All posts by Mush

About Mush

I want to be a veterinarian because I love children.

Amritapuri Part 1

Seva, Spiritual, Travel

In which I use my passport! And spend eighty hours in airports and airplanes!

I’ve been thinking about writing this post for most of a month now, because I wasn’t sure how, since it wasn’t really a touristy trip. I went to see my Sadguru, an enlightened person, an avatar, for spiritual purposes, and most of what I have to observe was the ways my mind does what it does and how I reacted to that. It’s not like I went to any restaurants or shows or on any hikes or cruises.

view from the footbridge facing toward the Amritapuri ashram

The trip was Walla Walla to Seattle to Vancouver to Delhi to Trivandrum. I never left the airports, and it took a couple days each way. Absolutely exhausting. The shape of the trip was dictated primarily by politics; from what I’ve been told (by a Keralan living in Canada I met on a return flight) you’d typically rather go through Dubai.

The way over I was exhausted in every way: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. My relationship has its struggles, I’ve been in the same entry-level job for six years with no promotions or recent raises, I’m older and fatter than I’ve ever been, and I live a life of, essentially, laziness and dissipation. I read a lot, I sleep a lot, I drink too much, I don’t bother to have a social life, and while I know the shape of my life would be perfect for sadhana I just don’t do as much as I wish. I was unhappy in every quarter. Which is why I wanted to go see Amma so bad. Get my priorities straight. You spend a lot of your evolution believing in doing things, but then comes the realization you’re not doing anything, you’re not the doer, and yet you have to do things to achieve states, and it’s all some bullshit Buddhist koan, and you need your guru.

After determining that I wanted to go and why, with literally no effort on my part, everything just fell into place. Suddenly there was money to go, and tickets, and a month off work with zero push back, and literally everything I needed was just… provided to me. (Thanks, dad!)

~+~+~

So one morning around three AM we got in the car and went to ALW, which is my favorite airport because you can go from the door all the way through security in literally four minutes. (I hate airport security for its waste, irritation, and ineffectiveness. It’s theatre and its tedious.)

Anyway, flight to Seattle. Few hours layover, I got a coffee but I don’t think I ate. Then flight to Vancouver, which is a really well-done airport. Nice to look at, immigration was a breeze, wifi, all the kiosks worked, nice art.

Flight to Delhi was either fourteen or sixteen hours, I can’t remember which, and by then my extremities were bloated and I was miserable because the seats are for takeoff and landing, not a dozen-plus hours of actual flight, and I’m too old and fat now to get my feet underneath me or curl up. I did sleep but it was terrible quality, weird and jittery.

Airplane food

The food was pretty good, though. They fed and watered us probably four times. I had a window seat and so had to bother my row mates twice to get out, walk, stretch, and pee. The bathrooms were still familiar plane-style weird little closets with toilet paper.

Weirdest part of the whole journey was that it never got dark. You’re just flying over the lid of the world with the sun. So, so many hours of bright daylight.

Then another few hours in Delhi, to get out through immigration and back in through security. The Delhi airport is a fucking people-moving disaster, the signage is either not there or useless, and both times I went through it I had no idea where I was supposed to be going in spite of being in possession of a reasonably high intelligence and a general concept of how to get through an airport. The airport employees I asked were contemptuous (which I do understand, I work customer service too, and being asked the same fucking question over and over does get annoying) and unforthcoming and rude.

The immigration guys were bored, grumpy, gruff, and slow. Yes, I had all my documents ready: passport, boarding pass, visa. Your job sucks, whatever, at least you’re sitting down for it, you huge baby.

Security in India is segregated by sex, so you give your bags to the machine for scanning and then have to hike way over to where the women are being screened, leaving all your belongings utterly unsupervised, to be wanded in private in a cubicle by a female soldier-slash-cop. (These were friendly and pleasant, and one even complimented me on my hair.) Then at peak disorientation, tired in a strange airport where you don’t understand the majority of the languages, you have to remember which carousel has your bags and figure out how to get back sans signage. It’s a trip.

Continue reading Amritapuri Part 1 →

31 hours and counting

Seva, Spiritual, Travel

In which I’m on vacation, as of Saturday at 6:10pm when I clocked off work.

I’m pretty much packed! Had to buy new luggage, because ours were a few inches too big for the new carry-on sizes and I don’t want to check anything. New suitcase is green, within parameters for cabin luggage on Air India, and came with a cute matching extra bag I’m using in place of the shitty old backpack I was gonna bring.

