Category: uncategorized

(see previous post)

Mission accomplished

Am all done with just letting shit run over me. I’m taking back the fucking reins. Fuck you.

She’s gonna be gorgeous. I can’t wait. And one day, when I’m not here anymore, I’ll tell you who Neighbor is, too. I’ll always have this little bit of him now.

Nine items for the scutwork this week. Got three done today; may as well pace myself.

Pushing myself later on wakeups because I’ve got the overnight shifts starting this next Sunday. It’s going to get to the point, probably by Friday, where I’m doing the scutwork in the morning instead of at 4pm, which is going to be better, actually.

L’s going to be out of town for about nine days. Neighbor is apparently going to come over daily to make sure everything’s okay. I may enlist him on the dogs’ second feeding (they are fed twice a day) just so I can buy myself some more sleep time; I can get the bowls ready and have them in the fridge for when he gets here. That will depend on his willingness and how familiar he is with the routine. It might not be possible. We’ll see. But the idea of seeing him daily is kind of nice. It’s weird that she goes out of town without him. I’m still afraid to ask him what’s going on between them. He might not answer anyway, and what if he tells her I asked? Bad scene. Best not.

(Though at some point, if I’m feeling a little bolder — maybe after I have at least $1000 put away in case I’m kicked out — I may make some flippant joke in passing and see what he says.)

I’ve thought about the shit with Stuart (I was right; he’s blocked my sockpuppet now) and on the one hand I know I was a bit itchy trigger finger with the unfriending him. On the other hand, he was asking too much just expecting me to relocate to BC when he would barely talk to me, and then on top of that not tell me what I was getting into or why he wanted me to get into it. AND, I thought I was all big and bad being over the thing with Matt? Yeah… he reminded me too much of Matt with that mess. So we’re triggering my fear of winding up homeless again AND reminding me of the man who wasted twenty years of my life and who then sat on his hands as I ended up homeless and then helped mess up my daughter… THANKS, STUART. No, really. Don’t let the door hit ya.

Incredibly, I still feel bad about it. I also wonder whether he might have been sweet on me after all and whether that would explain the extreme response. I don’t understand the mixed signals — “done with relationships” versus calling everyone he knew to get me housed in BC on seemingly a whim — and maybe I’m just wrong anyway and it’s just Stuart doing his usual Not Making Any Fucking Sense. But I’ll probably always wonder. At least a little.

You know what, though? Apparently I still want a man who’ll fight for me a little. Like, act like he’s actually happy I’m around and make the effort to not scare me off and, if he accidentally fucks up and I take it the wrong way, take the initiative to try to correct the problem. Not this cowardly fucking mess I just got dumped on me. Again. By a whole new guy.

And to think I started down this path because I was tired of being hung up on Neighbor. Joke’s the fuck on me, innit.

Oh. Interesting thing happened. So. On Neighbor’s garage, to the left of the garage door as you face the garage door, there’s a spigot. Sometimes I wash my hands there. Well, there happens to be an escaped mint growing there at the junction of garage-wall and ground. The faucet running happens to water it nicely. It’s gorgeous, nice big long broad leaves. Probably a mutant spearmint, but who knows. I’ve had my eye on the tallest growth for a while and meant to ask Neighbor if I could have a cutting of it once I had the money to get a plant pot and some soil. Well. Last week when I went to do the scutwork and then wash my hands, I noticed that exact growth had been clipped off. What the fuck?

Yesterday I happened to look out the window where L has her raised-bed garden boxes and… there’s this green branch stuck in the sand in one of them. I haven’t been out to look more closely at it but goddamn if it doesn’t look like the mint. And it’s limp, because if she’s trying to root it, she’s not doing it right. GRRR.

Fucking hell. Not bad enough she’s got the man, she has to take my fucking mint too. Well, I’m not going to ask anymore. I get some supplies together, I’m just clipping some fucking mint and they can fucking cope. And it’ll be mine. In a pot. Not in her fucking garden.

It’s weird. I kind of like her. I’m definitely grateful she gave me a place to stay. But I still feel weird about her. The jealousy is part of it. But also, she goes around with her face constantly stuck in her laptop (you laugh… no, I promise you, she is worse than I ever was), and she always has this air like she’s just tolerating me. Except when she really wants me to do something, and then she’s all friendly and shit. I don’t know what’s going on there. I’d like us to be friendlier but I don’t know how to get there. I am not going to put my energy into something, though, that’s likely to backfire. So I lay low, strive not to piss her off, bond (such as it is) over the dogs, and… just get on with things. I don’t know what else to do.

What I need to put my energy into:

1. Getting healthy. -Er.
2. Sorting out my employment situation. Whatever that looks like.
3. Getting back to Ohio.

I don’t really think I have a future here.

Hell, I haven’t heard from my brother Doug since that one time he called after I got here. Not even that. I’d call him, but I don’t know what his work schedule’s like and, well, Stuart just demonstrated it again: if I make the first move, I’ll be seen as the pest and put off til later. I don’t like going where I’m unwanted, where I was not invited, and where I don’t belong, and that includes phone calls. I dunno. It’s a whole thing with me.

