my boring life story

Am at Dad’s house (I am not “at home,” I still have no fucking home) today doing laundry. Curious to see if he will ever fucking nap. It’s 2pm and I got up at 10am (didn’t mean to run that late, but I didn’t get enough sleep night before last, and I was feeling it by the time I got back last night… guess I was making up the time), and he hasn’t napped once.

If he’s hoping to pick another fight, it’s not happening. Or if it does happen, that will take great effort on his part. I’ve got protein shakes and I WILL stick with those all fucking day if that’s what it takes.

—

Yesterday was Star Wars Day, as in “May the Fourth be with you.”

Today is Revenge of the Fifth.

I like knowing things like that, but they make me sad, too. I felt like geeks were my community for most of my life, though I never thought it was a perfect situation; like nearly every other human social group, they’ve got a little bit of a woman-hating problem. But it has gotten to the point that now they are pretending not to know what a woman is, and some of the women in their community actively pretend to not be women now, and you’re a bigot if you notice. Their argument? Well, there are ninety genders on Planet Whatever in That One Television Show, so of course trans is a real thing here, in real life.

My 1950s-Westerns-bingeing dad thinks that liking things like Star Wars is childish — told you he’s an asshole — and I will never agree with that, but there IS a certain amount of childishness in the geek community. It would be less irritating if they did not also paint themselves as The Most Intelligent Social Group Who Will Save Humanity. My fat ass they will “save humanity.” They want to upload all our brains to computers. After spending half an hour ranting at you about the unstableness and lack of anti-hacker security of ALL the current popular computer (therefore also smartphone) operating systems. Make it make sense.

Anyway. I also happened to check out the three newest “saga” Star Wars films on DVD at the library on Thursday. I wasn’t even thinking about what yesterday was. I just thought, fuck it, I haven’t watched these through in a while, and they were all on the shelf, so I grabbed them. Dad always manages to interrupt me if they come on satellite and I’m watching them. I’m always nice about it — it’s HIS television, so I hand him the remotes when he gets up from his naps — but if I didn’t take the initiative, he’d ask for the remotes anyway. It’s happened a couple of times. If I’m watching on my laptop, he can’t do that. One, I’m in my room; two, it’s on my laptop; three, there’s no remote. Plus, if I have to step away, there is Pause. Suck it, Dad.

I’d be less spicy about this, but he’s up half the night when I’m in bed and watches whatever the fuck he wants then. Needs to feel more Lord of the Manor, I suppose, and especially now that he can barely do a fraction of what he used to be able to do. I am the wrong punching-bag for him to take his frustrations out on. I would have been his most sympathetic ally. (I did not say ABSOLUTELY sympathetic. I said MOST sympathetic, as in degrees. I would never have been 100% okay with his behavior.) As ever, he does this shit to himself. I wash my hands of it.

Oh, he can’t help himself? Get him declared incompetent then. Either he’s responsible for his actions or he needs to go to the veterans’ home. Fucking pick one. I’m not going to do it, because I’m already too much The Evil One, and not only in his opinion. Y’all think I’m shit? Fine. This is y’all’s mess now. Have fun.

I am not sure I will actually watch the DVDs now, though. I checked them out just before his shitstorm, and now I don’t think I would have the focus. I’m back in survival mode. Whee. So I guess I can go drop them off at the library tomorrow.

—

I need to edit yesterday’s post because I said his second bail was in 1997 when actually it was 2017. Had me a brain glitch, and those happen much more often when I’m upset. He suddenly decided to move to Montana in 2017, no (believable) explanation why. (“I’ve always wanted to live in Montana.” Uh-huh, and your reason for not doing this when you were more able-bodied is? He hadn’t had his initial kidney failure event yet, but he still wasn’t doing WELL.) I found out later that that was around the time Carrie got married to Stanford. I bet it was no coincidence and I bet I know why. My father has had a thing for Carrie since the late nineties or early aughts, and I noticed it even back then. How many actual Guy Friends of Women do any of us know about who ever bought the woman in question a diamond heart pendant? Yeah. That’s what I thought. Carrie for her part was astounded and then very thankful to have such a “good friend.” I think she knew but was trying to be class about it, since she was married at the time. Byron, at that point. The cheating fuck. I suspect Dad was thrilled when Carrie finally shitcanned Byron, which took a lot longer than it ought to have; one of the times I was here, she had left but not divorced him and was living in a mobile home in town. The final straw was when she got colon cancer maybe a decade ago and Byron started screwing around again. And this is why you dump them the first time they cheat. But I’m sure Dad thought it would finally be his turn. And then it wasn’t. And Dad didn’t want to be around to see her being happy with someone else. It’s possible he had always toyed with the idea of moving to Montana but told himself it was stupid, until suddenly he needed somewhere to go. (Tellingly, “needing somewhere to go” did not include the possibility of moving near either Doug or me. Remember that when he cries that his kids won’t talk to him anymore. Doug might, but I fucking won’t.) Sold his nice trailer and most of his belongings. Took off.

He was on the way there when he visited me in Ohio that year. Then he went to visit my brother Doug in Oregon. Then he went to Billings. And it would have worked out swimmingly had he paid any fucking attention whatsoever to his own medical regimen and asked the right questions, but someone fiddled where they should have faddled and he got the wrong dose of something and then wound up in kidney failure. He spent a lot of time in the hospital and then had to move back to Iota. And lo, here we are.

He does all this stupid shit and it is never his fault, then he looks at me and does not even know what I am doing and pronounces me a loser. Sure, Jan. Keep telling yourself that.

(I AM a loser, but not for whatever reasons he imagines.)

I suddenly find myself wondering how he behaved when Carrie got sick. Was he there for her the way he expects her to be there for him now? Because that was well before his kidney failure, obviously. She’s never mentioned, and he doesn’t talk about it. I first found out she was sick from Facebook. He knows, or he ought to know, that I consider her a family friend and he should have guessed I might want to know (I didn’t reach out to her, but only because I think what I post on Facebook would have offended her, and I wanted to leave that can of worms firmly sealed). He said nothing. The excuse of “I was freaked out because the woman I love was in danger of dying” only goes so far and he’d have never said that to me, anyway.

I get an idea that he mostly thinks of people in terms of Rules and doesn’t have much theory of mind. It’s one thing to try to interpret people’s motivations based on their behavior, but it is super difficult to set up a list of Rules by which to measure them and expect that list to always work. I don’t even try it. I have more like broad guidelines and then I try to take exceptions into account. I don’t know how good I am in the theory of mind department, but if I haven’t gotten totally pissed off at someone, I do try. In fact, it gets me into a lot of trouble because I give the wrong people the benefit of the doubt and then end up totally wrong about them, to my detriment. I don’t understand him at all. He just strikes me as perennially hateful. Like he gives people things as a transactional tactic so he can call in favors later, but doesn’t actually like those people. Except Carrie, and now he’s mad at her too. (I have been here since December and could count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen them interact, which is weird because she lives less than five minutes away. If he asked, she’d come over. He doesn’t ask. The same thing happened two and a half years ago.) He just needed someone to share his bank accounts in case something happens to him, and he doesn’t trust Matilda. If he and Carrie ever had a final falling-out or she suddenly died or something, I suppose he might turn to his other sister Emily, but that’d be a last resort. I have no idea why, but his idea for the humiliating anniversary present for Emily makes me think that’s true. That bullshit failed only because I delayed helping him put it together and then (I guess) he forgot about it. Or, best-case scenario and I’d be shocked, he had second thoughts and then thought I forgot and decided not to bring it up again.

He’s gonna be in a mess when I leave. But see what I said above about him doing this to himself.

—

Okay, enough of that shit. For now. (I very much doubt I am actually done.)

Yesterday, after I posted my post here, I went back out for a while to see if I could get any more deliveries. I can’t decide how I feel about that, because I ended up in OPELOUSAS.

Impression: There are a LOT of cool old buildings there… and most of them are empty. I don’t know if Opelousas is in the process of failing or has already failed. It’s sad to see.

Also, and I don’t mean this the wrong way, there were A LOT of black people. Like, more than the average. It makes me wonder about the general demographic history — did a lot of Louisiana black folks just happen to move to this one town? If so, what was the draw? I don’t wonder enough to research it (there are a lot of things I’ve been curious about in life and I’ve only looked up a fraction of them, and I have no internet access as I write this anyway), but it was hard to miss.

Also, and this isn’t Opelousas, but I took I-49 to get there and what the fucking fuck is up with all the fucking mansions on I-49? Both sides. Damn. I almost felt like I was back in Dublin or New Albany or something. It was unreal.

Anyway. The way that worked out was I had this one delivery that went out in that general direction and then, when I dropped it off, I got the first Opelousas call, and then when I dropped that off I got a second, and both the Opelousas deliveries I did were over $10 (each). I could have gotten more work there, but it was getting late and I wanted to head back. If I lived in Lafayette I’d have stayed and worked the area for a while. I don’t live in Lafayette and I needed to eat, so I noped out of there after Delivery Two.

By the end of everything, I had gotten almost to $50. I did indeed get Chick-Fil-A, exactly what I said I would get, though I’m not sure I will get it again, or at least not the kale. The kale wasn’t bad (and there is also cabbage in it), but I think they added sugar, and I don’t know why they call it crispy. Crispy implies dry, and this was wet. I wanted kale chips, not whatever that was. It was definitely crunchy, though, and you get chopped roasted nuts with it, which go nicely. I had $14 or $15 in cash which was more than enough to cover it and I was able to leave my earnings alone. Though $20 of that’s going to go poof tomorrow when I get gas again. I am probably done giving Dad rides, so I’m done letting him pay for gas. If it occurs to him to hand me money I won’t say no, but that’s not likely to happen. I’ll be stunned if it does.

—

Don’t take this as my final decision but I’ve got the skeleton of an idea and I might run with it.

I mentioned the job fair at a local nursing home. I’m going to see if my Humana points will cover putting together a job-fair outfit from Walmart. If not (because there aren’t enough — they’d pay for it, in theory), I’ll earn the money. Either way, I’ll go to the job fair. Let’s see if I actually get a job.

If I do, I’ll tell Dad and then bide my time. After I have some pay stubs together, I’ll see if that income-based apartment community in Iota has a vacancy. They did recently, but I can’t imagine that lasted. If they do at the point I’m talking about, I’ll put in an application. If I get it, I’ll move out of here. Won’t even tell him I’m going. Buh-bye, asshole. Browbeat someone else. I’m not your fucking punching bag.

In case that falls through, and I predict it will, I’ll just keep the job-fair outfit and hope that I can use it in Ohio.

I don’t want to be here, but I know now from experience how hard it is to make it in Ohio with no backup, when even the charities play games with your life. If I can get a toehold here, then fine. I’ll go along with it for a while and hope that I can move back to Ohio later. But if I can’t, Ohio is plan B.

