Category: dublin ohio

Yesterday was headache day apparently, and I should have gone out later when I felt a bit better but I also hadn’t gotten enough sleep due to being awakened by the headache. I don’t like driving when I’ve not had enough sleep; I like driving in the dark when I’ve not had enough sleep even less, and sunset comes early now. So I got out there earlier today to try to get ahead a bit. I’m not ahead nearly enough for my comfort. It went pretty well today, considering nearly all my runs were midrange or stinkers. If I get about $1 per mile gross, that’s pretty good. I surpassed that goal.

…

I didn’t mention but I applied, or sent in sort of a pre-application actually, on a local employer’s website Friday night. So obviously, I’m not going to hear back until tomorrow at the earliest. It is possible I may not hear back at all. If I do hear back and they actually hire me full-time, it’ll be decent wages, at least. They’re based in Dublin, so if I got the full-time hours I could either find a way to stay in Dublin or I could move southeast to Clintonville, or at least to north Clintonville/ south Worthington. Hard to believe with prices doing what they’re doing but there are still some affordable units out there. Mind you, they’re normally in older buildings. As long as the neighborhood isn’t a war zone and someone’s staying on top of the bugs and repairs, I’m good.

But that’s me getting ahead of myself, which I am wont to do. I don’t know what I get so excited about. I will undoubtedly fuck it up again.

…

Doug called while I was on a run. Picture it: Sicily, 1922. I’m in this neighborhood I’ve got little experience with (some, not a lot). Uber’s GPS has fucked up and sent me turning down a side street when I should have gone straight. I’m trying to pull up Google Maps, because it’s usually more accurate. Customer has started texting me to explain how to get to her place. At the same time, Doug’s trying to call. All on the same screen at the same time. Doug rang twice in less than a minute, mind you (or so it seemed: new phone quirks?). Being noped once wasn’t enough, apparently. Fortunately my course correction was very short and Doug finally gave up, or I might have veered straight into a meltdown.

The timing of his call versus my post yesterday is a bit too convenient to ignore. Well, in one sense. Was quite happy to ignore it in the other sense.

I have had plenty of time to go over all sorts of past shit in my mind over the past two years. A lot of it’s been about Matt and Thea but face it, a lot’s been about my general family situation too. I want to talk about it here but I can’t get up the arsed-enough-to-bother right now. If I had to sum it up in as few words as possible — and for me you know that’s a monumental task — it would be “when it comes to dealing with me, nearly everyone I know insists on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.” I’m so fucking easy. (Hell, I used to be easy in that way, but of course that’s not applicable in this context.) I really am. Sit the fuck back and chill, don’t talk like an asshole, don’t lie to me, don’t make promises you won’t (not can’t) keep, don’t assume stupid things about me that aren’t true, don’t tell me I’m bad for the most minimal shit. I’m so tired of this. Why do I ever have to explain this? I’m NOT a princess. I’m NOT high-maintenance. You fuckers are all just high-damage. Could you stop it? Fucking finally? Just go away? You won’t stop being human bulldozers, so go bulldoze somewhere else. I’m fucking tired. Enough already.

I don’t get how I’m the one looking for drama where there isn’t any. I would not even be in this mess had anyone ever, at any point in my life, been fucking capable of accepting me as I am. Even Doug. He wanted this perfect big sister who always entertained him and kicked larger boys’ asses for picking fights with him. Someone he could kick around in turn when his life was shitty, with zero consequences to him. How dare I have any issues with that whatsoever. I should have just shut up and done what I was told. You know what? Pay me back the money you fucking owe me and apologize, SINCERELY, for all that shit. It was still going on when you were old enough to be tried as an adult for murder. Don’t “we were just kids” me, fucker. And my parents? My being so quiet at three years old that their friends didn’t know they had a kid was a PROBLEM for some reason. I was basically Dream Kid, with a few weird habits and aversions thrown in. I remember Reba beating me once for waving goodbye to her as she left for work (after lunch?) when I was supposed to be taking a nap. No way of knowing I wouldn’t have laid right back down — I remember that day. I was still actually in my bed. They always assume the worst. They have from day one. Or they’d lash out and I’d be the punching bag. Dad once left a bruise on my arm about the diameter of a baseball. My memory may be exaggerating but I don’t think so. I remember it turning green as it healed. I’m still scared of him now. I could probably knock him flat now without half thinking about it, and his anger still sets me on edge. That is so fucked up. Oh sure. Cry about what a terrible daughter I am. Fuck off.

