Holding on to what you got while everything goes to hell

Moon photos first, then words:

2/27/2026 04:41pm

02/27/2026 9:55pm

02/28/2026 04:25am

Friday afternoon I got excited because my partner Della told me how good a daymoon we were experiencing when she was trying to decide what to use for her daily instant film project - I ran out to get a photo myself; I was otherwise busy with work so I didn't have time to edit or prep the photo, but then a few hours later I was taking the trash out for the night and saw how bright the moon was. Got my second shot. Thought "Ok cool, now I have a dual post". I love seeing the visual changes of the moon throughout a timespan, a "Several hours apart" thing with the moon is always cool.

The third shot happened only because a cat wanted to leave our room and was clawing at our door which woke me up; again, the super bright moon shining in through the windows, I had to grab my camera. I figured I'd edit them in the morning (or like, later that same morning, you know what I mean) and do a post but I made the mistake of reading the news at that moment, learning that the incompetents who run my country joined with Israel to bomb the shit out of Iran, ostensibly to assassinate their leader but succeeding mostly in the continued western destabilizing of the middle east and killing a bunch of innocent school children.

This reminded me that first news event I ever remember seeing on TV in my life was the announcement of US ground troops in the Persian Gulf during the (misnomer) first Iraq war in the early 90's, my parents trying to explain to me what a war for oil meant.

To that extent, my life has effectively always been punctuated by "and now the US is doing more vile shit in the Middle East" which to be clear has NOTHING on people who live there and are constantly being bombed, invaded, "regime changed" or extorted for resources by my country or our supposed "allies".

Anyway, I wasn't really in a good place to edit moon photos for most of Saturday as a result! Wanted to distract, so I caught up with the Pokemon direct with my kids, watched the Stardew anniversary video (Clint?? really??), loaded up the new episode of the Monarch show because giant monsters are a comfort to me, cooked some dinner for the family, etc etc.

I won't go too much into the next part yet right now but pretty much right after dinner, one of the cats who has never had health issues had a stroke and collapsed.

It came from out of fucking nowhere, it was abrupt, it was horrible and she did not make it. Most of the rest of the night was a fucking nightmare, dealing with the fallout, managing my emotions, helping the kids healthily express theirs.

We did a bit of catharsis sorting through her kitten photos and I realized (not really a shock but you know how it is) how much I've photographed her since I found her under our house as a newborn in 2017. I started writing a whole eulogy this morning but like, I needed some space from it and was not really in a place to process so soon - so, full circle - I went back to editing my damn moon photos.

Here they are. I'm proud of them. And I'm sad about the state of the world, both globally and locally. Expect a sad cat post in the next few days. I'll content warning it but I can guarantee as sad as it'll be, it'll be full of great stories and good photos.