my boring life story

Okay. Progress.

1. The Columbus State check cleared. Chime said it would, but I wound up spending like four or five days on tenterhooks just absolutely positive it was not going to deposit. I have rarely been so happy to be wrong.

I had also hoped, had I gotten the money timely instead of five fucking months later, end result I actually deposited it nearly a year after taking the fucking class (it was a one-off stipend), to have set it aside as an apartment deposit since some apartment communities charge $250 for that. But instead I’m using it to shore myself up one more month. Because of course I fucking am.

But! It’s here. I have it. If Columbus State suddenly wants it back, they can go begging. Maybe one of the they/thems on staff can start a GoFundMe.

2. Phone came in today too. And the case. The battery life may not hold quite as well as it did for the Samsung, but we all know what ultimately happened with the Samsung battery, and I’m an habitual charger anyway. (Nope, sorry. Being an habitual charger no longer damages batteries in the way it once did. Letting the battery fully drain, as my father once advised me, actually shortens battery life now. Look it up.) Also I’m not fond of some of the differences in keyboard functionality: I have to take too many additional steps for punctuation and symbols. That said. HOLY SHIT WHAT A NICE CAMERA. Still really point-and-shoot quality, but good for all that. If it holds up, I will be one happy camper.

Phone works on my carrier, works with Uber Driver. I’m good. For now.

Oh and it has a headphone jack (YAY) and a micro SD slot (YAY YAY) so I can make more space for photos and music (YAY YAY YAY YAY YAY).

A postscript: I didn’t have the money saved up for it. I lucked onto an Amazon refurb listing that is subject to their Amazon Payments plan. No interest. There might have been a small fee in the first payment, but that was it. So I have to make payments on it for the next few months but they will not be large. Should I hit a windfall, I will just pay the whole fucker off.

…

Mom wrote. I am not sure what’s going on with mail. I think Elizabeth had it just sort of stashed in random places. She also claims the mailbox key works but that she’ll have her maintenance guy do a WD-40 treatment. No, that’s not it but you go ahead. I got my renewal form for the car registration and 100% I can just go in and do it in person. I thought so, but it’s nice to confirm. And here soon I will be getting some sort of mailbox. I’m tired of this. Anyway. The reason I went off on that segue was Mom’s letter was dated from last month. We’re almost to the middle of this one. Postmark was from a month ago. I’m not going to say anything because it was my dumb ass not following up once a week to see if there was mail AND last month was when Pat died. It’s fine. Sort of. But I don’t want any more weirdness like this. Plus, I don’t know where I’ll be after January and I would like a reliable place to get mail. So there.

But! Mom says she will be sending Chaise’s guitar. We’ll see. She’s just moved to a new place, and moving’s expensive. If I get the mailbox before next month I’ll text her and let her know the address so there’s no chance of weirdness happening. I can just go pick it up. No biggie.

…

I can’t make any definitive promises yet but I’m circling the whole concept of going keto again. If I do it there are a couple possible approaches I can take that might not cost an arm and a leg. Either make it shake-based, or follow a very, very simple meat-and-veg routine. The fact that I’m having to talk myself into this even knowing that it will help me should tell you the depth and suckitude of food addiction I am mired in. I’m tired of looking like shit, and at this point I’m reminding myself too much of Dad, and I don’t even have the fun of a good buzz to make it worth my while. I would like to see what my body’s supposed to look like again before I die. Sounds stupid and vain and shallow but there it is.

…

I also think about the whole attracting-a-man thing, despite all my ranting about not wanting that fucking drama anymore. I am not sure where to go with that. To wit, do I get my physical affairs in order and look better and then go for a guy who likes me that way or do I look for a guy who likes me looking like a human Blob and who wouldn’t mind if I improved myself. There are pros and cons to either approach. I’ll be straight up, though: the fact that no men express interest in me, ever, anymore tells me that it’s just as well I’m not actively looking because when you get right down to it, there’s nothing to look for. It was a scam all along.

Oh well. Their loss. Well, sort of. I’ve always been a weirdo, though the manner in which I weird has evolved over the years (devolved?), and being close to a weirdo is difficult at the best of times.

I can still admire my favorite from afar. Y’all, somebody clone this man. Please?

I started later than I wanted to today, and things dragged on for a bit, and I didn’t exactly have many brilliant runs (although one twofer I had was the equivalent of $20 or so in an hour, which is pretty good), but at the end of it I had $113 or so. So I was able to get a decent amount of grub and set aside $20 for gas tomorrow because holy fucking shit I hate going below half a tank and most particularly getting too close to a quarter tank. Among the many things going wrong with my car, my gas gauge sometimes acts up and so I don’t like taking chances. I never did in the first place, and that was with an accurate gauge.

But, that leaves me with about $70 set aside. If I have another day tomorrow like I had today, that new (to me) phone is in the bag. I have to get a case too, but as long as I can get it around $90 or less before I throw in the case I’ll be pretty happy. It’s an older Google Pixel. That’s one of the phone types that supports my delivery app. I will double-check, as I think I said already, once it gets here. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be okay.

I’m still thinking things over for immediate-future plans… probably thinking too much. One card that’s very much still on the table is just up and relocating to Delaware (the Ohio town, not the state, and the place where I lived in the homeless shelter). I don’t want to leave here, but let’s say I got a job at a certain distribution center up there. I wouldn’t like my commute being nearly half an hour in one direction every fucking workday. So, like, depending on what happens around here, if I had to go for that, I’d want to move closer. I know some rents are affordable up there. It’s not impossible. And at that point I’d be month-to-month with Elizabeth anyway. I think she’d be a bit informal about me making plans. If the supposed hiring bonus panned out, I could make it right with her whichever way anyhow, if I had to. If if if.

But that’d be for a year, two or three at the most. I don’t want to stay up there. Columbus or maybe Dublin is where I belong, at least for now. Could be permanent. Don’t know. If I were about fifteen years younger I would make a move toward being in an entirely different country but I don’t think they’d want me this old even if I had the requisite job skills. It’s also possible I’d end up wanting to go somewhere else in the USA. Not that possible though. I like this place well enough. If I can get my shit sorted in the next year or so, I might be able to afford to come back down here.