I said I didn’t want to talk about it. This isn’t really talking about it. This is grousing. But I’m gonna leave the rest aside for now or I’m really gonna get ugly. I already look ugly. I don’t need to help it any farther along. In a nutshell: Fuck all y’all.

Maybe not Mom. She’s trying. More like I’m curious to see if she really will send the guitar. I lost the blanket Chaise’s grandmother made me. I’d like something else of his. But I don’t have much faith it will happen. I wouldn’t ghost her over it, but I’m also not assuming nothing else will happen that I would ghost her over. Like I said. Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Nobody knows how to just be normal with me. I don’t get it. It’s always got to be the bullshit sooner or later.

…

I don’t know what I did the other day but I was trying to update the homepage and I lost like one-third of it. I need to go back and fix that, which I will do when I get done here.

[edit] Never mind — I’ll get to it when I get to it. [/edit]

I have these weird moments. Like brain glitches. I’m pretty sure I had one the night I fell on my face in July. There was no reason I should have tripped that hard, but I did. Not long before that I was having major issues trying to park in front of my place. It was like the lights were not all on in my head. This isn’t a regular thing, but it’s got me skittish anticipating it getting worse. I’m not sure if my brain glitched with the website or just fat-fingered something. That’s a technical term, by the way. I am not sure if it’s actually possible to do it with a physical keyboard, or even if that’s how it happened. Could be I mishandled the trackpad. But the maddening thing is not knowing.

It makes it so much worse when people are being shit with me and then notice me glitching and take advantage of that. Went through something like that when I left Mike and lost Sean. Which is one reason I’m not panicking about it happening now. It is just my brain refusing to cope with the reality, I guess, or just me not having enough spoons to keep all cylinders firing because I’m using up too many by freaking out. But I hate my brain being like that. I don’t want the glitches. I want things to work right. It’s one more reason I get so angry when bullshit starts.

…

I think I’m coming down with a cold. Grumble. I hope it’s a cold. Flu’s going around and COVID never completely went away.

I’m still going to deliver, incidentally, because I have no other choice. And as I wouldn’t have caught this thing if you sick fuckers would stay the fuck home, I don’t give a single shit if that bothers you. Don’t want to deal with plague rats? Don’t be a fucking plague rat. Good talk.

Heard from both Carrie and Doug today, so that was weird. Nothing going on with Dad, at least not in a bad way.

Doug sent me a random reel on Instagram. We chatted very briefly — like, two messages each. That was it. After weeks of nothing.

Carrie wanted me to give her my social security number and address because she is filling out an updated form for Dad’s life insurance. Dad’s been saying for years he wants me to have half and Doug to have half. Previously Carrie was supposed to distribute it but now, for some reason, they’re going for a direct payment.

The problem is that I am not stable. Oh sure, I got housed this year. That ends in January and I may or may not have another apartment by then. Whatever happens, I don’t know how often my address will change in the future. It seems less efficient to have a person oversee the disbursement of funds, but in my case it actually makes more sense because I don’t have to worry about losing the info I need to notify the life insurance carrier of change of address and, hey, someone from home might fucking look in every now and again. I mean what if I fucking died tomorrow and there wasn’t anyone left to pay my half to.

But here we are, and I’ve gotten this vibe off Carrie that she’d rather not have anything more to do with us brats anyway, and it’s really hard to explain because she’s been nothing but nice, but it’s just these little things in and around the edges of conversations and so on. One of those things Southern women do rather than confront the elephant in the room: go politely distant. It’s not like we keep up with one another regularly, anyway. I hate to say it, but… I can understand her having issues with Doug. He’s been borderline to actually horrid for literal decades. Me? I was the good kid of us two. Not an objectively good kid, maybe, but definitely the less-trainwrecky. No one wants to admit it for some reason, but it’s true. No one stopped to ponder whether I might have good reasons for going distant and dropping contact. No one gives a sweet shit. I’m just bad. The end.

