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Blocked Things....
Aug. 21st, 2017 03:12 pm1) Writer's Block.
I last posted here last Sunday. There's been plenty to say since then; I just haven't found the words to say it all with until now. Somehow, today's events brought some clarity even as the sun has been slowly going obscura all across America on a live feed.
The important part first: we're fine. For the past week, we've been closer to capital-F Fine than we've been in quite some time. But getting there was a long, strange trip.
( Some detail )
It was a sobering (see what I did there?) and terrifying experience, yet it had to happen one way or another. We'd drifted onto the fuzzy, dangerous line of self-medicating to deal with both physical pain and other life stresses, and rather than working on solving the underlying problems with those, we wound up taking things out on each other. Since this happened and we came out of it okay, I've had any number of moments where some Stupid Little Thing would've gotten me angry, or down on myself, and instead I just said, meh. (Okay, I might have cursed once or twice before the meh, but it didn't escalate from there.) And last Monday, when I was at my lowest watching and worrying about whether Eleanor would be okay? I still had to go to court and get back to work when that was done, and the court appearances and my half-day of work either side of it were among the best I've had in quite some time.
Since then, we've had any number of good experiences. I followed through on two of the new pieces of business that I picked up that Monday, and finally got My Last Real Estate Deal Ever, Promise over its biggest obstacle. Eleanor went back to her foot doctor and is scheduled to have bone spurs removed from both feet in October. We tracked down and watched an absolutely goofy movie that a friend recommended to us. She had good experiences with people at work and in her religious practice. We replaced, and I just received the replacement of, the digital camera she's done so much good work with.
And then the sun went out.
2) Sunblock.
No, I never saw a thing outside here- but I followed the moon's coming and going across the face of the sun through the NASA livestream, from Oregon to Idaho to Kentucky in the past hour or so. I have friends and co-workers who traveled hundreds of miles to get into the "totality zone" for those few precious minutes.
Meanwhile, for whatever reason or no reason, it's again been a very good Monday. Emily texted us early this afternoon to tell us she's already been promoted at work after just around three months- to executive assistant for her chapter's CEO. I sent her a congratulations, but was able to send even more than that, because my previous text of the day was from the producers of Hamilton. I've been on their ticket-update email list for ages. Unfortunately, the scalpers are on that list, too, and every time I've tried to get in on the first day of a new block opening up, there were only $3,000 resale seats available. To combat this, they tried a new method this time: verifying the individual requestor's mobile number on Saturday for a presale today. I just got in under the wire to register, and apparently the scalpers couldn't buy enough burner phones in time, because amazingly this morning, I got a code, and next thing I knew I had two seats for this coming March in The Room Where It Happens:)
I offered them both to Em and Cameron; if he can't go, I'll take the kid myself; it's a matinee this time, so we'll plan it for a stayover after the show, to be sure of getting on the train home the next day.
So all in all, it's been pretty good, as general and local apocalypses go. Not that I'm encouraging them, but I am encouraged that good things have still been happening.
3) Blocking Nazis.
The intervening week also brought plenty of developments in the division and healing of our nation after the previous weekend's events in Charlottesville. I don't discount how much the anger and frustration from that situation might have fed into both of our states of mind at the end of that weekend- but since then, we've witnessed near universal condemnation of the supremacists, and of the Cheeto who virtually remained the only one not to condemn them completely and consistently. We saw one of the white supremacists shown the door of the White House. And we cheered as the good people of Boston outnumbered and outshamed this past weekend's contingent of white supremacists to the point of rendering them irrelevant- with no violence to speak of. After such a showing of hate, it was good to see love winning again.
I last posted here last Sunday. There's been plenty to say since then; I just haven't found the words to say it all with until now. Somehow, today's events brought some clarity even as the sun has been slowly going obscura all across America on a live feed.
The important part first: we're fine. For the past week, we've been closer to capital-F Fine than we've been in quite some time. But getting there was a long, strange trip.
( Some detail )
It was a sobering (see what I did there?) and terrifying experience, yet it had to happen one way or another. We'd drifted onto the fuzzy, dangerous line of self-medicating to deal with both physical pain and other life stresses, and rather than working on solving the underlying problems with those, we wound up taking things out on each other. Since this happened and we came out of it okay, I've had any number of moments where some Stupid Little Thing would've gotten me angry, or down on myself, and instead I just said, meh. (Okay, I might have cursed once or twice before the meh, but it didn't escalate from there.) And last Monday, when I was at my lowest watching and worrying about whether Eleanor would be okay? I still had to go to court and get back to work when that was done, and the court appearances and my half-day of work either side of it were among the best I've had in quite some time.
Since then, we've had any number of good experiences. I followed through on two of the new pieces of business that I picked up that Monday, and finally got My Last Real Estate Deal Ever, Promise over its biggest obstacle. Eleanor went back to her foot doctor and is scheduled to have bone spurs removed from both feet in October. We tracked down and watched an absolutely goofy movie that a friend recommended to us. She had good experiences with people at work and in her religious practice. We replaced, and I just received the replacement of, the digital camera she's done so much good work with.
And then the sun went out.
2) Sunblock.
No, I never saw a thing outside here- but I followed the moon's coming and going across the face of the sun through the NASA livestream, from Oregon to Idaho to Kentucky in the past hour or so. I have friends and co-workers who traveled hundreds of miles to get into the "totality zone" for those few precious minutes.
Meanwhile, for whatever reason or no reason, it's again been a very good Monday. Emily texted us early this afternoon to tell us she's already been promoted at work after just around three months- to executive assistant for her chapter's CEO. I sent her a congratulations, but was able to send even more than that, because my previous text of the day was from the producers of Hamilton. I've been on their ticket-update email list for ages. Unfortunately, the scalpers are on that list, too, and every time I've tried to get in on the first day of a new block opening up, there were only $3,000 resale seats available. To combat this, they tried a new method this time: verifying the individual requestor's mobile number on Saturday for a presale today. I just got in under the wire to register, and apparently the scalpers couldn't buy enough burner phones in time, because amazingly this morning, I got a code, and next thing I knew I had two seats for this coming March in The Room Where It Happens:)
I offered them both to Em and Cameron; if he can't go, I'll take the kid myself; it's a matinee this time, so we'll plan it for a stayover after the show, to be sure of getting on the train home the next day.
So all in all, it's been pretty good, as general and local apocalypses go. Not that I'm encouraging them, but I am encouraged that good things have still been happening.
3) Blocking Nazis.
The intervening week also brought plenty of developments in the division and healing of our nation after the previous weekend's events in Charlottesville. I don't discount how much the anger and frustration from that situation might have fed into both of our states of mind at the end of that weekend- but since then, we've witnessed near universal condemnation of the supremacists, and of the Cheeto who virtually remained the only one not to condemn them completely and consistently. We saw one of the white supremacists shown the door of the White House. And we cheered as the good people of Boston outnumbered and outshamed this past weekend's contingent of white supremacists to the point of rendering them irrelevant- with no violence to speak of. After such a showing of hate, it was good to see love winning again.