Day in the Life of an Idiot

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Image: snow shovel in snow, trying to show off how many inches we got by 7am when it was still snowing. 

I have no idea how many inches actually fell in Saint Paul, but it must have been over 4 inches because Saint Paul declared a snow emergency! Which means that I work tomorrow tagging cars. (Others are working all night tonight, but I am just not enough of a night owl that I could survive a shift from 8 pm to 6:00 am.) What's funny is that due to how pay periods work, I actually haven't yet got paid for the work I did in February (though I do expect a paycheck by this Friday.)

Today is actually reading Wednesday, (apparently NOT yesterday). Because I realized I hadn't read anything, I quick read a manga last night called Ask Affection by Yoichi Manika. It's actually almost a plot-what-plot, except I find that I'm still kind of trying parse out how the relationship even worked. I haven't yet written my review, even, because like, this one guy is complaining at his regular gay bar that all the guys that he hooks up with are only after him for his pretty face (and naturally hot body.) The bar's "mama," a trans woman, has heard a rumor that an AV (adult video, so what we would call a "porn star") has been seen sniffing around and she thinks he should try to hit that. Our hero looks at the guy in question, decides, I guess because the movie he's in is straight, that there's no chance and anyway, wouldn't this just be more of the same? That last thought isn't a bad one, but the problem is that through out the whole rest of the manga, our hero never seems to parse that a sex worker would be working as a straight porn star and actually be gay. EVEN when they do hook up and said porn star keeps reassuring our hero that he's actually interested in a boyfriend. Yet, our hero moves in? And continues to not believe that he's being courted? That's the part where I start going ??? and, probably, I am thinking WAY TOO hard about what is essentially smut.

Such is my nature, I guess.

... and I still can't find a spot in front of my house.

Sometimes I really hate living in Midway, just off University Avenue. 

 
Image: holiday cookies

I did manage to get some baking done this weekend, but the chocolate mint cookies were ruined by my missing the baking soda. I mean, they're edible? They're just not very chewy. More like a brownie cake. I am going to try again, since they're my favorites of the season. 

Otherwise, I suppose I should talk about the snow. We definitely got some. Saint Paul was very weird in that different neighborhoods had wildly different accumulation, but I would guesstimate us somewhere in between the most in the eastern suburbs (21 inches/53 cm) and the official count at the airport (12 inches/ 30.4 cm). Probably 10 (25.5 cm) inches here?  It was definitely boot weather, and it was taller than my calf-high boots. 

Saint Paul did its usual job of plowing, which is to say right down the middle. To be fair, while a bunch of my neighbors were out moving cars to the night-plow side of the street in the morning many others did not. Shawn and I have taken it upon ourselves to print out and deliver fliers that explain St. Paul's rules of a snow emergency, AND I spent a good portion of my morning hand-shoveling out spots so that all the neighbors could switch sides (because that's the other problem, of course, if the plow comes through, which it had, and makes giant drifts around cars, people can't park in the drifts.) For the first time ever on Saturday, I was not the loan weirdo. Once I explained what I was doing, a number of neighbors actually also pitched in. We nearly cleared the night-plow side.... of course my side of the street is day-plow and... a bunch of neighbors never moved. So, on Sunday I cleared a bunch more snow off the street, this time, by myself, with my hand shovel. 

Saint Paul ought to pay me for this service. 

I tell myself it's my winter workout. Plus, despite everything, I still take a certain amount of altruistic pleasure in making things nice for other people. 

And, I say "despite everything," because this morning when I went out to put the recycling in the bin, I discovered one of my neighbors had dumped an entire mattress and box frame on my property, as garbage. What the actual.  So, I hauled these things to the abandoned lot area and dumped them there, because I'll be damned if I get fined for someone else's garbage. Not only does this make me feel absolutely pooped on by the very neighbors I spent my free time Saturday and Sunday helping out, but also continues to fan the flames of my hatred of the Saint Paul City Council for having sold us out to the highest garbage bidder. Long story, but suffice to say, because it's really hard to get decent garbage service and we are all constricted to the same plan, no one has a good place to dump things like mattresses. Shawn told me this morning when I explained what happened, that this might not have been one of our own neighbors as people are reporting getting entire truckloads of garbage dumped into the middle of alleys because the service won't pick certain items up. 

Argh. 

I will say in all honesty that one of the things that the pandemic has truly damaged for me is my hope for humanity. Like, I want to still imagine that people will choose good, but I am constantly and continually bombarded by the clear message that they don't. This has been weirdly underscored for me by watching Star Trek. Shawn got us two months on Paramount +, so I've been catching up on a lot of things I never saw, like Star Trek: Lower Decks. There was a scene in the last episode of season two (I think) of Lower Decks where everyone had to work together to get a thing done, and I thought, "This is clearly fantasy" because not only did they manage it all in time, but no one complained. I mean, to be fair, the universe of Star Trek takes place in a military stratocracy, so your choice is follow orders or go to the brig/a penal colony, but still. I swear if America were a ship in the fleet, we would all already be dead because no one would ever think doing something for the good of others was ever worth doing.

And yet, I keep at it. 

In fact, just today, I wrote a glowing recommendation for one of my former Loft students to an MFA program. So, I may sound kind of hopeless, but I'm really not. It's just that sometimes I despair, you know? I do think this is why I write, read, and role-play in science fiction. I can continue to imagine the future as a better place, at least in my own mind. 

rachelmanija  just sent me a link to a fic exchange is so perfect for me that I ran out and signed up for it immediately.

