Month: July 2024

It’s hard for me to update anymore.

It’s not that I don’t want to. If not wanting to write were all it was, I’d just stop blogging. Even with wanting to, I often forget because other things grab my attention.

But it’s just the situation. I have to admit, I’ve got a visitor tracker on this thing. It just tells me IP addresses, which will parse to city and state/province and country and nothing more detailed than that. But I see visitors to here from California who are definitely not me, and I have to admit at least one of them’s suspicious. There’s nothing particular that I’ve been able to identify that sets off my paranoia (I don’t think it’s a condition, per se, so much as just an emotional response), but close to three decades on the internet has sharpened my ability to catch patterns. I swear to fuck, for instance, that one time I was supposedly talking to the girlfriend of a guy friend over ICQ and it “sounded” JUST like him, like he was pretending to be his girlfriend. There are tells. There shouldn’t be tells for visitor hits but hey, maybe there are and I just haven’t learned exactly what they are but am catching them subconsciously. Brains are weird.

I’m not exactly saying anything bad here when I speak of my local situation. In fact, there’s stuff I keep quiet because, well, lunatics, and I feel a mite protective of myself and other people. It really has gotten to the point where you can get into trouble for I-shit-you-not NO WRONGDOING WHATSOEVER. No bueno. So I find myself self-censoring.

But it isn’t even just about anti-lunatic measures. It’s about me having feelings and not wanting other people to weaponize them. And not wanting to make things awkward or uncomfortable. And not wanting people to think I want to take things away from them.

It’s maddening, because my life really is interesting now, at least sometimes — and in a good way, too. I’d love to leave some kind of record of it.

I don’t know if I can figure out how to do that.

Some of this is PTSD, too. I got harassed a lot the last time around. I’m terrified of shit happening again.

I hope, wherever my former tormentors are, they’re fucking proud of themselves. Know why I only seem to ever bitch about politics? You assholes wouldn’t let me talk about anything the fuck else. Stop saying you want something when all you ever do is work against it happening. Jesus fucking fuck.

All that aside…

…I’m getting very, very fond of someone.

I’ll say no more than that. You know the phrase “slow your roll”… this is me rolling real slow so I have time to figure out the situation first. Given my track record, there’s a 90% or better chance that I am misreading said situation.

Because that’s something else the assholes did to me. Made me doubt everything I thought I knew.

I’m better, but I can’t say I’ve forgiven. I probably never will.

Facebook doesn’t like it when we post the addresses of Supreme Court justices.

Oh well! Shame they don’t control my blog.

Go fuck yourselves, Facebook. Mwah.

32 years since I went into the Army. Shit has never stopped being weird and scary.

Same old Monday night thing again. Mac was there this time and had some younger woman along with him. I don’t know who she was to him but apparently she’s been there a couple times before (I am pretty sure I remember one of those times) and Neighbor remarked after they’d left that this was the third time she’d come over and she’d seemed angry all three times. I didn’t really think so, but I have shit instincts about people so I’m probably the wrong one to ask.

Learned a little more about how Neighbor’s life goes — there was this woman he and L kept mentioning and I asked about her tonight because he mentioned her again. Turns out she cleans his house. With L cooking some meals for him it makes me wonder who else he’s got on staff, ha ha. Also learned he spent about fifteen years growing pot, “but you knew that, right?” Yes, I know you wrote a book about pot but no, I’ve not read it yet. I haven’t read most of his bibliography. I keep meaning to get a particular one done via library ebook loan on Kindle but I have a sinking feeling I’m not going to finish it before the due date. Again. I just can’t fucking focus anymore. I have a feeling I sort of get where he’s coming from anyway, given what he usually writes about.

