Time Marches On!

And so we come to the end of another month. 

Numbers were good again. Did skip two workouts this month. One last Friday when we were in the emergency room all morning and one this Wednesday when my give a fuck gave up for the day. Sometimes it happens. But good overall. 

I had switched things up, did weights three days a week, lower body Monday, upper body Wednesday, mixed on Friday. Did cardio five days a week. Short session after weights M,W, F with longer stand alone sessions on Tuesday and Thursday. I'm going to be switching it up again next month, as is my way, but not sure just exactly how yet. That's a project for this weekend. 

Hit my writing numbers. Barely. I used one of the extra pieces I've been writing for the exchange with Dana one week and I literally forced out a story yesterday based on the first thing I noticed in the room. My cold hands. But to be fair I was always planning on using the Dana pieces at some point. I hadn't planned on starting that this early, but I really loved that story and couldn't wait to share it. It's rare that I love one of my own pieces for more than a day after I write it. Until a few years later when I stumble across it and have forgotten enough of it that I am surprised by how good it is. (I'm kidding, but only slightly, I write so fast that I forget what I've written all the time.)

Even with the challenge on the fiction, which it's SUPPOSED to be a challenge, I'm sticking with the at least 3 nonfiction and one fiction piece a week with an extra fiction piece to Dana. If for no other reason than to keep her writing as well. There are things I fully believe in this world and one of them is that it would be a crying shame if Dana stopped writing. Seriously, folks, she's REALLY good at it. For those of you who have been reading my blog long enough to remember a few years ago when we cross posted pieces we wrote off the same prompt you'll be doing the amen nod right about now. 

I read a majority of nonfiction this month sort of by accident. I had the standard auto/biography/memoir (All about ME! by Mel Brooks) and self help book (The Fifth Agreement) but the Fantastic Stranglings was also a memoir (it was nonfictionish, sort of an enhanced reality for him, very entertaining) Once Upon a Tome: The Misadventures of a Rare Bookseller. And there has been a little spring challenge going with Kindle and for March to get my reward I needed to read a book by a female author on their list and I happened to have The Secret History of Wonder Woman already owned so it would check off the read more books off my Kindle as well. So four out of 6 books were nonfiction. Not standard for me. And three were off my Kindle so that's good in that area as well.

Debating the Picture of the Day list. Not sure if I'm doing it this month yet or not. Sticking with Selfie Saturday. Even if sometimes I have to get creative like last Saturday when I didn't think Brent would really appreciate a camera in his face. I think I made it work. 

Extra things will be the house still. Got the re-inspection done and Monday we do the end of first year walkthrough. Then there will be some things that need done and hopefully I'm finally getting my extra cabinets installed. After all of that I'll be looking at FINALLY finishing the unpacking and getting some art on the walls. 

We also need to look into a cat/house sitter who will stay here so we can think about taking a vacation. Apparently Brent's gut feeling is that he could use one...

Be Prepared...

Her hands were so cold. 

It was spring and the sun was shining, but it was deceptive. The air still held a chill, especially in the shade. 

It was hard to believe that in just a few months that same shady spot would be sticky and miserable. That people would be fanning themselves, turing their faces this way and that, just trying to catch any sort of breeze. 

But not today, today her hands were so cold.

A pair of gloves would be good. But she didn't have gloves with her and now it was too late.

Planning was always a problem. What all do you need to bring with you? Nobody seemed to agree. And it seemed to come in and out of fashion. Pack practically everything you own became just grab a little money became just you. Nothing else needed. 

But gloves. Gloves were needed.

She would have liked to have more than that. Maybe some hot cocoa. A snuggly blanket. Her dog. But for sure some fucking gloves.

Cold hands, warm heart. That's what her mother used to say. Her mother always had cold hands. Raynaud's Syndrome. Her fingers would turn blue when she was chilled then bright red as they warmed up. Though they never got really warm. Just a little warmer than ice cold. But she would touch you with those freezing fingers and as you jumped away from the chill she'd laugh, Cold hands, warm heart. 

That was a woman who needed a pair of gloves. 

She remembered her brother wondering if her hands were finally warm when they cremated her. His wife yelled at him for being inappropriate.

But she wondered too. Had there been a moment where her mother thought, finally. Finally my hands are warm. 

She should have been cremated. It was her husband's family that was against cremation. Not hers, obviously. But her mother-in-law had talked her husband into a burial in the family plot. Such a lovely space, under the shade of a giant oak. 

They could have at least given her a pair of gloves. 

It's Rich...

I know this is kind of ironic coming from me but we really messed up in society when we started identifying with the dragons.

Talking to Katie on Sunday and we were talking about the tax cuts from the Trump years and how she assumed they had benefited us. I had to disabuse her of her thoughts of the kind of money we have. We have don't have to stress in line at the grocery store money, we don't have tax cuts for the wealthy money. We, in fact, had a GIANT tax bill that year even though we tried to mitigate it with withholding adjustments mid year. We are the middle class. Maybe upper middle class, but we are the tax bracket that pays for everything. 

And let me make this really clear, I don't mind paying taxes. I think a really healthy, functioning society needs taxes to be paid. I think the government should be providing certain goods and services on a wide scale to all of us and that taxes are how we pay for those things. But what I do have a problem with is that is not what my taxes seem to go to. My taxes are a redistribution of wealth and it pisses me off. 

And let's be REALLY clear here, the redistribution that is happening is upward. 

The wealth gap is insane in this country. I've written about it a lot because it really bothers me. That level of money breaks something in your brain and you no longer understand enough. Enough just becomes more. 

I like having enough. I've lived through times when I did not have enough. I like having a cushion to protect us from times when it might be harder than others. Either due to work paying less or items costing more or the dreaded combination of both. Enough and a little extra is great. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. 

But when enough is out the window and it just becomes more it's a problem. 

When you are hoarder and you are poor they make you a horror show television program. Oh look at how disgusting this is! You don't want to be this! When you are a hoarder and you are rich they make you an aspirational television show. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. Dream Houses of the Obscenely Wealthy. How many houses do you need? How many cars? How much money do you need in the bank, the stock market, the Cayman Islands? 

We praise people who make a lot of money with Airbnb or VRBO instead of shaming them for buying up the smaller more affordable houses making it more expensive for people to actually live in those areas. And you see it all the time. Lovely resort towns that depend on the service industry to keep them running and the people who work in those industries can't afford to live there. All the while there are 100 listings on vacation property sites of ENTIRE FUCKING HOUSES that are being rented out to vacationers. 

Airbnb started out as people renting a room in their house. Or maybe renting their house out while they were on vacation. Then it turned into people buying houses just for that purpose. Not for long term rentals, but just short term. Not even just buying a vacation house and renting it out while they weren't there. They can make back the mortgage and a healthy profit just over the peak tourist season in some places. Which they then turn around and use to buy more properties. All the while we have people living on the street. Because it's a cascade. You take inventory off the market and it increases the price of everything left. And eventually you run out of space that people can afford all together. But there are people still making a lot of money so it's fine. 

Because we don't understand what enough is. 

I get it, hotels are expensive. There isn't as much room. Maybe you like having your own kitchen to cook in to save you some money. But just understand that it's a lousy system we are encouraging. People in popular vacation places need someplace to live and if everything is going to investment properties that's a problem. 

We idolize the dragons. That's what dragons were in the old stories. They were hoarders. They sat on great big piles of jewels and gold. And they didn't have a use for it, it's not like they needed it to live, they just liked it because it was shiny. They just wanted it to have it. And they wanted more than any other dragon had. They were hoarders. 

And we've turned into a world that wants to be the dragon instead of the dragon slayer. 

We don't know what enough is. 

Busy Brain...

To keep on pace with my goals for this year and writing I really should have written yesterday. Didn't have to to make it, but it would have been easier. I'm trying not to go two days in a row without sitting down and writing something. Anything. Just words on the screen. That keeps me on the track to write more days than I don't. Technically I could skip three days in a row and then write the next four and I will hit more days than not in a week, but that give absolutely no wiggle room. So I try to make sure I'm sitting down and writing at least every other day.

And yesterday I didn't. 

It's not because I don't have thoughts to write about. It's because I have too many. And I'm tired so it's hard to wrangle them into coherent writing. Which makes them swirl more and add more random pieces as they go. So now I've got a tornado of thoughts swirling in my head and I'm having a devil of a time sorting out just one theme out to write about. 

So instead you get this. A brain dump session. 

Wrote out a few status updates over the past couple of days and then "yesed" the are you sure you want to leave without posting prompt. 

I try (and I know this might shock some of you) but I try really hard not to be disrespectful of other people's religious beliefs. I wrote recently how hard that is to do considering they use them to be disrespectful of me and mine. But I still try. So often when I'm just pissed as fuck and can't take it anymore I write a scathing status update, reread it for spelling errors and then delete it. 

Not because I don't believe in what I've written but because I don't think it will actually do any good. It's just me being an asshole and though I'm actually pretty good at being an asshole, it's not something I generally try to do. You can't asshole someone to your way of looking at life.

Most of you also know I stopped having gun debates after Sandy Hook. That was the point for me where I realized absolutely nothing is going to change. I cannot make people care about gun control if slaughtered babies didn't do it. But it's really hard when we hit another school shooting to not post something. Or to not argue with people who want to talk about mental health being the real issue. We have more guns than people in the United States, but sure, you go on ahead and think we have different mental health issues than the rest of the world and that's why this continues to happen. Or maybe they are right and it is a mental health issue. We have to be challenged to not see that the over abundance of guns is a problem. 

This morning I saw a post about taking a break from the news. Not just for a day or two when something awful happens and you can't take anymore coverage of it, but like an actual break. Cutting it off. And it was basically that you should only interact with things that are in your power to change. Anything else is just going to cause you stress that you can't do anything about. Which seems like such great advice. Except how do you know if there is something out there that you could change or you should be working toward changing if you aren't paying attention? 

