I keep wanting to write this mini-rant about discourse and think, maybe this month it will be different, but I guess not. I like following these monthly posts, so I click on the link when I see the previous monthly post ends and I read up to the last post; however, it does not show up in my list of posts with new messages when come back to the website. I have to change the watch option manually, whereas, some other posts, where I spend maybe 10 seconds reading, show up right away. And I keep thinking…maybe next month I will do whatever it is that triggers it, only to be disappointed again.
“Cranks-giving?” Not this year, it really is Thanksgiving! It took me 20 years, but I finally
finally
convinced Mom that it’s not a requirement to serve stuffing and gravy with the turkey. I can season that bird any way I want now without having to think about how it will pair with stuffing and gravy. (She did insist on buying a little carton of gravy, but it has a good date on it…I don’t mind sending that one to the local blessing box.)
It’s possible to work out too hard, which I did today, with my fitness trainer, and I’ve felt like shit all day. I had to use my emergency inhaler during the workout too and I have been hacking all day. Had a couple uncontrollable coughing jags where I thought I was going to hurl. You see, if you cough long and hard enough it can trigger your gag reflex and make you nauseated.
I came home and ate food and showered and I still feel like shit. This is part and parcel of long COVID: you hit a certain threshold on intensity in a workout and it wrecks you for a couple days. Oh, and maybe delayed onset shittiness from the COVID vaccine I got this weekend? Plus daylight savings bullshit.
Parenting continues to be a joy. My kid had a tantrum this morning before school and we had a call from the school social worker because of problems in class this morning.
I have a stupid all staff meeting tomorrow morning which means I cannot rest tomorrow, I have to go in. I fucking hate these meetings.
My friends came over just now for movie night and I had to bow out, I can’t even watch a fucking movie. I’m laying in my bed feeling terrible.
I have the perfect companion for feeling like shit: Corey Doctorow’s book Enshittification which has so much shit to get mad at tech companies about, it will stoke the fires of my outrage forevermore. They are fucking dastardly. We live in the age of monopolistic corporations coddled by regulators. And we’re definitely not turning it around anytime soon with this administration.
Annoyed at Church Guy.
He has to drive maganut to and from church ( I don’t go to that church) Sundays.
Always complains. I do like to hear what he deals with ( women shouldn’t be allowed to drive!, neighbors called police about how I treat my dog, Israel killed Charlie!).
I say, don’t drive him.
I even told his pastor ( I attended a few times) how church guy feels.
Pastor said he doesn’t have to drive maganut, not forced to.
I say, tell him to hush.
I’ve told maganut he was crazy before.
Hes afraid he’ll go off and hurt him ( he takes fight class and has lots of ammo).
I think, he probably isn’t going to want to end up in jail.
Church guy has helped me financially so I’m trying to be polite.
I want to say, Grow a pair or stop complaining!
Certain family members moved out of state and we’re no longer obligated to put on a show for people and serve food we don’t have any interest in.
Now we celebrate a holiday I invented called No Fucks’ Giving. (Seriously, that’s what we call it.) We go get whatever we want to fix at home. Pizza? Burgers? Sushi? Tacos? If you want it, it will be available. It’s the best.
Great name. This will catch on. We always crash with my Aunt. She makes a Costco run, cooks some chicken or pork and potatoes the night we arrive, and we just eat leftovers for the rest of the week. (And those ridiculously good Costco chocolate chip cookies.)
My dear sister: You are a wonderful cook, and everything out of your kitchen that I have ever tasted has been absolutely delicious. That said, when I bring your plastic containers back to you, it isn’t because I want you to fill them up with more food; it’s because I don’t have room in my kitchen cabinets to store them when they’re empty!
THAT said, thank you for the mini meat loaves, the pumpkin tarts, the turkey sliders, and the Mac-and-cheese cups you sent home with me on Hallow’e’en.
Borrowing that name (I’ll give it back on the 28th, thanks)!