Out-Of-Town Guy went a little weird a while back and hasn’t stopped being weird… for him, anyway. Supposed to meet him when he’s in town for the thing next month and now I’m not sure I will actually care. But we’ll see. He’s moving to Victoria, meaning he’ll be on Canada’s west coast and not THAT far north of me that he couldn’t stop in once in a while. It is amazingly easy for Canadians to come here anyway. I am just gonna lay low when he’s here, though. If he wants a conversation he’s going to have to push for one. I doubt he will.

I really would like more people to chat with though. Is there a point in adulthood when that stops happening? There must be and I’m well past it. And Facebook and DMs and texting really don’t cut it.

Got a new keyboard and mouse for the laptop. The O key has been a problem on the laptop for a while (I had to superglue it back on) and now other keys feel looser and the clicker buttons on the trackpad have lost their goddamn tiny minds. The keyboard and mouse I just bought connect to the laptop by way of a USB dongle. I hate that word, it brings out my inner thirteen-year-old boy, but that’s what the tech nerds call them. Am using it in a USB port that I never use for anything else anyway. Only real drawback is the keys are noisier. I should push my bedtime back so I can limit this to more of L’s awake hours. I don’t know how well she can hear it now.

Got a “no” on MediCAL. Ten to one the cow didn’t check the document-upload whatsit. Accordingly, I have written back to ask her if she has. I will be very surprised if I hear back from her, but if I don’t I’ll just hang on until whenever open enrollment is and just try to save up enough money for urgent care for in the meantime.

Because that’s the other thing. Neighbor needs additional help related to the meat thing on Monday nights. I’ve said I will do it. That’s $100 a week. I’m supposed to go over there Wednesday and find out what’s involved and be shown how to do it. So, sort of a job. It’ll at least keep me going for a bit. Certainly no worse than fucking Uber Eats; I’ll be able to keep more of what I get.

Okay, I need to take care of dishes/leftovers and then get something to drink and then get my ass to bed. Sigh.

Said my piece about the day here.

It is weird that this is my one consistent source of income right now. I’m literally getting paid to write. Did not see that coming. Even weirder when people tell me it’s good writing. I don’t feel like it’s good writing. It’s definitely not polished. Can’t be, given the medium. I don’t know what I do with this. Is it ever going to progress beyond short unpolished little snippets? What the fuck do I do with it? I HAVE NO IDEA

That’s not quite true. I get random ideas now and again. I am just not sure if they will go anywhere. And I do have to think about getting paid because, well, I’ve been shit at the job history and I have to do something. And I’ve been doing this forever. Didn’t matter why. Always some excuse to write something. Might as well make it my job.

Sometimes I think it wouldn’t matter how good I was because I have this unpronounceable French surname. Okay, not unpronounceable — I’m pretty okay with it — but most people struggle. I swear half the reason I fell for Q back in Columbus was that the first time I told him how to say it, he just rolled it off his tongue. No one else has ever done that. And he was a German major. Has a facility with languages, I guess. But most people are not like that. I don’t even try anymore — if they manage the way the Navy used to say it when Dad was active, that’s good enough for me. But it’s a difficult name, and not much easier to spell. You can’t get “known” that way. You just can’t. People will skip right over you and go to a name they can say and read. I suppose that if I ever got serious, I might consider a pen name.

(My sockpuppet name on Facebook might have sufficed, but I think people would still struggle with the spelling outside of Louisiana. Coonasses would pick it up right off, but I don’t want my readership limited to one out of fifty states. Not that most of that one state’s inhabitants would bother with me in the first place.)

But, for now, I get new free subscribers pretty regularly. The more eyeballs, the greater the likelihood of a share, the better chance another paying subscriber will come along.

And for the record, I do better with the monthly than with the annual. The annuals are great, don’t mistake me — they always seem to come along just when I’m starting to freak out about my general money situation. They do help. I love them. I just can’t count on them all year round. It’s the monthly that will really make me, in the long run.

—

Well, it’s mid-afternoon. If the lovebirds (friendbirds?) are planning a beach walk, either they’ve not done it yet or they did it this morning already, which would be weird because Neighbor stays up late like I do and then sleeps til noon. But either way no one has said anything to me so, I nailed it. Not included. Not welcome.

