In which there is no thematic element, just a random, sloppy post.
Somebody finally moved into our old house across the street! Naturally this means I’m sitting on my couch, right in front of the plate glass window, with the drapes wide open, watching him wash his car, in completely blatant “nosy old white lady” fashion.
His car is CLEAN as FUCK, guys. He’s got a hose attachment, detergent, chamois and everything. After he dried it, he put it in the garage and covered it! Who puts a car cover over a car in a garage?! Absolutely fascinating.
It’s a chilly and grey November day, with splashes of sunlight, and lots of breeze and golden leaves gently spiraling… picture-perfect autumn. I should probably go rake leaves or some shit, but this couch is damn comfortable.
We went out to brunch earlier at The Sunny Side, which is next door to the liquor store, so I grabbed myself some Oregon-made vodka and a couple mixers. I may be starting cocktail hour pretty early. Like, any minute now, or whenever I decide what I want: bloody Mary? Vodka soda? Vodka cran? Screwdriver? Lemon drop? Vodka gimlet? Little bit vapor-locked with all the potentials, here.
Speaking of time, FUCK DST, IT’S SO FUCKING STUPID, WHY CAN’T THE FUCKING FEDERAL GOVERNMENT KILL WHATEVER IT IS THAT KEEPS STATES FROM BEING ABLE TO OPT-OUT TO STANDARD TIME?!?! The entire left coast has voted to kill the clock changes, but we can’t opt out unless we go to permanent DST rather than standard time. I hate it.
The shop is doing more business every month, and my boss told me that “a lot of that is thanks to you,” and I’ve never been so pleased. I love that little cheese shop, and I’m pleased and proud it’s doing so well. Yesterday was extremely busy (for a tiny shop in a rural town of 9,000) and honestly, I had a blast. Lots of lunch customers, lots of grocery customers, locals and tourists alike. Really enjoyable! I’m so lucky to have a good job: one in which I have responsibilities I actually enjoy, and where I am not treated like ignorant, replaceable shit.
Honestly, I think I have some genuine PTSD from working low-level corporate America jobs. Comcast, Home Depot, places like that are truly abusive and awful. If I can manage it, I will NEVER take any job ever again that isn’t operated directly by the owner. (It’s so much harder to be an abusive fuck if you actually have to look your employees in the eye every day.)
Apropos of nothing: I bought a new vape mod last weekend, and I love it. The box said it was “mint green,” but it’s actually metallic-peacock-blue-shading-to-bright-teal. It’s actually quite pretty.
I think I forgot to water the dogwoods at all this week? I have “water dogwoods” in my planner last Thursday, but I feel like I wrote that to remind myself and then never did it. I love these little trees and want them to thrive, and the internet and my aunt Kathy both say we need to water them deeply on a regular basis for at least the first entire year, so that they can grow deep roots, and I really don’t want to fuck it up!
My dad’s leaving the country for a month, to vacation in Costa Rica, and we’ll be sitting his cat. I’m really excited to have a temporary cat guest! I don’t really want to commit to a pet, mostly because they always die, but having a visiting cat? Fucking fantastic! I hope she settles in quickly and likes to cuddle, I haven’t been purred on it quite awhile.
In which there are bugs!
There was, again, an earwig in the sink this morning. I fished it out and dropped it into the compost bucket on the counter, which is what I (nearly) always do with random earwigs.
I say nearly. I keep a small bowl of flour on my counter at all times. I bake, and pulling down an entire bag of flour just to get a few teaspoons to dust with while shaping a loaf is a pain, so I just leave a bowl out. Last week I scrubbed my kitchen spotless and went to bed, and in the morning there was, in the center of the spotlessly clean long counter, an earwig, absolutely covered in flour, about ten inches away from the flour bowl, just standing there, waving its antennae in what seemed like utter bafflement. I mean, this insect was clearly so exasperated it made me laugh out loud.
I didn’t drop that one into the compost, I just let it be (as it had clearly already had Quite The Day). Who knows where it got to, but I can’t imagine trying to escape a pool of white flour the relative size of an Olympic swimming pool before breakfast.
Anyway, they’re harmless and slow and weird-looking, and I don’t mind them much as they’re sort of little sanitary engineers, with beneficial little jobs, but they tend to always be directly in the damn way. Every single time I’ve gone to pick something — a rose, a tomato, a sprig of basil, fucking anything — there’s an earwig nestled into it somewhere.
