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A white flag

Monday, July 19, 2021
This photo has nothing to do with the post, I just think he’s funny when he sleeps.

We drove through central Wisconsin this weekend on a little teeny “get the fuck out of the house” adventure, and I’m still stymied by the loads of Trump flags. It is mid July. The election happened last year. So much awful has happened since then and yet still, mid-July 2021 and these people are flying flags and sticking his name in giant letters over their back truck windows. There was a flea market by the side of the road that we’ve visited years ago and purchased produce there, but yesterday, a giant MAGA flag flew alongside the Flea Market and Farm Market flags and that’s a big no thank you.

Given his rhetoric about hating losers, I’m flummoxed by their insistence. I assume they are presenting these symbols because they felt seen, they felt validated. I keep thinking about the intense racism and about how at best it wasn’t a dealbreaker for Trump voters, about how worse case scenario, it was in fact a desired feature. I keep thinking about the women who voted for him after the Access Hollywood leak, after the rape accusations, after the asylum seekers in cages and over a thousand children lost in the system (that we KNOW about).

74 MILLION people voted for him in 2020. It’s easy to forget this. It’s been months. But 74 MILLION people feel like they’re being suppressed right now. And let’s be real here, it was white women and white men who put this fucker in the White House. It’s white people who feel like they’re losing something and are eager for anyone who can tell them they can get that something back if they just do this one little thing and cast a ballot. Some of them are flying flags but most of them aren’t — they’re just out there, quiet and walking next to us at the store or in the next cube at work. It’s easy to forget this with our guy Joe in the White House. Midterms are coming and the Dems tend to lose seats in midterms with a Dem President.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I keep feeling like something really bad is brewing. The flags are a reminder that we absolutely cannot rest. And white people, this is on us. You need to own this and you’re likely going to be the only people who might be able to crack those MAGA-truck driving voters. Our work isn’t done even with our guy locked in. We have 74 million cases to make and 74 million hearts to unlock.

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Fifty fifty

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

I’m not sure when my body started falling apart.

I used to worry about it in my late twenties, with the emergence of The Crevice, a horizontal tilde crease above my eyebrows. I tried getting rid of The Crevice, rubbing creams in there and sticking Frownies tape on it while I slept. Nothing helped. Nothing fazed its Royal Creviceness. It remains. I maintain bangs. The Crevice endures.

In my twenties, also, a weird vein pattern emerged on my outer thigh where it pushed against the arm of the uncomfortable office chair in my work cubicle. Reddish purple, delicate, almost like filigree, it meandered like a mapped tributary across my thigh. It’s still there, a creek bed testimony of my time spent in a windowless office space.

In my thirties, facial hair, a marker of the PCOS that served as my life’s unreliable narrator. I paid a dermatologist to laser off my mustache. It eventually came back, with friends on my chin. The fine peach fuzz on my face decided it too wanted an adventure and grew longer, vellus hair with an improved CV. I’d always heard not to shave your face, so I’d clip with shears, the points so close to my eyes that I spent the entire time cringing. This couldn’t possibly be a good idea, this clipping. In Las Vegas, an economy based in nudity and flesh meant that laser hair removal places were on every corner, the prices ridiculously low. I could have had my entire body denuded below my earlobes for under a grand. The first thing they told me was that before every appointment, I absolutely had to shave the area, so I lathered up and pretended to be KD Lang and Cindy Crawford at the same time. The result was amazing — I’d never loved my face that much. Ultimately, laser hair removal doesn’t do anything to the clear stuff — it’s back. But with the pandamnit, face masks and Zoom calls hide everything, so I stopped caring for months.

Now I have to waste brain space thinking about it again. Or not.

During the pandulce, I was forced to give up my beloved hair stylist appointments. When Las Vegas allowed hair stylists to operate again, she made up home DIY color kits for me and Esteban colored my hair on the back patio, but it was a messy affair, and awful to rinse even at the kitchen sink with the sprayer. Each time, I remembered why I don’t color my hair myself. I tried to embrace my natural light brown tinged with sparklers, annoyingly only present where the hair falls into a part. After six months post-coloring, I got very zen about it, live and let live etcetera. Then the moment I reached full vaccination, I caved and made an appointment with a new colorist in Green Bay. She botched the job entirely. I don’t really blame her too much — my natural brown is so much lighter than what I had been wearing that she probably tried to find a happy medium. However, she erred on the light side and gave me “hot roots” as it’s known in the trade. So now I have a strange ômbre of dark, light, middle happening and it’s worse than just rocking COVID highlights.

This month, I turned fifty.

Last weekend, my mother, seventy this year, stared at me and hissed “I can’t believe you’re FIFTY” and on the second syllable, a bit of spit flew out. I know this is less a story about me and more about her, as is always the case with my mother. My maiden aunt shook her head and said “Not a wrinkle on your face.” She’s wrong (clearly The Crevice would beg to differ) but then says “Fifty is good. I liked fifty. I hate sixty.”

I don’t know what to say to that so instead I say “Sunscreen” too late responding to the wrinkle comment but instead sounding like an antidote for being a sexagenarian. She nods, as if this is sage advice, and then adds “You never liked being outside.”

Accurate. Both my mother and maiden aunt worshipped the warmth of summer, baring as much skin as possible, using actual cooking oil in lieu of tanning unguents. I remember lazy days in August, watching them flex their toes, my mother in silent competition with my aunt’s Native ancestry which gave her a headstart in the roasting process. Now each of them carries their own histories on their skin, different than mine, but I guess the same in many ways.

These things, however, are external.

Now I worry about internals. I worry about what’s inside.

That PCOS gave me a giant bumper crop of ovarian cysts, harvested every two or three months with a painful several hours of panting and yipping and whimpers. Every time I’ve had an ultrasound, twin cysts lurk, one on each side. Then there are the fibroids, three the size of various fruits, a strawberry, a lime, an orange. The fruit salad of agony each month. I don’t want suggestions or advice. I know the options. I went through a fairly invasive and painful procedure in February to ensure that there’s no cancer lurking. There isn’t but the asshole fruit salad still wallops me every few weeks until my best friend is a heating pad set to 5. This is how it will be until it’s not.

It might be because of the pandemonium or it might be the twists and bitterness of the aged, but I’m finding myself more easily shook, more likely to say “who gives a fuck” and indulge myself in the maudlin. Perhaps this is the midlife crisis that I put off by going back to grad school, or perhaps this is just my body reminding me no amount of face cream and night masques can stave the beast that takes us all eventually.