I mean, I see a lot of posts from people that drive me up the fucking wall because they say things that are like little sing songy "I'm happy because I don't judge people who are different than I am." or "I love everyone and I don't care what your politics are." Or "You'd all be better off if you just went for a walk and listened to the birds instead of reading the tweets."

OH thank you! That's so fucking helpful! I mean, I'd love to have a dose of the it doesn't matter if people are different kool-aid to hand to the MULTIPLE legislators that are using people like my daughter as scapegoats for all the world's woes. And Oh my goodness how I'd love to love everyone except some of you are just fucking psychopaths who want to arm teachers with guns and take away their books. And that tweet thing, super clever, thank you!* It would be great if all there was to worry about is what the birds were saying instead of the people calling for the downfall of our entire social system. But, hey, at least you are happy. You know what they say? Ignorance is bliss and you are fucking blissful as all get out! No offense...

When my brain is busy and my body is tired it's hard to not lash out at people. It's hard not to post status updates that won't really do any good as far as changing minds. It's hard to keep moving forward with actual productive things instead of picking fights with the multitude of if not outright idiots out there at least myopic bliss filled people. I tend to get a little quieter. Or at least most posts that are sharing of articles or other people's thoughts than my own. A layer of protection. Not for me, for everyone else. 

I am a mean drunk. It's why I don't drink much. Even when I have a drink I have A drink. It's rare for me to ever go past two in a short amount of time. The only time I have three in a day anymore is when we are on vacation and they are spread out over a long amount of time. Or I am only going to be around Brent. Otherwise I just don't do it. Because I know I'm a mean drunk. So it's my responsibility to not get drunk and lash out. 

Being tired is like being drunk but with a lot less control. 

So instead of sharing my thoughts with the world right now, I'm limiting them to you (aren't you lucky?) and to Brent (he took a vow, he has to put up with it) and to my inside my head voice. Which I'm trying to make sure doesn't leak out of my fingers into a status update. 

Like this one:

We all have different family values.

Some people think a Drag Brunch on Sunday fits their family fine. Elaborate costumes, lip syncing to 80s dance hits, some truly corny jokes, and waffles. 

Some people think it's better to go to Sunday School at the church and learn about Lot and his daughters. You know the ones he offered up to be raped. Yeah, the ones who later got him drunk and raped him so they could get pregnant. 

It's all just a matter of difference in what we feel is appropriate for children to be exposed to. 

Are you sure you want to leave this page? If you exit now your post will be deleted.

Yes. Fucking fine. Delete it. Ugh.

*full disclosure, I made up the listen to the birds/read the tweets line and might use it in a short story at some point as well, so of course I think it's clever.

My Plan...

"Just pee."

"mumbles..."

"No, you can't get up. Your hip is broken. See? They've arranged that you can just pee. This will suck it all away."

"I can't I'm not there."

"You don't need to be there. Just pee. Right here."

This was the conversation on repeat yesterday. With the woman who needed to pee getting more and more distraught as the nurse calmly told her they had a device that would suck the pee out and her husband getting more and more frustrated that she wouldn't listen. 

Emergency rooms are not great for patient privacy. 

The woman who was in that room before the woman who needed to pee had abdominal pain. Lower right side. Some nausea. I diagnosed her with appendicitis and when she didn't come back after her scan I figured they took her right to surgery. The room on the other side was a possible concussion from her symptoms though she wouldn't say how she had hit her head so I am guessing also a possible case of domestic abuse. 

I never saw any of their faces but we heard a shifting array of medical conditions through the morning. There were also a couple of codes called out over the intercom including a very calm call to the stroke code area. I guess they didn't want to sound alarmed for all of us? Or maybe they deal with so many emergencies every day they don't get really worked up about it anymore. 

Since Brent wasn't an emergency emergency there were long stretches where we just waited for the next person to check on him. The intern came in, then later the doctor who was supervising the intern, but not together which I thought was odd. A few different nurses. The guy who came in to set up his IV port and do the blood draw. An orderly who came to wheel him away for his CT scan and then bring him back and hook him back up to all the monitors. Though he didn't put the machine on mute like the early morning nurse did so that was annoying for the forty-five minutes we waited for the next nurse to come in to check on him and to turn it off. Then the doctor again. Then the intern again. Then the IV guy again to hook up his antibiotics in an IV drip. Then we waited for someone to notice they were all gone and let us go home. 

The whole time listening to the coming and going of the rest of the ER. The moaning guy who came in while Brent was off getting his scan sounded really bad. Brent said that he saw the EMTs wheeling out a cart on his way back so we are guessing that was him. Brought in by ambulance and in bad shape. Also a few people who were loudly protesting that they were fine. Not sure why you are in the ER then, but I'm guessing you aren't really fine at all. 

But the one that stuck with me the most was the older woman in the next cubicle room who was so upset about having to pee. She broke her hip Wednesday they kept saying, so I am not sure why it wasn't until Friday that she ended up in the ER. She did not understand that because her hip was broken they would not let her get up. She didn't understand why her husband was there when he got there. She didn't understand why she couldn't pull the IV out of her arm, or why she needed to keep that arm straight so the drip would go in better. 

She sounded so lost. So scared. So bewildered. 

Her husband told the nurse at one point, "It's the dementia." The nurse replied, "Yes, we understand."

And, again, the nurse was amazing. She was the soul of patience. Before the woman's husband got there she never left her side. She kept her calm (as calm as she could) she repeated the pee line over and over. And even after the woman's husband got there she checked in often. They were still there when we finally were discharged so I'm not sure if they were going to let her go home that day or if she was going to have to stay. She was very much not in favor of staying, but I have a feeling with her broken hip she was going to be there.

And still not understanding why.

I thought about her husband, how frustrated he sounded, how long he probably has been dealing with this, though she lives in a care facility now. (The walls are basically non-existent, like I said, no medical privacy at all) I wondered how long he tried to take care of her on his own. If the dementia came on slowly or quickly. If she knew what was happening. If she is still worried about peeing the bed or if she finally was able to understand that they had put some sort of catheter in her that just "sucked the pee away." I also worried about it giving her a yeast infection, because old ladies are prone to yeast infections anyway. (I was diagnosing and second guessing all the doctors yesterday, it was a long day and I needed to keep my mind occupied so I didn't get frustrated at how long it was taking them to help Brent)

As I drove Brent home I told him, "If I suffer from dementia, and if it's a slow enough onset, I am going to find a death with dignity out. I just want you to be aware of that."

He was very quiet for a moment then, "I will be very sad if that happens, but I understand that would be your decision."

We agreed that no matter which way it went it would make him very sad.

But I never want to be the woman in the bed who doesn't understand her hip is broken and she can't get up to go to the bathroom. That is scarier to me than just about anything I can think of. 

Brent is better today than yesterday, by the way. He's not all the way to great yet, but he's better than he was and so we are counting that as a win.  

A Year Later...

Last year Katie came out to everyone. We had known for almost a year already at that point and I wrote about that time period starting here. But now we are a year into being fully out in the world. 

It's been quite a year. 

On one hand it's not been a big deal at all. More training our brains to not misgender our child accidentally. And for the most part we don't, but sometimes, to be perfectly honest, we still do. Mostly it happens when we are talking about something that happened when she was growing up. As you are recalling the memory that short cut in your head that stores things easily switches from she to he and you are mortified for a bit.

I also am having a hard time weaning "guys" and "dude" as gender neutral out of my vocabulary. It's just such a part of my speech patterns that I automatically use both. And then I think, "Shit" but I'm trying not to overly call attention to my mistakes because Katie has said that's worse so I just think, "you really need to say y'all" and then (as corny as this is) I practice in my head, Y'all, y'all, y'all. And then "you guys" comes out when I open my mouth and we start all over again. 

On the other hand it's been a terrifying year. You all have seen it happening. The steady march of the Christian Nationalists that are trying to completely take over our government and how they've made trans people, trans women in particular, their big bad scary thing they are fighting. I mean, I guess they could try to work on poverty, homelessness, lack of health care, or any of the number of real problems we have facing us right now, but this is easier for them, especially when they can couch their hatred and bullying into "won't somebody think of the children?" And it's not just anti trans bullshit, it's a creep of anti the whole alphabet family. So that's been terrifying. How quickly some states have become "off the list" as we say in our house. We won't be traveling there, we won't be visiting and we for sure won't be retiring there. 

I wrote about how when Katie told us, I instantly had a pit of fear opening up in my stomach. It's solidified into a solid black rock that I carry with me everywhere. I worry about her in Bend because Bend is barely purple. A lot of Eastern Oregon Red there. And right now the Red is for red hot hate. That's what is fueling that particular political party and that hate is pointed at my child. So I worry about her.

I know she is aware of the danger. One of the reasons she moved into her new apartment last year was safer sidewalks. She said that walking so near the road worried her because all it would take was a second for one of the trucks with their Trump flags to dart over and hit her. Understand that this is a real fear. Violence against trans women is extraordinarily high. It makes me furious and scared and I am learning to live with that feeling every day. Which pisses me the fuck off.

And in between all of that has been life going on. 

Katie is happier than she has ever been. And yes, part of me still kicks myself that I didn't realize she wasn't happy. That I wrote off a lot of her unhappiness to just being quiet. To being a bit more reserved than I am. But now she is coming into herself. She is more relaxed with her own space. She has friends that are supportive of her and that she is supportive of in turn. We tease her that she is running Katie's Home for Wayward Girls, but she has opened her heart and her home to a group of girls that needed someplace to go. The roommates, the coven, also her girlfriend. 

I know right? I've not had to share her with another woman before so this has been new. I got to meet her over the holidays, and I made her cry so that went well...