I wonder if trying to be more social towards L might affect anything. The thing is, she’s very introverted, and at least two-thirds of the time that I go downstairs she’s got earphones on and is either watching something or is involved in a Zoom call or similar. I think she teaches writing classes, which may be her major source of income right now. I got the impression that the piece of land her house sits on used to belong to Neighbor, or might still do (definitely shares a boundary), and I half suspect she was able to pay to build the house out of the proceeds from her most successful two books (one co-written, but still), but these are only theories. But if she’s got to be on the computer to make her money, I completely understand that. I am just not sure whether there’s more I should be doing in terms of overtures or if my staying mostly in my room has got her on edge. I feel like she’d tell me, because there have been other times she noticed things amiss and brought them to my attention and was very matter-of-fact about it, so for now I’m refraining from asking, “Is everything okay?” I think she’d let me know if it wasn’t. But I’m still not strictly at ease with how things are. If I just had answers to a few more questions, it would help a lot. But they’re questions that carry baggage, so I’m afraid to ask.

Well, we’ll figure it out or we won’t. It was interesting that on one of my early visits to Neighbor’s, he asked how she and I were getting along and if I liked her. That being curious about me thing again. He’s asked no more about how things are going with her since, though, so that’s another clue that there isn’t really any trouble brewing, I suppose. You figure out where the barometers are when people have given you enough shit over the course of your life. It’s a survival thing.

Or you miss one barometer because you haven’t encountered it yet so you don’t know what it looks like. Hope I’m not headed for that.

—

This has taken me far too long to write. I didn’t get as much sleep as I might have done last night and I’m sure that didn’t help. The depression isn’t helping either. Let me go take a walk and then get a fucking shower and then we’ll see if I have my head on well enough to get Rory’s site completely back on. It’s just missing some images. It shouldn’t have taken me this fucking long to sort out. Sorry, big man. Oh, like you care. ‘Later.

—

[edit] Not long after I finished this post, I went downstairs meaning to go for my daily walk because I wanted a shower and it didn’t make sense to have the shower first. L asked me, not for the first time, about a feminist gathering coming up. It’s nearly $190 and all the low-income tickets were gone and I explained that I wanted to but it really was not in my budget. She suggested that Neighbor might pay me to do a certain chore for him (she told me what it was, but it’s related to the thing I wouldn’t tell you about the other day), because her previous housemate had done that too, and Neighbor’s ankles really can’t take all the walking at this point. I said sure, I’d be happy to if he’s amenable, so I suppose he and I will discuss that next Monday night, if I don’t see him sooner. And anyway, that would help me cover the festival, and it’ll likely cover me on spending money elsewise too. Works for me.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t also looking forward to seeing more of him. Be that as it may.

But, the way she asked me and was disappointed when I said no and tried to talk me into it anyway and then threw out the chores thing. I think I have rather been misreading some of this situation, and what I’m taking as unfriendliness or judgment or whatever is just the introversion and us being new to one another. So maybe I should just fucking relax.

As to the beach walk I was really being silly (and yes, I think they went this morning). This is a guy they both know and I don’t know — why would they take me along? If he and I ever got to chatting, it would be different. I can visualize no scenario where that would happen. Now if he shows up to the August gathering, that will be different. But I’m just not going to worry about it.

You know… an insight here, I guess… I am as bad about friendships as I used to be about men. “Oh hey, we are friends now! LET ME INTO YOUR WHOLE LIFE!” And I know why I do that, it’s not to be creepy or an asshole (or a creepy asshole), but it’s also inappropriate and I need to get a fucking grip.

So, lesson learned I guess.

Let me just give things time. I still think Neighbor’s trying to get to know me, which is an achievement in itself because he is a big-ass introvert also. It’s a bit risking yourself reaching out and asking questions and finding common ground when you don’t people well and oh look, he’s doing that. Maybe I should return the favor. I want to anyway.

