick you off the bed, just get back on!”

1/21/26

Hunter doing well. His limbs have gotten loooong long long, and he’s even heavier (30 lbs or more). I can still pick him up and hold him (I think only because I’ve always held him throughout his growth, so he’s been like my weight training to get me to this point) but not for as long as before. i see maturity replacing the babyishness in his face, but he still gets faraway baby looks in his eyes, still has a round baby face, and still does the baby screams and squeals. He’s usually endlessly talking to himself or us, generally very happy and silly, asking for toys all the time, asking what specific words mean, with occasional punctuations of defiance/anger or whining. Today I gave him a nickname of Chattermax, like the nonstop talking bird from Bluey, and i think he thought it was funny.

my only concern right now is he’s not in formal schooling, so his days are mostly all playing and TV/video games and going along on errands with us, with no formal structure at all. but as soon as we find a place to settle- and we’ll be sure to pick a place with decent schools- that lack of structure should change, and I’m sure he’ll be ready for school by then, after having heard all the adults in his life and even cartoons and books tell him many times already how great school is and how everybody needs to go. there’s this one book that Rodrigo found at Goodwill, called The Pigeon Has To Go To School, that he really likes that we read to him.

1/22/26

Lately, with the way Hunter speaks, he seems way too short for his age. 

something that made me happy: we were out at a restaurant tonight eating, and Rodrigo looked up and instantly saw on Hunter’s face that he needed to poo – he recognized his poo face without Hunter needing to say anything. And he took him to the bathroom, leaving me to enjoy my food. I love that he’s not a total dad dud and has this parental sixth sense, because it’s such a burden if I’m the only one that carries that sense.

there is not that much of an update on our friend that’s in ice detention. We found out he’s being held at a facility in Pennsylvania and his girlfriend has the address, and she and his family were working with his lawyer to get him out of jail as quickly as possible, because he didn’t wanna stay there obviously, and would rather go back to Brazil. he had to wait for the next deportation flight, but she wanted to get him out sooner, but there was some mandate passed so that his own lawyer couldn’t do anything and only a federal lawyer could make anything happen, so the last we spoke to her, she was trying to get in touch with a federal one, but they were so busy that she had to make her appointment at 9 PM. it’s sixteen days and counting now, that he’s been jailed and away from us, separated from his family.

Had this strange feeling all day today, that things, microcosmic and macro, are all coming to a head, like things will be building up to the ultimate pressure and then just burst. I don’t know if the burst will be good or bad, just it feels like I’m in a storm and there’s not much I can do except let the winds pick me up and drop me where they may. 

1/23/26

I had a dream during my chunks of interrupted sleep this morning (interrupted because Hunter falls asleep around 11 PM, which I then get up from his bed and go to mine, but I still had work to finish so worked for about another hour, then went to sleep, then woke up like four hours later because of three hour time difference for work to clock in, and then fell back asleep for a little bit, then woke up to do more work): there was this girl that died, I think she was wrongly killed, at our school. I don’t remember her name or her face, just that she was good. For some reason, her clothes were left out on a kind of raised seating surface or table top for anyone to take if we wanted – her family was donating them. And I went up to the table, and I was like the only one there during the day in the middle of the high school lobby kind of area, except this one guy* was behind me, and while I ran my hands over her clothes, he put his arms around me from behind in a strong and gentle and comforting embrace that felt really good, and I remembered the feeling all morning, even when I was not sleeping anymore and working. there was also a feeling of sadness and loss, knowing this girl was gone, with only her clothes left. There was a pretty rainbow patterned hoodie, and a deep purple /lavender T-shirt, that I first just admired, and wasn’t planning at all to take, but then at the end, something made me say what the hell, and I took them to wear as my own. *The guy in the dream was just an acquaintance I know from work, we’ve never really talked aside from sometimes he emails me work to do, and it bothers me a little that he never says my name in the email, only “hey”. So my real life impression of him is generally cold, which is why in the dream, it was a surprising I guess that he was so warm towards me.

the cold sore is almost gone, there’s just a small red spot there now. at its worst, it did look bad, but not as monstrous as I thought it would be- it was definitely among the least conspicuous I’ve gotten. I was putting this myrrh-goldenseal balm on it that I never used on sores before – I don’t know if that’s what helped – or if my immune system is very slowly building back up, or a combination.