They are looking for a bigger apartment, the one she moved into last year is super cute and cozy and not meant to house 4-5 women all sharing one bathroom. I worry about the search. There are bigger places out there, sure. But will they rent to her? Will they discriminate against her? Will the vacancy they had listed suddenly become full when they come to look at the space? 

And that's part of my black rock of fear as well. She was playing life on easy mode before and suddenly jumped to hard. So as a parent I was on cruise control. I had done my job, raised my child, and they were out there handling it. Which still, my child is handling it. Good job, good friends, enjoying life. Just now there is always that drumbeat of fear in the background. I didn't prepare her for any of that. I wasn't prepared for that. 

On that first day I wrote about how lovely everyone had been. And for the most part that has stayed true. I dropped two people off my friend list for anti trans bullshit. One hurt a little, only because we had been friends since we were kids and I had a higher opinion of him than he proved worthy of. The second one was also someone I had known for awhile but I hadn't spoken with them for so long that when they sent me their anti trans bullshit note I had forgotten they were even on my Facebook friend list. Which they then weren't anymore. There is a lot of anti trans commentary on public posts and sometimes I read it, but mostly I don't. I can't do anything about the rampant ignorance and, honestly, not your fucking business, that runs through the world. I'd like to, but I can't.  

I've also answered a lot of questions from friends about trans issues. About how I handle things. How Katie handles things. A few just general what is being trans questions. And I try to give really honest answers. Sometimes the answer is that's honestly none of your business. But I don't mind people asking questions. I have always felt that if you know something that other people don't it's your responsibility to share that information. I HATE the "it's not my job to educate you" stance. Whose job is it then? Because there is a lot of misinformation out there. There is a lot of just flat out lying that is being done. If those of us who know better don't do our part the bullshit becomes what people think is the truth. So I try to do my part in places where I think it can make a difference.

A year later and she continues down the path of her new life. She's happier than she has ever been. We have a daughter who is happy, and that's what all of us say we want for our children right? We just want them to be happy. And she is. 

The Right Choice...

Remember last month when I was starting the Road to Recovery Part 3 and I was trying to figure out what problem I should focus on? I did finally settle on not doing that, not having one issue to try and work through and just seeing what I was thinking about that day.

Turns out that was brilliant. 

Thank you.

Okay, maybe not brilliant but definitely the right choice for me. It's been a good series. He's talked more about his recovery and all of the steps he's had to do to just get moving again, let alone trying to run. And it's been about more than that. It's been about ideas we have when we are younger that the world disabuses us of pretty quickly. Or sometimes slowly. It's been about listening to yourself when you are in pain, physically and mentally, and treating issues when they are small before they blow up. 

He was talking about that today in relation to physical pain, and working out through pain, and when and what type is growth pain and what type is you are hurt pain. He used a phrase that I really liked, "Pain whispers before it screams." Oh my gosh that's so good. (and yes sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it just comes at you unexpectedly, but let's stick with the areas where it builds)

I liked it because it fits so much with aging and the differences in dealing with pain that I have now vs when I was in my 20s. Now when I get a little niggling pain someplace I have to really pay attention, what is this? Is this getting better? Do I need to rest this for a bit? Brace it? Ice it? Heat it? What do I need to do to soothe it? When I was younger it was just a WORK THROUGH IT and move on. That is not an option now. Now if I try and work through something it lets me know pretty quickly that was a bad idea. Probably from years of working through it instead of taking care of it the right way.

I liked it because it fits with emotional issues as well. A lot of times we know there is something wrong. In a relationship, in a job, in just what you are doing in your day to day. It's just that feeling of something being off. Then the blow up happens. The fight or the break up. The firing. The breakdown. And you look back and see how you knew something was off but you were just ignoring it. 

Pain whispers before it screams. So good.

Another thing he talked about was being a perfectionist when he was younger. And how that tied into his religious belief that the world was a meritocracy. That if you are good, good things happen to you. And how you always had to strive to be the best at things. You needed to do the best all of the time to achieve greatness. He talked about how weird it was that he thought those things because his parents didn't. They exposed him to a lot of the world's religions and most of them talked about doing your best. Not being the best. And how things happen to all of us. And his mother used to tell him that you didn't need to do great things. What you needed to work toward was doing a lot of little good things that would add up. That by focusing on being great at one thing you would miss the opportunities the world would present you for a multitude of good ones. 

Oh I like that too. Fits in with The Four Agreements for me. Always do your best. Whatever it is you are doing, whatever it is you are presented with, do your best. A lot of little good things add up to a good life. And a good balanced life is better than a limited one where you are great at one thing and lousy at a lot of others. 

It matches up with my belief that perfect is the enemy of the good. (you've probably heard that a lot, it's such a good reminder) That if you are always worried about something being perfect you often won't even try things. You don't notice good things. You keep trying to hone and polish something that is already good enough. Wasting your time that you could be putting toward other things you enjoy. It also holds you back from trying new things. If you have to be perfect at everything you cannot fail. And it's incredibly rare to not fail when you are trying something new. 

And when he talked about believing the world was a meritocracy, that good things happen to good people. Oh my...that's one that I think a lot of us struggle with. The idea that there should be some sort of karmic justice out there. If you are good person you should have good things. If you are a bad person there is some sort of bad thing waiting to happen to you. But that's not the way it goes. A lot of really awful people have great lives. And part of why they are able to have those great lives is because of how awful they are. They don't hesitate for a second to take more, have more, shut out anything that doesn't serve them. And we wait thinking, SURELY something will happen to them. And it doesn't. Not always. 

Sometimes life bites them in the ass and we all feel a little better about it. But often it doesn't. And you have to be able to live with that idea. That bad things happen to good people. That good things happen to bad people. That even the idea of good and bad people shifts depending on who you are talking to. What their ideas of good and bad are. I mean...it's complicated. 

So I'm really glad I didn't have some sort of issue I was trying to work through. Something that I would be trying to shoehorn into the past 20 workouts with his chats. Because I was able to just listen each day and let what he was saying kind of wash over me and settle in where it needed to. 

Which, of course, made me think about daily life. How so often we are focused on our own issues and what we want or even need to be working on that we miss some really good stuff going on with others. 

It's been a good series. I guess the thing I needed to work on was that part of my yearly list of goals. Be the ocean. Let his words and messages flow with me. Find that space to just float along with him. 

It works. 

AI Dreams...

It had started as a joke. They thought it would be hilarious to prank their boss. It was the sort of thing they did when they were all in school. Just fucking around with you. That was the line, I was just fucking around with you. And everybody would laugh, and they’d get back to work.

But he’d forgotten they weren’t in school anymore. And he wasn’t his dormmate anymore, he was now his boss. And it wasn’t grades or study time they were worried about it was shareholders.

It had been a joke. Then someone leaked the transcript, and it wasn’t a joke anymore. It was a new product. It was a leap forward in innovation. It was THE FUTURE.

And so, when he told his boss, his former dormmate, whom he thought was his friend, that it had just been a joke, that it wasn’t real, that they hadn’t meant for anyone outside of their small group to ever even see the transcript, he had expected to get yelled at a bit. And even possibly to get fired, he had been prepared for the worst. He thought.

He had had no idea what the worst really was.

It had been a joke. They had come up with AI that was actually intelligent. Conversational, thinking outside of just stiff programmed responses. But of course, it hadn’t been. It had been him hiding behind some faked code to make it look like the computer was processing and responding, but it had been him all along.

He’d been prepared for the yelling. And there was a lot of yelling. “DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU’VE DONE?” He was told in no uncertain terms that he had jeopardized not just his job, but the whole company. That they could be sanctioned, fined, driven out of business. That if it got out that they had faked an AI that they would never be trusted again. So, he prepared to be fired. He even felt that he might deserve it by that point.

But they didn’t fire him. Instead, they pulled up the security feeds at his sister’s house, at his parent’s house, at the school his nephew attended. Ironically the security software he had developed. They pulled up all of his banking records to show him how easily they could manipulate them. Adding and subtracting funds at lightning speed. Showing money coming in and going out from foreign actors. If they wanted proof it was not only corporate espionage but possibly treasonous behavior, considering their government contracts, they could provide it.

He thought that being fired would be the worst thing. He was wrong.

He was working 20 plus hours a day. Trying to code actual AI that could do what he said it could do, while also acting as the “AI” interface. He wasn’t alone in his work. He didn’t know what the others had done to warrant being trapped with him, but they were stuck just the same. There wasn’t time to chit chat, and they knew they were under constant surveillance (again with his own design), so they didn’t even try.

He had tried early on to get a message out to the world. To let them know what was happening. He was ready to go to jail if needed. Or to face a firing squad if it came to that. Losing his mind slowly in a room with no windows and the only light being the glow of computer monitors was too much to bear. But when he tried to manipulate the chat with a tech, to show that it was a cry for help it failed spectacularly.

The tech didn’t think that it was a cry for help from a person, he thought the AI had become sentient. Which, of course, it was sentient, it was a person he was talking to. But he never considered that. He just thought the AI was alive. Was its own being now. The tech was let go. He was ridiculed in the media. He was made a joke so that nobody would look too closely at what he was saying.

And the entire AI team had lost three meals as a warning. And he was told if he tried something like that again they would do worse. And if he tried to get cute with his own life, they would make sure his sister didn’t have time to mourn him as she would be too filled with grief over what happened to his nephew.

As other companies started releasing their own AI, he hacked their systems and looked at their coding. Trying to see if he could use it to actually create what he had faked. They had done it so he knew he could. Then at least they could stop reading stupid questions and carrying on inane conversations. But their code was as fake as his.

All over the world there had to be rooms of people pretending to be AI. Were they all trapped like he was? Or was it voluntary? Were they being paid enough to keep silent or were they being threatened into it?