But our problem is that our Millennial kids and their cousins, who are iconoclasts in every other way (not one of 'em owns a TV)…
…HAVE to have a Thanksgiving weekend IDENTICAL in every way to the ones they grew up with.
So granny, even though she’s pushing 100, HAS to make her mandarin orange Jell-o and maybe great-grandma’s 100-proof rum balls. And we HAVE to serve our traditional cranberry concoction as well as the jellied cranberry (“Make sure it has the can lines on it!”) … not to mention the decorations and the printed placecards. And menus, for Og’s sake.
Sigh… I tried to raise good rule-breaking hippies.
Where did I go wrong?
I may have hit a low point at work today, as at today’s all-staff, we were subjected to a 30 minute lecture about a 30-year-old book, Who Moved My Cheese? My familiarity with this book is limited to the absolute evisceration of it on the If Books Could Kill podcast, which is probably one of their funniest episodes because the book sounds so badly written and the ideas in it are obnoxiously pro- worker exploitation.
The woman who gave the presentation reported that it was the single-most life-changing book she had ever read.
The theme of the book is for employees to stop whining and embrace change (it’s the kind of book CEOs love, as you can imagine.) This presentation was buttressed by a not-so-subtle hint that we should all be using AI by now.
She then informed us that she had purchased a copy of this book for every single one of us.
I have, for the record, no problem with embracing change, as long as the change is clearly for the better. I’m not even really sure what “change” we are supposed to be embracing, as this agency’s staffing has been more stable than usual for several months now. What change is being resisted that triggered this presentation? I cannot guess. I work in a silo.
I think that’s probably a good thing. I mean, when you build your life around someone else it’s hard to let that go, I imagine. But raising independent kids is the goal. I have a five year old and I struggle with that very concept of life after him. But I also wonder if he will ever stray far. He’s struggling a lot right now but he’s five, and I don’t really know what seven looks like, or thirteen, or seventeen. But sometimes I do wonder how much extra support he’s going to need as an adult.
Went to a Mexican restaurant last night and got chicken fajitas. Food was fine, but why does every Mexican restaurant get so chintzy with the tortilla shells? You always get three shells, each about 4 inches in diameter- not nearly enough to pile all the fajita mix into. Either give us more than 3 lousy shells or give shells maybe 6 or 8 inches in diameter. They’re the cheapest part of the dish and the restaurants always give them out like they’re made of gold.
Just had a scary conversation with one of my sisters. She’d just gotten home from her weekly volunteer session at a local food pantry. They had, no kidding, 50% more ‘customers’ than the same day’s session last month, representing almost 75% more people than last month. People were reappearing who had managed to make a go without their help for three or even ten years had come back. Other families had had to take in other family members who could no longer make rent on their own. Everyone was saying how their welfare benefits just won’t cover a full month’s food any more.
And, of course, everyone is now nearly panicking over how much food benefits the reduced amounts will be, and how long the system will take to get whatever lesser amount actually be handed out.
On top of that (somehow related, maybe?) the volume of donations from their usual grocery stores has dipped, at least ten per cent they think, and that’s a huge slice of where their supplies come from.
It’s always (at least for the six years she’s helped there) been a rule that you can only come for food once every thirty days, but they used to make exceptions for special cases and when supplies allowed. Today they had to be brutally strict. You last got food nly been 27 days ago? Go home, come back in three days.
And they had to cut way down on how much they could give each family. Especially fresh fruit and vegetables , and they still ended up running out of many things before the line was done.
And the cut off of benefits hasn’t really begun officially!
People not being able to feed their kids – that is the point where social unrest begins to skyrocket.
I don’t understand this at all! Are you from this planet? A good hearty stuffing and gravy (and mashed potatoes) is the best part of a turkey dinner! There’s a turkey gravy that I get from a local store that is so totally addicting that I freeze individual portions of it in small plastic containers so I can have it any time. If there was any part of a traditional turkey dinner that I’d be willing to give up if necessary to give something up, it would be the turkey!