We’ll see what’s possible here first. I absolutely have to have something by the end of the year because January’s going to be dead. I’ll be very surprised if I’m wrong.

Not much of an eventful day. I got more delivering done than I did yesterday but as I was completing the fourth or fifth one, as I was near the dropoff neighborhood, my body felt that was a good time to remind me Shark Week is still going on. My usual pattern is the first roughly three days are really heavy, and then it tapers off fast and just sort of spots for days. But the past two or three months it’s been sort of mixing things up a bit, out of boredom I suppose, and the heavy days seem to happen at random, sometimes four or five days into it. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard women talk about getting a “gush” event, but I get them, passing large clots sometimes too, and this was one of those times. Fortunately, I didn’t have to get out of the car to hand the food off, and I got home without real incident other than being held up at Dublin Road and Hayden Run because WHAT THE FUCK, PEOPLE, QUIT BLOCKING THE FUCKING INTERSECTION they are still working on the Riverside and Hayden intersection and still have two entire lanes closed off and people do not think about how to TIME things. Fuck. Anyway, that was the worst bit and then I was home to clean up. I thought about going back out later but I didn’t trust things to behave, so no.

I’ve been working on stretch bracelets, trying to get more money out of my bead collection that I had wanted to sell off anyway. I need to go ahead and list some of them tomorrow. Will I? I don’t know. But I need to do it.

I always seem to run round and round over the same old ground in my head about my general life situation and stuff people have done to me. It probably doesn’t help that nothing really new is happening, at least nothing new and good. I could have that as a distraction, but no, and my general distrust of people isn’t going to help improve that any.

I want you all to know something, whoever reads this, and especially if you already know me in person. I’m coming around to something I’m probably going to do, and I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about it.

I had this concept of myself in my head that because I have a family and because I am a mother, there are certain things you do and think in those scenarios if you really care about those people in your life, and if you don’t do them then you don’t care and then you’re a bad person. I didn’t come up with that concept on my own. Society pushes that on you too. It’s really, really hard to step away. It shouldn’t matter what people think of you, but when you are already on the ass-end of society and no one cares if you live or die, what people think of you matters a whole hell of a lot. It could make or break you for your life ever getting better. Or for you continuing to have a life at all. I’m learning that the hard way. I would have been better off cultivating friendships all those years than giving one single fuck what men thought of me. Men want a jizz receptacle who will wash the skid marks out of their jockey shorts for free. They don’t give a fuck about women nine times out of ten. I let myself be suckered into what patriarchy does to women, which is portion us out to men to be isolated in men’s houses with no support network, no assets, and no future. I am never fucking doing that again. It’s probably too late to make real local friends though. That ship has sailed.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about having come to the point that I’ve realized I’m still holding space in my mind and heart for people I’ve cared about to come to their senses and really come talk to me, come hear me, come sort things out and figure out some new way we can forgive and deal and move on still acquainted with one another. I’m talking about realizing that that’s futile because that only works when the people you’re missing were operating from good faith in the first place. Were good and decent people in the first place. Ever had your best interests at heart and felt you had theirs at heart in the first place.

That’s not what’s going on here. They hate me, they think I’m scum, and they wouldn’t bat an eyelash if I died tomorrow. I need to let go.

I need to just proceed as if people are already dead. Stop wishing, stop hoping — however faintly, stop leaving space open because y’all, it’s just going to fill with cobwebs. I need to be filling that space with whatever the fuck I’m going to do with the rest of my life. No one wants to be in that space. Fine.

You wanted me to go away. This is me going away. Actually, it’s you going away. I belong here. I am here. You bailed. Bye.

The cold hard truth is that if they came back tomorrow telling me they were sorry and asking for some way to move forward together, I couldn’t trust it and like as not, they’d follow up that expressed wish with some version of “but you have to do what I say even when it’s wrong and you have to act like you like it,” which is a fucking non-starter. You can’t make peace with people who do not respect you. You can’t make peace with people you don’t respect, either, and I’ve lost all respect for most of those people and don’t have much left for the rest. It is better that we have distance. We can all do our own things and not bother one another. Fine.

It will be interesting to see who comes out what way in ten or twenty years. For the record, don’t even come at me going “wow, how have you been” because if you had really wanted to know, I’m all over the fucking internet and I’m an open goddamn book. People who want to know things make an effort to find them out, not save it up for ten or twenty years and then play dumb when you run into the person somewhere. You know what you did. Either work to correct the situation properly or leave me alone. If you have to ask “what’s proper?”, you aren’t ready. Go work on yourselves til you figure it out.

You won’t. None of that will ever happen. I’ll write about my experiences at some point and then maybe you’ll get a fucking clue, if you ever even look here anymore, but other than that I’m fucking done. I need more space to get things done. I can’t fit you in anymore.

I’d say I’m sorry, but what’s the point.

Okay. One more bracelet and then snooze.

Because I can’t seem to find my peace for very long without something coming along and kicking the ant hill.

Okay. For a while now, the case on my shit-class Samsung Galaxy (it’s the A class, and a low number, not a high one) has been sort of falling apart a little bit. It’s a cheap case, and I had dropped the phone a couple times in the past several months, so I didn’t think more of it. Just made a mental note that I needed a new case soon.

So I got the case, and it came in yesterday. So I go to put it on in the car before I even go anywhere. (I tend to have small items shipped to Whole Paycheck because it is almost literally a straight shot from the apartment and I don’t have to have Amazon come up this steep driveway just to give me tiny things. Rather save that for larger packages.) And I notice it doesn’t seem to want to snap all the way into place on one side.