I think about my aunt assuring me that fifty is good, fifty is enjoyable, how much she enjoyed it, and how much she loathes being sixty. I wonder what she might have said ten years ago, if she would have said the same about fifty. I often say my favorite phrase now which is “It’s better than the alternative” but also, this tipping point is such a ruse. It’s a falseness. It means nothing. Each day we take another step. And then another. And another. We pray to a god that lurks inside ourselves but that god doesn’t listen.

But it’s better than the alternative.

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Dearest Confinement Friends – creativity edition

Monday, January 11, 2021

Last year, I coordinated a series of postal mailings that allowed and rewarded social distancing while also supporting the use of the USPS. We called in Dearest Confinement Friends, because that’s what we were and are, many of us sending letters to friends that we just hadn’t met yet in person. Then came the annual Holiday Card Exchange (our 20th year!!! pardon me while I crumble into dust), and we also did a book exchange in the spirit of Iceland’s Jolabokaflod (which was AHMAHZING).

Now my big camp counselor brain just can’t quit.

These dark winter months are always a struggle for me, so I try to view January as a time for renewal, for self-care and self-expression. It’s no coincidence that I took my very first pottery class in January. It’s not a lark that I always plan Weetacon for March so that I can spend January and February plotting and coordinating. My hands get itchy, and I’m willing to bet that I’m not the only one.

Enter the newest greatest thing to get us through this perpetual pandemic of doom — the Dearest Confinement Friends 2021: Make and Send!

Here’s the deal — by signing up for the Dearest Confinement Friends Make and Send, you’ll agree to create physical expressions of your creativity and send it to up to ten people. And they’re going to send things they made to you. That’s it. That’s the entirety of the project. Make up to ten things. Send them out to the addresses you’ll be provided, and you’ll get that many things back from the people you sent to.

What do you send? That’s the beauty of this. You do you. Are you a knitter? Cool, make hats! Do you crochet? How about a crocheted coffee cup cozy? Are you a sketch artist? Neat — sketch away! Are you a photographer? AWESOME — do a photography project! Do you always wish you had more time to draw? Draw a comic inspired by their most recent social media post! Or paint a watercolor postcard!

Not sure what to send? Can’t art? This is all about your comfort zone — the point is to Make and Send. It doesn’t have to be worthy of the Smithsonian — it just should be handmade by YOU. Here are some other suggestions:

Are you ready to do this in 2021? ME TOO! Let’s go!

First step: Sign up for the exchange here. By signing up, you’ll be paired with up to ten other people after Feb 1. That’s it. That’s the first step! Unlike the previous exchanges, this will be limited to small groups of ten people or fewer, because I want us to be purposeful and focus on the making of each thing rather than becoming an Art Factory. But if this works out, we’ll do it again later in the year, so there will be more opportunities to create! The sign ups will be open until January 31. To reiterate, as many people as want to join can sign up and then I’ll split everyone into manageable Make and Send groupings so that the MOST you’ll send to is ten people (but it could be fewer).

Second step: I’ll send out the addresses by Feb 4th and you can focus on making your art for your recipients (and they will be doing that for you too). Ideally you should finish all of your art pieces and send them by March 15th, so keep that in mind for planning your project time.

Tips for success in making and sending:

  • When deciding what you’re going to work on, make a project timeline and compare it against your own schedule for the upcoming weeks to make sure you have enough time before committing to supply purchases, etc. This is especially important if you are making things that need time to dry, cure or process.
  • Your Make and Send pieces must be able to be sent through the mail safely, so it must heed all of the USPS shipping requirements. If you’re not sure what can be sent through the mail, there’s a whole list of things here.
  • If your item fits in a standard envelope, it may require more postage if it weighs more than an ounce (which is the limit for a standard USPS forever stamp).
  • Your project plan should include some concept for how you’ll package stuff too. For instance, it would be very sad for someone to get a package of broken pottery or a wax candle that melted when sent to someone in a warm climate (which in theory shouldn’t happen if you send by March 15 but who knows with climate change weirdness).
  • If you know already that you’re going to make something that needs specific supplies, order them right away since there have been many pandemic-related delays in the supply chain that could impact you.

Got questions? Hit me up here, Twitter, FB or at weetabix blah blah gmail etc.

Let’s make 2021 ahmahzing!!!

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Squishy

Monday, December 7, 2020

This weekend, we had Christmas Tree drama.

It’s likely that our movers destroyed our Christmas tree — we haven’t opened the storage bag yet, but it looks distinctly WRONG.

Before we moved to Vegas, we traditionally had two trees, but I had gotten rid of the older of the two when we moved, rather than paying to store it for three years. We took with us an extremely high quality tree I’d found on insane discount at a church thrift store — it seemed to have been used maybe once or twice and I adore that tree. Now that tree might be fine or it might look like it has been hefted on Cheryl Strayed’s back across the entirety of the Pacific Coast Trail to be thrown off a cliff during a momentous moment. I hesitate to ask Esteban to haul it up from the basement, and my knee is still too janky to try going down the basement stairs, and honestly, if it’s completely fucked, I don’t know if my spirit could take it after the continued series of small and large disappointments associated with that move across the country.

I only had lugged one partial set of ornaments with us to Vegas. My huge collection of 30s-60s mercury glass ornaments have been safely stowed away in climate controlled storage. And honestly? I missed those ornaments. Some of them belonged to my grandmother and my great grandmother, and we are looking at a fourth Christmas in a row of being alienated and away from family (despite in some cases being just a few minutes away by car). With limited tolerance for standing and twisting (thanks janky knee) and limited bandwidth for activities that aren’t related to unfucking this house (thanks janky pandemic home buying experience), if I was going to focus on putting up a tree, it should be with the ornaments I haven’t seen since I tucked them into their storage boxes in January 2017.

So Esteban proposed buying a second tree. Or maybe an only tree, depending on how screwed our current tree got in the move.

My general mode for buying Christmas trees is one of opportunity. My $40 thrift store tree was the most I’d paid for a tree to date. The tree before that was a $400 tree Esteban had scored for $25 when he worked at Shopko Corporate offices — it had been used for one December as a lobby tree in the main HQ. The tree before that was Esteban’s grandmother’s 5 ft plastic tree – that one was free.