So the nursing home is not my only possibility, but it’s the only one that’s going to keep me in Dad’s house long enough to get stable unless I manage to find something else this month. I am curious to see if his belief that showing up in person will get me hired holds any water. I don’t think it will, but let’s see. I literally have nothing to lose.

Of course, he could also kick me out tomorrow so I really don’t know what’s going to happen.

—

He’s yelling at me from the hall. “TAKE CARE OF YOUR CLOTHES.” He doesn’t know when I started them and the machine can’t have been done more than half an hour.

Right, Dad. I was gonna leave them wet so I’d have nothing to wear tomorrow.

Fucking nightmare.

—

Anyone who knows me and reads this also knows my mother’s alive, or at least she was in December when we last communicated. (No one on that side will tell me when she passes away. Trust.) She and her husband live in town now and apparently have a spare bedroom. She told me about the spare bedroom and the implication seems to be that I could crash there, at least temporarily, should I run into problems.

So here’s why I’m probably not going to do it.

Our relationship has been… fraught. She was accused of abusing or at least neglecting me when I was a toddler, which is why Dad got custody of me. I finally got to see her again when I was seven and spent the next three and a half, four years visiting her in the summers and at alternating holidays (sometimes Christmas, sometimes… I want to say Thanksgiving, but maybe spring break, which is longer? Can’t remember). Then Dad was deployed on an aircraft carrier when I was eleven and we moved to Missouri and I was told I could only write to my mother if I sent it to Dad to re-mail, and I would not be allowed to visit her at all. I decided I would not have my letters to my own fucking mother handled that way, so I shut everything down until Dad was back home. There was bad blood with her at times, both about that and about other times, like when I was in Iota but didn’t go see her. Then when I had my own kids, I caught her giving Thea Diet Dr. Pepper one day, and Thea was a year old. Then I heard about Mom lying to my brother Chan about his paternity, which he didn’t find out about until his actual father had passed away. (He’s a Pearl Jam fan, which is a really strange coincidence. Go listen to the song “Alive” and you’ll hear what I mean; that first verse is autobiographical for Eddie Vedder.) Then I heard Mom had stolen money from one of Chan’s kids. And I keep hearing rumors about drug use. People probably spread rumors about MY (nonexistent, except for caffeine and, right now, metformin) drug use so I take that with a salt quarry, but it could also be true. I won’t ask her, so I’ll probably never know.

Oh, I skipped something. Then there was my grandfather’s death and I wasn’t told about his medical crisis until three days into it when it was already too late to say goodbye. I barely made his funeral in time. Then there was my brother Chaise’s death and I had to hear about it from Dad, who is not even Chaise’s father. Then there was my grandmother’s death, and no one on that side of the family told me about it, and I’m not sure Dad even knew. I had to find out from the Find A Grave website. Weeks later. I bitched very publicly, on my Facebook, about people not telling me, and then Mom fired off an angry letter telling me off as if I’d been the one guilty of wrongdoing. Oh no you fucking don’t. So that was good for several years of no contact. Especially after I told her off right back.

It wasn’t like I never tried. I did try, and that’s probably why I’ve lost my one surviving maternal half-brother, because Chan has been at odds with her ever since the dead-father situation. But he would have known I was trying to maintain a relationship with her. He would have been offended, too. So I’m functionally down to one brother, and it wasn’t even worth the loss when you get down to the final tally, as I’ve never been able to depend on Mom for anything.

Because that’s the other bit. I have tried staying with her before, back in the ’00 crisis situation (I’ll put that here at some point). She “couldn’t afford” to have me stay, so I went to Dad’s. Even though she and her husband both get Social Security and possibly disability at this point (and he may be retired military as well, I can’t remember), she’s going to say she can’t afford me there again. Bet me.

Also? More importantly? I don’t want the only time I talk to her being when I need something. It didn’t used to be that way, but here in recent years it would end up that way. That’s not a good way to treat people. I don’t want to make it a habit. Either I need to strike up a relationship when I don’t need to live in her house or I need to leave her the fuck alone. Even if she doesn’t like it because she already lost Chan (and Chaise before him). It’s better this way.

So it is this weird mix of still being angry at her, particularly as she never admits wrongdoing past the initial reaction to her offense (she’ll admit when she does something, sometimes, but that’s as far as it goes), but also not wanting to be shitty to her (well, more shitty than the not talking to her thing), and I don’t know what I am supposed to do with that. I’m stuck. The end.

It occurs to me I could just write her a letter and tell her that. I might. Hopefully she still has her P.O. box. Even if she doesn’t, the post-office people are really good here (it helps that this town is still so small) and they might forward it to her. And then we’ll see. Maybe she should have a say in where this relationship winds up.

I wouldn’t even go there if not for my situation with Thea, which has given me a bit more insight into my mother’s and my estrangement. I suppose that makes that a mixed blessing. A backhanded compliment from the universe. Some bullshit like that. I’d rather have my daughter back in my life and also not have things fucked up with Mom, but I’ll take what I can get.

—

So, the health thing.

I have this blood-ketones meter I found on Amazon a few years back that was actually affordable. Problem is the strips expired before I used them all and I need to get more. I also don’t have any keto pee strips. So I can’t check whether I am in ketosis right now.

There is a possibility I could be. I do feel different, and I seem to be peeing a lot more, which is a sign of it. I just don’t feel different enough yet.

Something else I am wondering about is how this stuff all works when you’ve actually gone diabetic. I wonder that because my fasting sugars haven’t really improved. My postprandials are somewhat better, but it depends on what I intake. When it’s the Atkins shakes, and I have two per meal, that’s good for a twenty-point rise. That would be fine if I weren’t diabetic because say my fasting was 95, my postprandial would be 115 and that’s well within the safe margin. But post-supper with solid food it can go higher, about fifty points or so. Going back to the hypothetical fasting of 95, that’d be a 145 postprandial. I don’t want to go over 140. And more to the point, my fasting sugar is NOT 95. Right now it seems to want to be in the 150s, or maybe the 140s on a better day. This is not a safe situation. Even if I never see fastings of 190 anymore, and I did see those a few times before I began this experiment. But I also saw 140s and 150s most days, which is why I say my fasting sugars haven’t really improved.

But it’s useless to say ketosis isn’t helping when (1) there HAS been SOME improvement and (2) I don’t even know if I am in ketosis yet. And that’s another thing: it may take longer to get there anyway if you’re diabetic. I am really flying blind right now.

One benefit of being on Dad’s shit list is he’s not likely to yell at me for not wanting to eat crap, since I’m doing my utmost to stay out of his way. I’ll take it.

I should explain about the shakes. They allow me to be out and about and not buy crap to eat but, at the same time, get a good amount of protein into me. They also function as multivitamins, really. They’re kind of crap themselves, and if you looked at the ingredients list you’d see what I mean, but they’re not Doritos. It does bother me that my blood sugar goes up 20 points after two of them, but one shake is about 160 calories and 15g protein. I need more of both, and doubling the intake works fine for that.

I wonder if I’d do better on Keto Chow. My guess is “probably.” But the Atkins shakes are also cheaper. KC is about seven dollars a serving — I’ll check again when I’m online, but that’s what I remember — plus you have to buy the fat you’re supposed to add. A four-pack of Atkins shakes is less than $8 at Walmart and already has the fat in. I have to think about saving up to get out of here if it turns out I need to do that, and I should probably say “when,” because that’s what it’ll actually be. So I’m just going to have to be annoyed at the twenty-point spike. Ideally I reduce that, though. I’ll see if I can figure out how.

I’m not doing Atkins, though. I have nothing against Atkins, but I have my reasons. I just find their products useful for cutting sugar, and they tend not to be ridiculously expensive. More expensive than their high-carb equivalents, yes, and especially the candy, but that’s a given. The food industry uses carbs to pad their profit margins in the first place. Your food is killing you because it is cheap. Atkins shakes may be cheaper than Keto Chow, but they’re also not chocolate milk. Which, at this point in my life, if full-sugar, would make me very sick. Milk itself fucks me up pretty good.

—

Dear God this is long. Sorry about that. I have this longstanding pattern of writing less when less is going on, for I hope obvious reasons, and I really wish my longer posts had nicer things in them. That’s yet another project I suppose I had better work on. I wish it were all up to me, and I’m not one of those dipshits who thinks that if you don’t talk about the bad stuff, then it’s not really happening. But as a project, and for the sake of my mental health and my future (what’s left of it), I need to push harder to cut out the bad shit and bring in more good shit.

I don’t even know where to begin.

Sigh.

I might not have turned into a blubbering mess over Dad’s bullshit last night, but I’m also still not okay. I ended up in bed after 1am and it was probably closer to 2am. I woke up between six and six-thirty and then could not go back to sleep. Somehow, I am still functioning. If you want to call it functioning. I just don’t fucking care.

My first delivery was nice: twelve dollars for a Panda Express. The second was shit: four dollars and some change for Wendy’s and I had to drive to Duson. I’m back in Lafayette right now and sitting in their library on Johnston Street.

(Why do they call it a street? It’s practically a fucking highway. Well. Technically it IS a highway.)

Funnily enough, there was all sorts of shit on the map and when I clicked out of active status, the app fussed at me because it was a “busy time” with “lots of orders.” Okay so when were you going to send me any. I must have gone ten minutes at least with nada. Maybe I’ll try again today and maybe I won’t. I’m seriously considering getting those grilled Chick-Fil-A nuggets with their crispy kale because I forgot to set out meat last night to thaw.

Still got that feeling of basic unreality over Dad’s rant yesterday and I wanted to share more thoughts about that.

First off, I think he ranted about me buying things — he was kind of slurry but I think he went there — because clearly I had to have bought that glass dish with the lid. If he thinks I also bought food, I am not sure why — maybe he noticed the new broccoli and cauliflower bags in the freezer that both together cost me less than five bucks? Could be. Nothing else was out where he would have seen it. If I want to just get out the door without talking to him then that’s two meals I can take with me (and now some crunchy snacks) and they’re already in my room ready to go. Not like they would draw bugs. They’re sealed. So, unless he’s snooping around in my room — and that possibility is definitely not off the table; he goes into my room to turn off my lamp — there shouldn’t be anything to see.

(The lamp is an LED desk lamp. It burns almost no juice and if I get home when it’s getting dark, having that on is helpful. Does that stop him fucking with my stuff? Course not. He doesn’t even ask.)

But here we see his almost talismanic belief that if I never spend money then I will have a great retirement. He tells me I don’t understand how bad my situation is. I’m the one knowing IT DOES NOT FUCKING MATTER WHETHER I SAVE EVERY FUCKING PENNY BECAUSE I SHOULD HAVE STARTED SAVING FOR RETIREMENT THIRTY FUCKING YEARS AGO. IT IS TOO FUCKING LATE. I AM FUCKED. He makes this big deal out of me being fifty — how is it in any way dignified for a fifty-year-old woman’s father to be telling her how to deal with money and for her to never be able to buy anything? Bloody stupid man. And anyway, you don’t give someone that kind of financial advice without asking where they are financially FIRST. He’d have felt pretty stupid if I’d won the lottery without telling anyone and then it turned out I had a couple mil in the bank. Fuck. But he doesn’t want to know. He thinks he knows already.

