my boring life story

I have thought some more about managing my schedule and I’m not 100% wedded to doing Uber on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Frankly I’m not more than 5% wedded to it because there’s too much travel involved. I actually made progress back in Ohio when I moved to Dublin because it was very easy to start my delivery day from there; that’s where I did most of my delivering anyhow. Go where the money is, is my motto. But I’ve regressed now. I have to travel over twenty miles to get to the good stuff AGAIN. And the good stuff might not even be there.

But based on previous experience it’s a fair bet I could expect to do pretty well on Fridays. Probably on Saturdays as well. That might be when I do it. I don’t know yet.

Today started out kind of shit. Was puttering around in the kitchen when I looked up and there was a big fat tree roach on the kitchen wall. I have found through dealing with about half a dozen others that it helps to use both brands of roach spray Dad has on the utility table in the kitchen. Just one by itself doesn’t really do anything, or not fast enough, anyway. The problem is they get stoned on the way to getting dead and tend to wander around the house falling off things until they finally die. The longer they take to die, the more likely they wind up going where you do not want them to go. And I don’t want to send them outside. Then they’ll get eaten and poison something I don’t want to poison. No bueno. Two sprays it is. Then when the little shit’s dead, it goes in the trash.

And now I’m in my room typing because we got hit with a big, if possibly temporary, thunderstorm that I did not want to be out in with my electronics. It’s 1pm now and I’ll probably go to Carrie’s in a bit but for a while I wasn’t sure that was going to happen. Anyway I’m sitting here minding my own business and suddenly hear rustling in plastic behind me on the shelves. And then buzzing. I still haven’t seen what it is and I cannot pinpoint the exact spot the noise is coming from, and now it’s died down, but there I go with another fucking bug to deal with. Joy. I’m not sure which is worse, another roach or a wasp. We’ve been getting plenty of the latter on the back porch, and my room’s direct line of sight to the back door, which we often leave open if it gets warm enough. But the buzzing could simply be something beating its wings against plastic — it doesn’t have to be a buzzy bug. And roaches are much more likely than wasps are to hide in stuff. I really don’t want to know. Hope it dies before I have to see it.

I don’t get why people LIKE living here. Between this shit and the humidity and fucking hurricanes, it’s very inhospitable. I suspect we only still have a viable human population here because most of them are too poor to relocate and at some point, someone invented air conditioning. It is not like the north in regards to the latter. Broke people have a/c here. They make a/c happen. Even if they only use it on the very worst days.

I also fully appreciate the irony in me having a generally pro-nature stance and then being freaked out by this shit. I am actually not freaked out by all bugs, though. I don’t know what it is about tree roaches — Germans, sure, because they actually breed in your house, but tree bugs are just visiting. I hate them anyway. I cannot explain it. I hope we ALL know what it is about wasps, though. Stay the fuck outside and leave me alone, I got no problem with those. Step into my hive, we’re gonna have a problem. It’s no worse than what they’d do to me if I stuck my head into a hornet’s nest. Let’s be real here.

I also have a theory that tree roaches don’t like rain. I don’t know why, but we tend to see them most often when it’s been raining outside. Like… you’re tree roaches? Take shelter in a tree? Do not come in my house and freak me out? I don’t get it.

I got matcha yesterday for the first time in a long time. Beaucoup Blends in Iota has matcha lattes. I don’t think they quite grok matcha though. They do a decent job with it. It’s not quite as flavorful as what Kung Fu Tea sells in Columbus, but it’s pretty good. But the young lady who sold it to me was politely confused about me not wanting any flavor shots. “Just sweetened is fine,” I said. She asked me to taste it before leaving to make sure I actually liked it. Yep. It’s good. Thanks. Haha. The only matcha I ever had with any other flavor added was the sesame matcha that KFT sells. I think it would be a stretch too far to suggest that flavor option to BB’s staff. I doubt it would sell very well.

But! I am happy to note they have diabetes-friendly tea drinks. And if I want to self-harm with starch, they also have boba. It’s expensive compared to KFT’s but I doubt they get many requests for it. Though I could be wrong on that score. Walmart, of all fucking things, in Jennings now carries boba tea kits. You could have knocked me over with a feather. One of them is even matcha flavor. Maybe it’s catching on. But if I don’t do boba I still have lots of options. Looks like their smoothies are okay for me too.

…

Yesterday Dad and I went to Super One because the day before yesterday, Dad went out and bought a small chest freezer. So now there was nothing for it but he would have to get meat to fill it. Well, half fill it, anyway. Didn’t get too crazy.

Had an unpleasant moment in the deli section (and I use that term loosely; this is south Louisiana, after all) where I suddenly went dizzy. It wasn’t BAD dizzy, but if it had kept up, I wouldn’t have been able to drive us home. I didn’t fall over or anything though. And it was for just a few seconds. I half wonder if it wasn’t something I was smelling in the general area. Something chemical going on. I hope I was actually smelling something and not hallucinating it relative to the faintness. You never fucking know.

I hadn’t had breakfast. Something else I’ve been going through, and much more than that one dizzy spell, is I get full sooner than I used to when I eat, and if I persist and eat more after I’m not hungry anymore then I feel sick afterwards. And we’re not talking five Big Mac value meals here. We’re talking fairly normal, especially by American standards. I am not sure if this is coming from me having been used to not having much food for two years or if something worse is going on. I’m already pretty sure my gallbladder has shat the bed. I’m wondering if it’s possible it might not be the gallbladder after all.

Nurse practitioner’s office called today and the lab results are back. Phone had no signal when the call came in so I got the voicemail. I have to be in Jennings tomorrow for the mammogram anyway so I might as well call them back then. Something else to worry about. This IS a small town and maybe they just call everyone when test results come back even if it’s to say the test results are fine, but in my experience no news is good news. They are going to find a high fasting sugar. Minimum. I bet my cholesterol is tanked too. They better hold on to their britches because I am not going on a statin. I have enough problems and statins can mess up your muscles and your brain, neither of which of mine are at peak anymore (the muscles never were, in fact). Do not want. Niacin and garlic capsules are not out of the question, though.

And of course there’s going keto. I bet just doing that will improve things a lot. I will add on the garlic and niacin, or possibly a good full-spectrum B complex, just for extra insurance.

Let’s just hope there’s nothing else going on. Not that they can tell everything from the labs the nurse practitioner ran for me. She did say she’d run an A1C if the fasting sugar came back high so I’m half hoping that’s what she wants to talk about because I want to know what it is. Otherwise? God, no more bullshit. I have had twenty-five years’ worth of bullshit. I deserve a break. I DESERVE one. Goddamn it.

