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.)
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.
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.
In which blah blah Facebook blah.
Somebody from Fairfield posted this on Facebook:
And I wrote this in response, but didn’t post it. Because why bother.
Counterpoint: There is no good reason to shame people who need pharmaceutical antidepressants. Those meds save lives.
Humans suffering from mental health disorders do not need to hear that their meds are bad and what they REALLY need is… a drum circle? Seriously? It’s like telling someone with cancer that all they need is a good attitude. It’s judgemental, unloving, and ignorant.
People with serious illnesses need drugs to survive. Diseases like depression and cancer are NOT the sufferer’s fault, and these diseases can’t be treated with positivity alone. That’s why we invented drugs in the first place!
Are drugs side-effect free? No. Are they perfect? Also no. But do they save human lives? Yes, they absolutely do.
Sorry for the soapboxing, but I know a lot of humans on psych meds who don’t need to be shamed about it.
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.
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!
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!
In which *LOUD SCREECHING NOISES*!!!
Embo told me she’d heard that an Oregon dairy might be opening a cheese shop in Walla Walla. I immediately went online and got my Washington state food handler’s card and updated my resume with the Wisconsin cheese course I recently completed.
Then I went to the dairy’s website, found their contact information, and sent them a friendly email with my resume attached.
THEY REPLIED. I REPLIED BACK.
THEY’VE ALREADY OFFERED ME A PART-TIME JOB BASED ON MY RESUME AND OUR EMAIL CORRESPONDENCE! And they totally want to meet the first week in July to discuss more!
They definitely have a cheese shop in Milton-Freewater, and they also do the Walla Walla farmers’ market. I don’t know if the Walla Walla cheese shop is real or just gossip, but:
I already have a job!
My current fantasy is that we move to Walla Walla, I train in Milton-Freewater while my better half looks for (and ideally finds) work (so he can drive me to and from training), and then I get to work in the new Walla Walla cheese shop, pairing delicious cheeses with local wines, and I don’t have to buy a car! HOW GREAT WOULD THAT BE?!
If the WW storefront is just gossip, I might have to become a car owner, which would be meh, but hey: CHEESE SHOP JOB. They actually make cheese, too, so I could learn about cheese-making and affinage.
I’m terrifically stoked right now, and totally ignoring all the fucking packing we need to do!
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.
In which there are NO MORE DRAWERS!
Yesterday, I put our shitty, old, used, and dinged up $99 IKEA chest of drawers on Craigslist, and got three responses in under three hours.
A kid came and picked it up this afternoon, and now all the crap that was in it is on the bed.
I don’t really understand why the listing got three responses, but boy did it. The third person even said, “I’ll give you twice as much as you asked and come pick it up RIGHT NOW,” which really baffled me. You haven’t even seen it, what if it’s worse than I said?
Oh, well, whatever, now there aren’t any drawers! And it really feels now like we’re moving!