He goes on and on about what perfect life choices he made after the Navy and conveniently overlooks that (1) he was an able-bodied man and not wholly responsible for any children, as I was grown and Doug was not with him for part of that time and when Doug did move down, Matilda or some other woman usually looked out for him. For free. (2) As an able-bodied man he had access to blue-collar work that paid very well for the area. (3) He tells me it was desk work, which is even more insulting. If I do desk work in a hospital I get just above minimum wage; if he does desk work on a fucking boat then he’s giving ribeyes to all his fucking friends because he’s got money practically dropping out of his asshole. Guess which one of us is more useful to society in these scenarios. (4) He never had to get a job again after retiring from the Navy. All he had to do was scale back his lifestyle. And he did. It’s not my fault he decided he wanted more money than that. (5) He has TWO sources of income now. I have zero unless I’m delivering. If I do find a job it will pay LESS than he’s getting for doing NOTHING. I don’t care what he says he “earned,” that is still the truth. And you still see signs of stupidity, like the way he just bailed from Tennessee in 1992 and then just bailed from Louisiana in 2017, and the latter bail was even stupider because he had a nice place to live and now he basically lives in shit. I mean someone made a real effort with that trailer (it wasn’t Jodi; it was the previous owner, probably), but it still doesn’t stack up to the one he bought. And you know why he sold that one? Because Carrie got married. Bet me. That is a STUPID reason to give up everything. And then he went and injured himself taking his medication the wrong way. That’s how his kidneys started failing in the first place. Sure, Dad. You make THE BEST choices. Tremendous. Bigly.

Probably because we are too much alike, I pick up on his vibes pretty well and I know what he means by me “doing nothing.” He’ll pass by my room AT NIGHT and see me on my laptop or he will pass by my room AT NIGHT and see me playing games on my phone. It is AT NIGHT. When I would not be working anyway, unless by some miracle I pick up a night-shift job. What the fuck does he expect me to do AT NIGHT. I have no idea. But I can tell that my AT-NIGHT idleness pisses him off. Regardless of time of day, too, if I am even looking at something with a screen, it pisses him off. I can forget finishing that proofreading course here, because he will parse it as Doing Nothing. I could go to college by distance ed if I kept my Gold Pro status with Uber because free tuition to Arizona State is one of the perks, but I can’t do that in his house because it’s staring at a screen and thus Doing Nothing. I literally get paid monthly for writing essays on Substack, but if he sees me writing, I’m Doing Nothing. I want to draw portraits, but that is also Doing Nothing. If I tried to explain any of this to him, he would declare it bullshit and shut me down, too. He doesn’t like me crocheting or knitting, either. Fucked if I know why. That also happens AT NIGHT a great majority of the time. So: ALSO not Done Instead Of Working. There is no work. It is AT NIGHT.

Guess what he does all fucking day.

Watches TV. Or sleeps.

Yes, yes, I know. He’s “retired.” My screentime involves actual interaction with something and he’s sitting there letting a gigantic screen beam bullshit into his brain but I’m the bad one here. Fucking clown. He used to be a bookworm, and now he hardly does that either. He has ample opportunity to request library trips. He never does. He’d rather just sit.

And drink. And lie about quitting drinking. And drink some more.

I appreciate Doug trying to rescue me by negotiating my move back in with Dad but I really wish he would just relax. Doug’s life weirdnesses are at least partly his fault, yes. Dad’s bullshit is not Doug’s fault, and is a very large part of the reason he and Doug never had a good relationship. And it’s the same way with me. I said something the other day, maybe on Facebook, maybe also here, about Dad not liking me since day one and me not actually being a wanted child. I meant it. He treated me like I was a pain in the ass from day one. He has never let up. If we’ve been apart for a while he’s usually happy to see me again but that lasts maybe a month. Two if I’m lucky. This is supremely fucked up. I’m tired of it.

—

The only real drawback is I burned too many bridges in Ohio and I’m not sure what to do about that. But it’s time to start looking.

Library’s about to close. Gotta go.

So I got home from the Jennings library and Dad was in bed. I unloaded things and took my glass food-heating dish to the kitchen (I am tired of heating things up in plastic, and it was less than five bucks) and put a few things away that had been out drying, and then heard Dad turn on his bedside lamp. After how nasty he was yesterday, knowing his Asshole Phases can take two or three days sometimes, I went back to my room and closed the door. He seems to understand that that means “leave me alone” even if my lamp’s on. It was the same this time.

After a little while I was really feeling suppertime, so I went out to the kitchen to clean the glass dish and prep the ribeye I had put in the fridge to thaw last night, and while I was working on all that, he called me over.

It was more of the same as the bullshit yesterday, only an angry lecture instead of a passing bitch. The upshot of it is that I am accomplishing absolutely nothing that he wanted me to do and that if I don’t get a job in the next month, he’s kicking me out. Only, given how mercurial he is about basically everything (which is weird, because he’s also a stubborn jackass about other people, but it’s okay if he flits back and forth the fuck around), he started out with something like a four-month ultimatum and then whittled it down to one almost immediately. So I have no faith in the one-month number either.

So originally the Uber Eats thing was fine, and he understood I don’t have a schedule, but if I don’t go do it when he thinks I should do it, I’m “doing nothing.” And it has been months since the one time I asked him for money.

Gotcha.

I would be more upset, but sitting there listening to him enumerate all the ways I suck ass was like listening to him talking about someone else.

…

You need to take a good hard look at reality and see how bad the situation is. Check. Did that two years ago. And again one year ago. Even more so last December. Still doing it now. Already there, Dad.

You know about all the birds and the bees and the flowers and that’s bullshit. Right: you get all those stupid plants that you keep killing or tearing down from a fucking CrackerJack box. Guess that knowledge ain’t so useless after all, huh. Sorry I don’t want to murder everything on earth like you do with your dumbass jokes about running over birds. What was I supposed to know about, Dad? The proper way to scrub a fucking toilet? If you weren’t paying your sister’s friend to clean your fucking house, I’d show you I know that one. I have actually wiped our toilet down between her visits a time or two. You and your shit-splashy ass. You’re fucking welcome.

You don’t know anything about HUMAN stuff. About PROPER HUMAN ways to do things. You think bourbon and Coke is a fucking food group. You think a cruel joke involving too-small lingerie is an appropriate anniversary present for your youngest sister. You think a woman can sAvE uP fOr ReTiReMeNt scrubbing toilets at $70 a week for seventeen years (ain’t no way I’m retiring at 65) with no husband to back her up. Which $70 a week you are not even paying me because some random friend of your sister is more important. Asshole.

You lost your son and you lost your daughter. You never asked me one single fucking thing about either of them. You just sat back and let me struggle except for that time you threw me a thousand bucks right after I got Mike arrested. You have no fucking idea what’s going on, by your choice, so just keep your fucking yap shut. And kindly do consider how YOUR son and daughter turned out. Two different mothers. Both kids equally fucked up. Almost like there’s a common fucking denominator there, DAD.

GET A JOB. You don’t GET jobs, Dad. You are GIVEN a job. NO ONE WILL GIVE ME A JOB NOW. On the RARE occasion someone in Ohio gave me one, I wasn’t fucking suited to it somehow — including, in one memorable case, being let go because I’d had COVID less than a month previously and was still getting aftereffects. Sure. I fucking planned that. Of the things I AM suited for, ACCORDING TO THE JOB LISTING, they will not even give me the fucking time of day. NOT EVEN WHEN I SPEAK WITH THEM IN PERSON OR ON THE PHONE. Half of them are fucking around with their thumbs up their asses. The other half can’t manage their way out of a paper fucking bag, and a state of employment is supposed to be a partnership in the civilian world, DAD. These assholes quit faster than I ever did, and I have been quitter extraordinaire much more often than not. They put me to shame. What do I do with that, DAD? I don’t even know where to begin, DAD.

Shit, my own cousin said she’d email me about a portrait job. That was early LAST MONTH. I even checked my spam folder. Nada. It will not happen. I have a theory about that. More on that in a minute.

…

That’s a sample. It went on longer than that.

I’m kind of proud of myself because I didn’t start raising my voice or blubbering. Part of it was the unreal feeling that he was talking about someone else entirely. Part of it was I haven’t been able to have a proper cry in literal years; the closest I got was when I realized last December that I would be moving back here. That was not a happy cry. That should fucking tell you something. But most of it was realizing the futility of it all. I will say it now, if I’ve never spelled it out before: I have never really liked my dad. He is telling me now that he doesn’t like me, but I beat him to it ages ago in the other direction. Although I may be imagining things and that may not be quite accurate because… he’s NEVER liked me. Always saw me as a weirdo pain in the ass. I sometimes say that he thinks I am slow and stupid. That came out in the lecture too. He all but accused me of being mentally retarded somehow even though I’m intelligent in some way. But intelligent in the wrong way. My father, everybody. My fucking father. And it’s been like this all along. The only time he’s glad to see me is if he hasn’t had to see me in years.

It wears off. Every fucking time.

So anyway, I stayed calm and nodded along and assented and agreed wherever there seemed an opening to do so. I wonder if he expected me to blow up. He’s probably pissed off that I didn’t. The fucking created unnecessary drama is getting fucking tiresome. The thing he doesn’t understand is that he’s shown his true colors again. I cannot be fucked to care about an asshole or about what the asshole thinks of me. It’s a character flaw of mine. I acknowledge that.

[eyeroll]

It’s not that I think he hasn’t done anything good for me. Of course he’s done good things for me. Any idiot or asshole can do good things for other people. It doesn’t mean they can’t be idiots or assholes. Think about what bribery is. Think about what kickbacks are. Think about what flattery is. People are all too willing to settle for surface glitter. Then they don’t understand why you feel ripped off because you expected gold. Because some people reading this are stupid: I didn’t expect my dad to give me literal gold. I keep hoping, against all evidence, that he will make some effort to understand the situation — like ASKING ME QUESTIONS or THINKING LOGICALLY — and NOT coming down on the side of deciding I’m worthless based on his own random unthinking flailing prejudices. Considering I’m not a drug addict (unless you count caffeine) or a criminal, that is NOT an unreasonable ask.

And yet.

