Snootful Saturday

Went to the Solstice parade on Saturday [fig 1]. Brought Dog. It went fairly well. Dog did great, other than stealing a whole snootful of fries [fig 2, recreation] as we shifted seating positions. But mostly he layed or stood nearby while we sat in the curb. He was at pulling level 14 afterward but he did better waiting around in a crowd than I expected. Better than I often do.
The sun wasn’t bodily oppressive, a relief for a parade about how it’s daylight for like 143 hours this week, though I sure missed my sunglasses ¹Remember back before you were injured and traveling when you were going to help me pick new glasses? We should really get back to that..

Met someone at the bus stop who had just moved from the UK and was new to everything. The parade itself was okay, but somewhat poorly managed. The first unit was much, much too slow and it made the whole parade drag. Made it take an hour between the bike ride and the parade start too. And there was the staffer who kept demanding the enforcement of a strict physical boundary without bothering to define it, and without consideration of the very fuzzy distinction underlying that boundary. The amount of authoritarianism required to trigger me is not real high and I had to put some effort into not making this dude feel bad ²Between Mother’s neglect and anxiety, and Pete’s belief that you could “win” any situation by being sufficiently mean, I can make almost anyone feel bad in short order. This is rarely a good idea, but it is the often the correct tool to use against narcs and other authoritarians when you want to be left alone..

Failed to meet up with C either at the festival or on Thursday. Which is think was fine. I’ve been so busy myself, and have had to put a lot of focus on Shanda. Even with robots out early I didn’t get done with my day until almost 10 PM on Friday, and that didn’t include any BZ project work. Saturday was busy at the festival and a decent amount of time helping Shanda and trying to get the house back in order after a week of neglect.

I did get to watch Treasure Planet (2002), while LS was over. It’s directly Treasure Island, right down to the 1750s tech and transport, but somehow in space. That lets the story be a little less racist, which is good. It does nothing about the important-to-the-plot classism and misogyny. It also makes the world complete nonsense, which is less good, but you’re supposed to just ignore it. Both the book and the film are pretty unconcerned with murder and how it affects personal relationships, but I think it plays particularly poorly in the film. Nice to watch a film though. We should do that more. Some of you should consider doing that in person too.

It was a GM game day on Sunday but they never got in touch even after we reached out, and never showed up. So we had an unexpected few hours off. Not enough to let me catch up on sleep or anything, but still great to be a little less compressed going into the next week. Used the time to try to get through the backlog of feels from busy and stressful times. And to call M, even if only for a minute.

Talked with Shanda about food hoarding and the idea that potatoes do in fact go bad in a way that requires getting rid of them. I had to make a special run to the grocery store to make this point acceptable but that also resulted in pie so it’s a wash overall. Had what is becoming a weekly Sunday talk about how whatever it is you think talking to B will do probably won’t help or feel good. I wish you’d stop treating me like an authority who is keeping you from your desire. I try very hard not to be an authority in any circumstance, and to never stand between you and whatever you want. It hurts me to be accused of that, and I’m pretty sure it’s not true.

Talked with M about cats and typewriters and piano and theater. Tried to get on the same page about how I can provide better care, but I’m still having a lot of trouble understanding your feels, and that makes it hard for me to actually help in a way that you like. I suspect I’m not the only one who is unsure of how you’d like things to go. I know it’s hard to talk about; I appreciate you trying. Not talking about it also seems pretty hard, for both of us, and I’d like all of this to get easier over time.

Made vauge plans with J for some LARP-related activity. It’s not exactly my speed but I would like to have some more options for costume in my life. And I can tolerate medieval nonsense for good storytelling. Also I could buy an inflatable horse suit ³There was a real good one in the parade. Self-inflating like my Baymax suit, with the back end just cantilevered from the front standing position. I will definitely own one eventually. and build some sort of silly faux weapon, and those are my speed. And it lets me push as some of the doing scary things buttons that I find so motivating. If I imagine we future where I respond to my own fear will I be less good at this for others or better? They also volunteered something akin to personal information in a related reaction. It’s still hard for me to predict where their engagement will fall, I think in no small part because they want to disagree with me about framing on literally everything.

Got some great requests and suggestions from M about upcoming care packages for others. I always like this best when I get to do it with other people. It not only makes the contexts better but it lets me tell better stories. Less isolated stories. And I’m glad you’re doing it with me.