So I go about my business, do some delivering but the pickings are a bit slim, because I wanted some food money. Had it been busier my greed would have kicked in and I might have pulled off an $80 day, but that’s not how things went down. (I just got another 40% off coupon in my buyer account for that same service, too. Really bad sign.) And I get back to my apartment and I’m dithering around and I go to pull up my phone screen and… it gets WEIRD on me. I had to poke at it a bit, worry at some buttons, to get it going. The really weird bit was that with the new case, the buttons had initially worked better so I’m already halfway on alert. Then I get into the menu and like half my apps are zerged. They’re the ones I moved to my mini SD card. Which I now cannot see in the system or access.

Okay…?

You get to the micro SD through a tiny side drawer, and I’m not sure what I was doing wrong but I got the case off and stuck something in the drawer-latch hole and… nada. And as I’ve got the case off I look at the back of the phone again.

“Is it supposed to be curved like that?”

I had sort of noticed that when I first changed cases and then it slipped my mind. I couldn’t remember what the stupid thing had looked like when I bought it; that happened in late ’21. Two years ago, basically.

But I’m starting to wonder if I can possibly just take the thing apart to look at where the drawer’s supposed to be, so I go look up YouTube videos for a how-to, and then…

…I realize the “curved” bit is right where the battery is supposed to be.

Holy fuck.

Did some more googling: Samsung phones are known for developing swollen battery.

FUCK.

Probably this was why the old case had been cracking, too: the drops I’d had started the process and the swelling kept it going. It was a shit case, honestly. An Otterbox will try to make allowances because they actually made an effort with the materials. Mine was. Though now I knew why it wasn’t going absolutely all the way on properly.

I’ve done some research. I don’t want another Galaxy. This was my third-ever one. The “good” Galaxy phones burn up battery too quickly. The bad ones… well. I have been complaining about the low RAM in this even-fails-as-a-doorstop device for two fucking years. The battery was, for once, the ONE demonstrably good thing about this piece of shit, and now that’s what’s failing me. We are not going to go this route again. It’s Pixels from now on or something of that ilk. I’ve heard good things about Pixels though. Also they’re one of the phones that supports my delivery app. I WILL be checking to make absolutely sure when I get the thing bought, but we’re proceeding on the assumption that that will work out. If it doesn’t, I’ll figure out something else.

Also, it’ll have 4GB RAM instead of half that much. Still not great, but 100% improvement from before.

Meanwhile, it is my understanding that swollen batteries are safe for phone use for a time, but that charging is dicey. I am at least not letting the battery drain down to zero, which is hilarious because my dad used to advise me to do that, but it turns out this type of battery is MORE likely to swell up if you do. (Is there ANYTHING my father has ever advised me to do which is actually fucking legitimate? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) But I worked out a basic fire-retarding precaution to take at night when I’m sleeping, and I just need to get this earned over the next couple of days. I literally have the phone and case in my shopping cart at Amazon. It’s an older model, but hopefully it checks out. I will clear it, or not, when it gets here.

…

So when I took that contact-center training class at Columbus State, one of the perks was they gave you a $250 stipend if you got employment as a result of taking the class. I did, earlier this year. Filled out the form I was supposed to fill out for the stipend. Got fuck-me games played with me by some doof who works in that department and who doesn’t seem to know his own departmental procedures. I tried. I was mostly polite. He finally sent the check. With my name misspelled. I sent it back with a letter advising him not to bother again.

Well, I finally got my mail from Elizabeth dating back to July. I thought, I bet there’s another check, because that ass [Columbus State doof] never listens to anything I’ve got to say. It was a bit like dealing with Matt, actually. I was right. There it was.

With a little note on it that advised it was only good for ninety days. It had been issued 02 August of this year.

Fuck it. I’ll try anyway. Worst they can tell me is “no.” So I set up the mobile deposit.

Well, so far Chime seems convinced it’ll go through. So the app told me after a few minutes. I don’t believe it, but we’ll see by the 15th. Meanwhile I need to get this fucking phone thing sorted so I don’t have to play so much catchup this month. Last month sucked ass.

If it turns out Chime was wrong and the thing bounces, I won’t even tell the doof. Moving on. Tired of the drama. Oh God fucking forbid, I asked for something that at the time I was entitled to. Y’all run get my smelling salts. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE. One of these days you’ll actually NOT throw a conniption fit when I advocate for my rights, and I won’t know what to do with myself. It’s not like I’m nasty about it, at least at first. What the fuck. I don’t fucking know.

…

I spent today restringing some stretch bracelets and making more, and tomorrow if I get up early enough and have good light, I’ll list a bunch on Etsy. To think I was grumbling that I could not move my Etsy Seller app over to the SD card. WHAT THE FUCK WAS I THINKING.

Oh, and recently I had moved a bunch of files off my phone. Someone was looking out for this big fat idiot. There were more on the SD, and hopefully they weren’t wiped. I’ll find out if the new phone works out, and then I can use brute force to open the old one and see what’s what. I have what I call a mini-SD extender that looks exactly like a normal SD card but has a slot in it that you put the mini SD in. Lets you stick the mini SD into a normal SD slot for a computer to read it.

I don’t think the Pixels take mini SDs. I may subscribe to Pro on Flickr again just to have someplace to put things. At least I almost never use my phone as an mp3 player anymore. No way in hell will I have the space.

Sigh.

I’ll link to the stretch bracelets when I get them listed. At this point I can still catch up the month but I’d like to have something in reserve. If I can even keep it there. You know how us Poors are.

…

Okay. I have a question. Who the fuck’s visiting me from Canton, Georgia and Albuquerque, New Mexico? There are some other places I wonder about too, but those are regular customers. I have no idea why. If you’re on my Facebook, holler. It’s weirding me out a bit.

All righty then. I need to finish a bracelet and then it’s off to bed. But first, more root beer. Mmm. Root beer.

Oh gosh, where do I begin.