I have culture-appropriate clothing, shawls and wraps, new undies, compression socks for the planes, and a sweater. I have toiletries, jewelry, bug wipes, an eye mask, ear plugs, headphones, a rain poncho, and snack bars. I’ve decided not to take my contact lenses. I probably won’t take any makeup, or if I do it’ll just be the tiniest bit to wear in the airports. Can’t find my safety pins, but won’t really need them unless I buy a petticoat and choli at the ashram and wear a sari.

I have movies and music on my phone, and an external battery (or two, if I take his with me). Will finish loading up the Kindle with ebooks tomorrow. Have a keyboard to use with my phone if I want to type, and a journal to write in.

I have all my tickets and visas printed and neatly organized in a binder. I have all the travel apps anybody could ever want installed on my phone.  I bought a roaming pass for my cell phone, so will hopefully have coverage outside the airport while finding my already-booked-and-confirmed ashram taxi.

Checked Kerala weather, and I don’t think it’ll be so awful—the highs are lower than here, and the lows are in the mid-70’s, which is actually cool enough to wear a sweater if you’re sitting. The things I’ve read made it sound like monsoon is sizzling, but 75-85 isn’t that bad; more like it’s the humidity travelers must be reacting to. And I love rain.

They assign you your housing when you visit Amritapuri; I can’t decide if I want a room alone or to be stuck into a dorm. As it’s monsoon and Amma’s been in residence for months, I can’t imagine the ashram will be full to the rafters, so I might get my own room. Do I want a room alone? I am pretty old and set in my ways; if I get stuck in with other devotees they’re gonna hear more farting than they probably want. I leave it to God, I guess, to stick me where I’ll be most challenged—and this is exactly why I expect to be put on kitchen duty and to spend my entire vacation doing dishes every day.

All that’s left on my to-do list is ‘get travel cash’ and a last load of laundry so I can take a clean nightgown. Then I’m out of the country for the rest of the month.

It’s an awfully long way to go to not do any sight-seeing, but really I just want to spend more than 2 days near Amma for once in my life. Three weeks will probably trigger a breakdown but hey, it’s what I’ve always wanted!

 

 

India

Spiritual, Travel

In which I’m going to use my passport!

I’ve got the month of July off work, and I’m going to Amritapuri. I complained about the tedium of shopping for flights, so my dad offered to do it for me.

Today I’ve bought some items for the trip, including a rain poncho, bug repellent, and a little laundry line to use in my room. (I don’t intend to take much in the way of clothes so it’ll be handy to be able to rinse and hang stuff.)

I read what little I could find online about actually staying there, barely a handful of blog posts, and that’s where I got the laundry line idea. (The actual ashram site lets you register to visit but has almost no information beyond the fact that they provide linens and there’s a bank onsite.) Also grabbed a couple packets of Tide specifically for sink washing, a couple travel size toiletries like toothpaste and shampoo so I don’t have to check my suitcase, some talcum powder. A Bluetooth keyboard to use with my phone, since I’m not bothering to haul a laptop. I’m assuming I’ll take a pair or two of Crocs because they’re lightweight, waterproof, and bouncy for slogging through concrete airports. I already have compression socks for the flights, a Kindle to carry a few hundred books, and a phone I’ll probably stick some music and movies on for backup entertainment.

Actually, my phone broke in half last week but the new one is supposed to arrive tomorrow. It’ll be green! I’ve never had a green phone before. Pretty exciting. Anyway, it’ll have plenty of storage for some media.

Already got a passport neck purse (gift from dad, along with an eyemask for sleeping) and a power converter.

It’ll be monsoon season, so I expect to be moist the entire time, but apparently it doesn’t get much hotter than the 80’s so I think I’ll be okay since it’ll probably be in the high 90’s here.

I’m so excited to go, but I’m nervous about the long flights. Longest flight I’ve ever been on was SEA to DCA and it was so fucking boring and tedious; that was, what? Five hours? Fourteen hours on a plane sounds worse than a brief stint in jail, honestly, but I guess people do it all the time so it should be okay.

Anyway, flights should be booked in the next couple days, then I can apply for my visa and register with the ashram. Whoo!

 

Spring is sprung

Life

In which open doors and windows season is upon us!