Okay. Carry on. I need to work on Rory some more. Mmmmm. Rory. [slap] Ow.

Meat thing went okay yesterday. Mac didn’t show up, oddly, so it was just us two chickens. Fuck off. Not like that. The haul was oddly ham-heavy, and there was a lot of loose stuff in the truck bed (mostly hams in that bit). Somehow, Neighbor managed to fit most of the house-and-dog haul into his freezers and fridges. I half suspect he’d have better luck with it if he let me put things away, but no doubt he has a system I would mess up and I’m too slow anyway. Just ask my dad. Any rate, shit got heavy toward the end because… hams. I got a fucking workout, anyway.

Weirdly, maybe because Mac wasn’t there to chat with instead, Neighbor got on the subject of my weight loss. We’ve been following one another on Facebook for literal years, over a decade probably, but there was never much reason to talk one-on-one until now, but lately he responds to more of my stuff and I guess that just caught his eye. So he’s asking me questions and I’m answering them and he’s sort of expanding it to talk about his own experiences with weight issues and then also his sister’s issues with it. He was very impressed at the fact that I seem to have mislaid about twenty pounds since March, and we talked about the pitfalls of bariatric surgery and I told him what I’d found out about it having higher death rates than diabetes does.

At some point he mentioned having gone through open-heart surgery and I was like “WAIT A MINUTE — Open-heart surgery???” and turns out he had an almost complete blockage five years ago that damn near killed him and he had to have bypass surgery. Holy shit. And I would have been Facebook friends with him at the time and I had no fucking idea. For all that he’s practically told his life story in print, he’s still a fucking mystery. He’s doing so well now, too. I know he was an athlete in college and he must still be keeping up with it in some way because L’s remarked before about him still being athletic. But holy shit. I have to remember he’s in his sixties now. I hope he has lots more time. He will be a loss to the world, whether they know it or not.

Anyway… We weren’t talking about sex, at least.

But he’s like this, the random questions about my weight loss (geez, of all the things I talk about, pick that?). He’s a very curious fellow and of course it’s what’s fueled his career as a writer; he has had questions and he’s sought answers for those questions. I have known so few genuinely curious people in my life — people who weren’t just looking for bullshit to gossip about — that this is kind of a breath of fresh air for me. I’ve been so TIRED of dull motherfuckers who never care why anything is the way it is or how it might be fixed if it’s going wrong. It’s nice to know that, genuinely, not everyone is like that.

While he was trying to put things away, in between me bringing in stuff for him, I sat down on the floor with his Anatolian shepherd Hercules for a bit to pet him because Herc likes to be patted while he’s sprawled on the floor. In fact, if you stop, he paws at you as if to demonstrate what you should be doing. So I’m obliging and the English shepherds Spot and Stevie decided they wanted attention too. Those terror twins go RIGHT for the ears. Not biting. Snuffling and licking. I have sensitive ears. I got a bit shrieky. I finally had to stand up just to get out of range. Poor Herc. Hahaha.

My bag that I normally use to carry my Monday meat haul suffered a broken strap handle and Neighbor offered me a box to use. The box had a larger capacity than the bag did and so I ended up with a bit extra. When I got back to the house, the back-woods neighbors in between L’s and Neighbor’s places were at the gate ready to go down the driveway and Duke heard them coming and bawled fit to die, like he always does (he doesn’t like them, Paul in particular, and no one can figure out why), so the whole house was awake when I got there and L commented on the amount of food. I said I’d do my best to put it away. She wished me luck.

I got it all put away.

Fucking refrigerator/freezer Tetris MASTER. Dat’s me.

You watch. One of these days Neighbor will be asking me to put the haul away. It’s coming. Not if. When.

