Ra Ra Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine
The cicadas of Brood X are here, though it keeps throwing me off because I'm used to cicadas in general showing up in July and August rather than May. Cicadas are associated with mid to late summer in my mind, the noise of them and the way they just sorta drunkenly bumble through their business. Having them here now in May just adds another level of surrealness, though it's not like everything isn't surreal enough already, what with the pandemic and so forth. It's hot enough now to feel like deeper summer, though. Last night I was driving back from the store with the car windows down late at night, and it felt like summer, all warm and velvety.
Last year, I actually did get to pay more attention to spring, since we were all working from home and in lockdown. This spring, I feel like I missed everything because work just demands too much. My birthday is in three days, and that's just not registering with me either. At some point I ended up in the back half of my thirties? I have a mortgage and shit? I'm as surprised as you.
One of the other things throwing me off is that I once again did the ducking and chicken rental for the kids, but usually they time it so chickens come first, around Easter-ish time, then ducks in June. (And apparently they're also doing turkeys this year in July. I didn't sign up for that one because I don't fuck with turkeys unless they're in the freezer section of the grocery store. Not even in cute baby form where I would supposedly have the upper hand.) this year, they flipped it, so I just finished off the week of ducks at the start of May, and chickens will be coming up next week or so as June begins. Backwards!
As always, I got way too attached and thought longingly of stealing them and how I could somehow begin doing urban duck and chicken raising, but by the end of the week, I did consent to give them back sadly. The kids got a lot more out of it this year-- they were old enough to actually be able to handle the ducklings on their own, though given Nate is in heavy dinosaur phase, I had to answer a chain of questions on if Tyrannosauruses would eat ducks. Tommy mostly shrieked at them happily and flung peas, but since the ducks learned to tolerate baby yelling noises in exchange for peas, that all worked out.
...Penny did throw a duck. In her defense, it was more of a startled toss, and she tossed it in a wading pool, and it was not one of my ducks, but apparently there were long conversations about when it is okay to toss a duck (rarely, though there are some applicable circumstances) and how we have to be especially gentle with baby animals. Hopefully it sank in. The good thing about being an aunt is you don't have to always be the one to try and logic with a four year old.
At any rate, they got a week of being given their fill of frozen peas and duck feed, and grumpily allowed me to cuddle them, and peeped their little heads off while pooping with great abandon, so even if it wasn't the best week of their lives (it was actually the second week of their lives; you get the ducks when they're about a week old) it hopefully was a good one. In the grand tradition of naming them after Washington Capitals, this is Oshbabe and Dilly Dilly.
I went down to see Louise's parents a couple weeks ago; normally we do our meet-up at the awards ceremony at the college, but since that was virtual again this year (a trend I approve of, as no one likes award ceremonies, and keeping them short and sweet and in a format during which I can browse AO3 except for the actual 30 seconds I need to pay attention to is much to my preference) I put the visit off until a week after her death anniversary, which coincided with Orthodox/Bulgarian Easter. I also learned from the last time I did this particular date, and simply didn't eat anything ahead of time. I figured if I was hungry enough, it wouldn't matter if Louise's mom tried to make me eat my weight in potato salad again.
Fortunately for me, that was not on the menu though there were several other mayo-heavy dishes, and I plowed ahead with grim resolve accordingly. I was able to eat enough to please her mother, which is a tall task. The major problem with visiting them is no longer actually the issue of having to eat too much mayonnaise. The issue is, uh. The crazy racism. I've always known her folks were conservative, but the past couple years have morphed a lot of their politics into Fox news talking points, and it's depressing.
The last time this happened, I had hoped it was kind of a drunken one-off, as we were having post-awards dinner at a seafood restaurant. The waitress gave Louise's mother the equivalent of a full goddamn water glass of Johnny Walker Black, and somehow we started talking about open borders and... disaster. Louise's mother is an immigrant who fled communist Bulgaria in her youth, and her perspective is she did everything the right way to come to America so everyone else should too. I think she's legitimately terrified of communism happening in the United States, so, I mean there's a lot of emotional baggage background going on there. But, then Black Lives Matters comes up and it was just a long slide down a depressing rabbit hole of trying to get the conversational rails somewhat stable, and failing.
