Fucking Fuck: The Venting Continues June 11, 2019 12:04 PM Subscribe
Latest venting thread now open as there is much to vent about. Gentle members, pray begin your cries of woe within.
Mitch fucking McConnell. Donald fucking Trump and his fucking offspring. Lindsey fucking Graham. I can't go to the gym without their faces all over the fucking TVs. I can't open a news website, or Facebook without seeing one of their smug, gloating, smirky smiles. They've ruined what was left of the U.S. to ruin, and they seem to be rushing to destroy any potential of life on earth for many species, including humans, for more than about 80 more years, just as a by-product of their greed and selfishness, and desire to destroy anyone who doesn't look or think like them.
I don't want to talk about politics or news when I go out, but I can't talk about anything else. And I can't really talk about politics or news, because I get so upset I literally can't get words out.
I'm probably just losing my mind, but I swear this feels personal. Like they're my own personal demons. I'm depressed as hell because I feel like they've won - they've made me as much of a hater as they are.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 12:15 PM on June 11, 2019 [26 favorites]
I don't want to talk about politics or news when I go out, but I can't talk about anything else. And I can't really talk about politics or news, because I get so upset I literally can't get words out.
I'm probably just losing my mind, but I swear this feels personal. Like they're my own personal demons. I'm depressed as hell because I feel like they've won - they've made me as much of a hater as they are.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 12:15 PM on June 11, 2019 [26 favorites]
I just found out that Layleen Cubilette-Polanco, a 27-year-old Afro-Latinx transgender woman, died at Rikers prison on Friday. Fuck.
One thing did cheer me up today. It was watching Jon Stewart yell at a bunch of Representatives. If you have time, I strongly recommend watching the C-Span video of Luis Alvarez (a retired detective with the New York Police Department Bomb Squad, who has cancer) and Jon Stewart plead to Congress to reauthorize the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund.
I skipped the testimony of Alvarez because I have enough sad feels right now. I wanted to experience the bracing tonic of Stewart's righteous indignation. (He did not disappoint: The first responders gave him a standing ovation after he was done.) Here's a news story if text is more your jam. His best line: "Al-Qaeda didn't shout 'Death to Tribeca'" in response to the idea that the 9/11 first responders' health issues are a New York problem, not a US problem.
OnTheLastCastle, I am so sorry to hear about the crazy work thing. still_wears_a_hat, I feel you. Everything sucks. Hang in there.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:33 PM on June 11, 2019 [13 favorites]
One thing did cheer me up today. It was watching Jon Stewart yell at a bunch of Representatives. If you have time, I strongly recommend watching the C-Span video of Luis Alvarez (a retired detective with the New York Police Department Bomb Squad, who has cancer) and Jon Stewart plead to Congress to reauthorize the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund.
I skipped the testimony of Alvarez because I have enough sad feels right now. I wanted to experience the bracing tonic of Stewart's righteous indignation. (He did not disappoint: The first responders gave him a standing ovation after he was done.) Here's a news story if text is more your jam. His best line: "Al-Qaeda didn't shout 'Death to Tribeca'" in response to the idea that the 9/11 first responders' health issues are a New York problem, not a US problem.
OnTheLastCastle, I am so sorry to hear about the crazy work thing. still_wears_a_hat, I feel you. Everything sucks. Hang in there.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:33 PM on June 11, 2019 [13 favorites]
I feel paranoid, because I'm the happiest maybe I've ever been and yet everything is awful. What if something really terrible is wrong with me? What if the Conservatives get elected in Canada and in a few months we're just as fucked as the US? What if this new amazing person in my life ditches me? I know the answer is to think about what if everything goes well, and I do try. But I'm so effing scared of everything. I'm not scared to die, I'm scared to become unable to care for myself, especially if I have no partner and the Cons privatize health care... it's all a house of cards.
posted by wellred at 12:34 PM on June 11, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by wellred at 12:34 PM on June 11, 2019 [12 favorites]
I've been coping with politics by focusing on my own small life - and it's my own small life where I have things to vent about now:
* My fantastic roommate is MOVING OUT at the end of July. For positive reasons - he wants to write for TV and is going to take a leap of faith move to Los Angeles and give it a go. I'm happy and excited for him, but as roommates go he is gonna be WAY hard to top.
* And his leap of faith has finally brought me face to face with the fact that I FUCKING HATE MY JOB. I've made steps to do something about that, mind you - I've reached out to career counselors to try to really do a job change RIGHT this time instead of going for a desperation move (which is what my job searches usually have been), but that's still going to take a while, and that means I have that much longer to put up with my anti-vaxxer co-worker who thinks that everything is a government plot and OH GOD I WANT TO PUNCH THINGS.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [14 favorites]
* My fantastic roommate is MOVING OUT at the end of July. For positive reasons - he wants to write for TV and is going to take a leap of faith move to Los Angeles and give it a go. I'm happy and excited for him, but as roommates go he is gonna be WAY hard to top.
* And his leap of faith has finally brought me face to face with the fact that I FUCKING HATE MY JOB. I've made steps to do something about that, mind you - I've reached out to career counselors to try to really do a job change RIGHT this time instead of going for a desperation move (which is what my job searches usually have been), but that's still going to take a while, and that means I have that much longer to put up with my anti-vaxxer co-worker who thinks that everything is a government plot and OH GOD I WANT TO PUNCH THINGS.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [14 favorites]
Everyone should probably be reminded that this thread is very lightly moderated, by design. Do not assume moderators know everything going on here in anything like real time.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [17 favorites]
First time visitor to this kind of thread... now I know.
posted by amtho at 12:45 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by amtho at 12:45 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Thanks for the reminder, paper chromatographologist.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:53 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 12:53 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
re: politics, I had a friend who was super excited to see Pod Save America tour and she bought tickets MANY months ago which I agree to go because we were both single and it's nice to have friends doing stuff. Well, I've disconnected from politics due to the pointlessness of it right now in my brain and also life... it was so weird being there. It was more like a church tent revival than I could explain. There was a woman two seats over getting mad at a famous pollster who was just talking about methodology talking about wanting to hit her, and then she kept hissing "Peeeeeeete" in a weird voice like it was a tic.
I didn't like it.
Also thank you, bella donna. you're a peach. long may you reign.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:57 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
I didn't like it.
Also thank you, bella donna. you're a peach. long may you reign.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:57 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
I feel paranoid, because I'm the happiest maybe I've ever been and yet everything is awful. What if something really terrible is wrong with me? What if the Conservatives get elected in Canada and in a few months we're just as fucked as the US? What if this new amazing person in my life ditches me? I know the answer is to think about what if everything goes well, and I do try. But I'm so effing scared of everything. I'm not scared to die, I'm scared to become unable to care for myself, especially if I have no partner and the Cons privatize health care... it's all a house of cards.
Hmmm, have you talked to a therapist or trusted friend? Feel free to vent to me. If the fear is pervasive and never leaves, a thing I get so well, even though it's completely disconnected from your day-to-day then that sounds very hard. I'm sorry the world and all the information we get constantly has done this to you and so many more.
I try to enjoy concrete chunks of time and events, personally. I'm going to go to a farmers market tonight! That's all that's on my mind.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
Hmmm, have you talked to a therapist or trusted friend? Feel free to vent to me. If the fear is pervasive and never leaves, a thing I get so well, even though it's completely disconnected from your day-to-day then that sounds very hard. I'm sorry the world and all the information we get constantly has done this to you and so many more.
I try to enjoy concrete chunks of time and events, personally. I'm going to go to a farmers market tonight! That's all that's on my mind.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
OnTheLastCastle, yeah, I have a therapist who is awesome, and yet. Thanks, you are a pal.
posted by wellred at 1:02 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by wellred at 1:02 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
I may have vented on here before about the two rounds of crappy roommates I had (when I was gullible enough to let people live with me because I have a big house and friends that were in a rough place).
The last set - in addition to eating all my food, drinking ALL the alcohol in the house, stealing my stash (of a stage 4 cancer patient no less), etc, also busted a hole in the wall of the shower by having .. activities in the shower.
I finally told them last September/October to GTFO. It took until February for them to finally move all the crap out of the room they'd been staying in.
About two weeks ago I got a tip from a mutual friend that the wife of the pair of said roommates had been picked up by DHS for driving a box truck full of illegal immigrants over the border. I guess she was really hard up for money... (but oh, the karma)
At least I'm finally going to be able to get the shower fixed up this week (I've been using the stall shower in my master bath). A friend is coming over to redo all the time and backboard in the damaged spot for nothing more than cost of supplies + I'm refurbing them an older laptop.
posted by mrbill at 1:09 PM on June 11, 2019 [8 favorites]
The last set - in addition to eating all my food, drinking ALL the alcohol in the house, stealing my stash (of a stage 4 cancer patient no less), etc, also busted a hole in the wall of the shower by having .. activities in the shower.
I finally told them last September/October to GTFO. It took until February for them to finally move all the crap out of the room they'd been staying in.
About two weeks ago I got a tip from a mutual friend that the wife of the pair of said roommates had been picked up by DHS for driving a box truck full of illegal immigrants over the border. I guess she was really hard up for money... (but oh, the karma)
At least I'm finally going to be able to get the shower fixed up this week (I've been using the stall shower in my master bath). A friend is coming over to redo all the time and backboard in the damaged spot for nothing more than cost of supplies + I'm refurbing them an older laptop.
posted by mrbill at 1:09 PM on June 11, 2019 [8 favorites]
Jon Stewart addressing Congress on 9/11. It's very FUCKING FUCK.
posted by Fizz at 1:20 PM on June 11, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by Fizz at 1:20 PM on June 11, 2019 [12 favorites]
Animal Crossing for the Switch looks superb ... but has slipped from 2019 to 2020. The new release date being March 20th, 2020. Which is over nine [redacted profuse expletive] months away.
posted by Wordshore at 1:52 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by Wordshore at 1:52 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
Lost one friend to cystic fibrosis last week. I guess it sometimes takes a while to live with that.
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:59 PM on June 11, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 1:59 PM on June 11, 2019 [17 favorites]
I'm in about my third week off work due to a massive PTSD episode and having all of the anxiety ever and I will finally start getting mental health treatment tomorrow. The provider is almost an hour outside the city because everyone in the city is booked up until, like, September. I need to get back to work so I can afford to exist, and having to wait for care on top of everything else is such a nightmare, it's giving anxiety to my anxiety.
Fuck the American for-profit healthcare system, is what I'm saying. Fuck mental illness, fuck police violence, fuck the lack of universal basic income and all the other safety nets we don't have here.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:04 PM on June 11, 2019 [21 favorites]
Fuck the American for-profit healthcare system, is what I'm saying. Fuck mental illness, fuck police violence, fuck the lack of universal basic income and all the other safety nets we don't have here.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:04 PM on June 11, 2019 [21 favorites]
Holy shit, lollusc. Are you okay?
posted by Bella Donna at 2:10 PM on June 11, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:10 PM on June 11, 2019 [3 favorites]
Yeah no one was home, thankfully.
In the morning we had a ceiling and in the afternoon we did not. I think it fell on the cat because she refuses to go anywhere near that couch anymore.
The tradesperson who came out to give a quote yesterday says it fell because the previous owners were DIY morons who used wall sheetrock instead of ceiling sheetrock and attached it to the beams with glue and he's surprised it didn't happen sooner. We'll have to replace the whole ceiling and it's going to cost like $5000. And involve tradespeople coming in at 7am for a while.
In fact it is 7am now and I am up because another guy said he would come quote now and I bet he'll be a no show.
posted by lollusc at 2:13 PM on June 11, 2019 [13 favorites]
In the morning we had a ceiling and in the afternoon we did not. I think it fell on the cat because she refuses to go anywhere near that couch anymore.
The tradesperson who came out to give a quote yesterday says it fell because the previous owners were DIY morons who used wall sheetrock instead of ceiling sheetrock and attached it to the beams with glue and he's surprised it didn't happen sooner. We'll have to replace the whole ceiling and it's going to cost like $5000. And involve tradespeople coming in at 7am for a while.
In fact it is 7am now and I am up because another guy said he would come quote now and I bet he'll be a no show.
posted by lollusc at 2:13 PM on June 11, 2019 [13 favorites]
Went to gyno for routine checkup. She did the standard pressing of my belly to see if there were any lumps, and said "it's hard to check it properly because of all the fat."
posted by Melismata at 2:16 PM on June 11, 2019 [27 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 2:16 PM on June 11, 2019 [27 favorites]
Oh ffs. Melismata, sorry your doc was so nasty. bile and syntax, your situation sounds like a nightmare. kanata, I have been there. Sending virtual hugs to all. I want life to be better for everyone like, yesterday. Had to go without my ADHD meds for maybe 5 days, which is nothing, but it was still hard. I got pills today, so maybe maybe maybe I will be able to get some work done tomorrow.
It is past my bedtime here in Europe so I will say good night. Let us please continue to take care of ourselves as best we can. As we say in Al-Anon, I may not know know all of you but I love all of you. (And now y'all can vent about what a cheesy thing that is to say.)
posted by Bella Donna at 2:25 PM on June 11, 2019 [10 favorites]
It is past my bedtime here in Europe so I will say good night. Let us please continue to take care of ourselves as best we can. As we say in Al-Anon, I may not know know all of you but I love all of you. (And now y'all can vent about what a cheesy thing that is to say.)
posted by Bella Donna at 2:25 PM on June 11, 2019 [10 favorites]
ZeusHumms, my condolences on losing your friend.
posted by Bella Donna at 2:26 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 2:26 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
Hugs everyone. To be clear, there's a lot of chance what's wrong with me is not dangerous, and my fears are part-time... I'm just having a big symptom day, and feeling it.
posted by wellred at 2:37 PM on June 11, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by wellred at 2:37 PM on June 11, 2019 [3 favorites]
i don't drive but i can't make myself navigate public transportation for the first time by myself and it is STUPID AS HELL and i'm furious with myself
posted by Mizu at 2:41 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by Mizu at 2:41 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
Oh also a few thousand mainly very right-wing people get to choose the next leader of the UK Conservative Party, who then by default becomes the UK Prime Minister (mother of parliaments?! more like [redacted] of parliaments) which means in a few weeks time the UK will almost definitely get Boris as PM, who is running on a platform of crashing out of the EU, not paying the legally owed monies, and cutting taxes for the wealthy (paid for by increasing national insurance contributions from the not-wealthy).
posted by Wordshore at 2:50 PM on June 11, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by Wordshore at 2:50 PM on June 11, 2019 [14 favorites]
Fucking fuck indeed. Broke up with my boyfriend, who I still loved, and who talked so much about marrying me. When we talked about it in the past (because it was obvious we had issues), we both said we'd stay roommates and help each other get on our feet. In reality, I can't stand to be around him right now, because he's been checked out for months and is happy to move on from this, so he's moving out this weekend. I'm happy for him, even, but starting to come to terms with how much I was giving up to try to make this relationship work and how it's left me so unprepared, in a practical sense, for what's next. I feel so much anger about that, and guilt about the anger, and compassion for him but also myself.
I mostly lurk on metafilter, but thanks for the space to talk. Love to everyone who needs it.
posted by gaybobbie at 2:53 PM on June 11, 2019 [31 favorites]
I mostly lurk on metafilter, but thanks for the space to talk. Love to everyone who needs it.
posted by gaybobbie at 2:53 PM on June 11, 2019 [31 favorites]
So last Friday I spent six-hours of relaxed, lively discussion on a second OKC date (99% match, also physically my type) -- which quite literally is unique in an embarrassingly large number of years -- and somehow in the days since my mood has plunged and I feel both a bit despairing and quite anxious and I'm not sure why.
One part of this is that I agreed to meet someone I'm not really that interested in this week, who by comparison and in my current state of mind I'm actually loathe to leave the house and meet, but I feel like a total jerk to postpone it, but which I think I'll do anyway because I feel the precise opposite of "socially adequate" right now. I hate this because it's super-important to me to treat people well on OKC; I try to think about the way I'd like people to be thoughtful with me -- and subtextual ambivalence is very much not it.
But it's more than that. I stumbled upon a few things recently that was new information to me with regard to my mental health. It's been taken for granted for 28 years that I suffer from chronic major depression, but now I'm seeing bipolar II is quite explanatory of heretofore unexplained or unrecognized things; specifically that hypomania is distinct from mania and I've not recognized it for what it is, that bipolar II over the long haul is noticeable mostly as recurrent severe depression, and that there's a lot of overlap between it and atypical depression, which also very closely fits what I've thought of as idiosyncratic to me. Finally, I brushed across "avoidant personality disorder" and while I think it's inconsistent and maybe subclinical for me (though I have the sense I'm fooling myself about this), it sure as hell explains why what should feel like a good thing -- which it did, and into which I put a lot of effort -- suddenly feels despairing and terrifying. And, really, this all seems pretty cliché. Not that they're cliche make my feelings any less real.
And I'm doing this thing where I'm suddenly distrusting my own judgment about other people and how adroitly I interact with them: when there's nothing so great personally at stake and I'm working hard to pay attention, listen, and be aware, my judgment and decisions are pretty reliable. When I feel like this, though, and I feel both vulnerable and inadequate, it's like all my inherent and acquired insight just flees and I feel like I know nothing about anything with regard to what other people are thinking and feeling and how to respond.
Well, again, this is all of a piece and quite common, isn't it? Which always means to me that my awareness of this fact is supposed to enable reasoning/learning my way out of it...but which never, ever, happens contemporaneously. I just flail about and then, usually, shut down. Go, me.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:37 PM on June 11, 2019 [19 favorites]
One part of this is that I agreed to meet someone I'm not really that interested in this week, who by comparison and in my current state of mind I'm actually loathe to leave the house and meet, but I feel like a total jerk to postpone it, but which I think I'll do anyway because I feel the precise opposite of "socially adequate" right now. I hate this because it's super-important to me to treat people well on OKC; I try to think about the way I'd like people to be thoughtful with me -- and subtextual ambivalence is very much not it.
But it's more than that. I stumbled upon a few things recently that was new information to me with regard to my mental health. It's been taken for granted for 28 years that I suffer from chronic major depression, but now I'm seeing bipolar II is quite explanatory of heretofore unexplained or unrecognized things; specifically that hypomania is distinct from mania and I've not recognized it for what it is, that bipolar II over the long haul is noticeable mostly as recurrent severe depression, and that there's a lot of overlap between it and atypical depression, which also very closely fits what I've thought of as idiosyncratic to me. Finally, I brushed across "avoidant personality disorder" and while I think it's inconsistent and maybe subclinical for me (though I have the sense I'm fooling myself about this), it sure as hell explains why what should feel like a good thing -- which it did, and into which I put a lot of effort -- suddenly feels despairing and terrifying. And, really, this all seems pretty cliché. Not that they're cliche make my feelings any less real.
And I'm doing this thing where I'm suddenly distrusting my own judgment about other people and how adroitly I interact with them: when there's nothing so great personally at stake and I'm working hard to pay attention, listen, and be aware, my judgment and decisions are pretty reliable. When I feel like this, though, and I feel both vulnerable and inadequate, it's like all my inherent and acquired insight just flees and I feel like I know nothing about anything with regard to what other people are thinking and feeling and how to respond.
Well, again, this is all of a piece and quite common, isn't it? Which always means to me that my awareness of this fact is supposed to enable reasoning/learning my way out of it...but which never, ever, happens contemporaneously. I just flail about and then, usually, shut down. Go, me.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 3:37 PM on June 11, 2019 [19 favorites]
Ivan, if you ever want to talk about avpd experiences, it's basically the story of my life.
posted by gaybobbie at 4:00 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by gaybobbie at 4:00 PM on June 11, 2019 [1 favorite]
My partner and I decided to take a few months break other on Friday (after months of working through stuff together in counseling) and I'm looking for a place to live on my own and I'm leaving my toxic workplace on Friday.
I feel like I know everything is gonna be okay but also I feel like I'm destined to end up a lonely gay trans person that's too fucked up to be in a relationship.
It's not over over but it feels like it's just a slow motion ending of a great relationship.
posted by nikaspark at 4:08 PM on June 11, 2019 [16 favorites]
I feel like I know everything is gonna be okay but also I feel like I'm destined to end up a lonely gay trans person that's too fucked up to be in a relationship.
It's not over over but it feels like it's just a slow motion ending of a great relationship.
posted by nikaspark at 4:08 PM on June 11, 2019 [16 favorites]
You know what I am most angry about? This fear mongering atmosphere that the U.S. has. It bleeds onto everyone and beyond. They spread fear like shit, but god-fucking-damn, shit fertilizes plants, and we will grow up and rise up to be your fucking weeds, Man. I have never felt the 60's and 70's more than I do right now, because fuck these fuckers, I have had enough.
My husband tried to go back to work yesterday, and got so exhausted, he had to come home and extend his short-term disability another week. But thank god he has that benefit, thank god we have savings, and I feel like we need a plan to transition him into retirement and for me to step up and become the main bread winner. Only I haven't worked at a "real" job in forever, only freelance, and my skills are rusty and out of date, and I have no fucking clue how I am going to handle this and take care of him at the same time. If he ends up having to leave his job, we won't have any health care benefits, and been there, done that, it's not pretty. He can go on Medicare due to his age, but then there's still the issue of his student loan and the car payment for the new car we just bought when our old car bit the dust last month. I have GAD and metabolic syndrome, and I've been driving all over creation when I haven't driven in over a year, the radio helps, and I know all the current pop songs now, ha-ha. I can't go on the highway yet, thank goodness I haven't needed to.
They found a thing on his liver when he was in the ER, so he has to have a liver scan at the end of the month, and one of his iliac veins is bigger than the other, so they have to keep an eye on that, and coupled with my own health issues, I am like, well, at least my blood sugar is getting lower with the new dose of Metformin (hey, thanks, afternoon diarrhea), but damn, I am trying *so hard* to keep a positive attitude here. I have to stay positive for him. I have to stay positive for us.
If I believed in things like curses, I would curse the entire Trump family, the Kushners, the Steve Bannons, all of those mother fuckers like Mitch Turtle McConnell and Lindsey Turncoat Graham. Fuck those guys, they can rot in hell for all I care. I will rise up like a weed, and I will take you over, you miscreants and depraved villains, and I will be victorious.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 4:11 PM on June 11, 2019 [24 favorites]
My husband tried to go back to work yesterday, and got so exhausted, he had to come home and extend his short-term disability another week. But thank god he has that benefit, thank god we have savings, and I feel like we need a plan to transition him into retirement and for me to step up and become the main bread winner. Only I haven't worked at a "real" job in forever, only freelance, and my skills are rusty and out of date, and I have no fucking clue how I am going to handle this and take care of him at the same time. If he ends up having to leave his job, we won't have any health care benefits, and been there, done that, it's not pretty. He can go on Medicare due to his age, but then there's still the issue of his student loan and the car payment for the new car we just bought when our old car bit the dust last month. I have GAD and metabolic syndrome, and I've been driving all over creation when I haven't driven in over a year, the radio helps, and I know all the current pop songs now, ha-ha. I can't go on the highway yet, thank goodness I haven't needed to.
They found a thing on his liver when he was in the ER, so he has to have a liver scan at the end of the month, and one of his iliac veins is bigger than the other, so they have to keep an eye on that, and coupled with my own health issues, I am like, well, at least my blood sugar is getting lower with the new dose of Metformin (hey, thanks, afternoon diarrhea), but damn, I am trying *so hard* to keep a positive attitude here. I have to stay positive for him. I have to stay positive for us.
If I believed in things like curses, I would curse the entire Trump family, the Kushners, the Steve Bannons, all of those mother fuckers like Mitch Turtle McConnell and Lindsey Turncoat Graham. Fuck those guys, they can rot in hell for all I care. I will rise up like a weed, and I will take you over, you miscreants and depraved villains, and I will be victorious.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 4:11 PM on June 11, 2019 [24 favorites]
It's small potatoes compared to what many of you are dealing with, but today I severed ties, probably irrevocably, with a friend of 40 years, a former college roommate. In many ways I will miss her, but I've been trying for years to have a relationship that wasn't based on me using my "very particular set of skills" to do some pretty big favors for her and the not-for-profit enterprise she founded. She is so obsessed with the not-for-profit--which is admittedly cool--that in my view it's unhealthy; she's sublimated her identity to it completely and ran through a nice inheritance to keep it afloat while eschewing a salary, impoverishing herself in the process.