Pick a tomato? There’ll be a crack, and in that crack, AN EARWIG. Cutting a rose to put on the kitchen window sill? In between the petals of the bloom, AN EARWIG. Curled up under the basil leaf? AN EARWIG. These little shits are like tiny dumb sheepdogs, somehow.
Apparently they are, like moths, attracted to light, so apparently they amble over to doors and windows at night and somehow make their way inside, maybe on a person’s clothes, or just by walking, who knows, and end up under kitchen towels and things in the morning.
Did you know they live about a year?!
Say what you like about the royal funeral, but there are a lot of cool outfits and weird rituals.
In which it’s good.
There’s a comedy sketch show called Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun and it’s utterly fucking brilliant and totally the descendant of Monty Python, Young Ones, and Fry & Laurie, and you should watch it.
That is all.
In which I’ve been considering the size of Oregon lately.
I have recently learned that Oregon is about the size of the United Kingdom.
The entire United Kingdom, which is, like, three countries. Oregon’s actually got a few square miles more space than that.
What the hell. How are all those people and towns and countries in an area smaller than Oregon?! I’ve been in the habit of watching Escape to the Country in the evenings and there seem to be endless numbers of houses for sale in the UK. If a similar show were taped in Oregon, would it last fifteen seasons?
Actually, the population density in Oregon is about 17 people per square mile. In the UK it’s 281. We have a lot of empty space.
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The closest Amtrak station to my house is in Pasco, WA, which is 51 miles away.
There is no Amtrak service from Pasco to Seattle; you either go via Spokane or Portland. This boggles my mind.
If I wanted to get from my house to, say, Astoria, I’d have to take a municipal bus from Saager’s Shoe Store (half a mile from my house) to the Amtrak transit center in Walla Walla, then take an Amtrak bus to Pasco, then transfer to a train to Portland, and then transfer to another bus to Astoria. It would take almost two days to go 327 miles.
Meanwhile, there’s some British guy who makes videos that are all “how far can you get from London by public transpo in a single day?” and the answer is: VERY. In fact, YOU CAN GO BASICALLY ANYWHERE IN GODDAMNED EUROPE, because those guys have useful, interconnecting public transport infrastructure and Oregon… doesn’t.
I mean. Buy a stupid, expensive, ugly, climate-destroying personal vehicle, you hippie. Or walk. Because fuck you.
—
Our country’s utter lack of will to put in efficient, useful public transportation drives me nuts. If you could just walk to the corner and step onto a bus, YOU WOULD. Because driving fucking sucks.
Owning a car sucks. Parking sucks, insurance and maintenance suck. It all sucks. People think it’s convenient and freeing because they’re totally ignorant of any other way, but I guarantee you that any time you hear someone gushing about a charming vacation spot they love, they love it because IT’S WALKABLE.
People love Disneyland’s Main Street USA because it’s walkable, they love Boston because it’s walkable. They love New York because it’s walkable, same for Seaside and most of Europe: IT’S WALKABLE. People loved college because it was walkable.
Cars make you miserable. They stink. They’re stupid. Car infrastructure makes towns and cities ugly as fuck. Buildings surrounded by parking lots are hideous, and you know in your bones that most of America is distressingly unbeautiful which ultimately makes you depressed. Looking at ugly shit all the time is not what you signed up for.
—
As an aside, if you try to book a Pasco, WA (PSC) to Vancouver, BC (VAC) trip on the Amtrak site, it crashes. You have to do PSC to PDX, and then PDX to VAC, and then it can’t figure out how to offer round trip options so you have to do them all manually.
I don’t know if I want to go to Vancouver BC, but as the Yeti changed jobs recently he probably can’t get time off next month for us to vacation together. So I’m considering a solo train ride!
—
I imagine a light rail through Milton-Freewater. It would go to Walla Walla and Pendleton, and at each end there’d be transfer to other trains so people could get to work. If there were frequent train service to both towns, households on my street wouldn’t have to have between two and seven fucking cars.
Imagine if each household only needed one car, and that they could, if they wanted, hardly ever use it. If it was easy to get to Walmart and back, why would you ever drive? Or if the train ran in such a way that you could get to and from your Walla Walla job easily? How fucking great would that be?