Everything did indeed go down today but should be back up by now. When I write these entries sans internet connection and then upload them later, I usually timestamp them 23:59, but I’m actually writing this at nearly 11pm, and I got this sorted out hours ago.

It was a Facebook friend. I put out the call asking if I could borrow $35 from someone on-list. Paying it back this coming week should have been no problem if I can run some food deliveries. Cindy responded and informed me that the $40 she sent is a gift and that I deserve it. I have no idea why I would, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I may plead temporary insanity and repay it anyway. That will depend greatly on how this upcoming week goes. Or I could just take the blessing for what it is and get to work on paying my insurance. Which will be late again — it’s always due on the fifth and they allow me about twenty days overdue before they’ll cut me off — but if I play my cards right it’ll be less than a week late this time, which is much better.

Hey, so next month it could actually be on time! Wow!

Doug is now following my Substack. He has mentioned at least twice since the festivities started last fall that he doesn’t have the whole story on me and Thea, and if that wasn’t a big ol’ hint then I don’t know what is, and I meant to write out the story on the Substack anyway, so two birds with one stone. I guess he finally got around to reading it? I must have sent the link to him two or three weeks ago. I also know he’s busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, so no offense taken. Someone in the family could stand to be fucking listening to me by now. No one’s really wanted to up ’til now. Might as well be him. I guess we’ll see how that goes. It will also be fantastically ironic if it goes well. He was always the one getting pissed off and punching me when I ran my mouth when we were kids. Oh well.

Dad wants to go out and buy a small chest freezer tomorrow. I will not be the one driving him, since no way in fuck is that thing going to fit in my car in its original packaging. It might have fit if taken out of said packaging, but no one wants to wrestle with that in a parking lot. We’ve got the spot in the house picked out and everything. I half expected him to stick it in my room, because that’s the room it was in when he had one before, but he owns a shop vac now that he didn’t have last time and probably ruled it out for that reason. Fine with me. It gives me some wiggle room. I’m using that tray table and a folding chair (this is probably the one thousandth time I have mentioned the fucking tray table) as a desk setup now that I can just fold up when done with it and put it out of the way. I could get a real desk at some point, but I dunno. I actually like having the extra space. I don’t feel so hemmed in.

I think every day about how shit my diet is and how I can finangle it around to be better. That’s going to be a work in progress for a while, and mostly in my own head. Maybe having the freezer will help, I don’t know.

I have to talk about this and I haven’t wanted to. One more thing to not stick on the social media. Speaking of food. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on with me. I used to have a decent appetite. Even the last time I was here at Dad’s I had a decent appetite. That is shot now. Kerblam. I can eat, but if I’m not careful I end up feeling stuffed like a tick, and it is not a pleasant feeling, and it doesn’t take much food to get there.

Probably my gallbladder has kicked the bucket. I fit the demographic: fair (if they mean skin), fat, and (over) forty. The nasty feeling seems to most often coincide with higher-fat meals? I need to pay closer attention to that. I certainly get the runs after higher-fat meals, which is another sign. We’re not talking better regularity, we’re talking almost have to tape my ass cheeks together to make it to the bathroom. Not every time, but often enough to be notable. So yeah, could be gallbladder.

It could also be something much, much worse. I’m not in any abdominal pain and other than what looks like rosacea on my face I think my color is okay, so I am not going to try to borrow trouble. Nevertheless. I am aware of possibilities. We’ll leave it at that.

I still miss Ohio. Mostly the missing comes out as clear visual memories of driving around town, or visiting some of my favorite haunts. I am not allowed to want things, and I want to go back there, so that probably means I never will. I certainly can’t do it before I’ve got decent income. And at the rate I’ve gone, if I do go back I might wind up having to buy a house or something. I don’t know if there is some kind of registry landlords use to tattle on tenants the way banks have ChexSystems to tattle on check-bouncers. And is it a real eviction if it happened during the month-to-month period? I never should have taken that fucking apartment. I should have stayed at InTown Suites in Dublin. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking. If I’d had just a little patience I could have gotten into that place over on Broadmeadows and been paying more than $300 less rent a month. And that would have been my utilities, probably. And no one sticking their nose in my business as long as they got paid timely. It wasn’t like the sticking the nose really helped anything.

Boy that went off on a tangent. I want to go home. The end.

I told Carrie I’d be sticking around. I probably will have to. I can’t see any way this gets better. I’m treading water, and one day I will drown. And everyone will say I was no-account and deserved to drown, and they’ll all get on with their lives like I never existed. What’s the fucking point, anyway? We just get ground under in the end and it makes no fucking difference.

But if I find some way to go back, I probably will. At least there will be more to do. Want to know why rural people get so hateful? They’re fucking bored. There’s work, and it usually sucks, and then there’s nothing at home but crap food and fucktarded TV shows. It’s no wonder drug use is epidemic down here. If you can’t change what you see, hell, change how you see it. But that doesn’t work terribly well. So it’s be ragey at everyone because at least it gives the brain cells something to knock up against. They gossip and backstab for the same reason. It’s really sad. I don’t need to be caught up in this mess for the rest of my life. I want to do actually good and fun things with my life. Thanks anyway.

“Rural people are hateful?” you ask. “I thought Southerners had good manners.” Oh, sure. They are old pros at covering it up. You are better off with a rude New Yorker. He’ll still get your car unstuck from a snowbank in January.

In other news, I’m starting to want to try to date again. God, no. I look like shit and I am completely poor. But I think about it anyway. It does not help that an ex-boyfriend of mine lives down here, probably less than thirty miles away. It’s a good thing he’s married (he met her after we broke up). Incentive to avoid him. Because I think that if I did try to look him up and if he weren’t married, it might actually get somewhere. Just as well. I think if we’d stayed together long enough he would have eventually found me ridiculous and ditched me. They tend to do that.

Not too big a mystery why I’d rather moon after Scotsmen, innit. A whole ocean away and completely inaccessible. Keeps me out of trouble.

Okay. Bedtime.