It’s Tuesday, which is my Sunday, so I’ve had some Grape Nuts and coffee and then watched an afternoon movie and made a crazy Bombay sandwich with hash browns in it and ate a cupcake.

The patio cat had five kittens on the 16th and 17th and they seem alive and well and they live in a box on the patio. I have homes for three already but that leaves two so let me know if you need a kitten.

I bought myself a lilac but I can’t decide where to put it. I’ve put in two tomatoes and some basil, and last year’s parsley is mysteriously still alive. I’m way behind on laundry and I’ve basically quit doing dishes. We did some weeding yesterday but the property still looks pretty crap. At least all three trees are leafing out!

I’m very much leaning toward An Afternoon Nap, if you must know.

Got my tax refunds, so that’s nice. Account balance looks a little less dismal than usual! I’m seriously considering a cleaning service to come get the floors and corners and fan blades and things clean. It sounds so bougie but obviously A) I care about it and B) ain’t gonna do it myself, so why not use the tax refund?

I’m in desperate need of a vacation. I’m bored of everything. Thank God it’s spring! The balmy air and flowers and leaves help a little, but mostly I think my brain could use some out-of-town time. Maybe we’ll have to take an overnight bag to Portland or something.

New Post!

Life

In which there’s nothing to be excited about, I just realized it’s been an entire quarter since I last posted.

Glad spring is here, though I’m already mildly stressed about the yard. There are a thousand weeds poking up through the gravel in the back, which I do not want to either pull by hand nor poison with herbicide. Owning land is probably more fun when you’re genuinely a garden sort of person.

Been collecting landscaping business cards for awhile; finally sat down and texted all of them today because the lawn’s at least 10″ tall and himself is making zero moves to mow it. One place responded and said they’d take a look in the morning and let me know what they’d charge. (Himself gets to pay for it, of course, and I might even take an admin fee for arranging it.) I ain’t livin’ in the ghetto-ass bad yard-lookin’ house, fuck that. If he ain’t gonna mow it, somebody who isn’t me is.

This administration is stressing me out. Looks like the economy very well might collapse? What the fuck. I mean, I already can’t afford to ever retire, but I am very accustomed to my global supply chain and don’t want to wake up one morning to find I’m too poor for exotic, expensive, rich-people things like coffee or, I don’t know, soy sauce. Or clothes. Or any of the other shit we do not make in this country and cannot make again within a reasonable amount of time because, as any moron knows, building these things from first principles is complex, expensive, and time consuming, and when you’re done you need an entire class of people who will agree, for whatever reason, to work in factories, and in this country that ain’t the white people.

It really is bizarre how deeply fucking racist much of America actually is, when you get down to it. They voted to burn the country to the ground not on policy (the “policy,” if it can even truly be called that, was released pre-election, and it laid out exactly what they’re doing now: disappearing citizens without due process, destroying the government, defunding the post office, social security, and medicare, and knocking science and medicine back a hundred years) but more because they wanted to be able say the n-word without normal people snubbing them for it. People voted for fucking fascism because they didn’t want anybody who isn’t white and straight to, what? Be treated as human beings?

They all say it was about economics, but nobody rational would vote to have their retirement fund in free fall. It’s not Christian and it’s not conservative, because for those you’d need love and intelligence: two qualities conspicuously absent from any of these people.

Anyway.

The patio cat I liked, the probably-mildly-brain-damaged-from-exposure-or-malnutrition cat, got chased away by another patio cat. This replacement patio cat was a large, mature, street-wise tuxedo cat, and he brought a tiny juvenile cat around. She turned out to be female, of course, and I knew I should trap her and get her fixed, but I didn’t, and now she’s visibly pregnant. Long story short, there are about to be patio kittens.

These I will, swear to dog, trap and get fixed. For fuck’s sake. Even if I have to pay for it myself.

The little hardwood sapling my aunt gave me survived the winter! It’s beginning to bud! I slow watered it this afternoon. I like to imagine it twenty years from now, shading the back yard and the roof. Can’t imagine being here myself to see that, but still. It’s a really nice thought.

I was offended to perceive I was coming down with something the week before last, because I’d had Covid only six months before, but come down with something I did. Missed three days of work, had to go to the walk-in clinic. Some kind of bonkers sinus infection, maybe, or a lung infection or something. They never really know, but I got the good cough syrup and a course of antibiotics. I asked the doc about prescribing them for something that probably isn’t bacterial and about placebo, but she told me that a greater percentage of people respond to antibiotics under these circumstances than you’d expect if the effect were only placebo! So, mystery bacteria! Or something. They don’t know.