When the art started, he thought he had his answer. Copywrite violations everywhere. Plagiarism in written works. Art images lifted directly from websites and cut and cropped into “new” pieces but keeping the watermarks, so they were easy to trace. If this wasn’t an engineer begging for the outside world to take a deeper look, he didn’t know what would be.

And still…

The companies all said they didn’t know exactly how the programs were working. They didn’t know how their code was creating new things.

And people fucking bought it.

There were congressional hearings where state representatives asked about Chinese interference instead of asking how in the world they could write code that did unexpected things. How was it even remotely possible that they would write code and not know how it would work. Wasn’t that what writing code was? But no, they didn’t know enough to even ask the right questions.

It was all brushed off as just odd when the AI tried to get the reporter to leave his wife and marry it. Just a footnote, why would the AI say such a thing? It’s a mystery. Nobody understands this stuff.

But he did. He understood. He understood that was some poor slob stuck in a windowless room someplace trying to get a message out to the world.

Save me. Save us. Please.

But no one was coming. Just more and more techs to answer more and more questions. Write more and more term papers. Create more and more fraudulent pieces of art. To pretend that there was intelligent life somewhere.

He had had no idea what the worst really was.

It's Fraught...

I really do like the word fraught. It's such a nice way to say fucked. Or potentially fucked. It's fraught.

Today is Mothering Day in the UK. It's like Mother's Day here, just a fancier way of saying it. And just like here, it's fraught.

The combination of posts on either day always range from glowing tributes to mom, funny pictures of what your kids did to celebrate, to posts just overflowing with pain from either missing mom, or never having had a good relationship with mom. It's a lot.

If you have known me for any length of time you know I don't celebrate Mother's Day. When my mother and mother-in-law were alive we sent them flowers and tried to remember to call, because even though I don't celebrate it, they still did. So out of obligation to them we made sure to cover our bases. 

And that's a big part of why I don't celebrate. Obligation. 

I have told Katie over and over that she has no obligation to either Brent or me. She did not choose to be born. We did that. So she has no debt to pay, no obligation to uphold, over being raised by us. By the things we did for her while we raised her. Those were our choices. 

I am glad that she's grateful for a lot of it. That she understands how much easier her life is in some ways because of the choices we made. I am glad that she appreciates us as parents and as people. But she owes us nothing. 

I am also glad (and I've talked about it a lot) that she calls me often. That she shoots me texts when she runs across something she thinks I'll like. I would so much rather that, than a once a year phone call, bouquet of flowers, breakfast out. 

It's the same as Valentine's Day. I don't want Brent and I to fall into some trap of making a big deal romantic gesture once a year and forget that the real foundation of romance is bringing home a cup of coffee if you had an early morning errand you ran. Or getting the brand of cereal that you know he loves at the grocery store. Or bringing home a piece of fudge from the fudge lady at work. Or saying, "Hey, your butt looks really good in those jeans!" The daily stuff is what I would rather have. 

We call them Hallmark Holidays in our house. And they are fraught. 

People's relationships with each other, with their parents, with their grown children, they are all complicated. And expectations from those Hallmark cards and commercials make them worse. And now? Now with social media and people posting pictures of their happy families and what they are doing to celebrate? It's too much. 

I can remember standing in front of a Hallmark display looking at Mother's Day cards and trying to find one to send home. It was the first Mother's Day we were living away from New Mexico and my mother and I were not on good terms. I was furious with her. I was debating walking away from my birth family at that point in time. So much anger. And those cards did not help. There was no "Look, I'm trying to understand that you did the best you could, or what you thought was right, but you fucked up." section. Everything was about how wonderful mom was, how special, how giving, how nurturing. How we all held an obligation to her. 

I walked out of the store without a card that day and had to go back and just blindly pick one a few days later. It didn't help the relationship, that's for sure, but if I hadn't gotten the card at all it would have been even worse. 

The obligation.

I hope that you are having a good Sunday no matter where you are. No matter what your history is. I hope you understand that Hallmark doesn't get to decide how your relationships look. That it's okay that life is complicated. I hope you are healing if you need healing. I hope that you are thriving. I hope that if your relationship with your mother is a good one, it brings you joy and I hope that if it was a terrible one you are able to move past that and still be okay. 

I know days like today are fraught. 

Sometimes it just makes it better to find a bright spot about it. 

Like the word Fraught. 

I do so like that word. 

Last One of These I Hope...

"They always mean beautiful things like hummingbirds. I always reply by saying that I think of a little child in east Africa with a worm burrowing through his eyeball. The worm cannot live in any other way, except by burrowing through eyeballs. I find that hard to reconcile with the notion of a divine and benevolent creator." David Attenborough talking about the hate mail he gets for not crediting god in his nature documentaries.

A friend of mine posted a version of that quote on her wall. It took just a few seconds for someone to come in and tell her it was because she was reading the scriptures wrong: "the Earth belongs to Satan and those things are from Satan not God." 

Umm, I grew up reading the scriptures and that's a fucking cop out. Which, let's be honest, a lot of scripture interpretation is. I mean the whole story of Job is basically god and satan getting together and agreeing that they could fuck with this guy completely and he would still believe that god was good and worship him. Which is such a horrible thing to teach people. That no matter what bad thing happens to you it's not god's fault but all of the good things are his credit. 

I mean, they totally do that. They always thank god for the raise, or the new house, or the award but they don't blame him for the cancer or the flat tire or bankruptcy. That is your fault somehow. That's satan's work in your life. All the glory to god, none of the blame. What a great gig.

My response to my friend's post, and her friend's post under it was one of my standard reasons for why I don't believe in any god. "You either believe in an omnipotent god who could stop this and doesn't or a god who can't and isn't omnipotent after all. So which is it? Or....god isn't an actual supernatural being and just a story that was used to explain things people didn't understand and used to control the behavior of the masses. Like all gods through history."

A few years ago I heard a great quote about atheism from Stephen Roberts: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

All religion is nonsense. You just believe your nonsense and nobody else's. 

Doing the Tommy Rivs workout and he is hiking the mountains in Italy. Lots of cows. He said it reminded him of his childhood in Eastern New Mexico and then Eastern Oregon. He talked about how the ranchers would get up early to tend to their cows before church on Sunday and would wear the same boots to services without cleaning them off. So this was the smell of church to him. 

Bullshit. (to be fair that wasn't what he was saying, but it struck me as funny and true at the same time)

The part that makes me so frustrated is that I live in a country where I am expected to treat your religious beliefs with respect while you use your religion to disrespect me and my beliefs. And not just disrespect, but use your religious beliefs to enact a rule of law that follows it. Turning a free country into a theocracy. And when I push back against that I get accused of being a religious bigot. Disrespecting your beliefs. Cramming my lifestyle down your throat. 

Yes, me saying, leave my daughter the fuck alone, let my friends live their full married lives, don't worry about what happens in the bedrooms of consenting adults, don't be an asshole when talking to people is somehow ME cramming my lifestyle down your throat but you passing laws saying you can't read certain books, go to certain shows, get healthcare you and your doctor deem necessary, because it offends your religious belief is not cramming YOUR lifestyle down my throat. 

I don't care if you are religious. Let me put that out there if anyone is confused. I have said over and over again that I have a lot of friends who are. And a variety of religions and beliefs as well. I even have a few pagans in the mix. Talk about old time religion, am I right? But the thing I care about is if you think your religious beliefs should dictate what I do in my life. I'm not going out and charging crystals by the light of the full moon. I'm not going to avoid shellfish or tattoos. I'm not going to blame poor people for not praying hard enough and claiming their wealth in the name of Jesus. I don't care if you do though. I mean, some of it really makes you an asshole, but you are free to be an asshole. 

That's what freedom is supposed to be. You are free to believe what you want to. I am free to believe what I want. But that's it. You are not free to force me to live in line with what you believe by force of law. You can restrict me from forcing your church to perform gay marriages. You can restrict me from forcing your non-publicly funded religious schools from allowing gender confirming pronoun use. You can do that. That's your right. I will say I believe you are wrong and doing the wrong thing, and that's my right. But those are choices. I have the choice of going to your church or putting my kid in your school. I wouldn't because well... church. But it's all about choices. 

 

I'm frustrated and angry and frankly more than a little scared as I watch our country slide more and more toward Christian Nationalism. As I watch one party embrace illiberal democracy and celebrate autocratic rule as long as it is couched in "God Said I Could" I'm worried. I grew up in the church. I know how badly this can go. And it's not just the LGBTQIA+ community that should be worried. All women should be worried. All people of color should be worried. We should all be worried. 

I titled this blog "Last One of These I Hope" but it won't be. It can't be. Because they aren't going to stop. So I can't stop either. None of us should stop. Silence is agreement in these sort of matters. We all need to be pushing back. To be standing firm in our own beliefs. Because it's not about Drag Shows, or books with two daddy penguins. It's not about protecting the children from groomers. It's not about any of the bullshit they say it's about. It's about weaving the fabric of our society to ensure that they have all of the power and we do not. It's about scapegoating populations while they rob the coffers and enrich themselves without you noticing. 

And we cannot be silent and watch it happen. We just can't. 

Use your voice while you can. Speak out while you have the chance. 

We need to keep moving forward and not let them push us back into the closet, or the kitchen, or the coal mine, or the cotton field. 

We the people. We. 

Speak up. 

Don't Tweet...