Actually, that was part of the issue; her insistence that the enterprise was unique and so special that all people and organizations with which it crossed paths should make exceptions for it, including regulatory agencies, foundations, philanthropists, etc. For me that meant she rejected my insights and recommendations on the grounds that I didn't understand the organization's inherent wonderfulness (but the she would always come back for more). And the organization could be wonderful, but that doesn't mean the problems she asked me to troubleshoot aren't completely typical, nor does it follow that the requirements of the various regulatory agencies et al were unreasonable.
I'm not blameless here, as I eventually ghosted her after the last set of requests, which was cowardly of me. But I resorted to this action only after multiple cooling off periods and difficult conversations... and I'm just the most recent of our many mutual friends to cut ties, particularly those who have been dragooned into helping out with the not-for-profit as board members or whatever. Others just got sick of hearing about the organization and its woes. Instead of thinking about why friends (and romantic partners too) kept abandoning her (andwhat who the common denominator might be), she complained about their disloyalty and bemoaned the fact that a few of them who are very, very rich could bankroll the organization without even noticing and yet "inexplicably" refuse to write game-changing checks (never mind that our circle works hard--and pretty successfully--to ignore the gigantic disparity in wealth among us). I guess I've joined the ranks of friends who decided she's an unredeemable user.
Yet this woman was once among my closest two or three friends, and that's the relationship I will miss along with the notion--the possibility-- that it will ever be rewarding again. Over the past decade or so, it always felt like she was going through the motions when asking about my life and well-being: just enough to be polite before changing the subject back to the not-for-profit. And she stopped being able to retain any information about me, so consumed she was. Ultimately, everything about maintaining the friendship became too lopsided to bear. It was asymmetrical in all emotional regards, plus I always paid for everything we did together and regularly traveled halfway across the country to see her, at least annually, which has never been reciprocated. Her commitment to the organization and her certainty that it would fall apart without her meant that she could never leave it, although in fairness she probably couldn't afford to visit me anyway.
Re-reading the above with an eye towards confirming that I'm portraying the situation accurately, I'm amazed I lasted this long. Even though I think this was the right decision for me, it's still the end of an era and I will probably mourn the friendship for awhile. Thanks for reading.
posted by carmicha at 4:20 PM on June 11, 2019 [14 favorites]
Actually, that was part of the issue; her insistence that the enterprise was unique and so special that all people and organizations with which it crossed paths should make exceptions for it, including regulatory agencies, foundations, philanthropists, etc. For me that meant she rejected my insights and recommendations on the grounds that I didn't understand the organization's inherent wonderfulness (but the she would always come back for more). And the organization could be wonderful, but that doesn't mean the problems she asked me to troubleshoot aren't completely typical, nor does it follow that the requirements of the various regulatory agencies et al were unreasonable.
I'm not blameless here, as I eventually ghosted her after the last set of requests, which was cowardly of me. But I resorted to this action only after multiple cooling off periods and difficult conversations... and I'm just the most recent of our many mutual friends to cut ties, particularly those who have been dragooned into helping out with the not-for-profit as board members or whatever. Others just got sick of hearing about the organization and its woes. Instead of thinking about why friends (and romantic partners too) kept abandoning her (and
Yet this woman was once among my closest two or three friends, and that's the relationship I will miss along with the notion--the possibility-- that it will ever be rewarding again. Over the past decade or so, it always felt like she was going through the motions when asking about my life and well-being: just enough to be polite before changing the subject back to the not-for-profit. And she stopped being able to retain any information about me, so consumed she was. Ultimately, everything about maintaining the friendship became too lopsided to bear. It was asymmetrical in all emotional regards, plus I always paid for everything we did together and regularly traveled halfway across the country to see her, at least annually, which has never been reciprocated. Her commitment to the organization and her certainty that it would fall apart without her meant that she could never leave it, although in fairness she probably couldn't afford to visit me anyway.
Re-reading the above with an eye towards confirming that I'm portraying the situation accurately, I'm amazed I lasted this long. Even though I think this was the right decision for me, it's still the end of an era and I will probably mourn the friendship for awhile. Thanks for reading.
posted by carmicha at 4:20 PM on June 11, 2019 [14 favorites]
Melismata, sorry to hear that. Reminds me of my own docs (pulmonologist and PCP), who, when I asked about a handicapped parking permit a year ago, said (in the pseudo-politest way possible) "You're fat, just walk more."
Nevermind that I've got:
- Asthma
- Tracheal stenosis (scar tissue restricted airway)
- COPD
- STAGE FOUR CANCER (lungs and shoulder, after they took out the kidney and tumor)
but oh, no, it must be because I'm fat that I have trouble breathing sometimes!
posted by mrbill at 4:21 PM on June 11, 2019 [23 favorites]
Nevermind that I've got:
- Asthma
- Tracheal stenosis (scar tissue restricted airway)
- COPD
- STAGE FOUR CANCER (lungs and shoulder, after they took out the kidney and tumor)
but oh, no, it must be because I'm fat that I have trouble breathing sometimes!
posted by mrbill at 4:21 PM on June 11, 2019 [23 favorites]
I was going to sizzle up two packages of chicken to have over pasta tonight, and... well, I finally found the source of the stink in the kitchen. Had to throw out one of those packages, so now we'll split a chicken breast between us.
I used up the last of my PTO on the trip up the California coast a couple weeks ago, so I have no time to take off between now and August. Which really isn't too long to go without a vacation, but I could really use more ocean views along the PCH, plus a few more days to explore more of San Francisco beyond the Mission and the Embarcadero.
I am fucking fuck -ing about spoiled chicken and how my vacation wasn't long enough, yes.
posted by emelenjr at 4:37 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I used up the last of my PTO on the trip up the California coast a couple weeks ago, so I have no time to take off between now and August. Which really isn't too long to go without a vacation, but I could really use more ocean views along the PCH, plus a few more days to explore more of San Francisco beyond the Mission and the Embarcadero.
I am fucking fuck -ing about spoiled chicken and how my vacation wasn't long enough, yes.
posted by emelenjr at 4:37 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
I love my new job. I do not love 90+ degree temperatures in a job where I work outside. I am praying for cooler temps.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 4:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [5 favorites]
So sorry about that, mrbill and Melismata. Every profession has its share of jackasses.
posted by Glinn at 5:15 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Glinn at 5:15 PM on June 11, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh, one more thing. I had to get a doctor to sign off on more time out of work for me, which went fine. I told friends who I was going to see and came home to a message about how this guy completely disregarded one of my friends' rather significant joint and GI issues for years, choosing instead to tell her she's fat and "probably just eats crap," and now I am feeling creeped out because I saw him with no idea that he'd been awful to her. I'm heavier than she is, but less tattooed and have different class status, but aaaaaaaahhhhh so creepy!!!!!
posted by bile and syntax at 5:24 PM on June 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by bile and syntax at 5:24 PM on June 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
I got -so- angry today, all because 'Heartless' by Kanye came up on my playlist. There was -so- much shit my soon-to-be-ex huz did that I swallowed my anger about. For years. So many goddamn lies and excuses, along with infidelity and hiding shit, etc etc. If I showed any anger or upset, it was met with a tirade about how horrible I was making things for him. And none of this left our house. He was really good at keeping his addictions secret.
I had to be the one to walk away and end it. And now I'm in a wonderful, intense fast-moving relationship which, viewed through a certain lens, turns me into a villain. I don't believe this narrative, my friends and family and others who know the story know that it's not true, but fuuuuuuucccckkkkkk. Fuck. Fuck him and his bullshit. I want to just let go and let the world know how wonderful my boyfriend is and how in love we are, and I have this weight behind it. Most of it is in my head, and I know that, but still.
And, I'm still technically married, which I feel is a big secret I'm keeping from boyfriend's friends/family (not that they need to know, but the pressure of not slipping and saying something is real). I'll probably talk to him about this soon. And, I really see this being a long-term thing, and I think some of my more conservative family members (aunt/uncle/grandparents) are not going to be super welcoming to a brown Muslim guy, and that breaks my heart. They were side-eyeing my soon-to-be-ex huz because he's half Jewish, so uh, yeeeeah. Even my dad is a little iffy, but I'm sure he'll be fine after he meets him. I haven't told boyfriend about this yet either. Fuck.
I'm sending out so many internet hugs and loves to all of you fine people. I'm glad we're here together.
posted by Fig at 5:30 PM on June 11, 2019 [26 favorites]
I had to be the one to walk away and end it. And now I'm in a wonderful, intense fast-moving relationship which, viewed through a certain lens, turns me into a villain. I don't believe this narrative, my friends and family and others who know the story know that it's not true, but fuuuuuuucccckkkkkk. Fuck. Fuck him and his bullshit. I want to just let go and let the world know how wonderful my boyfriend is and how in love we are, and I have this weight behind it. Most of it is in my head, and I know that, but still.
And, I'm still technically married, which I feel is a big secret I'm keeping from boyfriend's friends/family (not that they need to know, but the pressure of not slipping and saying something is real). I'll probably talk to him about this soon. And, I really see this being a long-term thing, and I think some of my more conservative family members (aunt/uncle/grandparents) are not going to be super welcoming to a brown Muslim guy, and that breaks my heart. They were side-eyeing my soon-to-be-ex huz because he's half Jewish, so uh, yeeeeah. Even my dad is a little iffy, but I'm sure he'll be fine after he meets him. I haven't told boyfriend about this yet either. Fuck.
I'm sending out so many internet hugs and loves to all of you fine people. I'm glad we're here together.
posted by Fig at 5:30 PM on June 11, 2019 [26 favorites]
Ugh Fig. You deserve all the bubbly happiness with new love. I'm sorry people suck and you have all their stuff (even if it's just theoretical at this point) dimming it.
I shouldn't be sad right now. I love my job, I like where I live, the weather is beautiful, and I finally feel like we're ok financially. But my sisters and my bff live so far away and the world is just blah right now.
And I burned my thumb because I am a forking clutz.
posted by ghost phoneme at 5:36 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
I shouldn't be sad right now. I love my job, I like where I live, the weather is beautiful, and I finally feel like we're ok financially. But my sisters and my bff live so far away and the world is just blah right now.
And I burned my thumb because I am a forking clutz.
posted by ghost phoneme at 5:36 PM on June 11, 2019 [7 favorites]
Even anonymous, I can't be too specific but a giant FUCK YOU to the narcissistic bully who is currently making my life so much harder than it needs to be. I have to cope like a fucking grownup and in fact all I want to do is sit on the sofa and cry. I can't even get enough energy summoned for a good revenge fantasy. And on top of that, I had a bone graft last week and I'm three days away from having the stitches out and somehow the flap came open during the night and now I'm waiting for the dentist to call me back about when I can go in and I'm so afraid the graft didn't take or something and I'm going to have to do the whole mess all over again.
posted by frumiousb at 6:18 PM on June 11, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by frumiousb at 6:18 PM on June 11, 2019 [13 favorites]
I don't have a fucking fuck fuck thing going on so much as a "Holy shit you've gotta keep running running running!" in my life just now -- I'm ridiculously upside down on this condo, doing a bit of a re-fi, dragging out a few bucks @ 4.5% and all was well until it occurred to me that they are going to send an appraiser over to nose around and take pictures and I shit my drawers because there are about a trillion billion little things and two big ones that are out of line here and I backed out, said bye-bye, except these ppl *really* want to do this deal, today the brokers assistant called "When are we gonna close? When are we gonna close? etc and etc" and I told her that I am *nowhere near* ready for some clown with a camera nosing around and she said "Look, just get all the rest of everything else together and send it over, and when you get the jive done for camera time we'll send the mope over then. How soon can you pull everything together? (ie When are we gonna close? When are we gonna close?)" and I'm looking around -- a new front door (great story, my younger brother got pissed at me and stormed out, and I locked the door behind him, and it was July, and about a million degrees, and my brother kicked that door in and we got into a fistfight behind it, I'm so proud of him, so happy to be his brother, he reset my clock, which I needed, and that door for years has held together but held together with big honkin' screws, fine for a bachelor but for the camera it's got to be replaced), so new front door, new A/C unit being installed tomorrow, I had all my bike gear spread all over the place (mountain bikes, 3 of them, and tubes and tires and seats and etc and etc) and tools spread all over the place and paint and paintings spread all over the place and my dishwasher shit the bed just last week and blah blah blah fucking blah. I asked the brokers assistant what's todays date, told her that one month from today we are in like Flynn (whoever the fuck Flynn is), told her that July 11 is in pencil, not ink, but soft lead pencil pressed hard hard hard on soft, porous paper so it'll be a big fat pain in my big fat ass for me to try to erase it if I don't keep on hauling ass around here creating order from chaos. Painful but fun also to throw all kinds of shit away, clothing that doesn't fit or sucks, and I'm all the time buying black shirts, they are festooned all about this bitty condo and I am to try to hang them up orderly and/or fold them and put them up like Marie fucking Kondo or some shit? Jesus h christ on a crutch, I'm screwed, but I'ma gonna do it. No, I *am* doing it. Fuck. One of my best friends is this total psycho neat freak and he offered and I said "Yep, please come help me." knowing even as I said it the suffering that would entail, and that suffering has indeed entailed, it has entailed the living dogshit out of me, his blue-collar yankee scumbag drill sergeant juice lit a blazing, white-hot fire under my ass and I've been on the run and will *be* on the run so long as need be. I repeat -- jesus h christ on a crutch. So it's sortof a fuckety fuck fuck but it's a fun one, too, and taking all of my time, energy, and attention, and at the end a big honkin' pile of dough for a few important things that I've put off and put off and put off (think: dentistry) (think: getting my geriatric pickup ticking like a pocket watch) (think: new fridge, new dishwasher) (think: all new cabinetry, cuz I've a friend with a cabinet shop and I can trade out hours of work for him for hours of work in his shop for me but I've still got to buy the material) so I've put all this jive off but now I'ma gonna do 'er by god, and won't it be just swell when I do? Won't it be just great? Yes. Yes, it will be great.
So, wish me luck. Not fuck -- luck. Or, what the fuck -- wish me fucking luck, hows about that?
Is this how we're supposed to do in these fucking fuck threads?
posted by dancestoblue at 7:23 PM on June 11, 2019 [10 favorites]
So, wish me luck. Not fuck -- luck. Or, what the fuck -- wish me fucking luck, hows about that?
Is this how we're supposed to do in these fucking fuck threads?
posted by dancestoblue at 7:23 PM on June 11, 2019 [10 favorites]
This is just to say
I have eaten
all the junk food
that was in
the house
and which
I should
have
thrown away
FML
it was delicious
so sweet
and so salty
also
I hate
my fucking job
and
my cat just
farted
in my face
hugs to MeFites
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [51 favorites]
I have eaten
all the junk food
that was in
the house
and which
I should
have
thrown away
FML
it was delicious
so sweet
and so salty
also
I hate
my fucking job
and
my cat just
farted
in my face
hugs to MeFites
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:40 PM on June 11, 2019 [51 favorites]
I never realized how much I really used my right pinky until I nearly fucking cut the tip of it off on Sunday. One minute, I was digging leaves & debris out of my rain gutters, & the next minute, I was standing on my roof, with blood running down my filthy hand shouting “FUCK!” & wondering how tin flashing could be that Sharp. Anyway, I held the flap of the tip of my finger on with my thumb, made it down the ladder one-handed, got it cleaned out, decided that minor emergency would just put a butterfly on it anyway, asked the wife to help put a butterfly on it, then decided I’d better sit down, as I was getting dizzy. She patched it up in pretty short order, & 2 days later it looks like it should heal okay, but, where was I ? Oh yeah
I type a lot at work. I use my right pinky on the shift & return keys. When it’s wrapped up in a bunch of bandaids, it’s hard to keep it it out of the way, & it’s hard to remember not to use it until “ouch! Fuck!”
Thank god it’s one of my two spare fingers, as I have a gig playing bass with a new band Saturday ( no practice - just charts NO FUCKING PRESSURE) & this could have been season-ending if it had been my left hand.
On the “fuck you, I’m outta here” front, I gave notice at my ridiculously stressful job because I found a better one, & I’m kind of enjoying watching 20 people who more or less loathe me discover just how much I do & how much worse their lives are going to be in 2 weeks. Clients are starting to freak, & my boss is trying to wear his brave “we’ll get through this” face, but I think I put the fear in all of them. Good luck replacing me, you’re gonna need it.
I’ll report back in a month or so as to whether I really get a portion of my life back, as it looks like I might, & I am going the fuck outdoors. (Just in time for fucking Texas summer, but I haven’t seen the sun in so long, that’s just okay by me)
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:06 PM on June 11, 2019 [15 favorites]
I type a lot at work. I use my right pinky on the shift & return keys. When it’s wrapped up in a bunch of bandaids, it’s hard to keep it it out of the way, & it’s hard to remember not to use it until “ouch! Fuck!”
Thank god it’s one of my two spare fingers, as I have a gig playing bass with a new band Saturday ( no practice - just charts NO FUCKING PRESSURE) & this could have been season-ending if it had been my left hand.
On the “fuck you, I’m outta here” front, I gave notice at my ridiculously stressful job because I found a better one, & I’m kind of enjoying watching 20 people who more or less loathe me discover just how much I do & how much worse their lives are going to be in 2 weeks. Clients are starting to freak, & my boss is trying to wear his brave “we’ll get through this” face, but I think I put the fear in all of them. Good luck replacing me, you’re gonna need it.
I’ll report back in a month or so as to whether I really get a portion of my life back, as it looks like I might, & I am going the fuck outdoors. (Just in time for fucking Texas summer, but I haven’t seen the sun in so long, that’s just okay by me)
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:06 PM on June 11, 2019 [15 favorites]
"Anyway, I held the flap of the tip of my finger on with my thumb..."
No lie, reading that just made me grimace and hiss and involuntarily recoil from my computer screen.
Glad you're healing up alright.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:17 PM on June 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
No lie, reading that just made me grimace and hiss and involuntarily recoil from my computer screen.
Glad you're healing up alright.
posted by Secret Sparrow at 8:17 PM on June 11, 2019 [6 favorites]
My dad has pneumonia for the 2nd time in 6 weeks. They think it’s probably COPD. My mom is not handling things well and my sister is doing all the work of taking care of elderly parents because she’s 20 mins away. And I’m guilt-ridden, more and more, by living 3,000 miles away and not sharing the load with her. I have no idea what to do.
posted by greermahoney at 9:45 PM on June 11, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by greermahoney at 9:45 PM on June 11, 2019 [9 favorites]
I spent a few hours today carrying on a conversation, via text, in which I tried to advise my barely adult sister as she tried to advocate for my grandmother at the doctor's office. My grandmother, who barely speaks English, recently had surgery for breast cancer, and I had to try to find out details about her insurance via my sister, who does not understand anything about insurance, to make sure that the doctor didn't order some test that would cost thousands of dollars. Throughout this process, my main concern was not whether my grandmother was getting the tests that would, hopefully, confirm that the cancer was removed, but whether this eighty-one-year-old woman who still works part time was going to get charged some obscene amount of money by a medical system that is staggering in its cruelty and wastefulness.
Meanwhile, my grandfather on the other side of the family is slowly succumbing to extreme old age. This is a man who survived years of terrible war, who endured things that must have required a degree of strength that I cannot even imagine. It's terrible to watch, from thousands of miles away, as he fades.
My father is undergoing a series of tests because there appears to be something wrong with his liver.
My relationship of nearly six years ended about a month ago. We were on opposite sides of the country with no prospect of ending up in the same place, and that became intolerable for her.
All of this is so fragile.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 10:15 PM on June 11, 2019 [15 favorites]
Meanwhile, my grandfather on the other side of the family is slowly succumbing to extreme old age. This is a man who survived years of terrible war, who endured things that must have required a degree of strength that I cannot even imagine. It's terrible to watch, from thousands of miles away, as he fades.
My father is undergoing a series of tests because there appears to be something wrong with his liver.
My relationship of nearly six years ended about a month ago. We were on opposite sides of the country with no prospect of ending up in the same place, and that became intolerable for her.
All of this is so fragile.
posted by a certain Sysoi Pafnut'evich at 10:15 PM on June 11, 2019 [15 favorites]
There has been homophobic graffiti around Paris for months, and last week there were two physical attacks on lesbians in London and Southampton, and it makes me so so sad.
posted by ellieBOA at 10:49 PM on June 11, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by ellieBOA at 10:49 PM on June 11, 2019 [12 favorites]
And here's an update that probably most people who aren't me saw coming:
It's not, in fact, just the ceiling that is the problem. The ROOF was also a stupid DIY job. So maybe now we have to replace the roof. Or maybe they can fix the roof. But either way it is no longer a few thousand dollars and a week of work. And of course they figured that out after they took the rest of the ceiling off, so the lounge is going to be unusable for a while.
posted by lollusc at 3:06 AM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
It's not, in fact, just the ceiling that is the problem. The ROOF was also a stupid DIY job. So maybe now we have to replace the roof. Or maybe they can fix the roof. But either way it is no longer a few thousand dollars and a week of work. And of course they figured that out after they took the rest of the ceiling off, so the lounge is going to be unusable for a while.
posted by lollusc at 3:06 AM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
(This is a second story room with a double sliding doors that lead to a straight drop to one's doom below, with no balcony or railings, or whatever, so it's not exactly a big surprise that nothing else is up to code either.)
posted by lollusc at 3:07 AM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by lollusc at 3:07 AM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
The faint hope I had that I could build a career and make a future in Hong Kong in peace, freedom and security and with a bit of prosperity thrown in after years of earning not very much money at all seems to be dimming by the minute.
posted by mdonley at 4:22 AM on June 12, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by mdonley at 4:22 AM on June 12, 2019 [11 favorites]
Now in the right place:
It turned out my stitches from the bone graft have opened up, but the dentist doesn't want to restitch, and instead just wants it to heal over. So I'm stuck on the couch and glazed with tramadol and listening to the sirens in Central down below.
I keep watching Twitter obsessively, watching all these images of brave students being shot with rubber bullets, being beaten up, being attacked with tear gas. Just fuck it all.
posted by frumiousb at 4:46 AM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
It turned out my stitches from the bone graft have opened up, but the dentist doesn't want to restitch, and instead just wants it to heal over. So I'm stuck on the couch and glazed with tramadol and listening to the sirens in Central down below.
I keep watching Twitter obsessively, watching all these images of brave students being shot with rubber bullets, being beaten up, being attacked with tear gas. Just fuck it all.
posted by frumiousb at 4:46 AM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
I stood up from my chair at work to walk to the bathroom on Monday afternoon and strained or tore my LCL (the ligament on the outside of your knee. Usually this happens because someone slide tackles you, or something). And then I had to hobble to the bathroom because I REALLY had to pee, and trying to stand back up made me yelp loudly enough that the construction guys in the hallway asked if I was ok.
Stupid knees. Why are there so many little pieces that can snap or pop? And why does Boston have so many T stations with stairs but no elevators?
(I think I'll be off crutches by the end of the week, and hopefully get to the orthopedist tomorrow or Friday, I don't think it's really severe, just hurt a lot at first and now feels kind of unstable)
posted by ChuraChura at 5:02 AM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
Stupid knees. Why are there so many little pieces that can snap or pop? And why does Boston have so many T stations with stairs but no elevators?
(I think I'll be off crutches by the end of the week, and hopefully get to the orthopedist tomorrow or Friday, I don't think it's really severe, just hurt a lot at first and now feels kind of unstable)
posted by ChuraChura at 5:02 AM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
Hugs to all of you who need/want them.
I know the feeling of being exhausted and being caught in a spiral of unsettling events that never seem to ease. My future in terms of my employment and my being in this country is still being decided on by the powers that be, and my anxiety about that is consuming almost every moment of my day. I was unable to renew my lease because of this, and while I’m grateful for friends who have offered me a place to stay, I want my own haven to go home to. I miss my bed and want my things not to be in storage boxes in various friends’ apartments.