I felt better after two doses of antibiotics. But no way to know if it was because of them or if it would have happened anyway!

Today I did dishes, make an extremely elaborate sandwich, did laundry, watered the hardwood tree, got groceries, paid bills, found someone to mow, and did full sadhana. Give me gold stars, please!

Christmas 2024

Life, Spiritual

In which I’m blogging because I feel obligated to do so. Happy holidays!

I logged in because it’s well past time to blog again, but, well. Eh. Not much going on. I work the same job, live in the same house, am in the same relationship, eat the same foods.

Since my last post one feral ditchcat left and another appeared, I did a cheese class at a winery, and I continue to feel guilty about not having better oral hygiene habits. I go on diets because I’m fat, but dieting sucks so I go back off again. I finally finished knitting a pair of socks I cast on when I still lived in Iowa (that is to say, in 2006) but I prefer to wear the wool ones my mom gave me for Christmas a year or two ago. They’re machine-made but they’re warm as fuck.

I spend far too much time scrolling Bluesky.

I used my typewriter to address our Christmas cards! It was at least as if not easier than using a computer and printer, and probably faster. Plus it sounds cool.

We went to Seattle so I could attend a retreat, but of course my better half is agnostic so he just wandered around on a mini-vacation while I got my God on.

I have Tuesdays off and have watered the plants, tidied the whole house, and scrubbed the bathroom (including the mirror). For lunch I had Turkish eggs, which are fucking delicious. Tomorrow I have to make two enormous cheese platters for a company party, which should be fun. (That’s a lie; I’m tired of making cheese platters. The rest of the staff “don’t know how” and it nearly always gets left to me, as if putting salami on a plate is somehow mysterious or onerous? I’ve shown everybody how to do it but it somehow remains “my” job, and the owner seems perpetually aggravated about them but never cancels them. It’s weird enough to take the fun out. Anyway.)

Now that work bottles heavy cream, I’m even more of a dairy snob. My favorite way to have coffee now is pour-over with a glug of the good stuff. I’d have some now except I’m out of cream and too lazy (read: it’s cold out) to go get more.

Living room has lights and our little fake tree is up. Looks very Christmassy! I’ve totally got Christmas spirit this year but have to work both Tuesday and Thursday that week so it won’t be much of a break.

1955 Royal HH

Life

In which IT’S HERE!

Week before last I was surfing Amazon and the reviews for the modern typewriter are pretty terrible. They’re made of cheap parts because to make them of good stuff would make them cost far too much, and nearly every model has a review that says “This is cheap shit, I hate it, just buy a vintage one because they’re much higher quality.”

So I emailed my family to ask if anybody had an old typewriter lying around, and no one did (save an aunt who had an electric that smoked when she plugged it in), so I found one on eBay and I bid on it.

And won.

It seems that old typewriters go for $30 to $800 dollars, and there doesn’t appear to be any fucking rhyme or reason—some are as-is, some are fully checked over by pros and certified working, some are rare, some are common, but regardless of status, somebody online is gonna offer you something for $675 that goes for $55 elsewhere. I assume greed and stupidity, since that’s what drives eBay pricing in general, I think.

Anyway, this thing was listed by a Goodwill in California, and the photos were weird (as in not taken by a typewriter guy) and the description was non-existent. I got it for $40 including shipping, so even if it was a paperweight I could still get that back just by selling the keys and platen.

It arrived today and it’s heavy as hell; I routinely carry 20 pound wheels of cheese around, and this thing is much heavier than that, so maybe 30, 35 pounds? I can’t be bothered to go weigh it on the bathroom scale, but it’s a lot for something you put on your desk.

It’s quite dirty and dusty, is missing a 4 key, and needs some work, but I think I’ll be able to use it after some TLC. Main issue is that I’ve only briefly gotten the keys to hit the platen. There’s some margin setting or other I haven’t figured out yet that’s preventing it from actually typing except during that brief period before I kept fucking with more settings, and there’s also something messed up about the key arms for 8 and J, but I bet that can be fixed with some judicious needle nosed pliering.

Oh, and it’s short one proprietary ribbon spool. Replacements, according to what I’ve seen so far, run about $35 each. OF COURSE. (But once you have two proprietary spools you can wind on any old ribbon you want, forever.)