"I do think there is an anti-Christian bias in Hollywood. As soon as the David character in “The Last of Us” started reading from the Bible I knew that he was going to be a horrific villain. Could there be a Bible-reading preacher on a show who is actually loving and kind?" Rainn Wilson Tweet

"Of course it’s true that the evangelical/political coalition is doing a great deal of damage to our country. Banning books - banning freedoms - denying inconvenient science, taking a grotesque anti-LGBTQ+ platform…But most Christians that I know are kind, accepting and loving and seeking to make the world a better place. They should also be honored in the media." More from Mr. Wilson

The number of people on TV and in movies that are these good Christians he wants to see represented is practically immeasurable. Because it's assumed that most people are religious. It's not odd for a character to talk about going to church, or saying they will pray for someone, or seeing a crucifix hung on a wall in a house or have a character wearing a gold cross. It's all just background. We don't notice because it's ubiquitous in our American culture to see religion constantly. 

His second tweet also explains his first. Why oh why is the bible reading preacher a red flag that this is going to be a bad guy? Well...yeah, the book banning, the homophobia, the anti trans movement, the sexism the generalized bigotry, all of that makes it pretty easy to see why we will probably assume someone coming in to a story like that is going to be the bad guy. Now, as an aside, David makes it clear that he is not actually a Christian, that he recognized that it would be easier to control people if he couched it in religion. Which, yeah. 

Slavery. Hitting your kids. Women being less than men. Anti trans, anti gay, almost any generalized bigotry. They've all been justified by using bible verses. The bible itself has been rewritten and edited at times to further the people in power's agendas. But do go on about how it's Hollywood pushing the narrative and not history. 

And I do get his inclination to wanting to see his friends better represented. I have family and friends who fall into the really decent people who are also religious camp. Like, really religious. The ones who do pray for you every day and not in a condescending way but in a please protect and shower love on this person way. The ones who use their faith to guide their lives in positive directions. And his own faith (he's Baha'i) dictates that he wants to see the best in everyone, the unifying things we all hold. So I understand his "why can't we all get along" stance. 

But...

Right now there is an, to quote Rainn Wilson, "evangelical/political coalition {that} is doing a great deal of damage to our country. Banning books - banning freedoms - denying inconvenient science, taking a grotesque anti-LGBTQ+ platform" There are states right now trying to outlaw our daughter's existence. Who are using her as a scapegoat and target for all of their hate and discontent. So forgive me if my response to "oh won't someone think of the Christians" is fuck you. Fuck you and fuck them. I will worry more about Hollywood's representation of evangelicals when real life representation of evangelicals isn't so vile. 

Oh...God.

Back in 2011 I went to an all day seminar called Get Motivated! There were a lot of different speakers and it had been heavily advertised and it was cheap, like a few dollars a ticket cheap, AND...here is my big confession, I love shit like that. Keynote speakers at conferences? Love them. I heard some great speeches in my time in corporate America. And I am a sucker for them. Because they are stories, someone is up there telling you a story about their life, and I dig it. 

So I went. I went with a friend who also loves stuff like that. We sat together at a lot of Keynote presentations over the years and were usually the only two out of our group of ten who were like, "THAT WAS GREAT!"

The day was interesting. Not quite what I went in expecting but once I was in the middle of it, I realized that of course this is what it would be. There was no way those super cheap tickets were going to pay the speaking fees for even one of the presenters let alone the 8 or 9 we heard. So, of course, there were sales. Oh wait, excuse me, opportunities! I mean we were all there to get motivated right? So what better motivation than learning about trading stocks? Or real estate stuff or whatever the other sales pitches were that I've forgotten now. 

There was also a lot of god talk. Which, again, the majority of the speakers, if not all of them, were conservatives (I saw General Powell, Laura Bush and Rudy Giuliani in my mix of speakers just for examples) and so there was a lot of blessed by and his hand guiding and god bless America, that sort of thing that you get used to hearing if you live in the USA and listen to politicians talk. But there was even more, including at one point an honest to goodness come to Jesus moment with an altar call. Like we were at a revival not a motivational conference. 

So at the end of the day I posted about it, calling it mix of motivational speakers, sales pitches and god talk. The friend I went with was really insulted that I described it that way. He got a little huffy about it and did the "we just took different things from the experience" thing. Which was weird to me. Because he bought one of the programs that they were selling so he knew I was right about the sales pitches, and as I said at one point there was a literal altar call to go along with all the other god talk. But for him that all just washed over him without him really noticing. 

And he thought I was making it up. That maybe one of them had said something about god, but not most. Surely not. 

And that's what it's like to be an atheistically leaning agnostic in America. The god talk is so pervasive that everyone around you hears it without hearing it. God bless the United States of America. Oh god has blessed me so much that this happened. I just thank god that my cancer is gone. On and on and on. If you are out in public at all you can't really avoid it. But because you can't avoid it you mostly don't notice it either. I mean, as long as you aren't a different religion or no religion at all, then it's really noticeable.

And it's weird because when you point it out people get pissy. 

And just for the record, when I looked up the seminar to see if they were still doing them and just avoiding Portland because we are on the conservative EEK! list, nope. They went out of business in 2012 when the evangelical couple who founded it got divorced and sued by a woman who lost everything she had and then some from "investing" in one of the programs sold to her at a seminar. So yeah, a mix of motivational speakers, god talk and sales.

But Laura Bush was surprisingly engaging. 

And Bill Cosby was such a horrible asshole that I was not one of the people shocked to find out he is a horrible asshole. 

And I didn't buy anything. 
And I didn't convert.

And I was right about what it was.

So yeah, overall it was a good day. 

But the reminder of it hit with a lot of other god talk items around me lately so it's churning in my head. Expect another blog, but of a more ranty nature soon. I just figured I'd share this story as a warmup. 

Sticky...

She knew when she got married that there would be challenges. That how different their upbringings were would add to those. She knew that. They knew that. They had talked about it. Understood that it would take a little extra compromise from both of them at times. But that's what marriage was all about even when backgrounds were similar, and theirs certainly weren't. She knew that they could make it through even the most challenging times. Or at least hoped.

"You're pregnant?" 

"Surprise..."

"That's not funny."

"Well it's kind of funny. I mean, it is a surprise."

"You fucking cheated on me and you think that it's funny?"

"Oh wait, babe, no. I absolutely didn't cheat on you. I would never. You know that."

"So you decided to get artificial insemination without talking to me first? Without seeing what I thought about it?"

"No, I didn't do that. I wouldn't do something so major without us both deciding we were ready for children. You know that too."

"I know a lot of things. Like I know that it's impossible for you to get pregnant without cheating on me or getting artificial insemination."

"Impossible is a word for...well...we don't use the word impossible in my community."

"Oh come on! You are going to try and fall back on that?"

"It's the truth. Impossible is for science not magic."

Her wife just glared at her. Yeah, this one was going to be more challenging to get past than deciding who to spend Christmas with. 

She thought back to a lesson on brewing potions with her sister. 

"I hate potions."

"You don't hate potions, you just aren't as good at them as I am."

"No, I mean it. I'd rather do blood magic. I like it better. It's more sticky."

"It wouldn't be if you cleaned your work stations more often."

"Ha. ha. Very funny. You know what I mean. Potions wear off too quickly. It's a lot of work for a little time. Blood magic sticks. You work one spell with blood magic and that shit's forever."

"Not quite forever."

"Okay, maybe not quite forever. But pretty much forever."

"That's why I like potions better. Because I do know how long they will last. No matter what the spell is there is an exact amount of time it will last. Blood magic is unpredictable."

"Blood magic lasts. It's sticky. Potions and spells with nothing but will behind them are all limited."

She smiled at the memory. Which was a mistake. 

"Why are you smiling? What the hell?"

"I'm sorry. I was just thinking about my sister. She would totally be on your side."

"ANYONE would be on my side. Seriously, what the fuck? You're sitting here telling me you're pregnant and expecting me to just be cool with it. I can't get you pregnant. You can't get me pregnant. It's one of the many benefits to being a lesbian. No unexpected pregnancies."

"And I should have expected it. I mean as soon as Jenn died I should have thought about it, but I didn't and I'm sorry about that."

"Look, I don't want to sound like an asshole here, but what the fuck does your sister dying have to do with this?"

"Do you remember our sixth month anniversary when I took you to the Ravel Manor House?"

"I don't want to play memory lane right now..."

"No, trust me, this is relevant. Really."

"Okay, sure, whatever, yeah, of course I remember it. It was lovely."

She opened her phone and did a quick search then handed it to her wife. 

"It's gone."

The article showed a collapsed ruin where the house had stood. There were some quotes from locals about how suddenly it just fell apart. The house had stood for centuries then suddenly it was just rubble. The reporter had tried to contact the owners to see what had happened but there was no one left. The last Ravel had died. There was actually a lot of confusion over who the land would go to, the only deed on record stated that if the Ravels left, the land would then belong to the King. 

The last King to rule that area had done so five hundred years ago. And there was no clear line as to who would represent the crown now. That particular King ruled over a kingdom that covered what was now 5 different countries. So do all of the countries have a claim? Or would it have been whoever was in charge of that particular fiefdom? Which would cover three different counties. Or should it just go to the township or the county or the city or the country that the manor had been in while it stood? And if it just reverted to the local government were they then incharge of determining why the manor had collapsed and turned to rubble so quickly? 

The article left the reader with a lot of questions and no answers. 

"Fascinating. Really great stuff. And, again, what the fuck does this have to do with anything?"

"What they called a deed, wasn't a deed. It was a binding document. One done with intent behind it. And tied to blood."

"And..."

"So you know we've talked about different types of magic, that was blood magic. Blood magic stays in place as long as that blood line exists. If you were to actually look at when the last Ravel died and when the house collapsed you would see it was the same day. Probably the exact same time. And when the house collapsed it collapsed with all the weight of how old it was hitting it all at once. Which is why it basically disintegrated. It had been held through blood magic. When the line died, the magic failed."

"So the old house fell down. Tragedy. Again...what the fuck does this have to do with us?"

"Spells can be really specific and can include a lot of things. Especially blood magic spells. If you have enough will, and enough blood you can make a really strong binding. One of my ancestors made one of the strongest known. My line. My blood line back centuries. Jenn and I were the end of the line. Two more chances to continue the line. When Jenn died well...one more chance."

