In which I do an op-ed.
There’s a Twitter feed, called Well Regulated Militia (find it at @Well_Regulated_), that posts about nothing but the gun-related incidents and accidents that befall our, well, “militia.” Here’s a common example of its content:
“A member of our well regulated militia sleeps with a loaded gun under his pillow. His 2 year old son crawls into bed with him, finds the gun, and shoots himself. He dies at the hospital.”
The takeaway is that guns kill, even without human intent. All the time. Totally debunks the whole “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” bullshit.
Guns have one purpose: to propel a bullet at high speed into things, particularly flesh. Yes, you can kill with a car or a plane or a knife, but all of those things — cars, planes, knives — have other, primary, purposes. You can’t get to work or Europe in a gun, or make dinner with one.
Guns are dangerous tools, and it turns out they’re unsecured a shocking amount of the time.
While there are very good reasons to own guns, a great many gun owners obviously do not need, or know how to properly use or secure, their guns. (Because if you needed your gun, it wouldn’t just be lying around, now, would it.)
There’s also a really long thread by members of the armed forces (under @iAmTheWarax, if you want to find it), who are rigorously trained to handle guns, who still fuck up regularly because even highly trained humans are, well, fallible. Guns should just not be lying around, for fuck’s sake, because they’re dangerous.
You need to get a license to drive a car; you should also need to get one to purchase, own, and keep a gun.
I don’t want to ban guns, or remove them from all owners, not at all.
But I do want gun owners to assert that they need one (even if it’s just to shoot rabbits in the garden), that they’re mentally competent, and that they’re trained to handle and secure one.
Submit some forms (your shooting certifications, your completed safety class, your gun safe receipt), take a written test. Re-up every decade. Bureaucracy, used for its proper purpose. Will the occasional qualified applicant be denied gun ownership? Probably. Will the masses who shouldn’t be own guns be denied? Yes.
Will some bad guys have guns anyway? Yes, but they’ll be outliers, just like unlicensed drivers are outliers, just like unlicensed doctors are outliers, just like unlicensed anythings are outliers.
But IT WILL HELP. We need to regulate gun ownership in this nation.
In which it’s November the 6th.
In which my eBay order from China arrived today!
Okay, okay, OKAY: I have far too many fountain pens now!
In which I have thirteen inks!?
Well, this is my fountain pen ink collection. I don’t think I realized I had so many!
The hues I have are these:
Grey, horsetail brown, tundra green, teal, damson purple, rouge opera red, black, violet, apple green, orange yellow, rose pink, lavender blue, and syrah red.
The syrah and the tundra are both subtle and muted, and look great together — would be amazing for Christmas cards.
The J. Herbin inks are cheery and bright. (I haven’t tried the perle noire yet, but I expect it to be a true black rather than a grey, based on the swatches I’ve seen online.)
The Diamine grey is really light with an extra fine nib, so I’m going to put it in a pen with a broader or even a stub nib. Imagine it’ll look antique.
I love the horsetail. It’s an amazing, rich brown. It’s probably my favorite color; it and the syrah.
Haven’t tried the teal yet; need to clean a pen! Bought it to put in the swirled teal Wancai Mini:
(I also have some cartridges—a couple colors I purchased, and the rest that came packaged free with pens: black, black brown, black blue, blue, and red.)
I was just surfing for fountain pen inks, but I guess I don’t actually need any more! And I certainly don’t need any more fountain pens, but I have half a dozen cheap Chinese ones arriving next week anyway.
In which I whinge!
My feet hurt.
I’m glad of my new job because it forces my lazy self to move around, but MY FEET HURT! I just worked a seven-hour shift (wearing compression socks and squishy shoes, even) and MY FEET HURT!
My feet hurt! OW.
I did get a delicious sandwich half-off, though, so that was lovely. Oh, and I get a booze discount, too, so I got some Bailey’s and am totally gonna have Bailey’s in my coffee tomorrow!