He had told Doug flat-out when Doug negotiated me coming back here that he didn’t care what I did, I could work for a charity if that was what I could get, just as long as I did something. Here I am with something that I can use and AM using to pay my bills and put some money by (haven’t gotten to the latter stage yet, but that was the plan… oh well?) without overly tearing up my car (as long as I don’t do it full-time, which is WHY I am not doing it full-time… does he think I don’t like having money?), and he was all happy about that at first, and now I’m shit for doing it. Sitting there mocking me for how little I get per delivery. What the actual fuck. It is more than I make sitting on my ass at home. And right now I make about eight-ish bucks a month sitting on my ass at home, and once a year I might pull in another almost $100 if my annual subscribers on Substack don’t cancel. Won’t turn it down but… woefully inadequate. Uber Eats is doing me better. I’m no longer begging for help with bills.

But now? Nah. Now I’m shit and “doing nothing.” Right.

—

The really interesting thing is how happy he was at first when I told him I was doing delivery driving, and how all of a sudden THIS week he’s fucking furious. I have a couple theories about that. And they may both be true.

1. I didn’t go to Lafayette Monday or Tuesday. The reason I didn’t go is that I already don’t make a shit-ton of money there; I’m lucky to break $50. I’m not driving 25-30 miles and then only making $20. It is playing the numbers. I might have a really good Monday once in a while. I can’t predict that.

I did go Wednesday, and did break fifty. I thought I was doing well. I still do, considering. I make twice that much in Columbus on a Wednesday if it’s not a Wednesday in Diet Month. (A big reason I don’t make as much here is because I refuse to drive at night until I get my headlights in better shape and learn the layout of Lafayette a lot better. But even with that it can drag at lunchtime.)

I did not go yesterday. I mentioned elsewhere that I went to Carrie’s instead. The weather was nasty and even today, going out driving, I almost hydroplaned on 98 or 97… can’t even remember now. I don’t know if it is that bad in the city, but I was not going to put myself at risk to find out for MAYBE fifty bucks. If I had an actually reasonable and kind father, I’d have just stayed home, but he’s a dick so I went to the Jennings library and caught up some non-paying things. As you do. No one’s going to give a fuck if I wreck. They are just going to blame me for being stupid enough to drive to Lafayette to work. I say “they.” I mean Dad. You know I’m right.

So those three days he knew I didn’t go may have been the trigger. This is not an unreasonable assumption once you’ve watched how his moods work for a while. The fact I had figured on delivering tomorrow and Sunday wouldn’t have made a lick of difference. He had his brain set on how it should be and I fucked that up.

…OR…

2. My aunt Matilda has been winding him up. The reason I think this is a possibility is because the day I told him I was delivery-driving, he’d told me she and he had had a phone conversation, while I was gone, about me signing up for assistance. Now why in the world would they have been talking about me. Who started that conversation? Inquiring minds are kinda curious. I can live without knowing, but given everything else I’ve heard of how she approaches the whole issue of her older brother’s impending mortality and her low opinion of Doug, if not also of me… It’s not off the table. If she thinks she will get lots of money when he dies, she’ll take the risk of pissing me off to turn him against me. I mean, what am I going to do? Her daughter Erin will pound me into the Stone Age if I try anything, and we all know it. I’m not scared of Erin, and I’m not saying that out of bravado or stupidity. I have no opinion about Erin either way. I actually think she’s kind of cool. I just know that she has that particular option within her range of capabilities, and clearly she has a good relationship with her mom. (Her mother may have, in fact, talked her out of taking on any creative projects with me. Thanks, Nanny.) So my hands are tied, really. Matilda would know that. Matilda is already angry at me for speaking publicly about Dad’s alcoholism. The motive is definitely there.

Joke’s on her if Dad never updates his insurance paperwork again. Either Carrie will get the money and not fuck me over, or Doug and I will get the money and if for some reason it goes to probate, Matilda still will not be seeing that money because she’s not entitled to inherit from Dad. His grandchildren would see that money before she ever got a fucking dime. I guess she had better just be fucking happy with the $2k a month she’s getting from her ex-husband Michael’s death since neither of them ever remarried. Fucking wah. If I were getting $2k a month, we would not be having this conversation. I would not even fucking BE here.

Joke’s doubly on her because Dad’s already against me, has been my whole life, and doesn’t need any “turning.” All she’s done with this bullshit, if I’m right about her, is put me into danger. (Thanks again, Nanny.)

I would also like to point out for the audience that if Dad had not gone on this tear the last time I was here, I would have been here when he started having serious problems last year. Dad painted himself into his present corner — and added a second coat! — and I am NOT shouldering the blame for that one. I shouldn’t just get my half of the payout, I should get a fucking medal for all the shit he’s put me through over fifty fucking years.

I am saying that from a completely intellectual perspective because I’m not emotionally attached to the insurance outcome. Like as not, he will change it and he’ll fuck me. I can’t hope for something that will probably never come. But if we’re talking about “shoulds.” That’s what I mean.

—

And just for the record? I never wanted to be at odds with anyone in my family. Whatever bullshit they got up to before I was born, whatever bullshit they got up to during the custody battle between Mom and Dad, whatever bullshit they’ve gotten up to in the years since, I had nothing to do with any of that. FOR SOME STRANGE FUCKING REASON I CANNOT PUT MY FINGER UPON JUST NOW, they decided to forget I was an innocent party in the whole mess. I was supposed to just let everyone destroy me FOR NO FUCKING REASON and eat shit and smile.

No. Uh-uh. Fuck that. All you get is me not screaming in your fucking faces. If you want me to be even better than that, how about you lead by fucking example.

I won’t hold my breath though.

—

I think it is probably a foregone conclusion I’m still going to be unemployed (Uber Eats is a contract position… not sure if it counts) in a month and he’s going to tell me to get lost. I’ve had two trailer-park neighbors (one of them Jodi, the landlady) and two different aunts tell me they are so glad I’m here for him, so I wonder how he will spin it once I’m gone. It could be he’ll just tell them the truth and then blow it off if they fuss at him. But given how he behaves about his drinking, he clearly has no compunctions about lying and even if he tells the truth, the cultural situation down here is such that they might sympathize instead, especially if they only hear his side and never try to follow up with me, which experience tells me people in this kind of situation will do regardless of where in this benighted country they live. People, after all, are generally assholes. My curiosity about this is more of the bug-in-a-bottle variety, though. We’re talking about people for whom I am out of sight, out of mind. I suppose it works that way in the other direction too. I also suppose it’s a good thing he doesn’t want a funeral. So I don’t have to worry about awkwardness there. Though someone might yet throw some sort of remembrance party. I’m sure I won’t be invited.

—

If he actually lets me be here the whole month, a certain nursing home in the area has a job fair coming up in mid-month and I will probably go. That will likely be my Hail Mary. I will also see about the application to a certain local grocery-store chain I’ve been putting off for weeks. I’m not going to put too many more eggs into this basket, though. They’re all going to turn me down anyhow.

—

I know of another thing I can probably do instead. When I last applied with them, it was an instant hire, but I backed out because I was worried about my periods. They allow you to withdraw your application before your first shift without penalty as long as you follow a certain procedure. I did. I’m good on that count. Well, these days my periods seem to have given up on me. If that holds, a whole new vista of potential jobs opens up even if this particular one isn’t a go. The pay is decent too. If I wound up in weekly-rates again, I’d be able to afford them. Got kicked out for bed bugs again? Oh, I’ll just go stay in another weekly-rate. Though this time, I’ve learned some tricks. I may acquire a bug-baker. I probably will.

You read that right. If I fail here — WHEN I fail here — I’m going back to Ohio. And chances are very good I will stay.

I don’t have any people anymore, but if you have a place you love and can live in, that’s you half sorted.

—

And now for something completely different.

I don’t know how much longer I will try the diabetes program, even if a miracle happens and I get to stay.

(What do I mean “get to”? The only good thing about that is I won’t suddenly be struggling to survive a month from now.)

It’s a good idea in theory, but there are some gaps in how it’s administered. I could probably find a way to deal with all that — had Dad not just dropped this bombshell into my lap, I was going to ask Brandon next door (the guy who replaced my car’s starter) about paying him to use his internet service — but the meter itself is weird. I tested it with its control solution first thing, and it came out at the absolute bottom number of normal range. That might have been okay but when it tells me my sugar is in the 100s, I feel like I’m going hypo. That’s not an encouraging sign, and then when I follow up immediately with the meter I was already using, that’s good for being forty points lower more often than not. Ish. Something like that. I have no idea what’s going on and I am not amused.

I am in the process of trying to get into ketosis. I’m hoping that if I can get my fasting and pre-meal numbers into the low 100s, maybe I won’t get 200s after eating steak and broccoli and cauliflower JESUS CHRIST. I did put salad dressing on the veggies, but it was ranch, not French or fruit vinaigrette and it wasn’t like I sprinkled sugar all over everything. I don’t get it. So keto it is. If I can get my sugar even enough to not feel weird anymore, that would be great.

I will say this: I don’t have that ill feeling anymore that I used to get after Dad’s junk meals. I’ll buy that for a dollar.

And even with the ridiculous post-steak number, I don’t think my numbers ranged more than 40 points all day, contrasted with yesterday when I went up more than 100 points after supper. Ouch.

—

Speaking of money. I finally sold that fucking Samsung phone. It’s a lower-number A series so I was expecting maybe two bucks. Or nothing. I was okay with nothing because I wanted the phone recycled, but it still wasn’t a completely happy thought.

I got ten bucks.

Still small potatoes, but I believe that’s more than I’ve ever made at an EcoATM. It’s definitely more than I made the last time I sold a phone there.

Hope they’re not mad when they see the battery.

Not my problem.

—

It’s midnight and I’m now fading, and I want to get out of here early tomorrow if I can, so I need to get my ass to bed. Probably will be doing delivery. If something weird happens, the library system in Lafayette is open 9am to 5pm tomorrow and I’ll just camp out again. I am so done with the fucking drama. DONE.

I’m gonna be home Sunday though. I need to do laundry. He can fucking cope.

Wish me luck. I WILL need it.

So when I first moved back in with Dad, or more accurately when he and Doug were discussing it, one of the conditions of him allowing it was that I Do Something, even if it is work for a charity. I found that acceptable terms, because I am an idiot and keep forgetting how often I fail at this employment thing and how rarely I hear back from anyone but I thought surely there must be something.

For a while I couldn’t do anything because of the car, and then we got the car fixed. I had been wrong to be optimistic; no one was interested, and only two of the employers I tried even contacted me back to say No. Otherwise it’s been a great big zero. So I went back to food delivery.

When Dad found out what I was doing, he was very happy, and I told him from day one that I am not scheduled and I can pick my hours.

So now, if I’m not out there absolutely every day, he gets crabby. If on the other hand I go out there Saturday, he complains because Saturdays are crazy. WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME, I’M DOING THE BEST I CAN HERE

It makes no fucking sense for me to burn up my car even faster by doing the six-day-a-week balls-to-the-wall thing I was doing in Columbus. NONE. I need the car, his life is easier if I have the car, and if I fuck something up it’s going to cost at least the four hundred and something for the starter replacement and probably a lot MORE. And then I will hear the bitching because Dad has to pay for it. So my goal is to limit it to three days a week, maybe four if I have a bad day, fewer if the weather is shit. And this is not up to him. This is up to me.

