Category Archives: Life

m0N3Y

Admissions

In which LOL MY MIND THO.

What’s the word for that psychological condition in which, after you quit a job and receive your final paycheck and have no income, you suddenly find yourself wanting, practically needing, to spend money on inane shit?

I always have this! Every time I’m unemployed.

Well, shit, no money coming in, let’s eat out and go to bars and shit I should buy this dress, right?

(I mean, I already have a job offer in Washington, so I’m only temporarily unemployed and not rife with uncertainty, and we have savings, but all I want to do is BUY SHIT lol. I think the point is sorta tangentially related to UBI: financial uncertainty, even mild and temporary, seems to have an effect on the way the mind works.)

Moving and my mind

Admissions

In which I very nearly gave myself a panic attack.

We’re still over a week away from loading the shipping container — and we’re at least half packed — but my mind just served up this whole entire OMFG WE’RE NOT READY, WE CAN’T DO THIS, IT’LL NEVER WORK, IT’LL BE A NIGHTMARE thing about moving because minds, it turns out, are stupid.

I mean, it did everything it could to freak me out and make me feel bad. WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF, IT WON’T FIT IN THE CONTAINER, WE’LL HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT TO THROW AWAY!!! IT’LL BE A DISASTER, THIS FEELS TERRIBLE AND SCARY, I’M INCOMPETENT, IT’S AN ABJECT FAILURE!

I had to google the dimensions of the box again and look at a bunch of pictures again to convince myself of what I already knew, like, three months ago: without any furniture but the bed, all our stuff will totally fit, plus there’ll be overflow room in the car if necessary.

And fuck, mind, so what if we have to toss something. What do we own beyond the file box with all our papers in that’s truly that important, anyway?

Honestly, the real trouble is that no one wants to buy the couch so we’ll have to figure out what to do with it, and he really needs to sell his desk. (My desk is already mostly apart and can go in the dumpster with his office chair.)

It’s fine, mind, and in two and a half weeks we’ll be snugged up in the ancestral pile surrounded by family and friends.

Stupid mind. Jesus.

Ten. Bucks.

Spiritual

In which there’s some cash.

Homeless chick rode up to me on her bike during my walk to work today, very conciliatory, sorry to bother, said she’d just woken up in the park, mid-afternoon (I assume she was awake most of the dark hours, perhaps to move on, perhaps to watch her stuff), only had three cents, was, so sorry, very hungry.

“Oh, you need some money? Cash?” I asked. She didn’t even respond coherently, really, was trying to speak but mostly there was a sort of wave of OH GOD YES SOME CASH WOULD BE SO, SO WONDERFUL vibe.

So I pulled up short (halted my rapid waddle down the sidewalk), pulled out my wallet, and gave her ten bucks.

It was tips from my job, free money for me anyway. She thanked me, obviously had only expected a dollar or two, at most, started to explain why she needed it, like desperate people do, to justify their need, our collective human need, but I said, “I’m a bit late, on my way to work, didn’t leave quite on time, can’t slow down. But you have a good lunch!” (Because I hadn’t. Left on time, that is.)

She said she’d eat WELL, SO well, gave me a “God BLESS you!” (which I’ll take, thank you, beloved Guru), and let me power walk on. “Thank you!” she called. “Be well!” I called back. “Eat something nice!”

Mentioned I’d done this when I arrived at work, gave a homeless woman ten bucks; co-worker said, predictably, “Ten bucks?! You shouldn’t give them money.”

(Them? THEM?! It’s a human, a person.)

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I replied. “Adults, even the homeless, can safely decide what to do with ten bucks. She needs food, she’ll get food. She needs beer, she’ll get beer. Shampoo. Tampons. She knows far better than I do what she needs. Jesus.”

Maybe she’s an addict. FINE, she should BUY WHATEVER SHE NEEDS TO TREAT THAT. It’s a condition. It’s ten bucks.

Maybe she’s not homeless but has the balls to LOOK homeless and convincingly approach a total stranger in Uptown in broad daylight for money? FINE. TEN BUCKS for the performance, well done, good show, huge balls.