Spent too long in the office today. My boss kept rescheduling for later and then pulling me into things that weren’t even on the schedule. Usually he’s gone by 3:30 but today he pulled me in to meetings with interns at 4:30. Shanda was early to the gym and E canceled so by the time I was actually able to leave at like 5:20 I decided to give up and get back to work. Made good progress on my BZ project. It does all the queries and calculations I need now, so I just need to give it some I/O options and it should be done. Stayed until after 8 but also knocked out a good chunk of the most important work for the week. I’m on the queue and walked in to a sev 1, but the case is mostly done so I only have to babysit the process. There’s another one that’s going to be NV, and nothing else on my plate so far. No way to tell if that will keep up but it’s an okay start to the week – the frontloading is desirable for me, so long as things fall back off.

I’ve got a morning meeting tomorrow, and then a 3 hour call to fraking Eastern time Medicaid. I know I whine about this a lot but it’s such a hassle. The idea that they can’t have enough staff to have reasonable hold times is silly. The idea that phone staff should be assigned by county is silly. Their 40 seconds of hold music is infuriating. And every step of the process is designed to make you drop out and stop fighting, because some rich asshole thinks that publishing poor people makes his life better. And today is a call in response to a demand for contact in their part. A demand they mailed and insist you call them about – no option to mail back – within a short window. They don’t tell you why you’re calling or how to prepare, so I’ll likely have to call back a second time too. The violent and ultra-conservative oligarchy running this place has got to go (is a thing we say to justify murdering poor brown people but for some reason doesn’t apply to the rich white dudes saying it).

After that my week should unwind a little. I want to get the bedroom taped this week, and our character sheets transfered. And a haircut. Should be doable Wednesday and Thursday. If the queue isn’t too busy I should have a decent about of time. And I don’t yet have any Friday plans, for the first time in forever. Maybe we can even get to cooking again this week.

Talked with V about the reassurance we need to exist. About how hard it is to get anyone to see that question and how devastating it is when their answer is so hesitant or uncertain. About the way 10,000 lesser questions bring that one into being. About the way missing days in toddler school are so hard to make up later. Can’t be made up without the right kind of help. And how asking if your existence is okay is exactly the sort of thing that makes people unable to help you in the way you most need.

I still need to move through my call list from recent weeks. There are parts I’ve let go too long already. It’s jot even something I don’t want to do, it’s just hard to make happen on days when I can’t even get to my ie writing. I need a couple of days where I’m not too exhausted to focus for 2 hours. Budget analysis is less fun but still something I want and could usually whip out in bed before sleep, if I could keep my eyes open. I never should have let myself get used to short sleep – it takes too long to recover.

Thought about Frostbite some more. That’s the day I decided I always needed my knife. There were some plywood bits only loosely attached that I could have used to build shelter. I could have broken them off, but I couldn’t have removed them without damage – not without a tool. And so I always have one now. It’s very important to me and I do not like to give it up. I thought about other times, when the weather was above zero, where Pete convinced me to lock my glasses inside in addition to my shoes. Or the later times when I finally convinced him to leave the keys with me, and he insulted me for wanting my “warm fuzzies” – for wanting the security of shelter. I’m amazed sometimes at how much work they put into being cruel, when being merely neglectful would have been totally sufficient for their plans.

Ben says Marion is still dying, or at least was last he heard. He is unsure of there’s no news or if he’s also been removed from communications. I think the later is actually preferable, since updates always come with shame for him about how he’s not properly making himself available for other people to take out their emotions on. I was sort of hoping she was dead by now and that I had been downgraded to not even knowing second hand.

Not sure what’s on the plate for therapy this week. We poked at fear last week but I know my therapist misunderstood the profundity of mine. They always have misunderstood my relationship with fear – most people do – but it was more of a problem last week. So I’m not sure more would be useful until I can imagine another framing. I’ve got some other-people worry list items right now; maybe I can roll those up into a feel I can do LI against. I also want to get them to cite their sources about imagined compensating experiences, so I can talk to @BPS about it ⁴ViMLive is moving to Thursdays and I’m going to try to catch them there this week. I haven’t done the HA4H but I’ll earn while I learn..

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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