By the time I get this up, the three of you who ever read this thing (who the fuck’s in New Mexico and Arizona?) will have noticed an outage. The reason the outage occurred is that I didn’t have enough money to pay the hosting bill. It started out at around $25 a month and then, over the past two years, was raised twice so that now it’s about ten bucks a month more expensive than when I started. To say that I am irate about this is to utter the understatement of the year, but they are also a competent hosting service, so I haven’t wanted to drop them. Also I have never moved all my domain names to them since I left Bluehost four and a half years ago, and the idea of having to move domains from two different services to yet a third one is mildly irritating. It will also cost money, which is why I haven’t finished yet. I stopped having reliable money a little over a year ago and, starting a little over two years ago, too much of my money was spoken for.

(I’m still bitter about the way Dad acted last time I was here. Had he backed the fuck off and let me figure things out, I would have been able to start my own income and things would have been okay by the time Matt stopped sending support. When I think of that lost nine thousand dollars I could have used to maintain my fucking car and save up for emergencies, I could cry. Or that’s an exaggeration because at this point I don’t really feel anything anymore except vague calm and mild irritation. I’m so fucking tired of everything. Fuck it.)

ANYWAY. I have been thinking about starting up the delivery driving again. I will very likely have to drive to Lafayette or Lake Charles to do it, but we’ll see if Jennings or Crowley would work. I won’t have to drive six days a week, either. Technically I really only need to earn about $300 to $400 a month, $200 to keep up with the gotta-pay bills and another $200 for random expenses. I can do that in like two days a week if there are enough orders or big enough ones. No problem.

Will it fuck the car? Probably.

Know what else will fuck the car? Me having no money and then normal car-aging shit happens.

Besides, this will get me out of the house and then Dad will be like “oh, she’s doing something” and maybe things will stay chill around here. Because they pretty much are. I’d like to keep that going.

I’m thinking I could do a schedule of Monday-Wednesday-Friday either being at Carrie’s or going to the library, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays Ubering. I reserve the right to have weekends off. Or, if Tuesdays and Thursdays are too dead, maybe Thursdays and Saturdays. Whichever.

I will probably hit the library more often than I go to Carrie’s. I will be starting up the proofreading course again and I need quiet. Bad enough I will likely be distracted by social media. If I also have to hear the television, that’s not going to help.

I’m not announcing anywhere about the proofreading course. I want room to fuck up and fuck off and stall without anyone hassling me about it. Also it’ll be a laugh to see Dawn ask me occasionally when I’m going to start it up again. (Love ya, Dawn. Not that you read this.) But I’ve thought about it and this is the thing I’ve got in front of me, already paid for, that would let me develop an independent, portable business. I still want to do artsy shit and write, and I am (mostly writing, as it actually pays), but I’d like my whole life to not depend on that stuff because you can’t maintain an independent voice or style when your paycheck depends on the maximum number of people liking you. That is how art turns into crap. I’m already not where I should be, developmentally or careerwise. Let’s not.

The portable bit is especially important. It’s a remote thing I can do without constantly being on the internet (I only need to check my email sometimes and maybe get to a place with a better signal for file uploads and downloads — not a big deal) AND it’s something I can take traveling. I want to travel. If nobody wants me around except when they want me to do something for them, I might as well do whatever the fuck I want. And I really, really want to see Scotland before I’m too old to go.

I might also want to do some kind of nomadic thing back here stateside. I don’t know what that would look like yet.

In other news, I am finally getting medical attention. I have established with a primary care provider, I have gotten a long-overdue tetanus shot (grumble… my shoulder has a painful knot in it two days later), I am scheduled for a mammogram next week, and I am scheduled for a consultation for getting a colonoscopy the week after that. (The consultation is week after next. We’ll see when they want to go up my butt. I have already sorted out with Carrie when she’ll be available because I can’t drive myself home, and that’s in my Google calendar in case I forget.) I think we glossed over the uterine fibroids issue a bit, but if my PCP is not the person for that, I am pretty sure I can schedule GYN appointments without her referral. So I will do that too.

It’s another reason to put less emphasis on getting a Real Job. Nothing I would qualify for at this point in my life would be flexible on scheduling for doctor appointments. The Uber will be. Nothing I can do about that because you fucking clowns out there don’t want a humane working life for Americans, and especially not for American women, and MOST especially not for POOR American women. So, whatever. I refuse to care whether I am living up to the standards of people who don’t give a shit about me. It takes too much of my energy and I have less to spare than I used to.

In still other news, I’ve learned that the Scottish comedian I have mentioned in previous posts here is due to perform in Houston, Texas in I think May. I’ve looked over the scheduling for several of his U.S. tour dates in other parts of the country and I should be able to expect a ticket price of around $30. If I can figure out lodging, and I might want to set it up for the day prior and the day of, I might go ahead and pounce on that. I might ask Carrie if she’s interested in going, but we’ll see. I want ONE cool thing to do this year. I never do this shit for myself if some guy isn’t paying for it. There will be no guys paying for anything anymore. Not counting Dad, and I wouldn’t ask him. If I can earn it ahead, I will. If I sell that Sandor drawing, I really will. G is my consolation prize for big man being married. I do not need the object of my whatever to be tall. Just as long as he’s taller than me. He is. By about two inches. He also will not find me in any way interesting, but at least there’s a meet-and-greet. Should be fun. He seems like a cool guy.

Okay. I need to, like, fix food or something. And then maybe draw? I don’t know. I think I mentioned here that I got a folding tray table at Walmart a while back. I got a folding chair after that, so now I can set up a temporary desk in my room any time I feel like it, and it’s easy to store away. My social worker at the homeless shelter last year called me resourceful. Yes. Sometimes I am. I look forward to a day when I don’t have to be anymore unless I want to be. Probably won’t happen.

Dad rode in the car today for the first time since the repair. It started on the first go and he cheered. I am still not used to it starting on the first go. I keep expecting it to give me lip. I imagine I won’t get out of that headspace for a while yet. And of course, I’ll be looking out for the next problem.

I already think there is one cooking up. I don’t have any idiot lights about it right now but I may have a damaged head gasket. Am I going to learn from my previous experience and just get it looked at before it gets bad? No. I’m tired of needing money from Dad. Am I still going to have a car in six months? Probably not. I might be okay if I get a job, but who says I’ll get a job. We know how this goes. Waste my time, bullshit me or ignore me and even if they eventually do hire me, dick me around until I freak out and leave. Hopefully I will be less likely to freak out and leave at this point but who knows, really. At any rate, everything is still way up in the air. It’s the fucking story of my fucking life. And Matt wonders why I stayed in that shit situation with him for so long. I know he went through his so-called “salad days,” but that doesn’t mean he knows what this is like. This ain’t my first rodeo in Poverty Hell. I never wanted to be back here.