(It turns out the strap on my bag didn’t really break so much as came unstitched. I can probably repair it, except at this point I’ve got no sewing stuff left. I’ll figure something out, but from here on out it’ll probably be my Walmart bag instead of my meat bag. Or something else entirely. I don’t fucking know.)

So today, L went over to Neighbor’s. I know with the August thing coming up they seem to be doing a lot of vetting and who knows, that might have been it, but I always feel something of a pang when they’re off somewhere together, or even when they’re here together and absorbed in whatever it is they’re doing, because I’m pathetic apparently. That got a bit interrupted when she came back a few hours later and we were chatting about general things and she goes, “[Neighbor] says you’re down twenty pounds?” and we got off on that tangent. So, I dunno, he’s a curious kind of guy. He likes learning more about people. Okay. Why was this a topic of conversation with L? Maybe it was related to whatever they were talking about. It just hits me a little bit weird. I still wonder what’s really going on there, and not just between L and Neighbor at this point. Well, for now I guess I will decide that he’s just getting to know me and we’ll just see how that goes.

Though I saw some random dude on Facebook invite him and L to go walking on the beach in two days. Ten to one I will not be invited. I’m already alone and unsure of myself and I really don’t need that shit of feeling left out, but I suppose I already feel better than I did when I first saw that conversation, and I’ll just have to see what happens. Like as not they’ll take the dogs, or L’s dogs anyway, and at least I won’t be needed for that. So… who knows? They could invite me along. I just don’t see it. Could be my own bullshit, could be life experience. Who fucking knows.

You know what?

I want my life back.

That’s gonna involve finding me a man. I don’t know who he’ll be or when. I KNOW I’M BEING STUPID. When has finding me a man EVER worked out well. But it’s been literal decades. When do I get to find my dude? The dude I really wanted got married and I don’t fucking mean Matt. I keep trying to want other dudes and they keep being dead ends. I want to find my best friend in the whole wide world and grow old with him. Will I? I don’t know. I mean I can be my own best friend, but I mean a best friend who is not me. Two best friends are better than one. Is this going to be possible. IS IT. I don’t know. I’m tired of not knowing. But if I have to be in limbo AGAIN, I need to put nose to grindstone and make this shit happen.

It’s probably going to involve going back to Ohio. Though I don’t think I’ll be ready for that for another six months to a year.

But yeah. Long past time. This has to happen.

I could stay here too… but as long as people keep seeing me as half-invisible detritus from the universe, I’m fucking not gonna. I might stay here for a while but I won’t stay here forever.

Okay. I need to get ready for bed and quit feeling sorry for myself. I know for a fact I will accomplish at least one of those.

P.S. Got a call from Doug finally. Odd timing, but okay. Apparently Dad had a fall again and Carrie found him asleep on the floor. And then he poured out his whiskey, and then next time she took him shopping he bought more. So, same old same old then.

Well, it is what it is.

At this point I’m waiting to hear from Neighbor about tonight’s meat-sorting. He told me when he left here, so now what I’m awaiting is word that he’s on his way back. I normally give it about forty minutes after that notice and then start walking over.

One of these weeks, if I’m feeling adventurous, I may ask him if I can tag along and then let my brother know we’re coming so that we can meet up somewhere; Doug has a P.O. box in Cave Junction and has got to live nearby. I doubt Neighbor will go along with it, but in theory we could just leave early and then have a bit of time. I don’t know if Neighbor and I are friends yet, strictly speaking, but there’s nothing wrong with him meeting someone from my family, and it might help Doug to be able to put at least one face to my current situation. I dunno. Just at a guess. Or actually, I’m going to give it several more weeks just to see how things go here. I could even give it until after the August meeting because I think that might be a better gauge of the general situation. We’ll see.

And speaking of Doug, I don’t hear from him. I don’t know why. I did communicate with him right when I arrived here, and he’s got my number, and that’s as far as it goes. He contacted Dad pretty regularly when I was still in Louisiana so I’m not sure what’s going on. I know he’s got health issues, and that could be it; I also know he’s dealing with the situation with his daughter and who knows, maybe some shit came up there. I think I’ll send him a dog photo or something soon to see if he bites. Might as well.