In which there’s a repost, because I liked what I wrote.
My dad, no idiot, who has told me about his own experiences of the ineffable (while yet confusing “religion” with idiot American Christianity and considering himself an atheist), posted this on Facebook:
This was my reply:
Seriously, though, who believes in a God as a separate, remote, all-powerful entity in the ceiling, and not the whole of distributed consciousness? (We’re not the ancient Greeks, for fuck’s sake. We call it “weather” now, not “Zeus.”)
Children do, maybe, ideate such a “God” briefly, and also the pitifully indoctrinated, and the ignorant. Have pity on these, as you would on the idiots and the damaged, as you would on those who believe in ghosts or magic. They will either come to know better in their time, or are incapable of knowing better. Either way, let them be. (Unless they vote. Hah.)
Most atheist memes are raging against a “God” nobody worships, because truly that “God” is well known to be a caricature of a symbol of an icon of an idea of a koan, weakly and vaguely representing that inexpressible, ineffable state every conscious being knows intimately and yet seeks endlessly: love.
The truth is that the entity whose duty it is to feed those hungry and protect those kids and women from idiot ego’s bottomless and selfish hunger is that one who can perceive such suffering: You.
Me.
Us.
Every one of us.
We’re conscious, we’re consciousness; we’re consciousness embodied, distributed, and rarified, and WE’RE what’s capable of perceiving suffering and acting upon it.
We’re “God.” Us. We, alone (as far as we yet know) among all the elements of the manifest, immense, infinite physical universe, are the only ones who experience refined intelligence and consciousness. (Barring ET and cracking superluminal travel, of course, but I digress. So far, it’s just humans.)
In brief, bitching about suffering — and raging at some one-dimensional cartoon “god” nobody credible actually believes in — is really no more noble than ignoring suffering altogether. The problem is not with “God,” it is with that ridiculous definition of God as a thing apart from the world, an individual entity like our minds, separate and finite, capable of selfishness and laziness.
God is consciousness, or love. And infinite. This is plainly stated in most scriptures, but one has to, you know, actually put in the study time, in earnest, to learn it. Figuring out what “consciousness” means apart from our finite minds, knowing what the mystics know, takes time, introspection, and intense self-discipline.
I guarantee no earnest seeker thinks God is a white dude floating in the sky like a Marvel superhero.
TAT TVAM ASI: thou art That. (Or, as I learned it, lifted from a Beach Boys song: I am That, thou art That, all this is That.) Figuring out what that means is the only meaningful journey.
In which I’m blogging because I’m not scrolling Twitter.
TWITTER:
I waste a remarkable amount of time on Twitter. Used to enjoy it, but now it’s more a habit than a pleasure. Sometimes it’s fun, still, and there are quasi-meaningful interactions with other users, but most of it’s just crap: the absurdity that is the White House, the bad performance art that is Fox news, international news of wars, crimes against humanity, the occasional interesting tidbit about an old word or some science. But most of it is really just unadulterated crap: recycled jokes, married women saying mildly clever coquettish things for male attention, pet pics, ads, and vitriol.
Now it’s been “improved” into a site that does not show you content chronologically; you see others’ Likes in addition to their Retweets; and the mobile app some months ago started refreshing to the top on its own, hiding older content and re-displaying seen content.
That was annoying, so I’d switch to the site in a mobile browser. But now the browser version has started doing that, too. You’ll be reading a tweet, and the thing will just reset to the top on its own.
Too annoying. Tab closed.
GERMS:
It’s been, oh, around 72 hours or so since a co-worker showed up visibly ill and breathed all over everything, and I now feel what may be the beginnings of Coming Down With Something.
Am I irritated as fuck? Why yes, yes, I am! Stay home when you’re actively shedding goddamned germs, people, especially if you work in public!