Also, the man I’d been dating for the past month has left for an extended trip across the world and from the last conversation we had, it doesn’t seem like he’s interested in seeing me again when he comes back. It was too short a time for a relationship to develop, I know, but he’s the first person I’d truly been interested in after a very long time and my heart is still a little disappointed that he didn’t find me as fascinating and worthy of knowing. He was lovely and genuine to the very end, though, and I appreciate that as much as I hate it. It would have been so much easier to move on had he been hateful.
posted by theappleonatree at 5:43 AM on June 12, 2019 [10 favorites]
I know the feeling of being exhausted and being caught in a spiral of unsettling events that never seem to ease. My future in terms of my employment and my being in this country is still being decided on by the powers that be, and my anxiety about that is consuming almost every moment of my day. I was unable to renew my lease because of this, and while I’m grateful for friends who have offered me a place to stay, I want my own haven to go home to. I miss my bed and want my things not to be in storage boxes in various friends’ apartments.
Also, the man I’d been dating for the past month has left for an extended trip across the world and from the last conversation we had, it doesn’t seem like he’s interested in seeing me again when he comes back. It was too short a time for a relationship to develop, I know, but he’s the first person I’d truly been interested in after a very long time and my heart is still a little disappointed that he didn’t find me as fascinating and worthy of knowing. He was lovely and genuine to the very end, though, and I appreciate that as much as I hate it. It would have been so much easier to move on had he been hateful.
posted by theappleonatree at 5:43 AM on June 12, 2019 [10 favorites]
My dad has had stage 4 metastatic cancer for a year now. He still thinks he can be cured. Like, honest to god, he thinks every treatment he undergoes is somehow, magically, going to cure him. Even though I've told him (and my mother, who persists in believing in this fairy tale as well) that there is no cure for cancer, "no evidence of disease" and "remission" do not mean "cured," you're stage 4 and metastatic, dad, no you're not ever going to be cured, there is no cure for cancer, what's the prognosis? if you don't die from heart attack or stroke, this cancer will kill you, you're 82, did you think you weren't going to die ever?
It's exhausting and complicated because he was and is a terrible father, a terrible husband, and it's really hard to feel compassion for someone who destroyed you and gave you PTSD and who is so clearly a narcissist. I know I'm supposed to love him because he's my dad but I don't think I do and I'm angry at him because OF COURSE he's living through all of this because it's all about him and I'm pretty sure his body is strong due to spite and narcissism.
And I know it's not socially acceptable to not care that your father is dying in drips and drabs and I know it's not socially acceptable to be angry about this whole process (the doctor's appointments and chemo and whatnot) taking up so much of my time. But I can't help what I feel. He's not a good person.
How am I supposed to deal with this? There's no road map for this.
posted by cooker girl at 6:07 AM on June 12, 2019 [39 favorites]
It's exhausting and complicated because he was and is a terrible father, a terrible husband, and it's really hard to feel compassion for someone who destroyed you and gave you PTSD and who is so clearly a narcissist. I know I'm supposed to love him because he's my dad but I don't think I do and I'm angry at him because OF COURSE he's living through all of this because it's all about him and I'm pretty sure his body is strong due to spite and narcissism.
And I know it's not socially acceptable to not care that your father is dying in drips and drabs and I know it's not socially acceptable to be angry about this whole process (the doctor's appointments and chemo and whatnot) taking up so much of my time. But I can't help what I feel. He's not a good person.
How am I supposed to deal with this? There's no road map for this.
posted by cooker girl at 6:07 AM on June 12, 2019 [39 favorites]
If anyone does ever need to vent privately, feel free to MeMail me. It's the least I can do to repay people being kind to me. I've got a lot of value out of Good Life Podcast lately to help deal with life.
But today I gotta say FUCK NOT GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP! cause … I got enough sleep for once and I feel amazing. I promise to never stay up past 1am again but I probably will tonight.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:59 AM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
But today I gotta say FUCK NOT GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP! cause … I got enough sleep for once and I feel amazing. I promise to never stay up past 1am again but I probably will tonight.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:59 AM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
Apparently it's time for ~*~*~*DIGESTIVE ISSUES*~*~*~! I hate it! :D
posted by capricorn at 7:14 AM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by capricorn at 7:14 AM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
I don't know how to change my life to deal with the climate crisis. I feel such anger towards the merchants of doubt that spread climate denialism. Most of the time I can't do anything so I distract myself and did you know that if you iteratively apply the Collatz function on 2^n - 1 you pass through 3^n - 1? Or I get lost in stupid quixotic non-systemic solutions like if you think about it, you could use solar to charge batteries and then have a second set of wires in your house that's DC-only, then run your LED lights and computers without paying the conversion cost to and from AC.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:19 AM on June 12, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:19 AM on June 12, 2019 [7 favorites]
Guys, one of my young coworkers got intimidated into giving her number to a customer, a much older guy, this weekend. She said it was fine, but she was so quiet, and seemed scared. This has happened before-- it's really common for women working in the service industry to be stalked and harrassed, because none of us feel secure enough in our jobs to tell a customer to stop or else get out of my store-- and last time it was dealt with very quickly. I felt like I had to do something.
I was so naive. I went to the security guys. They took care of it last time. But it was a different guy. He protested and argued with me over ten minutes or so. How could you force someone to give you their number? Why didn't she stand up for herself? A manager was nearby and started agreeing and talking over me. Why didn't she just give him a fake number? She should take more responsibility. All I could keep saying over and over was, "Are you serious right now?" and, "Please try to understand."
In the end the guy went and talked to her to check on her. In front of all her coworkers. And customers. And now that everyone had the story, they threw in their two cents-- that it was her fault.
She's not angry at me. She thanked me for standing up for her. But good god, I cried on my lunch break. How did we become so invested in this narrative that anything that happens to a woman is her own fault? She's not even twenty yet. Don't people want to protect each other anymore? Why doesn't it matter to them to look after her? I never asked him to arrest the guy or something-- just to check in on her.
I'm so angry, and so sad. Why do we have to be all on our own? Why do we have to blame each other? Why can't we help each other? We don't have anything else in this world. It's just us, and a planet that, given time enough, will sweep every whisper of us away.
I really hope she's going to be alright.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 9:12 AM on June 12, 2019 [41 favorites]
I was so naive. I went to the security guys. They took care of it last time. But it was a different guy. He protested and argued with me over ten minutes or so. How could you force someone to give you their number? Why didn't she stand up for herself? A manager was nearby and started agreeing and talking over me. Why didn't she just give him a fake number? She should take more responsibility. All I could keep saying over and over was, "Are you serious right now?" and, "Please try to understand."
In the end the guy went and talked to her to check on her. In front of all her coworkers. And customers. And now that everyone had the story, they threw in their two cents-- that it was her fault.
She's not angry at me. She thanked me for standing up for her. But good god, I cried on my lunch break. How did we become so invested in this narrative that anything that happens to a woman is her own fault? She's not even twenty yet. Don't people want to protect each other anymore? Why doesn't it matter to them to look after her? I never asked him to arrest the guy or something-- just to check in on her.
I'm so angry, and so sad. Why do we have to be all on our own? Why do we have to blame each other? Why can't we help each other? We don't have anything else in this world. It's just us, and a planet that, given time enough, will sweep every whisper of us away.
I really hope she's going to be alright.
posted by the liquid oxygen at 9:12 AM on June 12, 2019 [41 favorites]
What kind of shitty ass parents turn down a son's request for a fucking Father's Day call? My partner's shitass Extremely Evangelical parents, that's who.
And do they cut him off and own their shittyness? NO! No, they do not. They just continue to let him unsuccessfully audition for their love and respect; which they will neither give nor acknowledge the futility of the effort.
They neglected this man his entire life, refused to attend his PhD hooding ceremony, and rebuff him at every turn. But they did offer to fly out here if he found a good christian woman to marry!
(After 4 years together guess who's still not good, christian, or planning to marry? THIS WOMAN)
The fucking world is ending and they can't accept a call from their grown son to hear him say that he still, inexplicably, loves them.
Fucking assholes and their useless, pointless, ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY AND OPTIONAL cruelty.
I hate them.
posted by Space Kitty at 10:40 AM on June 12, 2019 [43 favorites]
And do they cut him off and own their shittyness? NO! No, they do not. They just continue to let him unsuccessfully audition for their love and respect; which they will neither give nor acknowledge the futility of the effort.
They neglected this man his entire life, refused to attend his PhD hooding ceremony, and rebuff him at every turn. But they did offer to fly out here if he found a good christian woman to marry!
(After 4 years together guess who's still not good, christian, or planning to marry? THIS WOMAN)
The fucking world is ending and they can't accept a call from their grown son to hear him say that he still, inexplicably, loves them.
Fucking assholes and their useless, pointless, ENTIRELY VOLUNTARY AND OPTIONAL cruelty.
I hate them.
posted by Space Kitty at 10:40 AM on June 12, 2019 [43 favorites]
Fuck the American for-profit healthcare system, is what I'm saying.
Factoid: apparently life expectancy with cystic fibrosis is ten years greater in Canada than in the US. Not sure why exactly. It's a recent development.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:45 AM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
Factoid: apparently life expectancy with cystic fibrosis is ten years greater in Canada than in the US. Not sure why exactly. It's a recent development.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:45 AM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
Our A/C died in this 105F heatwave and the house became unlivable and so we're in a hotel with the cats. I have executive function problems, and body problems, so I feel so helpless in mind and body, I feel overwhelmed and weak. I should never have become a homeowner. Right now though with this emergency, I feel scared and anxious with a physical knot of misery in my chest like I haven't felt since like 25 years ago, that feels like a bad sign.
I recognize the feeling now as mostly anxiety, I think. I hope I am stronger and wiser and able to fend it off. But I also feel like I'm hitting up against my (pathetic) limits.
posted by fleacircus at 10:52 AM on June 12, 2019 [9 favorites]
I recognize the feeling now as mostly anxiety, I think. I hope I am stronger and wiser and able to fend it off. But I also feel like I'm hitting up against my (pathetic) limits.
posted by fleacircus at 10:52 AM on June 12, 2019 [9 favorites]
In a slight respite from fucking fuck, we now have a working washer/dryer, after a month of going over to a friend's house, and I managed to (I think) not get completely gouged by FIOS when replacing our 10 yo router and broken dvr. Fuck the opaque pricing and upselling that's required for CR! I'm really hoping we don't have anything new to fix or repair in the next month.
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 11:06 AM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Hermeowne Grangepurr at 11:06 AM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
I have a Skype job interview scheduled for tomorrow and it’s a job that would solve a few problems and cause some other ones and I am totally conflicted about just canceling the interview because it’s so very bewitching to have someone interested in my actual skills.
posted by Smearcase at 11:14 AM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Smearcase at 11:14 AM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
How come every silver lining has to come with a fucking dark cloud?
After 18 months (!!) of therapy and 12-step meetings and working on myself, I am finally in a place where I can mostly easily recognize when I'm having distorted thinking and stop it. I can recognize and engage with emotions, both mine and others', mostly without anxiety. This is all good, right?
The woman I cheated on and broke up with when my addiction of choice was at its peak is finally able to say things like "hanov3r, I trust you, even more than I did when we were first dating" and "I love you" and "I see a future for us" and "I'm so so proud of all the work you've done". This is all good, right?
Yesterday, we went to a medical consultation to talk about the results of an MRI she had a couple of weeks ago to try to figure out why she's having vertigo and facial numbness and significant distortion of hearing on one side. And.... She's got a 3cm tumor in her inner auditory canal, sitting on either (but disrupting both) cranial nerve VII or VIII and mildly occluding nerve V. It is benign and physically operable (too large for gamma knife, unfortunately), but the operation has a 100% chance of removing what hearing she still has on that side. It's also on the likely side of possible that damage to nerve VIII during the operation would result in loss of muscle function on that side of her face, leading to drooping, vocal slurring, and other physical symptoms that, to someone who is already struggling with othering feelings because of her body type, would devastate her self-confidence.
We are lucky - she's under-employed, covered by Medi-Cal, and this appears to be completely covered, so it's not going to be a gigantic financial burden, we think. But, like... fuuuuuuck. This is a lot for someone to carry and (not to, like, center her issues on me, but...) I can HEAR my addiction and intimacy issues trying to use this as an excuse to bolt again from someone I care about to my core and FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
posted by hanov3r at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2019 [22 favorites]
After 18 months (!!) of therapy and 12-step meetings and working on myself, I am finally in a place where I can mostly easily recognize when I'm having distorted thinking and stop it. I can recognize and engage with emotions, both mine and others', mostly without anxiety. This is all good, right?
The woman I cheated on and broke up with when my addiction of choice was at its peak is finally able to say things like "hanov3r, I trust you, even more than I did when we were first dating" and "I love you" and "I see a future for us" and "I'm so so proud of all the work you've done". This is all good, right?
Yesterday, we went to a medical consultation to talk about the results of an MRI she had a couple of weeks ago to try to figure out why she's having vertigo and facial numbness and significant distortion of hearing on one side. And.... She's got a 3cm tumor in her inner auditory canal, sitting on either (but disrupting both) cranial nerve VII or VIII and mildly occluding nerve V. It is benign and physically operable (too large for gamma knife, unfortunately), but the operation has a 100% chance of removing what hearing she still has on that side. It's also on the likely side of possible that damage to nerve VIII during the operation would result in loss of muscle function on that side of her face, leading to drooping, vocal slurring, and other physical symptoms that, to someone who is already struggling with othering feelings because of her body type, would devastate her self-confidence.
We are lucky - she's under-employed, covered by Medi-Cal, and this appears to be completely covered, so it's not going to be a gigantic financial burden, we think. But, like... fuuuuuuck. This is a lot for someone to carry and (not to, like, center her issues on me, but...) I can HEAR my addiction and intimacy issues trying to use this as an excuse to bolt again from someone I care about to my core and FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
posted by hanov3r at 11:36 AM on June 12, 2019 [22 favorites]
hanov3r, good luck with everything!
I've been trying to get an MRI for years -- the first neurologist I saw declined to give me one, even though I was getting 300+ migraines per year, because he figured that I'd been getting them for a few years by that point, and we'd have noticed if it was something more serious. On the way out of the office, I mentioned offhandedly that I sometimes got them on the other side of my head, and he was like "oh good, because otherwise it could be a sign of something more serious..." except he had already decided not to give me an MRI? I can only guess that he thought I was faking it, or something.
Eventually I started getting fewer migraines, but then a few years later I started getting worse headaches, along with kind of an intense mental fog. By then I couldn't afford the $300 copay for an MRI, so I didn't go. Those, too, eventually went away. Lately I've been getting a lot of headaches, along with occasional vertigo and facial numbness, but I can't even reach my doctor's office -- I call and no one picks up the phone. I just sit on hold for 40 minutes, listening to the same little snippet of Mozart with a loud and abrupt reminder every 5 minutes to get a flu shot. I'm on Medicaid now, and I'm sure they'd cover an MRI, but apparently the challenge now is getting anyone's attention.
A close family member had a brain tumor a few years ago, so of course now I'm primed to think anything is a symptom of that. I'm trying to switch to a different doctor, so I can actually see them. Here's hoping. It just sucks, because these constant headaches are preventing me from doing much of anything.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:05 PM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
I've been trying to get an MRI for years -- the first neurologist I saw declined to give me one, even though I was getting 300+ migraines per year, because he figured that I'd been getting them for a few years by that point, and we'd have noticed if it was something more serious. On the way out of the office, I mentioned offhandedly that I sometimes got them on the other side of my head, and he was like "oh good, because otherwise it could be a sign of something more serious..." except he had already decided not to give me an MRI? I can only guess that he thought I was faking it, or something.
Eventually I started getting fewer migraines, but then a few years later I started getting worse headaches, along with kind of an intense mental fog. By then I couldn't afford the $300 copay for an MRI, so I didn't go. Those, too, eventually went away. Lately I've been getting a lot of headaches, along with occasional vertigo and facial numbness, but I can't even reach my doctor's office -- I call and no one picks up the phone. I just sit on hold for 40 minutes, listening to the same little snippet of Mozart with a loud and abrupt reminder every 5 minutes to get a flu shot. I'm on Medicaid now, and I'm sure they'd cover an MRI, but apparently the challenge now is getting anyone's attention.
A close family member had a brain tumor a few years ago, so of course now I'm primed to think anything is a symptom of that. I'm trying to switch to a different doctor, so I can actually see them. Here's hoping. It just sucks, because these constant headaches are preventing me from doing much of anything.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:05 PM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
...and the Cons privatize health care...
They will try, but they didn't even truly get to a 2-tier system in Alberta when the cons were running that province for 40-years (before the NDP arrived, now we will see if the cons continue their crappiness (of course they will)).
The cons and their big business pals will keep hacking at the edges, and over time try to whittle everything away, chunk by chunk - but hopefully we can remedy/fix things after they get voted out as long as they don't remain in power for more than one electoral cycle at a time.
It will be a good 15-20 years before cons can completely privatize health care in Canada. Let's Fight it.
posted by jkaczor at 1:07 PM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
They will try, but they didn't even truly get to a 2-tier system in Alberta when the cons were running that province for 40-years (before the NDP arrived, now we will see if the cons continue their crappiness (of course they will)).
The cons and their big business pals will keep hacking at the edges, and over time try to whittle everything away, chunk by chunk - but hopefully we can remedy/fix things after they get voted out as long as they don't remain in power for more than one electoral cycle at a time.
It will be a good 15-20 years before cons can completely privatize health care in Canada. Let's Fight it.
posted by jkaczor at 1:07 PM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
I would request that you not take the venting thread as an opportunity to tell me I'm wrong. I'm not trying to start a fight here, but these threads have a purpose and I'm trying to let out some feelings, not be accurate.
posted by wellred at 1:29 PM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by wellred at 1:29 PM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
This winter (early 2019) I've discovered I'm happiest within a very narrow range of 55F-60F degrees.
I love this temperature and am so happy to have discovered another person who feels the same way!
---
posted by Anonymous at 2:36 PM on June 12, 2019
I love this temperature and am so happy to have discovered another person who feels the same way!
---
- I went into graduate school bright-eyed and excited about it, and emerged bitter with a master's instead of a PhD and with the discovery that I want to do something almost entirely unrelated to my training. So it feels I wasted four years of my life and I wish I could rewind time and re-do graduate school in this different field. If I went back to grad school in this new field now, I would need to do post-bac work plus invest the grad school time and I'm in my mid-30s and I am tired of just scraping by. All my friends have families and homes and lives and I feel stuck in my early 20s and it feels like pursuing a whole new degree is only going to prolong that.
- My current job is in my graduate school field doing the tasks I hated most in grad school. To make matters worse it's at the school I left. Every day I am reminded of my grad school failure. I even keep seeing people from my program; they treat me like a pariah. It's like I'm working for an ex.
- In my field, having a master's means you're an idiot failure who was too dumb and weak to finish your PhD. And I can't dismiss the nagging feeling that it's true.
- I have been trying to change jobs to my desired field for well over a year now, half so that I can do work I'll actually enjoy, half to work in an position where it feels like I'm making a meaningful difference in the world. But I have very little formal experience, nearly everything I know is self-taught, my degree is worthless, and 99% of entry-level jobs require experience (why call it entry-level?!). I had two amazing opportunities, but I was so anxious about them I bombed their skills tests. Go me.
- I despair of ever escaping my current field. I think I just don't have the resume to do what I love and I don't know how I'm going to get it if nobody will hire me.
- I feel like a big baby for complaining about this. I am lucky I have a job at all. People are going through so much worse.
posted by Anonymous at 2:36 PM on June 12, 2019
I need a hug.
posted by blurker at 2:52 PM on June 12, 2019 [20 favorites]
posted by blurker at 2:52 PM on June 12, 2019 [20 favorites]
[[[[blurker]]]]
Hugs for everyone who needs them. And if anyone needs to vent outside the FF threads, my memail is always open.
posted by hanov3r at 3:28 PM on June 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
Hugs for everyone who needs them. And if anyone needs to vent outside the FF threads, my memail is always open.
posted by hanov3r at 3:28 PM on June 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
shapes, I'm so sorry that the medical industry has been failing you as hard as they have. I can't imagine that's made your move across country any easier, either, has it?
posted by hanov3r at 3:38 PM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by hanov3r at 3:38 PM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
my new job alternates between shuffling deck chairs on the titanic and shoveling more coal in the boilers so we can steam into the ice field that much faster
posted by entropicamericana at 3:39 PM on June 12, 2019 [13 favorites]
posted by entropicamericana at 3:39 PM on June 12, 2019 [13 favorites]
I'm having a biopsy tomorrow.
(((blurker)))
(((cooker girl)))
posted by headnsouth at 4:13 PM on June 12, 2019 [7 favorites]
(((blurker)))
(((cooker girl)))
posted by headnsouth at 4:13 PM on June 12, 2019 [7 favorites]
Hugs to everyone. I wish I could do it in person, honestly, because I don't think we, as adults, get real, supportive hugs enough.
Cooker girl..I fully support you and understand about your dad. Mine was a terrible father; I haven't spoken to him in years; and last I knew he had prostate cancer but wasn't doing anything about it..and I don't care. You are not alone in not caring about an abusive parents health struggles.
For myself: I am so so so tired of being in pain. Both shoulders; work related; the right one first and then it became an issue where I had to get a lawyer because work tried to say I didn't report it soon enough. I had surgery a year ago, almost, yet I still have pain and during the battle for care I injured the other shoulder and I'm still waiting waiting waiting while it hurts more and more and I'm just tired of it. And I can't be one of those people who can't eat when they have pain; nope I feel better eating. And I'm still working, because of bills and a house and being a single woman with two (grown) sons at home. I'm trying not to stress, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow and I knew that ahead of time without even seeing the news (thanks, pressure related agony!)
Ok, whine over, for now. Thank you for listening!
posted by annieb at 5:18 PM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
Cooker girl..I fully support you and understand about your dad. Mine was a terrible father; I haven't spoken to him in years; and last I knew he had prostate cancer but wasn't doing anything about it..and I don't care. You are not alone in not caring about an abusive parents health struggles.
For myself: I am so so so tired of being in pain. Both shoulders; work related; the right one first and then it became an issue where I had to get a lawyer because work tried to say I didn't report it soon enough. I had surgery a year ago, almost, yet I still have pain and during the battle for care I injured the other shoulder and I'm still waiting waiting waiting while it hurts more and more and I'm just tired of it. And I can't be one of those people who can't eat when they have pain; nope I feel better eating. And I'm still working, because of bills and a house and being a single woman with two (grown) sons at home. I'm trying not to stress, but it's supposed to rain tomorrow and I knew that ahead of time without even seeing the news (thanks, pressure related agony!)
Ok, whine over, for now. Thank you for listening!
posted by annieb at 5:18 PM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is a small vent in the grand scale of things, but I've got just a month and a half left on my lease, and I have to either
1) relocate for a job in my field (applying for a lot, interviewing for a lot, no offers so far)
2) find some kind of temp-office-admin job that will pay enough to keep a roof over my head, probably in the medium-sized city 40 minutes away
3) put together enough freelance work to put a roof over my head
4) move to my dad's condo in Texas.
I hate being unemployed. I hate not knowing where I'll be living in August. I hate trying to make this decision of... how long do I hold out for a job I want, when do I accept that isn't going to happen? How much money am I going to spend on hotels so I can interview at places that aren't going to hire me?
I promise I can interview for jobs without coming off as pessimistic and defeatist. Really.
posted by Jeanne at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
1) relocate for a job in my field (applying for a lot, interviewing for a lot, no offers so far)
2) find some kind of temp-office-admin job that will pay enough to keep a roof over my head, probably in the medium-sized city 40 minutes away
3) put together enough freelance work to put a roof over my head
4) move to my dad's condo in Texas.
I hate being unemployed. I hate not knowing where I'll be living in August. I hate trying to make this decision of... how long do I hold out for a job I want, when do I accept that isn't going to happen? How much money am I going to spend on hotels so I can interview at places that aren't going to hire me?