1. Sometime in between the last update about Dad and now, Doug got a hold of me again to tell me Dad was back in the hospital. Apparently Carrie went over to his place and he was in bed with a bloody nose. Upon further investigation it appears he fell and broke his nose and was still conscious but did not use his Life Alert. (For those of you who don’t know, that’s a remote thingie you wear as a necklace and if you fall, you can click a button on the remote thingie and it will alert whoever you set it to alert.) Doug immediately went to “Dad really is trying to kill himself” which was not at all abated by Carrie’s informing him that Dad had just bought two new bottles of bourbon. He had had a bottle and a half remaining the last time previous to this that he went into the hospital. Less than two weeks had intervened. More like less than one but I could be fuzzy on that by now so take it with a grain of salt. Still not helping Doug to know about that.

Part of me wants to call Dad up and chew him a new asshole. 75% of me knows it will accomplish jack shit. And forget me moving back down there. Then he’d resent me monitoring his drinking habits. Or not monitoring, if he was hoping to have me back down there as an excuse to quit. Either way, I can’t win, and the sad part is that a win for me would have been a win for him too because who exactly is at war here? Shouldn’t be anybody, I would think. Jesus fuck.

(Familiar theme. A win for me with Thea would have been a win for Thea. A win for me with Matt would have been a win for Matt. Why are people such jackasses about this? I don’t go around wanting to hurt people as my default state of existence; if what I’m wanting for you sounds disagreeable, it’s time you looked at your own propensity for self-harm. For five fucking seconds could you let go of your pride and let the Wookiee win? No? Well suffer, then. I’m done. This is just too much fucking effort to expend to accomplish exactly fuck-all.)

2. My former stepmother’s brother, Dale, called two nights ago. First time I’ve conversed with him since about 2005-ish. I think? Might have been longer. We were never in regular communication anyway, but if he and Reba were getting along pretty well, I’d hear from him more often. So anyway, this time I was out driving and I get this call from Mississippi. I’ve been getting a lot of bullshit spam text messages from organizations that don’t know what a woman is anymore but nonetheless want women to have the right to choose; it’s election season, we’re about to vote on whether to amend legal abortion into the Ohio constitution, and a strange number could be anyone, really. So I let it go to voice mail. I am pretty sure my voice mail announcement says to text me instead of leaving a voice mail message, because my voice mail doesn’t work for shit 90% of the time and I prefer texting anyway. Thus. I will say this for him: he follows instructions. At least sometimes.

He’s a year younger than Dad and he’s going through that time of life we all get to look forward to where our friends are dropping like flies. He’s a Vietnam War vet and so are a lot of his friends, so the dropping like flies is particularly tragic and gruesome. It is probably far too late to put the inventor of Agent Orange on trial for crimes against humanity, but that doesn’t mean I don’t REALLY want to.

I’m not sure what else this was about, only want to mark that it was weird. Two notes:

[a] At one point I offered to pass his info on to Doug. He doesn’t think Doug will want to talk with him. The reason he thinks Doug will not want to talk with him is because years ago, Dale made a pass at Moriah, Doug’s ex-wife. I was not clear on whether she was an ex at the time. All I know is Dale says she flirted with him, so he reciprocated. Doug was fairly peeved about it, Dale said. Okay, if they were already broken up, I suppose it depends on how soon after the breakup it was but I suspect this was more “Oh EW, Uncle Dale, she’s young enough to be your daughter” than any single other issue, really. But if Doug and Moriah were still together at the time, or were only recently split up, YEAH, there are going to be issues. And dude? She’s young enough to be your daughter. AND she’s mother to your great-nephew and great-niece. Jesus Christ.

(And don’t think it didn’t cross my mind, between that and some other things he said, to wonder why he wanted to talk my ear off for more than an hour. I mean, he knows I’m not related to him. They think they are so mysterious, but at the end of the day they all follow a fucking script. Well, you stay down there in Gulfport, m’man. Fine by me.)

[b] I have long been suspicious of Reba’s current husband, Rick. Some things Doug told me about how Rick treated him years ago, and my own observations of Reba’s and Rick’s dynamic together, got me wondering if Rick wasn’t a tad possessive of his wife. Controlling, maybe. Now here comes Dale telling me Rick “fixed” Dale’s motorcycle in such a way that it would have killed Dale to ride it. Dale knew enough to understand what he was seeing when the “repair” was completed and got it to his personal mechanic, thereby dodging a metaphorical bullet. But he hasn’t been around Rick since, from the sound of it. Yeah, solidarity. I don’t want to be around Rick either. The little bit of time I stayed at his place in the month after I got Mike arrested in ’99, it felt like camping out on a minefield, never mind walking across one. If Reba’s favorite hobby was nitpicking everything I did, Rick raised it to a goddamn art form. Using Reba as his mouthpiece, mind you. I don’t even want to know how he’d be if I went back there.

(You wonder why I never turned to family after I walked out of Dad’s house this last time. Oh, my sweet summer child.)

…

I have been seriously lax on some hobby pursuits lately. If you’ve noticed, don’t worry: I’m aware. I am in this weird place, mentally, where even though I feel better over time, I still feel bad too, if that makes any sense. I have enough trouble managing my time but if I’m depressed, forget it. Everything gets overwhelming. I have had a LOT of “what’s the fucking point” moments in the past six months in particular. I don’t know where I go from here.

It’s weird. My life falling apart two years ago was horrific, BUT, I needed the kick in the ass to start standing on my own two feet. It was well past time. I hated losing nearly everything to resale shops and that fucking clown, BUT, my life was too cluttered. I have no idea what to do with my life, BUT, it’s become clear I was too willing to let others direct me and I forgot to figure out my life for myself. I’m poor, BUT, by most metrics my life has actually improved. Even my driving is a hell of a lot better. You should have seen me when I first started doing it for a living after a long, long time not getting around much because either I didn’t have a car or I was too broke. The sheer number of near-catastrophes I had. I have no fucking right to still be here, I will tell you what. [knocks on head] But now I have a much, much better mental map for where things are in town, and I am much more competent at getting there. Life is so fucking weird.