Since we’d been celebrating and decorating trees for years and had still yet to pay more than a collective Benjamin, Esteban suggested we invest a bit. Esteban went on a brief trip to Costco to score the one tree they had that would fit under our ceiling — a 7.5 footer. However, once we made room among the yet-to-be-unpacked art boxes in the living room, and he set it up, I was disenchanted. It was a slim drink of water — which is fine and I could grow to like that — but it wiggled and wobbled along the connections between the segments. It was like a Bobblehead tree. I tried to gird my loins to accept this instability, but then did the math and realized that if it was this wibble-wobbly in Year 0, what would it be like in Year 3? Or Year 10?

Back in the box and straight back to Costco, which has a great return policy and easy no-fuss transactions. From there, we went to our local garden center, which is known for being Christmas HQ as soon as the mercury drops below 40 degrees.

They are also known for carrying some of the most bespoke Christmas trees this side of Balsam Hill.

Since Esteban has decided that I’m too precious to set foot inside stores, even masked, but he is not, I sat in the parking lot while he did a Google Hangout and showed me the threes. Since of course I had already scoped out the tree I lusted for, when he came upon it, I said “Yes, that’s the tree I want but it’s soooper expensive” and then he just turned to the lady and said “I’ll take this one.”

I have intense guilt about this purchase, to be honest. The house needs a million dollars of fixing, and we’ve already “splurged” to have gas run to the fireplace and the kitchen so that we can “splurge” again to replace the apartment-grade electric coil stove with our preferred gas range (a splurge that feels less splurge-like by the day, since we’ve now learned that this piece of shit is a whopping 50 degrees off, thanks to a $4 in-oven thermometer we purchased to confirm this suspicion). But then Esteban did the math — I have invested tons of effort into my vintage ornament dragon hoard curated collection. I vastly enjoy setting up the tree, so much so that I am constantly scheming for more tree concepts and placements. And since I refuse to actually spend real money on what has become a seasonal hobby, it’s not like we’ve ever seriously invested in a tree. Plus, we had ditched the last one and we should have a tree that makes us happy.

We stopped at our climate-controlled storage to see if we could reach the ornaments (luckily we could) and were set to rock and roll. Back home, we set it up like one two three — in fact, he had it half together while I stepped into the kitchen to grab a soda. I still had to dig my vintage bubble lights out of their hiding place, but I couldn’t resist opening my vintage ornament trove and putting a few of the non-glass ornaments up. Hi friends, I missed you.

It’s a funny thing to have excitement. I didn’t realize how much the pandemic has robbed us of excitement until that moment. I haven’t been looking forward to anything for so long, but I love Christmas and I love Christmas trees and I love decorating and seeing so many of my vintage treasures that I inherited from my grandmother and my great grandmother. It’s like spending time with family even though we can’t see our families this year. It’s a good feeling.

Ole also declared that the tree was just fine with him.

So, I had an appointment for a boob smash and boob listen I had remembered I had to be there at 7 am today. Cool. Sucky time but cool. Then I got an appointment reminder saying not to forget my appointment at 8 am today — whoops, that was lucky! Man, I would have been unhappy if I got up extra early for a boob smash and boob listen and then had to sit around in the parking lot waiting for it!

So I go today at 7:40 am (be there 20 minutes early they said, and I follow directions!) and they say no, your boob smash was at 7:20. But! My appointment reminder, I say! I got an email! Oh, that was for the boob LISTEN appointment, not the boob smash appointment. You should have gotten a separate email for your boob smash appointment, you probably missed it, so many emails these days, you probably have a lot of spam, etc. But, can I at least get the boob listen done, since that won’t be for another 20 minutes? Oh no, they won’t listen to your boob before your boob gets smashed, so you’re fucked.

I got a rescheduled smash and listen (IN THAT ORDER) and went back home to check my email.

The ultrasound appointment email came a full 15 hours prior to the appointment. The Boob Smash reminder email? Came in at almost 11 pm last night. Less than 9 hours before the appointment and during hours when most people AREN’T CHECKING EMAIL.

The medical care in Las Vegas sucked massive balls but apparently what I need to trade for competence and compassion from my beloved Coldington doctors is a failure to understand the best practices of written communication in this the year of our lord 2020.

My latest publication is up at Jet Fuel Review, so if you like bog bodies, this is gonna be your JAM.

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House Joys

Friday, November 20, 2020

So, we left Las Vegas and bought a house we had never set foot in until the minute we arrived, exhausted by a 1800 mile road trip.

I do not recommend this strategy.

In August, when we were in the midst of packing, I wrote “The house is somewhat of a midcentury wreck — still too much money, to be honest, definitely not a deal by any stretch — but it has fantastic bones and hits many of our requirements neatly. I don’t love it with all of my heart like I did our last house, but I’m awfully fond of it. It’s a bit weird projecting your feelings on something you’ve only seen through pictures — I imagine we’ll feel differently once we get into the house. And if my affection shifts, well, we can always buy another house.”

An understatement, to say the least. The house is not “somewhat” a wreck, it’s an actual maintenance nightmare, mostly in ways that were disguised or not easily noticed during a walk through. For instance, we didn’t learn until we made the offer that it had been rented for at least five years. Apparently the yard was waist-high with weeds until the day before the realtor showed up to take photos. Esteban’s parents carted away three truck beds full of actual garbage that had been just lying out in the backyard in places, including broken pottery and an actual kitchen countertop that had been out there so long that they could actually BEND the wood.

They painted the laundry room but opening the cupboards revealed how bad it had been — luckily we had some paint.

And everything was filthy. Actually filthy. Like, real earnest filth, a fine or sometimes actual crumbling layers of slime and grime over everything. And that was AFTER my mother-in-law had been set loose on the place for two weeks and AFTER I paid for a “move in cleaning” — I don’t even want to think about what it looked like before.

But filth is manageable, right? Nothing that a little elbow grease and sometimes actual Goo Gone and commercial cleaners can’t fix. And if you can’t, well, paint covers a lot. We think they were actually keeping dirty diapers in the laundry room cupboards, for instance — there was an undeniable stench of human waste while scrubbing those.

One of the smartest things we did before we left was hire someone to paint the three bedrooms. At the time, it felt very luxurious, but had I known how absolutely disgusting this place was, I would have picked out more paint colors for more rooms. I don’t even want to think about what the painter covered up, especially looking at the state of the damage on the trim and flooring.