The whole “don’t give THEM money, THEY will hurt themselves with it, don’t know what THEY really need” thing is paternalistic, classist crap. Fuck the charities. Nobody knows better than the actual person what the fuck they need. I mean, can you even imagine being homeless and needing, for example, tampons? Or hemorrhoid cream? Or lice shampoo? You can’t beg for that, but you can beg for food.

Yes, on occasion you may get the vibe wrong, and give an asshole grifter ten bucks. SO THE FUCK WHAT. In the grand scheme, you give way more to professional grifters than you do to the homeless. Most of the time, you’re buying an actual human being lunch, beer, tampons, soap, pet food, or yourself a “God bless!”

Give the ten fucking bucks, if you have it, which, in this mostly cashless world, I actually did, today.

A lovely day off

Life

In which I’ve checked some boxes on my to-do list.

Slept a solid 8 hours… in a row! (Lately I’ve been sleeping in shifts. Bit annoying, really. Had to work Saturday’s 11-7 shift on a mere four hours sleep, because I woke up at five in the morning and never got back to sleep.)

Woke up and meditated.

Made the bed, started the dishes, brewed myself a latte, journaled a bit. Fountain pens! Washi tape!

Looked at flights for this year’s Amma retreat and rescheduled my hotel dates. Listed the couch and the air conditioner for sale on Craigslist. Cleaned the toilet bowl. Gave himself a basket of laundry to do and a short grocery list to shop.

Made and ate a cheesy, saucy bean tostada.

(It was delicious.)

Today is a rainy, green and cool and overcast and lovely, day. Birdsong. Open windows, breeze.

I’ve got some garbanzos cooking for Moroccan stew for dinner!

Currently re-watching an episode of Firefly again because it’s good and it’s there. Plan to read later; most of the way through Doctorow’s latest and just bought a Delaney. Also have a trilogy sitting on my Kindle I bought a while ago still needing to be read, too.

Okay, off to chop veggies for the stew!

UPDATE: Stew!

Really delicious! I used freshly ground cumin, and added a bit of a few extra spices (ginger, cinnamon, paprika, and black pepper) because WHY NOT.

Foliage

Life

In which spring has FINALLY fucking SPRUNG in the 55408!

I took this while walking to work this morning:

The trees here leaf out so quickly you can hear them grow. They start late, so they have to!

What Embo Did While Drinking Pink Bubbles!!!

Guest Post

In which I’m reposting an hilarious series of texts Embo sent me last week, because she said I could.

If you’re me, you have excellent friends. And people who have excellent friends occasionally get text galleries LIKE THIS:

Look at that clean-ass living room.

And that punk-ass beer fridge! LOVE IT.

Painting?! VOLUNTARY PAINTING PROJECTS?! Mind blown.

You could eat off that terlet. Sparkling!

She got an awful lot done for someone who was day drinking! Goblinbox stans Embo!

You’re not a skeptic, for fuck’s sake, you’re anti-vaxx

Health, Soapbox

In which I know they can’t be persuaded until they’re ready so I’m not bothering to post this on Facebook, where I wrote it in response to someone’s anti-vaxx post, but I didn’t want to delete it.

The risks of being exposed to diseases are known, and they are horrible.

The risks of vaccination are vanishingly low, verging on non-existent outside of allergies or contamination (generally associated with lack of refrigeration).

We have decade upon decade upon decade of proof that vaccines are both safe and effective. Vaccines truly are one of the best things humanity has ever invented! They’re amazing and wonderful and gorgeous! Vaccines have saved millions of humans from disease, disability, and death! Unlike so much of the shitshow that is modern life, VACCINES ARE ACTUALLY WORTH CELEBRATING.

We know that vaccines do not cause autism. We know they do not cause “immune disorders” (this term is vague and medically meaningless). We do know they prevent disease and that they save lives.

To be a vaccine “skeptic” — without actually being an epidemiologist or biologist or in some way genuinely qualified to meaningfully contribute to the science — is to be anti-vaccine.