Ugh. I hate fucking cars, and I hate not being able to get anywhere without one. If there was a light rail to Walla Walla, I could take my bike to the mechanic tomorrow and wouldn’t be limping along on bike tires that won’t hold air for more than an hour.
—
Yes, I drive sometimes. Yes, I’ve even driven to work and back, which is barely half a mile. It’s fun to have access to a car. What I’m bitching about is needing one in order to be able to function in your own goddamned society because there’s no even vaguely reasonable alternative.
Example: there is a bus from here to Walla Walla. But it only goes twice a day, it barely gets within a mile of my destination, and there’s no bike rack. So, while I could technically get to the bike shop tomorrow, it’s not reasonable because this one, simple errand would take something like five hours.
—
Dunno why I’m so furious about car culture today! Probably because my bike’s needed new tires for weeks and I’m feeling sorry for myself because I can’t just drive it over to the shop, because the Yeti’s always got the car when the shop’s open because, well, it’s his car, and he works in the opposite direction.
Anyway. What’s fun in Vancouver BC?
In which I guess I haven’t posted for two months?! What the hell, man. How is anybody this lazy?
Twitter permabanned me.
No idea why. I replied to some Stonekettle tweet or another with “lol don’t hold your breath” and Twitter permanently suspended my account. (Probably got mass reported by some asshat enraged that Stonekettle called him a sissy or something; who knows.)
I appealed twice, but their idiot algorithm says I violated their TOS. With “don’t hold your breath.” Computers are stupid.
My account was something like 13 or 15 years old, and they deleted it for no reason. This is why you should keep your content where you can control it! If you want me, I show up here once a week or so.
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The cheese convention was awesome. My bosses paid my entry fee, drove me to and from, paid me most of my missed regular hours, and covered my (very nice) hotel room. Unbelievably generous! I enjoyed myself a great deal, learned a lot, and bought a couple books, a t-shirt for the yeti, and a pair of convention socks. Brought home a pretty bitchin’ swag bag (it’s an insulated lunch tote) full of brochures, stickers, samples, a water bottle, and even a bento box.
Work is awesome. I have an amazing and fantastic job, but (you could feel the ‘but’ coming) I need a goddamned vacation. My attitude is slipping, but this isn’t the time for it because we just lost our assistant cheesemaker and a couple part-time employees so we really do need to be pulling together. I keep having to come in on my days off for little things and normally I’d love it but lately I feel grumpy about it. So I think I’ll book another October trip to the coast. We had so much fun last year! I was considering going the other direction this year, back the way we came, into Idaho or Montana, because it’s gorgeous out there and a cabin vay-cay would be nice, but, like, THE OCEAN IS BETTER. So I’m thinking a week in maybe Seaside or Bandon or something, or Astoria and Ilwaco?
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I reactivated my Ipsy subscription and they sent me an amazing razor (it’s got four blades and a moisturizer strip that actually works) so I’ve been shaving my legs for the first time in most of a decade. It does feel nice, really.
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We had some severe weather last week. Thunder, lightning, high winds, and 1/4″ hail. It blew our entire fucking shed off its foundation, over the fence, upside down, and into the irrigation ditch. We had to have it hauled off!
RIP, shed. We didn’t really need you, but I hear you’ve been there, according to our ex-landlord, “for thirty or forty years.”
UPDATE: They put it in the local paper!
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The neighbors to the rear put up a big-ass privacy fence.
I hate it, but at least it’s wood rather than plastic! Fucking people and their dumb privacy fences. YOU’RE NOT THAT INTERESTING. NOBODY’S LOOKING INTO YOUR STUPID FUCKING YARD. THIS IS THE GODDAMNED DESERT, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU BUILD BARRIERS TO BREEZES.
Today they’re having their back yard graded with a little tractor.
Why the fuck they’re doing all of this in the wrong order I’ll never know, but apparently they’ll be re-doing the entire yard before cutting down and hauling off their very big, very dead tree? (You can see the big dead tree in this very photo, taken before the stupid new fence went up.) I mean, why the fuck would you put up a brand-new fence before having the enormous dead tree removed?!
People are dumb as hell. And now I have to figure out what to plant along the entire goddamned fence to hide it so I don’t have to be enraged every time I go outside!