I am just so goddamn tired of being lonely though. There is no end to it in sight. God.

I cannot promise when I am going to stop talking about that man, but I imagine it shouldn’t be that far off, at least in terms of what you’d call a regular feature. So I’m going to talk about him again here. Sorry.

Timeline was: Sunday night, unfriended Stuart. Monday, reached out and assured him that I had not canceled him but that I did wish him well. He responded rather quickly for someone “too busy,” going “huh?” because allegedly he’d just been calling around trying to find me a place to crash so I could work on his party’s election campaign in British Columbia — a thing he had SAID we were going to discuss, and he SAID he’d get back in touch with me last Thursday or Friday and then never did. So he didn’t know what the fuck was going on, because I didn’t know what the fuck was going on and had already written it off as Probably A Bad Idea, chiefly because Not Enough Info, because Stuart had decided he was “busy.” Right. But about two seconds later he realized what I’d done and said that he guessed he’d have to call back around and let them know the housing was no longer necessary. I mulled things over and went to write him back and found he’d blocked me. So you saw all that. I gabbed on exhaustively about it yesterday.

Right. Caught up. So today I go over to my political sockpuppet Facebook account and peek over. Don’t ask me why. Masochistic streak, I guess. Sure enough, his one recent public post was talking about him being “canceled” again. Now he didn’t come out and say publicly that I had canceled him. But it would be passing odd if, like, five other people decided to unfriend him the same day I did, and I had already noticed him playing fast and loose with the concept of “cancellation.” It wasn’t hard to do the math. So… being that he’d never friended me on that account or, if he had, he figured out pretty quickly it was me (maybe because I told him?) and dropped it and THEN forgot about it… either way, I commented with a few home truths about the situation. I also informed him that the door was still open a crack, so to speak, but that it would be up to him to walk through it and if he didn’t… well. I doubt he was poised on his account waiting for me to comment. I’m kind of hoping that if he’s decided he’s going to keep being a dick, that enough people saw me speak up before he shut me down. Just because I would feel a little better if they had. Though I don’t know what’s the point, because this is going to end the same way it always does. Man acts like abusive prick, woman bites back, man’s friends side with man even though they just saw him being a prick. The older I get, the better I understand why radfems give up on men. Dramamongering fucking walking sperm banks. And we’re at eight billion now. What’s the fucking point.

I wouldn’t be on this angerfest about him if not for another thing I noticed about him while we were still on good terms: he is one self-centered sonofabitch. He honestly is. What scares the everloving shit out of me is, I was willing to give him a pass for it. I was willing to say, “Oh… nerdboy. No social skills.” Exactly why OTHER PEOPLE allow men like this to get away with shitting on ME. Thank god he slipped and was a dick to me early. Shut that shit RIGHT down. But you should have heard him. I will tell you what: I will be STUNNED if he remembers one goddamned important detail about me whatsoever. He might remember I have a kid who IDs as trans, but that’s one of his current obsessions, and it isn’t really about me. Give it a week and he’ll be pretending he never heard of me. If not sooner. This man wants to be in politics and lead people. Why. Just fucking why.

Okay. Enough of that. Also I both went digging and also got on the scale and I found out two things: (1) my weight in the second week of March was something like 259 pounds and 15 ounces; and (2) my weight this morning was 226.5 pounds. 33-pound loss since March. Curious to know whether I could get to Onederland by the end of the year. Doubt it, but it’d be interesting to find out. Oh, and my fasting sugar was 96 mg/dl. I hadn’t walked the day prior, is probably why. I’d rather see it high eighties. BUT! Doing pretty well.

Meat-sorting was a night late; some weeks it just is. Scutwork will be plentiful this week. Should put me in good stead for when my temp job begins. As it is I’m doing better than I’d had any right to expect since Employer allows up to 50% of your net pay to be advanced to you each pay period. So if this coming Friday is a payday, I’ve fucking got it made.

L will be out of town for a period of time this month and it’ll be a little weird feeding the dogs, but hopefully that will go okay. They’ll just have to be a little later with breakfast than they are used to being. They’ll live.

My brain is just about derailed. I’ll add more later if I remember something.

I had had a theory for a while that the hit I keep getting here from Denver, Colorado was from my kid. But I noticed tonight that this person’s hitting the big man’s fan site as well, so unless my daughter knows the website address for my Rory McCann fan site, it’s someone else in Denver visiting. I suppose it could be her father. He could have had all manner of bullshit tracking my online activities when I lived with him and I would never know. It sounds paranoid, but with him being a programmer and a software developer and basically in control of the internet connection in his house, it’s not off the table.

[edit: I just remembered I link to the big man’s fan site from my real-name homepage. So that could be it. I had just been thinking that if he tracked me online at all while I lived there, he could have gotten the URL that way, but that’s the more paranoid and complicated explanation when really all he had to do was follow links. Same for the kiddo, actually. And that’s what I get for forgetting my own content. D’oh!]