(Does that make me a user? So fucking what? The alternative is death by some way or means. I’ve only been suicidal twice in my life — what do I mean, “only” — and then I decided the various fuckers who’ve made my life suck over fifty fucking years don’t deserve the satisfaction. If I can’t get to them any other way, this one’s fine. Oh, you hate me? LOOK I’M ALIVE I’M ALIVE I’M ALIVE HAHAHAHAHA FUCK YOU

At any rate, as such, I’ll do what I have to do, up to a point. I draw the line at explicit prostitution — as opposed to the sorta-prostitution of being the woman in the average heterosexual relationship, which I also won’t be doing unless something REALLY AMAZING happens — or drug-dealing, because neither is worth the fucking pain.)

ANYWAY

So we went to Basile to drop off those Knights of Columbus pork dinners for my cousin Kathy, and then we went to Jennings by a different way than I am accustomed to, but I’ll remember it for next time I’m in Basile because it’s so easy. Apparently this way takes me right past where my mom used to live in Jennings as well, but I could not find that house to save my life at this point. For all I know, someone planted some fucking trees around the general area and it would really be unrecognizable.

(I do love trees. They just completely change the landscape, so.)

Dad told Kathy about his fall but put it down to getting “dizzy.” I don’t think he thought that one through very well because if it’d been Carrie and if I hadn’t told Carrie about the fall and what actually caused it already, she’d have immediately demanded he go back to the doctor and not taken No for an answer. But Kathy’s slowed down a bit these days. (She is my first cousin, but her mother was from Dad’s father’s first marriage, so Kathy’s old enough to be my mother. She was born the same year as Dad.) Or maybe he did think it through and already figured that out for himself, but I doubt it because she could still say something to Aunt Matilda next time they talk on the phone, and they do every now and again. Well, I told who I needed to tell without making it a huge gossipfest. One of the reasons I wrote about it here anyway is because no one I know fucking reads this thing even though quite a few people know this is here, unless they’re masking the visit in some way. I figured that it might not be safe as houses but it ought to be fairly safe anyhow. But if Kathy tells Matilda, there went the horse outta the barn. Dad won’t yell at Kathy about it; he’s too fond of her. Dad also won’t yell at me about it. This will be entirely Dad’s fault if it gets around. Fine by me. His fall was his fault in the first place. “Dizzy.” Yeah, okay bruh, I suppose that’s one of the effects of an Early Times overdose. Moving on now.

I love the man, but goddamn.

I feel like Doug’s conversation with him in December had lasting effects, though. He’s gotten a little cranky in a couple spots about my situation since I got here but mostly, he’s chill. Some of it may just be being too fucking tired to pick fights anymore; as many naps as he needs daily, this would not surprise me. That’s fine, because I don’t want to fight either. As many simple everyday things as he has weird takes about, there is no way in hell I am ever going to get him to understand my life and my perspective when they are so different from what he’s been through. The head injury is not helping. Age is not helping. His health is not helping. I would just as soon do what I can to make his life a bit more comfortable, minimize my need for help from him apart from his providing a place to live, and just get on with things without the fucking drama.

I have my first doctor’s appointment in over a decade tomorrow. In the past month I have finally come to terms that my blood sugar’s going in the wrong direction, so I’m expecting a diabetes diagnosis soon; if not tomorrow, since no one asked me to do fasting labs prior to the appointment, it’ll be within the next couple weeks. I’m not as upset about this as I should be. One, I got myself here as surely as Dad made himself fall. He has his booze, I have my fucking carbs. I’ve also been very poor and sometimes homeless over the past two years and the logistics for eating keto on simple food in that situation are pretty much impossible (it nearly all needs refrigeration if you don’t want to overspend making special orders at fast-food places), but if I had taken care of myself before my life blew up, things would have turned out very differently. So no point crying there. Two, with a diagnosis my insurance will then cover a meter and strips. I’ve been wanting to track things all along but wasn’t earning quite enough to feel comfortable having to buy lancets and strips every month. They practically give you the meter and then fuck you on the supplies. A diagnosis would solve that problem. Also, with the diagnosis, any employer I get on with is going to have to accommodate it because legally, either type of diabetes (and I’d be type 2) is a disability. So at least I won’t have to worry about stupidity there. I might get noped for “other reasons” because I’ve left it too wide open to be rejected for hire but if the diabetes is the reason, they won’t dare tell me what the real problem is. I’d take early retirement at their expense if they did. Retirement from what. I know. But it’s still funny to think about. I love making bullies uncomfortable.

The other thing I need to think about is the uterine fibroid situation. We have absolutely got to get the ball rolling on that one because it’s going to interfere with work if I do by some miracle get hired somewhere. And, frankly, I’m tired of fucking with this. If I have to go on, like, Nuvaring or something temporarily until we sort out the other, fine, but the main thing that distresses me about the fibroids is going through the heavy periods, so at minimum we need to find a way to make that stop. If they won’t do anything else but a hysterectomy, I’ll just stick with the Nuvaring. Or whatever. Even the mini-pill would be fine. I don’t want a hysto unless there is cancer. There is not likely to be any cancer.

Meanwhile I am being the world’s biggest asshole as far as wasps are concerned. They can get onto the screened back porch because someone half-assed the connections to the outside wall of the trailer. So they get in, and then I hit them. Wasp spray is specifically designed to not have to get near the little buzzers. I would rather just let them back out but as I mentioned on Facebook, wasps are terrible at following directions. Also, it would be my fucking luck that I somehow developed a wasp sting allergy over the more than forty years since the one time I was stung by a bee. We don’t have any epi pens. They are prescription only. I don’t even have any Benadryl right now. Let’s not and say we did. Sorry, ladies. You’re outta here.

Besides, if I stuck my face in their nest, they’d sting the shit out of me. This is me stinging them, I guess.

I just hate handling the poison and I hate killing them. It’s not instant. I know they suffer. I’m, like, the diametric opposite of a heroine here. Meh.

Okay. I have other stuff to write. (I do sort of have a job. I think I mentioned that in the previous entry. It’s just not paying well yet, and it never will if I don’t keep doing it.) ‘Later.

A WHOLE LOT of shit has gone down since I last wrote.

First off, Dad didn’t really quit drinking. I admit I wondered, because usually when he quits he dumps it down the sink. He did not do that this time. I got home Friday and the bottle was back on the counter because, after all, there was still booze in it and it had only been resting at the top of the can. Minimal risk. I think that shit kills germs anyway.