Like, I know it's important to call out ignorance and racism when we run into it, especially with those we love or are close to. But at the same time, I was sitting there trying to figure out if the emotional fallout of detonating the relationship with my dead best friend's drunk mother in a crab cake restaurant after an award ceremony that that meant to commemorate her dead daughter was... like, it wasn't so much considering if it was worth the effort, but if I had the mental wherewithal to do it, and I kinda didn't. So I did not! And I was mad about it all the way back up 495-N, and also wished I had at least ordered the bigger size of crabcake so I could have had that small, petty pleasure.
Anyway, it happened again a couple times after that, and since I was always around for some kind of Louise-related thing-- her birthday, her death anniversary, Mother's Day, etc.-- it always feels terribly awkward to weigh the "am I being a shit human being by basically just trying to navigate the landmines in this conversation without forthrightly stating I think she's full of shit?" vs. "Am I a shit human being if I can or can't make my dead best friend's mother cry on the anniversary of her daughter's death?" I don't know. It's hard for me to figure out. It's frustrating. There are so many people out there who are both kind and awful at the same time.
At one point during the last visit, while we were sitting on the porch and I was doing mental parkour to conduct the conversation in such a way as it didn't have any chance to light upon politics or current events, we noticed a box turtle crawling across the lawn. We spent the next half hour watching and talking about the turtle excitedly. So, if you can't figure out the ethics and social niceties of tolerating/calling out problematic conversations, my best advice is to bring a turtle. That fucking turtle saved the afternoon. Godspeed to him, wherever he ended up.
This has been the first year I haven't had to plan a baby or bridal shower for someone else. The pandemic did do me a solid there. One of my good friends from high school had a virtual baby shower on Zoom, and I did go out of my way to attend it. It was excruciatingly boring, though at least I could drink during it, as long as I kept my glass off screen.
I'm sure hockey is about to piss me off something awful, but I currently don't have the energy to get as bent out of shape about it as in past years. I mean, I'm sure I will get pretty pissed at some point, but right now, it's just lower on the list.
Last year, I actually did get to pay more attention to spring, since we were all working from home and in lockdown. This spring, I feel like I missed everything because work just demands too much. My birthday is in three days, and that's just not registering with me either. At some point I ended up in the back half of my thirties? I have a mortgage and shit? I'm as surprised as you.
One of the other things throwing me off is that I once again did the ducking and chicken rental for the kids, but usually they time it so chickens come first, around Easter-ish time, then ducks in June. (And apparently they're also doing turkeys this year in July. I didn't sign up for that one because I don't fuck with turkeys unless they're in the freezer section of the grocery store. Not even in cute baby form where I would supposedly have the upper hand.) this year, they flipped it, so I just finished off the week of ducks at the start of May, and chickens will be coming up next week or so as June begins. Backwards!
As always, I got way too attached and thought longingly of stealing them and how I could somehow begin doing urban duck and chicken raising, but by the end of the week, I did consent to give them back sadly. The kids got a lot more out of it this year-- they were old enough to actually be able to handle the ducklings on their own, though given Nate is in heavy dinosaur phase, I had to answer a chain of questions on if Tyrannosauruses would eat ducks. Tommy mostly shrieked at them happily and flung peas, but since the ducks learned to tolerate baby yelling noises in exchange for peas, that all worked out.
...Penny did throw a duck. In her defense, it was more of a startled toss, and she tossed it in a wading pool, and it was not one of my ducks, but apparently there were long conversations about when it is okay to toss a duck (rarely, though there are some applicable circumstances) and how we have to be especially gentle with baby animals. Hopefully it sank in. The good thing about being an aunt is you don't have to always be the one to try and logic with a four year old.