Orrrrr it’s someone else in Denver entirely. Who fucking knows.

I still need to fill in from this past week. Will I? I don’t know.

I do know I posted this to my Facebook and that when I get done pasting it here, I’ll unpin it from there:

—

Okay, I’ll stop vaguebooking about it. You can think I am drama-mongering if you want, and you’re entitled to your own opinion. He’s blocked me anyway. I’ll be surprised if that changes.

For starters: Stuart Parker may be complaining that someone has canceled him again. He may be referring to me. I will not ask anyone to say anything to him once they’ve read this, but if you want to point out that I’m nobody with no power and can’t actually cancel anyone and that unfriending is not canceling, I’d appreciate it. You don’t have to, but if he’s complaining and you decide you want to, go ahead.

Now the back story. Let me try to be brief with it, anyway. (I’ll fail.)

I don’t know when he and I became Facebook friends. I don’t even know who friended whom. I just know it’s been a while. Over a year, for sure. Over that amount of time, whatever it was, he’s been friendly but mostly impersonal. “Mostly” because once in a while he’d do a “care” react on my nicer photos and once, he liked someone else’s comment saying I looked lovely. And I thought he seemed like an interesting guy, so I wasn’t against the idea. Still am not. That sort of behavior isn’t what you’d call creepy anyway, but I wouldn’t have labeled it such from him.

I knew about Corey — I remember him being in the midst of the breakup — but I also know it’s been a while.

So when I heard he was coming here for the DGR conference, I was mad excited. I thought, wow, we were already sort of hitting it off — let’s see what we think of one another in person. And when he first got here, it looked like that might be promising. We hit it off pretty much immediately and he talked my ears off. I went into the weekend fairly hopeful.

And then when we were there, yes he was busy with food prep and cooking — sure. But when I was doing one of my *three* volunteer time slots, he wasn’t half as chatty with me as he was with some other people. Later, when he suggested I go to BC for the campaign I was dead shocked — not only because of what a big change it would be for me (and a big risk) but because up to that point, not counting our first meeting, he hadn’t been behaving like a guy who’d ask me to go to BC. I didn’t know what to think. It was why I talked about it a lot here. Like, “Does this sound in any way reasonable to anyone else?”

I thought when we parted ways on Sunday [25 August] that was it, but then he and Brandi and Melissa showed up on Monday because Brandi’s car was broken down and they had to sort out a tow truck, which took hours. And he and I had time to chat and the upshot of that was his declaration that he’s done with dating and relationships. We didn’t even get hugely personal, it just sort of went in that direction. So okay… all the care reacts, the invite to BC, and now this? I wasn’t exactly sure what was going on.

I had so much more to say in that conversation but didn’t because I didn’t know how to get it out properly and didn’t want to cross a line, but it kept nagging at me so I wrote a thing online for further elaboration that I knew he would be able to read, not naming any names, knowing he’d get a notification and probably go see what it was. I know for a fact he opened it at least once (my stats said he read it twice, but that could have been a glitch — they were pretty close together). Thought that maybe it’d spark another conversation. Nope. Silence.

Messaged him directly soon after that to ask him about the BC thing, what it would involve and why me, and he said he was settling in and he’d get back with me Thursday or Friday. Not this coming Thursday or Friday. This *past* Thursday or Friday. That have gone by now.

By today, I still hadn’t heard from him. But he was on Facebook complaining that no one “on the left” had given him a nasty nickname. Not so much as a “sorry this has run so late, here’s what I’m doing.”

That’s when I gave up. I’d already decided against BC, as you all saw, but the idea of seeing him continue to post around and clown around and never actually answer my questions rankled. I thought I must have really fucked up somehow, or repelled him, or something, and I didn’t want to engage with that anymore. So I unfriended him. I did, however, DM him to tell him I wasn’t doing it to cancel him.

He replied back with a “huh?” and said he’d been calling around to find me housing for the election work he had in mind — we still had not discussed this in any way, which was what he was supposed to get back with me about — but he guessed he’d have to let them all know it wasn’t an issue anymore.

I mulled over things a bit and then meant to respond to him, and now I can’t. Because he’s blocked me.

I tried one last-ditch effort to start an actual conversation with him through Substack but though he’s probably online, I asked him to DM here, and he hasn’t done that. He’s not likely to, either.

I’m at an impasse. I don’t know what I did wrong in the first place, well before the online misunderstanding (or whatever it was), and I don’t know why it’s gone this direction. I am considering this a dead end because I can’t see what other way it’s going to go.

So it’s not like anyone would have noticed I don’t comment on his stuff anymore, but that’s gonna be a thing. But I don’t hate him — I’m kind of pissed off at him, but I don’t hate him. If I see people accusing him of crazy shit, I will still speak up for him. Whatever his ish happens to be, though, he’ll have to deal with it on his own. His choice. Clearly I am now completely out of favor.