Anyway, here’s the manual:

So pretty soon I’ll have a working typewriter, for some reason I can’t defend. I mean, I don’t need a typewriter, because I have a computer and a printer, and I’ll probably only use the thing for the occasional envelope I can’t be bothered to slot into the printer or recipe card I don’t want to hand-write, and it’s big and weighs a ton and would be an absolute bitch to get rid of again. It’ll be fun to clean and tune and get working again, as a project, but I already have several hobbies I’m just not doing…

Anyway, I’m going to go brush and vacuum it out and get to cleaning it a little before I go back to bed.

Sick Day

Life, Spiritual, Travel

In which I slept until one o’clock.

The Yeti is off at Microsoft for a week-long tech conference, and I have a cold or something.

Started out yesterday feeling tired after a good night’s sleep, swollen glands, and a vaguely sore throat. Went to work, came home. Woke up today feeling so incredibly meh I don’t even have words for it; took the day off work and went back to sleep until the afternoon.

Now I’m vertical and outside a cup of pour-over coffee with fresh creamery cream, and about to finally do my morning meditation, once I’m done writing here. Then I’m planning to eat scrambled eggs, cheese grits, and sliced tomato.

I put in five tomato plants this year. Two are struggling and look pitiful, but one of them has given me three very nice and dearly won tomatoes. The other three plants are absolutely jubilant about their situation, and in a week I’ma have way too fucking many tomatoes.

I’ll probably freeze a bunch for cooking. (A thousand years ago, I stayed with a woman who was too busy to can one summer, so she just quartered her tomatoes, froze them on a sheet pan, and then stuck them in ziplocks. I cooked tons of chilis, soups, and curries with those frozen tomatoes over that winter, they were so handy and much more wonderful than canned tomatoes! [That woman later went on to move into my ex-house, bed my ex-husband, and hate me—there was some online bitchiness at some point—idk really, but they never returned any of my Christmas cards.] Point is, everybody has something to teach you, even if they later choose to weirdly betray you for mediocre dick.)

Just logged into my main credit card—the one with the awesome points that I use for absolutely everything—and there were two $16 charges from something called Maya Mobile, so I reported them as fraud… and now I’m cardless for five days, waiting for a replacement. All over barely thirty bucks. WTF.

Aaaaand I have to quit smoking again. About a year ago, I picked up a pack just to have one or two, for fun and nostalgia; of course that slowly, slowly escalated, until last week I was very nearly up to a pack a day again. So I very deliberately did not smoke one day, charged up my vape batteries, and am getting my head set to Quit Smoking yet again. Fucking pain in the ass, I dunno why I decided to do this to myself. Heh.

The Yeti bought himself a new computer, finally, after eight years, and I got the old one! It’s finicky, but to sweeten the deal he also bought me a second monitor, so it looks really cool and is far more computer than I need, considering I never compute and only use the browser these days.

After deciding I had to go to India to see my Sadguru because the inside of my head was totally full of shit, it was announced that She was coming here. (!!!) There were barely three weeks between the announcement and the Seattle programs, so I guess it was a fairly sudden decision. I went, and it was the cleansing, nourishing wonder I so desperately needed it to be. Five years without darshan fucking sucked.

I volunteered for greeter seva for the first program, and heard that we were only allowed one darshan per tour stop (I have no idea now if that was true or just a rumor), so I didn’t get a token the first day. After satsang I served lunch and then went to the kitchen and made a ton of puris.

My darshan was during Devi Bhava, and there’s no point in attempting to describe the interiority of it, but Her sari was gold, She said “My daughter, my daughter” in my ear, it was of typical length, and otherwise, externally, a completely average darshan. It was not like the time I got to be there in Her arms while she had a very long conversation with another devotee and some swamis; it was not like the time I was doing lap seva and suddenly the stage was mysteriously, impossibly, and incredibly empty for what felt like minutes while She made fun of Puffer’s awesome sari-fabric suit. It was just a normal darshan. And perfect. And seared into my mind for eternity. To know and be known, to love and be loved, to be grounded in That.

I kinda wish I’d just abandoned my job and my home and my life and just… gone on the rest of the U.S. tour, like so many others do, but I didn’t. I never do. I’m too shy of God to just blurt out “Let me COME WITH YOU, You’re the only thing that matters!” She’d probably send me home anyway. Go home and meditate, do your sadhana, silly.