But there is still this inner brat that wonders why the fuck I ever do anything if it’s just going to be in a vacuum. To be fair, no one gave a shit what I did when there were still people in my life, either, unless they thought they could get something out of it. So I don’t know why I give half a fuck whether anyone notices me now. It’s just going to be more opportunistic fucking ingrates after my very last-ever available fuck to give. The growing season’s over, y’all. Move on.

Holy shit… I squeaked in under the wire.

So I got the $300. I had enough other that it all pushed me up to about $890, and then I discovered I had a bit more in tips from deliveries which pushed it up to $900. Like I said before, I could do $70 in a day and then use $30 of my SpotMe.

Well, I started nice and early. That helped a lot. So what I actually got up to was probably $80ish, which meant $20ish needed to come from the SpotMe. So I stopped and got the money order, and then I left it in the usual spot with a note for Elizabeth, and then I went back out because I had pretty much no food worth speaking of and I also had two out of three blips left on the final quarter-tank of gas. Car-car and I both needed to eat. Nothing for it. I got far back enough out of the hole to spend $20 straight, not SpotMe, getting it into the gas tank and then went back into the hole a little bit getting food. I still have eight or nine bucks cash so I’m fine for breakfast tomorrow.

Got back here and, uncharacteristically, Elizabeth was outside. I damn near hit one of the dogs but she wasn’t upset — they will tend to be impulsive and I think they’re still also upset over Pat. Doggos are like little kids in that way: upset = acting out. Anyway, E said that her family members who want to move in aren’t going to be able to until after January. So we could do it month to month until then? I said. Yep. So I have a place for two more months. Well, three if you count this one.

Oh, and I had been wondering for months where the fuck my mail went. She’s got it. So none of that’s lost. I had left the key she’d given me with the rent when I left the rent in our usual spot, and I included an explanatory note. So she knows what’s up. I figure it’ll be near the end of January by the time I actually get any of it, but who knows.

I have some leads on jobs that I need to follow up in the next couple weeks but we’ll see. Failing anything else, if I don’t get lazy again I can just aim for $50 a day five days a week to save toward rent and do pretty well and then after that, who fucking knows. I don’t know. I’m playing it by ear.

Nineteen years ago.

I remarked on Instagram today that probably one of the biggest reasons my daughter has shut me out is I have her entire childhood between my ears and I know what and who she actually is, up to a point (I don’t “own” everything she is — she owns herself, and she also operates under her own power and initiative), and therefore I am inconvenient to have around because she wants to pretend none of that happened. I did not also mention there that that is a common tactic of young people who think they’re trans, and that sort of thinking is also why they call it “deadnaming” when you refer to them by their birth names. They literally believe they have become a different person, which is odd when you consider that they also claim to have finally uncovered their true selves. Well, kiddos, that would mean you were the same person all along. You can’t uncover what isn’t there. Make up your fucking minds?

Being in a support group on Facebook for parents who’ve gone through this has been illuminating. I had read enough accounts of rapid-onset gender-dysphoria girls up til I joined to understand some of what was going on, but I had no idea how textbook these kids are all being. Of course, each individual kid fancies they are being original. If they only fucking knew.

…

I have been running into some right rotten bullshit on Uber lately. First off, Uber can’t take “no” for an answer when they offer me some bullshit job and I refuse it. I thought I was a contractor? Then I have a right to say no. I cannot fathom what they are thinking, other than maybe they want to inflate my refusal percentage. It wouldn’t surprise me. Then there was the guy who accused me of having someone else do my deliveries when he ordered from inside a secured facility that I could not get into and a security officer offered to bring it to him. Yesterday, I got a customer who ordered a trunkful (as in my car trunk — and the car is a Hyundai Sonata, so that is not a small trunk) of groceries, including heavy items containing liquid, and I didn’t know what I was getting when I went to pick it up, and she lives on the second floor and was home and did not offer to help, and neither did whatever man was talking with her behind her door as I labored back and forth. She at least had the good grace to top up my tip. Then today, I had one who didn’t like how long I took, even though it was the restaurant’s fault for not being ready when I got there, and who didn’t like how they filled her drink, even though they filled her drink and I had nothing to do with it. So she downvoted me and took three bucks off my tip. Probably killed the whole thing, actually, but she couldn’t take what Uber paid me. And that was a twofer call, and the other customer had to wait longer than she did and he gave me five extra dollars. It is really hard knowing that you are good at your job and that most of your customers like or love you (at least for ten seconds at a go) and then having to contend with assholes like this and having zero recourse. I can’t block them even when they lie. I can’t downvote the delivery experience anymore — and from my end the delivery experience was fine, anyway. But I can stop picking up from Shawarma Bites, because this was not the first time they made me wait and I’m not going to leave myself wide open for more problems. I’ll get problems anyway, but when there’s a known vector, why not rule it out from step one. So, thus far, I have blacklisted Café Istanbul, Dave’s Hot Chicken (oh let me tell you about Dave… I’ll tell you about Dave some fucking time), Walmart, and now Shawarma Bites. Who’s fucking next? I hope no one, but believe me, there’s lots more where you came from. Bring it.

…

Additional Uber gripe. Was dropping off at the Extended Stay America on Tuttle Crossing and there were a couple guys loitering outside the front door when I went in, and when I came back out and speed-walked past them towards my car, one of them called out to me like, “Hey.” Fucking really? No. Keep that bullshit to yourself. Even if I were up for getting attention from a guy — and if your initials are not RFM I’m fucking not, thank you very much — I’m not gonna decide that on the basis of some fool on a Thursday night with nothing better to do than stand around talking about whatever with some random other guy outside an extended-stay hotel. Because we all know why you are here, and it’s not travel.

But I have to be philosophical for a sec — thanks to my looks being gone, I guess, because my age really isn’t all that obvious, I could count the number of times this has happened on one hand. Probably actually one finger. In two years. Not too shabby really. It just threw me because it’s been so long since it last happened.