And for future reference, not that I have a line of men beating down my door: You will get a lot farther with me if you fucking communicate with me TIMELY. Either as a friend or as anything more than that. I cannot do inconsistency, expectations of mindreading, or outright fucking games. I just can’t. I went through twenty years of that shit with Matt (and also Craig, the brief period he came back into my life to fuck with my head 14 years ago), and I have done plumb run out of bullshit spoons. And I’m not shopping for more.

That is all. Sorry for the dramafest but I needed to give my side. I know I “shared” Stuart with a LOT of you.

—

Along with the unfriending yesterday, I took him off my Substack today. I had comped him in case he wanted to have conversations in the comments, but nothing ever came of that. I was interested to learn he’d read the “thing I wrote online” — apparently twice, but the “read” statuses happened so close together timewise that it might have just been a glitch and he only read it once. But there’s no reason he should have to keep getting emails from me. So I sorted that out.

Anyway, at the Facebook post there was some followup discussion in the comments and I realized that I had not adequately conveyed just what had gotten me wondering if Stuart liked me; it wasn’t just “care” reacts or a like on a “you’re lovely” comment. I’d posted something a while back about how I am weird in ways that wouldn’t let me do well in relationships and he came back with something like “be careful, Dana, this sounds like an old-fashioned and very appealing personal ad,” to which I replied, “You are too fond of peppers. It will never work.” He laughed, I laughed, and I didn’t think anything more of it, though now I wonder if he thought I was entirely serious. Because I wasn’t.

There are lots of reasons it would never work, but having different opinions about food probably wasn’t one of them.

Him flirting when he didn’t mean it OR, meaning it and then chickening way the fuck out when he was faced with actual me in person would be reasons it would never work.

I have a strong feeling it was the latter in play. I realize how full of myself that makes me sound. It’s possible my radar in this area of life is completely and irretrievably broken. But… somehow… I don’t think so. He struck me as a very nervous person when he was here. I had already gotten that sense from him on Facebook before that. I’m just having trouble believing that I would have that sort of effect on a man — or, as in his case, that I would have a magnifying effect on already-existing nerves — given that I’ve become such a troll. Sooooo… but he’s not speaking to me anymore anyway, so I’ll just have to wonder.

I wouldn’t admit this on Facebook, but if he ever gets the fuck over himself and reaches out, I might actually want to talk. Oh, FINE. I do want to talk. I just don’t think it’s ever going to happen. I feel a good bit sad about that. I think… well, I think we kind of need each other. I don’t know why I think that, but I do.

But not “need” in the sense that I’d die without him. So it’s move the fuck on, I guess.

Oh, and yeah. He’s the previously-mentioned-in-previous-posts “S”. If you hadn’t guessed. I’m not bothering to go back and replace the letter with the first name. I only spelled out his name here because I linked to his homepage on the extremely remote chance that he’d notice the trackback. It won’t lead anywhere, probably. But what the hell. I literally have nothing to lose.

—

In other news, I’ve been pretty seriously logjammed about writing and it’s pissing me off. I’m seeing signs that’s shaking loose, though. Let’s hope.

I’m actually writing this like three days later but wanted to put days on their days. So I’m going to be vague in places, but this is the best I can do.

So. (Going back into Sunday Voice.) People played silly fucking buggers today and so I was very late getting to the conference site, and so I missed all of S’s presentation. I am not sure how much I would have gotten out of it, but it would have been more time around him, so I was a bit grumbly about missing it.

Anyway. At this lake house where we held the conference, there are two bathrooms. One’s in the master bedroom, one’s just off the kitchen between it and the mud/laundry room, and both were open to attendees (the bedroom one before 9pm and after 9am, due to that being the women’s room — and yes, we would have enforced that shit, had we needed to). I ran into a lot of situations where I needed to go but they were both occupied so I’d have to flit back and forth ’til one was clear. Yesterday, while I was passing through the kitchen in the midst of this, I noticed the volunteer sign-up roster on the side of the fridge and that meal prep and cleanup for lunch for today were blank. Two slots each, no one had taken any of the four. Ah ha, I thought. Here’s how I get to talk more with S. So I signed up for both before and after for lunch for today.

This was where I did the Facebook flirt I mentioned yesterday. “Not me signing up for kitchen duty again. Probably helps the chef’s cute.” Something like that. And by the way, he never noticed it. Or he did, but ignored it. Or avoided it. I really don’t know.

ANYWAY. So today that was a thing. There was some talking. Not as much as I’d heard him doing with M. I wasn’t too surprised. There wasn’t as much prep to do, either, which didn’t help. I wound up washing a fuckton of dishes afterwards because the dishwasher was already full and running. Other than that it was kind of a dud. I suppose at least I helped people out, so it wasn’t all for nothing. The conference is not for me to be chasing men, DANA.