Secondly, before that, I had written that last post in the library and then went out to the car and tried to start it and…

one hour later, give or take, FINALLY, it started. I had even tried to reach Carrie after at least half an hour of that, but she told me later she’d been at the casino with her phone turned off.

This was the second time my car had scared me in less than a week. It was the last time.

Yesterday I meant to take Dad to Knights of Columbus to pick up some pork dinners. We got into the car and apparently, the Jennings-to-home run was its last hurrah.

So Dad gets out of the car and… toddles over to Brandon’s next door.

Turns out Brandon is an auto mechanic.

I have been struggling with this fucking car since winter fucking solstice.

It worked out. Brandon found there was a mechanical issue with the starter, which is why it tested OK at Advance Auto because they were only checking the electrical side. I had been really starting to wonder. A whole lot of other things could have been going wrong, but the electrical still seemed so solid. Even with the battery being old, Brandon noted that it holds a charge okay, but advised me that at some point in the near future I should think about replacing it. Not a big deal now. He even knew some guys who would transport my car to his shop for $75(!), because the starter had given up the ghost. I literally drained the battery down trying to start it that last time. As in the clock lost its setting and reverted to 1:00.

Along with replacing the starter, Brandon also got the bad brake light working. We will want to replace both “lenses” (the light fixtures) and probably wiring harnesses because the lenses are warped, the right far worse than the left, but he enlarged the bulb holes for now and it turns out the socket for the right (passenger) brake light still works even if it’s a little crumbly around the edges. We’ll get to that when we can get to that.

I don’t think Brandon charged for labor. I think he just charged for parts and the tow. I know Dad’s done a lot of nice things for him over the years and maybe that’s why. I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I am just going to give him more work, including labor if he’ll let me, as I need it. I’m sure he won’t object.

Best part? I have now fully passed inspection. So my car is FULLY FUCKING LEGAL. WOOHOO!

Have applied for work again. Carrie’s granddaughter Chloe works at this place and we’ll see how that goes. I never count on these things happening. I have no idea how it will go even if it does happen. All I know is it’ll be a while, if ever, before I’m earning under my own power without dicking up my car. I need something until then.

Carrie says Dad’s giving me $500 soon. He’s said nothing, so I’m not counting on that either. I’ve got enough for my phone bill tomorrow but if this site goes dark in a few days, Dad didn’t give me the money. We’ll just have to see how that goes.

Ironically? I AM earning. It’s not enough to cover my baseline expenses yet. But I am. No one around here knows that because I don’t feel like explaining it. I cannot get simple concepts across verbally without confusing people, so how the hell are they going to get any of this? And with Dad’s hearing problems too. So I just pretend to be a complete bum and get on with things.

(I had that approach with Elizabeth too, which was probably what soured her on me. I don’t feel like having someone tell me all my ideas are shit, okay? It’s not like everyone says it to me, or even most people, but to have the people closest to you shooting you down over EVERYTHING is a real buzzkill. I’m supposed to be supportive of and unquestioning of everyone I know but no one has to back me up. Fuck that. If you’re just gonna shit on me, I’m shutting you out.)

For the record, I need 50 paying subscribers on my Substack to cover my baseline expenses. 75 paying subscribers and I’d have gas and the occasional domain name also covered. It’s going to take time, of course. 150 paying subscribers if I want to transition this into more than a hobby that sometimes pays because I have to account for taxes. I feel very mercenary talking about it this way. It’s more to me than an earning thing. But right now I have to think about money. The only time in my adult life I didn’t think about money a whole lot, I was wasting years on Matt. That ended badly. I have to think about money. You’ll just have to understand.

Okay. I need to git. I wonder if Dad will ask me to take those Knights of Columbus dinners to Kathy. I really should have offered when I took off but I had no idea how this day was going to turn out. Tomorrow for sure if I don’t do it today.

HI COLUMBUS

At least I know that’s not me. No, I get tagged with IP addresses that are nowhere near me. Today it’s New Iberia. I’m in fucking Jennings.

I finally got a library card. The Jennings library has much better hours than the Iota library does. I will probably get an Iota card too, though. I just won’t count on using it very often.

I feel so stupid about the inspection sticker. It was so easy. I still failed it, but the only bit I failed was the brake lights. TWO of them were out today. No idea why. I was expecting to be dinged for the passenger-side one. Having two out was scary though. So after I got out of there, I stopped by Walmart and shopped for a bulb, realized the bulb number I needed was the same one I had a bulb for in my glovebox, bought a few other things, and went back to my car. So there’s a new bulb on the driver side now (I can see where the old one burned out). I’m hoping it’s working, since I couldn’t see any way to check. I need a mechanic appointment for the other plus the starting issue anyway. I’ll get there. I guess. If I get back to the inspection station within that 30 days they’ll have my sticker waiting in the desk. They have a record and there’s even a note on the Failed sticker. It’s okay. I’m legal for thirty days either way.

Dad decided to quit drinking again. I mentioned he took up drinking this week, right? Okay. Today when I got up I saw the whiskey bottle in the trash and it still had Early Times in it. I don’t know what that’s about. For all I know he fished it out of the fucking trash after he got up today. I’m not going to obsess about it. I am just going to avoid having conversations about my fucking employment status as much as humanly possible. I’m tired, okay? I swear I do not think I am too good to work. I know that’s been some people’s impression. What you think is snobbery is my anxiety. My whole life, and my dad has been THE biggest offender, it’s been “you’re too slow” and “you’re too stupid.” Not those exact words but those exact sentiments. Often coming from the same people claiming I was intelligent. It was a major mindfuck. And then I’d have problems at work. Too slow. Too stupid. Over and over again.

The problem with the shit I don’t want to do for a living now is that those are the exact employment situations where people will say I’m too slow and too stupid and then they will fire me. THERE IS NO POINT GETTING HIRED IF THEY ARE JUST GOING TO FIRE ME. NONE. ZIP. ZILCH. NADA.

So that’s why. It isn’t thinking I’m too good. It’s what’s the fucking point when I’ll just be back at square one within a month.

So that’s a big reason I got the library card. Dad usually can’t be arsed about what I do on the weekends but I think it would be better for both of us if I were not home on weekdays most of the time. And having the library card will mean I don’t have to be in Stanford’s (Carrie’s husband’s) hair either. I’m not 100% sure he doesn’t like me being there, but he bitches about everyone else so it’s a fair bet he bitches about me too. And PLUS, it ALSO means I can do worky stuff at a proper table in a proper chair. Although it’s not that proper a chair. It SQUEAKS if I sit down in it too fast. It’s like a built-in whoopie cushion. It’s awesome. One of these days I might try to get video of it.

