Today I got up to find I had heard from a guy I’ll call C here, and this is shaping up to sound like a really bad retelling of Men in Black, but at least if anyone googles names, this shit won’t come up in the results. Nothing on the internet is really private, but it can be disguised.
Anyway. Bit of back story: Encountered C after encountering Neighbor and L and likeminded people on Facebook many, many years ago. He won’t remember our early conversations — some of which took place courtesy of my politics-posting sockpuppet account, which still exists but is idle — but my awareness of him probably dates back at least ten years. He friended me more recently, maybe after I moved here, because it turned out we were in the same private group and he’d been meaning to for a while. Nothing to get twisted: he’s older than my father and is quite happily in a relationship, and is in Maine besides. But we definitely vibe on a Potential Friend level. This is totally okay with me.
So anyway, at about two this morning his time (he’s three hours ahead of me, if this needs said) he got a bit of insomnia, and then he got some kind of idea, and when he got up this morning he DMed me through Facebook with a suggestion that maybe I could help him with some clerical and technological tasks for pay. Probably he saw me post the thing about L asking for half utilities yesterday and then things just sort of clicked. He’s an emotional intelligence coach and has done a lot of work in that field that he wants to make accessible for others and also possibly donate to Neighbor’s and L’s environmental organization for their use. But he needs some help organizing it all and doing a bunch of other things. He’s got a bit of a windfall coming, so apparently he’ll definitely be able to pay me. I need to pick his brain some more about what this will all look like, but so far I’m kind of optimistic about the whole thing.
The other benefit of him having this idea was we got on the phone and I had probably the longest conversation I’ve had with anyone in a very long time. While he is not a therapist, he’s sort of in a neighboring wheelhouse and so he’d do the “tell me about yourself” thing and I’d balk because except for things I already say, I hate talking about myself because just about any aspect of it makes me want to cry now and the fact anyone’s asking when people don’t usually give two shits just brings the crying jag nearer to the surface. I notice this is also much more a thing in verbal conversations than in online… it doesn’t feel as ouchy in a text medium. I have no idea why.
But anyway. So, I’ve got an errand early (for me) tomorrow and then apparently it’s meat-sorting night, but probably I’ll chat with C again. We’ll see.
Funny yesterday. Neighbor was over with the dogs again. Unusually, he and L let them into the house because Mist, the boss lady, was not indoors. Turns out it was a mistake anyway. Spot wanted to sit next to Neighbor, and then Duke wandered too close to the couch. Spot was Not Fucking Having It. Neighbor told me later that Spot also gets possessive of him if they’re both on the couch at his house, but this wasn’t his house and he literally jumped onto Duke’s back and was trying to fight him. Spot is an English shepherd. Duke is a Great Pyrenees and about 180 pounds. If Duke weren’t such a gentle giant, Spot would be renamed Splat right now. I should bottle his audacity and drink it when I need a fast cure for chickenshit.
But what really struck me was Neighbor’s reaction. He literally grabbed Spot, turned around with him, pinned him to the sofa (he didn’t hurt him), and kept yelling “NO! YOU DON’T DO THAT!” at him until everyone calmed down. Not ragey, more Angry!Stern. Re-establishing who the actual boss is, which of course is not Spot. He and L both know a dog trainer and I have to think he’s gotten pointers. Anyway, L said he was athletic and I know he used to be a high jumper (hell, I’ve seen photos on the wall in his cabin from his high-jumping days), but it’s still another thing entirely to see it, and him being post-major-heart-attack and post-open-heart-surgery, too. (I’ve seen the scar.) It’s kinda cool.
Shaddup.
L really is going to let the toilet paper dwindle down to nothing before deciding to do something about it; we have something like one and a half rolls left in the bathroom and another couple half-used (or more) rolls elsewhere being used for cheap Kleenex. I buy it most of the time and have sometimes hoped we could trade off but unless we’ve got guests coming, that hasn’t been happening. It is what it is. A six-pack is $7 and some change. I have ten bucks to my name and another five in reserve right now. See, I could have passed that ten bucks on to her and been up to the full thirty this week but OH WELL. I need more drink mix anyway. It’s all good.
So I gotta crash. I’m actually writing this at nearly 2am Tuesday but I thought that if I didn’t write this shit down I’d forget and I didn’t want to. So there you go.