But at some point I asked him where he was going to end up because I knew he couldn’t go back to Tanzania on account of his visa troubles (they changed the rules while he was there, which fucked his ability to stay). He said he’s in Canada for now, in British Columbia, until the election. Then, depending on how it goes, he might have a job and he might not. He didn’t spell this out, but presumably that amount of time gives him space to sort out his visa situation, so he could very well go back to Africa if the election goes wrong. He asked me where I thought I was going to end up, and I said I had no idea. I mean, I don’t. This can’t be permanent, and I have no followup plan for when I leave. I think that I might like to go back to Ohio, but I don’t know if I can actually accomplish it and not end up homeless again. I didn’t say all that to him, of course. He didn’t seem like he wanted to get excessively chatty.

Later we were talking in the living room, and I said he looked like he could use a hug, so I finally got one from him. (Hugs are great. You get to give and get at the same time.) He seemed quite pleased about that. We chatted a bit about this and that (he has a tendency to pontificate about political stuff, and he talks about himself a lot too), and then he said the most amazing thing. Suggested that I might like to move to British Columbia myself to help with the campaign. I was flabbergasted. Where was I supposed to live? He apparently knows someone I could crash with. I pointed out that I have no passport and no Real ID driver’s license either, just the plain ordinary one. But could I take a rain check on discussing it further? Because maybe I could sort that out. So we kind of left it open-ended, but he seemed pretty sincere about it. I have NO idea where that came from.

It being a conference for Deep Green Resistance, there was much talk about DGR’s mission and about its future direction. I’ve known about them pretty much since they started, but this is the first I’ve actually come close to joining. Figures that right now they don’t have a good process for that because they don’t want to do what they had been doing to bring in new members anymore. But there’s new leadership (well… some of it), and they’re trying to revamp a lot of stuff. Why do I want in? It’s not just the trans thing. It’s not even mostly. I’ve been closer to nature since I got here, and for years I’ve been trying to ignore the worst of what’s going on, and I can’t ignore it anymore. And all I see is a small ragtag group of rebels against the system trying to bring it down by speaking a language almost no one understands. Bloody academics. I have this knack for translating Academic into Plain English, and I wonder if I might not be able to put that to good use. They need a proper propaganda arm, in the old sense of the word. Lacking the arm, I’ll be one fingernail, at least. Whether I actually join DGR or not. I can read the book it’s based on at their website. I can get the general idea.

But! At least for now, it looks like I will be helping them with fundraising. No one else was raising their hand when that call went out and it mostly involves tech stuff. Neighbor is not fond of tech, L pretty much despises it, and I’m comfortable with it. It is a no-brainer. So B, who basically heads DGR now, and I will be discussing this in upcoming weeks and we’ll see what we can cobble together. And then, if we get that going smoothly and someone still hasn’t jumped on the merch, I’m gonna dig into that too. Long past time.

Some of it’s to do with Neighbor. I’m 99% sure he’s L’s, but I’m gonna feel what I feel there for a while yet. I don’t know what it’s going to turn into, but he matters to me in some way, and he’s getting discouraged that nothing he set in motion is really getting anywhere. I probably can’t fix it, but if I can kick things up the arse and get them moving in some small important way, and if that makes him happy, I’ll be happy. Sounds shallow, but if love doesn’t get us through this, nothing will.

“So why are you so ate up about S?” Because I’m 99% sure Neighbor is L’s. Because there’s no hope there. If he had a shred of interest in me beyond just being interested in human beings as he is, he’d have said so by now. And because S seemed like he might be interested in me, and that’d be a fucking first in years, and I already thought he was an interesting person. He ain’t pretty but, as a friend of mine pointed out, he has kind eyes. He’s another nerdboy, and you know I like nerdboys. He’s smart, he’s tall (omg), he’s funny (he’s one of the chief reasons I laughed so much this weekend — only Neighbor made me laugh more), and he’s a nervous wreck from everything he’s been through — and may have been a nervous person anyway — and God, that’s bringing out the caretaker in me. His big flaw other than the talking about himself all the time is that he drinks. That may yet be a dealbreaker. I haven’t decided yet and it’s not like he’s trying to climb down my pants, so I figure I have time to figure that out. Probably the rest of forever, actually, the way my luck’s been going.

Left him a Facebook message telling him goodbye and sending a virtual hug in case I couldn’t do any of that in person — he has tended to duck into his quarters early in the evening through this whole thing without saying goodnight to anyone. But I lucked out and saw him again before we left so I got to hug him again in person. HA.

Neighbor’s house for bears and dog walks again. This time M and I got a ride back to L’s, so no more having to play woods guide. Yay.

Pardon my rantfest earlier. I addressed my frustration by simultaneously passive-aggressively, indirectly flirting with S on my own Facebook feed and also therefore throwing down the gauntlet in case M thinks she’s the only person who could possibly ever be interested in him. Also I have put my name down for two kitchen shifts tomorrow because there was just no one on those shifts. Joke will be on me if they decide not to have lunch tomorrow on account of it being Sunday, but I doubt that’s going to happen. Which means he’s mine for lunch. Muahahahaha.

