Done This Week

Well, worked two days this week. (I forgot how much I fundamentally hate having to leave home to go to work.) Day one was fine, mostly catching up on an obscene number of emails. Day two involved my first confrontation about where my tits went.

Neat. 눈_눈

Without getting into the details too much, because I might throw up, this person clocked it as a trans thing. No hostility, maybe a little concern troll-y. Insisted it’s nobody else’s business, which would have been more convincing and more reassuring if this hadn’t been in the midst of a “making this my business” conversation. It was, at least, one of about two people at work who I could be semi-confident would not try to hurt me (directly or indirectly) over this.

I’m resentful of this person for putting me in this position, and I feel ashamed that I didn’t push back harder. I was tired and stressed and caught completely off-guard at the time.

More than anything, I just don’t understand why people can’t leave me (and all the rest of us) in peace. What does it matter, what other people are getting up to? Why do you think it’s your god-given right to know literally anything about me?

Obviously, my brain will not stop ruminating on this situation and what else might develop going forward. Every time in life I think, okay, things are basically under control, I’ll be able to catch my breath for a bit, something happens that throws me right back into the shit.

Anyway! Fuck!

So many things are blooming in the garden. The freak hail storm wasn’t, perhaps, the best for them, though. It’s cold but sunny now, so the birds are all out, singing and hunting for things to eat. I do so love this time of year.

Lewisia: 3 new pieces written, all March posts queued up

Day job: 17 hours and an incalculable amount of stress

Cooking: cheat lemon pie from B. Dylan Hollis (tasty, doesn’t freeze up as firm as I would have liked, but that certainly didn’t stop me from devouring it)

Crafting: made two little jar terrariums out of moss and sticks

Gardening: weeding, set up the mushroom solar lights, garden club post

Reading: Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (I find the writing style so funny, because it has a particular stiltedness I associate with vintage stuff, but it has a sense of humor that often reminds me of very modern online humor and shitposting)

Listening: MYTH: Side One by The Narcissist Cookbook (experimental stuff with spoken word and found audio type bits, mixed in with the sparse weird folk sound I love from this artist, promptly picked up Side Two and the appendix but manfully restrained myself from bingeing them immediately)

Aftermarket Parts: cleared for return to work, more SDI paperwork and got the second/last disability payment

Clock Mouse: 935 words

The Friday Five

1. Did the house where you grew up have a newspaper delivered regularly?
Yes, the LA Times, daily. Which is something of a wonder, given we were a ways out of town.

2. Have you ever subscribed to an actual print newspaper?
As part of the household, to whatever degree that makes it my subscription. Unfortunately, at my current house, the delivery was so unreliable (I think we had something like six months of credit at one point from missed deliveries) that we eventually gave up. And the newsstand prices have become so outrageous, especially in light of the anemic state of print papers, that it stopped being worthwhile.

3. When was the most recent time you physically picked up and read a newspaper?
It's been a few years now, sadly. My dad used to sometimes pick up free copies from work at the end of the day, when they would otherwise be destroyed.

4. Do you pay for news online now?
No. For the most part, I follow individual journalists to keep up with their work, plus whatever gift links are passed around social media on a given topic.

The thing I liked about print papers was that I got a little bit of everything and could stumble upon interesting things that way. As readership fell, newspapers decided that cutting back on content would somehow save them. So the print papers became steadily less interesting. And now, the websites of papers, even setting aside the paywalls, seem actively hostile to that sort of browsing. Everything's got to funnel you toward the clickiest clickbait parts.

More importantly, though, I've become so disgusted by the editorial choices of many papers (NYT, anyone?) that I have no interest in financially supporting them.

5. Do you have any saved newspaper clippings?
Yes, there are still a few posted up on the fridge. Mostly comic strips. I used to love the comics. Not just the Sunday color ones, but the weekday black and whites. In elementary school, one of my go-to choices at the yearly book fair would be comics collections. Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, Farside, and Bizarro all got read to the point of total spinal collapse.

Mum probably has more saved away somewhere. We used to have some advice column clippings from many years ago. There was one about communicating with one's children that said it was better to answer your child's hollering to you with "yes," rather than "what." Something about putting both of you in a more positive frame of mind, more open to whatever is about to follow. For some reason, this always stayed with me and is something I do at work all the time. Make of that what you will. :P