I promise I can interview for jobs without coming off as pessimistic and defeatist. Really.
posted by Jeanne at 5:50 PM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
It's not bad enough that innocent and good people of all kinds are suffering and dying the world over, made worse by the current American president and those who flatter him for power and easy reward, but The Guardian has to show me a photo of a truly horrific animal slaughter practice in a distant country. And I am the sort of person who can't erase these things from my brain so once in a while I just see it again and for fuck's sake. Everything is so. fucking. shitty. Oh yeah, my 10-yr relationship is probably over, but we can't decide and time goes on. And there's the dogs.
Geez. I'm so sorry everything is so shitty everyone. You deserve to feel better, and I hope everyone does feel better. I offer virtual cupcakes* for all in lieu of hugs which I sometimes don't do well.
*or other pastry/other thing you prefer
posted by Glinn at 5:51 PM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
Geez. I'm so sorry everything is so shitty everyone. You deserve to feel better, and I hope everyone does feel better. I offer virtual cupcakes* for all in lieu of hugs which I sometimes don't do well.
*or other pastry/other thing you prefer
posted by Glinn at 5:51 PM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
My job sucks right now, and it's nobody's fault except, like, the state legislature, but I'm still angry all the time, even though there's really nobody to be angry at. (I could be angry at the state legislature, but I am perma-angry at the state legislature, so that's really just my general state of existence.) And I'm exhausted. And I really need to find something more productive to do with my time than fantasizing about quitting with no notice.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:08 PM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:08 PM on June 12, 2019 [1 favorite]
metafilter still doesn't have any poc mods.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:24 PM on June 12, 2019 [14 favorites]
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 6:24 PM on June 12, 2019 [14 favorites]
My partner has a chronic pain condition, and she's been struggling with a flare-up for about the past month. Two to three days a week, she can't really get out of bed, and even on the good days it's a lot harder for her to get around the home. So for now I'm doing all of the cooking, all of the errands, and making sure she can get to appointments.
None of this is new (my partner has had this condition a long time), and normally we'd be able to weather a bad month without much problem. But the timing is bad: I just switched jobs, and the new one is turning out to be a lot harder and more stressful than expected. The hours are a lot longer than we planned on, and it's more physically demanding. And for various reasons I can't go back to the old one.
So between work and helping my partner, my own sleeping/eating/self-care has gotten a lot worse. I'm exhausted, and I did something to my fucking knee yesterday, which is hilariously frustrating when my partner can't get around well either.
And like, by most standards we're fine. The new job is immensely frustrating but it pays well. I feel like I shouldn't complain. But I'd also love to be able to get more than 5 hours of sleep a night...
posted by a device for making your enemy change his mind at 6:47 PM on June 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
None of this is new (my partner has had this condition a long time), and normally we'd be able to weather a bad month without much problem. But the timing is bad: I just switched jobs, and the new one is turning out to be a lot harder and more stressful than expected. The hours are a lot longer than we planned on, and it's more physically demanding. And for various reasons I can't go back to the old one.
So between work and helping my partner, my own sleeping/eating/self-care has gotten a lot worse. I'm exhausted, and I did something to my fucking knee yesterday, which is hilariously frustrating when my partner can't get around well either.
And like, by most standards we're fine. The new job is immensely frustrating but it pays well. I feel like I shouldn't complain. But I'd also love to be able to get more than 5 hours of sleep a night...
posted by a device for making your enemy change his mind at 6:47 PM on June 12, 2019 [4 favorites]
Top AI researchers race to detect ‘deepfake’ videos: ‘We are outgunned’
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:18 PM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
Top artificial-intelligence researchers across the country are racing to defuse an extraordinary political weapon: computer-generated fake videos that could undermine candidates and mislead voters during the 2020 presidential campaign.Fuck.
And they have a message: We’re not ready.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:18 PM on June 12, 2019 [3 favorites]
I have been having worsening fatigue and cognitive impairment since my surgery last summer. I went out on medical leave when I got the flu at the end of February this year because I had already used my five weeks of PTO. I begged my doctor for an extension (which I need to again because it’s set to expire at the end though f this month) because I will get fired if someone doesn’t figure out what’s wrong. My doctor is stumped. I really do like her, but she has this weird insistence that I’m too young to have anything seriously wrong with me (which is not only offensive but kinda confusing because I’m older than her). She has run a bunch of tests, but she’s basically hands off now and considers me to a problem for the specialists.
Ok, cool, the specialists. In the past three weeks, I had a consult with the sleep doctor she referred me to, as well as a check-in with my regular neurologist. To my great surprise, I found that I show signs of narcolepsy and absence seizures. So, that’s cool.
But, no, it really is. I just want answers! And it has been delightful not working. I’ve been slowly, within my limitations, getting my house back in order, while also getting to rest whenever I need to. I’ve picked up a new hobby. Since finding out about these potential diagnoses, my health-related anxiety has gone way down. My memory has been affected so much, and while I suppose I should be sad about the loss of happy memories, I’m instead grateful for the loss of traumatic memories. I live entirely in the present now. I don’t remember the past and I can’t conceptualize the future. It’s all very freeing.
And it’s all very unsustainable. SSDI is notoriously hard to get approved for as it is and narcolepsy isn’t a listed condition. If I do have narcolepsy, I’d have to get approved for epilepsy, which is just monumentally stupid. We can make do on my husband’s salary alone except that I currently carry the health/dental/vision insurances and the premiums will be three times as much if he takes them on. What I would get from SSDI would offset that. My disability benefits from work and the state are going to run out soon, so I don’t know what will happen then. Kid Ruki’s doing my old pre “real job” ( this is the only job I’ve ever had in my entire life that provided benefits, and I got it well into my 30s) job of working in my mom’s office, and I might need to take it back. She’s young and healthy. She has options.
How fucked is it that we can be 2%ers when it comes to income in this state and still not be wealthy enough to afford being chronically ill? How fucked is it that US culture assigns value to a person based on their ability to provide labor? Fuckity fuck.
posted by Ruki at 7:48 PM on June 12, 2019 [18 favorites]
Ok, cool, the specialists. In the past three weeks, I had a consult with the sleep doctor she referred me to, as well as a check-in with my regular neurologist. To my great surprise, I found that I show signs of narcolepsy and absence seizures. So, that’s cool.
But, no, it really is. I just want answers! And it has been delightful not working. I’ve been slowly, within my limitations, getting my house back in order, while also getting to rest whenever I need to. I’ve picked up a new hobby. Since finding out about these potential diagnoses, my health-related anxiety has gone way down. My memory has been affected so much, and while I suppose I should be sad about the loss of happy memories, I’m instead grateful for the loss of traumatic memories. I live entirely in the present now. I don’t remember the past and I can’t conceptualize the future. It’s all very freeing.
And it’s all very unsustainable. SSDI is notoriously hard to get approved for as it is and narcolepsy isn’t a listed condition. If I do have narcolepsy, I’d have to get approved for epilepsy, which is just monumentally stupid. We can make do on my husband’s salary alone except that I currently carry the health/dental/vision insurances and the premiums will be three times as much if he takes them on. What I would get from SSDI would offset that. My disability benefits from work and the state are going to run out soon, so I don’t know what will happen then. Kid Ruki’s doing my old pre “real job” ( this is the only job I’ve ever had in my entire life that provided benefits, and I got it well into my 30s) job of working in my mom’s office, and I might need to take it back. She’s young and healthy. She has options.
How fucked is it that we can be 2%ers when it comes to income in this state and still not be wealthy enough to afford being chronically ill? How fucked is it that US culture assigns value to a person based on their ability to provide labor? Fuckity fuck.
posted by Ruki at 7:48 PM on June 12, 2019 [18 favorites]
Top AI researchers race to detect ‘deepfake’ videos: ‘We are outgunned’
OMG the total ethical blindness of the deepfake developers is also infuriating. There's no way they don't know what they're doing, and they're doing it anyway, and they're justifying it to themselves with the lamest possible excuses about making special effects cheaper.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:19 PM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
OMG the total ethical blindness of the deepfake developers is also infuriating. There's no way they don't know what they're doing, and they're doing it anyway, and they're justifying it to themselves with the lamest possible excuses about making special effects cheaper.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:19 PM on June 12, 2019 [5 favorites]
I’m having a hard time and I’m too sad to write it all down. Hugs to everyone.
posted by The Toad at 8:23 PM on June 12, 2019 [20 favorites]
posted by The Toad at 8:23 PM on June 12, 2019 [20 favorites]
Big mazel, fluttering hellfire! As a New Englander who genuinely enjoys hockey, I daren’t say this around town, but I’m glad we lost. We’re a cocky lot and needed humbling. And what a humbling we got! That was a very well-deserved win!
posted by Ruki at 8:36 PM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Ruki at 8:36 PM on June 12, 2019 [2 favorites]
So, a thing that is getting me closer to buttoning, I've just realized that every single comment I've posted in the most recent politics thread has been deleted. Not a single one of them made it past whatever secret formula the mods use to decide who's allowed to participate.
None of them were argumentative, or doomsday, or any of the other reasons they've used. Now, I think it's just their way of saying I'm not welcome. Some of those (especially with arthritis using a mobile) took a long time to write and link, and then poof, it's just gone, with no note or explanation.
I find it astonishing that zero of my comments have been allowed to stand. Much like Animal Farm, some commenters are more equal than others, it appears.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:37 PM on June 12, 2019 [20 favorites]
None of them were argumentative, or doomsday, or any of the other reasons they've used. Now, I think it's just their way of saying I'm not welcome. Some of those (especially with arthritis using a mobile) took a long time to write and link, and then poof, it's just gone, with no note or explanation.
I find it astonishing that zero of my comments have been allowed to stand. Much like Animal Farm, some commenters are more equal than others, it appears.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:37 PM on June 12, 2019 [20 favorites]
Aside from personal venting, more of a societal thing: last night I was home early enough to catch the NHK (think sort of BBC/PBS) 7 o'clock news, and they had a little segment on Uber Eats, which is taking off in Tokyo, and it was all very "you might have seen these around town, here's what they are sort of thing" complete with a young guy talking about he can choose when he wants to work, and a manager saying that it's great that, during a labor shortage* it's a big help for his (giant, national chain restaurant) not to need to set up in house delivery staff.
Of course, there was a short bit about one delivery guy who was hit by a taxi, got knocked off his bike, and broke his wrist, needing surgery. And not to distort things, they did discuss that the delivery people aren't covered under any insurance for on the job accidents, because, technically, they aren't working for Uber. But then it jumped back to talking about how easy it is to use the app to get food delivered.
Fuck this shit. Fuck the people who use loopholes and letter of the law to screw people out of work, to eliminate work that can actually pay a living wage, and do their best to turn people into disposable cogs that they can get rid of when they're injured. And fuck NHK for refusing to talk about the loss of jobs that Uber Eats and the gig economy are causing. Fuck everything for the world being run by people without the sense to understand that if you squeeze every last cent of profit, and pay the lowest possible wages at every turn, you'll end up with a population that can't afford the products and services they produce. Just because you own a company doesn't mean you are suddenly above the concept of community. Fucking fuckers.
*There is a labor shortage in Japan in the sense that wages are stupidly low, and most Japanese people are simply not doing the labor that doesn't pay enough. Rather than raise wages, the powers that be are simply doing end runs around immigration laws, allowing the rise of "Japanese Language Schools" which are simply visa mills, and people on student visas can work 28 hours a week, and usually at reduced, or lower than minimum wages. The government even just created a new class of visa for unskilled labor, rather than push the idea that wages need to rise to meet costs. Instead, they're creating a limited duration visa (holders of the visa will have to leave the country at the end of the visa) which will keep the people holding it from having any reason to attempt to become a part of society, which in turn will give nationalists the chance to talk about foreigners refusing to become members of society, and the bullshit will continue. Fuck it all.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:44 PM on June 12, 2019 [25 favorites]
Of course, there was a short bit about one delivery guy who was hit by a taxi, got knocked off his bike, and broke his wrist, needing surgery. And not to distort things, they did discuss that the delivery people aren't covered under any insurance for on the job accidents, because, technically, they aren't working for Uber. But then it jumped back to talking about how easy it is to use the app to get food delivered.
Fuck this shit. Fuck the people who use loopholes and letter of the law to screw people out of work, to eliminate work that can actually pay a living wage, and do their best to turn people into disposable cogs that they can get rid of when they're injured. And fuck NHK for refusing to talk about the loss of jobs that Uber Eats and the gig economy are causing. Fuck everything for the world being run by people without the sense to understand that if you squeeze every last cent of profit, and pay the lowest possible wages at every turn, you'll end up with a population that can't afford the products and services they produce. Just because you own a company doesn't mean you are suddenly above the concept of community. Fucking fuckers.
*There is a labor shortage in Japan in the sense that wages are stupidly low, and most Japanese people are simply not doing the labor that doesn't pay enough. Rather than raise wages, the powers that be are simply doing end runs around immigration laws, allowing the rise of "Japanese Language Schools" which are simply visa mills, and people on student visas can work 28 hours a week, and usually at reduced, or lower than minimum wages. The government even just created a new class of visa for unskilled labor, rather than push the idea that wages need to rise to meet costs. Instead, they're creating a limited duration visa (holders of the visa will have to leave the country at the end of the visa) which will keep the people holding it from having any reason to attempt to become a part of society, which in turn will give nationalists the chance to talk about foreigners refusing to become members of society, and the bullshit will continue. Fuck it all.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:44 PM on June 12, 2019 [25 favorites]
posted by lollusc : We'll have to replace the whole ceiling and it's going to cost like $5000. And involve tradespeople coming in at 7am for a while.
Oh honey, I'm so sorry. About three years ago we had a hail storm/tornado that went through our class 4 tornado roof like it was paper, and had to replace all the ceilings. (And the walls and floors and, and, and...it took almost 2 years.)
Protip, replacing ceilings is about the messiest job you can do in the house. There will be plaster dust everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Depending on the age of the house, the material can be anything from plaster to gypsum dust. Turn off, and cover in plastic all of your computers. Not even kidding. Tape off and seal every room. If you have central AC, with an intake anywhere near this construction, you'll want to turn it off for the duration. If you can't, you'll want to tape and seal access to that hall as much as possible.
Get/rent a serious vacuum when the job is done. It can take weeks before everything settles.
For what it's worth, my idiot contractors, who were not the most efficient of stoners, were able to strip, redeck, texture and paint one 700 sq feet room in three days. (including repainting the walls at the same time)
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:58 PM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
Oh honey, I'm so sorry. About three years ago we had a hail storm/tornado that went through our class 4 tornado roof like it was paper, and had to replace all the ceilings. (And the walls and floors and, and, and...it took almost 2 years.)
Protip, replacing ceilings is about the messiest job you can do in the house. There will be plaster dust everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. Depending on the age of the house, the material can be anything from plaster to gypsum dust. Turn off, and cover in plastic all of your computers. Not even kidding. Tape off and seal every room. If you have central AC, with an intake anywhere near this construction, you'll want to turn it off for the duration. If you can't, you'll want to tape and seal access to that hall as much as possible.
Get/rent a serious vacuum when the job is done. It can take weeks before everything settles.
For what it's worth, my idiot contractors, who were not the most efficient of stoners, were able to strip, redeck, texture and paint one 700 sq feet room in three days. (including repainting the walls at the same time)
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 8:58 PM on June 12, 2019 [6 favorites]
So, a thing that is getting me closer to buttoning, I've just realized that every single comment I've posted in the most recent politics thread has been deleted. Not a single one of them made it past whatever secret formula the mods use to decide who's allowed to participate.
Heya, I know you've been feeling frustration about politics megathread deletions and I'm totally fine trying to talk that through over email and try to help figure out a way to have this feel like it's working better for you. There may be a crossed wire with the deletions you're talking about; you've had only one comment removed from the current thread and it was a one-liner, so maybe the context for this is something from another discussion and I'm misunderstanding something.
Key thing for me is, I hear you that you're frustrated and I'd like to help alleviate that. I don't really want to sort that out mid-thread like this; I can email you or talk about it via the contact form if you want.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:31 PM on June 12, 2019 [16 favorites]
Heya, I know you've been feeling frustration about politics megathread deletions and I'm totally fine trying to talk that through over email and try to help figure out a way to have this feel like it's working better for you. There may be a crossed wire with the deletions you're talking about; you've had only one comment removed from the current thread and it was a one-liner, so maybe the context for this is something from another discussion and I'm misunderstanding something.
Key thing for me is, I hear you that you're frustrated and I'd like to help alleviate that. I don't really want to sort that out mid-thread like this; I can email you or talk about it via the contact form if you want.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:31 PM on June 12, 2019 [16 favorites]
hanov3r, you are an excellent human to your friend who is learning all about the new found fun in their head. This is my week 13 knowing about my tumor, quasi-affectionately called Boris. I’ve just got back from two days at a teaching hospital & I too will have the same exact surgical approach (translab) & I’m really struggling with the losing my binaural hearing bit. Three opinions, two were surgery. One was across the country where I know no one & no guarantee I’d save my hearing there either. But I’m just done with it, ready, but terrified of the financial part. Because neurosurgery ain’t getting any cheaper.
But good on you for everything you’re doing right (which is all of it) as none of this is easy. At all. Supporting wobbly people like us isn’t, nor is it being a human with a coping mechanism that you’re actually interested in self-regulating. Message me if you have any questions about vestibular schwannoma/acoustic neuroma.
posted by moonbird at 9:46 PM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
But good on you for everything you’re doing right (which is all of it) as none of this is easy. At all. Supporting wobbly people like us isn’t, nor is it being a human with a coping mechanism that you’re actually interested in self-regulating. Message me if you have any questions about vestibular schwannoma/acoustic neuroma.
posted by moonbird at 9:46 PM on June 12, 2019 [8 favorites]
Am not trying to tell you that you are wrong, I was trying to give you a little hope - I am scared about this stuff too, so - rule is now, no hope in venting threads?
posted by jkaczor at 6:29 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by jkaczor at 6:29 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
Your comment does not come off that way. Thank you for trying to offer hope, but the effect was to make me feel invalidated.
posted by wellred at 6:31 AM on June 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by wellred at 6:31 AM on June 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Well, apologies to wellred.
My venting in my little corner of the world is that the used van we bought last summer requires about $5000+ to make the AC work again. (And it was poorly repaired - probably just to patch it over until it would sell - so far out of two used vehicles, there have been two major problems with the heating/cooling systems - beginning to see a pattern here)
Then, as of late yesterday afternoon it looks like my current contract will be done end of September and I have no idea where I will find more work then (no one wants my niche skills, at my age and my rate/salary - and I don't do software development any more, so... whee)
My ex is accusing me of somehow modifying my ex's tax return from 2017 with CRA
...and... I live in the mess Ford is making, the list goes on and on. Well, at least there is legal Cannabis now... But wait, I don't do that...
posted by jkaczor at 7:23 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
My venting in my little corner of the world is that the used van we bought last summer requires about $5000+ to make the AC work again. (And it was poorly repaired - probably just to patch it over until it would sell - so far out of two used vehicles, there have been two major problems with the heating/cooling systems - beginning to see a pattern here)
Then, as of late yesterday afternoon it looks like my current contract will be done end of September and I have no idea where I will find more work then (no one wants my niche skills, at my age and my rate/salary - and I don't do software development any more, so... whee)
My ex is accusing me of somehow modifying my ex's tax return from 2017 with CRA
...and... I live in the mess Ford is making, the list goes on and on. Well, at least there is legal Cannabis now... But wait, I don't do that...
posted by jkaczor at 7:23 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
And it's a brand new day! The current FPP about men not cleaning the house enough is killing me, because if I had a man in my life, I'd pick up his socks every day of the goddamned week.
posted by Melismata at 7:45 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 7:45 AM on June 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
My dad has prostate cancer and it sucks. He'll be getting good care and I am grateful that is so. He also has a good mental approach and is in reasonably good spirits. Preliminary indications are that it should be treatable and that it hasn't metastasized beyond the gland. It's about as good as it gets with a diagnosis like this, but it sucks. I've lost too many loved ones to cancer and I hate it.
posted by cheapskatebay at 8:11 AM on June 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by cheapskatebay at 8:11 AM on June 13, 2019 [5 favorites]
Warning, icky medical stuff within.
So, I have some autoimmune issues, and have always had problems with my skin (kind of from day 1 of life, thanks Dad, who seems to have had some of the same issues .... but mine are worse). I have had cellulitis, which can be life threatening, 3 times, for example. When you say skin issues and life threatening, and particularly as I am an older woman, a lot of people can be dismissive of how serious this can be (including laughing ... sigh.) I pretty much travel everywhere with serious prescription antibiotic ointment, and was talking to Mr. gudrun about how I will need to be careful about where we go in the future, travel wise, because of this stuff. (He at least takes this seriously, especially since he got cellulitis not so long ago from a cut from a saw).
So, about 3 months ago I wake up one morning on a weekend to find a big honking pus-filled open sore has appeared in the nether region, seemingly overnight. Scary all the way around, particularly due to the location. I put my antibiotic ointment on it, because - open sore, but it is still not so great so I go to the doctor on Monday. They test me for herpes (negative), and suggest sitz baths. (Ignoring the fact that this is a staph infection, with potentially dangerous implications for someone with my issues.) I also can't get in to see my dermatologist for ages. I continue with the antibiotic ointment and it thankfully goes away eventually. So, almost three months later, to the day (again on a Saturday), I start getting the same issue in the exact same spot. I treat it the same way, go to see my dermatologist, and other than going on the way I have been going, he has no major solutions to offer. He also seems to have forgotten to send my very expensive prescription orders to the pharmacy.
So, here I am, where my skin can seemingly go on the attack at any time, with potential life threatening implications, and only washing and ointment as solutions. I know other people are dealing with a lot worse stuff, I know it, but yet it is scary and depressing and I worry for what might happen when I get older, or if I would need surgery, etc.. Sigh.
posted by gudrun at 8:29 AM on June 13, 2019 [9 favorites]
So, I have some autoimmune issues, and have always had problems with my skin (kind of from day 1 of life, thanks Dad, who seems to have had some of the same issues .... but mine are worse). I have had cellulitis, which can be life threatening, 3 times, for example. When you say skin issues and life threatening, and particularly as I am an older woman, a lot of people can be dismissive of how serious this can be (including laughing ... sigh.) I pretty much travel everywhere with serious prescription antibiotic ointment, and was talking to Mr. gudrun about how I will need to be careful about where we go in the future, travel wise, because of this stuff. (He at least takes this seriously, especially since he got cellulitis not so long ago from a cut from a saw).
So, about 3 months ago I wake up one morning on a weekend to find a big honking pus-filled open sore has appeared in the nether region, seemingly overnight. Scary all the way around, particularly due to the location. I put my antibiotic ointment on it, because - open sore, but it is still not so great so I go to the doctor on Monday. They test me for herpes (negative), and suggest sitz baths. (Ignoring the fact that this is a staph infection, with potentially dangerous implications for someone with my issues.) I also can't get in to see my dermatologist for ages. I continue with the antibiotic ointment and it thankfully goes away eventually. So, almost three months later, to the day (again on a Saturday), I start getting the same issue in the exact same spot. I treat it the same way, go to see my dermatologist, and other than going on the way I have been going, he has no major solutions to offer. He also seems to have forgotten to send my very expensive prescription orders to the pharmacy.
So, here I am, where my skin can seemingly go on the attack at any time, with potential life threatening implications, and only washing and ointment as solutions. I know other people are dealing with a lot worse stuff, I know it, but yet it is scary and depressing and I worry for what might happen when I get older, or if I would need surgery, etc.. Sigh.
posted by gudrun at 8:29 AM on June 13, 2019 [9 favorites]
gudrun, this isn't in any way a contest for whose medical (or other) issues are the worst. What you're going through sounds absolutely awful and terrifying, and I hope you heal up soon.
posted by bile and syntax at 8:51 AM on June 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by bile and syntax at 8:51 AM on June 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
Everyone around me is partnered, married, getting married, pregnant, already had kids, have at least had long term relationship experience even if they're no longer together, etc. I'm getting invites to weddings and baby showers or hearing wedding planning or excitement about kids.