And then there was just the criminal lack of maintenance. Some of the outlets are so old that when you put a plug into the outlet, it falls out because it’s so shot. The furnace didn’t work — and our home inspector apparently heard it turn on but didn’t check to see if it heated. The light fixtures in the bedrooms were so bad that our painter took them down to paint and said “No, I can’t put these back up. I can’t even donate these to Habitat for Humanity — they’re dangerous.” The garage door showed daylight through it. There are storm windows missing. There is significant evidence of past rodent activity in the basement (although nothing fresh, a small miracle). The refrigerator light was out — not burned out, literally missing. The refrigerator was also missing its filter — and maybe no one ever noticed because the water to the ice maker/water dispenser had been turned off due to leaking like a sprinkler in the basement if you don’t have the water for it turned off. That fridge is jammed into the space so tightly that they just cut some of the house trim on the side of the door to make it fit. The stove BLEW OUT the third time we used it — luckily Esteban figured out the issue and chanced that a cheap-ish part would fix it, and it did, but not before we uncovered even more signs of disgusting past occupants and their filth. Every window treatment left behind was stained or broken — we don’t know how many renters this place had previously, but it sounds like there was very high turnover, and maybe it’s because the previous owners were terribly disinterested landlords.

EEEEHCK

What about a home inspection? Yes, that. There was so much to find and report on, it was a bit like chasing cats. The home inspector did find a problem with the electrical that was a dealbreaker, so we wrote it into the close requirements that the owners had to fix that issue — they “fixed” it by also blowing out half of the front of the house, which of course we didn’t discover until we took ownership and then they refuse to pay for the electrical guy to come back and fix his mistakes, so that’s on us now too.

Then there’s the “what the fuck” element of ham-fisted home maintenance. For instance, the beautiful original double doors that I was so in love with? One has been glued or cemented shut. There’s a three-season room off the backyard, but the door into the house? The side of the lock where you put the key is on the INSIDE of the house. The other side of that door seems to have a million random holes punched into it that have been hastily filled with mismatched wood putty, and whatever happened to the door probably happened to the ceiling too, but they didn’t bother trying to fill those holes. The screen door into that porch? The handle is just broken off. Both showers are held up with bungee cords. The tile frame around the main bathroom is falling off, but someone has helpfully slapped brown packing tape across it, the mirror and the wall, as one might a Band-Aid.

And then there’s the “I don’t even want to know” elements. For instance, there’s a fairly new Pergo floor in the kitchen. However, there’s a random hump in the middle of the kitchen where the flooring bows and flexes. And that flooring was installed so sloppily that not only did they not account for the two pocket doors, which now cannot open due to the floor, but they also installed it around the dishwasher, so if this shitty dishwasher (and it’s so shitty! It’s such an old piece of crap that the basket for the silverware had holes in the bottom so it didn’t actually hold silverware) breaks or needs more maintenance, we get to take apart the floor too in order to replace it.

How they made the refrigerator fit in the kitchen.

So far, we’ve replaced the garage door (which looks gorgeous), paid to have the fireplace converted to gas while also having gas run for eventually replacing the stove, replaced all of the exterior light fixtures that are broken or mismatched, fixed the furnace, and started replacing the light fixtures in the bedrooms (which isn’t a big deal, it’s just a question of deciding).

As such, unpacking has been mostly a staggered affair — we still have cupboards in the kitchen, for instance, that need to be cleaned/fixed/repainted before we can load them. Forget about hanging artwork yet, we’re still just trying to get the kitchen in place. We had to buy a heat gun to remove the disgusting dirty Contact Paper glued onto the shelves, which was glued down on top of filthy older Contact Paper. (Like, they didn’t even wipe up the shelf before putting down the paper. WHO DOES THAT.) We ended up buying another leaf blower that could accommodate a gutter cleaner to safely deal with the literal YEARS of detritus in the gutters so that we wouldn’t have ice berms this winter. Normally, we’d just use a ladder, but of course, the ground and yard has been so poorly maintained that you can’t safely use a ladder on several areas around the house. A $50 filter for the fridge (before we figured out the plumbing fiasco) here, a $60 dishwasher silverware basket and a $18 rinse aid toggle there, and then we had to pay the city $95 to replace the city-provided garbage cans because the one left by the former owners had a big fucking crack on the bottom and that’s just a nightmare waiting to happen.

Anyway. That happened.

But we’re glad to be back. And after we have kind of recovered from our disappointment in the shape of the house, we appreciate the good bones, the little delightful details here and there, the original elements that can be absolutely saved and treasured. We’re going all in this time, fixing the stuff that prevent us from being truly happy with our living situation, and trying to mitigate the stuff we can’t, using every ounce of our resilience and creativity.

We wanted a quarantine project. We got one.

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Leaving Las Vegas

Thursday, August 20, 2020

So, here’s what Las Vegas summer is like — blowing hot wind, like standing in front of a hair dryer, or an oven door just opened, a wooof of hot air that just keeps coming — and it never not ever cools down. 330+ days of sunshine, months and months without a rain drop, occasional wind storms that blow dust and Valley fever fungus and every piece of trash out of open garbage cans (some of which flip open because of said hot wind). You can look 300 feet up in the sky and think there are birds circling but then realize it’s a collection of garbage, plastic grocery bags and newspapers and receipts pretending to be seagulls. And have I mentioned the plants or wildlife that wants to sting or destroy you? And first degree burns if you stupidly touch something metal in the afternoon?

TL;DR version: Hot blowing garbage, also scorpions.

Despite all of the easy reasons to hate Vegas, I’m going to really miss it. I’m going to miss taking the dogs out at 2 am and not worrying about putting on something to stave off a chill because it will feel like crawling back under the covers. I’m going to miss flowers in January. I’m going to miss iced coffee and bare legs in November. I’m going to miss drinking with writers on patios in February — huddled around the outdoor heaters but still relatively comfortable. I’m going to miss the indescribably amazing smell of the desert after it rains, and the way that plants that looked beige or disappeared 99% of the time suddenly bloom forth with scarlets and blues and bright neon pinks the second they get a drink. I’m going to miss taco trucks and picanha trucks and arepa trucks. I’m going to miss the pastrami. And the people. I’m going to miss that there’s an actual authentic literary community here. I’m going to miss seeing someone at parties who looks like that one famous writer and it’s actually that one famous writer. I’m going to miss not worrying about wearing makeup to go to the store because no one judges you. I’m going to miss being relaxed about sweat — because it just means your body is working to cool you off. And I’m really going to miss my friends. I’m going to miss our ridiculous adventures. I’m going to miss the delight of going to a bar downtown, where none of us lives, and having each of them randomly walk in, unplanned, because despite being a city of over 2 million, it’s really a series of small concentric circles, thousands of tiny social townships that move through a larger geographical area. It is so many psychological small towns, nestled together and intertwined, but very much unique and distinct.