So that was the background for yesterday.

I didn’t go anywhere Monday and Tuesday because those tend to be slow days anyway and I wanted to do things at home. Wednesday I went out and had a decent day and pulled in about fifty, which bumped me up to seventy with the insurance due on the fifth (I had thought the second, but this was even better). Supposedly rain was on the way but it wasn’t supposed to be that bad. I am not fucking Matt and I know they aren’t accurate enough but that’s all I had to go on.

Yesterday it thunderstormed all through the lunch hour. Lunch hour is when I go so I’m not driving at night in a still-unfamiliar city. I’m learning the streets but it will take months to get proper comfortable.

I pointed out the weather to Dad, who was perfectly capable of seeing it himself, and he grumbled “well you picked the outside job.” I could see which way this was going, so I went to Carrie’s and spent a good chunk of the day. Dad has Asshole Phases he flits into and out of at random times and this was one brewing up.

Came back later, asked him did he want supper, he asked how work was and I told him the truth: it was storming, so I went to Carrie’s. He denied that it had rained all day (okay, ask Carrie yourself? We were out IN it and then complained about it at her place), grumbled something about being “sick of this shit” — meaning me not working every fucking goddamn day, I guess — and said he wasn’t hungry. Had already said he needs to lose weight, which is ridiculous, but I’ve given up the idea that he will ever see sense about food, nutrition, diet, OR diabetes, and he knows fuck-all about any of them. (Thanks, medical establishment. I place the blame squarely on YOU.) So it wasn’t wholly surprising, but that bit about being “sick of” whatever pissed me off. I bite my tongue a lot, not wanting to lose a bed to sleep in. All you fucking men who act horrid to the women and girls living with you because you know we have to take it, I hope an alligator bites your fucking dicks off. Slowly. And you bleed out. I don’t care who you are. You suck. Anyway, I decided I wasn’t going to try to cook dinner with him there being a fuckhead so I went to McDonald’s.

The calculation I did with that is I have not been happy with my sugar numbers and I need to dial the carbs WAY back, hopefully to get into ketosis, and I thought about what I would miss if I went low-carb. I know that if I get a real hankering for fast food or really want something easy then I can go to Wendy’s, leave the bun off, and get a Caesar side salad (bonus: they never come with croutons anymore, but with crunchy cheese bits). Not a problem. I can’t do that with chickie nuggies. So that was my last crap meal at a fast-food place, I hope. If I ever want fast-food chicken nuggets again, I’ll get the grilled ones at Chick-Fil-A.

I stayed out til the sun was almost set, got some things at Walmart, and went back to Dad’s place. Can’t really say “went home.” He was asleep, thank fuck. I washed the stuff in the kitchen sink, puttered around a bit in my room, and went to bed and a little while later his ass gets up and turns on half the lights and turns on the TV nice and loud and stays up half the night. Meanwhile I have to slide my bedroom door closed (it’s one of those sliding barn door sort of setups, except not a barn door) because MY light bothers HIM when he’s in bed. It’s his house and I get that, but the fucking hypocrite anyway. At least I have a loud room fan that drowns most of it out. Wish it served as a blackout curtain too.

What I got at Walmart was eight Atkins shakes in two flavors, a bag of broccoli florets, and a bag of cauliflower. Unless shit gets really strange, he’s got a bunch of boneless/skinless chicken breasts in the freezer and there are drumstick pieces I could bake which are already seasoned. I also got a bottle of sugar-free honey mustard sauce. I will probably get another couple flavors if I don’t wind up homeless again, but we’ll see. I have salad dressing already, so I could do really simple suppers of a meat and one or both veggies and toss the veggies in the salad dressing and if I want to put sauce on the meat, I can. But I didn’t want to dig for the chicken boobs last night and make noise, so I grabbed the nearest available ribeye out of the chest freezer and put it in the fridge to thaw. So that’s supper tonight.

I set up a couple caffeinated lemonades before I left and took four of the shakes. Two for breakfast, two for lunch, the lemonade to drink in between because I wasn’t going to set myself up for an argument by making coffee.

My sugars have been interesting. Still too high but haven’t spiked more than twenty points, which is hella better than they’d been doing. I feel like if I go into ketosis I can still be relatively safe and gain good sugar control that way. I’m going to find out. I’m at the very beginning stages of easing into it and am already feeling weird, but I find that I feel weird if I get too close to 100 mg/dl. Which is where I’m supposed to be. Which is weird. I think once I burn off my excess glycogen (you never burn it all off), that might sort me out a bit. I’m still a sugar-burner, is the problem. That means your body expects to have sugar for fuel all the time. If you get into ketosis you get out of that state. I really need to.

It was storming again today so I stayed in Jennings at the library. In fact, I am still here. Worked on Rory’s fan site some more, fucked off on Facebook, basically just did not give a shit all fucking day and if it’s crappy tomorrow too, I will be checking out the Lafayette public library because they are open 9a to 5p. I don’t like to be late with my insurance, but as the due date is the 5th and then I have a grace period that lasts til the 21st, I have time. I refuse to worry about it. The weather will improve and then I will drive for a few days and get the insurance money together and then job done. Whatever.

I think from here on out I will just leave the house and go wherever all day except on Sundays. If he wants a ride and keeps being a shit, he can ask Carrie or he can ask someone else. Me having to be his chauffeur or his housekeeper was not one of the conditions he set for me moving down here. If he decides to change the terms then maybe I’ll be fucked. Until he does I’m not going to worry about it. He wants me out of the house? I’ll be out of the fucking house. Fuck him.

The first thing I need to do when I get the insurance out of the way is get the phone and hosting lined up again for the end of the month and then, after that, line up some interview and work clothes. IF I CAN EVER GET A FUCKING JOB, my next step will be find an apartment. I am not going to stay in a situation where I am constantly being belittled and disrespected in the place where I have to sleep. People can hate me if they want. They have never had to live with him. It’s just like the situation with Matt. What a great guy. Uh-huh, wait til you have to clean up after him or deal with his lies and inconsistent bullshit and unreliability and two-facedness and fucking triangulations. What the fuck is wrong with men? I’m so fucking done. And human beings are fucking stupid. All a man has to do is hand them three ribeyes for free and they’re suddenly his best fucking friend even if he has a basement full of women’s skeletons. And they will praise him to the skies if the cops ever search his house. “Oh, he’s just misunderstood.” FUCK. YOU.

On the other paw, I have long had a problem with social-media addiction. If I don’t start using what little internet access I can secure to better my situation, I might as well feed myself to the local gators… what is this shit? Entire years gone and nothing to show for it. Matt wasted twenty years of my life, yes, but so did I.

Well, got things to do. Will undoubtedly whinge more tomorrow.

Updated a couple pages in the “ex-files” section. No big deal, just editing. Still says sort of the same thing.

Gotta get goin’, I’m at Carrie’s and it’s almost five.

Later.

Considering I get hardly any visitors here, who on earth is so damn interested in my love life and dear God, why?

I love having a visitor tracker. It doesn’t tell me who you are nor your street address, but I get lots of interesting stats.

Anyway. I’m in Jennings right now and I doubt I’ll have much interesting to say for the rest of the day, I’m just needlin’ ya. I did start up my diabetes program with that sleek new little sugar meter. I did not like my numbers, but those things are never 100% accurate anyway. We’ll work on it. No big.

All right. I better get home or Dad will be like “where are you?” He needs to pick up meds. ‘Later.

Okay, I don’t know if I’m allergic to tobacco smoke but I’m pretty sure it irritates me.

That, or whatever was making me cough before is still happening now and again.

If it’s not Dad’s chain-smoking, it’s likely allergies. I’m hoping that’s what it is. There’s still plenty of stuff blooming, plus we live in an area with some bayous and some swampy places and therefore lots of fungus, so it could be that. I already know from my few months in South Bend, Indiana in late summer 2002 that some fungi fuck me up. That may not even be an allergy. Fungi have a high affinity for animal tissue. None of us are particularly resistant to them.

Whatever. I was coughing as I started this entry so this is me thinking out loud. Moving on now.

We had nasty storming this morning and I wasn’t sure what severity we were in for, so I stayed home today. Dad thinks it’s option B versus going to work, but I wasn’t going to go to Lafayette, I was going to go to the library or possibly Carrie’s if she’s home. There is almost no point in driving on Monday or Tuesday. Unless something weird happens, I think Wednesday through Friday or Thursday through Saturday are perfectly reasonable work schedules right now. If I could figure out working towards alternative income sources on other days of the week, I’d have it made. Dad will be happy either way because I’ll be out of the house Doing Something.

Weirdly, he asked me to let him know I’m leaving when I do go “to work” so he can put on his Life Alert pendant. Call me crazy, but he ought to be wearing that thing anyway. I mean, what if he had a heart attack while I was in the fucking shower. I might hear him, I might not. Just hit the fucking button. Besides, it’s faster than calling 911 even if I were in place to know what was going on when it happened. And if it’s important enough for Life Alert OR for 911, I shouldn’t be fucking driving him.

But… as usual… I say nothing, because he’ll have some counterargument.

High drama in the trailer park today. Dad was napping earlier and I was playing phone games and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show, not movie) when this racket started up outside. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a woman or a boy but they were yelling stuff like “I didn’t do anything wrong!!!” and “Let me in!!!” and BANG BANG BANG on a door. There are so many Latino people in this neighborhood that I thought it was probably the tenants in Corey’s trailer behind all the ruckus because they’re white, that was not a Mexican kid screaming, and the sound seemed to be coming from that direction. When I got up to look I found out I was right. And the screamer was definitely a boy. I couldn’t tell at that distance but I suspect I’ve seen him before: probably the tenant’s son, and he’s getting around to middle-school age but his voice has not cracked yet. His tone of voice was such that even if I were the meddling type, given my general life experiences, I would not have walked over to yell at him because mofo would have probably punched me in the face or something, and it would have actually hurt. I did think to myself, Boy, if Jodi’s home, she’s gonna be PISSED. Number one cardinal sin where the trailer-park owner is concerned is tenants lying to her. Number two sin is tenants disturbing the peace. Though I think the sins might have swapped places today. Dad got up not long after the incident and maybe half an hour after said incident had begun, he hollered for me to come look out the window and sure enough, Jodi was at the trailer with an Acadia Parish sheriff’s deputy in tow. Those people had already pissed her off by committing Cardinal Sin One some weeks ago, and now they’ve upped the stakes. If she doesn’t get Corey to evict them, I will be stunned. And Corey will defer to her. He and his mother and sister used to live here and they have a good relationship with Jodi.