But I don’t like my chances overall. He’s still being really distant, but he’ll talk with M in greater detail. That’s a really bad sign. I’m tempted to beat myself up because every time I even think a guy’s interested who I also find interesting, I have to go after that — but I’m trying to go easy on myself anyway because who the fuck else should I go after, guys who show no interest in me at all? But then I run into this hot-and-cold shit. And he didn’t explicitly say he’s interested in me. There have just been little events that could be interpreted that way. But if that’s not what it is then I don’t know what he’s doing. I am so tired of that happening. If you’re gonna ignore me, ignore me all the fucking time. Quit with this on-and-off shit.

I can’t say things are better, but after being disappointed over S like that, I got to sit through a Q&A with Neighbor, and that was fun. He has this dry, sudden sense of humor where he will just say something mildly silly out of nowhere, and then several minutes later he will refer back to the earlier joke, and then a few hours later for a completely different thing he will call back to that original joke and it’s always good for a laugh. I still can’t quite get over that I liked this guy’s writing back in 2010 or earlier and here the fuck I am, sitting in on his Q&As and getting to see him every week and talk about whatever. And yet, my fondness for him is not all fangirling. I have too much of a thing for nerdboys and he is a big ol’ one. Except most nerdboys are sellouts to industrial civilization and he… went completely the other way. I wish I’d met him before I met all the CAW idiots. I’d have likely been a lot happier. Well… maybe. He has said he’s done a lot of work on himself in therapy. Maybe he was more of an asshole years ago. Well, he’s therefore less of one now. And we’re here now. And he’s one of the highlights of my week.

This time a bunch of people went to his house to see the bears, and I got to go along. He wanted me to walk his dogs. [smack] (not really) I am not going to pretend it wasn’t a bit of salve to the ego to be able to think, “Yeah, I get to see this all the time,” meaning hanging out with him, being at his house, seeing the bears, and all of it. Then there was this little moment where I remarked to him that he looked exhausted and he said no, he was only a little tired, and then something I didn’t catch in all the people noise but he looked a bit rueful, and I said in haste, “I know that sounded bad,” and he said “no,” and I said, “what did you say?” and he said, “Thank you for noticing.” It’s like we have hit this milestone where there’s actually been a little bit of energy exchange now, not just us off by our isolated little selves throwing words at one another from across a gulf.

Or this is just him thinking he’s supposed to respond that way and it’ll go back to the mutual isolation. Guess we’ll have to see.

And there’s still the huge Damocles question hanging over everything: are he and L a thing?

I ended up seeing the inside of his little cabin tonight. So, when his mother bought the land he now lives on, there was this little cabin which he lived in back then, and then there was her house which is the house he now lives in. When I first got here the cabin was being leased to some friends of his. Acquaintances? Something? I’d never seen the inside of it. It gets used to house guests now, either for L or for Neighbor, and — of all people — I walked M back from Neighbor’s meet-the-bears thing because she was staying in the cabin. Should have gotten her ass lost in the woods, but I’m being nice. More asshole me. Anyway, so I get in there and I look around and I see Neighbor’s work area from when he wrote most of his books, and… I saw three framed photos on the wall and realized they were from his high-jump days. Wow. All along that wall in his office nook are manuscripts and reference books and all sorts of stuff — it’s amazing. And, of course, L’s book that she got famous for. On his desk. Because of course.

M and another conference person walked me back to L’s land from the cabin. Now I fall down go boom. Zzzzz.

I need someplace to vent. Pardon me, because this gets childish.

First off, I probably way misread S. There’s a small possibility I did not misread him, but I very much doubt it. He’s been very… polite and yes, HE IS CANADIAN and apparently they do that, but.

Secondly, one of my other Facebook friends is here, and I’ll call her M, a woman with a long-distance boyfriend she’s basically freely admitted to using for his money. And. She has been ALL THE FUCK OVER S since the morning after he got here. I can see what she’s doing from ten fucking miles away. And… He’s actually chatting with her.

So that was fucking pointless.

She’s not even a good person, and I can tell. I just can. It’s not even jealousy. Maybe I should say not a healthy person. First day I chatted with her she offered to lend me money to buy a bicycle. Are you fucking kidding me. And generally she seems more interested in charming people than in actually connecting. The macking on S when SHE ALREADY HAS A MAN makes her already apparent Issues fucking galling.

And if she thinks S is loaded she is in for a rude fucking awakening. He has some income, but all this gender shit has absolutely destroyed his academic career.

There are more important things in the world than Having A Man. I know. I’m shit at Having A Man even when I do have one. I’m just so fucking tired of people taking things away from me when I already don’t have squat.

Okay. Fucking wah. I vented. Let me get my nose out of my phone and stop being rude.

Holy fucking Christ, this week.

Okay. So. Uh. Today’s Thursday. We did the meat haul on Tuesday, one day late. Right. So. Yesterday I had four items’ worth of scutwork and in a normal week, I’d have done two yesterday and two today. Because people were supposed to be arriving today by 3pm, I went ahead and did all four items. So that’s all done for the week. Bonus: Neighbor paid me on time! I hardly know what to do with myself. Wow.

