Pho, Puffers, and Phumiliation

… so I said, “Ain’t nobody tryna put no Black ballerina in their production, it’s gonna fuck up the whole aesthetic. I mean, I don’t get why people don’t get that.“

Hello! My name is sam. I am not Black or African. Eww! I am a South American Canadian (but you already knew that).

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Usual Age Discordance Shit

I will be 52 in 21 days. People are always like, “Why don’t you act your age!?” Well! I can’t, or am I! sam, an age mosaic:

• biological age – 70 w/ COPD
• chronological age – 52
• perceived age:
  • How I see myself – 2 to 6 (depending on the day)
  • How others see me – 30-ish
• functional age – 17 (still requires supervision)
• social age – mid-20s

I’ve been sick as a Cerebus for a week (wheek is the proper spelling). I imagine Cerebus would sound hoarse and raspy if it tried to talk. Because I have asthma, anytime I get a respiratory infection, it takes extra long for me to recover, and it’s so painful.

Of course, I could save myself a lot of chestache if I used my orange puffer every day like I’m supposed to. This time, when I got sick, I couldn’t find the orange or the blue one. I had to wait almost two days for a replacement.

Happy to be getting back to my old self — about 75% better. Bonus: I barely ate or kept anything down with all the coughing, so I lost a couple pounds. Moving forward as always.

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A few updates:

1. Dad’s cruising parts of Asia. Got a message that they left Taiwan this morning and they’re heading to Hong Kong next.
2. Dee is moving out again. Yay! I’m looking forward to making that room a library/quiet room/office. I’m stoked.
3. I’m not doing anything special for Christmas or my birthday.
4. I’ve been categorizing my poetry menu into Nature, Relationships, and Social Commentary
   • To my surprise, Social Commentary dominates. I always imagined myself a romantic at heart, but the archive says otherwise. It seems I’ve been responding to the world, its absurdities, injustices, and contradictions, more than I realized.
   • I’m a “let me critique society right quick” poet. Who knew?
5. I got approved to be published in an anthology – Yay!
   • I thought about tweaking one of my poems, but my poems are time-stamped versions of me. If I change them after a day or two, that’s ok. Anything longer, and it feels like I’m messing with the essence of who I was in that moment. Like retroactively editing myself, and that never sits right.

The strangest shit happened with Uber Eats on Friday. I was craving soup, so I ordered pho, and it arrived at my front door, no problem. Then I ordered some groceries from Farm Boy, but they were delivered to my work address instead. Instead of $60, my groceries cost me $120; now I’m seeing if they’ll reimburse me.

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Hate The Game

I had a weird dream. I was a football referee, but I felt too out of shape to run the field. My manager was frustrated because I couldn’t make the right calls or blow the whistle properly — I was too breathless.

For some reason, during the transition between each half, I can’t get to the bathroom fast enough. As a result, I end up pooing in the corners of the field, and everyone is disgusted with me.

I thought, “I need to do something before I get fired.” But instead of the usual get-fit stuff, I bought a full-body corset suit online. It came in parts: legs, thighs, upper arms, and a torso piece like a strapless bathing suit.

At first, I thought it was perfect — whalebone with elastic between each bony insert. For my next game, I put on the corset. At first, during light running, everything was fine. But then, as play picked up, I grew uncomfortable; it wasn’t really breathable, and I couldn’t get enough air. I also worried about taking it off if I needed to poo.

Before the first half is over, I collapse and soil myself; the mess spreads from my shorts and pools like blood on the field. They call EMS, but no one wants to come near me, and I end up dying on the sideline while people watch. (Yes, I died in my dream, I thought that couldn’t happen, maybe I was unconscious.)

So that’s how my life ends — a spectacle of breathlessness and embarrassment. I’ve had worse dreams, though. At nothing was chasing me.

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On a final note, another thought while lying in bed over the last week, there are certain things I don’t want to be. A funeral director, for example. Given that environment, I might discover I’m attracted to dead people; a thing that never would have come up otherwise, you know?

I hope you had a great November! I’m thinking about what I want my life to look like in 2026. There’s a George Brown course I’m thinking about taking, Introduction to Film and Video Production. We’ll see.

Happy Holidays to You!

Sat Dec 6

Photo by Spacejoy on Unsplash

© 2025 Samantha Williams. All Rights Reserved.