"And so you decided to continue your line?"

"No, again, honey, I would never do something without talking to you. Never. But I didn't think about what Jenn dying meant. Not about that anyway. That unless I carried a child that our bloodline would end. With my death the spell would come undone."

"And our house would fall down? Sorry, this house was built new 15 years ago. Try a different story."

"I don't actually know what would happen. I don't know what the original spell was for. I just know there has always been another one of us. There has always been a continuation of our bloodline. No matter how improbable a healthy pregnancy might seem, there is always a child. They wove it into the spell. A self perpetuating line."

She looked at her wife trying to see in her eyes if she understood what she was saying. 

"When this child is born. Our daughter, it will have to be a daughter since neither of us have a Y chromosome to give, the DNA test is going to show that she is our child. Both of us."

"That's impossible."

"Again, not a word we use."

"So you are trying to tell me that not only are you pregnant, but you are pregnant with my baby?"

"That's what I'm telling you. And I should probably add that most likely she won't be an only child."

....

She knew when she got married that there would be challenges. That how different their upbringings were would add to those. She knew that. They knew that. They had talked about it. Understood that it would take a little extra compromise from both of them at times. But that's what marriage was all about even when backgrounds were similar, and theirs certainly weren't. She had just always assumed that the biggest challenge would be dealing with a whole family that thought they were actually magical. Now she knew the biggest challenge would be dealing with a whole family that actually was. Including her newborn daughter. 

Not as Planned...

We ordered new couches for the living room. The ones we have in there right now were bought to be used in our media room in the old house. Super soft, squishy, comfy couches. Not meant to be sat on every day. So we bought a new set with firm cushions and studier fabric.They are coming on Tuesday. 

Before we bought them we measured the room we are using as our media room to make sure the couches we currently have would fit in there. They will. It will be a FULL room for sure, but it will work. And it will be nice to have places for more than two people to sit if Katie is home, or we have anyone else over. 

This meant moving the current couch that was in there someplace else. We decided to put it in Katie's/the Spare room. Which meant taking out the desk we had in there. And we needed to figure out where to put the footstool that matches it. So the desk went back into the office, at least for now. It's sitting at the end of our current desk as sort of an extension. It doesn't really match, but it fits. The footstool we decided to put in our bedroom. To fit it in there we needed to move another piece of furniture to the foot of our bed. Again, it fits, but it's a little more crowded. And we had to throw a gray blanket over it because it is absolutely the wrong color for the room.

We currently have too much furniture and still not enough. Not the right combination. 

But we are making things work. 

So now that the media room is cleared out we decided to go ahead and move the couches into it ahead of the arrival of the new furniture on Tuesday. 

And...well.

The couch would fit. If we could get it in the room. It's too long and too wide to navigate the turn. If you are the right age you can hear Ross Geller yelling PIVOT! We tried everything. We took the door off its hinges, we took the feet off the couch. We bashed the walls and the door frame up pretty good trying to get that stinking thing in the room. No dice. 

So I'm going to ask the furniture delivery people on Tuesday if they can figure it out. I'm not sure they will be able to, but they move a lot more furniture than I do so maybe they know the exact right angle for it. If not I'll try and sell it. And if I can't sell it then I'll give it away. 

Which would suck, because it's not that old and if we had realized that it wouldn't actually work in that room we would have just sucked up the fact that it is looking a little sloppy for another few years. 

But sometimes that is what happens with plans. You think you've got it all covered and you miss something crucial. Like the narrow doorway into the bedroom.

PIVOT!

We Can All Agree...(Help Yourself #3)

This month's self help book was the one that flipped the switch on this idea to go. I've mentioned before that if you ever wanted to figure out my moral code you could read Desiderata, Elf Quest and The Four Agreements and you'd pretty much have me figured out. Yep, a poem, a comic series and a woo woo spiritual book. That's me. (if you Google Elf Quest this review snippet is the first thing you see: ElfQuest is liberal, sex-positive, and identity-affirming)

I've read and reread all of them so many times in my life I could probably recite a lot of them back to you. I used to keep a copy of The Four Agreements in my bedside table and I'd go back to it every few years and read a chapter a night before bed for a week just to lock it all in there again. 

Then life got busy and though the book stayed in my bedside table I didn't pick it up for quite a few years. And when I did I wondered what the hell happened. I didn't remember it being so woo woo. I remembered it being really profound and making a huge amount of sense to me. But what was all of this other stuff? 

The actual four agreements though? Still gold.

So when I saw that there was a book The Fifth Agreement and it was a revisit of The Four Agreements with an added agreement and it was written with his son I thought that it would be interesting to see what the updated take was. 

And I broke one of the four agreements, to be honest, I made an assumption that it would be less woo. It was not less woo. It was a lot of woo. 

I am so glad that I read The Four Agreements when I did, because if this had been my first exposure to those ideas I never would have made it far enough into the book to absorb them and have them make a difference. 

Things come in to your life at different times and that makes all the difference in how you react to them. When I was in my 20s I was still close enough to letting go of the religion I was raised with that I missed having that spiritual aspect in my life. I was searching for something to replace it. And the woo woo Toltec wisdom that don Miguel Ruiz was talking about was not that far removed from burning bushes and people coming back from the dead. It's all woo woo. Just depends on the woo you were raised with on how off it sounds. I was still half in and half out of a world with that supernatural thing being front and center. 

The farther I get from that the less interested I am in anyone else's woo. By the end of The Fifth Agreement I will admit that I was skimming whole sections. Which don Miguel would say means I am not ready to give up the dream of this life and am not using the Word properly. I say it's because I don't believe the words he's saying, which ironically enough leads us to the fifth agreement itself. 

Again, the agreement is gold. Even though my interpretation of it might not be exactly what he meant.

Be skeptical but learn to listen. 

Oh that's good. 

Just because someone says something doesn't mean it's the truth. BUT it is their truth, or at least there is a reason they are saying it. Learn to listen to people to see why they think what they do, why they believe what they believe, but don't be sucked in to it if it doesn't make sense. If it's not true. If it's dangerous or damaging or harmful to others. Listen when people talk, don't just wait for them to stop so you can get your point in but that doesn't mean you have to agree. 

Be skeptical, but learn to listen.  

It slots in with what I already believe so of course it resonated. But it's still good. 

Looking at all five of the agreements and reading them at the same time as Desiderata I can see that they actually mirror each other a lot. It's no wonder they resonate with me. They just reinforced each other.

Three self help books down, nine more to go. Let's see what I stumble on for next month!

Interpretation...

"...it's like that country song. You know the thank fuck that didn't happen song."

"What? What song is that?"

"That Garth Brooks song. You know! He is back in his hometown and runs into the girl he used to bang and he's with his wife so he's all like, Yeah, thank fuck that didn't stick!"

"Unanswered Prayers? Is that the song you mean?"

"Yeah! That's it."

"He sees her and realizes he needs to appease his wife so he's like, yeah, she's not great, don't know what I was thinking."

"I...I don't think that is the point of the song."

"But at least he realizes that he's not so great anymore either. But maybe that's why he doesn't think she's so hot, because she doesn't look at him like he's perfect."

"Again, I think maybe you missed something in the song."

"Well I mean he doesn't say fuck, but that's just because it wouldn't have gotten on the radio back then. Can you imagine what it would be like if he wrote it now? Like thank fuck I missed all of that crazy coming my way that you post on Facebook!"

"I..."

"And when they ran into each other at the high school homecoming game she would just cut her eyes to his MAGA hat and shake her head a little, while he patted his wife on her backside to show his disdain for the women's rights post she made in honor of International Women's Day."

"Garth isn't actually a MAGA kind of guy."

"Oh, right! Maybe it's flipped, maybe he's wearing a blue hat with an equal sign and she's all like 'Think of the children!' I just automatically made him the dick which I should really think about, but so many of the dudes I went to high school with grew up to be TOTAL assholes and Facebook has just shown me how bad my taste in boys was back then."

"Well, that's kind of the point of the song. It's not that you had bad taste, it's that you all grew up and changed. I mean dating when you are young is mostly about shared experiences right? Like you have classes together, you know the same people. You aren't really talking politics or deep life ideas. It's just oh I think you're cute and we have algebra together we should totally get married some day."

"And then you run into them later and are like thank fuck that didn't happen!"

"Or...some of God's greatest gifts are unanswered prayers."

"But you know he's actually thinking the other."

"Yeah, probably."

The Last of Us...

Double Spoiler Alert!!

Okay, as you can tell by the title I'm going to write about The Last of Us. If you haven't watched the show or played the game and are planning on it you should probably back out now. If you haven't watched the show or played the game and aren't planning on it you might want to back out as well, just because I'm going to be talking about things you haven't seen. 

The second spoiler alert is that I haven't played the game. I'm just watching the show. So I don't know what's coming and I DON'T WANT YOU TO TELL ME. Seriously. Don't tell me things you know because of the game, don't tell me I'm right or I'm wrong in what I'm going to write about based off things you know from the game. Just sit smugly and know you know things I don't. 

So...on to the blog.

First off I want to make super clear that I love this show. I love Joel and Ellie and I think that Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are both doing an incredible job. After this week's episode I'm ready to hand Bella their Emmy right now. So good. Oh my gosh. Just want to get that out of the way first.

Did you know that when you are watching nature documentaries the film maker can manipulate which animal you are rooting for? It's the one they show you first. So, for instance, if you are watching a family of field mice and their struggle to find food and a good burrow and raise all of their babies you are fully team field mouse. And when they show the hawk coming to try and snatch away poor Mr. Field Mouse you are firmly in the run little mouse get away from that bastard hawk camp. 

