and the light today / reminded me of the winter you drove home
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 I was just going to start rambling about how I listened to the Decemberists’ entire discography again and had a good time and then I realized I hadn’t copied and pasted the header in this post so I went to do that only to discover that I already talked about re-listening to the Decemberists… Cruelties of fate. I was also going to talk about how I listened to a bunch of Bad Religion but then I typed a sentence and went… Where did I already type this? And it turns out it was tumblr (yes, tumblr still exists, yes there are people still using it, yes we’re having a great time thanks) where I got tagged in a meme and wrote about what I had been listening to, so let’s cheat the system and share that!
I finished listening to You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian which I thought was delightful. I feel like I’ve read a lot of books this year, but I think I’ve just been consistent enough about reading every day (at least 15 minutes at a time, at least twice a day!) that it seems like I’m blowing through things but I’m really not. Which is fine! But confusing. We’ve been spending most of our time working to get the guest bedroom/rest of the house in order for our friends who are coming to visit at the end of the month so most of my brain energy has been there. I did use our George Foreman grill the other night and remembered how much I love it. I survived college on the original version 20+ years ago and it continues to work exactly the way you need it too with little change except the one I have now is bigger. The infomercials had it right sometimes! And also I guess if you too are in the Twin Cities, I highly recommend The Clapping Monkey coffee in (as our house search birthed, “I don’t want to live in damn honky ”) Fridley. By far the best iced mocha I’ve had in god knows how long and some great grilled cheeses also! Okay, I guess that’s it? We haven’t made our donations yet this month, but I think we’ll probably donate to some more mutual aid groups and I hope you’ll find some close to you or in a vulnerable area and do that too! 
or the feathers / of some unimaginable bird / that loves us You know it’s bad out there. I know it’s bad out there. I’m incredibly proud and grateful and amazed by the bravery and good I have seen people do. I’m going to talk about some pop culture type shit now. I re-listened to the entire Decemberists discography in order this week and it was deeply enjoyable. I’m probably a bigger fan of their later catalog and The Hazards of Love remains my favorite album, but there really aren’t any misses in the bunch. I also listened to Yasmine Hamdan’s I remember I forget — loved it right away and four or five listens later I am only more enamored. (Shoutout to Tommy for the rec!) — and Gully Boys’ self-titled album also got a handful of listens this month and is a great time, though my biggest repeat by far is “Big Boobs (ft. Zora)” which is an absolute banger. We’re still rewatching The West Wing and frankly the less said about it the better (though that won’t stop me from posting later babey!), but I am fascinated by how much North Dakota gets mentioned and I really wonder who on the staff has the connection/random attachment. Also who’s the hockey fan because I don’t think there’s any American show that’s ever referenced it so much. We also finally watched episode six of Heated Rivalry which was fine! I think I was always going to be hard on the show because the book does so many things I love. I did think the family stuff turned out fine, but I will remain disappointed by the changes made to Shane’s mom’s character (and Scott Hunter’s backstory, but that’s not relevant here) and it made it all less impactful, though if I’d come in without having read the book I’m sure it would’ve been great. Okay, I think that’s it! We’ve been throwing money at various local groups and food drives, so I am recommending mutual aid through Liberation Twin Cities today, if you can spare it. Thank you! I love you!  The other day I did one of the most stupidly nerveracking things in the world and went to the DMV. This is a normal activity that my brain has decided is as dangerous as being near hungry, unsecured wildlife, and I had to take a Xanax the night before to be able to sleep and one morning of in order to handle going through the appointments (S! Plural! Multiple!) without experiencing complete and total mental collapse, which is stupid and embarrassing, but for which I am grateful anyway. I used to have to rawdog these experiences and it would be so stressful to me that I would be sick to my stomach. Not because I have any issue with these kind of bureaucratic processes — I think these kind of machinations are what the state should actually be doing versus alternating between killing its citizens domestically and sending them into pointless and evil wars to die — and not because I don’t like people or can’t handle small talk — I love single serving exchanges! I love to talk about the weather! I love to be an easygoing and compliant customer! — but because I have a gene-deep fear of anyone with any kind of authority over me — Yes! That includes the rude woman at the DMV intake counter! — and a well-honed fear of Fucking Something Up despite carefully and repeatedly making sure I had everything I needed. Despite all of my dread and anxiety, both my license appointment and the vehicle registration went fine! I made two different DMV employees laugh and no one got mad at me for fumbling my papers or wearing a mask or having shaky hands. I got sweaty and uncomfortable and my license picture is an all time bad one — Have you seen a partially melted stick of butter with a mullet? Well the good people of the Minnesota Department of Safety sure have! — but the whole experience was fine. I won’t necessarily learn anything useful from this — Okay so what it went okay this one time! That means nothing about next time! — but it was nice to like, go through a bureaucratic process — one I believe in wholeheartedly! I think drivers should be licensed! And vehicles insured and registered! I think it’s good that these are part of the concept of public safety in Minnesota! — and have it work out fine, to make the appointment and have what I was supposed to and get it all done in basically about an hour. Did I feel bad for the people waiting the 3-4 hours to get served without an appointment? I did! But i also know that those agencies are perpetually underfunded and understaffed and they can’t serve the public perfectly from an empty cup, but they were all trying, even the rude, wrong gatekeeping front desk person was trying to make sure we were doing the right thing even though the thing she was telling us to do was not actually that. Anyway, the actual point of all of this is that one of the services this particularly agency also offers — right there at the walk-up window next to the camera that took my melted butter photo — is marriage and while I finished paying the fifty bucks for my driver license, Tom Petty’s “Freefallin'” playing at a pleasant volume in the background, a couple next to me stood there and got married. After the ceremony was done all of us who were in hearing range cheered and clapped and the couple looked bashful and happy, standing there with their paperwork and their parents and it was both a little absurd — I had just listened to two guys in their late teens/early 20s have a detailed conversation about Minnesota sports while waiting to have my number called while Crystal was standing elsewhere listening to a man say that he was surprised there weren’t more mass shootings at DMVs — and also genuinely wonderful because life happens everywhere all the time when you’re expecting it and when you’re not and I really don’t know what else could be more magical.  ETA: I wrote this at the end of December and I edited and scheduled it on January 5th and then an agent of the federal government shot and killed a woman very nearby for daring to care about her neighbors being harassed and abducted. She wasn’t the first and I’m not naive enough to believe she’ll be the last. I don’t have anything astute to say, I’m not sure that there is anything astute to be said about it, but I believe the people are stronger. I believe community is stronger. I believe we are capable of better things and I believe those better things are possible. I wish so many people didn’t have to suffer in the meantime. I wish the federal government wasn’t test driving military occupation. If you’re able, please donate to MIRAC and food pantries that serve the Twin Cities area. *: AI can pry the (poorly and regularly incorrectly used) em-dashes from my ass. They were mine first. Get fucked. |
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