Good morning. Hello. How are you? #655
Continued aftermath processing. And some boring normal life stuff.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am okay. Feeling a bit better today, because one cannot live in abject horror constantly, even though one is convinced abject horror is constantly merited. So I’ll just revert back to the constant guilt of living a life and trying to achieve normality after such horror, but do it anyway for my child. I did write yesterday, but it was a jumbled mess of despair, and it was late, and it seemed uniquely unkind to send that to your inbox on such an awful day. Who needs me being very visibly sad in your inbox when we’re all already very sad. It’s definitely a different sort of consideration, ever since GMHHAY has turned into an email instead of a Facebook post. Back then, I was posting Very Sad Things onto a website, and you might then stumble across the Very Sad Things. That is a very different dynamic than me sending Very Bad Things straight to you, for you to read first thing in the morning. Who needs that. Normally, in my writing to you as well as in reality, I like to temper my Very Sad Things with a bit of hope or an action that we can do, but yesterday I did not have a lot of hope with which to temper things.
(I still think you should vote in the midterms, though. I still believe that if every liberal, progressive and Democrat person out there voted in the mid-terms we could find our way out of this mess. I believe that there’s a non-zero chance of us gaining two senate seats, which would end Manchin’s reign of tyranny (yesterday he said he would do “anything” to ease parents suffering. Except he won’t, you know, stop blocking any law that might end parents’ suffering). Would it take a while? Yes. Is it definite? No. Does it feel good? No. Is it still the right thing to do? Absolutely. You don’t have to be uncool and babble about it to your friends. You don’t have to spend hours of your life obsessing over 538 and Ballotpedia and RealClear Politics. You just… gotta vote in the midterms. Even in blue states. Especially in blue states. Vote for the people that are going to do something.)
(In any case, if you are certain that some very sad, bad writing about Uvalde and mass shootings is something that you want to read, yesterday’s entry is here. But I do not recommend this course of action.)
One thing I didn’t really say coherently yesterday but I am thinking about constantly is the link between public education and mass shootings. Like… I get that mass shooters target schools because they are sick and they want to inflict maximum emotional damage, or they want maximum attention, or maybe some even more malevolent cocktail of urgings to do harm to society. Well, actually, I don’t really get why mass shooters target schools. But I am fairly sure their reasons don’t have anything to do with Republicans’ ceaseless, unrelenting assault on the public education system. It sure feels like the two are linked, though. Because my first thought, every time, of course, is how can I protect my child? And I immediately think I need to keep her out of public schools. Which is weird because mass shootings can happen anywhere, but they don’t, really. I mean, they do, but not like they do in schools, and in any case, literally everywhere else she might physically be, save for home and school, she is there a lot less. I gotta admit we’ve been seriously considering home schooling already, but damn if these episodes don’t make me double-down on that line of thinking.
But then I get so pissed off because I believe deeply in public schooling. And I know that half the reason I’m even considering home schooling is because of the Republicans’ ceaseless, unrelenting assault on the public education system, and that pisses me off so much.
And then the two start to combine in my head in very dark ways. Like maybe this is why Republicans are okay with mass shootings in school. Because they want public schools to die anyway. Because they know they’re less likely to have their kids in public schools.
I won’t go so far as to say that any of them are consciously, actively thinking that, but man, it sure feels that way. And I’m pretty sure that it’s at least in the subconscious of some of them.
Anyway.
Onward. Here we are still in Salem. I had an intense day of meetings yesterday, and have another one today. I knew this going into the trip: I would be working here, and I had work to do. I still think it’s absolutely great, being able to go on walks to the ocean on my lunch breaks, evening constitutionals around the Salem Commons in the evening. I get to see Annie and Bill. It would have been nice, though, to have all the days off. See Annie every day. Go on longer walks. But that was never a realistic option, the meetings are the kind of meetings I would have had to take even if it were a vacation day, so better to not waste the vacation day.
On Tuesday night four friends drove up from Boston and we had a lovely time on an outdoor patio at a gothy tiki bar I mean that is like a great situation. I saw friends and hugged them and talked about nerd things in real life human form instead of on a group text or a Zoom. Emma and I are still swapping bedtimes, and so it’s been sort of an open question, absent a babysitter, how we are both going to see friends. So on Tuesday it was her shift for bedtime, and I saw the friends at the tiki bar, then around 9:30 or 10, we all walked over to our house and Emma came out and I went inside to go to bed and they all went out some more and it worked kind of fantastically? So, you know, couple options: babysitter for the big things like the birthday party and the Mike Gill memorial celebration. On my off nights, I can go out, or if we both want to go out some night, we can swap halfway through the night, which is kind of hilarious really. I like it. In any case, it seemed to work well, as I am old and can’t stay out late anyway, and whether I go out or not, I still gotta be up early in the morning to get Jane out of bed.
Tomorrow I am driving up to Portland to see friends and their various establishments for procuring various types of beverages, and that is very exciting. A) road trip, B) fiends, C) Portland is a great little town and I haven’t been there in ages. I guess that means there will be no GMHHAY on Friday, huh. Maaaaaybe. I gotta get out of here by 8AM. I have been waking up earlier, like 6:30, so I guess it’s not inconceivable, but if I don’t write tomorrow, that’s what’s going on.
I forgot to set up Quicken on this computer, which is harshing with my morning routine, but also is a bummer because I am not tagging my transactions every day, which means that when I get home I will have to tag three weeks of transactions, which is probably good because, you know, stare it in the face, how much this trip cost you. But also it is going to be insanely tedious and also I would prefer not to immediately feel guilty about the vacation I just took. I honestly thought that Quicken was a cloud-based app. I thought I was using a native Mac app, but my data was stored in the cloud. But this does not seem to be the case. I’m not even sure where it is stored. At the very least, I gotta get this shit over to my dropbox so it is getting backed up. I mean, my computer is backed up to Time Machine and…Oh, huh I bet I could get my quicken transactions from Backblaze. I will work on that today. In my infinite free time between five meetings. Oh wow that really would be a boon.
Great word, boon.
Tomorrow is the premiere of Obi Wan and I am very excited they really better not fuck this up. Book of Boba Fett delivered in the end, but barely and they should be doing better than that. It does not help my confidence that just as they are premiering a show centered around a character from the original trilogy who had been re-cast, that Kathleen Kennedy is going around saying that they think re-casting OT characters is a mistake. That made me very sad that she said that. Boushard offered wise counsel on the topic telling me that, you know, passing comment, not to be taken too literally, maybe more specific to Solo, they can’t just say they did a bad job re-casting Solo they have to pretend it’s something else, etc. And okay, that’s all true, I am going in with an open mind here but that just seems a very rude thing to say right as Ewan and Hayden are kicking off this thing.
But, then, we are all human and we stick our feet in our mouth and blurt things out, even presidents and even Presidents of Lucasfilm.
Okay let’s get through the day. Once I get through the day I have four days off. I am excited for Portland, excited to get to Boston, excited for a bedroom (hopefully, fingers crossed) that has actual shades so I don’t get worken up with the sun. That would be nice.
Jane is awake I can hear her cooing. I’m not supposed to get her out of bed for another hour and fifteen but that seems.. unlikely. Also it is very hard to do mixes here. I did manage to listen to a bunch of new records this week: new Craig Finn, new mxmtoon, new Spice (oh man the new Spice is so good). But I am not doing that five straight hours a day of listening to stuff like I am at home, while working, so it’s hard to just keep all the playlists growing. So I am making them on the fly right before I post them, mostly. Which is never as good. Except today’s. Today’s is awesome.