So.

We found a house.

I used my secret super power and wrote a letter and it worked. It always works — whenever I deploy this emotion missile during home buying, it works. We got our minions in the house about six hours after it went on the market, and then drafted up an offer that evening. Three days later, we went up against six other buyers but the letter is powerful. They had no chance against the siren call of the letter.

The house is somewhat of a midcentury wreck — still too much money, to be honest, definitely not a deal by any stretch — but it has fantastic bones and hits many of our requirements neatly. I don’t love it with all of my heart like I did our last house, but I’m awfully fond of it. It’s a bit weird projecting your feelings on something you’ve only seen through pictures — I imagine we’ll feel differently once we get into the house. And if my affection shifts, well, we can always buy another house.

So now we’re in boxes, as they say in Animal Crossing. I’ve packed up my entire office and much of the master bath and guest room and a whole lot of the kitchen stuff. I’m reluctant to pack the artwork because there’s something really awful about an echo-y house in my brain, but they are next on the list.

We’ve gone round and round on how to manage the move in a pandemic, and at the end of the day, the thing that makes the most sense is to hire one of those moving box things, load it up, and then Esteban and I will drive with the dogs across the country, pulling our bug jalopy on a trailer. The cat will be fetched by my brother-in-law Eric and flown back in the cabin to make life easier on her and reduce our anxiety of losing a cat during a road trip. We will arrive probably days before our belongings show up, and will likely spend that time unloading/moving our storage units there, and doing general “oh, we have a new house” tasks.

To compound the general chaos, I’ve been assigned three classes to teach this fall — two sections of the same 101 course, and then a lit class I’ve never taught before. Then I was assigned a fourth — a section of 102, which meant a third prep — and then they took it away and gave me a third second of the same 101 class, which means I’m back to just two preps again. Since they are all remote courses, and I’m an old hat at teaching online at this point (it’s what I used to do as a part-time adjunct before I decided to get my PhD), I’m not fretting too much, although I do worry that I’ll repeat myself or get lost in the thread and miss telling one of those sections something really important because I’ve got pandemic brain (as do we all).

But until then, one task at a time, the next thing and then the next thing after that. That’s all we can do. That’s all any of us can do.

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The definition of insanity

Monday, June 15, 2020

The housing market in Wisconsin is bonkers right now. No, seriously, it’s bonkers. We are seeing houses that sold in fall of last year going for 200% what they sold for just 9 months ago. We found a house that sold three months ago now back on the market, no changes, no improvements, asking 45% more — can you imagine making an investment with a 45% return that is legal?

And the worst part is that the asking price? In a regular real estate market, most of the time the asking price is the top price — meaning they’re starting out with a number that they would LOVE to see. It’s optimistic. However, right now? The asking price is the opening bid — and houses that go on the market on a Friday have an announcement that you need to get your best offer in because they’ll be making a decision on Tuesday and there are no second chances.

We’ve now been outbid on four different houses in rapid succession. Each one we offered asking price plus closing costs. Each one had several competing offers and ours was typically the lowest, often by more than 10%. Each time has been an excruciating mental exercise that falls flat on its face.

The chagrin is that we know this is a real estate bubble — we KNOW that it’s going to pop, so all of those houses are going to be rapidly deflating back to their more usual Green Bay pricing. A friend who works in the industry said that all of his clients corporations were freeing up cash reserves, preparing to make a killing when the bottom falls out in the third and fourth quarter. Another friend’s financial advisor told her to rent something for a few months, or even house sit, until the market flips, because it will, and it will be legendary.

All of these realities are intellectual — we know there’s nothing we can do, and we know that, as expensive as it is to live in Las Vegas, it is financially smarter than paying even ten grand more for a house than had we waited just a bit longer. And the numbers we’re crunching — it’s not just ten grand. More like a hundred grand.

As with all things, your bank account rarely shouts louder than your heart. Knowing we’ve been able to GTFO really since April when it became clear that I no longer physically had to be in Vegas? It hurts. It stings. It’s like a scorpion zap to the brain. And of course, with the pandemic, it’s not even like we can ENJOY what Vegas has to offer. There are no seafood towers at Bouchon. There are no fun ethnic markets to explore. There are no weird little desert towns to check out on the weekends. There is just the inside of this house and our tiny postage stamp back patio and bit of gravel that subs in for a yard.

And the worst part? Everyone wants us to move back to Wisconsin. “This is why you need to move back to Wisconsin,” they say, and point out whatever reason that Vegas is a human hellscape. Text messages. Marco Polos. Emails. Chats. Facebook messages. My mother’s annual phone call for my birthday started with “Happy birthday! When are you moving back?”

Friends, we know. WE KNOW.

And it feels like I’m constantly rebuffing friendly helpful suggestions, but the truth is, we’ve thought of them already. Yes, we’ve looked at houses thirty miles away — it’s the same problem. Yes, we’ve looked into buying a house “for now” and selling it later or becoming a landlord in the future — it’s still the same problem of overpriced housing on a smaller scale. Yes, we’ve looked into renting a house for now. Not only are there very few places available right now (because landlords are seeing the market on fire and are putting their investment properties ON THE MARKET) but what’s left are shithole houses that aren’t what we need or even can live with, and again it comes down to making a stupid spend with our cash — for instance, most don’t allow pets, or only allow cats or only two pets. Well, we have three pets, and for those who allow three pets, those landlords are currently asking a $2K “fee” for pets (no, not a deposit, a FEE to have your pet walk through the door, regardless of whether they shed or anything else) plus additional rent on top of that, none of which you ever get back. Yes, we’ve looked into buying vacation property and living with it for now (that was the house on the riverfront that we got outbid on) then using it as a second home later. Anything you can suggest, we have thought about it, done the mental labor and research, and it doesn’t work. IT DOESN’T WORK.

I know that these suggestions come from a good place of trying to help — please understand that I have explored EVERYTHING. You know me, right? You know that if there’s an obstacle, I’ve already come up with like seventeen potential strategies to get around that obstacle? Trust me when I say, we literally have explored every option. We’re smart people. We’re clever. We aren’t afraid to throw money at a problem if the probably is worth the cost of admission. And this problem is absolutely making us both physically sick. Making jokes about this move or prodding us to work faster is not funny. It’s honestly really stressful.