I could draw here, too. Easily.

Well, we’ll see. And I’ll also be able to check out books, OBVIOUSLY. And possibly also DVDs. I saw they had some kid ones. You never know.

Did I mention here that I have a doctor’s appointment coming up on Wednesday? I’m a little bit excited because at least this will get the ball rolling to figuring out the uterine fibroid problem, and possibly also get me a free glucose meter and a prescription for strips. Those are positive steps forward.

Shit, I should get a dental appointment Monday too. Might as well.

Don’t get too excited. It’s always the most optimistic before shit goes to shit.

I’m so fucking eloquent today. (Do not even get me started about MY mental lapses lately. They haven’t been major yet, but they’re pissing me off.)

Who the hell’s in Fostoria, Ohio? I’m also getting visitors from Arizona and New Mexico. Weird. But Fostoria has got me particularly curious. It’s nowhere near where I used to live. It’s closer to Akron. Closest thing I can think is someone I knew at the shelter, but no one had my last name there. Could just be a random.

I won’t get an answer, so consider that rhetorical questioning.

I cannot quite say that Dad’s on the warpath, but like that, about me getting the car inspected. I’ve been putting it off out of fear. I just knew that if I went to get it done, they’d fail me. It’s not rational, just one of my anxiety things, because even if they do fail me I will get a Failed Inspection sticker, so I’ll have a sticker and wouldn’t get ticketed for missing one. I’ll also have thirty days to fix whatever the deficiency is, and of course they will tell me what it is. I won’t have to guess. So me worrying was silly. Didn’t stop me, of course.

But I looked at a website about vehicle inspections in this state and I have a feeling I might be okay. I was worried they would fail me over the brake lights because one is out, but the other two work last I looked, and brake lights weren’t even in the list on the web page. Headlights yes, brake lights no. Last I looked both my headlight bulbs work but I have that cockeyed one because I changed it myself. Worst case, they fuss at me over that but that fix should be less than fifty bucks if it’s an issue.

So I’m probably okay. Dad already gave me the cash so it’s be fussed at one more evening because I didn’t go today (they close at 4 and it’s after 2; I’d rather go earlier in the day when most people will definitely be at work) and then tomorrow I will go to Eunice and get that done. I will pay for a two-year sticker. No more bullshit til I have to renew the registration anyway.

AND THEN, apparently a legislator at the statehouse is introducing a new bill to eliminate the inspection sticker requirement. Scuttlebutt is that it has a better chance of passing now because the state introduced some kind of vaping tax that would replace the funding this sticker requires. Ah, state politics. I’ll be a bit annoyed if it passes and I’ve paid for a two-year sticker, but it’s only $20 and it saves me any related tickets until July, which is when this thing’s expected to pass if at all, so I’ll just count my blessings.

(Assuming I’m not caught and ticketed on the way to Eunice. AVERT.)

Carrie wants to ask Dad about getting her off his checking account and putting me on it. Confidentially, I’m against the idea. The only reason I am even entertaining it is Carrie doesn’t feel safe staying on it because she feels it puts a target on her back with Aunt Matilda. What Carrie doesn’t seem to realize is that changing the account will actually paint a target on me. The fact that if anything happens to him I’ll be fucked never seems to cross anyone’s mind in this sad equation. I might be able to stay with Doug for a while but I am under no illusions. It’s likely to go wrong and then my ass would be stuck in Oregon. I might have a couple more escape hatches if that happens but I can’t guarantee it. So it’s in my best interests if that man stays healthy, or as close as he ever gets anyway, for at least the next five years. I don’t know what I did to deserve living in this dilemma, but here we are. Will anyone care? No.

He seems about as reluctant as I am because Carrie was all fired up to go make the account change today, but she texted him and he read it and he never replied. I can’t tell whether he’s already gotten through that bottle of Early Times or if he did his usual hide it from me like it makes any difference, and I didn’t hear him walking the way he does when he’s well into his cups (which is why he falls), but whatever, he was definitely in grumpy mode if I know my father at all. So this is likely to be stalled if it ever happens. I’m fine with “never.” This wasn’t my idea.

Updated bracelet photos today here. I have more pics and I need to take pics I missed. At least everything will pretty much match.

I need to do more mini drawings.

Okay. My train of thought derailed a while back. ‘Later.

Insurance paid. Got that done yesterday.

I had to ask Dad for sixty bucks because I had some money but I was mainly tapped. But I had enough to cover $52 of the $112 bill. Hence requesting the $60. I know you were about to go “WTF, insurance is never that cheap” and you’d be right. Sorry. Haha

I don’t know if it was a coincidence, but we went out and ran errands after that and Dad got whiskey again. Doug says I shouldn’t blame myself and honestly, he drank like a fish before I ever got here, which is how he fucked himself up last fall. But it always does my head in a bit.

Now I’m at Carrie’s catching up with stuff and Stanford got home first. He’s complaining about Brenda, who visits every day, so I’m betting he complains about me when he gets the chance. Brenda at least contributes to the electric bill. If I even had the money to try that, Carrie would probably tell me not to, but still. I don’t get what she sees in Lala (his nickname… why, I have no fucking idea). They had split two years ago, though not divorced. Whatever. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Let me upload my other shit because I should probably leave soon.

A note: I started filling out an application for a grocery store in Crowley and then… just stopped. Because you know what? This is all bullshit. If I had recent work history worth speaking of besides deliveries, it’d be one thing but most of what I put on applications is old and it’s a long list. I already know they’re going to say no. I’m working for nothing. I make more money writing the damn Substack. And even that’s not a lot, but it’s more than I do applying for employment.

I don’t know if that means I am on the right track or what. It probably doesn’t actually have any inherent meaning.

Lots of that going around anymore.

Okay, I want to know who put the fucking bunny ears on the lion for that Cadbury Eggs commercial

You know the one. All the animals “auditioning” for the role of Cadbury Bunny. I swear to fucking God it’s the same ad I used to see back in the nineties. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess.

Probably the closest we are going to get to any sort of Easter celebration is picking up some pork-steak dinners from the Knights of Columbus this coming Sunday. Dad’s a fully confirmed Catholic but never bothered with it much as an adult except when he was trying to impress Carrie. I was baptized as an infant but was never confirmed later, and nothing I’ve learned about the Church in the time since has convinced me I should do anything about that.

