Boom

I got an unsolicited phone call that made me smile. The mere existence of the call was shiny news for me, and the content was even better. I know on your end the event was less than ideal, and I will help you make changes if it doesn’t immediately improve. I’m so proud of you for all the parts. For deciding to try, for changing your schedule to make it happen, for sharing it with me when you did, for planning to go back. I never expect a call from anyone, and certainly not one that I like. It made my week. Thank you.

Made progress on my BZ project this week. Among other things I bothered to learn some of the python CLI bits, so I can has a shmancy UI. So now it has lots of runtime options and output formats and actually produces correct data (for the most recent 92% of data; the oldest stuff has corruption issues from an import in like 2011). And I’ve actually got some feedback from the people who will be using it, separate from the worried and mostly worthless advise I’ve been getting from my boss. I do want to work out the data issues for the oldest records, and to officially consult with a team I know for a fact won’t want to write an interface for my data, but I’m not feeling so pressed about schedule on that.

Went to C’s birthday. Out for dinner and then to an arcade. I was only half with it most of the time. I was slammed with work right up until we left, like I have been for a while. And of course my brain is only ever half attached to things like birthday parties, because it knows that the options are me hiding or the event ending in tears. Things were mostly fine though, other than me being quiet. I played enough pinball to remember why I’m never quite satisfied with it. I wasn’t sufficiently bad at MarioKart to make Shanda feel accomplished. Eventually we left and went back to C’s. I played with an excited dog for a while and then we did some sort of smoking-themed Monopoly/Candyland game ¹Smoker’s Wild https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1656/smokers-wild which had several terrible puns in it but then lasted for over and hour with game play that didn’t matter and winning accomplished by literally dying. Like any game it’s terrible when you don’t care, but it was pretty hard to care about this one.

By the time that was done I had a pretty significant headache. The one that made my not write yesterday, and do this instead [fig 2] ²https://youtu.be/vIyk-ILV-Do. Eventually I got to sleep, and after napping until 11 or so Thursday was okay — I still wasn’t feeling great but the thrumming was gone. I’m not sure what the problem was, but it made my life hard to deal with in a way I’m not used to — usually I can just grit through it and mostly carry on. Maybe that’s good? Maybe that’s me reacting to not feeling well? Or maybe I was just dying more than. It’s really hard for me to say how I’m feeling even under calm circumstances, and I’ve been far too busy lately to have been paying enough attention.

Started late on Thursday with a wake and bake, then helped Shanda with some tension. Used a blue pen to share a fear and make people have feels ³The goal is a little weepy, and I hope not too nervous, though I doubt I’ll get any feedback about it. Then we actually got some time together without being super busy. Dog was sort of unhappy since we had food out all day, but mostly it was fine. It was nice to be able to watch some media, and not by in a hurry to do the next 11 things. We’re still behind on laundry and dishes and painting but those were all true on Tuesday too, and it was worth some time to be more current on feels and life in general. We also ended up with plans for most of the day on Saturday, so a day off seems extra important. I’m super ready for vacation ⁴Except for having care plans for Dog, since he isn’t coming with. If anyone wants to temporarily own a dog later this month let me know.

Watched a couple episodes of Fleabag (BBC). It’s from the same writer as Killing Eve — Phoebe Waller-Bridge — and it’s real good. It’s a PoV dialog piece with explicit subtext and a less than likable main character. I could imagine comparisons to Bojack or even Rick & Morty, wherein we have to trust the limited PoV we are presented even knowing it’s not always sensible let alone kind. The explicit subtext is in the form of asides to the camera — often part of the other-the-shoulder with the non-PoV character — that are either faces or dialog or both; you’ve seen other things use the same mechanism but this show does it for every line. Also it’s got a guinea pig, and not as much gay as Killing Eve, but still a fair dose. I think several of you would really like it, and it comes in convenient 26-minute segments and only 6 episodes in S1, so you can binge it in short order.

We watched the next episode of American Gods (Starz), after a lengthy break. The adaptation continues to be amazing. It’s got an excellent take on sexy religion in S2E7 “Treasures of the Sun”, where the Queen of Sheba ⁵Who is part of Christian lore and the Bible, though would almost certainly be denied by modern Evangelicals asks us to be moved by the holy spirit. This show is always weird — it has to be, to met its premise, and it’s arguably less weird than the book — but I love it a lot. I want more Crispin Glover though. He has never been creepier, and that’s no small claim for Glover. He just chews the scenery and earns every second of it.

I thought today about how I’m ashamed to have ongoing access to high-quality food. There are a hundred reasons for this, but a selection from the top 20 are:

1. If I was genuinely hungry, and not just faking for attention, I would have eaten grass. This also ties into the way I imagine that my needs are always a result of my not planning correctly, not being good enough, or in general not being a real human. One of the things Mother told me when I was very young, maybe 4, was that not eating all day was my own fault. She left me outside and our yard was full of growing things, so lunch wasn’t a thing I should complain about. If I was actually hungry I could have eaten parts of the yard. So I tried eat grass and found that, in addition to being hard to choke down and pretty dry, it didn’t do much for being hungry. Next time she offered the yard as food I explained how had grass and it wasn’t really working. “Lots of people eat dandelion salads” she said “and they’ve got plenty of water in them”. She of course didn’t explain how this might actually work, and when pressed on the issue suggested I could eat the main stem and (possibly seeded) flower. My experience with dandelions wasn’t much better, but it implied that dandelions were regular food, and so I was at least happy to have access to people food. One day I brought in a pile of probably 80 dandelion stems and flowers I had collected and tried to share it with the family for supper, since “lots of people eat dandelion salads”. This was clearly upsetting for her, and she didn’t want any, but I convinced her to save some for Pete. Pete of course was not interested in yard trimmings and made Mother feel dumb about it. That wasn’t great for household stress levels, but it made her push the idea into repression, so she stopped telling me to eat grass and agreed that while the hose was connected I was allowed to use it for water, which was a big improvement. Being hungry is a lot easier to take with access to water.