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We have too much yard. I need to put at least a third of it into gravel or native grasses or something. It’s too big for non-gardeners.
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It’s official: I’m menopausal. My last period was a year ago last week.
I was just looking something up in my old Flickr account and was reminded that a few years ago (okay, six years ago actually) I was too exhausted and/or low energy to walk a single block to I Am Coffee on Lyndale and 28th. My desire for an iced coffee that I didn’t have to make or clean up after was nothing in the face of overall inability to work up enough enthusiasm to throw on some shoes and walk the short side of a single city block and back.
Most of the peri-menopausal experience was like that. No energy. No interest. No desire. I spent most of it at home, fucking around on social media, and much of it feeling guilty about not doing any hobbies or having a social life. No reading, no knitting, no journaling. Some cooking, a little baking, and the bare minimum in terms of domestic chores. Worst of all: absolutely no desire to do anything about it. Awareness of having gone in the space of a year from a person who biked everywhere and had adequate energy and a giant social life to someone who just… spent all her time at home, doing effectively nothing but recovering from work.
Occasionally, very occasionally, like, maybe twice a year, I’d get a wild hair and get The Yeti to take me out for a meal, but most of the time I didn’t even have the oomph for that. (What luck to live in the era of Door Dash and Bite Squad! I can’t even begin to estimate what I’ve spent on delivery fees and tips in the past five years.)
But lately, it’s been lifting some? I want to do stuff sometimes now? Sometimes it’s reasonably easy to get my to-do list done. I’m starting to get over giving a fuck about how my body is now: fat, achy, triple-chinned, weak, slow, and in no way vigorous or youthful. (I’m not over how terrible it is to lose all sense of vibrancy and vitality — that’s utter bullshit — but I’ve started to not care as much about the injustice of becoming a crone against my will.)
I’ve heard symptoms described as “a fog,” so I’m tempted to say that “the fog is lifting,” but I don’t know that I ever felt vague or foggy as much as just utterly devoid of energy or drive. My intellect worked the whole time, and I don’t think I felt brain fog, per se, so I’ll say it’s more like light the end of a tunnel. I woke up today feeling refreshed and capable, and got up and started acting like a normal person: made the bed, put on music, wrangled the laundry, sang to myself, make an iced espresso, did two sinks of dishes!
Of course I did all this in a body that looks like a potato and feels half as strong as I think it should.
But it’s better than it was.
I think.
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Apropos of nothing, I really miss hash brown patties. My local stores have been out of them for half a year. My kingdom for a stupid oval-shaped greasy potato thing!
I suppose I could just, you know, go to McDonald’s or something.
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The Yeti won’t eat goddamned leftovers any more, so now that I’m caffeinated I’m off to clear half my fridge straight into the trash!
in which there’s a post completely free of theme or structure
THE BOYS, a television show on amazon
so these dummies saw homelander literally nursing (as in drinking actual breast milk) in season 1 and thought, ‘yeah, this is a powerful man, power is being able to do whatever you want, this guy is the hero of the show’
homelander lets an entire plane crash, kills multiple times in petulant rages, and is clearly a sociopath/deranged fascist, his girlfriend is literally a nazi — let’s face it, the writing is hardly subtle — and these white boys thought YEAH, THIS IS THE HERO
and this is why cutting humanities from the schools is bad, these fucknuts don’t know that being a lead character isn’t the same as being the hero (which actually does rather require that the character be moral, right, and good)
honestly whole swathes of society have absolutely no hold at all on power actually being self-mastery, they honestly think REAL POWER is being a slave to one’s basest drives, that it’s being an abusive, selfish, horrific little cunt all the time and not getting punished for it
NEWS, in my local paper
the same sorts of woefully underendowed intellectuals are mad there was a drag show in pendleton and the paper covered it like it would cover literally anything else
10 or 15 years ago the average reader would have seen coverage of a drag show and simply determined they didn’t care for or about it; now, due to extreme brain-poisoning from the fox channel’s news entertainment programs and the internet’s danker corners, they’re angry and upset and offended and victimized about it and believe that society, which has LITERALLY ALWAYS HAD DRAG QUEENS, is in sharp decline
drag queens are frequently intimidating to people outside the community, sure, but everybody used to know they weren’t anything to get mad about
listen, if you hate drag queens but think rodeo clowns are totally fine and normal, you seriously need to go work on your personal shit lol
MASTER, in terms of bedrooms
the walls in the master bedroom of this house are painted lavender and i’ve been sorta struggling with it
obviously most normal people would just paint the room but i don’t want to because fuck painting, total pain in the arse
so i got a lavender blanket last week and made the bed with that and some chocolate brown sheets and a quilt from my mom and a throw, and dang! i think i’ve got a color scheme now!