I'm too old to find someone to marry, have a baby with and manage to finish law or grad school within a reasonable time. I guess there's a lot of structural social issues I don't have to deal with, but I see little babies or growing kids or hear their excitement about people sharing their lives and cry when I go home.
posted by Freeze Peach at 9:38 AM on June 13, 2019 [22 favorites]
I'm too old to find someone to marry, have a baby with and manage to finish law or grad school within a reasonable time. I guess there's a lot of structural social issues I don't have to deal with, but I see little babies or growing kids or hear their excitement about people sharing their lives and cry when I go home.
posted by Freeze Peach at 9:38 AM on June 13, 2019 [22 favorites]
Dermatology veteran here - one probably saved my life, I was in utter agony, but damn was she mean. Sending healing vibes. And whoa is this not ever the pain Olympics, we all deserve love and comfort.
posted by wellred at 9:40 AM on June 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by wellred at 9:40 AM on June 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
Work and certain people at work are making me absolutely furious. Furious. I want to be like "you all can't treat me this way!" But the truth is they can and they know it and I know it. Fuck them -- and fuck me for sitting here and not rising above it. Fuck me for failing to get myself into a better position where I wouldn't have to take it. That was the whole goal of my whole life and I can't fucking manage it. I fucking hate myself for that. Hate being so powerless. Hate being such a powerless piece of shit.
Obviously that's not just work. I mean, everything and everyone is dying and doing whatever the fuck horrible bullshit they want and I can't stop ANY of it. ANY!!!! But my coworkers being assholes is the most concrete and petty version of everything that I'm powerless to stop and damn I am angry.
posted by rue72 at 10:34 AM on June 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
Obviously that's not just work. I mean, everything and everyone is dying and doing whatever the fuck horrible bullshit they want and I can't stop ANY of it. ANY!!!! But my coworkers being assholes is the most concrete and petty version of everything that I'm powerless to stop and damn I am angry.
posted by rue72 at 10:34 AM on June 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
wellred hooboy do I hear you. Everything that's good just feels like it's perched precariously on the top of a house of cards.
posted by headnsouth at 11:49 AM on June 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by headnsouth at 11:49 AM on June 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
/me holds up headnsouth
posted by wellred at 12:33 PM on June 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by wellred at 12:33 PM on June 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
They’re gonna try and pull a Gulf of Tonkin on us, aren’t they?
This has to be the last straw.
Please.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:44 PM on June 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
This has to be the last straw.
Please.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:44 PM on June 13, 2019 [8 favorites]
I finally found a physical activity I really like (kickboxing - let's be real, 'boxercise' is what it is but maybe I'll eventually do the real stuff) which is a relief because I stopped working out when I had to give up my home gym and hadn't yet found a replacement.
But!
My body's answer to that has been to give me sweat-induced eczema flare ups, which are miserable. I sweat a LOT in an hour long kickboxing class and even though I dash home after for a cool shower, I'm starting to get more itchy patches everywhere and it blows.
Body, I'm trying to be good to you. Please, chill out.
posted by rachaelfaith at 2:15 PM on June 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
But!
My body's answer to that has been to give me sweat-induced eczema flare ups, which are miserable. I sweat a LOT in an hour long kickboxing class and even though I dash home after for a cool shower, I'm starting to get more itchy patches everywhere and it blows.
Body, I'm trying to be good to you. Please, chill out.
posted by rachaelfaith at 2:15 PM on June 13, 2019 [6 favorites]
Leaving my job at my falling-apart organization, which is good, but on my way out the door, my supervisor for the last 6 months who has barely seen me in action ever, gives me a shitty performance evaluation, specifically dinging me on "adapting to changing organizational needs and priorities" when that is ALL I HAVE BEEN FUCKING DOING FOR THIS ORGANIZATION for the last 2 years at the expense of pretty much everything else.
posted by gingerbeer at 2:23 PM on June 13, 2019 [11 favorites]
posted by gingerbeer at 2:23 PM on June 13, 2019 [11 favorites]
Ok, here goes. I'm angry and sad and disappointed because I lost a good IRL friend this week due in part to her anti-vax nonsense, but also due to my spouse's super aggro verbal attack on her because of her anti-vax nonsense. I'm disappointed with the both of them. Him I have to figure out how to deal with, so I'll set that issue aside for now. But her, I'm also really hurt that she would assume -- wrongly -- that I knew all about it and had been being a two-faced bitch to her for the last three weeks. It's so middle school and stupid and unnecessary.
posted by pleasant_confusion at 2:46 PM on June 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by pleasant_confusion at 2:46 PM on June 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
Goddamn it. Last night I went to a "ladies' night" with the non-male identifying side of a larger group I used to hang out with, just to see some old friends who don't seem to come out otherwise. I fucking hate the concept of "ladies' night."
So I see this friend who moved an hour away when she had a baby, and... now she's an anti-vaxxer. Like "I know it doesn't cause autism! But it kills babiiiiiieessss!" garbage and this is just the shitfrosting on the asscake that has been this week/month/year.
posted by queensissy at 3:51 PM on June 13, 2019 [10 favorites]
So I see this friend who moved an hour away when she had a baby, and... now she's an anti-vaxxer. Like "I know it doesn't cause autism! But it kills babiiiiiieessss!" garbage and this is just the shitfrosting on the asscake that has been this week/month/year.
posted by queensissy at 3:51 PM on June 13, 2019 [10 favorites]
Surprisingly HR stood up for me. I’ve been the half-year focus of bullying and harassment by one of my manager’s. Not expecting any change, I thought, I’ll trust the system. I’ll report. Lo and behold, my torturer has been given termination notice. In a few months, I’m hoping my psyche and workplace will begin to heal and improve. This person has created disruption culminating in a fair number of the team leaving. So not so much fuckity fucking from me. It just feels good to vent and breathe again. Maybe I’ll start sleeping through the night now. I haven’t since October.
posted by lemon_icing at 5:01 PM on June 13, 2019 [15 favorites]
posted by lemon_icing at 5:01 PM on June 13, 2019 [15 favorites]
Fuck this bullshit.
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:45 PM on June 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Doktor Zed at 5:45 PM on June 13, 2019 [4 favorites]
Fuck the skull of AT&T. I've mentioned before that they're closing down the division I work in due to the Time Warner merger, and I'll be out of a job about September.
But the latest kicker is the new facility out-of-state may not be ready by November, when our union contract runs out, and the AT&T rep "thinks" if the contract expires they won't have to pay the required severance pay.
posted by Marky at 11:24 PM on June 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
But the latest kicker is the new facility out-of-state may not be ready by November, when our union contract runs out, and the AT&T rep "thinks" if the contract expires they won't have to pay the required severance pay.
posted by Marky at 11:24 PM on June 13, 2019 [7 favorites]
I'm playing a gig tonight, a fundraiser for a local sexual violence/DV shelter, with my very angry punk/noiserock band. Other artists on the bill include a pretty good local rapper. Yesterday, the headline band, who are co-organising, sent out an email asking everyone to please not swear, because one of their band is a teacher, and wouldn't want to get fired. Now, this is the UK. Granted, I've never been a teacher here. But I do not see anyone getting fired because they were also on a stage at an event where someone had said fuck. It will not happen. Utter paranoia. But, they are co-organising. So that's fine, we can pick a set round it, even if it means not playing our single from a few weeks ago (Pig Fuck Initiation, about Cameron and brexit). Harder for the rapper, who would need to rejig her lyrics entirely. Stupid, but whatever, we can deal, the rapper can decide to just ignore that request (the other organisers have told her to do as much - we're mates with some people connected to the 'no swearing' people which gives us less freedom to do that). So today we get a message saying that there's all kinds of tension and arguments between organisers etc (because of the above - he ridiculous language request was not run past the other organisers before being sent out) and so now they don't want to put up one of the other performers, can we sleep them for the night. Which, well, very kind of. Was rather planning on painting the spare room today, but guess not. I'll be spending today tracking down new bedclothes for the spare mattress instead (the old ones died in a flood months ago, long story). So that's fun. I also cannot stand this person. There's nothing wrong with them like, they just rub me the wrong way, big style. And I'll be putting them up in my house. Because I can't not help when people ask for it or need it.
Fuck this. Ugh.
posted by Dysk at 1:47 AM on June 14, 2019 [10 favorites]
Fuck this. Ugh.
posted by Dysk at 1:47 AM on June 14, 2019 [10 favorites]
So our boiler just started flat-out refusing to supply hot water this morning, no matter what controls we adjusted or how many times we restarted the thing.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem in fucking JUNE and we'd just suck it up and take a quick brisk shower, but this is mustn't-grumble England, where it has been raining and fifty degrees Fahrenheit for the last *week* or so. Trying to do a cold shower or sponge bath is an invitation to the hypothermia fairy.
(We bathed as well as we could. I personally microwaved two large pitchers of water and made do, but I can still feel residual soap on my skin. It itches.)
Cue the call to the landlords, who promised to get someone out to look at it as soon as possible.
It is currently Friday. "As soon as possible" turns out to be fucking Wednesday. WEDNESDAY. These are the same landlords, by the way, who never cleaned out the cellar before we moved in, or repainted the kitchen ceiling after it had to be replastered, or fixed the gutter that's dripping water into our neighbor's wall, or...
The absolute fucking *state* of this country sometimes.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:34 AM on June 14, 2019 [4 favorites]
Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem in fucking JUNE and we'd just suck it up and take a quick brisk shower, but this is mustn't-grumble England, where it has been raining and fifty degrees Fahrenheit for the last *week* or so. Trying to do a cold shower or sponge bath is an invitation to the hypothermia fairy.
(We bathed as well as we could. I personally microwaved two large pitchers of water and made do, but I can still feel residual soap on my skin. It itches.)
Cue the call to the landlords, who promised to get someone out to look at it as soon as possible.
It is currently Friday. "As soon as possible" turns out to be fucking Wednesday. WEDNESDAY. These are the same landlords, by the way, who never cleaned out the cellar before we moved in, or repainted the kitchen ceiling after it had to be replastered, or fixed the gutter that's dripping water into our neighbor's wall, or...
The absolute fucking *state* of this country sometimes.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:34 AM on June 14, 2019 [4 favorites]
Have had enough stress and trauma (beyond mourning loss of my friend) in the past week to last a year.
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:13 AM on June 14, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:13 AM on June 14, 2019 [3 favorites]
My cat died. It was horrible. I had to clean the blood up so no one else saw it and freaked out and then handle all the arrangements, so my adrenaline kicked in and I wasn't able to cry and now I can't, I just sit feeling empty and sad and unable to grieve.
posted by corb at 8:13 AM on June 14, 2019 [34 favorites]
posted by corb at 8:13 AM on June 14, 2019 [34 favorites]
Oh, corb. That's rough. My heartfelt sympathy.
The grieving will kick in, in its own time... you can't force these things.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:19 AM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
The grieving will kick in, in its own time... you can't force these things.
posted by Too-Ticky at 8:19 AM on June 14, 2019 [1 favorite]
I am with you corb. The emptiness is grief too.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:34 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:34 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh, corb, hugs if you'll take them. I'm so, so sorry for your loss.
posted by hanov3r at 9:04 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by hanov3r at 9:04 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
Oh corb, I'm so sorry. That's absolutely awful. Internet hugs if you want them.
posted by bile and syntax at 9:11 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by bile and syntax at 9:11 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm so sorry, corb. That sounds so traumatic, I'm also so sorry your grief seems to be on hold. When my beloved dog died last year I was so busy taking care of all the details and managing other people's sadness about it that it took until now to even begin to process the grief — it started coming in dreams this past month. Such a long, aching process. Sending some virtual love your way.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:38 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:38 AM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm trying to be a responsible citizen and keep up with the news.
But the news--especially the political and environmental news--is so awful that I think it's sending me into depression. Seriously, I'd go check in somewhere if I thought "we have maybe a decade on the outside to save the planet and it's freaking me out something fierce" would fly with my health insurance company.
I'm not going to harm myself or others, never fear. I just need a six-month break from the unending awfulness. Children in cages, put there by my gov't. Penguin colony collapse and temps in the 80s in the Arctic. Mitch McConnell and his Gang of Thieves, aided and abetted by smiling American faces that hide willful evil beneath. And that old favorite:, American Racism, on its successful Comeback Tour: "We Never Really Left, But We're Always Here For Our Fans!"
I missed the magic portal on Election Night 2016 and ended up in the Darkest Timeline. And I'm not even the heroine of the story. I'm a nameless mook who will suffer and die with others in the background as the Protagonist flails about, all of us forced out of this life in vain because a happy ending and a justice-filled denouement are rapidly fading into the horizon.
How did it ever come to this? I am trapped in Death's twilight kingdom, and all I can do is go' round the prickly pear at five o'clock in the morning.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper
Hugs to all.
posted by magstheaxe at 9:47 AM on June 14, 2019 [6 favorites]
But the news--especially the political and environmental news--is so awful that I think it's sending me into depression. Seriously, I'd go check in somewhere if I thought "we have maybe a decade on the outside to save the planet and it's freaking me out something fierce" would fly with my health insurance company.
I'm not going to harm myself or others, never fear. I just need a six-month break from the unending awfulness. Children in cages, put there by my gov't. Penguin colony collapse and temps in the 80s in the Arctic. Mitch McConnell and his Gang of Thieves, aided and abetted by smiling American faces that hide willful evil beneath. And that old favorite:, American Racism, on its successful Comeback Tour: "We Never Really Left, But We're Always Here For Our Fans!"
I missed the magic portal on Election Night 2016 and ended up in the Darkest Timeline. And I'm not even the heroine of the story. I'm a nameless mook who will suffer and die with others in the background as the Protagonist flails about, all of us forced out of this life in vain because a happy ending and a justice-filled denouement are rapidly fading into the horizon.
How did it ever come to this? I am trapped in Death's twilight kingdom, and all I can do is go' round the prickly pear at five o'clock in the morning.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper
Hugs to all.
posted by magstheaxe at 9:47 AM on June 14, 2019 [6 favorites]
Oh corb. My 16 year old kitty appears to be dying. She has a bowel obstruction and stopped moving her hind legs. She’s a little better on steroids right now but the big sleep is coming soon. She was abandoned as a kitten by a feral cat in our garage and was bottle fed and I’m her surrogate mother. About 75% of the time I’m at home, she is on my lap, or sleeping on top of me often with her paws stretched over me. She’s scared but she trusts me. I have to be strong enough to do the best thing for her because I’ve made that promise to her. But I’ve never had any creature, human or otherwise, love and trust me so unconditionally as her. She’s purring on my lap as I type.
Stupid animals.
Hugs to you corb.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:06 PM on June 14, 2019 [9 favorites]
Stupid animals.
Hugs to you corb.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 12:06 PM on June 14, 2019 [9 favorites]
shapes, I'm so sorry that the medical industry has been failing you as hard as they have. I can't imagine that's made your move across country any easier, either, has it?
Hey thanks, I appreciate it.
Dealing with doctors and insurance is a headache (so to speak), but at least there's something to work towards. More broadly, things have been so bad that I'm just getting through one day at a time, sometimes hour by hour. In that context, medical hassles feel like more of a realistic, concrete goal. I think there's a part of me that doesn't want to resolve them, because then there will be other stuff to deal with -- but presumably, by dealing with medical stuff, I'll be more capable of identifying and addressing the next goals. Or at the very least, I'll have a still-more concrete set of goals and actions to focus on.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:40 PM on June 14, 2019 [5 favorites]
Hey thanks, I appreciate it.
Dealing with doctors and insurance is a headache (so to speak), but at least there's something to work towards. More broadly, things have been so bad that I'm just getting through one day at a time, sometimes hour by hour. In that context, medical hassles feel like more of a realistic, concrete goal. I think there's a part of me that doesn't want to resolve them, because then there will be other stuff to deal with -- but presumably, by dealing with medical stuff, I'll be more capable of identifying and addressing the next goals. Or at the very least, I'll have a still-more concrete set of goals and actions to focus on.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:40 PM on June 14, 2019 [5 favorites]
My head hurts. My head hurt so bad yesterday I wanted to die.
I have what they currently think is cervical radiculopathy right at the base of my skull and have had for a while and am only recently back to trying to treat it.
I went to an osteopath on Tuesday, and finally got some x-rays done (after a year and a half, thanks old insurance and current untreated ADHD) on my head and neck. Absolutely nothing concerning or wrong at all made itself apparent.
I went to PT for the first time in a year yesterday. It was a relatively mild session that was mostly talking and a little stretching. I felt relatively good for several hours after. Then I started to get irritation not anywhere it has typically occurred, but down the right side of my head and neck that started at a 4 on the pain scale, and I don't know if it actively got worse or if I just couldn't tolerate it anymore at that intensity but it got to like an 8.
I messaged the PT and they said it wasn't a normal reaction and I should contact my primary. I did, their office called and scheduled me to come down for an appointment 2 hours from now with a doctor not my primary. So I'm pretty anxious I guess. I don't feel good and I can never sleep a full night and I hate American culture, even the shit that should be in my wheelhouse is largely awful for a variety of reasons, most of them capitalism.
I haven't really read the thread. I'm sorry to everyone who needs this thread. Hang in there.
posted by Caduceus at 2:16 PM on June 14, 2019 [8 favorites]
I have what they currently think is cervical radiculopathy right at the base of my skull and have had for a while and am only recently back to trying to treat it.
I went to an osteopath on Tuesday, and finally got some x-rays done (after a year and a half, thanks old insurance and current untreated ADHD) on my head and neck. Absolutely nothing concerning or wrong at all made itself apparent.
I went to PT for the first time in a year yesterday. It was a relatively mild session that was mostly talking and a little stretching. I felt relatively good for several hours after. Then I started to get irritation not anywhere it has typically occurred, but down the right side of my head and neck that started at a 4 on the pain scale, and I don't know if it actively got worse or if I just couldn't tolerate it anymore at that intensity but it got to like an 8.
I messaged the PT and they said it wasn't a normal reaction and I should contact my primary. I did, their office called and scheduled me to come down for an appointment 2 hours from now with a doctor not my primary. So I'm pretty anxious I guess. I don't feel good and I can never sleep a full night and I hate American culture, even the shit that should be in my wheelhouse is largely awful for a variety of reasons, most of them capitalism.
I haven't really read the thread. I'm sorry to everyone who needs this thread. Hang in there.
posted by Caduceus at 2:16 PM on June 14, 2019 [8 favorites]
Not trying to suck the air out of the thread but I also want to add that I'm sick of the only time people call or text me is when they need something done or they need money. No one gives a shit about how I'm doing except my very caring boss at work (casual non-profitish environment) and the other person in my role. I work over 50 hours a week every week and just added a third job. I also volunteer. My schedule is full but I'm supposed to drop everything and pour money into other people's emergencies even though I am younger than everyone else and trying to save up for my own needs. I'm in my mid 20s and ugly and sick and the only reason I am finally dropping more weight because all I eat is free food at work or ramen. I don't have time to cook or grocery shop anymore. I don't have time to go to therapy anymore. I shove everything down and try to be brave and chill and friendly. I uplift everyone. I think I work hard and I turn my weaknesses into strengths or make them invisible. I love my little kid relatives and make sure others don't get put out in the street.
I watch my dreams run downriver.
All I want is a shitty chromebook to write on and an old Honda Fit to drive and I can't even get that.
Even my jobs are largely supporting everyone else but at least I get thank yous, acknowledgements, gifts, lunches, people respecting my time or checking in, etc. I am grateful both workplaces for my jobs are friendly, healthy environments with concrete goals for the greater good. I don't think I like being alive but I can't do anything else.
I am going to keep favoriting everyone's comments because I don't want anyone here to feel like no one hears them or cares.
posted by Freeze Peach at 2:49 PM on June 14, 2019 [18 favorites]
I watch my dreams run downriver.
All I want is a shitty chromebook to write on and an old Honda Fit to drive and I can't even get that.
Even my jobs are largely supporting everyone else but at least I get thank yous, acknowledgements, gifts, lunches, people respecting my time or checking in, etc. I am grateful both workplaces for my jobs are friendly, healthy environments with concrete goals for the greater good. I don't think I like being alive but I can't do anything else.
I am going to keep favoriting everyone's comments because I don't want anyone here to feel like no one hears them or cares.
posted by Freeze Peach at 2:49 PM on June 14, 2019 [18 favorites]
Caduceus, that sounds terrible. I hope you get some answers and a course of treatment! I have been sending people Gingzilla to cheer them up because Gingzilla is awesome but maybe later when you're feeling better. Which you will. I hope soon.
Freeze Peach, I do believe this thread is for all the things so don't even worry. I hope you can say no to some of these people because you have every right to say "no, I can't do anymore right now." Even if you uplift the world most of the time, you don't have to do it all of the time. Say no. Go to the grocery store. Read an article by your favorite writer. Take a moment. I hope you feel better. (Also see Gingzilla above. Or Sophie Pecora for a brilliant song about bullying for which you may cry.)
Yes I've been watching America's Got Talent clips. Pffft.
posted by Glinn at 2:58 PM on June 14, 2019 [3 favorites]
Freeze Peach, I do believe this thread is for all the things so don't even worry. I hope you can say no to some of these people because you have every right to say "no, I can't do anymore right now." Even if you uplift the world most of the time, you don't have to do it all of the time. Say no. Go to the grocery store. Read an article by your favorite writer. Take a moment. I hope you feel better. (Also see Gingzilla above. Or Sophie Pecora for a brilliant song about bullying for which you may cry.)
Yes I've been watching America's Got Talent clips. Pffft.
posted by Glinn at 2:58 PM on June 14, 2019 [3 favorites]
For quite a while now I’ve been trying to find a job. I have an application in at Wal-Mart and on Wednesday I received a call from them. Unfortunately I was outside working and missed the call. They left no message and haven’t called back. I desperately need to find work and I’m afraid I missed this opportunity. Fuck.
posted by Tenuki at 3:12 PM on June 14, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Tenuki at 3:12 PM on June 14, 2019 [5 favorites]
Thank you Glinn. I will try but it's hard - I have very little processing power after work, and saying no comes with its own issues. As always I'll try to figure out how to fix it myself, even if the solution is kinda bleak. Thanks again.
posted by Freeze Peach at 4:29 PM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Freeze Peach at 4:29 PM on June 14, 2019 [2 favorites]
One tiny, tiny bit of good news in all this: our boiler mysteriously started working again, so we now have hot water. Here's hoping it doesn't decide to go on strike again before it finally stops raining for five minutes.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:25 AM on June 15, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 11:25 AM on June 15, 2019 [6 favorites]
i presented a project to a client which he liked immensly and i was ready to take to planning permission. Then the client called my boss and said to stop everything cause he would not be paying.
Moved to an other project that i lothe with the heat of a thousand suns, because against my principles.
Hr is late paying, again.
This is the first week in nearly six months that my left foot is not hurting (old injury) so i went out for a drink, alone because everybody is coupled up and did not want a third weel, even if i am absolutly fine being the third weel. Soul fell off my shoe and now my foot hurts again.
i need a hug. I am so fucking lonely.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 1:41 PM on June 15, 2019 [10 favorites]
Moved to an other project that i lothe with the heat of a thousand suns, because against my principles.
Hr is late paying, again.
This is the first week in nearly six months that my left foot is not hurting (old injury) so i went out for a drink, alone because everybody is coupled up and did not want a third weel, even if i am absolutly fine being the third weel. Soul fell off my shoe and now my foot hurts again.
i need a hug. I am so fucking lonely.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 1:41 PM on June 15, 2019 [10 favorites]
oh, and FUCKING FUCK MATTEO SALVINI and all his neofascist chums, may they choke on their retoric.
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 1:48 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 1:48 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
thegirlwththehat, please accept my internet hugs if you would like them.
posted by bile and syntax at 2:18 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by bile and syntax at 2:18 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
Freeze Peach - I admit that this idea is coming 100% out of an impulse my brain coughed up, but - I had an idea.
It sounds like you've got a lot of people asking you for help. However - I'm assuming that they're each asking you for different things. And you can personally only do so much.
So....what if some of those people all asking you for help had the means to help each other?