The expectation is that it’s not happening until the end of the year. So unless you know of a secret midcentury modern house that isn’t going on the MLS and a sweet original owner just wants it to go to a nice couple who won’t cut down the acres of hundred year old oaks and maples, please ask me about anything other than when we’re moving back. But when we know, you’ll be the first to know, I promise. I promise.

I started teaching a remote section last week — it’s kind of nice because my name was put on the section kind of late, for complicated academia reasons, and as such, the class is only at about 80%, which doesn’t seem like a huge underfill, but every class I’ve taught in the last three years has been full to the brim, with students begging to get in above enrollment caps. In fact, I typically have one unofficial auditor in the wings too.

I’ve been recording video lectures for them and putting together a lot of recordings for them to download and listen to while driving to work, exercising, folding laundry or whatever. I have no idea if it’s valuable to them, because they never talk to me or react other than doing their assignments. Hopefully that will change this week, as I recorded this week’s lecture and, while encouraging them to not do a research paper on a serious, scholarly subject but rather do something that is nerdy and fun to argue, I revealed something I’ve never shared publiclly.

Here’s the thing: English 102 research papers barely count for anything. It’s teaching you how to write a research paper, how to build and support an argument and how to do citations using academic genre and rhetoric conventions. It can be kind of dry stuff. But sure, you could write about something super impressive-sounding and try to cure the ills of the planet — like tackling income inequality or pollution, but hey, you think you can do that in under 5000 words? BE MY GUEST. I’d wager that you can’t, though, and that will weaken the paper. So, fine, maybe you narrow it down — maybe you look at the income disparity between the CEO of a specific hotel chain and its janitorial staff. Maybe you argue a way to reduce garbage on a college campus through installing hydration stations and eliminating plastic water bottles. Cool. Cool. Also, zzzzzzzzzz boring.

I mean, if you’re going to spend your entire rest of your college career writing that serious stuff, why not write something fun in this class that only matters because it’s teaching you the form? Why not argue that Ross and Rachael really weren’t on a break? Why not build the case that Tony Soprano didn’t die in the series finale? What about an entire paper about how Rose was underserved and misrepresented in the most recent Star Wars saga? Or prove that food that is cut in triangles tastes better than food cut into squares? Or that cats are the best pet? SOMETHING ELSE! SOMETHING FUN!

Also, even at 80% capacity, I don’t think I have it in me to slog through 20 papers about whether face masks are effective barriers against COVID-19.

So in the course of my adlib lecture, I talked about how my own major is English with an emphasis in American literature after 1950 and narratology, but I also really like real estate. And I like local history. And I also really like true crime as it relates to that local history. So if I were to spend four weeks researching that, it wouldn’t even be a chore. In fact, I revealed, I have done exactly that — and have spent hundreds of hours building a murder map of Green Bay, detailing the location, year and homicide details of every murder I can find, going back to the city’s first documented murder in 1871 (which incidentally happened on the very block where I used to live during my senior year in high school, when I met Esteban).

My murder map secret is out. Here you go. Enjoy.

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I don’t like the looks of you

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Today, I suffered through Ricky Gervais as a guest DJ on the David Bowie dedicated radio station on Sirius XM. As he spoke, I realized that he reminded me of a coworker, who was a bit of an asshole — and that made sense because Ricky Gervais is a terrific mean person. In fact, I’d argue that he’s downright cruel. But before I ever knew that about him, I instantly disliked him. And the only reason I could give is “there’s just something about him.”

Psychologist Paul Ekman has done a lifetime of research in recognizing and reading microexpressions and how they can be, quite honestly, super false based on many known and unknown underlying biases. Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote an entire giant book about the “thin-slicing” or “thinking without thinking” we do instantly, that then inspired its own critical response book by Michael LeGault that urged people to not give in to “magical thinking” and abandon critical reasoning skills.

I’m a big fan of critical reasoning and attacking problems logically. And yet, every asshole I’ve ever met has rubbed me the wrong way from the first glance. Somehow at a very visceral level, I’ve known that they were not good people. And that instant read? It honestly has not been wrong yet.

Here’s the thing — my brain gets in the way so often. I want to believe in the genuine good hearts of people. So I talk myself out of my instant immediate dislike — maybe a good friend whose judgment I trust has known them forever. Maybe they are insanely good at something they do and I love whatever it is they do, so I let my love of their work override my internal barometer. Maybe there’s just not a good reason to dislike them — they’ve never done anything mean to me, for instance, or anyone I knew. Or they have done the opposite — been extremely kind and thoughtful and generous to me, which causes me to seriously doubt my instant read. Basically, these people have their own instincts of self-preservation and adopt based on my own reinforcement or lack thereof and then it’s just a bake off to find out who is better at faking the other one out.

And this is not to say that I’m not friends with assholes — some of my favorite people in this world are actually terrific stinky assholes! There’s a difference, though, between the asshole who is open about their gaping anus qualities, and the asshole who wants a kiss on the lips except really it’s a rim job.

Esteban is always telling me that I am too harsh on people, which is really funny to me because if anything, I feel like I’m an overeager puppy when I meet someone I like. And when I like someone? They are under my umbrella of protection — I will stick up for them probably far more than I reasonably should.

I think back to at least five of the last major assholes I’ve met — people who have raised my blood pressure with how terrible they were. These are people I talked myself out of my usual reticence. People who actually made me feel guilty about being so stand-offish and then I actually leaned in to be extra generous, open and supportive to them. Each one of them ended up revealing themselves to be a massive viper and each showed their colors the moment that they weren’t getting what they wanted or needed out of me anymore.

The asshole modus operandi seems to be this inclusive act — “Oh, I’m only like this with OTHER people, never with you, you’re in on the joke, aren’t we wicked” kind of schtick. I fall for it every time — even though I know better. I KNOW better! I’ve heard some of these people say truly terrible awful things in my confidence and when I call them on it, they always say the same thing “Oh, it’s just a joke! I’m only kidding.” But they aren’t kidding. They are never kidding. And by the time I hear this most obvious tell, I’ve usually already ignored about 800 other signs to GTFO.

And I shouldn’t be surprised that I’ve picked up this telepathy skill. Throughout my entire life I’ve been bullied and targeted and the victim of supreme righteous assholes. I’ve learned to detect them, my soul acting as a dowsing rod for cruelty. It knows. It always knows.

And Ricky Gervais? Definitely not a good person. I don’t care how much he gives to charity or how he cares for his aging pets or any number of kind things he has done for orphans or refugees or old women who needed to be helped across the street. And if you like him? Cool. I’m glad he has some fans. I don’t wish him ill, really — there’s just, as they say, something about him.