There are people out there, like me, who JUST DON’T LIKE BEING SICK, thank you, and worse, there are those who will FUCKING DIE FROM THE COMMON COLD, and you might be breathing on their caregivers in your public job, so do your best to stop it from spreading. It’s your civic goddamned duty. If you can afford to work in Uptown, you can afford a couple days off when you’re contagious. Working while sick is not a praiseworthy sacrifice indicative of a good worth ethic, it’s rude and, at a stretch, quite possibly involuntary homicide.
BIRTHDAY:
My birthday is Saturday. I’ll be 50. No friends or family in the area, so no party. At least I won’t have to put up with macabre black bunting and balloons and over the hill jokes, but also, nobody’s planning shit, so, yeah? Not gonna say I’m not disappointed about not celebrating my big five-oh with a proper party. Nobody cares about 38 or 47, but 50?
It’s looking most likely at this point that I’ll be snot-filled and bed-ridden for the day, but if not, I’m considering requiring I be taken on a date to a jazz supper club about twenty minutes away. Wear a dress, some makeup, a cocktail ring, eat a $25 plate of food, come home. Sounds fun!
DISHES:
I have to do dishes at work now, so doing them at home is making me mad. I grumble about it under my breath.
It’s sorta like my internal monologue when I was married and infuriated, except my current partner actually, you know, supports me, so mostly I just want a professional sink and sprayer setup because domestic dishes are stupid.
CHILI:
I made three bean vegetarian chili today in the Instant Pot. Came out yummy!
WEIGHT:
Having a job that requires me to move around has not only destroyed my feet (ye gods they hurt!) but I think might be helping me lose a little weight. I haven’t taken my measurements or anything, but my gut seems slightly less gigantic.
At the very least, my Google Fit app pings me each shift to congratulate me for taking my 10k steps for the day! I mean, it’s not like I’ve become sporty, but compared to the nothing I’ve been doing the past three years, it’s an improvement. A painful one for my feet, sure (ye gods they hurt!), but hey.
WEATHER:
It cooled down from the 90’s! Wore a hoodie and a scarf the past two times I walked to and from work; tonight it’s rainy and cool and I have the window open and it smells nice!
PHONE:
My phone, which works excellently, is doing that things all phones do after a couple of years: it’s telling me its full.
I have a massive SD card in it, but apps bloat endlessly. Apps also flat-out refuse to work if they get old enough, so you have to let them update in order to even use them, and then one day your phone’s full.
App bloat pisses me off. I remember when devs would try to keep code small and efficient, but the expectation now is of endless hardware and processor improvements, so nobody cares. In a few months, my phone will start telling me it can’t update installed apps, and then I’ll spend half a year deleting things until I’m down to a quarter of what I’d actually like to have installed, and then I’ll need to buy a new phone.
Cell phones are marvels of technology, they truly are, but the expectation of endless hardware upgrades is just humanity being fucking wasteful and dumb.
CLINGS:
I cannot wait until next Monday because I’m going to put THESE up!
I adore me some holiday window clings, I truly do!
HOBBY:
My traveler’s notebook/fountain pen thing is still going strong. I have a dozen (cheap Chinese) fountain pens now (anybody who’d drop $700 on a pen is a weirdo), and a half dozen bottles of ink.
Look at this precious little lipstick-sized swirled teal mini fountain pen!
Occasionally I go over to the Java Hut and practice calligraphy over a latte, though only for fun; I have no intention or expectation of actually mastering it.
It’s pleasant and distracting; much better than scrolling Twitter!
In which I vent about the strange side effects of surviving for five decades.
I’ve been unusually healthy most of my life, I think.
Always felt robust and fine the majority of the time, barely even noticed my body. Had one surgery, wisdom teeth out, and a root canal. A ganglion cyst on my left wrist that cleared up on its own, as they do. No major broken bones or ER visits or in-patient hospital stays, or anything, really, beyond colds and flus. Have never had a regular GP my entire adult life.
I’ve felt truly fucking miserable, yes, but save the puke-inducing pain of a prolapsing uterine tumor it was always the mental pain of panic/anxiety rather than genuine physical malfunction.