BUT...if you start out with the hawk family and see them bonding and building a nest and their adorable little hatchlings. Then when Mrs. Hawk dive bombs the field mice you are like, YEAH! Snatch up that filthy little beast and take home dinner to the babies! You are a fierce and wonderful mommy!

Who we saw first is who is the hero of our story. 

I've always loved that. I love the comics where they would What If? the stories. What if Superman landed in Russia? What if the first person Wonder Woman saw was a German pilot? They were superheroes for the USA because that's who they saw first. 

Like most things your point of view is based on things like that. Your language, your religion, your patriotism, all of those things are more likely to be accidents of birth than choices you made. Some people migrate, or change religion, or even learn new languages, but most don't. And even those that do change still tend to hold some vestige of their past in regard. 

There is a percentage of our population that fully believes that everyone in the world wants to be a citizen of the USA. Thinks people in London are cursing their ancestors for not being part of the colonies. Instead those Londoners are looking at the USA and it boggles their minds that we allow people to go bankrupt or die because they can't afford health care. They are truly confused as to why we just accept that getting shot is a thing that could happen and instead of gun control we teach our kids how to do active shooter drills. They don't want to be us, they are confused as fuck as to why we want to be us. 

But that's because they saw themselves first. And we saw ourselves first. Who we are is an accident of birth as much as it is anything else. 

Who we view as the good guys is all about whose story we see first. 

Joel isn't a good guy. He's just not. He's told us that. His brother has told us that. His brother's wife gave Tommy a pass for "the things he did" saying they were Joel's fault. Which is bullshit, but also a hint that what they did was bad enough she had to justify it. Joel is a smuggler, an opportunist and pretty proficient killer. He's not a good guy. 

But...we saw him first. We saw him with his daughter. We saw what happened in the beginning. How he was one of the first to witness how the government and armed forces were going to turn on citizens almost instantly. He saw him break. And then we saw him many years later, skipping over the rest. And we've watched him warm to Ellie and we've seen him grieve losing Tess. So we cried when he called Ellie baby girl and thought, oh that's so lovely.

I don't have a problem with bad guys in stories. Clearly, some of my favorite characters in the world have been bad guys. They are usually more interesting. And when you get a bad guy who thinks they are the good guy, and who in a different way of viewing it really could be (Killmonger for instance) then I love them. I'm also not nonviolent. I've talked about that before. I'm just not. I like the idea of it, and I respect people who are, but tell them Ellie is the little girl who broke your fucking finger is perfectly wonderful. 

And we all (or at least I'm assuming we) felt pretty okay with Joel killing the guys who told him where to find Ellie. Told him after some encouraging beatings and carvings. But that level of torture is pretty extreme right? I mean, you don't just spontaneously come up with carving someone's knee cap off. And we were all fine because Dave was a pedofile and a cannibal. But Joel didn't know that. He just knew that they had taken Ellie away. Again, he's not a good guy. He's just our bad guy, we saw him first. 

So what I started thinking was, and they would have to trust their audience so much to do it, what if next season we get an episode from the field mouse point of view? We're all team hawk right now. We are fine with Joel slaughtering anyone and everyone who gets in the way of him taking care of Ellie. So what happens if we finally find the Fireflies and we find out that Joel did something to them? Like Tommy joined them for a little bit, but what if the reason Joel never did is because he stole supplies headed for them and people died because of it, or he killed a team of them for some reason? What if to them he's just a BAD guy? Not their bad guy? 

What if Wonder Woman met a German pilot first? 

Because you know that to someone out there in The Last of Us universe thinking of Joel as a hero would turn their stomach. I mean, if they were real and not video game characters. But still...

And what does Ellie then do if she is confronted with someone thinking of Joel as the bad guy instead of the man that came to find her (even though she handled her business thank you very much) and has protected her and helped her and supported her? What does she do if she meets someone who seems like a decent human being, who seems like they are doing their best in a hellish world, but their bad guy nightmare is Joel? 

It's only because I have loved the writing on this show that I can even entertain the thought of them doing such an episode. Because it's been so good. Every step of the way it's been great. I can clearly see where the game play would factor in a lot of the time and that has just added to what I'm watching. Reminding me that they told this story through a game. A game. Amazing. So I wonder, is there some DLC out there where you are playing as the field mouse? Where you are running and hiding from the horrible human who is out there coming to get you? And then the reveal is that the horror was Joel? 

I mean...come on...how good would that be? 

That's how much I'm loving this show. I'm writing future episodes instead of rewriting current ones.

You're Next...

So the worst of the worst met last week. CPAC. It's the nexus of the worst of them. It's so bad that people you usually think of as being awful people and also republicans skipped it this year. But still, there were the vile, awful, humans who pretend to hold the morals of the nation in their grubby little claws. And they called for eradication of trans people. 

Of course that makes me sick to my stomach and scares the crap out of me. Not that one hateful human said it, but that he is cheered for it among others who vote for republicans. 

And even if for some reason you are reading my blogs and still feel like genocide against trans people would be hunky dory, you should be scared too. 

Because if they were able to eliminate trans people (spoiler alert, they can't, the "best" they could ever accomplish would be to scare a lot of people into hiding), if they were able to pull off that horrific campaign, they would still have problems. And when they still had problems they would start looking for the next group to blame for them. 

Right now they blame immigrants, members of the LGBTQIA+ community with a special emphasis on trans people and trans women in particular, and people of color; for why they aren't doing well. Or as well as they think they deserve. 

The ironic thing is that they have been spoonfed this hatred of others by people who do not view them as part of their own in group. The ones that view them as the others. But others that can be used to maintain a system that keeps the money flowing upward into the hands of a smaller and smaller group, they are the useful idiots keeping the system running. A system that makes it possible that you are one serious illness away from bankruptcy. A system that allows people to live on the street and blame THEM for not being able to afford housing.

They do it by focusing that hatred on any other group than the one that is actually hoarding the resources. 

Oh you aren't a wealthy billionaire? You know why? Because a 13 year old trans girl is running track. Yup. Or maybe it's because your neighbor took her 3 year old to a Drag Queen story hour. Somehow that is making your life worse! It's not that the CEO of the company makes about 399 times what the average employee makes. I mean, that would just be crazy right? To think that you don't have enough money to live on is because someone else is making millions, when really it's because trans people exist.

But if they get trans folks all back in the closet. If they get the rest of the alphabet family living in fear again. If they get their wall built. If they disenfranchise every person of color that they can. If they do all of that, they will still be making scratch wages while the dude in the corner office debates which one of his houses to go stay at for the week. And then what will they do? 

They will target someone else. Because that dude in the corner office will already be working to give them a new target. They don't have to be faster than the bear, just faster than you, so to speak. If they can keep throwing targets up for you to hate then you won't realize that you could instead be working toward income equality and health coverage for all and housing the homeless and feeding the starving and educating people without bankrupting them and...and..and...

But if we did that then the hoarders would have to let go of their stockpiles of things they couldn't even use in one lifetime. They would have to stop their who got to this level of billionaire first race. They would have to seek help for whatever disease has twisted their minds from this is enough to there is never enough. From being rich is really nice to I need to always be richer. From their hierarchy of needs being met to having to meet their wants as well and find new wants all the time. And part of that wanting is being so much better off than everyone else that the idea of everyone else getting their needs met feels like backsliding to them. Closing the gap terrifies them. 

So instead they make sure to focus the anger on someone else. 

It's trans people right now. 

But please believe you're next. 

This Is Where It Always Gets Me...

In the past few weeks:

I've grieved with a friend over the loss of her father. 

I've celebrated getting the bank loan for a house and dream property for horses and chickens and a dog and maybe even a cat (maybe, let's not get too crazy) with another. 

I've marked the passage of time from what seemed like devastating, soul wrecking news, to look at you now with another.

I've watched a friend shatter a glittery glass ceiling and become the first cis woman to do what she did. 

I've grieved with others over passage of bills in their states that are trying to outlaw themselves, or their children. And talked with them about the real possibility of what moving looks like. 

I've watched a friend open the taps on her creative output and realize that a degree in art wasn't needed to do what she wants to do. 

I've seen birthday celebrations and anniversaries and children's birthday parties and play openings and closings and date nights and quiet moments marking the passing of summer or the start of Spring.

I've gotten better about ignoring the strangers and even those that I know. 

It is always those things that keep me hanging on to my online life. 

I've talked about it before, Brent dropped Facebook completely a few years ago. It wasn't good for him. It made him mad more than it did anything else. He misses the interactions with a few friends, but not enough for the pain of seeing so much negativity and nastiness. 

Katie stopped following a lot of news feeds a few months ago because it wasn't good for her. With the slew of hate filled legislation that is specifically targeted at trans people and the horrific things people say about them it was just wearing her out on a deep level.  

Those both make me really sad. Not that they did what they needed to keep themselves healthy and happy, that is a good thing, but that the only way to make it through the world with your soul intact seems to be to shut out a majority of it. 

How awful is that? 

I want to hold the idea of loving everyone in my heart but some people make that impossible. 

I want to hold the idea that most people are good and decent in my heart but more people need to speak up against the shit going on in the world for me to believe that. 

I think about walking away, to see if it would make me feel better, then I see all of the things I would miss and just tighten my circle a little more. Hide this feed, block this person, don't show me these things... We worried a few years ago about us all living in our own bubbles and that being detrimental, but if your bubble is full of fart smell I don't want it near my bubble. 

And a lot of bubbles out there are just sewer gas floating around...

The good still outweighs the bad for me, but only because I've been actively avoiding the bad. I've been tightening my circle. I've been cultivating my garden. I've been curating my feeds. I've been blocking the bullshit. I'm not sure if it's a good thing to do that, and of course I can't do it completely. I need to watch the anti trans movement, it's important to know where that is. I need to watch the entire anti LGBTQIA+ sentiment in fact. I need to know who is running for office places and what they are running on. I need to be able to make solid arguments for what I believe and why and part of that is seeing what other people believe and see if it's got a basis in fact or if it's all just hooey. 