Sorry, that was bitchy. I honestly believe that at least on that count, he means well. I don’t know anything about anything else to do with him. I am agnostic in that department.

But! People did not arrive at 3pm. They arrived well late, actually. I want to say about 8-ish? I was a bit of a wreck. Was quite excited about meeting S finally. It wouldn’t have been quite so bad had they not taken FOREVER to get down the driveway when they finally arrived. I know they were putting things in the barn (I don’t know why L calls it a barn; it looks like a fucking house), and possibly they had put up S’s tent (why on earth are we making him sleep in the rain, tent or not? I suppose at least that might not be the case for the rest of the weekend?), but I also had to listen to Parker barking the whole time. And I mean PROPER barking. She made the stovepipe for the wood stove RATTLE all the way across the ROOM from where she was barking — okay, not a large room, but that just made it WORSE. Because I was in the line of fire too. I had to go upstairs until the guests got to the house because it was bothering my ear so much.

S was first to make the porch and to come indoors after we had had a proper dog exchange to minimize complications (Duke is extra-barky with new people normally — I stood out when I first got here because he barked maybe once and then took right to me). It almost looked like S was really looking forward to meeting me. He even offered a handshake, which I accepted (this man has wonderfully large hands; I’d have been disappointed had he not offered), and which (here I am being bitchy again) was more than Neighbor offered when he and I first met.

Had a moment when we were settling into the living room that I caught him looking at me, and then when L led the women who came with him out to Neighbor’s old house (the house Neighbor currently lives in was his mother’s — they shared a property), S and I had a proper conversation. Wandered a bit from topic to topic, realized he may actually be scared of dogs (he held it together rather well, poor guy), learned more about his family, told him a bit about mine, and hither and yon and blah blah blah. It was great.

We’re not jumping right into Event Things tomorrow until mid-afternoon, so hopefully I get more talk time.

Yep. So far, I really like S. Hope I was right and Neighbor’s with L and not at all interested or Neighbor’s gonna run out of time. Pass the popcorn.

(No, I’m not after making Neighbor jealous. Just, if that’s what ends up happening, he’s got no one to blame but himself for it. No, I’d be quite pleased if it turns out I’m not wrong about S and he really is a decent guy. I have done much, much worse, y’know?)

I’m a little vague on when things have happened but… I think yesterday was when I had my busy day. Went to Walmart, came back, was settling in and had just spilled my Sprite Zero because I forgot how volatile Coca-Cola Company drinks are and I’d thought since I’d already opened it that I was safe… nah. When suddenly I get a message from Neighbor that he wants to go to the dump after all. Well, okay. So between the Walmart trip and the walking to his place I ended up putting in more than six miles’ worth of walking. Then was helping him lug shit around and throw shit around (not literal shit)… and while he did drive me back to L’s place, I still wasn’t done. Cleaned the bathroom and did the daily sweeping. I was tired. Earned it though.

(He drove to the dump again. I’ve given up trying to figure out what that’s about.)

Gut pain still coming and going and my dumb ass forgot the yogurt. Sigh. The pain’s gone right now but I had it this morning, along with an attempted migraine. Am now working on caffeine withdrawal, so I’m expecting a few more of those before it’s all said and done.

Anyway. Yesterday. So he drove me back here and then he stayed around a while. He and L have educated me on Kiwi Farms and that while yeah it’s a cesspool of Aspies (they call themselves “spergs” now, apparently), they learn more about news events having access to it than they would otherwise, so I might start an account there at some point. We’ll see. But while Neighbor was here, he ran across a photo of some stupid troon looking stupid in stereotypical porny shit and he turned his laptop to show her and goes, “Would you still love me if I dressed like this?”

So now I’m wondering what he meant by that. Are they actually a couple (they are SO a couple) or is he joking about the love thing too or does he mean “as a bestest friend” when he says “love”? AAAAARGH

I didn’t say anything. He showed me the pic and I made the appropriate faces. Probably should have joked, “Nah, I think my love switch would shut right off,” just to see their reaction. Am very glad I didn’t think of it ’til just now.

Oh yeah, and I did two loads of laundry. My own — L will probably never ask me to do hers AND IT IS JUST AS WELL. I do hit some household linens when I need to, but not a big deal.

Like I said. Busy day. And yeah, that was yesterday, now I think about it. How sad is that. It’s all a blur, man.

Today’s been boring. Scuttlebutt is that we may not be seeing a meat run until Wednesday night. Since I haven’t heard from Neighbor all day (he liked a couple things I posted to the funny group on Facebook, but that’s been it), I’m guessing that’s very likely. It is possible he’d let me know if it happens tomorrow. I won’t know ’til we get there. I have a decentish amount of food in the meantime. Not really worried.

I did ask him yesterday about the whole situation we have and how it’ll change over winter, because reasons, but it’s going to go on as usual, and we’ll just deal with the haul differently than we do now. That was a relief.

I need to get myself under me to make more of my own money. Will I? I don’t know. But I need to.