And to be anti-vaccine is to actively contribute to disease and death. Full stop. You don’t get your shots, you don’t get your kids their shots, you encourage others not to get their shots, and then we get ants. No, sorry, not ants: we get FUCKING MEASLES. A disfiguring, miserable disease that can not only kill you, but depresses your immune system for years, making you susceptible to diseases you’d otherwise fight off.

Your decision to cling to ignorance because it feeds your ego to “know something” the unwashed masses do not is the opposite of wisdom, the opposite of loving compassion, and the height of hubris.

“My intention is to allow others to make their own choices” is a pat set of anti-vaccine weasel words. What you’re really saying is this: “I mistakenly (and probably in good faith, for what it’s worth) believe outright lies, and I cling to them. And, even though my beliefs are demonstrably wrong, I expect my privilege to be respected in spite of my ignorance, the whole of the scientific process, and the overwhelming preponderance of evidence.”

People on chemo are catching measles because of the anti-vaccine movement. Babies are literally dying. Not very many yet, true, but this suffering IS PREVENTABLE.

The idea that letting a few people die in order to retain the privilege of flaunting one’s google university degree is AWFUL, and it absolutely breaks my heart to witness so many otherwise intelligent and loving people using their free time to be so-called vaccine-skeptics.

It’s a hobby that is LITERALLY killing human beings.

And yes, it’s a hobby. None of you are doctors or scientists or qualified in any way to do anything more than read shit online. And yet you “know” better than a over century of scientists and doctors and the self-correcting whole of scientific process?

No, you don’t know better. You’re not in on some secret. What you know is what you’ve read, and what you’ve read is garbage written by snake oil salesmen who want you to buy their cleanses and herbs and books and unregulated, useless supplements. Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine not because he knew too much, but because he was an unethical bastard trying to sell an alternate vaccine he would have made money from. All the rest of the anti-vaxx brigade are shady at best, from Oz to Chopra to Mike Adams to Scudamore, and they’re all selling you something.

Supplements are a multi-billion dollar industry, as are “alternative” health books and retreats and seminars. The ridiculous irony of the anti-vaxx movement is that it makes more than actual vaccines do, but screams “Shill!” whenever presented with facts.

The anti-vaxx movement is like Trump: everything it accuses others of is something it is doing itself.

Holy shit, I guess it’s happening?

Decisions, Life, Moving

In which we’ve decided to move!

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m not a fan of the weather out here. There’s no spring or fall, just sweltering, muggy summer, and blizzard season.

Living in Uptown is kinda cool in that there are art stores and coffee shops and diners and bars and bookstores all within a few blocks, but it’s also very loud, never dark, and pretty expensive. We’ve had two bikes stolen from inside our locked apartment building. And there was that episode with the goddamned fire extinguisher, too. I mean, it’s city living.

But we’re not really city people. We don’t take advantage of concerts or museums. We don’t bar crawl or see shows. We barely even go out to eat. We’ve been to two Twins games in five years.

We haven’t put down any roots or made any friends. We’re just here for his job, and that’s it. Nothing else ties us to Minneapolis. I’ve been getting Meetup emails for years, but everything I’d like to go to is always when I’m at work. I never did find a band.

They, his job, sent him to Illinois for half a month, and when he got back he said he hadn’t gotten pissed off at all driving around Springfield (pop. 115k), but since being back in Minneapolis he’s just been aggravated. Hates his commute. Said he’d like to go live in a smaller town. Didn’t much have a preference of which smaller town, isn’t really interested in moving back to Michigan, knows I’d like to go back to Washington state.

So. We’re moving across the country when our lease is up at the end of next month. I’m so fucking happy I could scream!

Plan right now is to get rid of/sell our furniture because none of it is particularly fine or worth hauling (except, hopefully, the microwave cart, which is really cool, and the bedroom mirror, which is also really cool), box up the remaining stuff (clothes, quilts, towels, hobbies, kitchen, and a prodigious amount of electronics: I’m estimating about 800 pounds/40 boxes), and either tow it or have it shipped, and drive to Walla Walla. Crash at the ancestral pile for the time it takes to get jobs. Live in the Pac NW again!