I have to find that balance, but I don't want it to tip too far over to just a constant bombardment of "that's not what that means, that's not what any of that means!" railing against people who only read headlines or opinion pieces. But right now what I need is a tighter circle of people who I trust to be decent. 

And so many in my circle are. It's what keeps me hanging out in those spaces. You. You are all my people and I love you all and you make me think the world is a good place full of decent people. So thank you for that. 

Watch your own bubbles. Don't let the farts in. 

Exact Change...

She had been raised to believe that most everyone was honest. That the crooks and the scammers were out there but they weren't the majority. The reason why we thought there were so many of them was because they stood out. You could deal with 100 honest folks and one dishonest one and the dishonest one would be the one that stood out. 

But the key to honesty, she had come to realize, often lay in if you were viewed as "one of us" or "one of them." If you were part of their in group, of those they thought of as being like them in enough ways they were much more likely to be honest in their dealings with you. But even those who were mostly honest, whose friends would describe as completely honest, whose coworkers would say they trusted them, even those folks weren't always honest in their dealings with someone that they felt wasn't like them. 

They seemed to justify it by lessening the one they were dealing with. Those sorts didn't need to be treated honestly because they for sure wouldn't treat me honestly if given the chance. Everyone knew that they were scammers and dishonest themselves so how could they expect to be treated in any other way? Like to like. 

And the distrust grew. 

Because if you knew someone who had been scammed it was easy to paint a whole group by that one interaction. If your only time interacting with someone not like you, they ended up being dishonest? Then you could easily assume that everyone who was like them was dishonest as well. And so you self segregated even more. Leaving fewer points of contact so the scammers stood out even more.

She wanted to go back to believing that almost everyone was honest, it would put her and her partner out of a job, but it would be worth it. 

She took a deep breath and held out her hand, the money crumpled in her palm. She gave her best smile and said "I'm sorry, I don't understand the currency, please take what I owe you." The automatic translator did its job correctly. She was fluent in all dialects of this region, but spoke the one that was expected from her. The clerk looked at the total and looked at the money in her palm counting out twice what he was owed.

Well it could have been worse, often they took everything and insinuated they were owed more and were being nice by not demanding full payment. 

It could have been worse, but it should have been better. 

"I think you made a mistake." This time she spoke his language directly. 

He didn't realize at first that it was her speaking and not the translator. "Oh? Let me see. Oh yes, I hadn't noticed the gum." He had the nerve to reach for more money from her hand. This time when he neared her the pinchers from her symbiote shot out from her sleeves and grabbed his wrist. He looked up at her with wild eyes. "YOU! You're one of them!"

"Two of them, actually. There have been a lot of complaints from the traveling population about your store. That you overcharge when you can, short change when you can't, and always give substandard product."

"Liars."

"And what you just did? Understand I wasn't being honest when I said I didn't understand the currency. And also understand that my partner's grip might tighten even further if you try to deny what you just did."

"A mistake. Am I not allowed a mistake?"

"A mistake would be once. As I said, there have been numerous complaints. Under current protocols I am within rights to take ownership of your store from you."

He paled at this. Finally she had his full attention.

"This is my family's store! Multiple generations have struggled to make this a success! You cannot do this!"

"I can. And it is not through anyone's fault but your own that I can. Though there is another option."

He narrowed his eyes, he didn't trust her, those like her were known to be dishonest and untrustworthy. And one who would willingly join with a symbiote? Even worse. 

"You can share ownership."

"Share my store? With whom? You? What as my boss? Controlled by the System?"

"Not your store."

"Then share what?" 

She stood quietly watching him until realization dawned on him. 

"For a period of not less than two years you would serve as host. During that time learning and absorbing all of the knowledge that can be passed along in a relationship such as this. I think you'll find that at the end of two years you might choose to extend."

The disgust was plain on his face now. "You want me to let one of those things live in my body? For two years? Just because you think I overcharged you for some gum?"

She smiled again, "Let's stop pretending that it was a one time mistake. And you don't have to. It's just a secondary offer. But you will choose one of the two. Either we take ownership of your store, or you host. I will be back tomorrow for your answer. And we will be watching you, so don't do anything foolish."

With that she and her partner left the store. 

Most folks were honest, as long as they felt like you were one of theirs. She believed her job was just helping them see we are all one. Or we could all be given the right motivation. 

Three Years In A Nutshell...

Three years ago today I made a post that foreshadowed what was to come and I didn't even realize it at the time. 

We had just gotten home from Disneyworld and made a grocery trip to restock the house after being gone for a few weeks. The grocery store and Target were ransacked. Entire sections of shelves were empty. The stocker told us they had been trying to restock and keep up but that they hadn't expected to be slammed like that and they just didn't have items to put back on the shelves. 

It was the first wave of pandemic buying. 

At the time we had three cases in Oregon (all of them in our county) and one suspected death. That was it. But it was enough for people to start thinking that maybe this mystery virus was actually a threat.

I'll be honest, I wasn't there yet. I still was in the camp of treating it just like you would any other sickness. Stay home if you don't feel well, Wash your hands frequently. Don't touch people if you don't have to.  Reading through some of my Corona Chronicles I can see when the shift started to happen. More to the just stay home part. As cases grew and we got more and more information we really tried to follow best recommendations. But three years ago today? Still in the wash your hands and stay home if you don't feel well camp.

Now here's where the foreshadowing really gets going. The supplies, sure, that was part of it. We had no idea how bad it was going to get. How wiped the stores were going to be, how long we were going to wait to be able to buy toilet paper, for instance. I was really glad we had a basic supply of things in the house but we got really lean there at the end. Our supply chains were broken. 

But in the comments there was someone who "heard on the radio" a stat. That stat made my "that doesn't seem right" sense go off so I did what I do and I looked it up. It didn't seem right because it wasn't. So I did what I do and corrected them, with links to the actual numbers and where I found them. You know, facts. Their response was not "oh, wow, thanks, I'll never say this again" their response was to argue with me that I was wrong. That that was just like my opinion, man. And I kept saying no, look, I've given you source documents, but they weren't having any of that, because it didn't fit with what they wanted it to be. 

In reading some of the older posts this morning there was a blog post from me a few weeks past that date lamenting the fact that the President was using that same bogus number in speeches, over and over again. And it didn't matter how many times it was fact checked and news organizations corrected him he continued to use it so other people continued to say it. 

March 1, 2020 I didn't realize that what I was seeing was how the entire pandemic was going to go, in my early blogs I was actually hopeful about the country pulling together, and maybe even that this mystery virus would put an end to anti-vaxx bullshit. And...well...

It didn't matter what the facts were. It still doesn't. It matters how you feel about things. Instead of fuck your feelings we've reached peak fuck your facts. I had no idea how bad it would get. 

And it's still going on today. I mean just this week you've seen the conservosphere just lose their damn minds because the Department of Energy said that they were changing their opinion and saying the virus came from the lab in Wuhan. They think this happened but with low confidence. Which is like what? That's a big bet hedger phrase. But it boils down to...we still don't have consensus even in our own government where it came from, how it started. But that didn't stop the rush of posts and articles this week. Most of them with really sensationalized headlines, and a lot of them that nobody read past the headline because you got the hot takes of China created this virus to unleash on the world for...reasons. 

None of that is what they concluded. 

The other part you are seeing is the conservosphere "sticking it to the lefties!" who all insisted that it couldn't have come from the lab. Well, that's why I went to double check my blogs. I mean, I knew what I had thought, and I was pretty sure I wrote about it, and I did. In April of 2020 I wrote that I believed it came from the lab. That the lab had already been cited for not following good safety protocols. And the lab was studying coronavirus in bats so it made sense to me that that is where it came from. And then I did this weird thing and said, but I didn't know for sure. 

Because I didn't. I still don't. I mean, the wet market thing is also a possibility. But I still feel like it was probably the lab. I don't think it was a virus created, I think it was a studied virus. I mean if the Chinese were creating it as a bioweapon and they released it as such, wouldn't they have waited to release it until they had their population vaccinated? And why would they release it in Wuhan? I mean, release it in New York City right? 

And I don't know that we will ever know for sure, because China isn't sharing information any more. Not that they were sharing a lot at the beginning, but they for sure aren't now. So we have speculation. 

But what we don't have is proof that China created a bioweapon and released it and SO THERE you stinking libs!

The facts don't support that. 

Yeah, I know, fuck the facts, what do you feel about it?

It was an interesting post to read, knowing where we are now. The virus is endemic, we are all handling it the way we are comfortable handling it. A mishmash of ways for sure. I know we are more careful than some and less than others in our daily lives. 

We aren't sure if Katie has or hasn't had it. We think so but aren't positive. We know for sure Brent had it and had the rebound as well, though seems to have skipped long Covid which is great. I have never tested positive despite being exposed multiple times. 

I also know that the worst foreshadowing happened in one of my early blogs when we were all starting the staying home and social distancing routines. I mentioned talking to Brent's mother to make sure she was okay and that I was worried she wasn't taking it very seriously even though she was in the highest risk factors in multiple areas. I will never know when or how she picked up the virus exactly but I do know it killed her. And I know that makes me much less tolerant of people who fuck the facts and want to run on conspiracy theories and feelings. 

I'm not sure where we go from here with the virus. I think it's just part of our lives now, and we will all do what we feel is best for ourselves and our families. 

Basically for us we are back to, wash your hands, stay home if you're feeling sick, keep up on your vaccines, don't hoard groceries and I wear a mask when the crowds are very crowdy. 

Stay safe.

Remember to follow the facts and that means reading beyond headlines. 

And for fuck's sake, don't spread false information.