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Forget yourself

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Saturday was the day I was supposed to get hooded.

(That’s a weird verb, right? Hooded? It sounds very violent or maybe racist, but really it’s the thing they do for PhDs — I guess it’s very Merlin-y? )

Our original plans were to have family in from out of town — a thing that I have been planning and plotting with my sister for literally years now. The entire thing was overwrought — I didn’t want a million people staying with us and also my family — as does everyone’s family — generally brings a lot of nonphysical baggage. I am still carrying some bitterness that my mother couldn’t be arsed to come to my graduation ceremony when I got my masters, and that was only two hours away, so I was flummoxed by a series of vertical emotional peaks and valleys about the new parameters of what excuses or requirements she would maintain for my graduation when it was 1800 miles away.

When I got into the program originally — a pretty big deal to get a full ride scholarship and job in a PhD program — she blew it off and purposefully kept saying “moving to Arizona or wherever” and then when we put the house on the market, she announced that I was not really serious, and then when we gave away our living room furniture a week before we left, she said “So you’re still going to move?” and then the night before the moving truck arrived she said with a straight face “I thought you were just making this all up to get attention.” Dear Reader, you may remember that this was also the line when I got accepted and funding to go to college in the first place as an 18-year-old, except that time my entire family believed her.

When I passed my comps, I gritted my teeth and called her — she already knew about it because my sister had told her, so she primed me to tell her what she called “your news” and when I said “Oh, I successfully defended my comp exams.” She was silent, so I continued, “So I’m a doctor now.” And she said “Oh. (a beat) Well. (a sigh) I always thought you should have been a lawyer.”

I challenged her on it, without seeming to react, by saying “Oh? Why did you think that?” but inside I was thinking “Oh here we fucking go.” And that has been a good mantra for dealing with a family member with a serious personality disorder — oh here we fucking go. The flipside to the negging is that somehow she seemed to think that we would be flying her out for my graduation — apparently if I had wanted an audience with her for my last graduation, I should have booked a limo to make it interesting for her. Or maybe she thinks that “fully funded” means that I have been granted an AmEx black card for the interim. She kept talking about how she “gets” to go to Las Vegas now, but of course, nothing about how that was going to happen. And for normal people, the assumption is that she would pull out her savings and book a ticket, but that’s not how she works — and my sister began managing her (my sister performs the lion’s share of Mother Maintenance, because she is the Golden Child, whereas I am the Scapegoat or Competition in recovery parlance) and making plans, reminding her that she needed to save money for tickets for her, her partner and maybe my brother if he planned on going. Then she agreed to pay for our mom’s hotel room — because it wouldn’t matter if her partner and my brother went along, they could all share a hotel room. Then when it got closer, she was going to pay for her flight too, but not the partner and our brother’s flights, and then apparently our mother started in on how it wasn’t fair to them that she “got to go” and they didn’t and how she wanted to “find a way” for them to go along too, and the entire thing was handled off stage expertly by my sister because honestly, I was so stressed in the first part of the year for my comps and my dissertation that I just couldn’t take part in the drama and the exasperation, other than to occasionally offer my sister pre-packed retorts and arguments to pop our mother’s various dependencies about how and why and when our mother would allow herself to be hosted, with the inclusion of her flying monkeys other family members.

(Heh. Lawyered.)

On my side, I was securing a hotel that was reasonably priced but not too far from the ceremonies but also not too close to the ceremonies because that’s basically the Strip and resort fee-land, and figuring out details for what to do with them, how to entertain, etc. The hotel groups were readied, the loose plan was set in motion (Neon Museum and a local restaurant meal as a group one day, reserve chairs at the MGM Grand pool another day) and everything was more or less settled, but when it came time for my sister to buy the tickets in late February, I told her to hold off. I was already getting the heebies about the pandemic numbers I was seeing and was prepared to just have them watch via streaming. And then, as we know, all plans for spring 2020 came shattering down.

So instead, on Saturday, Esteban and I hung out at home (because that’s what everyone has to do to stay safe now, nothing new to see, move along move along.) Since we wanted to do something a little special, we smoked a brisket in the backyard, and Esteban also opened the day with homemade biscuits and turkey sausage gravy (which is one of my favorite things — his biscuits are ridonk delicious). He continued the feast day with flourless brownies, two loaves of bread, and the mother of all big deals, Colicchio’s Parker House rolls, which are one of my favorite indulgent baked items. Esteban is loathe to make them because they don’t have a satisfying rise, make an incredibly stingy amount and are super fussy, taking a terribly long time to come together, but they are weirdly sour, ultra fine crumb and perfection both out of the oven and the next day slathered with some peanut butter and I love them to bits.

We spent the day tending the grill and then finally ate around 8 pm because the brisket took a month of Sundays to cook. I had offered my friend Amanda some brisket but warned her that it would be late, but she dutifully drove across town to do a cover-of-darkness social distancing pickup of a huge pile of brisket, a fresh loaf of bread and some homemade sauerkraut to boot. She reported that she and her husband ate far more brisket than they should have before bed and regretted nothing. Girl, same.

On Sunday, Esteban and I continued our habit of doing the NYTimes Sunday Crossword Puzzle together on the sofa while drinking coffee, although I think my anxiety started ramping up and I needed to get away from it for a while. He had his distance D&D and I started packing a few things to burn off some nervous energy. It was exceptionally hot on Sunday, so I couldn’t take the dogs outside from long stretches, which is usually my favorite thing to do when I’m feeling overwhelmed, so instead, I glowered and did a series of mounting doom scenarios, which as it turns out doesn’t work great as a stress management technique.

The other element of Sunday is that an agent sent a response to my full manuscript. While she did not yet extend an offer of representation, the feedback was exhaustive and thoughtful and she said she enjoyed it but also that a novel about a pandemic is going to be a tough proposition right now for obvious reasons. Ugh. A bit disheartening on top of a dismal offering of houses on the market in Wisconsin and the bait and switch of what should have been a huge celebration weekend coming to a wet fizzle and plop.

Monday was somewhat better — the heat had broken significantly, so I got to spend some time outside on the back patio in my outside work area (a rolling laptop cart, one of those bag chairs, and an outdoor ottoman paired with a cold drink and a few yard lizards will do amazing things to your optimism). I had an hour long talk with one of my (now former) students about her work and her goals and all in all felt really like it was a positive, productive day.