Well, now my whole body is turning strange and foreign!
I have actual pain, low-level and fairly frequent: feet, knees, hips, and back. Usually from strain or extra activity, but sometimes just because I slept or moved weird. My hands have ached since I started banging them around at the cheese shop, and now I find it hard to squat during a 6 or 7 hour shift because it actually hurts to stand back up.
My hands and lower legs swell, especially at work (but also in a fairly predictable way throughout my cycle these past few years), and I now wear compression socks.
Today I walked home from work just past four o’clock — it’s a five minute walk, about two blocks — and, even though it’s mid-September, it’s 91F and humid and very sunny. The side of my body that was both sunward and exposed/not covered by my dress is burnt. Burnt! In five, six minutes! My left forearm and the outside of my left hand, and my neck and upper shoulder on the left side are red and hot and sunburned!
I mean, I do have very oily skin, and I’d just been working food service for seven hours so I’d been perspiring and was additionally covered with mist and damp from doing dishes, but damn! I used to tan; had to be out for hours to burn.
The other day I thought I had had an allergic reaction to some cucumber-aloe facial mist, but now I wonder if it might have been a reaction to the sun? I sat in the sun outside the coffee shop to write in my notebook, and was dark red everywhere the mist — and the sun — had been when I got home. (I rinsed off in cool water and the red cleared away, but now I’m not so sure it was the mist. I really don’t want to develop allergies; they sound like a pain in the ass.)
Aging is so, so strange. Total lesson in non-attachment, having one’s reliable, rarely-changing body come up with new and strange ways of being. I remember the first time my lower legs and ankles decided to swell up toward the end of my cycle (it was in my early 40’s), how freaked out and distressed I was at the idea that Something Was Very Wrong; now I’m used to it, more or less, I guess, but it doesn’t look particularly attractive.
And now instant sun burns? Really?! What the hell.
I’m also slowing down! I’d rather get up earlier and plod through my getting-ready-for-work process than haul ass through it, and I never thought my Type A ass would ever turn into such a person. And at work, well, now I’m glad I’ve always been focused on efficiency because I need that efficiency more than ever now. I find it hard to really rush, at least in a sustained way. (Most of my cheese shop co-workers are older folks, thank God, because I don’t think I could keep up with a bunch of 20-somethings anymore, and MAN is it fucking weird to say that.)
Being lazy and maybe working a bit slower than one should or could: that’s a decision. Now, my very best rush, when making sandwiches, for example, is not what it used to be, even if I do have a big cup of coffee in me. I have a hard time hauling ass like I used to, because I end up dropping shit or being messy and also I don’t really have the energy or ability to fully do so like I once did.
Then there’s also the questions of genes — how much of my experience of aging is just how this body is programmed to age — versus the decisions I’ve made: everything from vegetarianism to never being particularly physically active to partying to smoking for 31 years. Like, if I’d eaten a different diet and worked out, and never gone to Dead shows on LSD, would I still have these cankles? I’ll never know, since this body is the one I live in and there’s no control body to compare it to. But I do wonder, though.
Anyway, I don’t think I’m dying or anything, but I’m more aware of the body than I’ve ever been because it does stuff now, stuff it never used to. It reacts to the world in sudden and mildly alarming ways! It swells up, gets tired, aches, gets varicose veins (!), gurgles, and wakes up four times a night for no fucking reason at all. I think I’m getting a mole on the back of my left hand (?!), and probably age spots. My skin is thin and odd. My right eyelid sags. I might need a dermatologist for possible nascent skin tags on my throat. I may be too thin-skinned to do dishes at work without gloves; I suspect it can no longer tolerate the industrial soap, sanitizer, and bleach.
It’s just weird, getting older. That’s my whole screed: it’s just weird.
In short, I’ll be turning 50 in two weeks, and I totally feel it!