Well, “again” for me. He’s always lived in the Midwest, being from here.

Have a social life again! Have family force us to show up for Easter brunches or whatever! Go to open mics. Rent a house with a porch (I mean, on the one hand I’d love to live with G’ma forever, but on the other, one does like having her own kitchen, and S. definitely likes his privacy). Buy a bicycle. Find a new couch!

Truth be told, I want to live in the side apartment, with the tiny gas stove and the patio with the steel furniture, but my brother’s still living in it, though he does speak constantly of wanting to leave.

I want to get a part-time job in a tasting room. If I can sell cheese, I can certainly sell wine. I want him to find a nice job in Walla Walla (fingers crossed we don’t end up in Pasco or Spokane) with banker’s hours and holidays off and the easiest commute ever.

Suddenly my To Do list is MASSIVE. Move across the country in two months! Egad!

We’ll be taking a lot of trips to Goodwill in the next eight weeks.

I need to go post some furniture on Craig’s List.

Alone

Admissions, Love & Marriage

In which this is really weird.

He’s gone for two weeks, and I have the place to myself. Off managing the integration of a satellite office for work. I can do whatever I want! Including nothing! I don’t even have to make dinner if I don’t want to! I can do absolutely NOTHING AT ALL if I like!

Except the dishes are dirty, there’s still a load of laundry left, the floor could really use sweeping, and the throw rugs haven’t been washed in most of a year. There are also a couple bags of recycle to take out, and the stovetop needs a scrubbing because it’s greasy and gathering dust and looks gross. I should clean all my random shit off the table and do a general tidy. Nothing’s been dusted in months, either.

In other words, there’s a list of chores to do like there always is, this is just another Monday like any other, but now I’m also feeling sad and lonely. He won’t be home at six. He won’t be around at all. It’s just me and the apartment.

There’s still snow on the ground, barely a quarter of the lawns are showing green, and there are no flowers. The trees are barely starting to bud.

I’m not on the schedule at work until Friday. (There’s a new checker in training on the liquor side, so I’m guessing that M. and T. are getting extra hours in the cheese shop to keep their F/T schedules? I dunno. All I know is that I have four days off in a row, which is pretty fucking great, really.)

Except I’m home alone, and there’s nowhere to go, nobody to see. I could go out for a $6 coffee, but I have espresso and dairy here, and I really should finish the whole milk before it has a chance to go off. I could take myself out for dinner on Lyndale or Eat Street later, but I have a couple slices of pizza to eat, plus Indian food from the other night, plus stuff for nachos, plus unused produce that’s almost a week old that needs to be thrown into the Instant Pot before it turns to sludge. (Wow. Not to mention some lentil soup in the fridge, and two or three soups in the freezer.) In short, I have a fuckton of food to eat. No need to go out and spend money.

I could walk over to the art supply store, but nobody needs stationery less than I do.

Could go to the bike shop, but have I really decided to buy a bike this year? I love the old Schwinn, but I didn’t ride it at all last year. I should just sell it on Craigslist. And my work commute is two blocks, and I’d have to find somewhere to park a bike while I’m working. It’s a liquor store on Lake street in front of a bus stop; I bet bikes get vandalized and stolen from there all the time. Better to just walk. Don’t need a bike for my work commute.

I don’t need a bike at all, technically. I mean, I want one. Rides to the lake or the global market are really lovely… during the three weeks each “spring” and “fall” when I’m willing to ride a bike around here.

There just aren’t enough days per year in that sweet spot between 45 and 75 degrees. I don’t mind a little rain, but fuck biking in mud and snow, and absolutely fuck biking in 80+ heat and humidity.