But I’m not full of myself, no. These assholes are never actually interested in me. Even Matt wasn’t, and Matt wasted two whole decades of my life. (So did I, but they were my decades. They were fucking well not his to waste.) Men who pretend interest where there is none are fucking trash. End of story. At this point if you pretend interest I assume you’re out to ruin my life. Again. Go home — or to your ratty little weekly suite — and wank. Asshole.

…

So we thought Dad had had a brain bleed again this second time in the hospital, but turns out they might have been seeing old blood from the original bleed, and I’m not sure how the fuck that happened if they suctioned it out like I thought they were supposed to? I dunno, but I rather thought they’d do that. Maybe I’m mental. (Shaddup.) And I found out in all the back-and-forth that he’s had a Life Alert subscription for a while now, so that’s good. But he was offered the veterans home and Doug’s place in Oregon after this mishap and turned them both down. We all know why. The veterans home wouldn’t let him drink and he’s got reason to suspect Doug wouldn’t either. (I think Doug said he’d go along with Dad’s requests, but I could have misunderstood him. Nevertheless, who knows how that would turn out. Dad doesn’t know either, and that’s the problem.) So it comes down to Dad caring more about the bourbon than about his kids, which is no surprise because it’s been like that all along.

I mean, I get it. I have health issues I could have gotten on top of at least 10 years ago and I still haven’t. If I don’t rein this shit in I’m going to be the helpless old person kept alive only by pharmaceuticals and unpleasant medical things, but have I changed my ways? No. Am I proud of that? Also no. So I can empathize, up to a point. I’m not 100% sure Dad even cares. Like, does he comprehend the situation he is in, or does he have his own weird little spin on it? Because I heard about his shenanigans with “quitting smoking.” I’ve seen the way he talks about various situations and issues. Dude not only marches to his own drummer, he’s got a fucking accordion instead. He’s on his own wavelength. I am not sure he understands the problem. I think he believes he understands the situation and that it is not actually a problem but everyone around him is calling it a problem so they can pick on him. I am not sure anyone is going to be able to get through to him. I do not know why someone obviously intelligent would think like that, but there it is. I have long suspected the man is autistic, actually, and Mom probably is too, and I got a double dose which is why I was such a weird little kid. Are any of us going to get help for it? Also fucking no. How do you set up an IEP for a grown-ass adult? Where would you even begin?

So there aren’t any good answers, so my dad’s probably going to be dead in the next five years and I’ll be dead shocked if it isn’t in the next five months, and I’ll still be the bad guy for talking about all this out where everyone can see it, because making me into the sacrificial goat is sure gonna fix Dad’s health or raise him from the dead, uh-huh. You bet.

…

I got the books sold. Talked about that several entries ago. With everything I’ve made so far that I was able to keep, I’m $100 short and tomorrow’s the last day of the grace period. But! I have a $35 Spot Me on my Chime account. I need a couple bucks for a postal money order or a couple more bucks for two Meijer money orders. Either way, I only need $70 tomorrow to get it done. If I can’t start early and make $70 on a Friday, I might as well throw in the towel.

[knocks on head]

So it’s get to $70, stop, buy the money order, take it over there, text Elizabeth to let her know it’s there, then get my ass back out there because I’ll need food money ’cause I’ll be muthafucked if I’m gonna have fucking canned pasta for supper again. I’m thinking that hibachi place I picked up from on Henderson the other day. The place smells AMAZING and that shit will feed me for at least two days. Oh my GOD. YES. And maybe bubble tea. I think I’d really like that too. If I can’t get them tomorrow because I left it too late, I’ll get them this weekend. It will be amazing. You just wait.

Okay. Bed. Shit to do tomorrow, lawds yes.

I had meant to write about this the day it happened, and I could go back through my messages to Dawn and pinpoint the day but I can’t be arsed for some reason — but I finally, more than two years after I left, drove past Matt’s old house (“the red house,” Thea used to call it), and from the opposite direction to the one I went in when I left. There was a large gold-colored pickup truck pointed the wrong way on the parking pad and half-parked in the front yard, and the garage was open in the back. First time since 2009 that thing’s actually been empty. It was very strange to see. But good, too.

I don’t know if I mentioned it here but after my initial anger and grief at Matt’s bullshit of pulling up roots and leaving the state with my daughter without telling me (I had to hear it from alternative sources), I thought about it some more, and I realized that my only sadness is at my daughter being gone. Otherwise, it’s basically a huge relief, like lancing a boil. Like there was this great festering sore in the middle of my mind-map of this area because I knew it would hurt to drive past and see them there and that, if she saw me pass, she would probably be upset too — not at missing me, but at being reminded I’m around. That’s gone. I can drive past there now and it’s okay.

This has changed my delivery patterns too, somewhat. I still avoid the University Area (actual name of neighborhood) and the south side like the plague, because the former has no good parking to speak of and the latter is nothing but bad roads and bad drivers. Downtown is Right Out too. But I’ve expanded a little bit and have been a bit more willing to let the app lead me around where it will, to a certain extent. I still don’t want to take ridiculous trips for next to nothing, but thanks to my new approach I made $18 on a pizza run yesterday. Just the one run. Not a twofer. Not even on the weekend. Liked it.

I’m only now realizing I have less rage. Weird. I can’t count on it not coming back, but it was already diminishing and now it’s dropped a whole lot again.

I might actually be okay. At least in that sense. Eventually.

I set up a GoFundMe to maybe help with this last month’s rent. I won’t link to it. If you’re that fucking curious you can go search me there; I’m sure I’ll come up. I realize this is a shitty tone to take when I’m hoping for help, but so far this year most “help” has come from people trying to make themselves look good and you can’t base it on that. You have to base it on meeting the person’s actual needs. I’m lucky I got anywhere at all; even where things were successful it was often because I took alternative steps under my own initiative. I can’t fault that, even if it’s patting myself on the back, but one wonders what all the fucking charities are for. The things I saw. I still need to write about that. In the meantime, if I don’t simper enough for you, pass me on by. I have a plan B if this doesn’t work.