So I think at this point I am just going to wash my hands of the whole thing. Doug can have all the money, or they can send my half to Thea and Sean, if they can even fucking find them. I won’t hold my breath. I doubt they’ll even try. My kids have mattered to that family even less than I have — and of course, they’ll blame me. They always do.

I’m not fucking forgetting none of them had a word to say the entire time I was homeless, including shelter time, either. I heard from Reba. A complete non-relative. Who I might add was also rejected by Dad’s family and always resented by Mom’s — the latter sort of understandable, I guess, but one can become so engrossed in despising the adults that one forgets to look after the kids. She showed them up. Probably another reason they hate her. I’m not idealizing her — there are reasons I’ve been distant from her too — but there it is. Face it.

Anyway, I don’t like even thinking about that shit. I was thinking about it pretty hard when he got into medical trouble in the past few months. Pondering what the hell I would do if I wound up with a life-insurance payout. And then I would stop myself short. What the fuck is wrong with you? I’d ask myself. He’s your father, not a fucking lottery ticket. But this is where things have wound up. You have these thoughts you’d rather not have. I’m going to stop giving myself reasons for having them. Nobody needs that shit when they’re already down low. Or any other time, but when you’re bottomed out there are already far too many other opportunities for losing your dignity.

Besides, if Doug gets it all, he still has a kid to raise and she isn’t even double-digits age yet. I’ve got nobody. I’ll never have anybody again. Put it where it’s needed, I say.

I’m not speaking to either of them directly about my decision. I see the pattern: we’re only going to bother with Dana when Dana’s daddy’s in distress. Nah. They’ll figure it out. The only other time I hear from them being when I say something they don’t like, I see how much I’m worth. They’ll be along eventually and figure it out. I couldn’t possibly care less.

This doesn’t mean I’ll never talk about the past, or share photos, or whatever. I’m weak in a lot of ways, but I’m not weak in that way. The past happened. It doesn’t help anything to pretend it didn’t. There were good times too. I’m glad they happened. I wish there’d been more of them. The end. Moving on now.

…

I’m not on LinkedIn anymore. Supposedly my profile will continue popping up in searches until it’s purged from the system. That site is full of pretentious fucking gits and I’m tired of holding space there. I’m thinking about dropping off of Classmates, too. Probably will. If people can’t figure out how to find me, they don’t want to. That’s their problem. What I’ll do with the other social-media things, I don’t know yet. I’m rapidly getting bored with the whole fucking mess. I’d rather work on my own shit, even on the internet. If people want to look at it, they will. If they’re fucking gits, they can “git” themselves someplace else. What a fucking waste of time.

There were a couple people I heard from on LinkedIn from my pre-internet days: one from high school, one from the Army. After that first flush of “oh hey, you’re here!” they both ghosted. Christine had good reason. See, she had really shitty timing in contacting me: I had just had my final falling-out with Craig, who fucked her when we were still together and I was in basic training. She made the mistake of being condescending to me when I made one final attempt at sorting shit out, I told her off, and that was it. John, well, John was always a flake. I’m surprised he even reached out. I expect I’ll never hear from him again. But I had a brief moment of “eh? Should I save that stuff somehow?” Nah. Doesn’t matter. Moving on now.

I’m doing a lot of that. It needed done.

…

I’m honestly not sure at this point how this month will go for rent even with the additional $250. But I had a good day today. Also a very well-traveled day; I crossed Alum Creek Lake.

Twice.

Admittedly, the second time was going back the way I had come. But still. Got a good look at that holiday light display they have on the South Section Line Road side of the lake (the west side), too. I kinda want to go. It’s a drive-through sort of thing.

Okay. Need sleep. zzzzz

(I’m pretending I wrote this before midnight. It’s actually 4am on Saturday now.)

Okay. Progress.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

…

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay. One more bracelet and then snooze.