This week Esteban was supposed to be in China but of course, that didn’t happen, so the Chinese company hosting the event decided to have an online affair instead. Great! Except all the events are happening in the wee dark hours of the morning — and apparently the company spends a lot of time barely hiding its anger at the U.S. government (to be fair, there are more than just Americans on these calls, but still, read the room) so Esteban has been managing his artificial jet lag while also dealing with his normal job demands that don’t stop just because he has an event. All in all, he can’t really complain because, as he said, he’d do this every time if it meant that he didn’t have to fly to China and back.

Today, I had a WebEx call with the few TAs who have been invited to teach sections this summer. I’m glad I asked for a section since my Big Tech Giant project seems to have ghosted and this is the only guaranteed income I have lined up for the time being. It was nice to see the faces of people from school.

It was even nice to see the annoying ones.

#Bixquestions: Who was the most annoying coworker you’ve had to deal with? What made them so annoying?

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Itching to go

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Sometime two days ago, my lips started feeling weird.

They do that sometimes. Typically if I’ve eaten something I’m allergic to, but also if I put something on my face that causes a reaction.

I know I haven’t accidentally eaten something I’m allergic to because I haven’t left the house in two weeks. Which leaves the small tube of Kate Sommerville sunscreen/lotion that I applied two mornings ago as the culprit. It was one of those little tubs that you get as a sample — I’ve been trying to kill all of the bathroom clutter before buying new stuff to replace what I’m out of, which means that I’m venturing into unusual territory. I know I’m allergic to certain sunscreen ingredients, but for some reason I rationalized that Ms. Sommerville would have used barrier ingredients, even though it literally said Broad Spectrum right on it, which is code for “has both barrier and chemical sunscreen ingredients.” Unfortunately, because it was a sample size, the ingredients weren’t listed and I couldn’t be arsed to go into my office and Google it, so gooped away like an idiot.

I spent an entire day applying Blistex to my lips, but then the itching started to spread to my face. I knew I had a hive situation going on, so I popped a Benedryl and went to bed. The next morning, I couldn’t see out of one eye and my entire face was itching, plus it had spread to my torso. My histamines were clearly out of control.

I remembered that our insurance provider offers a video doctor service, so without even brushing my hair, I went to the computer and checked. One of the perks of living in the West Coast is that you can do stuff very early, so by 7 am, I had already gone through the paperwork and was talking to a doctor who spent an entire 3 minutes talking to me and then prescribing various ointments and pills and then signed off. Then I had to wait two hours for the pharmacy to open, which was probably the most annoying. I didn’t want to drink coffee, knowing that I was going to start prednisone as soon as I got my prescription in my itchy little hand, so I was mostly trying to mitigate my own shit monkey brain for two hours.

It turns out that when you’ve been spending the last two months trying to distract yourself from the awful state of All This, you have a tough time trying to find something distracting that you aren’t sick of doing.

Esteban and I headed out to the pharmacy and found it closed, but he wasn’t able to wait until it opened, so we went back, dropped him off at the house, and I went back to the pharmacy, intending to sit by the drive through until it opened. However, I knew I couldn’t take prednisone on an empty stomach, so I broke my quarantine rule and swung through a McDonald’s drive through for a vegetarian Egg McMuffin and a Diet Coke. While coffee and prednisone makes my stomach turn into a sour asshole of an organ, Diet Coke doesn’t seem to fight as much with prednisone. By the time I got through McDonald’s, there was a fairly long line at the pharmacy, so I sat there and sipped my DC, ate part of the McMuffin (which is gross overall but I ate enough so that my stomach wasn’t entirely empty and threw the rest out) and finally got everything. I didn’t want to deal with giving this new pharmacy our insurance stuff unless the cost was egregious. I figured that it would be $10. Wrong, it was $68, but I just paid it because I was too annoyed by everything to deal with putting my phone into the tube, sending it to the pharmacist, having to deal with the fact that they’d have to have my phone code to see the card, wait for them to run the insurance, etc. I consider this my $68 fee for being stupid about putting sunscreen of unknown provenance on my angel baby sensitive skin. I should know better, and yet I keep confirming otherwise.

Once I got home, I started feeling dull and groggy — either a mix of the meds, the fact that I barely slept all night due to the irritation and heat on my skin, or just the lack of my typical morning rocket fuel lattes. I was supposed to have a meeting for Tech Giant Project, and we also had made a plan for my hair stylist to drop off hair goop and Esteban was going to color my hair, but since I had so much skin irritation on my face, my scalp was undoubtedly also going to be sensitive. I begged off both appointments and rescheduled them.

Then, because everything happens at once, on Monday we had put an offer in on a house in Green Bay. The housing market there continues to be insane, with people scooping up houses the instant they drop on the market, and we knew that people had been walking in and out of that house all day on Monday. It wasn’t the perfect house but it ticked many boxes and was certainly a place we could be happy for now. I wrote a letter to the owners telling them how much we loved the house and why we were picking it.

The offer came back on Tuesday saying “we really want to sell you this house but there are other bids, can you come up significantly?” Our realtor said that it never happens like that, where the other team actually tells you exactly what you need to bid or even reaches out to someone who was too low when they had other better offers, so the letter was certainly the delta. Ultimately, we had offered slightly more than asking price already, and the asking price was well above property value, so we agreed that it was pushing too far out of our comfort zone in terms of what made sense as an investment. So in the midst of my antihistamine haze we let it go.

It feels a little conflicting — and I think much of that is because it’s an exit strategy within our grasp. So much of this ennui has been based in uncertainty. People keep asking what our plans are, when are we moving, when can they fly out to help, etc, and we know that they are doing so because of they care about us, but it’s stressful to come up with an answer. We don’t know. We don’t know. We don’t know. It’s one of the least satisfying mantras there is.

I ordered moving boxes and supplies — apparently they have free shipping if you spend more than $50. The need to actually go to Uhaul and pick up boxes was one of the biggest things that was stressing me out, so I was relieved that I could just pick everything online and they’d take care of it all. Once I get my dissertation fully submitted through the various academic regulatory processes (you’d think it would be easy after the committee said you’re a doctor, but guess what, it’s a constant parade of formatting and form submissions after that), when I’m not working on this project for Tech Giant Blog, I’m going to focus on packing. We learned from the last move that we’re not the best without the military precision of Ward and June, so I’m going to attack this next step with a new mantra instead of “I don’t know”.

Now it will be “What Would June Do?”

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