The doctor has flat out told Dad that if he drinks again it will kill him.

I have a feeling he doesn’t give a sweet shit.

I don’t have an opinion about it either way. I can’t see us reconciling at this point. I have resigned myself to being the family asshole that everyone’s going to talk shit about for generations if they even remember I existed at all. They won’t, of course. I mention these possibilities only to show that I am aware of them. Everything that I’ve been through that I could have been spared had people simply stopped kicking me out the door (or, more recently, making me want to leave) and stopped being mean to me and actually started getting to know me, and I’ve lost count now, and I can’t measure, and I’m just tired of thinking about it. I made this mess, but I had no foundation to do anything else. Thanks? So backstab if it makes you feel better. It’s in character for you. Hate to see you start acting abnormally. Dementia’s a bitch.

I’m getting ranty and need to go to bed. The point, with the previous, is that in a lot of these situations I get pulled up for… basically nothing. I keep to myself, I don’t go engage people about anything, I go along my merry little way and the first time an issue comes up and I react to it, suddenly I’m a monster. I mean okay, I kept to myself and you don’t have enough experience with me, but guess who also never approached me to make the first move. Do you not understand what an introvert is? I’m easy, too. Just say hi and start a fucking conversation. I can pick it up from there and we can go back and forth. You know, like normal people? Make that investment. I cannot be the one making the first fucking move all the time and I am tired of people expecting it. If you don’t say hi to me I assume you are not interested. If you are someone who ought to be interested and you are making no moves, I am going to take a little bit of offense at that. I’m human. I am not a mind-reader. Stop making me fucking guess. And don’t expect me to act like you, because I don’t live among you. We should have some of the larger things in common, but that’s about as far as you can take it as far as expectations go. Point is, I ain’t done shit and you’re mad. I could literally tell you my entire life situation and you’d still be mad because something something bad decision something twenty years ago. So? This isn’t twenty years ago. Catch the fuck up.

Nope. Well then. Make your own choices and I’ll make mine.

And if you’re a new person and think I’ll bite your head off? Again, as I said… Treat me like just folks. But if you don’t approach, I assume you don’t care. It beats wasting energy chasing people. You always get those assholes who like the attention and who will accept yours even though they hold you in contempt. I hate that, and I’m not setting myself up for it. Too much time and energy wasted getting back to baseline after the massive disappointment hits me. No thank you.

Okay, bed for real now. GOD. Ni ni. zzzzzzzzz

Am still around, will catch up soon with whoever the fuck is reading. Couldn’t get my brain into gear after it for some reason.

Briefly: Turns out Dad had another brain bleed that precipitated this latest ambulance ride (see previous post). Doug flew out there early this morning to be with him. Carrie sent me photos. I’ll update this later and add them. Dad’s doctor also told him that if Dad doesn’t stop drinking, he’ll die. So it sounds like they have zeroed in on the drinking causing either the brain bleeds or the falls that cause the brain bleeds, unless it’s the brain bleeds causing the falls. Either way. It’s all of a piece. Just like I thought. I am pretty sure that when I was in ninth grade taking a current-affairs class, we had a segment on drug abuse and were shown a photo of the brain of an alcoholic and let’s just say it was ugly: huge contrast from a healthy brain, mushier and bloodier looking. It is amazing what you will draw on later from your memories in the midst of a crisis.

Also, Aunt Matilda, one of his younger sisters and also my godmother (fat lot of good that did), is on the warpath against me writing about this publicly. I am not sure where she saw me but I am guessing on Facebook. I am not sure she has worked out that I have a homepage. I am not sure it matters. But I got thirdhand-fussed at through Carrie and Doug about it. She can keep fussing. I am so tired of this shit. Welcome to life being acquainted with a writer. I may not be making a living at it, but this is me and you will just have to fucking deal. If you haven’t figured that out by now, it’s time.

I wrote this on Facebook a few days ago when shit first blew up:

Hey if any more family come here looking for shit to gossip and rage about, here’s a 21st-century primer for you:

1. Alcoholism isn’t a secret anymore.

2. It is a thing that actually causes problems for both the drinker and other people.

3. People who have had problems caused for them have a right to talk about that. Including publicly.

4. Men who behave badly or in ill-advised ways (not the same thing) do not have a right to be simped about it. Men will shame women all fucking year long for showing one square inch too much of boobage or having one too many boyfriends before age 30. Excuse the fuck out of me if a woman wants to talk about her dad committing slow self-unaliving. I think that’s rather more significant.

More to the point, where the hell have any of you been most of my life? You think you get editing rights now? Sit the hell down. Thank you.

People who can’t be arsed to stick the fuck up for me when I am being blatantly mistreated can shut the fuck up when I have opinions about things. You already showed me whose side you’re on and I only care about the opinions of people who give a shit about me. And then only just so far. I’m not a fucking windsock, and I’m not gonna wave in whatever direction people blow me, and you can get the fuck over it. Good talk.

This man used to drive intoxicated with me and/or my brother in the car. When we were CHILDREN.

Go fuck yourselves.

I could go into a ramblyrant like I’ve done the past several entries, or maybe I’m being paranoid and that all hasn’t actually been that ranty, but that bores even me after a while and I’m trying to organize my thoughts and intentions, so we’re going to take this in another direction.

Point the first:

I’ve decided to put my legal proofreading training on long-term hiatus. It is foolish in the extreme to not finish the course as I’ve already paid for it in full, but there’s also the risk of spent-cost fallacy. I’ve barely worked on it at all, and I am pretty sure I bought it in 2020. If I’m wrong, I bought it in 2019. It was that long ago. If I haven’t fucking finished it by now, I’m not sure I will.

I thought about signing up for the general proofreading course instead, from the same company, but they won’t let me trade in one course for the other course and I am not willing to shell out another multiple hundreds of dollars (at fifty percent off, which they recently had a flash sale in that vein, it’s still over three hundred dollars for the lowest-rung basic course) only to not finish. It’s idiotic.