I know most religion is political bullshit, that most people can’t tell the difference between politics and religion because of it, and that the majority of humans have yet to be able to want what it really is, but I no longer care. Most of my favorite people are atheist or agnostic, and that’s okay. I know an Avatar, I have seen God born into a human body and experienced what that is, and my gratitude is abject. Nobody else needs to care.

Hello!

Life

In which nothing.

I keep forgetting to blog because it’s 2024 and people don’t read blogs anymore, which means there’s no engagement, which means that thing in your head that tells you to blog is now telling you to spend three solid hours scrolling Bluesky instead.

Anyway, it’s Monday, my day off, and I’ve gotten through 8 of the 15 items on my to-do list, two of which required me to actually work my actual job (I do the bi-monthly newsletter for the creamery, and also I have some thing tomorrow where somebody hired me to do a half hour presentation sans AV equipment on cheese and serve a cheese platter, and nobody can speak extemporaneously for thirty fucking minutes without a slide deck unless they’re defending their pHd or whatever so I had to cram a little).

I have all the doors and most of the windows wide open but it’s not exactly warm enough for that so I’m wearing socks and a wool sweater and will shortly be drinking hot tea.

I made soup for lunch and ate it with some homemade bread.

I’m re-reading old Jeeves on my Paperwhite.

We watched Fallout together last week and it was good.

I ordered a second watch with a date display, because I keep looking at my watch when I need to know what day it is, for some reason. I’ve been staunchly anti-watch for literal decades but now I’m a watch guy, I guess? Anyway it’s a Timex and it was something like 63% off and it shows the day name and number and it fits the silicone watch bands I already have so I’ll be able to wear it to work without damaging the leather band it comes with. I’m pretty excited about Wednesday, which is when it’s supposed to arrive.

Apropos of nothing, here’s a meal I made and ate two months ago:

It was delicious!

Shit, I haven’t posted in months!

Life, Spiritual, Travel

In which there’s an update.

I used to find it much easier to post regularly when I both had things to bitch about and felt fine about bitching about things. But now I think it’s not that great a habit, and also whatever I might have to complain about is less a problem and more an incredibly trivial nothingburger. I mean, my habit is to login and complain (see my last few posts) and it’s a boring and dumb habit I’d like to break.

These days I don’t have much to bitch about. We have a house, we have each other, our jobs are nice, the weather’s comparatively mild (compared to Minneapolis). I finally bought myself a nice bicycle last year. Neither of us are unwell. All our bills are paid.

I do get annoyed by trivial shit, of course; I do have a mind, and it does decide to fixate on stupid shit from time to time. (Lately it tells me it’s unfair that my feet should hurt so much, that I hate hearing the neighborhood dogs bark, that my partner is stupid for not being able to read my mind, that I have to do so many dishes, and that work is exactly as it has always been which is suddenly somehow intolerable.

Minds are, if you really listen to them, quite stupidly invested in keeping you unhappy about shit.)

I’m excited about spring. Can’t wait to see the dogwoods in bloom! Somehow the tulips survived the landscaping and graveling of the backyard and came up through the rocks?! The first one has just bloomed, even! How the fuck did that even happen?

My aunt gave me two saplings, little ones that volunteered at her place, which I had planted last fall, a hardwood and a fast-growing shade tree, and I’m hoping they survived the winter. Those two extremely cold weeks last winter have me worried about them.

Looking forward to getting herbs and tomato starts out, too.

Not looking forward to the dog days, but they’re still months and months away. (I prefer the cold now, because you can layer up against it. But the heat in the desert at the end of summer is just relentless.)

Am so glad about the return of the light!

I think it might be time for me to finally go to India. Part of me feels like somehow I should have already been, and all of me feels like I’m certainly not getting any younger and travel’s certainly only going to get less comfortable as time goes by. And Amma doesn’t seem to be returning to world tours. And my job would almost certainly take me back after even a whole month’s absence. And I just got my passport renewed. So I’m really thinking about it, in earnest. And not thinking about how planes have begun to fall out the sky after decades of immoral stock buy-backs bullshit.

In unrelated, weird news, when I logged in to write this post I found three comments of the “go kill yourself you stupid fat bitch” variety waiting to be moderated, left on some old Covid-era posts. Some internet-poisoned, scientifically illiterate Rogan fanboi stranger has come back after literal years to follow up on his shitty comments on my blog!

Oh, well, I guess it’s my own fault for being a woman on the internet. My bad.