Update: So I’ve put a wet cloth on my burnt neck and after an hour and a half in the air conditioning the red’s nearly gone?
In which there was spaghetti for dinner!
I made tofu “meatballs” today. (The recipe is here.) I’ve never eaten actual meatballs, so it was a strange exercise, but hey: I had all the ingredients on hand and needed to use up the tofu!
Alone, they’re really bland, but in sauce they’re fine. (I didn’t make the sauce the recipe calls for because I didn’t have tomatoes; just grabbed a jar of mushroom marinara at the gas station.) Decent texture and remarkably filling. Himself said they were “really good,” and cleaned his plate, so: well done, tofu recipe!
Somewhat labor intensive to make, what with needing blender, bowl, plate, tongs, and pan, but it would be worth making a batch and maybe freezing them. Throw a few in a pot of sauce to heat up while the noodles cook, and you’ve got dinner on the table with very little effort.
For dessert, there was caramel cookie crunch Talenti gelato!
I’m so full.
In which I was able to quit a job I very much did not enjoy and replace it with one that involves CHEESE.
I applied to, like, between 17 and 22 jobs over about a month’s time.
Two declined via email; none of the others even responded, save I think one that sent a “we received your application” message. One called me back for an interview. One.
Luckily, the one job I interviewed for hired me on the spot, so now I have a lovely P/T job right here in the neighborhood! It’s a one-block walk to work! The pay’s the same as the last job, nobody screams at me, and I get to taste yummy cheeses.
I work in a cheese shop inside a big liquor store. We make and sell sandwiches, sell cheeses and a few meats, jarred things like marinara, honey, salsas, bulk olive oil and balsamic vinegar, sweets, crackers, chips, olives, dolmas, pâtés, pastas, martini shakers, bottle stoppers, and baguettes. It’s a really fun little shop featuring a lot of local items — the sandwich breads and baguettes are baked a block away, and there are multiple Minnesota cheeses — plus a bunch of imported European treats.
My job involves customer service, sandwich-making, dishes, cashiering, sweeping and mopping, slicing meats and cheeses, weighing things and putting stickers on them, and keeping cold case temperature logs.
It’s so much better than taking calls for Comcast! Nobody yells at me! I get to eat cheese! I get sandwiches half off when I’m on the clock, and an employee discount on booze!
It’s so great. And I totally need the physical activity, so I basically just look at is as paid enforced exercise with some free socializing thrown in.
Plus: cheese tasting!
All the people I’ve worked with so far are lovely, the work is hard but not that hard (it’s not endless, cascading, unsolvable systemic customer service failures, but my feet do hurt), and I think my training is coming along well. Mostly I just need to memorize the sandwich recipes so I can make them more quickly without having to refer to the directions.
Oh, and tips! Not much, got about twenty bucks my first week, but it effectively made the pay rate a skosh higher than my previous job where people screamed at me half the time and all the employee-facing policies were hostile.
So: whoo! New job!
Yay!
In unrelated news, I went to Planned Parenthood on Monday for a UTI I think I’ve had for a month or more. The last time I had one I didn’t even know until the nurse called and demanded to know why I hadn’t told her I had a UTI two days before a surgery, so I guess my symptoms are typically mild? The dip was negative (they sent my sample off for culturing), but they gave me some pills anyway which I picked up across the street at Cub. I read the insert when I got home and was too freaked out to take them for two days because WHAT IF I’M THE ONE WHO GETS THE POTENTIAL SIDE-EFFECTS. (Anxiety is so stupid sometimes. Also, the last time I had a UTI was when I had that uterine fibroid, so I’m half convinced I’ve got another one, because ANXIETY IS SO STUPID SOMETIMES.)
Took my first two doses today, and believe I’m already feeling better, but I also think my period just started, so that’s another layer of feeling weird to confuse the symptoms. Who knows. Twenty-three day cycle, egad.
Aging while female is really no joke, no, not at all.
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4 random books from my Library!