I will not deny I’m kind of wishing Dad would take advantage. That is a nice trailer and I think he would be more comfortable there. I know for a fact I would be, with the central air and the probably two bathrooms alone. It’s probably not going to happen, though. Because he’s paying Jodi rent on this trailer and not just rent on the lot, Dad stays here so Jodi can get that extra money. He feels he owes her a lot because she stayed over here overnights after he got out of the hospital last year. I understand, but if someone asked Jodi whether she’d rather get more money from Dad or see Dad more comfortable (and he would be; he does complain about this place from time to time), I suspect she’d pick the latter. But I won’t be the one asking that question. Not my lease, not my place.

The other thing that happened during Dad’s nap was I got my glucose meter via FedEx from that hospital/Humana diabetes-treatment partnership. When they told me it was going to connect to the internet I assumed it would be a CGM, but no such luck. I’m not 100% disappointed; I had been a bit worried that I might start reacting to the CGM covers and their bandage adhesive, and now I don’t have to worry about that. It is Bluetooth, as I suspected, so I can move numbers to my phone even if I can’t upload them, and stuff will be a lot easier to track. The notice card that came with the kit says to set up the app and then take my first reading and that will start me in the program. I’ll do that tomorrow because I intend to be out of the house for part of the day anyway. I get intermittent connection here but not reliable enough to try an app installation, much less sending data.

But the meter is actually cute! It is teensy and it makes me think of what a glucose meter would look like if Apple designed it. (I’m an Android gal through and through, but Apple’s designs are pretty. I can admit it.) And it actually came with control solution! I almost never see that in new-meter kits. I’ll do a control-solution test first tomorrow.

I’ll keep my other meter. I could end up kicked out of the program tomorrow if Humana loses funding for it, and then I wouldn’t have a meter. Or I would, but I’d stop getting free strips for it. Might be worth my while to check Amazon to see if they have the strips because there is a native app for the meter that I can use even if the program ends (I won’t be using the native app for the program), but right now I’m a bit broke for buying strips. So having prescription strips is still a great idea. I’ll probably fill that about once a month just to be on the safe side. Hopefully my situation improves enough soon enough that I can stop worrying about all of this.

The other cute thing that happened today is I was standing out on the front steps doing something on my phone and all of a sudden I hear BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZeep! right above my head. Looked up and it was a male ruby-throated hummingbird flying off like I had startled him. Which I must have done, since he had squeaked. At first I was surprised because we have no feeders in Dad’s yard anymore, and then I remembered I’m wearing a red tshirt today. Birb saw red, got excited for nectar snax, and then OH SHIT RED IZ MOOVING. Oops! Sorry, lil guy! I need to set up a feeder soon. That might be something I use my Walmart gift cards for. Wouldn’t be a bad expenditure. I’m sure the neighborhood miscreants have been wondering why we aren’t feeding them anymore.

(If you have ever observed large numbers of hummingbirds at a feeder, you would know why I call them that. Hours of free entertainment right fucking there. Or cheap, anyway. White sugar still isn’t a huge expense.)

The other neighborhood miscreants, the feral cats, seem to have disappeared. Dad made a big deal yesterday out of not having seen any of them but I’m finding it’s true, there don’t seem to be any around. Part of me is glad for the wild birds’ sake but part of me is a little sad too, because we don’t have a good animal-welfare situation in this state and, like as not, someone carted them off to gas them somewhere. I’m not against euthanasia, but we aren’t particularly humane about it. But we’ll see. Could be it’ll turn out they just felt the front coming and didn’t feel like roaming until it blew over.

Okay, I’ve been sitting here with my mind wandering all over the place for the past ten minutes. If something else happens today, I’ll add it. If not, I won’t. Deal? Deal. Buh-bye.

If I do this one right, I’ll have begun it 45 minutes after midnight, I’ll write a little bit, I’ll go to bed, I’ll get up later, and then I’ll add more to this post. Whee!

I just had to mark the occasion because I was sitting here writing a thing for my Substack when I noticed movement out of the corner of my right eye and there was this fucking green bug on my shoulder. I had a bad moment until I realized it wasn’t a stink bug; then I had a worse moment when I realized it looked something like a tree roach structurally, but it was smaller (not small, just smaller) and also prettier because it was the color of a katydid. Except I don’t think it was a katydid. I need to look up the developmental stages of tree roaches.

Anyway. I am sorry to report I murdered it with the flyswatter, being that it was soft enough to do so. I have reached this weird stage in my life where I don’t automatically want to murder all bugs anymore, but most bugs in my living quarters are fair game. Sort of. I absolutely refuse to open the door to outside at night unless there is a damned good reason, but I wish I could just point a magic wand at them all and zap them outside, where there is more food anyway. I suspect they come in here more because they can avoid most of their predators than because we have any real kind of a smorgasbord for them.

A miscalculation on their part, of course.

I will say that if it’s a spider and I get to it before Dad does (he sprays them! what the fuck? They’re squishable!) and I can actually catch it AND if it is daytime, spooder goes outside. I was chummy with some eight-legged ladies in the Dublin apartment because they were helpful and caught bugs that were buggin’ me. Kitchen Window Spider got relocated outside before it got too cold to catch things, simply because I didn’t want her webs in my face when I washed dishes anymore. Window Tunnel Spider in the living room disappeared before I got up the nerve to help her; she was bigger than KWS. But I’ve caught… two here so far? Those Little Caesar’s dipping cups with lids are so useful for things like that. Easy to wash, too. I have a small collection of them which I guard jealously. (Dad’s already noticed them and is curious. He likes his random containers, does my father.)

—

Phone and hosting are paid. I actually had enough money to do it and I still have twenty bucks in the Uber account. I’m really diggin’ having money immediately after a delivery run without needing to take extra steps. Also, yesterday (the 27th) I got the oil changed finally. No, I have not gotten it done since just before I moved back down here. Yes, I’m a moron so feel free to point and laugh. I get the punchline because I happened to be looking for an oil-change place on a Saturday and in Jennings, most of them are closed by 1pm if they open at all. Not Walmart. I never would have thought. So I went over there and it is WAY CHEAPER to get it done there than at Take 5, which was my usual vendor back in Ohio because I didn’t have to leave my car. And I got the tires rotated at Walmart too, which they charged for and which Take 5 never does. WITH the tire rotation I STILL spent less. It was close to $70 before sales tax, less than $75 with the tax. With high-mileage synthetic, mind you, same as always. Alllll righty then. Nice to know for next time.

However, it looks like ONE OF MY FUCKING BRAKE LIGHTS IS FUCKING OUT AGAIN. Or so they said on the form. I need to get a bulb and then have Dad check for me before I go replacing something I might not need to. It will not bother me to have a replacement bulb in the glove box if it turns out someone hit a wrong button when they filled out the work checklist or something. It’s that passenger side again. But I looked at the bulb and it seemed fine. Normally they get discolored when they burn out, the same way an incandescent household bulb does. Could be it’s still out but the bulb is not the problem. If the socket has finally failed, I’ll be pissed.

I’ll also be able to earn the money fairly quickly — turns out I can bring in $100 in three days if I’m industrious about it — but it’s the principle of the thing.

I think I’ll look on YouTube soon to see if I can suss out how to change it myself. If I can do it myself, fuck it. I would be able to just buy the wiring harness but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s selling that for my year, make, and model anymore. If the complete taillight comes with a harness, I’ll be good to go.

—

I keep meaning to take down the GoFundMe, not because I wouldn’t appreciate more help but because I’m at a point where I can earn pretty regularly now. But I hadn’t gotten around to it yet, and then yesterday I got a notification of a donation. I am not going to say no to it. I’m so broke I can’t pay attention. What I had to cover the oil change was from Dad. If I figure out how to move that $20 to the Uber card, I’ll be starting off with $40 and maybe can actually get my insurance paid on time, probably. Due date’s this coming Thursday. I think they’ll expire of shock.

That will depend on whether I actually want to drive before Thursday. I don’t get charged a late fee, and they don’t cancel my coverage until the absolutely very last deadline on the 21st. I am a bad, bad woman, but I also want to do something besides tear up my car all the time.

—

Last time I went to Lafe. for deliveries, which was Friday, I started out nauseated. I don’t know why but I have an idea. There was this weather front approaching and I had headaches off and on for two fucking days, Nausea Day being Day Two. Nothing hugely major but enough to be miserable. I bet the nausea was related. It used to be I’d get what the migraine people call “visual prodrome” before a nasty one, but that seems to have stopped years ago; I really hope the nausea is not a new thing that sticks around. New-old thing, because once in a while my headaches in my twenties would make me puke. Whatever. Do not want. Go away, nausea.

(It did, this time, but let’s hope it never comes back.)

—

It’s now 7:30pm, haha. Everything else up there ^^^ was from like 1 this morning.

Neighbor guy who replaced my starter a while back has erected (because this is such a Public Display of Penis) a gigantic TRUMP 2024 flag on his front fence. I am not exactly surprised, but if he thinks I’m going to take any bait about politics he’s going to be in for a snoozefest. I am here in Acadia Parish to lick my wounds and maybe have time to recover, at least economically. There are people here I really like, but practically speaking I don’t give a fuck about anyone here except to the extent they are making decisions about whether to help, trade with, or employ me. (Carrie might be the one exception. Might. Jury’s still out.) Hence the not wanting to get into debates. I suppose it’s a kind of lying — oh hell, of course it is — but this is the usual kind of lying I get up to doing, 95% of the time that I ever do it, and I always hate it. But I am also philosophical. If what they want is for everyone to be afraid of them and to lie to their faces, they’ve got it. If they want people to trust them and to want to have conversations with them, they have to stop supporting assholes like The Donald. Don’t feel left out, y’all. I’m just about at the point I don’t want anything to do with Biden voters either. He does have some advantages over Trump, but that’s such a low bar. He’s still trouble since the first thing he did in office was include “gender identity” under the defintion of sex and then stump for perverts in dresses, and I’ve fucking had it, and I’m not supporting any of those clowns anymore.

Anyway, neighbor guy’s girlfriend brought over barbecue yesterday. It was all right. I’ve had better. Dad crowed about it but Dad’s happy if you coat anything in sugar. He’d never admit it, but that’s what it is. It was nice of them, anyway. I don’t know if they know Dad’s political implications and I won’t be asking. Though I have not pointed out to Dad any of the times he’s groused about Trump that back in ’17 when he visited me in Ohio he had said something about being glad Hillary Clinton hadn’t won. Which means he voted for the asshole in the first place, and isn’t that fascinating. I’m pretty sure it was the January 6 attack that put him off. I wonder when Americans, and particularly American men, are going to get it through their thick heads that someone who hates large parts of the country is going to eventually hate them too. The rest of us are the canaries in the coal mine and a whole lot of us are on our backs on our cage floors now. Pay attention, dumbasses. You’re suffocating.