At any rate, they got a week of being given their fill of frozen peas and duck feed, and grumpily allowed me to cuddle them, and peeped their little heads off while pooping with great abandon, so even if it wasn't the best week of their lives (it was actually the second week of their lives; you get the ducks when they're about a week old) it hopefully was a good one. In the grand tradition of naming them after Washington Capitals, this is Oshbabe and Dilly Dilly.
I went down to see Louise's parents a couple weeks ago; normally we do our meet-up at the awards ceremony at the college, but since that was virtual again this year (a trend I approve of, as no one likes award ceremonies, and keeping them short and sweet and in a format during which I can browse AO3 except for the actual 30 seconds I need to pay attention to is much to my preference) I put the visit off until a week after her death anniversary, which coincided with Orthodox/Bulgarian Easter. I also learned from the last time I did this particular date, and simply didn't eat anything ahead of time. I figured if I was hungry enough, it wouldn't matter if Louise's mom tried to make me eat my weight in potato salad again.
Fortunately for me, that was not on the menu though there were several other mayo-heavy dishes, and I plowed ahead with grim resolve accordingly. I was able to eat enough to please her mother, which is a tall task. The major problem with visiting them is no longer actually the issue of having to eat too much mayonnaise. The issue is, uh. The crazy racism. I've always known her folks were conservative, but the past couple years have morphed a lot of their politics into Fox news talking points, and it's depressing.
The last time this happened, I had hoped it was kind of a drunken one-off, as we were having post-awards dinner at a seafood restaurant. The waitress gave Louise's mother the equivalent of a full goddamn water glass of Johnny Walker Black, and somehow we started talking about open borders and... disaster. Louise's mother is an immigrant who fled communist Bulgaria in her youth, and her perspective is she did everything the right way to come to America so everyone else should too. I think she's legitimately terrified of communism happening in the United States, so, I mean there's a lot of emotional baggage background going on there. But, then Black Lives Matters comes up and it was just a long slide down a depressing rabbit hole of trying to get the conversational rails somewhat stable, and failing.
Like, I know it's important to call out ignorance and racism when we run into it, especially with those we love or are close to. But at the same time, I was sitting there trying to figure out if the emotional fallout of detonating the relationship with my dead best friend's drunk mother in a crab cake restaurant after an award ceremony that that meant to commemorate her dead daughter was... like, it wasn't so much considering if it was worth the effort, but if I had the mental wherewithal to do it, and I kinda didn't. So I did not! And I was mad about it all the way back up 495-N, and also wished I had at least ordered the bigger size of crabcake so I could have had that small, petty pleasure.
Anyway, it happened again a couple times after that, and since I was always around for some kind of Louise-related thing-- her birthday, her death anniversary, Mother's Day, etc.-- it always feels terribly awkward to weigh the "am I being a shit human being by basically just trying to navigate the landmines in this conversation without forthrightly stating I think she's full of shit?" vs. "Am I a shit human being if I can or can't make my dead best friend's mother cry on the anniversary of her daughter's death?" I don't know. It's hard for me to figure out. It's frustrating. There are so many people out there who are both kind and awful at the same time.
At one point during the last visit, while we were sitting on the porch and I was doing mental parkour to conduct the conversation in such a way as it didn't have any chance to light upon politics or current events, we noticed a box turtle crawling across the lawn. We spent the next half hour watching and talking about the turtle excitedly. So, if you can't figure out the ethics and social niceties of tolerating/calling out problematic conversations, my best advice is to bring a turtle. That fucking turtle saved the afternoon. Godspeed to him, wherever he ended up.
This has been the first year I haven't had to plan a baby or bridal shower for someone else. The pandemic did do me a solid there. One of my good friends from high school had a virtual baby shower on Zoom, and I did go out of my way to attend it. It was excruciatingly boring, though at least I could drink during it, as long as I kept my glass off screen.
I'm sure hockey is about to piss me off something awful, but I currently don't have the energy to get as bent out of shape about it as in past years. I mean, I'm sure I will get pretty pissed at some point, but right now, it's just lower on the list.