dark brown and lavender look very restful and nice together, and the dresser is already dark brown, so really i just need a rug and some art, and maybe some sheers and BANG! it’s a room
but i’m here to tell you: there isn’t a single chocolate & lavender rug IN THE ENTIRE WORLD lol
(i found a great chocolate persian/oriental rug but the contrast color isn’t quite lavender, rather, it’s blue, and it just wouldn’t tie in the way i want, dang it)
anyway if you see any lavender and chocolate rugs please tell me immediately
DAD, the old pater
yesterday was father’s day, apparently, and my dad’s in town and this is quite possibly the first time we’ve been in the same town on father’s day in two decades
and i should have had him over for dinner or something but i didn’t know it was father’s day until today so there’s that opportunity wasted
happy dad’s day anyway
CHEESE CONVENTION, coming up soon
my bosses are taking me to BLAZING THE TRAIL FOR CHEESE, a big-ass cheese industry convention, in portland next month, but get this: they’re also covering transportation and lodging?!?!? they really don’t have to but i’m amazed and pleased
i think paying for entry is a reasonable employer thing to do, but gas and hotel? amazing
I am GOING to a HUGE cheese convention!!! how exciting is THAT!!
dudes i’m gonna put sage green sheer curtains in a bedroom with mint green walls and i will not be taking any questions
but if you have any opinions about holdbacks i’d like to hear them
in which there are house pics!
so the longer i live here the more i dig this place, it’s awesome
i have prisms in the kitchen and living room windows, so i’m getting rainbows TWICE A DAY which is just the absolute best:
and i never would have decided to have a red living room, but there was a red accent wall and i just went with it and it’s the BEST:
it’ll be fucking amazing at christmas time, i’ll tell you what.
here’s dinner from the other night:
and the little rose bush out front is ORANGE, i love it so much:
there’s a pink one in the side yard:
i got a laundry thing, it’s amazing:
there’s still an empty drawer in the kitchen, that’s how much storage space the place has, and there’s still tons of space in the bathroom cupboards and drawers. the office closet is stuffed, and the guest room closet is a third full, but mostly of half-empty boxes i will eventually consolidate. the guest room’s curtains and rug are ordered, but we still need to get a bed, dresser, and night stand.
i’ve got pictures up on the walls! not a lot, but having rented nearly all my adult life i just never got into the habit of hanging things (why bother when you’re going to move in a year or two) so even just putting up a cork board over my desk was SUPER exciting! i even pulled out the old cardboard tubes and took my prints out to measure them; HOLY FUCK FRAMES ARE EXPENSIVE! but since we’ve gotten cash gifts from a few of our relatives, i’ll probably just splurge and get some art on the dang walls, too!
sitting on the patio is a joy because you can hear the creek gurgle, and also the chimes when there’s breeze. we’re not doing much landscaping because we want to see what’s here and what’s what (they just cut everything to the ground for the sale, so it’s interesting to see what things are turning out to be: half are roses and the other half are massive brambles from hell!)
put in a few pansies and two tomato plants, but that’s about it for gardening this year, i think.
the place has excellent cross breeze so i’ve had the front and back doors open most of the past month. the fridge and stove (which came with the place) both work fine. we’ve had an electrician in to bid on some work but it’ll be months before we can use the clothes dryer.
there’s really no place for a dishwasher, but there’s just two of us and i can deal. dishwashers do a shitty job anyway, really, and i’ve grown to like doing dishes when my hands are cold.
listen, there are like nine ceiling lamps in this house so i bought some fancy fan pull pendants. don’t judge me. can’t wait ’til they get here!
i love this house, i love the window in the bath, i love the cross breeze, i love the covered patio and the weird-ass workshop/shed thing and the chain link fence and the gates. i love the creak of the hardwood floors and the layout and the light and all of it. could not be more pleased!
