I met up with a friend after work today. I was nervous about going out to eat but we went to an Indian restaurant that was completely empty when we arrived (it was on the early side of dinner) so it seemed ok.
We hadn’t seen each other since the summer and there was a lot to catch up on. For many years her life was really difficult and I used to feel like I really had no business griping about any of my challenges to her but these days we are more evenly matched. It’s not like we’re trying to outdo each other for title of pity queen or anything but it is nice to be able to commiserate with someone who will just agree that yeah, that sucks! It’s nice to not feel like you should censor yourself.
And with that I’m going to get under the covers and hope to sleep in.
I was listening to the newest Wolf Alice album on my way to work and got stuck on this song. This video wasn’t what I was expecting but I think it expands on the song’s message from a deeply personal one to something universal.
While I was driving I was thinking about my kids and how the past two years have been so difficult for everyone, but of course my focus is on trying to make their lives better. How can I make it ok? Honestly the world sucks so bad and what is there for them to look forward to in a country teetering on the brink of fascism. Climate change, racism, crippling debt, homophobia; how do I sell them the world? I’m also keenly aware of how their lives right now, in the present, are so far removed from what any of us imagined their high school and college years would be like. It’s a pointless exercise to consider what could have been had things not been upended by a pandemic but I think most parents do have hopes for what their kids will do as they grow up and it’s hard to watch the things you envisioned for them disintegrate. I just want them to be happy. Nothing else is as important as that to me. It’s why I drove 300 miles on Monday to take my daughter to her show.
In looking for a video* I watched a number of live performances and thought about how great their show was that I went to a couple of years ago. They’re touring now and it seemed like there were still tickets for the Boston show next week. I had them in my cart but then remembered a potential conflict I need to check into, plus I am still catching up on sleep from the trip up to Boston earlier this week (which already feels longer than just three days ago!). This is going to be one of those ones I leave up to the fates. If there are still tickets next week, who knows, I may decide it’s worth it.
*I was looking for a video with the lyrics because they’re kind of critical to what I’m talking about here, but the only ones I found were either crappy quality or actually got the lyrics wrong. You had one job!
I have got to get with the program here. I blame the pandemic for utterly destroying any sense of time and normalcy. It’s November? It’s midnight? I’m going to do what now?
Japanese Breakfast played at this new outdoor venue back in the summer and I had wanted to go but I’d been up in Boston for the day and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to pull off all that driving. Based on how tired I was this morning and how lethargic I was throughout the day, I think that was the right call.
I also read Michelle Zauner’s book Crying in H Mart, which I think is a good read even if you know next to nothing about Korean food or her band (like me).
Anyway, off to a slow start here on the old NaBloPoMo.
Even though yesterday was Halloween and you would think that would tip me off that today is November 1st, it still snuck up on me. This morning when I was driving to work, yes driving to the office again, my year and a half of working remotely is unfortunately over, I was kind of zoning out looking at the landscape, the trees were not vibrant colors anymore, and I thought well, it is November. Then I thought, fuck! It’s November!?!
Back in the summer my daughter bought concert tickets for a couple of shows. She had a friend who wanted to go with her and they figured plenty of time to figure it out later but in the months in between, her friend got busy and decided they weren’t able to go to the show tonight in Boston. I don’t mind going to Boston for a show, it’s not that far, but of course I had to first drive an hour up to work and then drive an hour from work to my daughter’s college and then drive an hour from her college to Boston and then repeat the reverse Boston to her college to home.
So I did not have time to think about some kind of appropriate post for kicking off yet another NaBloPoMo. To be honest I don’t think I gave much thought at all to whether or not I was even going to do it. I feel like at this point, simply because I’ve got a streak going, it feels wrong to not even try. Does anybody else still do it? I have no idea.
I’m grabbing the video to the song that was the encore tonight and doing the speech to text while I’m driving home. I’ll clean up the post when I get home and call it good enough.
Today should have been a celebration of Georgia electing two Democrats to the Senate, and a final formality of pronouncing a Democrat as the next president. Instead we had GOP Senators and Representatives making treasonous statements, and a deranged narcissist unleashing his rabid base of lunatic QAnon radicals on the Capitol.
“…The followers of chaos, out of control…”
I wonder if any of those Republican senators and representatives, who had to shelter in place today from armed white supremacists that had stormed the Capitol, ever stopped to think to themselves, huh, this must be what children feel like when they’re in lockdown at school. Except, you know, those are children and not full-grown ass-lickers that created and enabled the conspiracy-theory, crazed, cult members running around DC in mountain man militia outfits while Capitol police just moved the barriers aside and let them in.
Why are people surprised? I’m more surprised that it took this long for this to happen. Since NaBloPoMo falls in November and I’ve been doing it for many years now, I can go back and see that since Trump was just a candidate for the Republican nomination, I have feared something like this would happen. I don’t say this to pat myself on the back for being right, I truly would have been happy to have been wrong about Twitler and his supporters, and the GOP, but as an explanation for why I’m not shocked and why I’m not posting things about the unbelievable events in DC. It’s totally believable. They lied and misled and winked and fanned the flames and never once worried that this would somehow backfire. Meanwhile peaceful Black Lives Matter protestors were tear gassed, hit with rubber bullets and worse, indigenous people trying to stop an oil pipeline on their own land were blasted with fire hoses in freezing temperatures.
“…try to tell us something we don’t know…”
I’m not hopeful that we’ll see any meaningful accountability for this, not amongst members of the GOP or even those with their faces completely visible, caught on multiple cameras parading through the Capitol with Confederate flags, stealing things from congressional offices, breaking multiple laws. They should ALL be arrested and tried for sedition. This is a coup.
Much like the rest of 2020, this month has defied any sense of normal time for me. The election was this month? The interminable wait for the results of the election was this month? My daughter’s only been home for just over a week? NaBloPoMo is often a struggle to get through because it’s day after day of the same thing, at least the way I do it. But in this pandemic life in the dwindling days of the Cheeto administration, hasn’t every day been like that for months now? I can’t tell the days apart at all anymore. If I didn’t have a calendar on my phone, I’d be lost.
Thanks for following along these past 30 days of Marchtober. Here’s hoping next year’s NaBloPoMo is more like Novembers of year’s past.
Now that my son is into having physical copies of the music he likes, he gave us a list of things he wants for Christmas that is all records or CDs. I managed to get out by myself for a bit today and went down to our local record store to pick up one or two things.
I was hoping to find something used that wasn’t too much money to go along with the new (reissued) album I grabbed for him. Something he wouldn’t know to ask for but that he might like anyway. Then I spied the small section of cassettes and since he has that Walkman, I thought maybe I could find a stocking stuffer. Much to my surprise, there was a cassette of R.E.M.’s Document and The Replacements’ Pleased to Meet Me. All cassettes were $2 a piece or 6 for $10. I didn’t see six that I wanted so I just went with those two.
I brought them up to the counter and told the owner that I was getting the cassettes for my son’s stocking and he said, “oh, I’ll just throw those in for free. He’s a great kid, smart. He’s been down here checking out all the things he’s interested in, took pictures so he could make a list, it’s great to see kids still getting into it.” I’ve got to say, that really made my day. Parenting these days is a real challenge and I’ll take any signs that the kids are alright.
Noisy Cats 