Dad keeps talking about barbecuing, even bought a combo smoker-grill for the purpose, but stone cold facts are that he may never complete a grilling out there again. He’s made one serious attempt, had to quit halfway through from sheer exhaustion, and had me roast it the rest of the way in the oven to get it done. I need to start teaching myself how to use a charcoal grill. That would thrill the shit out of him, and it’s a useful skill. Though people are going to start thinking I’m a weirdo, because I will probably opt for wood chunks instead of charcoal briquets most of the time. Did you know there is actual coal in the charcoal briquets sold for barbecue grills? Between that and all the fucking sugar you see in most “barbecue” meat dishes, it’s not the meat killing us, y’all. And the added sugar is an even worse problem in restaurants. I’ve watched enough Guy Fieri (how many fucking shows does that man have? Good thing I like him) to have figured that out by now. It’s no fucking wonder all that restaurant food fucked me up back in Ohio, not that I’m in much better shape here.

Did you see the way I glossed over the “Dad’s last barbecue” thing? Yeah, me too. I’m trying not to think too hard about it. It is strictly day to day here. One day he seems mostly not in crisis, the next day he’s in the hospital because he needs more baking soda in his drug regimen. (This already happened. It is not a new thing. I’m telling you this because one or two of you might actually be people I know and I don’t want you freaking out.) Tomorrow, who knows. I am making no predictions about anything. He could fail to wake up tomorrow, he could last another five years.

I’m not much better off. I have this theory about middle age. Starting at age forty you run through a kind of biological gauntlet. From about age forty to about age sixty, we start dropping like flies. Those of us who make it to sixty can reasonably expect to get to seventy or seventy-five at least. This is not a hard-and-fast rule. OBVIOUSLY some people die in their sixties. But as far as Sudden Deaths What No One Saw Coming, ages forty to sixty tend to be prime season for those. And you always find out there was a cause, even if the nitwits writing obits claim it was “natural causes.” No, Brentley, we’re not supposed to die at forty-five. This isn’t the Stone Age, and not everybody died at forty-five even then. Lots of us made it to seventy. It’s just that far more of us back then did not make it past age five, which skewed the life expectancy stats.

Anywayyyyy… So I’m still working on my paperwork now and again. I got my file box finished. Yay! I want to make sure this shit is sorted in case someone has to deal with it over my cooling corpse. Hell, the first hanging file in there is labeled IN CASE OF DEATH. My letter to Thea’s in there. If I ever make a will, a copy of that will go in there too. What a joke, right? Like I have any assets. Right now the car could probably pay off my student loans if it really is worth six grand. That’s about it though. But I probably should set down some instructions for how I want all that shit dealt with. And I definitely have to set down instructions for leaving anything whatsoever to Sean. He’s not legally related to me anymore and wouldn’t get squat even if I had squat. Which I don’t. He’ll probably get photos if he wants them. I can’t fathom him wanting anything else personal.

Oh, and I fired a shot against a major vexation in my past: I still have a lot of the back-and-forth with Cheryl, my former mother-in-law, about the divorce and about my son. It is all now in a hanging file labeled something like IN-LAW BULLSHIT/ 1999 TO EARLY 2000s, allllll the way back to the back in my file box. Congratulations, Cheryl and Angel Bob. And before you think I’m complimenting Bob, google “Doctor Who Angel Bob.” Creepy old fuck.

Anyway. I got new underwear yesterday after two and a half fucking years. I used to like Hanes okay but when I took these out of the packaging, I immediately wondered how long they’re going to last. They look cheap and shabby. We’ll see, but I wanted some that I haven’t bled on, because… still, since February, no periods. I had some spotting in probably February and maybe early March but nothing to write home about. Also, I think I might have had six pairs of underwear left and they were all falling apart or close to it. So let’s start over fresh. I’m not so confident about my reproductive status that I wanted white underwear, though. Nope. All black. Old habits are hard to break. I would have gotten more of a color range had any of the mixed-color packs NOT had one or two white pairs in them. No such luck.

I’m still using what you’d call “underwear protection” but it’s Poise pads now. I am pretty sure my pelvic floor is trashed, plus ladyplumbing tends to be slightly leaky now and again no matter who you are. I might make up a set of cloth pads to use instead. Nothing I’m going to worry about right now. Poise is comparable in price to the name-brand menstrual pads, I think. We can talk environmental stuff but me changing how I do things doesn’t matter if 3.9 billion other female people aren’t. Or some portion of them, anyway. Meanwhile, it feels so much nicer with the Poise than it did with those heavy-day fucking diapers. Whew.

(And no one playing gender-identity games with pee pads, either. Ever notice that?)

I AM tempted to take up sewing my own underwear. Out of tshirts. It’s a thing I’ve mulled over now and again for a few years, because there are designers who sell patterns for that. It’s as good a use for tshirts as any because too many of them wind up in the landfill, and the resulting product will likely be better-made than what I just bought once I figure out what the fuck I’m doing with knit jersey fabric. And they can be whatever color I want. Bonus.

Oh god, I just rambled on and on with this entry. Sorry. It’s the not really having anyone to talk with. There’s Dad, yes, but first off he’s really hard-of-hearing and I am not a voice-raiser unless I am really pissed off, and then only sometimes, so raising my voice at any other time stresses me out because I half-consciously associate it with conflict, so I tend to forget to do it. No, not on purpose, but I know that’s what’s going on. Secondly, what also stresses me out in Dad’s particular case is the way everything has the potential to be a fucking lecture. And I never know what will trigger it. Nothing is off the table and it really, I guess, just depends on his mood that day and what’s been on his mind… and it’s that much worse if his take on the particular subject is asinine, which all too often it is. (I mentioned a couple things he said one of the more recent times I visited Carrie and she marveled because, as she put it, “He’s smarter than that.” But I got an idea he’s like that with her too because there was ZERO surprise in her voice.) If I haven’t said before that I don’t think this is dementia because he was like this when he was younger too, there you go. So I do not look to my father for conversations overmuch. I have reason to believe he finds that frustrating, not because he has a burning need to Be In Conversations all the time — he’s where I got my introversion, he most certainly does not — but because, I guess, he sees it as a failure on my part because I’m a fuckup so I’m supposed to be going to him to find out how to stop being a fuckup. I would rather just avoid that whole minefield.

So I do. And I don’t look for conversations with anyone else around here either because, well, the sum fucking total of my life experience tells me to not trust people. So you get to see me babble here.

Anyway. I need to make a new to-do list while I’m still thinking about stuff. I could write it here, but I wouldn’t read it again, probably, and I wouldn’t get like two-thirds of it done and then I’d look like an absolute fanny. Let’s give that a miss.

So far this week I’ve Ubered on Monday and then yesterday. The Monday bit was for Rory’s fan domain, and that’s definitely back up. Yesterday was just because I need to earn some money. I now have more than enough to pay the phone bill. If I go back out tomorrow I will end up with enough to catch both the phone bill and the hosting service on time for once. I am pretty sure I will still be late for the car insurance for May, but I won’t be AS late. We’ll see how that all goes.

Then, on Tuesday, I had a telehealth appointment because I got this card in the mail from the local hospital system (I know their name but I can never spell it — me, the excellent speller) who, in conjunction with my Medicaid provider, have a special type 2 diabetes program going. It seems that after years of wishing, I will finally get a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). Now, I don’t know how much good it will do me with our horrific internet/cellular connectivity here, but I did warn the provider about that. Hopefully it’s now a note in the chart somewhere. Anyway, the CGM isn’t here yet. I am pretty sure I’ll be able to get readings even when it’s not sending to the internet because it’s a Bluetooth connection. We’ll see about that too.

Okay. Red beans and rice are Right Out; they send my sugar well above 200 mg/dL. Chicken Voilà is right the fuck out too, same reason. In either case we’re talking a sugar spike by more than 100 mg/dL. And today, I had two eggs over easy, two sausage patties, and three pancakes and that fucked me up to a similar degree. I think very shortly, not long after I get the CGM, we’re gonna evolve our diet into something more low carb. My body has zero tolerance for this shit anymore. The fun bit is I will be able to see the results directly instead of having to listen to idiots on the internet claiming that Splenda raises blood sugar. What will be harder is convincing Dad that I’m not killing myself or being a princess. He’s one of those people who thinks “natural sugar” is healthy. Dude, that high sugar you were getting on your readings that borked your kidneys was natural too. Ebola is natural. Pick your natural. I don’t know what I will do if the car dies. As long as I can earn my own money then I have some modicum of control over my diet. I can buy extra eggs or I can buy almond flour or whatever. I just don’t want the fucking arguments. I suppose I’ll have to start showing him my damn numbers just to shut him up. Hey look, Dad. I can actually eat an actual meal and not starve. Imagine that.

I seem to have another problem, though, and I’ve been dancing around this for a while and you’ve all seen me, all three of you bots out there. I am not sure just what it is. Some elements of it say “heart issue,” some say “reflux” (but usually no acid burn?), and some say “oh shit, I stopped breathing, WAKE UP.” It’s not every night but, for instance, the past couple nights were not good, and night before last was downright scary. So this is something else I have to ask about, and I already didn’t ask about that EKG from the colonoscopy preadmit. A large part of it is I don’t want to be trouble. I also don’t want to hear Dad’s shit. Matt and Thea had remarked upon my loud snoring for literal years, so this is likely not a new problem, but Dad will find some way to convey “this is what you get for being stupid” anyhow. Oh, I forgot the coughing. That’s new. I think I mentioned the time maybe a couple weeks ago that I actually coughed up phlegm that was a weird color. That hasn’t happened again, but I was coughing a good bit yesterday. Not like I have a cold or something but more than you would expect from someone who isn’t sick. And it could be allergies. It’s spring, shit’s blooming all over the place, and even Dad has had congestion. I have no idea. But coupled with everything else it’s got me worried too.

(And today, every time I cough it hurts my head. I woke with a headache and am currently at the point where if I’m not coughing I feel okay, but every time I have to cough it’s Ouch again.)

Oh, I forgot. Another thing going on is that suddenly I can’t eat a lot because I get really uncomfortable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, considering, but for it to have not bothered me much at all before and now suddenly I feel like shit is really weird. I say “suddenly” like it just happened right now but basically it’s been going on almost since I moved back here. I don’t think I ever had heartburn as often as Dad had it at an equivalent age but I wonder suddenly if there is shit up with my esophagus. Or stomach. Is it too soon for diabetes-related nerve damage there? I hope so. Although some of the potential alternatives are terrifying.