(Sorry, Thea. Afraid you were a liar on that one. Especially since I know for a fact I explained that to you.)

I haven’t asked Dad yet about the insurance money but I will. I don’t see another option. The GoFundMe is dead in the water and I might have a bracelet sale coming up soon but it hasn’t happened yet. I got enough signal today going into town that if there were a sale in the pipeline on the Etsy Seller app, it would have popped up once I got to town. No such luck. And it wouldn’t have covered the insurance in any case. Need to sell Sandor for that.

I’m going to spend some time this evening, when I am done writing this, designing some more bumper stickers and mugs and such. That’s not necessarily going to get anywhere but I want it up in case. I do have some funny ideas. Some funnier than others, but can’t be any worse than some of the tripe I see out there.

SyFy (what a dumb rebranding) is running all the Harry Potter films, which I play when Dad’s napping. I’m always so torn when I watch these. I had to sell my book set to keep my room sometime in ’22 (and cried about it; one more link with my daughter gone), so the films are what I’ve got left. But they’re so badly done. So much got left out that made the stories so much richer. And don’t even get me started on the abysmal acting by those fucking brats. I’ll never forgive them for betraying Jo Rowling. I’m so glad HBO is doing a series. I hope they’re just scrapping the movies and starting all over again. It really needed the TV treatment anyway, that way they can fit more in. MORE HOUSE-ELVES. More Phineas! To list just two examples.

I don’t think I mentioned yesterday what my fasting sugar was. I think it was around 190 mg/dl and I’m too lazy to go pull out the meter just to get a perfect number in a blog post. And then I checked it today and it was in the 160s, I think 165. (I also learned, yesterday, that the tip of my left ring finger is a terrible place to stick for a sugar. Ow. Made a nice little bruise, though it’s gone now.) I’m glad it’s not 200-something anymore, but it’s still far too high. Experts say you shouldn’t go over 140 mg/dl postprandial, and even that is too high, and it’s not fasting, which is even worse.

I’m learning. Had fried fish and French fries for supper. Dad had a hankering. I’m often given to eating more than I’m hungry for rather than make leftovers Dad will just throw away. Didn’t do that this time. And I feel a LOT better than when it went over 200. Still don’t feel normal, and all sorts of other shit’s going wrong, but I’ll take the minor win.

I wonder if doing intermittent fasting but still eating the same food might stave off the worst damage for now. I seem to have read something in that vein at some point. It’s worth a shot. I just worry that with all the fucking carbs I’m going to be shorted sufficient protein. Already am being. Bad time for it. I haven’t been building enough bone in a long time now.

Oh well. Let me get some design time in. ‘Later.

Oh wow. It’s 2pm as I start this, I’ve been awake since around 8am, and I only just now remembered it’s Matt’s birthday. Fifty-four years wasting my good air on this planet. Happy Failed Abortion Day. Hope you’re run over by a truck.

It’s also Dawn’s daughter Kimi’s birthday though, so that redeems it a lot.

Two days ago my connection to the cellular network went from Tenuous to Completely Fucked, so I went a whole day flying blind. I can’t do much with what connection I get here anyway. For instance, I’m on the back porch right now writing this entry, and I tried to hotspot my phone a little bit ago, but the signal isn’t strong enough and frequently drops. But I rebooted my phone yesterday after a day of no signal whatsoever (mostly because Dad got a text message during my blackout time and so I thought, Well shit, the problem’s got to be on my end then) and lo and behold, that did the trick. Something got scrambled somewhere. I will never know what. So now we’ve gone from Completely Fucked back to Tenuous. Yay.

Anyhow, so I finally was able to update my Gmail inbox and I have already gotten a response from that cruise ship company. It’s a no. I knew it would be a no, but if I hadn’t applied anyway I would have spent the next year hating myself for not trying and wondering if I could have done it, and I have better uses for my time, like hating Matt. Anyway, they didn’t say why it was a no. These assholes never explain why they think you are better off dead than working for them. (You think I am being dramatic. Must be nice to live in your delusion.) But here are a few possible reasons.

1. They just plain didn’t like my résumé. If that was it, solidarity. I don’t like it either. Not that I can improve it when no one but the occasional exploitative yo-yo with piss-poor management skills will even hire me, but never mind.

2. They required hospitality to be one of the skills in my Indeed profile. I’ve never worked for an employer that was specifically in the hospitality sector, but I’ve practiced some of the relevant skills in other jobs, so I crossed mental fingers and fudged it. Obviously that didn’t work.

3. They asked for my height and weight in the application. Ostensibly this was something to do with maritime regulations and load-planning. And that could have been the truth. It’s possible. I figured it also might have to do with the free uniforms the employees get. But it’s equally possible they wanted to weed out the lardasses and just didn’t have the ovaries to say so. Consider me weeded.

—

If you’re curious, I’m five foot six inches and the last time I weighed, which I think was in December, I was around 250 pounds. I may have put on another ten pounds since I got here. It is not inconceivable.

Particularly as last night Dad suggested, out of the blue, that I check my fasting sugar today with his glucose meter. I don’t need my dad monitoring my sugar numbers and anyway, I will fuck up his data if I do that. He doesn’t know I have my own meter. No reason, I just didn’t feel the need to announce it. The strips expired in December, but I figure they might still be mostly accurate. Anyway, it’s long past time I set up a new-patient appointment with my primary care provider in Iota. I’ll try to get that done this week.

But, I thought, Oh, he’ll forget by morning, but I’ll still check my sugar on my meter, because after he suggested that, I checked my postprandial from supper and it was in the mid to high 200s! Around 250 mg/dl on the left hand and then, a few minutes later, 290ish on the right. Now, glucose meters are allowed to have a margin of error of about fifteen percent. That’s a big margin. And these are old strips, and who knows what the fuck all. But given the way I felt at the time after eating spaghetti for supper, I knew my sugar was high whether the meter was going to be accurate down to 1 mg/dl or not. And previous to eating supper it had been pretty low, which I can also tell by feel, and I had felt like shit. It just wasn’t a good day for me healthwise all around.

And I was right. He did forget.

Weirdly, I haven’t been getting the heart palpitations as much. They had been a real problem for a while. I won’t say they have completely resolved, but I’m a lot more comfortable at bedtime than I had been there for a bit. But it’s another thing I’ll ask about, because I need to make sure I don’t have atrial fibrillation or something like that. I’m a walking time bomb and we have to find out where the fuse is. Fuses are. There are probably multiple.