I found out the Chicago Manual of Style costs less than $50, hardcover, latest edition, at Amazon. I know from my participation in the student support group that that’s the style manual used by the graduates of the general course. I may invest in that and then see what I can get up to at Fiverr or Upwork on my own. If I start proofreading at all, that is likely to be how I do it. If I’m “having to succeed by trial and error,” at least I’d be succeeding.

This may not be a permanent decision. It’s too soon to tell. There is too much else going on.

Point the second

One of the reasons I want to put the training on hold is I need quick cash, and I can get $200 out of one of my books related to the course and another $100 out of two other books. They will also wind up being three fewer heavy things I need to shift when I move. So I need to list those in the group shortly. I have a fourth book I can also unload, but that’ll probably be $20 at best. Still, better than nothing. I could hypothetically continue the course without those books, so this isn’t the only reason I’m putting the course on hold, but it’s a big one.

Point the third

I’m going to take some time tonight and work on bits of this site, most notably here. It’s sat idle long enough. If I get bored with that, I may work on Rory’s stuff some more. It’s been a while. Possibly work on something else too; I haven’t decided yet. Let’s burn that bridge once we’ve crossed it.

…

In other news, Dad’s in the hospital again. His landlady and long-time friend Jodi has been keeping a close eye on him with her daughter’s help, and they saw him fall, but didn’t see the extent of his possible injuries. He certainly wouldn’t ‘fess up — he views such concern as unnecessary fuss — so they called an ambulance to be safe. Whether we get DT festivities with him again will depend greatly on how long the hospital has him under observation. I told Carrie last week that he needs to be in the veterans’ home, and she sort of hemmed and hawed about it, and likely doesn’t have authority to make that decision anyway. But it’s still true. Jodi and her daughter have their own lives, much as I appreciate them helping, and he needs to be near actual medical care, which they would have in a nursing home. I told Doug that the only reason Dad hasn’t gone there yet, even though he arranged things already and has a place there, is because they very likely won’t let him drink. Doug couldn’t find fault in my theory. That is a stupid reason to not ask for help. When I thought years ago that the man might drink himself to death, I never imagined it would be in this fashion.

I don’t know why this hasn’t put me completely off alcohol in any way, shape, or form, but weirdly it hasn’t. I rarely drink, though, so that isn’t saying much.

…

I never did contact him after he got out of the hospital last time. Haven’t wanted to. I can’t predict how he will behave, and I have no patience left for him acting like everything that ever goes wrong in my life is just me being bad. I simply do not have the energy left to stabilize myself emotionally after yet more setbacks because the people who are supposed to love and support me want to attack me instead, either directly or from the back. I don’t mean that he has to rubberstamp everything that I do or everything that happens to me. He doesn’t have to agree that I always do everything right. What he needs to do if he wants a relationship with me is to stop attacking me. That’s all. I am experiencing the natural consequences of my actions. They suck. I got the universe’s message loud and clear. The universe has not appointed a deputy to administer additional beatings, verbal or otherwise. End of story.

And that goes for anyone else. If you want to be offended that I try to protect myself, if you want to call me a bigot for telling the truth, if you want to cozy up to my enemies because they tell you what you want to hear even when that’s bullshit, you’ve made your choice but you don’t get to stay in my life too. That is not negotiable. I’ve had enough. I am not an unreasonable person. (The fact that you are now laughing says that you are, however.) If you ever get over yourself and want to make things right, not just bribe me with stuff or bullshit me with more nonsense you don’t mean, hey, I’m here. I’m an easy find. Speak up. But I’m done chasing people who just want to be hateful. Too much energy wasted to accomplish fuck-all.

I said I wasn’t going to rant. I don’t think I am yet, but I’ll leave that there. I’m sure I’ll address that subject again sometime. More than once.

Okay. I feel like I wanted to talk about something else, but now I don’t remember what it was. It probably doesn’t matter. Keep an eye on the other page ’cause stuff will be there soon.

[edit] Oh, yes. Right. This wasn’t what I had been meaning to talk about, if anything (I could just be imagining that I wanted to talk about something else), but I have this new weird thing happening. There are times I change position between standing and sitting that I get this weird pain thing going on, up my back somehow. That sounds weird, but I don’t know how to describe it. It’s a radiating sort of pain, and not severe, but it’s… different… enough that it makes me pause and catch my breath anyway. I think so far it only happens when I go from standing to sitting. It’s like everything’s settling back down, but in an ouchy way.

I should also add there’s this weird lump in my back just to the right of my spine. It is not a big lump, but if I rub the general area back there I can feel it, and there is not a corresponding lump on the other side so this is not me mistaking a body part for an anomaly. That’s been there a while. Months at least. I never thought to mention it in any venue until now and, well, I’m already grousing about my health, so there you go.

The thing that went on previously that I thought could potentially be a kidney stone seems to be done, whatever it was. I did go on magnesium, a formula that contains three different magnesium compounds including citrate, and magnesium citrate is supposed to help kidney stones. So if I had anything in that vein whatsoever, maybe I’ve knocked it down. No idea.

Interestingly, it was on the same side as the lump is. I don’t know if that’s significant. The pain wasn’t in the same place though.

Random other pains in the past few weeks that were likely my stupid fibroids acting up.

Foot thing a while back, right foot hurting when I’d walk around Meijer after a day delivering, but that may just be me pounding too much pavement. I replaced my shoes at the end of last year or beginning of this one but maybe it’s time for a new pair. I used to make one pair last five years or more. I suspect those days are done. I am probably the least shoesy woman you will ever meet, barring women who don’t have feet. I own two pairs at the moment and that has got to be some kind of record. And the other pair are only meant to be step-outside shoes. They’re sandals and too big for my feet and I got them to feed the farm animals while Elizabeth was out of town with Pat months ago. I couldn’t find boots that would go on my stupid derp feet, so opted for beach sandals because both they and feet wash off. I was once accused of being “resourceful” by a case worker. I suppose sometimes I am.