Like, maybe someone asking you for money to buy groceries has a new car, and someone else asking you for rides has a vegetable garden. (I'm pulling examples out of my ass by way of illustration.) Maybe if you mentioned that fact to each of them and connected them ("I'm actually tapped out of money and can't help with groceries, but - hey, you know, Aunt Ethyl has that great vegetable garden, and she needs rides once a week, maybe you could offer to drive her if she gives you some of her veggies?"). This may not work with everyone, but there may be some cases where it would work, and it may get some of that off your back.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:06 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
It sounds like you've got a lot of people asking you for help. However - I'm assuming that they're each asking you for different things. And you can personally only do so much.
So....what if some of those people all asking you for help had the means to help each other?
Like, maybe someone asking you for money to buy groceries has a new car, and someone else asking you for rides has a vegetable garden. (I'm pulling examples out of my ass by way of illustration.) Maybe if you mentioned that fact to each of them and connected them ("I'm actually tapped out of money and can't help with groceries, but - hey, you know, Aunt Ethyl has that great vegetable garden, and she needs rides once a week, maybe you could offer to drive her if she gives you some of her veggies?"). This may not work with everyone, but there may be some cases where it would work, and it may get some of that off your back.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:06 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
thank you Bile and Sintax 😊
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 3:29 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by thegirlwiththehat at 3:29 PM on June 15, 2019 [1 favorite]
People outside the UK have, generally, a vague notion of why Boris (Johnson), the very likely next Prime Minister of the UK, is not a good person.
There are many, many, reasons. Here are some - the only problem with this list is that it is not comprehensive.
We are so fucked. (weird coincidence: he shares many characteristics with the current US president, one of which being that they were born only 15 miles apart)
posted by Wordshore at 2:58 AM on June 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
There are many, many, reasons. Here are some - the only problem with this list is that it is not comprehensive.
We are so fucked. (weird coincidence: he shares many characteristics with the current US president, one of which being that they were born only 15 miles apart)
posted by Wordshore at 2:58 AM on June 16, 2019 [5 favorites]
This is so trivial that I don’t know it it belongs in the same thread, but I’ve spent so much time trying to support hikers coming to this new long distance trail/walking course here and this recent hiker just will not stop complaining, and yet at the same time will not give up and go do something else. First they were already complaining about the % of paved surfaces before even getting here. Then when they got here, it was complaining about how the unpaved hiking courses were too overgrown. Then they saw a bear (probably because they weren’t even using a bear bell). It seems like every day this person finds another shitty thing to say about the trail and says it in multiple Facebook groups. No mention of food, scenery, nice people who helped them, any awareness they’re going through areas affected by the 2011 tsunami and maybe could reflect on that for half a second.
I’ve put so much work into this trail in general, and been so responsive to this person’s various questions, and am (let’s be clear) happy they’re still safe and hiking around, but kind of ready for them to stop finding new and creative ways every day to say “thanks: I hate it.”
posted by sacchan at 6:46 AM on June 16, 2019 [8 favorites]
I’ve put so much work into this trail in general, and been so responsive to this person’s various questions, and am (let’s be clear) happy they’re still safe and hiking around, but kind of ready for them to stop finding new and creative ways every day to say “thanks: I hate it.”
posted by sacchan at 6:46 AM on June 16, 2019 [8 favorites]
Fuck the low-context GYOFB megacomments in the politics megaposts. Poll updates 3x+ a day also feel excessive.
posted by rhizome at 10:50 AM on June 16, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by rhizome at 10:50 AM on June 16, 2019 [4 favorites]
I can suddenly smell and taste things much more intensely than before, which means all food is now disgusting to me. I went to a family brunch and was totally nauseous the whole time. According to the internet, this means I'm pregnant! I think the likely explanation is that it has to do with allergies and sleep deprivation in some way. I'm not too concerned, it just sucks.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:38 PM on June 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:38 PM on June 16, 2019 [2 favorites]
I was so angry at my dad through my mom’s cancer treatment this past year that I don’t know if I will ever like him again. I mostly was afraid of him growing up, then for a while after college I felt like I could relate to him adult to adult, then I was so thankful that he helped watch my chronically-ill child a couple days per week for 5 years so I could keep my job, and then I realized that he was always a secret asshole but (like other republicans) is now saying the quiet parts out loud. Happy Father’s Day, you paranoid, guilt-tripping, emotionally-stunted, selfish, miserly, patriarchy-upholding man-child. I wish there was a better phrase for “you’ve done a lot for me, but the older we get, the more disappointed I feel.”
posted by Maarika at 8:36 PM on June 16, 2019 [8 favorites]
posted by Maarika at 8:36 PM on June 16, 2019 [8 favorites]
Sorry if I'm dominating the thread, but it's the middle of the night and I can't sleep because I keep thinking about how I'm running out of money and can't do anything about the predatory student loan I have. My interest rate is almost 13.5%. I can't work right now, but they don't care, they just want their money. I've already paid thousands into it this year, and the balance has only gone up. If I miss one payment, it's all over. My mother cosigned it, so if I default on it for any reason, she gets stuck with the whole balance (and she's on a fixed income). I can't even declare bankruptcy. I can never get rid of it.
I'm being held hostage by a financial institution that never expected me to be able to pay back this loan, all to make a little extra money for a rich person I'll never meet. Nothing bad will ever happen to them for this.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:04 AM on June 17, 2019 [11 favorites]
I'm being held hostage by a financial institution that never expected me to be able to pay back this loan, all to make a little extra money for a rich person I'll never meet. Nothing bad will ever happen to them for this.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 1:04 AM on June 17, 2019 [11 favorites]
I've been called to federal jury duty tomorrow. Can I get a big fucking fuck?
(Maybe it will be interesting? Maybe I will read a bunch of JLA comics.)
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:36 AM on June 17, 2019 [3 favorites]
(Maybe it will be interesting? Maybe I will read a bunch of JLA comics.)
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:36 AM on June 17, 2019 [3 favorites]
I've been called to federal jury duty tomorrow. Can I get a big fucking fuck?
(Maybe it will be interesting? Maybe I will read a bunch of JLA comics.)
There's probably a way to combine comics-reading with jury duty that can get one arrested.
Don't do that.
Best of luck, and FF!
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:25 AM on June 17, 2019
(Maybe it will be interesting? Maybe I will read a bunch of JLA comics.)
There's probably a way to combine comics-reading with jury duty that can get one arrested.
Don't do that.
Best of luck, and FF!
posted by ZeusHumms at 7:25 AM on June 17, 2019
"Amid opposition to Germany's decision to allow a huge wave of Syrian refugees and other migrants to enter the country, [German politician Walter Lübcke] declared it was morally right to give protection to those in need."
He was murdered in his home on June 2nd, and the police have arrested a far-right extremist. Fucking Nazis.
posted by jedicus at 8:01 AM on June 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
He was murdered in his home on June 2nd, and the police have arrested a far-right extremist. Fucking Nazis.
posted by jedicus at 8:01 AM on June 19, 2019 [6 favorites]
I think we made history because we were ALL dismissed. The company who selected the qualified jurors from the master pool chose only A to K names. The judge and lawyer debated in chambers for a long time if it would result in a mistrial/they should scrap us all.
So I didn't get to be on a grand jury after all. I still might in the future though since this didn't count as my service!
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:34 AM on June 19, 2019 [3 favorites]
So I didn't get to be on a grand jury after all. I still might in the future though since this didn't count as my service!
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 11:34 AM on June 19, 2019 [3 favorites]
Fuck anyone trying to portray a completely unsolicited endorsement of the very dead and very wrong James Eastland as harmless. What the hell is Joe Biden thinking?
posted by sallybrown at 7:36 PM on June 19, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by sallybrown at 7:36 PM on June 19, 2019 [3 favorites]
I'm tired and I'm hungry and my teeth hurt? weirdly? and there are Nazis, and.
Fuck, you guys. Fucking fuck.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:22 PM on June 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
Fuck, you guys. Fucking fuck.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:22 PM on June 20, 2019 [3 favorites]
Jebus tapdancing cripes. I get a very last-minute project for a convention dumped in my lap because someone had a combined brainstorm-hissy-fit, and didn't think through the ramifications of it. I stress out trying to figure out how to do it and manage the complex logistics, then find out that today it got cancelled because it was wildly too expensive and duplicated an existing project.
Asshole.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:17 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
Asshole.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:17 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
And the saddest thing is that I had good reason to quit years ago, but hang around anyway because I have “friends” there.
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:26 PM on June 20, 2019
posted by ZeusHumms at 10:26 PM on June 20, 2019
Well I seem to have just been broken up with.
posted by wellred at 10:53 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by wellred at 10:53 PM on June 20, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm in the middle of doing a play where most of the rest of the cast is about half my age. This is generally not a problem--they're mostly pretty cool, and we get along great.
There's one twentysomething cast member, though, who is both lacking in some essential social skills and (for want of a better phrase) so woke she needs a nap.
I mean, look. I'm oldish, yes, but I like to think of myself as inclusive and welcoming and accommodating to everyone regardless of their own individual things, and if I do slip up somehow, I'm more than happy to talk about it.
This kid*, though, is constantly--constantly--interrupting me (and other people) mid-sentence to point out "problematic" usages or to go off on her own tangents preaching rapid-fire and at length about social issues we've somehow reminded her of. It is both rude and fucking exhausting. I've only managed to avoid snapping at her through Zen-like efforts to maintain my calm...but I can feel the time coming.
*If I own several pieces of clothing that predate your birth, I'm legally entitled to call you "kid". It's in the Magna Carta somewhere towards the back.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:38 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
There's one twentysomething cast member, though, who is both lacking in some essential social skills and (for want of a better phrase) so woke she needs a nap.
I mean, look. I'm oldish, yes, but I like to think of myself as inclusive and welcoming and accommodating to everyone regardless of their own individual things, and if I do slip up somehow, I'm more than happy to talk about it.
This kid*, though, is constantly--constantly--interrupting me (and other people) mid-sentence to point out "problematic" usages or to go off on her own tangents preaching rapid-fire and at length about social issues we've somehow reminded her of. It is both rude and fucking exhausting. I've only managed to avoid snapping at her through Zen-like efforts to maintain my calm...but I can feel the time coming.
*If I own several pieces of clothing that predate your birth, I'm legally entitled to call you "kid". It's in the Magna Carta somewhere towards the back.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 2:38 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
Mr. Bad Example: speaking as a former stage manager, that is TOTALLY worth having a talk with the stage manager about. If for no other reason than "isn't that cutting into rehearsal time?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:04 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:04 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
I would, but the one saving grace in all this is that during actual rehearsals she more or less stays semi-focused. It's before and after where she goes off the rails.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:58 AM on June 21, 2019
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:58 AM on June 21, 2019
After 8 straight weeks (!) of contacting my Dem Rep demanding impeachment and getting no response – but getting (no joke) 24 fundraising emails from him in the meantime – I finally got an actual response. And it was: going to let everything play out, not going to support impeachment now, blah blah blah. And then I read that we almost started a war with Iran while I slept. On top of everything else. Fuck it.
posted by hijinx at 6:04 AM on June 21, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by hijinx at 6:04 AM on June 21, 2019 [4 favorites]
I joined a writing group a couple months ago, and it's been good!
Except that this past week, this one guy submitted for the second time. His first time was his first novel chapter, which featured a dead baby. This second time was his second novel chapter, in which a woman finds an intellectually disabled man on the road and rapes him. Who he's writing this for, I don't know. It's all very lyrical and "poetic" and literary fiction-y, very high brow. Blech.
When I initially read the rape chapter, I didn't even realize the two characters had had sex, it just didn't even occur to me that that would happen. Then in the group meeting, the writer was like, oh yeah, of course they had sex, and maybe they're the parents of this dead baby. I was shocked, and literally burst out, "but that means she raped him!"
And the guy gets this disgusted look on his face and is like, "this is before the #metoo era." Like rapes didn't happen before last year.
It turned into this whole big argument where it seemed like none of the men in the room (and it was 80% men) even understood that if someone can't or doesn't give consent to sex that that's rape. Which was shocking in its own right. This other woman and I didn't just let it drop and the men were really annoyed, as was the organizer (a woman). Like we were being such dumb bitches.
Ugh it's still turning my stomach and making me so angry.
posted by rue72 at 6:39 AM on June 21, 2019 [6 favorites]
Except that this past week, this one guy submitted for the second time. His first time was his first novel chapter, which featured a dead baby. This second time was his second novel chapter, in which a woman finds an intellectually disabled man on the road and rapes him. Who he's writing this for, I don't know. It's all very lyrical and "poetic" and literary fiction-y, very high brow. Blech.
When I initially read the rape chapter, I didn't even realize the two characters had had sex, it just didn't even occur to me that that would happen. Then in the group meeting, the writer was like, oh yeah, of course they had sex, and maybe they're the parents of this dead baby. I was shocked, and literally burst out, "but that means she raped him!"
And the guy gets this disgusted look on his face and is like, "this is before the #metoo era." Like rapes didn't happen before last year.
It turned into this whole big argument where it seemed like none of the men in the room (and it was 80% men) even understood that if someone can't or doesn't give consent to sex that that's rape. Which was shocking in its own right. This other woman and I didn't just let it drop and the men were really annoyed, as was the organizer (a woman). Like we were being such dumb bitches.
Ugh it's still turning my stomach and making me so angry.
posted by rue72 at 6:39 AM on June 21, 2019 [6 favorites]
Well I seem to have just been broken up with.
posted by wellred at 12:53 AM on June 21 [+] [!]
Ahem, let me declare something on your behalf:
Fuck that fucking idiot!
That really sucks, I'm sorry.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:43 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by wellred at 12:53 AM on June 21 [+] [!]
Ahem, let me declare something on your behalf:
Fuck that fucking idiot!
That really sucks, I'm sorry.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:43 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
Well rue72 for what it’s worth I think you did the right thing. Maybe some of those guys will be unable to get your point off their minds and it will change their thinking over time. Even if not you still did the right thing.
posted by sallybrown at 6:51 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by sallybrown at 6:51 AM on June 21, 2019 [3 favorites]
I feel pretty weird about the idea that we might have just avoided a war because of Putin. Not surprised, not anymore, but weird.
My kiddo told me yesterday that he was only going to live to be 45. "The planet will be uninhabitable by 2050 and so that's when I'll go," he said to me calmly, and I honestly did not know what to say. I feel like a bad parent for not immediately telling him he was wrong but shit, maybe he's not.
So that's happening this week.
posted by emjaybee at 7:11 AM on June 21, 2019 [13 favorites]
My kiddo told me yesterday that he was only going to live to be 45. "The planet will be uninhabitable by 2050 and so that's when I'll go," he said to me calmly, and I honestly did not know what to say. I feel like a bad parent for not immediately telling him he was wrong but shit, maybe he's not.
So that's happening this week.
posted by emjaybee at 7:11 AM on June 21, 2019 [13 favorites]
Thanks pals. He couldn’t handle it. I hope he’ll come back to me sometime.
posted by wellred at 8:10 AM on June 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by wellred at 8:10 AM on June 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
TW: Sexual Assault
Thanks, sallybrown. When it seemed like the writer decided that rape was fine and/or made up, I ended up trying to approach my critique from the angle that the (rapist) character didn't have a credible emotional journey within the chapter, because her decision to rape this man seems at odds with her internal state before and after the rape. And in the post-coital part of the story, the (raped) man thinks to himself how safe he feels. Ugh literally making my stomach hurt, bile is in my throat.
I mean, even if the character had had a credible emotional journey...I don't want to read about rape from the perspective of a rapist, especially while the narrative itself seems to condone/dismiss the rape, and to not grasp the perspective of anyone involved at all. The characters feel "safe" after, give me a fucking break. This woman forces this intellectually disabled man into the back of her truck while he screams in protest and tries to fight her off, and then once they're in the truck bed, (apparently) she rapes him. Oh excuse me, they become "two broken people having compassionate sex" despite her physically forcing herself on him. And then afterward they feel "safe." What the fuck.
Have you read the novella The Churn? It's part of the Expanse series. There are some scenes in there of sexual assault from the perspective of the rapist, but it's clear from the narration that the rapist's self-justifications are only self-justifications and that what's happening is being experienced as rape. And that's a much more complex situation because the boy being raped is ostensibly giving consent and the sex is happening within what both people think of as a loving relationship, but because of his age and the pressure/coercion involved, he functionally can't consent and he's still experiencing the sexual contact as traumatic assault "despite" himself. It's extremely disturbing, but I didn't feel reading it like I did leaving that writers' group discussion.
Something else that shocked me is that it seemed like for the writer and his defenders, a woman raping a man is somehow a totally different scenario than a man raping a woman. Maybe even an impossible scenario?! And...I can't wrap my head around that, either. The total lack of compassion, for one. But it also gives me vertigo to think that these guys assume that a woman would rape a man because "this is the best she can get" (which was the argument they gave for why the character did it). Have they never been predated on in their lives? Do they assume that this woman has never been predated on and that that wouldn't affect her perspective (regardless of whether she then goes on to victimize this man)? I literally can't imagine. Very literally cannot.
I'm not going to say that all the men in there were being horrifying, because it was really only two of them who very vocally dismissive of the idea that...uh, consent is IMPORTANT. That rape isn't some made-up thing, and raping someone is a BIG DEAL. The other two guys...who knows. One of them especially seems like a nice guy, so I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. And who knows what people who are being more or less silent are thinking, anyway. But man, it keeps playing out in my mind and making me feel angry.
Maybe I'll put up an AskMe asking whether and how to broach the issue next time we meet. It's really upsetting me, but it's ultimately not my choice what this guy chooses to write and...I don't know how to clear the air in a satisfying way but I also don't know how to continue on with the air uncleared.
posted by rue72 at 8:28 AM on June 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
Thanks, sallybrown. When it seemed like the writer decided that rape was fine and/or made up, I ended up trying to approach my critique from the angle that the (rapist) character didn't have a credible emotional journey within the chapter, because her decision to rape this man seems at odds with her internal state before and after the rape. And in the post-coital part of the story, the (raped) man thinks to himself how safe he feels. Ugh literally making my stomach hurt, bile is in my throat.
I mean, even if the character had had a credible emotional journey...I don't want to read about rape from the perspective of a rapist, especially while the narrative itself seems to condone/dismiss the rape, and to not grasp the perspective of anyone involved at all. The characters feel "safe" after, give me a fucking break. This woman forces this intellectually disabled man into the back of her truck while he screams in protest and tries to fight her off, and then once they're in the truck bed, (apparently) she rapes him. Oh excuse me, they become "two broken people having compassionate sex" despite her physically forcing herself on him. And then afterward they feel "safe." What the fuck.
Have you read the novella The Churn? It's part of the Expanse series. There are some scenes in there of sexual assault from the perspective of the rapist, but it's clear from the narration that the rapist's self-justifications are only self-justifications and that what's happening is being experienced as rape. And that's a much more complex situation because the boy being raped is ostensibly giving consent and the sex is happening within what both people think of as a loving relationship, but because of his age and the pressure/coercion involved, he functionally can't consent and he's still experiencing the sexual contact as traumatic assault "despite" himself. It's extremely disturbing, but I didn't feel reading it like I did leaving that writers' group discussion.
Something else that shocked me is that it seemed like for the writer and his defenders, a woman raping a man is somehow a totally different scenario than a man raping a woman. Maybe even an impossible scenario?! And...I can't wrap my head around that, either. The total lack of compassion, for one. But it also gives me vertigo to think that these guys assume that a woman would rape a man because "this is the best she can get" (which was the argument they gave for why the character did it). Have they never been predated on in their lives? Do they assume that this woman has never been predated on and that that wouldn't affect her perspective (regardless of whether she then goes on to victimize this man)? I literally can't imagine. Very literally cannot.
I'm not going to say that all the men in there were being horrifying, because it was really only two of them who very vocally dismissive of the idea that...uh, consent is IMPORTANT. That rape isn't some made-up thing, and raping someone is a BIG DEAL. The other two guys...who knows. One of them especially seems like a nice guy, so I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. And who knows what people who are being more or less silent are thinking, anyway. But man, it keeps playing out in my mind and making me feel angry.
Maybe I'll put up an AskMe asking whether and how to broach the issue next time we meet. It's really upsetting me, but it's ultimately not my choice what this guy chooses to write and...I don't know how to clear the air in a satisfying way but I also don't know how to continue on with the air uncleared.
posted by rue72 at 8:28 AM on June 21, 2019 [5 favorites]
The news today in the US has been just absolutely horribly, wretchedly depressing.
posted by sallybrown at 7:52 PM on June 21, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by sallybrown at 7:52 PM on June 21, 2019 [6 favorites]
On the same weekend where thousands of families are being threatened with racist mass arrests, I'm forced to feel grateful for Tucker Carlson's guiding light. Living under this administration feels like an exhausting, terrible game of "Would you rather...?"
On the plus side, apparently Lindsey Graham's relentless toadying has not given him any influence over Trump. That IS kind of funny.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:29 AM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
On the plus side, apparently Lindsey Graham's relentless toadying has not given him any influence over Trump. That IS kind of funny.
posted by grandiloquiet at 7:29 AM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
headnsouth—I don’t know what to say except that I’m sending you positive thoughts. I’m sorry. Also sending you a virtual hug/hand clasp/pat on the shoulder if you want it.
posted by bookmammal at 9:20 AM on June 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by bookmammal at 9:20 AM on June 22, 2019 [4 favorites]
I just got clipped by a car while walking into the library. I was waiting at the stoplight, the walk light came on and I started crossing. Then a big red SUV in the left turn lane opposite me darted into the intersection. I tried to jump out of the way but the front bumper nailed me in the hip staggering me. She slammed on the brakes, said “Sorry I didn’t see you.” And then sped down the road. Now I’m sitting at the library, and my hip is killing me. I’ve got about two hours until they close and I’m really not looking forward to the 3 mile walk home.
posted by Tenuki at 1:52 PM on June 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
posted by Tenuki at 1:52 PM on June 22, 2019 [6 favorites]
I’m in favour of non-sexual public nudity BUT when it’s just a few white dudes at Pride and everyone else is wearing bottoms, that’s entitled, narcissistic privilege, absolutely sexualized, and basically gross buckets.
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:06 PM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by seanmpuckett at 3:06 PM on June 22, 2019 [1 favorite]
We had to put our 14-year-old dog to sleep this week. It was time. He had a vicious type of cancer and his quality of life degraded rapidly (couldn't walk unassisted, slept 95% of the day, showed no interest in much of anything); any treatment besides pain relief would have made the few months he had left horrific, so we opted for good pain relief for a few weeks, spoiled him entirely every second we could, fed him fresh-cooked meats and veggies and rice that he loved, as much as he wanted to eat. And then we said goodbye, with a vet who came to our house and was lovely and gentle and as wonderful as someone can possibly be in that sort of situation. It was peaceful and gentle and right. We knew it was time, and we know we did the right thing. But it still hurts so goddamned fucking much.
I spent a few days occasionally crying with my husband beforehand, and the day it happened, I honestly was afraid I was going to have some sort of cardiac event, my chest (and left arm, really disconcertingly) hurt so fucking much, along with my soul.
My whole household hurts. Husband and I both feel like robots, and have been taking turns sleeping way, way too much at all the wrong times, and then last night we both stayed up way, way too late. Food sounds awful. Our other dog, who is young and healthy, won't eat either, and I just showered him with brand new toys and he just halfheartedly played with one and then went back to laying on the couch. Our young kiddo has asked a lot of questions and is very concerned to hear that doctors can't fix everything all the time. The other night he had me look up the longest-lived kinds of dogs and kept asking "if we get that kind of dog, how old will I be when it dies?" and then the heartbreaking but of course natural followup of "How old will I be when grandpa dies? How old will I be when you die?"
We're holding it together outwardly but somehow in the past week our house has become a messy wreck as we drag out games and toys and stuff to distract ourselves and nobody has energy to clean it up, leave dishes and laundry half-done, and nobody is sleeping right, and everything is just horrible.
posted by erst at 7:23 PM on June 22, 2019 [13 favorites]
I spent a few days occasionally crying with my husband beforehand, and the day it happened, I honestly was afraid I was going to have some sort of cardiac event, my chest (and left arm, really disconcertingly) hurt so fucking much, along with my soul.