2. Nothing tastes better than not being hungry, so having “good” food often meant a transient relief from ongoing crisis, and my brain associates satiation with emergency. Also not eating for a couple of days and then eating a bunch makes most people feel ill, so the idea of eating until you’re ill is real close to the idea of relief from hunger in my brain. There were a whole class of “emergency” foods that I couldn’t eat in normal life but which were often stocked and might be available for use under the right circumstances. For example, canned tuna was often available in the cupboard. Not a lot — just one or two small cans — but it’s canned so it stays edible for years and can be eaten without any preparation. I actually like tuna (I like real tuna better than canned, but still, tuna) and would love to eat it. But I know if there are less than 3 cans I shouldn’t risk it. I know that if I have any I can’t generate any dishes. I know that if I have any I need to be quick and silent and leave no evidence. I know that it’s only worth risking because there’s an emergency. I know that I can’t ask Pete for permission because he is still panicked about that time Alex cut her hand in 1986. But if I ask at the right time of day, on a day when I’m inside, on day 2 or 3 of only eating when Pete is around, I can often have a can of tuna. Not right away. Not where I can be seen. And I won’t get another until after we go grocery shopping. But with the right plan and some luck I can get Mother to authorize the concept and in a couple of hours when she’s busy elsewhere, if I hurry, I can have some tuna. I currently have 6 packs of bagged tuna in my cupboard ⁶FYI: The bags have superior tuna in them, as they don’t require the boiled-to-death process of canning. It’s more pasteurized than pressure cooked. because if I have less than that I can’t convince myself it’s safe to eat. When I do feel safe enough to have some I still can’t use a bowl or silverware. This $0.80 bag of tuna is too fancy for me to use, too good for me to want, and a sure sign that I’m failing to manage my life correctly.

3. All the rules about saving good food for other people, rules both expressed by Mother and that I inferred to help manager her emotional state. This mostly applies to leftovers, or other types of food that are not regularly stocked (which was everything in reality, but there was a list of things we were “supposed” to have on-hand) like produce or fancy bread. The obvious first rule is that I’m not allowed any; mostly I can get past that one these days. But there are lots of other rules. If there’s more than one serving I must save the additional servings for other people, whether or not they want any. I must never eat the last serving. If there are many servings I can probably negotiate to have a second one on day 3 or 4, but I must pay with a sacrifice of some type. There are still rules when the leftovers are shit, but many fewer rules. Certainly Mother didn’t want shitty leftovers so they were only subject to sibling sharing rules, not general sharing rules. And if it was bad enough that no one wanted any it was only subject to general eating rules, not sharing rules. So the ideal food was one that Mother didn’t really like in the first place, that degraded in quality fairly quickly after the first time it was served, but that held up okay in the fridge after that initial quality loss. Something that could be eaten cold and transported without a container, and that was less interesting to my siblings than other food they were likely too have. This is one of the reasons pizza feels so complicated to me — I’m ashamed to want pizza that’s better hot and fresh than it is cold and old.

Shanda wants to go to the fireworks. Not up close, but someplace on the hill here where we can see the ones over Lake Union, and in general have a view of the city. I don’t always do great with explosions — the same startle response thing that makes me want to hit people who touch me — but it’s clear that you’re afraid to plan to go for some reason, so I don’t want to discourage you with my own apprehension at the planning stage. I was hoping we could maybe prepare for it a bit before heading out but between your nerves about going and your excitement to see the fireworks, we didn’t get to. Didn’t even get to do a full Dog prep. So we set out without any discussion and with you not really paying attention to me. The big fireworks over the lake are far enough away to not be a problem, but all the all the amateurs with boom sticks were hard to take. Sort of hard on Dog too, which I expected and hoped would help us get some attention from you. That didn’t really work though, not until after we were already there and settled for a while. I want to encourage you to do things you like, to step past the reasons you think you can’t. I want you to see fireworks. I wish I could have been less alone while the concussions triggered my panic. I wish we could have stopped to recover instead of just plowing through when Dog and I needed a minute.

Hot take on a thing I did months ago, and that none of you know anything about: The Nordic Museum in Ballard is a tribute to the way that Scandinavian people became White people in the PNW. Looking back at what I wrote when I went there that’s more or less what I was thinking at the time, where I complained about the racist videos about how 1%’s dead parents exploited immigrants, but I didn’t have a good framework for it. But I think a colonialist lens is useful. The museum starts by explaining the now-dead parts of Nordic culture (at least as practices in Seattle), shows us how life was hard for early immigrants until some rich dude moved west to exploit them, shows their rise in prosperity under this new system, and eventually recognizes that some parts of Nordic culture are now acceptable, and that (within certain industries and roles) the people are now White enough to be 1%’s themselves. I mean, the good ones, not the poor ones or the commie ones. I don’t mean to be too harsh on the museum itself, which I think is decent compared to many of its peers, but it is not interested in stepping even one inch outside of Nordic integration into White culture.

ZiB

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