I can’t say I’ve settled on any definite conclusion about my current situation; we’ve all seen I flit the fuck back and forth between one mindset and another and yes, I annoy myself with this shit, too. But I may be closer to, specifically, figuring out the Neighbor situation. I don’t KNOW for sure, but it feels like it.

So, I still don’t know what’s up with him and L. I’m not going to ask, and I’ve been here since late May and he hasn’t even hinted, and I’m certainly not going to ask her because if they are together and she even gets a whiff that I’m interested, I could be homeless in less than a week. So we are not going there. So it’s an impasse.

But I’m seeing behavior that, I’m sorry to say, reminds me too much of Matt and I got tired of that shit when he was doing it.

Specifically, the absent-mindedness thing.

I still think Neighbor is more kind a person than Matt ever was. When Matt decided to Do Nice Things, he was always after something. It rather seems to be more built into who Neighbor is as a person. But he’s also pretty severely absent-minded. I know he has a lot of stuff going on, but let’s say best-case scenario that he and L aren’t together and she’d be fine seeing him with someone. (Tall order. Highly unlikely. If you could see them together, you’d see what I mean, even without the PDA except for occasional hugs. And I’ve seen two of those since late May.) Even then, there needs to be a certain amount of focused attention to build a relationship. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but it does have to be there.

Y’all, I can’t even get him to pay for the scutwork timely. And he did ask me to remind him. And I do remind him. And I’m lucky if he sees it within 24 hours. Or he’ll see me in person and go “I’ll send it when I get home” and then… crickets.

Okay?

It honestly doesn’t seem like he doesn’t want to pay. And he even came out and said that that was not the issue. It is just being absent-minded, he said. Okay, fine. But some part of me, the part that still isn’t okay after all the shit Matt and other people pulled, feels like I’m basically worthless if we can’t even get this done timely. It’s not a lot. For instance, I earned $60 from this most recent week. So I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around him “just” forgetting. And I also hate reminding people that they owe me money. I wouldn’t say it’s quite to the level of pet peeve but it does bother me a lot. Helluva spot to put me in. Thanks.

I could probably sort of live with it if one, I weren’t getting flashbacks to Matt’s bullshit and two, Neighbor ever consistently acted like he was interested in me as a person… okay, if L isn’t there distracting him, sure, he’ll start in with the questions and conversations. Sure. But if she’s there, forget it. Oh, if I initiate a conversation, he’s happy enough to chat… until his attention wanders. So. I don’t need to be the center of the universe. Never did. But goddamn it — and I’m always initiating this shit, too.

So where I’m going with this is probably just considering it a wash, continuing to be friendly with him but not hoping for anything else because it’s not happening. Ever. Literally, he could have a crush on me or something (I sound so fucking junior-high) and just be wired differently and not be the type to be demonstrative about it, maybe even hoping I make the first move. That’s great, but it’s not what I need right now. I’m tired of feeling like I have to beg for crumbs. My self-esteem has been trashed for literal decades. For fuck’s fucking sake already.

But there are still things I really like about him and I suppose I’ll look for those in another guy.

Not sure it’ll be S, but I suppose I’ll find out soon; it’s less than a week til he arrives. I expect he’ll be here this coming Thursday, since he told me he’d be here a day early. He’s been odd and distant, not that he was ever touchy-feely on Facebook but he’s gone extra-weird the past several weeks. Some of it’s no doubt getting ready to move back to the Western Hemisphere for however long he decides to stay this time. I also suspect people have been canceling him again. I’ll spare you the rant on that one. There have been a few hints here and there of Interest from him, but I’m not sure I can trust them, and very likely he’s still hung up on his ex too. That’s likely going to be a dead end.

You know what, though? It doesn’t have to be either of them. It shouldn’t be anyone, honestly. I’m too poor. It’s too much of a risk. Besides. We all know who I’d rather jump if I ever got a chance to do it. Sure, he’s occupied now. Situations change. Maybe I should be taking all this free time that my poverty and his “situation” are giving me and actually position myself to have half a shot at him later. Luck tends to be more favorable when you’re ready for it.

—

Got the package from Carrie the other day. Wasn’t weird like I’d been afraid it would be. Honestly not sure why she sent any of it, but did get my raincoat back and its liner, so I’m basically ready for fall, anyway. Got a test run with experiencing that weather, if from indoors, today because it rained all fucking day. I am going to need to figure out water-resistant shoes. My current ones certainly fucking are not. Sigh.

—

Gut pain for the first time in quite a while. Had a sudden turn for the better today and I think maybe tomorrow I’ll be fully on the other side of it. Whew.

—

Stupid fucking period. I had to delay the scutwork this past week by a day because no way could I deal with an accident if it came down to that. As it is, rain or no, I have to go to Walmart tomorrow to restock supplies. Nothing for it. (Another reason I was somewhat miffed at Neighbor today.) I’m so irritated. Can’t this just END already? I’m fucking old enough.

Oh well. I see we’re forcing myself to write anything at all at this point… again. I need to sleep. ‘Later.