Honestly though? My dad has some weird kind of eating disorder and is trying to impose it on me. Mom has had one all my life too, but it comes out in different ways in each of them. And the main way Dad’s manifests where I’m concerned is he cooks me an assload of food and then criticizes me for eating it. And he is very fond of throwing leftovers out when they are still good, which drives me insane because I am very against wasting food. Which has made my life difficult when I’ve been trying to eat in a healthy way and then someone else in the household wants to waste something unhealthy that I like to eat. I will whole-ass eat a kid’s leftovers to save them from going into the trash can even if it tanks my blood-sugar response. So I suppose I have some kind of disorder of my own.

We’re about to possibly start wrasslin’ over the grocery-shopping because the only way I am getting out of this is to be consistent in good eating, and the only way I can be consistent is if I’m not the only one buying the food, which I pretty much can’t afford to do anyway. Right now I’ve got $50 in Walmart gift-card balance thanks to Humana and another $15 I can add in there, also from Humana, but if I spend that on food I’ll end up needing $65 for something else at Walmart three days later. No good. So it’s time to manipulate the grocery list. Dad will live.

Or, y’know, whatever. Figure of speech. I’m not feeling particularly Pollyanna today.

—

I think I mentioned Dad bruised up some more a few days after his fall (which, weirdly, he has marked on his calendar even though he wants neither to go to the doctor nor to tell anyone it happened — his landlady Jodi figured it out, but that’s it), and he says the overall bruising mostly doesn’t hurt, but his pinky finger is still not behaving the way it should, and I’m a little more convinced he broke that metacarpal. When Doug and I were discussing the injury, Doug called that a boxer’s break. Apparently men get them a lot for not punching correctly. I can’t see any real deformity though. I thought at first when looking at it that the bone might be slanting too far, but the metacarpal for his index finger mirrors it, so maybe that’s just him. And if he had broken bone sticking out in there, he’d feel it. No complaints at all. Not that that’s a good metric. He does use the hand, though. He just can’t really use that pinky finger.

—

So I’ve been following this Scottish comedian on social media because he’s just a few years younger than me, is single, is fucking cute, and I love his sense of humor. And then he was complaining yesterday that he couldn’t see “boobies” on Sky TV for a wank. He wasn’t an asshole about it, at least not in an overall sense. Problem is I hate being reminded that guys look at porn, and I was kind of hoping he didn’t. He has a daughter, whom he mainly raised by himself, and a granddaughter who adores him and all I can think is how the fuck can you see women that way when you’d kill anyone who talked about your ladies that way? But I could ask the same of my father, who has been similarly guilty my whole life. I don’t understand any of you fuckers. I am not saying I’ve never looked at it or that I’m perfect. But you have to admit the situation’s very different with women who look at porn, too. And almost none of you dudes speak out against the abuses in the industry. You have done exactly fuck-all to put a stop to them. You know nothing about these women with “boobies” on your screen. Nothing. They could be trafficked for all you know. They’re just things to you.

I feel even more strongly about that in his case because he’s funny and gorgeous and every time he posts he gets dozens of thirst responses from local ladies and fucking nothing is stopping him from going out on dates and getting laid if that’s what he feels he needs to do. At least then she’s getting a nice dinner or movie out of it instead of humiliated in front of millions of men whose faces she can’t even see and then having her humiliation live on the internet forever. There’s a reason these on-screen women take up drugs and drinking when off-screen. It hurts. Dude, seriously, get some values.

Oh well. I would have never had a shot with him anyway. I’ll keep following him for a while, though. He is a pleasant distraction.

“Oh, you’re just jealous”

You know how stubborn men are about porn and how they refuse to give it up? When did you ever know a man who was that attached to a woman he actually knew in person? (Matt keeping me in limbo for twenty fucking years was not devotion, it was him being a pack rat, like he is with everything.) The porn addiction is a problem all by itself, but also a problem is the fact they’re wasting that energy on being gross and sick when they could be using it to start, maintain, and save actual relationships and they… fucking don’t. If it at least taught them to be good in bed I suppose that’d be about one-fourth a public benefit, but it doesn’t even do that. I can tell when a guy learned “techniques” from porn, and that garbage has never, ever given me an orgasm. Even good oral sex, which has, looks nothing like what they do onscreen. Do not even get me started about choking WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT BULLSHIT. Sorry, fellas. Come (har-har) up with a better excuse. You fucking can’t.

Anyway, a man being an exploitative piece of shit is not actually anything worth being jealous about. I don’t even want to count up how many years I wasted figuring that out. Moving on now.

—

I mentioned the other day that I have so far only sold one bracelet set on my Etsy. I might be about to sell another bracelet or bracelet set. I had someone ask me about it on the terf crafting group the other day (it is a secret group — keeps the troons out) and I shared the URL with her. I am trying not to get my hopes up because I haven’t heard anything back. I need to get my butt out to Carrie’s tomorrow and then we’ll see if this is a fault in the Etsy app — some apps pretend I have no cellular signal even when I do — or if it just hasn’t happened yet. I need to upload the new product photos anyway, and probably do some more listings too, if I can get my shit together today first.

It’s maddening. If I had sold the Sandor drawing I wouldn’t now be late on my insurance. I could have also asked Dad for the money, and I might still, but I really want to avoid that if I can. I am too much of a problem being here already, and I know it.

(When Dad was still drinking this last time, he got fairly into his cups one evening and said something about how he is glad he can know I’m safe now. So maybe not THAT much of a problem. But then again, who fucking knows.)

But also I find myself too often frozen at home. It isn’t anything anyone’s said. It’s me being afraid to go out there or ask for anything. I literally could go to Carrie’s or to the library every weekday and sort my shit out if I’d stop being so fucking anxious. But if I could just flip a switch I’d have done it already. And I’ve danced the SSRI boogie. It is the polar opposite of dancing. I am not willing to become a zombie again in a bid to overcome the scaredycat.

—

I want to talk more about that but this post is too long already and I have to pee. It is an incomplete set of thoughts, that last bit, and maybe I’ll finish it all later and maybe not. And you don’t care anyway, right? Right. Well then. Off to the porcelain throne. Later.

Pee.S. A little over two years ago, after Dad’s plastic toilet seat broke, I bought him the same wood-core toilet seat I had bought for the main-floor bathroom at Matt’s house. Solid, dependable, rated for 300 pounds. Guess what. It’s still in good shape. 10/10 would buy again.