My whole household hurts. Husband and I both feel like robots, and have been taking turns sleeping way, way too much at all the wrong times, and then last night we both stayed up way, way too late. Food sounds awful. Our other dog, who is young and healthy, won't eat either, and I just showered him with brand new toys and he just halfheartedly played with one and then went back to laying on the couch. Our young kiddo has asked a lot of questions and is very concerned to hear that doctors can't fix everything all the time. The other night he had me look up the longest-lived kinds of dogs and kept asking "if we get that kind of dog, how old will I be when it dies?" and then the heartbreaking but of course natural followup of "How old will I be when grandpa dies? How old will I be when you die?"
We're holding it together outwardly but somehow in the past week our house has become a messy wreck as we drag out games and toys and stuff to distract ourselves and nobody has energy to clean it up, leave dishes and laundry half-done, and nobody is sleeping right, and everything is just horrible.
posted by erst at 7:23 PM on June 22, 2019 [13 favorites]
head south, so sorry about the bad biopsy news. Hugs to everyone who needs them. I am still really sad about the upcoming move next month of my kid and her family. About 5 hours away door to door. Glad I will have had 18 months of near daily contact. That’s a big deal. I’ve been lucky.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:36 PM on June 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Bella Donna at 1:36 PM on June 23, 2019 [2 favorites]
I’m at the emergency vet with a poor probably UTI-ing kitty and we are probably gonna be here all night. And I can’t skip work tomorrow.
posted by wellred at 10:15 PM on June 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by wellred at 10:15 PM on June 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
So one of my oldest friends, a lifelong liberal Democrat who lives in a solidly blue state, explained to me that he hadn’t heard about the latest rape allegation against Trump because “there doesn't seem to be any point in being politically informed anymore, because rational argument is pretty much irrelevant in American politics.” I feel as though this encapsulates the withdrawal of so many of my friends and family into purely personal spheres in reaction to the current state of affairs. I could engage with them about books, movies, music, etc., except that the need for cognition to understand WHAT THE FUCK is going on is a monkey on my back.
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:57 PM on June 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by Doktor Zed at 2:57 PM on June 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
Sending hugs and 🌈 RBJ, I’ve had mobility issues the last few prides so have attended the march from a cafe on the route, if there’s one with indoor and outdoor seating you can retreat if needed, I’m not fond of crowds either.
posted by ellieBOA at 9:40 PM on June 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by ellieBOA at 9:40 PM on June 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
Gotanda, I'm right there with you on the pretty terrible bedside manner/understanding of pain management by doctors in Japan. I'm working through a kidney stone, and my regular doctor said "just wait until it really starts to hurt, then go to this other doctor you've never been to and know nothing about!" without really telling me what "really starting to hurt" means, so I'm playing some sort of weird game of chicken, hoping I can get through the next two weeks without the whole 'puking from pain' thing that seems to go along with kidney stones (Not that I heard that from my doctor, I saw that online when I went to doctor google, who is much more patient and willing to sit there and listen).
Sorry to hear about the knee not getting any better, as well. I'm in a holding pattern with my achilles, hoping that it will just get better, as I'd like to avoid what you're describing. At the same time, and this seems to be especially true here, though maybe every where, the PT will probably be a lot more helpful/effective than the doctor. They seem to actually care and treat you like a human, rather than trying to get you out the door as soon as possible.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:34 PM on June 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
Sorry to hear about the knee not getting any better, as well. I'm in a holding pattern with my achilles, hoping that it will just get better, as I'd like to avoid what you're describing. At the same time, and this seems to be especially true here, though maybe every where, the PT will probably be a lot more helpful/effective than the doctor. They seem to actually care and treat you like a human, rather than trying to get you out the door as soon as possible.
posted by Ghidorah at 10:34 PM on June 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
My job has destroyed my physical, mental, and emotional health. It has cost me one cat and one partner. It is an all-devouring maw of dysfunction, waste, and bullshit. And yet I do not know how to quit, because a childhood marked by poverty means YOU NEVER QUIT A JOB EVER EVER EVER EVER when you quit a job everyone you love will hate you forever, JOBS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:49 AM on June 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 9:49 AM on June 26, 2019 [7 favorites]
So, hey, I'm freaking out on the inside because of concentration camps and dead children but holding it together for my own kids, how's that going for everyone?
posted by bq at 1:08 PM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by bq at 1:08 PM on June 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
FUCK SCOTUS. FUCK ROBERTS. MOTHERFUCKER.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:35 AM on June 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 7:35 AM on June 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
Welcome to the second (third?) redemption court.
posted by mhum at 7:38 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mhum at 7:38 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
Hi yes, I have a fresh wave of despair over the gerrymandering supreme court decision that I was not expecting to have today.
posted by dinty_moore at 7:38 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by dinty_moore at 7:38 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
i hate my job with the fire of a thousand burning suns
flames
flames on the side of my face
that is all
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:52 AM on June 27, 2019 [8 favorites]
flames
flames on the side of my face
that is all
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:52 AM on June 27, 2019 [8 favorites]
I get that reference, Ms. White. Do we all hate our jobs? Mine is just so fucking stupid now that I'm not doing what I'm actually good at because I pointed out they were ditching my data to present fraudulent stuff to the client. They're still doing it! I have proof! I've heard the owners and heads of departments arguing about it.
If the world is ending, I'd at least like to find fulfillment, but while people are thinking "Why should I have kids?" i'm still back here wondering why I'd bother going to get a new degree when it'll probably be pointless.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:07 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
If the world is ending, I'd at least like to find fulfillment, but while people are thinking "Why should I have kids?" i'm still back here wondering why I'd bother going to get a new degree when it'll probably be pointless.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:07 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
Last night I was having dinner with a friend and we were talking about being alone and what happens when we get Alzheimer's or whatever and I said, "fuck it, the world's going to explode in 20 years so we won't get to have that" and he said, "nah...I give it 15." So there's that. So weirdly calm about it, both of us.
posted by wellred at 8:13 AM on June 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by wellred at 8:13 AM on June 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
I can't decide if we're being paranoid but climate change seems at the point where it's just so bad.
This year in the Corn Belt, it was record flooding and planting just couldn't happen for... a long time. Our food supply is going to get irrevocably disrupted at some point.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:35 AM on June 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
This year in the Corn Belt, it was record flooding and planting just couldn't happen for... a long time. Our food supply is going to get irrevocably disrupted at some point.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 8:35 AM on June 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
My most beloved friend told me last night that her exploratory surgery that doctors kept insisting she didn’t need (calm down little lady it’s probably just an STD) found stage 4 colon cancer. She’s in her mid-30s. I have both sorrow of the road ahead of her and the white hot rage that the doctors kept dismissing her symptoms for years until they finally handed her what amounts for a death sentence.
The political news pales in impact to me today but the wretchedness of it really doesn’t help.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:36 AM on June 27, 2019 [7 favorites]
The political news pales in impact to me today but the wretchedness of it really doesn’t help.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:36 AM on June 27, 2019 [7 favorites]
In my job-grumpiness case I have an exit strategy but it's just going to take time to implement and I'm having an impatient "even instant gratification would take too long" mood.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:37 AM on June 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
F U C K M E D I C A I D
Months-long waiting lists to get appointments. Phone lines randomly disconnecting. Benefits hotlines that turn out to just give you the same info you can find online. It's all free, but you get what you pay for.
When the revolution comes, I would like to see every politician be forced to get basic, necessary healthcare by calling clinic after clinic, even though they already know they'll hear the same thing from everyone. Unable to work due to mental health? Sorry, Senator, there's just no one available to see you right now. Recurring chest pain? It's probably heartburn, Your Honor, try calling back later.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:51 AM on June 27, 2019 [5 favorites]
Months-long waiting lists to get appointments. Phone lines randomly disconnecting. Benefits hotlines that turn out to just give you the same info you can find online. It's all free, but you get what you pay for.
When the revolution comes, I would like to see every politician be forced to get basic, necessary healthcare by calling clinic after clinic, even though they already know they'll hear the same thing from everyone. Unable to work due to mental health? Sorry, Senator, there's just no one available to see you right now. Recurring chest pain? It's probably heartburn, Your Honor, try calling back later.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 8:51 AM on June 27, 2019 [5 favorites]
Oh golly, the thorn bushes have roses. I am so very sorry to hear about your friend's illness. I wish I had death-ray vision, the kind you can turn on and off, so I could vaporize many many people. In my dreams, at least. Would happily add your friend's dismissive, incompetent, and possible evil doctors as well.
I had a painful phone call with my elderly dad an hour ago. He was upset, so I became upset. He is sick of all the junky cars he keeps buying compulsively. He is sick of the homeless people he invites to live with him who turn out to be unable to take care of him because they have their own problems. He said he needed help but there was no help. Except me. I am the only one who can help my dad, according to him, but I have said I will not come and take care of him.
That's true, dad, I said. Why not? he demanded, sounding both feeble and gruff in a way that kind of broke my heart. I reminded him that I am helping my kid with the grandkids. My ex has cancer and will have an operation later this summer and I will be his support then. I also have clients I must work for in order to pay my rent. If I were wealthy, if I could afford it, I might go see my dad for two weeks before the major stuff happens that my kid needs help with. But why? As he told me during my last visit, while I am there it feels like I have been there forever and when I am gone, it is as though I had never visited.
When I was young my dad chose himself; that's okay. He got to do that. Now he is old and sick and he wants me to choose him and I just cannot do it. I see him twice a year, which is more than I can afford, and I am going back in September. He may die before that but honestly, I cannot give him what he wants. He wants me to live with him until he dies and the dude has been dying, no kidding, for about 5 years now. I have chosen myself, my kid, my grandchildren. It may not be the best choice, but it is the best choice for me.
It makes me sad anyway. My dad has been an asshole for much of his life, but not all of it was his fault. I know he loves me even if he expresses it badly. I love him and so wish his last days (months, years) sucked less. But I can't fix his life. Fuck, I can't fix mine, I can only patch it up a bit around the edges.
Fellow sufferers on this mortal coil, I salute you. Sending you all the virtual hugs and moral support I have.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:35 AM on June 27, 2019 [8 favorites]
I had a painful phone call with my elderly dad an hour ago. He was upset, so I became upset. He is sick of all the junky cars he keeps buying compulsively. He is sick of the homeless people he invites to live with him who turn out to be unable to take care of him because they have their own problems. He said he needed help but there was no help. Except me. I am the only one who can help my dad, according to him, but I have said I will not come and take care of him.
That's true, dad, I said. Why not? he demanded, sounding both feeble and gruff in a way that kind of broke my heart. I reminded him that I am helping my kid with the grandkids. My ex has cancer and will have an operation later this summer and I will be his support then. I also have clients I must work for in order to pay my rent. If I were wealthy, if I could afford it, I might go see my dad for two weeks before the major stuff happens that my kid needs help with. But why? As he told me during my last visit, while I am there it feels like I have been there forever and when I am gone, it is as though I had never visited.
When I was young my dad chose himself; that's okay. He got to do that. Now he is old and sick and he wants me to choose him and I just cannot do it. I see him twice a year, which is more than I can afford, and I am going back in September. He may die before that but honestly, I cannot give him what he wants. He wants me to live with him until he dies and the dude has been dying, no kidding, for about 5 years now. I have chosen myself, my kid, my grandchildren. It may not be the best choice, but it is the best choice for me.
It makes me sad anyway. My dad has been an asshole for much of his life, but not all of it was his fault. I know he loves me even if he expresses it badly. I love him and so wish his last days (months, years) sucked less. But I can't fix his life. Fuck, I can't fix mine, I can only patch it up a bit around the edges.
Fellow sufferers on this mortal coil, I salute you. Sending you all the virtual hugs and moral support I have.
posted by Bella Donna at 10:35 AM on June 27, 2019 [8 favorites]
It's a petty thing, but...my fucking phone got stolen last night, and I can't tell if it was by my Uber driver or a subsequent passenger. Uber has thrown up its hands and said they've done all they could do, so I've reported it to the police and my carrier.
Now I have to take off early from work to go replace the thing...and I have no idea how much I'm going to get gouged for. Gah.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:46 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
Now I have to take off early from work to go replace the thing...and I have no idea how much I'm going to get gouged for. Gah.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 3:46 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
I've been waiting for biopsy results and I've been trying but failing at not spiraling into hating/blaming myself for telling myself for months and months it was nothing, all because I couldn't afford for it to either a) get checked out and be nothing or b) for it to be cancer or elsewise. Fuck this joke of a health insurance system, of a medical system. (Also trying not to berate myself for being anxious over uncertainty. Or wishing that I had the financial ability to treat my anxiety in general, all while knowing this constant low-grade nausea I feel is also just because of the world right now anyway.)
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:18 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:18 AM on June 28, 2019 [1 favorite]
Biopsy results were non-cancerous, so now I'm back to the "normal" amounts of fear and anxiety of future, and I did feel better after venting this morning.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 2:53 PM on June 28, 2019 [10 favorites]
posted by mixedmetaphors at 2:53 PM on June 28, 2019 [10 favorites]
So, I got rear-ended on Wednesday by a commercial delivery truck. No injuries and it was slow speed (and luckily my brakes held enough to keep from being shoved into anyone), but with such a heavy truck it wrecked the trunk lid and bent the rear quarter panels. Guy insisted that it was a problem with his brake pedal (and the one satisfying bit was his reaction when the cop insisted that the truck would not be driven away and had to be towed).
Last I heard from the body shop they were still waiting on word from my insurance company in order to start work (even though I picked one of their partner body shops where this is supposedly all frictionless). The estimate the body shop gave me is 2.5x what the insurance company was guessing, based on the pictures I sent (given my experience last time I got rear-ended, the insurance's quote seemed incredibly low-ball to me).
And, what pushed me to find the fucking fuck thread was I foolishly looked up my car on kbb.com and it's right in the ballpark of what the body shop quoted, so now I get to spend all weekend worrying if they'll try to total it. I really like my car, they don't make it any more, and I generally hate the direction the car market seems to be heading.
Plus, I recently started a job I don't like and as much as I doubt I'd quit without having something else lined up, I really don't want to be taking on any new large recurring payments.
posted by ckape at 8:19 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
Last I heard from the body shop they were still waiting on word from my insurance company in order to start work (even though I picked one of their partner body shops where this is supposedly all frictionless). The estimate the body shop gave me is 2.5x what the insurance company was guessing, based on the pictures I sent (given my experience last time I got rear-ended, the insurance's quote seemed incredibly low-ball to me).
And, what pushed me to find the fucking fuck thread was I foolishly looked up my car on kbb.com and it's right in the ballpark of what the body shop quoted, so now I get to spend all weekend worrying if they'll try to total it. I really like my car, they don't make it any more, and I generally hate the direction the car market seems to be heading.
Plus, I recently started a job I don't like and as much as I doubt I'd quit without having something else lined up, I really don't want to be taking on any new large recurring payments.
posted by ckape at 8:19 PM on June 28, 2019 [2 favorites]
I have concluded that I want to go back to California, except in the back of my mind I feel like it won’t be the same as it was before I left. Friends have moved to new apartments, people are doing different things, new buildings have gone up. I’ve missed everything familiar for the last few months, and now even those things will have changed in my absence. That was the experience had when I left another city — I went back to visit, and it was almost like I’d never lived there.
So what I really want is to never have left California, because it was a mistake to have done so. All the advice on grief tells you to keep your routines, your familiar places, and your friends. It keeps you grounded when everything seems out of control. I gave it all up, and spent months too depressed to function. And now it’s too late to go back — I have my own familiar things here, and I’m sure I’d miss them too.
So I’m homesick, but I feel like I can’t leave, and I don’t even know how I could make it work. Before I left I had a job and a small amount of money saved up. Now I’m nearly broke. I can’t even get a therapist because of now fucked the public benefits system here is, so I’m left venting on the internet where everyone can read this (the ironic thing is that I would have been able to see a therapist had I stayed at my job in California, instead of becoming unemployed and having to rely on Medicaid).
In other words, I really fucked up. I want to say that I ruined my life, but that’s probably too dramatic. What I most certainly did do was make things exponentially more difficult than they needed to be, and I still don’t know how to get out of it.
The plus side is that at least I feel like I have some more perspective than I did. I’ve gotten to spend time with family, which is basically the only positive about the last few months. But Jesus, take my advice: if you end a long term relationship, don’t leave all your friends and familiar things behind.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:47 PM on June 29, 2019 [5 favorites]
So what I really want is to never have left California, because it was a mistake to have done so. All the advice on grief tells you to keep your routines, your familiar places, and your friends. It keeps you grounded when everything seems out of control. I gave it all up, and spent months too depressed to function. And now it’s too late to go back — I have my own familiar things here, and I’m sure I’d miss them too.
So I’m homesick, but I feel like I can’t leave, and I don’t even know how I could make it work. Before I left I had a job and a small amount of money saved up. Now I’m nearly broke. I can’t even get a therapist because of now fucked the public benefits system here is, so I’m left venting on the internet where everyone can read this (the ironic thing is that I would have been able to see a therapist had I stayed at my job in California, instead of becoming unemployed and having to rely on Medicaid).
In other words, I really fucked up. I want to say that I ruined my life, but that’s probably too dramatic. What I most certainly did do was make things exponentially more difficult than they needed to be, and I still don’t know how to get out of it.
The plus side is that at least I feel like I have some more perspective than I did. I’ve gotten to spend time with family, which is basically the only positive about the last few months. But Jesus, take my advice: if you end a long term relationship, don’t leave all your friends and familiar things behind.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:47 PM on June 29, 2019 [5 favorites]
Thank you, Bella Donna, and to everyone else for being here and witnessing each other’s heartbreak. It helps to share it and I hope it helps to know that I have held each of you in my mind after reading your comments. Sending hope for future ease to us all.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:08 PM on June 29, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:08 PM on June 29, 2019 [1 favorite]
What a fucking toady our Prime Minister is. What a pusillanimous, servile, unprincipled, glad-handing, pissweak, tiny-brained sycophantic lickspittle.
I didn't think it was possible for me to feel any more ashamed of and infuriated by the horde of dumbshits I share a continent with who voted this arsehole back into office. I was wrong.
posted by flabdablet at 1:37 AM on June 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I didn't think it was possible for me to feel any more ashamed of and infuriated by the horde of dumbshits I share a continent with who voted this arsehole back into office. I was wrong.
posted by flabdablet at 1:37 AM on June 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
Eli Valley sums up how I'm feeling about our supposed representatives and their inclination to fund grotesque human rights abuses
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:33 PM on June 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:33 PM on June 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I read all the venting stories so you're never alone! And I'm an awesome hugger.
I really miss my dad the past few days. I guess because I went to a family reunion. They had a video of all the family through the generations and when I was introduced it was a video of my walking up to my mom right after we buried dad and kind of sweeping her into my arms in a big hug and kissing her cheek. I don't remember doing that, but it reminded me that I try to be a good son. I really like Jason Isbell and had sent my parents songs of his right before dad died and of course the top Jason Isbell song is about knowing one of you will die first in a relationship. This is a sad vent.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:52 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
I really miss my dad the past few days. I guess because I went to a family reunion. They had a video of all the family through the generations and when I was introduced it was a video of my walking up to my mom right after we buried dad and kind of sweeping her into my arms in a big hug and kissing her cheek. I don't remember doing that, but it reminded me that I try to be a good son. I really like Jason Isbell and had sent my parents songs of his right before dad died and of course the top Jason Isbell song is about knowing one of you will die first in a relationship. This is a sad vent.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 6:52 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
My condolences to hearts that grieve and love and support to those who struggle.
I will never forgive these cretins for bringing the world to a place where every time the electricity or Internet goes out, I momentarily panic that it signals the beginning of the war.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:00 AM on July 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
I will never forgive these cretins for bringing the world to a place where every time the electricity or Internet goes out, I momentarily panic that it signals the beginning of the war.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:00 AM on July 1, 2019 [4 favorites]
rbj, wonderful!
I also made my own journey - not quite as brave as yours but big enough for me - solo by train into Chicago to see Elizabeth Warren. She was so great! I wished I had the energy to wait in line for a selfie with her but it was a successful 6-hour total trip Fri. evening (got there about 4:30, long wait but good seat), and got a sign to wave and keep. (It's Harris or Warren for me, and I worry they will both be on the ballot and split too many votes so some white dude ends up with the nomination).
posted by Glinn at 9:12 AM on July 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
I also made my own journey - not quite as brave as yours but big enough for me - solo by train into Chicago to see Elizabeth Warren. She was so great! I wished I had the energy to wait in line for a selfie with her but it was a successful 6-hour total trip Fri. evening (got there about 4:30, long wait but good seat), and got a sign to wave and keep. (It's Harris or Warren for me, and I worry they will both be on the ballot and split too many votes so some white dude ends up with the nomination).
posted by Glinn at 9:12 AM on July 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
Welp, finally caught up with the insurance adjuster and apparently the delay is that they need to spend several days deciding if it's totalled, and who knows when that'll be done considering the holiday. Fuck.
posted by ckape at 11:48 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ckape at 11:48 AM on July 1, 2019 [1 favorite]
The idiot Trumpy governor my dumbassed fellow
Alaskan citizens elected in November- the one whose sole campaign plank was giving his voters $3000 each fiscal constraints be damned, literally buying their shortsighted votes- has used his line item veto to make absolutely draconian cuts to the state operating budget, including a 41% cut to state funding for the university system. It will require 75% of the state legislators to override him and the Republicans will likely not have enough courage to do it despite how devastating the cuts will be. The most gross/petty of them all is a cut to the court system in the amount the state paid for abortions last year because the courts keep upholding the state constitution, which contains an unusually strong right to privacy- this is straight-up Handmaid’s Tale shit.
Ugh. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.
posted by charmedimsure at 1:06 PM on July 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
Alaskan citizens elected in November- the one whose sole campaign plank was giving his voters $3000 each fiscal constraints be damned, literally buying their shortsighted votes- has used his line item veto to make absolutely draconian cuts to the state operating budget, including a 41% cut to state funding for the university system. It will require 75% of the state legislators to override him and the Republicans will likely not have enough courage to do it despite how devastating the cuts will be. The most gross/petty of them all is a cut to the court system in the amount the state paid for abortions last year because the courts keep upholding the state constitution, which contains an unusually strong right to privacy- this is straight-up Handmaid’s Tale shit.
Ugh. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck.
posted by charmedimsure at 1:06 PM on July 1, 2019 [2 favorites]
no, i would argue we're bringing the sun to us (summary via twitter thread (tl;dr - current policies still take us potentially over 4 degrees = climate catastrophe))
posted by entropicamericana at 6:04 PM on July 3, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by entropicamericana at 6:04 PM on July 3, 2019 [1 favorite]
Still no word from my insurance, but I guess I've learned an important lesson not to *checks notes* get rear-ended by a commercial truck (while stopped at a traffic light) a week before a major holiday.
posted by ckape at 7:19 PM on July 3, 2019
posted by ckape at 7:19 PM on July 3, 2019
Like a big idiot I let my pet insurance lapse, and of course now one of my cats has developed hepatic lipidosis. In the past 24 hours she has racked up $3500 and it is only going to climb, because she's probably going to need a feeding tube and that will require a few more days of monitoring before I can take her home (and feed her myself through the feeding tube). If she does get this feeding tube, she'll need to be fed every six hours, which means I will have to cancel my week-long trip to Seattle where I was going to see my best friend who's been going through some shit. I can't change or get my money back for the airplane tickets. On top of that I need to move to DC from my beloved Philadelphia, and the distance plus the increased housing prices plus having four cats are all really biting me in the ass. On Monday I got an excellent job offer and was riding high but I am seriously crashing now.
posted by Anonymous at 4:22 PM on July 4, 2019
posted by Anonymous at 4:22 PM on July 4, 2019
I just got three text notifications that I will be charged nearly $1000 for urgent care visits from February and March. I suspect they simply did not submit the claims to Medicaid, but I’ll find out. Garbage healthcare in a garbage country.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:39 PM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 4:39 PM on July 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
My cat needs the feeding tube. They're testing her liver biopsy today, hopefully it's not cancer (though the doctor said it could also be cancer in an area the biopsy didn't come from, so that's great).
posted by Anonymous at 5:42 AM on July 5, 2019
posted by Anonymous at 5:42 AM on July 5, 2019
Ursula Le Guin's The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, except Omelas sucks to live in for most people and our standard of loving isn't dependent on torturing children, we just do it because we like it
TNG episode "The Inner Light," except we won't even get our shit together enough to launch a satellite with a flute in it before the planet cooks
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:27 AM on July 5, 2019 [4 favorites]
TNG episode "The Inner Light," except we won't even get our shit together enough to launch a satellite with a flute in it before the planet cooks
posted by Rust Moranis at 6:27 AM on July 5, 2019 [4 favorites]
The chief of staff of the mayor of PVD, where my shul is, was arrested at Jewish led ICE protest. The comments on the (already anti-Semitic in the reporting) article in the paper were such that an armed security guard has been hired for services tomorrow. So, that's cool.
