June 2021

I forgot I went to King’s Island with my work friends! It was a fun time, trust me! That first picture was pre-walking around for several hours…I wish I had the after because I was SPENT.

Hello everyone! Sorry for the delay in the monthly wrap-up post. If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my tweet about it already, but I’ve been wrapped up in the aftershock of a huge loss.

I don’t have much to write about this month as it is, honestly…every day has been full of cleaning, working, taking care of what needs to be taken care of…the list goes on. This June has been expectedly busy, but in an unexpected way. Let’s get into it…

Birthday/Father Season

Allison and I, my food from the Woodbury, Allison’s cake that my mom made, and my dad’s pond section of his massive garden.

As we all know, the first week of June is Birthday Week for the Richmond-Leeths. My dad, mom, and sister’s birthdays are all within the first 7 days of June, so as you could guess, ya girl was busy spending time with everyone!

For my dad’s birthday, he had his normal show at Southbend, where he performs as Stella. I went down for the show and to surprise my dad for his birthday by being there! If you’ve never been to a Stella at Southbend show, you should go…every event is ridiculously fun.

In True Mary Fashion, I don’t remember 100% what I did on my mom’s birthday…but I know I called her! She did come down a couple days after her birthday to celebrate my sister’s. We hung out, played video games, then we went to see my dad’s garden. She lives in Indiana and I don’t have my license (yet) so I don’t get to see her as often as I should. The plan is to get my license before my birthday, so here’s hoping I can get an appointment with the DMV soon so I can visit her anytime I want!

Allison, my sister, invited me to brunch with our dads and her boyfriend. I’d never been to The Woodbury, so I didn’t know what to expect. I should have known that my sister would choose something good for her birthday brunch…what I didn’t expect was for it to be so great. It was delicious and everyone in there was so nice! A win-win! I could tell they were understaffed that day, but they were still doing their best. How could you not appreciate that?

Father’s Day was nice, too! We all went to my dad’s favorite coffee shop, and I bought him a plant and a pot to put it in. I always stress out about what to do for Father’s Day (what do you buy the man who has everything he wants and needs??), but this year was easy. I think I found the winning combo!

Music Obsessions

https://www.gq.com/story/megan-thee-stallion-thot-shit-music-video

I’m not going to sugarcoat this at all: I have not kept up with any new music this month. Like, at all. I drive home from work everyday now (shout out to Matt for driving the car to come get me in the first place), so I don’t have the hour or so to myself on the bus that I usually do to listen to music. I live so close to work that I don’t see the point in setting my phone up to discover anything!

Of course, some things flew just high enough into the radar to be added to this month’s playlist. I can’t ignore (or stop watching) Megan Thee Stallion’s new music video for “Thot Shit”. The Midnight just had their 5th anniversary for their album “Endless Summer”, and with that came two new songs, one of which is on the playlist.

BANKS just dropped a new single that is scary but sexy, which is very on brand. SOHN dropped a haunting new single that I’ve really been obsessed with, and the dynamic duo of FrankJavCee and NothinButLag dropped a parody track called “Youth Group” that has a very 90s aesthetic music video accompaniment as well.

I added the honorable mention from last month, which was the cover of the Vah Medoh dungeon from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, as well as a Kate Bush song that’s been resonating with me lately. I’ve also put some songs on the list that Matt’s been listening to as well. I wonder if you’ll be able to figure out which picks are his?

Go ahead and take a listen to the playlist here!

The Elephant In The Room

I don’t remember what we were doing but we were having a BLAST

If you keep up with my blog, you know that I post on Mondays (or really, really early on Tuesdays). Obviously, it’s late on a Wednesday. “What gives?” you may ask. “I thought you said you were going to be better earlier this month!” I did say that, but I promise I have a real reason for not posting on time this week.

In my life, I’ve always had my best friend Damian. For over ten (10!) years, you’d be hard pressed to see me without him. Even after meeting and marrying Matt, Damian and I were practically glued to each other. We both helped each other through everything, from boys to school to life. Over the past weekend, I lost my best friend. I won’t go into any details out of respect for his family, but I will say it was sudden and unexpected. You don’t hear a lot about 28 year olds suddenly passing away.

Naturally, I’ve been a fucking mess. He’s been my roommate for a while as well, so it’s been extra hard seeing all of his stuff in the house. Going back to work this week has been difficult, but has been a much needed escape from the emptiness I feel without him and his dog in the house. I was fully prepared to take care of his dog, but his sisters picked her up for his mother. I miss her a lot, but she’s in much better hands now.

Damian and I shared a warped, dark sense of humor that I don’t really share with anyone else nearly as much. We used to talk about what would happen in any traumatic event we could come up with. Every time I’d ask what he would do in a certain death situation like that, he’d just say, “Well, I’m immortal, so that wouldn’t happen.” I would just giggle and shrug. After all, I didn’t think I’d make it past 25.

It’s almost funny now to think back on those conversations, knowing how life ended up going for us. Funny in that dark way that we shared with each other, knowing that everyone else would be upset or mortified at what we were saying. Obviously, I’m not sharing this to upset anyone. That’s the last thing I want to do! The dark thoughts we shared growing up with each other turned into dumb, awful inside jokes. It was the way we connected when we first met, two teenagers disillusioned with the idea of existing.

Now that the two of us have grown up, matured, and seen the beauty of life, it’s heartbreaking to think that I won’t be able to share the rest of that with him any longer. I could go on and on about how he’ll never get to meet the friend group babies and be Uncle Damian to them, or how I’ll never get to return the favor and be his bridesmaid at his future wedding…There’s so many things he never got to do, but he did a lot while he was here, changing many a life while doing it.

I don’t think I’ll ever fully recover, but knowing how much he loved me and all of our friends, and knowing how his family loves us too has really made all of this easier. Although my phone is blowing up and driving me crazy, I can’t thank everyone enough for reaching out with condolences to me these past few days. I lost more than a best friend; I lost my platonic soul mate, my brother, my Damian. Knowing how much everyone loved him has made the pain less, well, painful.

This month has been a whirlwind. From the irregular posting schedule to all the events that have happened within the past few days, it’s been hard to keep up with everything. Luckily, I have a ton of people in my corner, and their support has made everything less awful. They know who they are!

If you feel so inclined to see if I actually post on time next week, feel free to follow me on Twitter! I’m usually retweeting memes, but I also make sure to keep everyone in the loop with my writing on there too. It’s a yin yang kind of situation, you know how it is.

I’m hoping that July is gentler to myself and all of us. Only time will tell! Thanks for reading as always. See you next week!

(If you’d like to read Damian’s obituary and see any information about his service, click here.)