This site is now at my new hosting service and I’m pretty happy about it. They have free security certificates and free whois privacy and those alone make them worth the cost of the service, which is less for my first year than two months at Old Host as it is. Bluehost, the one before Old Host, is pissing me off though. I fiddled where I should have faddled and now I can’t change anything in my contact records for one of my domains and I can’t transfer the domain either. Bluehost has to fix my domain-owner email before I can do that. They’re fucking around instead of doing what I asked them. I think I’ll get back into chat tomorrow and flame their faces off, is what I think I’ll do. I’m tired of the games. I left them in the first place because they were letting vandals fuck up a site I was running, and as I was going in to try to fix the problem I realized they had completely rearranged their site without any warning and I could hardly find what I needed. They have zero regard for the customer experience or even site functionality, really, and I’m fucking over it. Old Host (the one I’m quitting now) has been better, but they’re far too expensive for what I’m actually getting. Let’s hope New Host is far less disappointing. And let me not end all my paragraphs with “we’ll see.”

So I had an interesting development since the last post. It isn’t going to be much of a development for reasons which will become apparent as you read, but I ended up with another paid annual subscriber to the Substack and, as some of them do, he included a note. So turns out this is someone back in Columbus. He’s not anyone I’ve ever met. I emailed him to see if I could figure out where he knew me from — my theory was the Art and Artists of 614 group since he said this was Facebook and years ago — but apparently not. He saw me on Reddit when the Gender Critical subreddit was banned and he saw me a couple other places. Anyway, he’s in Clintonville. Going by his description of the general area, I probably could have walked to his place. His name is unusual enough that I was able to discover that he’s close to my age, though probably a few years younger. I can’t tell much of anything else about him other than his general career trajectory (he worked at OCLC before Matt started there!) and I haven’t tried. It’d be a bit weird. But he sent me words of encouragement, and he agrees with my assessment that the last three years have been basically me getting a bum fucking deal. My words, not his. It kind of makes me wonder who else is lurking, though — and he has been lurking; he’s probably been one of my Columbus hits here and there for the past however long — and just never said anything. I wish they had. But then it’s just as much my fault for holing up in that fucking house. I should have been trying harder to build my own life, and maybe I’d still be there with my daughter now. And Matt could be off somewhere else going and fucking himself.

Can’t do a thing about it, though. Can’t even think of this as “oh, I have a new friend,” because no way in hell am I getting back there and even if I could right now, I wouldn’t risk it. My situation is even more fragile than it was at the beginning of May. So that’ll just have to be whatever it is and I’ll just be thankful there are more people in the world who wish me well than I had previously been aware of.

I’m trying to make myself draw, and wondering why I have to make myself do it. But I think I’m still struggling a lot with depression. It’s not as bad as it has sometimes been but I have my episodes. I suppose it’s progress, though, that I don’t start drama with people while I am in the worse throes of it. You got to figure shit gets better eventually. At SOME FUCKING POINT I’ve got to catch a fucking break. I just wish it’d hurry the fuck up.

I am not sure just now whether I will be approved for MediCAL. I sent them the information they asked for and got no acknowledgement. I guess I will just wait and see what comes in the mail, because I am a gigantic fucking coward and I don’t want to call the caseworker only to be politely told to fuck off. I would probably be more worried, but if this falls through then I have a plan B because I qualify for VA coverage. It’s not ideal. There’s no VA clinic in Del Norte County. But if it would keep me from having no coverage, I’ll fucking go for it.

I am so pissed at Dad. I could have had a perfectly fine situation there if he’d just fucking relaxed and stopped trying to fucking control me.

But on the other hand, a lot about this situation aligns better with either the values I have or the values I want to have, depending on the topic. That’s not a bad thing.