The headline was "Mayor's $70,000 chief of staff arrested." We got a Dem trifecta, but fucking GateHouse Media and Sinclair control the big paper and traditional tv channel.
posted by Ruki at 9:55 AM on July 5, 2019 [5 favorites]
The headline was "Mayor's $70,000 chief of staff arrested." We got a Dem trifecta, but fucking GateHouse Media and Sinclair control the big paper and traditional tv channel.
posted by Ruki at 9:55 AM on July 5, 2019 [5 favorites]
While doing the dishes just now, I realized that a great deal of what's wrong with me is that I'm the kind of person who needs routine and there hasn't been a single day in the last 2½ years that has been routine.
posted by ob1quixote at 4:09 PM on July 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
posted by ob1quixote at 4:09 PM on July 7, 2019 [7 favorites]
GODFUCKINGDAMNIT
Just when I thought I had my shit together, I got volun-told at my job to do exactly the kind of office work I hate and am bad at for no extra money with an amorphous end date and LOTS AND LOTS of stress and accountability and visibility of the sort I actively avoid.
THERE'S A REASON I DIDN'T APPLY FOR THIS TYPE OF JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE AGGGGHHHHHH
posted by Space Kitty at 1:05 PM on July 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
Just when I thought I had my shit together, I got volun-told at my job to do exactly the kind of office work I hate and am bad at for no extra money with an amorphous end date and LOTS AND LOTS of stress and accountability and visibility of the sort I actively avoid.
THERE'S A REASON I DIDN'T APPLY FOR THIS TYPE OF JOB IN THE FIRST PLACE AGGGGHHHHHH
posted by Space Kitty at 1:05 PM on July 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
Well, my car is totaled, but it's a small enough margin that I decided to have them fix it anyway and I'd pay the difference between the cost and the insurance payout. Hopefully this isn't an incredibly foolish decision.
posted by ckape at 7:18 PM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by ckape at 7:18 PM on July 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
Jeffery Epstein.
And the fact that pizzagate is real, in that there really is an international child sex ring that reaches to the highest political levels of the world and probably nothing will be done about it because public attention span.
fucking fuckity FUCK fuck fuck.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:40 PM on July 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
And the fact that pizzagate is real, in that there really is an international child sex ring that reaches to the highest political levels of the world and probably nothing will be done about it because public attention span.
fucking fuckity FUCK fuck fuck.
posted by tivalasvegas at 5:40 PM on July 9, 2019 [2 favorites]
Well, July 4 ended with $2000 in airfare as Mrs. Fish and I got the call that her younger brother (who has severe developmental disabilities coupled with autism) had a life-threatening combination of MRSA and pneumonia. So we were on a plane to Oklahoma the next morning, and spent the next four days in shifts with his older brother keeping watch over him in the ICU, and then once he woke up stopping him from pulling out all his medical hardware, helping him poop, dealing with Medicare, all the joys of modern medicine. All while I got to also work remotely so I couldn't even escape thinking about politics while going through that. And then we flew back last night, less than 12 hours before the conference I'm sitting in now waiting to present for the first time in my life so no, I didn't need that weekend to prepare, I'm fine.
Oh, and when we got home there was a sign up at the entrance to our block that the HOA had the road resurfaced and therefore it was completely closed to traffic until 6AM (and since we got home at 10PM all the on-street parking within a quarter mile was already taken) so that was a fun surprise.
Thankfully he's making a full recovery so it's not entirely a fucking fuck situation but holy SHIT.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:07 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Oh, and when we got home there was a sign up at the entrance to our block that the HOA had the road resurfaced and therefore it was completely closed to traffic until 6AM (and since we got home at 10PM all the on-street parking within a quarter mile was already taken) so that was a fun surprise.
Thankfully he's making a full recovery so it's not entirely a fucking fuck situation but holy SHIT.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:07 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
A company I worked for a few years ago seems to have a weird curse. Lots of illness and death. In truth I think that it's partly due to call centre work (which makes up a big chunk of the workforce) attracting people who have health issues but that doesn't explain everything. Another dear person I worked with there has died. A second too-young friend lost to cancer in the last month-ish, as well. It puts things into sharp relief.
How does anyone give up on love when we might die tomorrow?
posted by wellred at 6:56 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
How does anyone give up on love when we might die tomorrow?
posted by wellred at 6:56 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Best advice to everyone in the mega threads is walk away and never return. Life is too short to expose yourself to the amount of toxic information on a daily basis. Things are not going to change politically in this country until the masses of baby boomers are dead. Stay active locally for sure but don’t give Trump any more space in your head.
posted by photoslob at 7:20 AM on July 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by photoslob at 7:20 AM on July 10, 2019 [4 favorites]
Yesterday, Mr. Carmicha had shoulder surgery for a torn rotator cuff which turned out to be much worse than the MRI suggested--torn in two directions and therefore needing to have a destroyed section removed, be reconnected and then reattached to the bone--so his recovery is ever so much harder. It's his primary arm, natch, and he's to keep it still for 6 weeks, ice on and off every twenty minutes through a contraption that looks like Bane's breathing apparatus.
So I'm sitting there in the hospital with him when my phone starts blowing up... crisis at an organization for which I am president of the board of directors and, worse, bedbugs found in one of our rental properties. It's a summer cottage AirBnb. On the bright side, the current guest got the hell out and is being remarkably reasonable about it, but for both of us the whole situation hits the trifecta: disgusting, inconvenient and expensive.
Fortunately, it's next door and the next guests don't come for a few days, so I have time to deal. After consulting with the exterminator, I am now running over there to ready the place for treatment, running back home to help the mister, stripping off my clothes outside at the back door just in case, etc. Every 20 minutes. The cottage isn't too bad vis-a-vis places for the bedbugs to hide: it's modern and minimalist and so the problems are limited, but I yearn to just throw everything out. But my house with its thousands of books, artwork everywhere and closets full of clothes would be an absolute nightmare.
I itch all over now and hope it's just paranoia. And I have not yet begun to engage with the organization's woes.
posted by carmicha at 9:41 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
So I'm sitting there in the hospital with him when my phone starts blowing up... crisis at an organization for which I am president of the board of directors and, worse, bedbugs found in one of our rental properties. It's a summer cottage AirBnb. On the bright side, the current guest got the hell out and is being remarkably reasonable about it, but for both of us the whole situation hits the trifecta: disgusting, inconvenient and expensive.
Fortunately, it's next door and the next guests don't come for a few days, so I have time to deal. After consulting with the exterminator, I am now running over there to ready the place for treatment, running back home to help the mister, stripping off my clothes outside at the back door just in case, etc. Every 20 minutes. The cottage isn't too bad vis-a-vis places for the bedbugs to hide: it's modern and minimalist and so the problems are limited, but I yearn to just throw everything out. But my house with its thousands of books, artwork everywhere and closets full of clothes would be an absolute nightmare.
I itch all over now and hope it's just paranoia. And I have not yet begun to engage with the organization's woes.
posted by carmicha at 9:41 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
In the megathread just now, two comments were removed -- one from zachlipton with a bunch of links, and one from someone else (TD Strange maybe?) about Amy McGrath doubling down on Trump-lite-ness. Why were these comments removed?
posted by tonycpsu at 10:58 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tonycpsu at 10:58 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
OK, mod note was posted for the latter deletion, but not the former. Still confused why the zachlipton post was removed.
posted by tonycpsu at 11:04 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tonycpsu at 11:04 AM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Because it was "here's a thing Pelosi said, that I know will trigger everybody saying their thing about Pelosi again, but guys please don't say those things"... and then three comments immediately beginning to have people saying those things. I thought with the disclaimer it would be clear why it was deleted.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:11 AM on July 10, 2019
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:11 AM on July 10, 2019
Sorry, ok, left a note in the other thread explaining that.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:20 AM on July 10, 2019
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:20 AM on July 10, 2019
IIRC, zachlipton referred commenters to this thread, which seemed worthy of a flag-as-fantastic, not deletion. I'd rather see zachlipton's comment restored than deleted, FWIW, especially because it wasn't a derail and was adding new content to the thread. Delete the derails, sure, but why delete a comment that also includes new content? That it included a caveat and a referral to this thread seems like even more reason for it to stay in the thread.
posted by Little Dawn at 11:39 AM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Little Dawn at 11:39 AM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'm really ok with my comment (it was a new Politico story about Pelosi) being deleted at this point. I had hoped that people could read it, because it did contain a new twist of interest to those interested the present and future of the party, silently reiterate their pre-existing feelings about Pelosi to themselves, and move on, and I begged, begged not to re-open that discussion, but it was a mistake to post it in the first place because I should have known that wasn't going to happen. Sorry.
posted by zachlipton at 11:56 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by zachlipton at 11:56 AM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
Often in cases like this, we are advised to open a new thread when discussion of a certain topic is overwhelming the megathread. Would a roundup of Pelosi's escalating rhetoric against impeachment be okay, or is she now in the set of topics that MetaFilter doesn't do well?
posted by tonycpsu at 12:42 PM on July 10, 2019
posted by tonycpsu at 12:42 PM on July 10, 2019
I've been watching people make the same points pro and con for a long time, getting more and more heated. I just gave a couple of people a day off for cursing each other out over it. I'll be honest, it feels like the same dynamic we had with Bernie supporters vs Hillary supporters, and that was months of intractable awfulness. I don't know how we can short circuit that, but I wouldn't predict a thread like that leading to a good conversation right now.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:10 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:10 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
People who can't discuss an issue in a respectful manner should absolutely be given days off (or worse.) The existence of those people does not, however, show that civil discussion about a topic is impossible, or even unlikely. diogenes said it best in the previous megathread:
We all have plenty of other places we can go for news aggregation. The community discussion in those threads helps me organize my own thoughts, develop my own action plan, and make sense of this completely senseless political environment. I can find these things in varying degrees elsewhere, and MetaFilter, LLC is under no obligation to provide me the exact platform I want forever, but I can't help but feel that dealing with this by correcting the behavior of the problematic users (or banning them outright if that fails) would work better than having an unreasonably high bar for a topic to even be considered acceptable to discuss.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:16 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
If we're going to try and curtail criticism of Pelosi in the megathreads, we might as well shut them down. At this point, Pelosi's inexplicable malfeasance is central to the story.I understand that a balance has to be struck between the desire of a community to discuss a topic and the staff's bandwidth to keep that discussion on the rails, but if we're escalating from "don't repeat the same complaints about Pelosi" to "don't post new complaints about her, either", and now apparently in this case to "don't even link to mainstream reporting of new things she's said that could lead to new criticism of her", well, then yeah, the megathread clearly isn't working at all.
We all have plenty of other places we can go for news aggregation. The community discussion in those threads helps me organize my own thoughts, develop my own action plan, and make sense of this completely senseless political environment. I can find these things in varying degrees elsewhere, and MetaFilter, LLC is under no obligation to provide me the exact platform I want forever, but I can't help but feel that dealing with this by correcting the behavior of the problematic users (or banning them outright if that fails) would work better than having an unreasonably high bar for a topic to even be considered acceptable to discuss.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:16 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think sometimes since we don't see deleted comments unless we catch them in time (and contrary to appearances, I don't refresh the megathread once every 500 milliseconds all day every day), it's easy for a discussion to look merely tiresome when it's actually, repeatedly, turned into an all out fight. The Pelosi discussion is way past that point now. I'm not sure why it needs to be rehashed in a new forum.
posted by zachlipton at 2:17 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by zachlipton at 2:17 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
People who escalate from discussion to all out fight should be dealt with appropriately. That takes time, but so does hiding posts and posting mod notes to deal with the topics that have been put on the restricted / "higher bar" / "doesn't do well" list. Knowing how many unique users participate in the megathreads, it seems hard to believe that the amount of work spent meticulously pruning the discussion to remove any turn toward one of the squelched topics is less than what it'd take to just remove the sources of the personal attacks.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:21 PM on July 10, 2019
posted by tonycpsu at 2:21 PM on July 10, 2019
the megathreads have been rendered damn close to unreadable by a small number of users' insistence on using them exclusively as a platform to engage in Democratic infighting. it is exhausting. never again do I want to be perceived as a heart or mind to be won over through some cocktail of passionate exhortations and acidic snark.
much as they annoy me, though, I would hate to see those users banned.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:27 PM on July 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
much as they annoy me, though, I would hate to see those users banned.
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:27 PM on July 10, 2019 [7 favorites]
Anyone who repeatedly ignores moderator direction to refrain from personal attacks has, by my understanding of MeFi's policies regarding personal attacks, done more than enough to justify banning them, irrespective of the subject matter that led them to that point. The decision to allow certain topics that may or may not lead to some members committing "suicide by mod" because they can't control themselves is certainly in the hands of the moderators, but once that decision has been made, it's ultimately the member's responsibility to keep their cool.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:35 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by tonycpsu at 2:35 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
We all have plenty of other places we can go for news aggregation. The community discussion in those threads helps me organize my own thoughts, develop my own action plan, and make sense of this completely senseless political environment. I can find these things in varying degrees elsewhere
While news aggregation is easy to find on the 'net, community isn't. Like you, I need the community discussion aspect of the megathreads to maintain my tottering balance when confronting the dizzying newsvortex, but I'm afraid I can't find anything like the MeFi community online. Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are of course cesspools and not worth the effort of locating subgroups of sanity in them. Discord, Slack, and other neo-IRC platforms don't hold much interest for me, either. Worse, my IRL friends and family, while not Trumpists, are not in sync with my outlook at all—probably because they don't have a community like Metafilter or a resource like the megathreads.
Fucking hell.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:19 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
While news aggregation is easy to find on the 'net, community isn't. Like you, I need the community discussion aspect of the megathreads to maintain my tottering balance when confronting the dizzying newsvortex, but I'm afraid I can't find anything like the MeFi community online. Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter are of course cesspools and not worth the effort of locating subgroups of sanity in them. Discord, Slack, and other neo-IRC platforms don't hold much interest for me, either. Worse, my IRL friends and family, while not Trumpists, are not in sync with my outlook at all—probably because they don't have a community like Metafilter or a resource like the megathreads.
Fucking hell.
posted by Doktor Zed at 3:19 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Could we move the megathread discussion to its own Meta? It might be odd considering where these threads began but I follow the Fucking Fuck threads because I like the feeling of solidarity with my fellow Mefites and that is the complete opposite of how the megathreads make me feel, which is why I stopped following them.
It seems like the discussion about how those are moderated is out of place here in the midst of health problems and other heartbreaks even if these Meta FF threads came as a relief valve from the political threads to keep political doom and gloom out of them. FF have really turned into something else now that’s more personal. Hope that makes sense.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 6:48 PM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
It seems like the discussion about how those are moderated is out of place here in the midst of health problems and other heartbreaks even if these Meta FF threads came as a relief valve from the political threads to keep political doom and gloom out of them. FF have really turned into something else now that’s more personal. Hope that makes sense.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 6:48 PM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
A car ran over my bike's front wheel. It was an accident and totally my fault, but I'm nearly broke and I can't replace it, so now I just don't have a bike anymore. Biking was literally all I had these days, so this is a setback. Like, I keep thinking "I'm pretty stressed... I'll just go for a bike ride!" and then I remember that I can't. This sucks.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 7:18 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 7:18 PM on July 10, 2019 [5 favorites]
Could we move the megathread discussion to its own Meta? It might be odd considering where these threads began but I follow the Fucking Fuck threads because I like the feeling of solidarity with my fellow Mefites and that is the complete opposite of how the megathreads make me feel, which is why I stopped following them.
That's odd, I've stopped posting F'ingF threads because it's strayed so far from their original purpose, which as much to share coping strategies as it was to vent. ("Please feel free to use this thread to share your anxieties, your coping strategies, your hopes and fears.") Saying the megathreads are the complete opposite of solidarity with Mefites makes me feel profoundly unwelcome here, something I've never felt before.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:09 PM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
That's odd, I've stopped posting F'ingF threads because it's strayed so far from their original purpose, which as much to share coping strategies as it was to vent. ("Please feel free to use this thread to share your anxieties, your coping strategies, your hopes and fears.") Saying the megathreads are the complete opposite of solidarity with Mefites makes me feel profoundly unwelcome here, something I've never felt before.
posted by Doktor Zed at 8:09 PM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I posted here rather than creating a new MeTa because there are many other MeTas open right now devoted to much more important issues, which made the idea of asking a question that might grow into a much larger conflagration about the megathread in general seem like bad timing given the limits on moderator bandwidth and the fact that the mods have indicated they have plans to open a general purpose "what to do about megathreads" MeTa in the coming weeks. I should have probably just used the contact form, but had done that already this week, and thought that more feedback about the issue of heightened scrutiny toward some political topics might be useful. Clearly, I done goofed.
Meanwhile, I was totally unaware that the FF threads had become their own sort of subcommunity, decoupled from US politics, and devoted to general rants from people who want to avoid the subject of US politics entirely. I am very much aware of the growing anti-megathread sentiment on the site and the fact that many people blame them for so much of what's wrong with MeFi in general, but figured that these threads, which grew out of the megathread, would not be a place where metadiscussion of things going on over there would be unwelcome. I guess I need to "read the room" better next time.
I am genuinely sorry to have intruded on your space, and will bow out.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:34 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Meanwhile, I was totally unaware that the FF threads had become their own sort of subcommunity, decoupled from US politics, and devoted to general rants from people who want to avoid the subject of US politics entirely. I am very much aware of the growing anti-megathread sentiment on the site and the fact that many people blame them for so much of what's wrong with MeFi in general, but figured that these threads, which grew out of the megathread, would not be a place where metadiscussion of things going on over there would be unwelcome. I guess I need to "read the room" better next time.
I am genuinely sorry to have intruded on your space, and will bow out.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:34 PM on July 10, 2019 [1 favorite]
Saying the megathreads are the complete opposite of solidarity with Mefites makes me feel profoundly unwelcome here, something I've never felt before.
I am confused and sad that stating my feelings about not reading the megathreads but reading these threads made you feel unwelcome here, which I am taking to mean Metafilter in general, but even if it just makes you feel unwelcome in this thread, it is very difficult for me to understand; I'm just like, one person, I asked if y'all could take the discussion elsewhere for my own personal reasons and you can do so or not do so because again I'm just one person! just like you!, and I completely understand tonycpscu's explanation having seen it on why it ended up here. (Thank you, tonycpsu, like I said it makes sense why it did.)
Use the FF threads however you want, I'm not a mod, I'm not the Fucking Fuck police, I'm just someone who feels a lot happier after I stopped following the megathreads but who really appreciates being able to hear how other mefites are doing even if it's for really shitty stuff. I won't comment on how people choose to use these threads again because I truly don't wish to make someone feel unwelcome if they want to vent about whatever.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:25 PM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
I am confused and sad that stating my feelings about not reading the megathreads but reading these threads made you feel unwelcome here, which I am taking to mean Metafilter in general, but even if it just makes you feel unwelcome in this thread, it is very difficult for me to understand; I'm just like, one person, I asked if y'all could take the discussion elsewhere for my own personal reasons and you can do so or not do so because again I'm just one person! just like you!, and I completely understand tonycpscu's explanation having seen it on why it ended up here. (Thank you, tonycpsu, like I said it makes sense why it did.)
Use the FF threads however you want, I'm not a mod, I'm not the Fucking Fuck police, I'm just someone who feels a lot happier after I stopped following the megathreads but who really appreciates being able to hear how other mefites are doing even if it's for really shitty stuff. I won't comment on how people choose to use these threads again because I truly don't wish to make someone feel unwelcome if they want to vent about whatever.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 9:25 PM on July 10, 2019 [2 favorites]
FF have really turned into something else now that’s more personal.
I propose that a Hugging Hug thread be created to accommodate what the Fucking Fuck threads have become, because we still need a venting thread for the politics megathreads, and it also seems clear that Metafilter needs a place for the more personal and nonpolitical solidarity that has developed in these threads.
At this point, I'm worried that fuckery is drifting back into the megathreads because the Fucking Fuck thread has evolved so much, it's no longer a place where venting political vents feels appropriate. Today's unusual megathread events seem emblematic of why this thread was originally created, and with the attempt to use it as designed being called into question, maybe we can translate that into a call to create a new style of venting thread for the community, independent of the political megathread community.
I'm on record referring to the political megathreads as kind of beloved to me, and I work hard to collaboratively craft FPPs with the idea that I'm doing something to nurture a community that I think is special and that I'm proud to be a part of, including because there is nowhere else that I've found that is collaboratively working harder 24/7 to make sense of completely insane times. My hope is that we can figure out how to balance the megathreads with the rest of the Metafilter community in the upcoming MeTa about them, but in the meantime, maybe we all need a hug.
posted by Little Dawn at 10:33 PM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
I propose that a Hugging Hug thread be created to accommodate what the Fucking Fuck threads have become, because we still need a venting thread for the politics megathreads, and it also seems clear that Metafilter needs a place for the more personal and nonpolitical solidarity that has developed in these threads.
At this point, I'm worried that fuckery is drifting back into the megathreads because the Fucking Fuck thread has evolved so much, it's no longer a place where venting political vents feels appropriate. Today's unusual megathread events seem emblematic of why this thread was originally created, and with the attempt to use it as designed being called into question, maybe we can translate that into a call to create a new style of venting thread for the community, independent of the political megathread community.
I'm on record referring to the political megathreads as kind of beloved to me, and I work hard to collaboratively craft FPPs with the idea that I'm doing something to nurture a community that I think is special and that I'm proud to be a part of, including because there is nowhere else that I've found that is collaboratively working harder 24/7 to make sense of completely insane times. My hope is that we can figure out how to balance the megathreads with the rest of the Metafilter community in the upcoming MeTa about them, but in the meantime, maybe we all need a hug.
posted by Little Dawn at 10:33 PM on July 10, 2019 [3 favorites]
back to fucking fuck:
i sincerely believe we're past several tipping points. our institutions and politicians are either complicit or entirely incapable of dealing with then. fascism IS here in america and things WILL get much, much worse. and the environment is past the inflection point and we're going to be looking at a runaway worst case scenario. the timing of these two things are not unrelated.
now if you'll excuse me i need to get ready to go to work and try to bailout a sinking ocean liner with a teaspoon.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:40 AM on July 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
i sincerely believe we're past several tipping points. our institutions and politicians are either complicit or entirely incapable of dealing with then. fascism IS here in america and things WILL get much, much worse. and the environment is past the inflection point and we're going to be looking at a runaway worst case scenario. the timing of these two things are not unrelated.
now if you'll excuse me i need to get ready to go to work and try to bailout a sinking ocean liner with a teaspoon.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:40 AM on July 11, 2019 [4 favorites]
« Older MetaTalktail Hour: ✨I Dreamed a Dream✨ | Pony: Option to hide "Favorited by Others" on... Newer »
You are not logged in, either login or create an account to post comments
So now I got a job interview coming up at Planned Parenthood cause fuck this noise. And some people I really respected just shrugged their shoulders like it's okay to lie to the executives and board members of a multimillion dollar company about your shitty stupid nothing advertising campaign. I am seriously doubting that anyone actually is a moral person anymore.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 12:09 PM on June 11, 2019 [34 favorites]