Today would actually be a good day for a ride! It’s 51F and heavily overcast, and while there is snow on the ground all the pavement’s clear, and the Greenway looked free of snow and ice when I walked over it yesterday. Buuuuuut my bike’s got two flats, is too tall for comfort, and where would I go? The park around the lakes is grey and ugly as fuck because THERE IS NO SPRING IN THIS GODFORSAKEN PART OF THE COUNTRY, and I don’t really ride for its own sake–I greatly prefer it as a method of getting somewhere.

(I’m actually surprised it’s in the 50’s out there; all the pedestrians on 28th are wearing parkas and hats, so I thought it was colder.)

Could go to a movie, but I have a fiber internet connection and streaming everything so putting on pants seems like a lot of effort.

Everyone I know is at work so there’s no one to chat with online. Notre-Dame de Paris en proie aux flammes, and my president is a tit.

I don’t want to fucking do laundry.

E. tells me that when her husband travels for work she gets drunk and has a cry the first night he’s gone; I thought that was weird until last night when I got home from work and S. was in Illinois for the rest of the month and I felt heavy-duty sadness and separation; I guess I’ve never been with anybody before I liked to have around more than I liked privacy and space. I was always relieved, before, when whoever I was living with fucked off for a few days or a couple weeks. I didn’t expect to feel so fucking sad.

I mean, S. leaves every closet, cupboard, and drawer he uses ajar, snores sometimes, and often sleeps in the very center of the damn bed, but that’s really the worst of him. (Well, that and his habit of saying he’s “going to order us food” and then having to read multiple menus and “think about it” for three hours first, until I’m starving and end up eating cheese straight out of the fridge.) It’s not unfair to say he’s a bit boring in some ways, but it’s also true that every time I walked into the other room last night and saw that it was empty and dark, I felt absolutely hollow. No hugs or smooches. No “I love you”s. I mean, we chatted online, but he’s not here.

We were apart a few nights last year when I went to DC to see Amma, but other than that we’ve never been apart more than the length of a workday since I got here, five years ago tomorrow. You get used to a person, don’t you.

Oh, and part of what made yesterday and today so melancholy is likely The Curse. This cycle was 44 days long, and I had nearly a week of PMS symptoms (irritability, bloating, cramps) before I finally started bleeding, so there’s a whole hormonal component affecting my emotional wisdom. (If you can help it, don’t start your period the day before your favorite person leaves town for half a month; it’ll make you weepy.)

So, what will I do? Likely fuck-all. I’ve made the bed and a latte. I’m online, at my desk. I’ll probably surf Twitter and stream shit I’m barely interested in watching until I get hungry enough to go nuke something; then it’ll be dark and because I slept badly last night and stayed in bed until mid-afternoon I won’t be able to go to bed early, so I’ll just keep sitting here feeling weird and alone and not even getting anything checked off my to-do list.

Odds are I’ll go get a cocktail or two, wearing a knit hat because my hair’s dirty and I won’t bother to wash it, then come home and fall asleep listening to 15-year-old music on my iPod next to a basket of dirty laundry.

The Title Would Go Here If I’d Written One

Life

In which the weather’s weird.

It’s 3:01 pm on April 11th. It’s overcast. It’s… hailing? There are several inches of snow on the ground. Earlier today, there was thunder.

What the fuck.

Here’s my lunch:

That’s leftover cucumber raita, basmati rice, and chana masala from last night’s dinner, with some dal I just made.

(I can’t stop making this dal recipe. It’s DELICIOUS. It’s super easy. This is, like, my fourth time making it. So good.)

The bed’s made, and I’ve got my laundry corralled in the basket to take down to the laundry room when-and-if I ever stand up and walk away from this stupid desk where I’m blogging and watching the first season of Get Krack!n. It’s a couple years old, but those Aussie chicks are droll and tight and hilarious.

I got four days off in a row. It’s glorious! Much sleeping and cooking and laundry. And snow-avoidance.

Sunday, Scott goes to Illinois for work for two weeks. We’ve only been apart three nights — or was it four? — in the past five years, so this’ll be weird. (We’ve been shacked up five entire years on the 16th. He’ll be in Illinois on that date, so I’ll buy myself a pizza! We’ll probably Skype or something. Five years!)