oh

Ok

Please take another pic in 3030 miles

That sounds really hard, man. I’m so sorry.

Are you looking for tips or advice or just needed to commiserate?

What an actual literal monster. I’m so sorry that your aunt is like this and the other adults in your life haven’t done anything to stop it. They should be protecting you.

Yo wtf

I am not looking forward to the day that medical implants and devices become subscription-based.

Missed too many monthly payments? Your pacemaker gets shut off until your account is no longer delinquent.

I was not going to subject him too either of those treatments.

This is it for me. Chemo sucks so bad that there’s are humans who decide to pass naturally instead of going through hell to get a bit of extra time–maybe. Putting a pet through chemo without their consent and not being able to explain to them why they feel so bad, that’s way worse than making the decision for them to be humanely euthanized.

I’m sorry about your doggy, and about your dad

Uncle John by Jonathan Colton

“Your uncle’s late again, last minute Christmas shopping at the airport, a dozen ringer tees he bought at Eddie Rickenbacker’s bar–ladies extra extra large” is such a mood

No.

I wish I could ever have as good of a go-to karaoke song as that skinny white dude who got overcome by the spirit of Shaggy

Say It Ain’t So by Weezer is a good one to get the entire bar singing along. Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind is good to get people try to sing along and then they realize they don’t actually know the words and wait did he just say crystal meth??

I was taking a little me time at a cabin. Pretty remote, a 45 minute drive down a dicey mountain road to the beginning of civilization (a convenience store and a church). I was there solo to unwind.

One night I made a nice little fire down a hill from the cabin, maybe 40 yards away. Around 10, I put the fire out and started back up to the cabin. The porch lights were on and throwing some nice ambient light, so I decided not to turn my headlamp on and harsh the vibe with blue light. I couldn’t easily see the ground where I was starting from, but the path was well-maintained gravel and I was familiar the terrain.

After ten feet, I froze. I’m a person who struggles to trust my instincts sometimes. But my lizard brain was picking up on something not consciously perceptible, and I have never before or since had every part of my screaming that something was wrong.

I turned on my headlamp and saw, about twenty feet up the path, a fucking rattlesnake. Then I immediately started second-guessing myself. Do we even have rattlesnakes in this part of the country? And it didn’t even rattle, isn’t that their whole thing? Also it’s night, aren’t they active in the daytime with the sun? I stared without moving an inch, barely even breathing, just silently gaslighting myself. After a few minutes it continued on its way and finished slithering across the path back into the woods.

I ran up the rest of the hill and into the house. Promptly grabbed my phone and typed “rattlesnake [regional area I was in]” in the search bar. So, it turns out there are rattlesnakes there, and yeah their pattern is exactly the same as the one I saw. Something primal in my body knew, and I’m really glad I listened to it.

Aww man, I thought Bobby was great in the reboot.

Need to start calling it Simulated Intelligence, because that’s what it is.

Very true. But, to extrapolate on Plath’s metaphor, you must select the ones that look best and harvest them, dry them to properly preserve them, and store them in a way to prolong their shelf life until you are ready to eat them. Without that planning, they’ll simply rot.

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

–Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Not strictly necessary items, but not brainless consumerism (at least I don’t think so). A few Christmas gifts for my husband–baseball caps from store that does made-in-USA reproductions of vintage minor league and negro league team caps. And some makeup and hair care products from a local business that I already use on a regular basis. I kept them hanging out in a cart from a few weeks ago to see if they’d do a sale.

It had already previously happened to her son and uncle without national attention.

Do you know why he cut contact? Either what he told you or what you suspect based on your experience?

Not my choice for sure, but since I have to live in it, committing it to memory seemed worth it.