As I think it through, I have one possible avenue of exploration. I mentioned that stuff comes up but often isn’t acidic. It’s possible my acid production is shot. I could see if things improve if I start using betaine HCL at meals. It’s not an expensive supplement and if it helps, that’s all to the good. It isn’t good for my poor stomach to not have enough acid in it. It would explain the discomfort too, or some of it, because that tends to happen with protein-y meals. Fat may or may not be a factor too. It is hard to say because I don’t think eating fat gives me the shits, necessarily, which would be indicative of a gallbladder problem. (The fact I’m on metformin just contaminates the potential evidence there, but I still don’t usually get the runs.) But if the betaine HCL doesn’t help my situation, I can try ox gall or a lipase supplement next. We’ll see. At least most of that stuff ought to be cheap. I hope.

I am equipped to slay this dragon! Or at least tame it. I wish I’d kept things up in 2012 instead of quitting because Stupid Man (not Matt, for once). I’d be in such a better place today. But I do have some good tools in the toolbox. I just need to USE them.

I want my sugar normal.

I want to have a good night’s sleep.

I want food to not be my enemy anymore.

I want to stop looking like a troll.

—

The folder I use to store these when I write at home is not open all the way and so I can see my desktop, and there’s a photo there that I lifted off Facebook. It’s from this play Thea was in last year. Other than some Instagram pics Dawn passed on to me it is the most recent photo of my daughter that I have. (It may be anyway. I would need to check.)

The situation with her is a thing I have kind of sat on a mental back burner and then left there. I miss her, and there is nothing I can do about it, because I can’t trust therapists anymore and anyway, I’m not the one who went off the deep end. Also, I feel like it’s only useful to ask for help when someone actually can help you, or can give you advice to help yourself that is actually helping yourself. This whole situation is happening because Matt lies to me and Thea lies to herself. I can’t stop either of them doing that. There is no school of psychotherapy that cures that. We are at an impasse. It is incredibly cruel.

(I don’t want him back, and I told him so, but we could have been friends and yet, he did everything he could to prevent that happening without looking like a dick in front of our daughter and his friends. Nice to know I’m respected and valued. That was sarcasm. I already knew I wasn’t.)

So it is easier to come to a place of grudging acceptance than to keep trying to be sad about it. Not that I’m not sad, but at a certain point it starts blunting unless you do things to keep it sharp, and I refuse to do that anymore, because it is not productive. I know what the score is. I do not need anyone else to understand, because no one’s in a position to fix this anyway. I don’t care if they think I am a bad mother. They would have thought I was a bad mother anyway. It is what it is. It can’t be undone.

So if anyone except bots is reading this, because I still care too much what others think, don’t assume I don’t love my daughter just because I hardly ever mention her. There is nothing to mention. I never get news.

But you might start seeing old stuff here about her. I have my old journals and I have other sources. So that’ll be nice.

As for my son, I don’t know what’s up with him. Until he tells me, I won’t know. It does me no good to chase people who don’t want to be found. That is what it is too.

Pleased to note that my hosting service is good about giving me some wiggle room to pay for an expired domain instead of immediately offering it up for blood sacrifice. Rory’s Bane is back online.

In my experience, Mondays are kind of slow anyway so I wasn’t expecting much, but one real boost I got was a $14 run to Abbeville. Cookies. From the mall. Great American Baking Co. That $14 was my share. I dunno, you tell me. Jodi (Dad’s landlady) was incredulous when I told her after I got back. Probably should have told her about the fake hedge animal I once transported from a Big Lots in Reynoldsburg (or was it Blacklick?) to a neighborhood almost (or actually) in New Albany, and that when I left the customer’s neighborhood, I saw another Big Lots nearby. Or no, I could have just told her about the big-ass bag of theater popcorn that other time. I love rich people. Throw away some MORE of that money at me, yo.

Jodi was over because she’s been thinking about setting up generators, a bigger one between her house and Brenda’s and a smaller one at Dad’s. Dad seems to think he’ll be paying for his. We’ll see.

But I reached about $25 even before the cookie tip came in, which was another six, so I think I have about thirteen or fourteen in reserve right now after paying the domain fee. I need to get my ass back out there Wednesday or Thursday and just go through until Saturday, especially as we’re supposed to have rain on the way. I might as well get the bulk of it done before I wind up looking out the window and going “Nope” at the weather. At least at this point it’s $43-ish for one expense and $35 for another. It won’t be as scary as the insurance payment. And the $35 can wait until 2 May for all I care.

I need to change those things over to my Uber debit card. Not the one I use for customers and their Shop & Pay runs. The other one that’s for me. No more 85 cents an instant-pay! (A buck-something after 1 May!) Woohoo! I should take some time, too, and tinker and see if I can do transfers back and forth to my PayPal and whatever. I WAS pleased to note that the Uber payment app lets you set up savings goals. Not enough banks and credit unions do those. It was one of the things I loved about KEMBA.

(A thing I learned not long before I left: KEMBA started out as the employee credit union for Kroger employees! That’s about as Ohio as it gets. If I ever go back, I’ll be in for account number FOUR.)

—

I joked about Rory’s Bane back in the first paragraph. I actually don’t know what he thinks of the site, and it needs cleaning up anyhow. I have been saying that for literal years and it’s still not done. Not that it would ever be DONE done unless he kicked the bucket or I quit running the site, but you know what I mean. I was actively surprised when a woman who knew Rory’s sister Sally-Gay back in high school messaged me a few years back and complimented how much work I’d put into the site. Lady, this is what I do because I can’t go chase his ass. Total compensation. Like men with little dicks driving huge pickup trucks. Don’t tell Rory’s people I said that, though. I am behaving myself, and I’m tired of being seen as a Bad Woman. Not that that’s going to stop anybody. I just thought I would register my opinion.

Again.

You might be wondering, “Would you drop the site if Rory said he hated it?”

Probably. But he’d have to prove he was the one sending the message. Anyone can pretend to be anyone on the internet, and plenty of assholes have been pretending to be him; the problem was so bad there for a while that when he finally got (or his wife started) his own Instagram, a lot of fans didn’t believe it was him at first. Thank fuck for blue checks and friend-list clues. I actually do not know what I think about whether he would ever say a thing like that to me — or about me, publicly, maybe. Based on everything I’ve heard, there is some potential there for him to be an asshole. Probably one of the reasons I’m attracted to him. I seem to have an asshole magnet that I dearly wish I could destroy. But on the other hand, I’ve lost count of how many people who have met him have come back and praised him to the skies. I’ve seen that sweet streak in him myself. He even gets all cute and shy sometimes. Awwww. So who knows. I’m not going to borrow trouble, but I did want to indicate, publicly, that I’m aware of possibilities and have thought about what I would do. People think I’m slow and stupid for some reason. So I usually have to spell it out.

And I wouldn’t even be talking like this about him if we weren’t five years apart in age, if he hadn’t started out normal ordinary working-class, if he hadn’t gone through some major hardships and come out the other side, if we didn’t have some quirks in common. I don’t make it a habit to moon after celebrities, and haven’t since I was a teenager. It isn’t the celebrity I’m all gaga over. It’s the man himself. The only thing his fame did was make him visible to me. He literally could still be a tree surgeon who never managed to make it big as an actor but if I knew of his existence and as much about him as I do now, I’d still be into the big man. I’ve dated worse. That is a horribly flippant thing to say. It’s still true.

But I don’t date married men anymore, and did in the past only because I was young and stupid and insecure. I no longer think married men wanting to fuck me is a compliment or a “sign” of anything, which pretty much dooms any future straying husbands with me from the word “go.”

Plus I’m a troll now. So every other factor I’ve addressed here is irrelevant, really; he is guaranteed to find me repulsive. I get it: I wouldn’t fuck me, and I masturbate only because I don’t have to look at me while I’m doing it. Looking at him from afar is all I’ll ever get. So let me have my little fucking hobby and stop grieving me about it. If you are.

—

Speaking of. Would you believe Matt was jealous of him while I was still living at Matt’s place? Not even kidding. I have no idea why, because men as a rule are almost never attracted to me, Matt knows that, and Matt never loved me in his entire life. I think it was some weird control thing. Me obsessing over Rory was a clear and present sign that Matt didn’t have an emotional hold over me anymore. I wonder if it was a coincidence that Thea announced she was trans less than a year later. I wonder if Matt manipulated her at all. I ask this question because he would tell me he wasn’t on board with it out of one side of his mouth and then “respect her pronouns” out the other side and Have Talks with her behind my back. Even if he wasn’t specifically putting ideas into her head about trans, he was pushing her somehow. I saw a few examples of the latter when I went digging, and they were appalling.

It may just come out — no pun intended — that that whole mess really was 90% his fault, and I hope for his sake he’s dead when or if it does. I will say no more than that. Because that shit wasn’t one bit funny, and he was playing with both our lives, mine and Thea’s. All because he couldn’t be my puppetmaster anymore.

I haven’t reached out to him at all this year, and not since mid-year last year, when I saw Thea’s graduation video and learned that she was moving to Colorado. He ignored me. Message received. I’m curious whether he’s relieved I’ve given up or is disappointed he isn’t yanking my chain anymore. I’m not curious enough to find out, and I probably couldn’t anyway. Just idle curiosity. (Fucker couldn’t spell curiosity either. Thought there was a U in it. Along with many random foods which he often eats anyway because he is stupid, he is allergic to Google and dictionaries.) I’m good, and getting better all the time. I have down moods sometimes, but they don’t last and those evil spells I went through in the first year and a half or so have largely dissipated. At some point I may even stop insulting him. I make no promises.

I swear to fuck he was making me ill. Both physically and mentally. For two fucking decades. It’s like I finally pulled a rotten tooth that had almost killed me.

—

Speaking of health. I have been dutifully using the glucose meter and strips from my prescription for my fasting sugars, and before and after one daily meal when I can manage it, and I have learned two things (among others):

1. Metformin does not seem to make a difference one way or the other

2. However, exercise does seem to make a difference

Not even formal, strenuous exercise. Just the moving-around involved with food delivery. I went three days in a row last week, not for more than six hours at any point (I don’t think), and I got my fasting sugars within goal range one morning and very near it the other two. My nurse practitioner’s goal range is shit because it allows fasting to go as high as 130 mg/dL (it’s not her fault; the medical establishment are generally morons about this, which is why the diabetes epidemic is so overwhelming), but if I were to go keto and then make a real effort at regular movement, I have a sneaking suspicion I may be able to get into actually normal range.

This is both wonderful and terrifying. It’s really hard to eat Actually Right around most people, because most people are carb junkies. It’s even harder around Dad, who thinks it’s all about food quantity, and I am not even going to try to explain that one to him. I would rather we never discuss food at all other than planning what to buy or eat. I am watching him waste away before my eyes but he thinks he’s doing so great because he’s losing weight. You’re losing MUSCLE, you old coot. I can LOOK at you and tell. You NEED that. Oh fuck it, I can’t fix it anyway.

“Oh, fuck it. I can’t fix it anyway.” That seems to have been my personal mantra quite a lot over the past 2.5+ years, actually.

But I can still fix me. I’m almost 100% sure of it.