Honestly, I'm not sure there has ever been a fic exchange more tailor-made for me than this one: Flash in the Pan: A Food Flash Exchange. I literally JUST WROTE a fic that is entirely based on two characters in Bleach forging a friendship by sharing food and poetry for the Moon Viewing Festival. Honestly 9/10ths of my fic involves scenes over food or food prep. When I was regularly writing my epic ByaRen soap opera, I would occasionally get comments that would say, "Damn it. Now you made me hungry." or ask, "Why do you write so much about food??"

The idea of this one is a little different than, say, Yuletide. The fic only has to be 300 words at a mininum long (hence: flash) and rather than focusing on characters or pairings, it is almost exclusively structured around fandoms and prompts (in the form of tags). So, for instance, you might chose the Marvel Cinematic Universe as your fandom and pick from the tag set "A food fight so intense it causes property damage" or, if you just want fluff "buttered toast."  The tags really do run the gambit like that, including things that could obviously become the entree (pun intended!) into sexual situations, like " a preposterously juicy mango" or "choice of desserts."  There are mysterious ones, too, like "the Noodle incident." So, you can really have fun with this one, if you join us.

And you should join us.....

The cool thing is that if you don't see your fandom on the list, you can still add it. If I'm reading the FAQ right, they are basically accepting nominations right up to when assignments go out tonight. Oh, that's the only other thing.

The deadline for signing-up is TONIGHT. 

Doooo eeeeeet with me! What is 300 words?? It's hardly even a half a page. You can do it! 

And, anyway, with the snow falling outside, I'm ready to snuggle under my half-finished quilts and do some fic writing. Seriously, I can not believe the amount of snow that is falling from the sky outside my window right now. The weather forecast, which I almost never look at except in a very general "will I need an umbrella?" way, tells me that it is SUPPOSED to start warming up after tomorrow.  I would enjoy it for what it is (ridiculous and sort of pretty), but I am worried about all the plants that bravely started to poke up from the ground. I had some bloodroot and some wild ginger sprouting, and, I LOVE those plants and I would be very sad if they died thanks to this snow. 

On the other hand, I have no desire to go anywhere with all the white stuff coming down.

What are you up to today?

At some point today, I have to leave this warm, snuggly house and go and get Inky's cremains. They called yesterday and said that he'd come back. 

It's really coming down out there.

Mason has a debate tournament this afternoon that he's judging over in Minneapolis. As a judge, he's a volunteer, so I have to transport him there and back again.  Given how quickly the inches accumulated already this morning, I'm not looking forward to trying to race him across town at 3:00 for a 3:30 meet.  I told him to see if he can't get the cell number of someone at the competition, just in case we run late.

My Broad Universe mentee and I had an interesting conversation last night about iGen, Mason's generation.

She's doing some kind of coursework or other that has her considering the various "personalities" of the generation and she said that iGen is supposed to be go-getters, but her experience showed them to be fairly incapable of things once considered standard, like addressing an envelope or keeping a budget.  She's very likely right about those last things. We've had to work overtime to make sure Mason has gotten skills that I KNOW I was taught in school, like how to write a check and read/write cursive. (I blame standardized testing, not this generation or its teachers, however.) At any rate, I noted that Mason absolutely fits the "stereotype" of a self-starter. I never even heard that he'd signed himself up to be a volunteer debate judge until yesterday when he asked for transportation to the meet.  Mason is required as a gifted an talented student to have volunteer hours and he found some in an area he ADORES. I told her, too, how he found himself a paying job that continues to be a perfect fit and the various times that we've found out, after the fact, that there was a scheduling snafu with his coursework that Mason just took care of--often in fairly brilliant and innovative ways, like how he finagled a TA position in English as ungraded coursework.

Obviously, Mason may be atypical. He certainly does prefer his video games over a lot of other activities--but again, I don't see this as a problem. From what I can tell, Mason has found himself a good community. They are all GLBT+/queer kids and, while I hear some trash talk in his comm, it seems very good-natured and not the kind of toxic stuff parents of gamers have to have CONSTANT VIGILANCE about. He's got himself on a team that plays in an amateur Overwatch league and it 'sparks joy' for him, clearly. So, I mean, sure, kids these days and their E-lect-TRON-ics, but I think we are all better served when we consider how such tools are being used by the generation that owns them.

Whelp, there's the call. They've cancelled afternoon activities for SPPS (Saint Paul Public Schools). I texted Mason to have him double-check that that includes his tournament, but I suspect it will.

Now we just need &!*%ing St. Paul to call a snow emergency so they will plow the &!*%ing streets.

My street is nearly impassable. WEIRDLY, where the rich people live, Summit Avenue appears to have been plowed curb to curb. It's almost like there's a socio-economic division in how the city choses to clear its streets. $10 says Highland Park is plowed, too.

But, so, the whole mentee thing via Broad Universe is going well, I think. We've done a bunch of checking in. She seems pleased with my level of critique (which can be intense and daunting) and as a mentor, I feel like my job is offer routes, but, ultimately, to go where she wants. Speaking of volunteering, it's been an interesting gig so far. 

Huh, apparently I just have to wait long enough... now St. Paul has finally called a snow emergency. Yay!

A friend of mine in Canada and I were trading selfies, and, while I normally don't post selfies, I thought this one perfectly captured my resting MURDER face in response to this weather....



I should probably go out into this mess to make sure we have something for dinner tonight, in fact. 

*sigh*

 I don't think I'd have a single title to report if last night wasn't a REALLY SLOW shift at the Maplewood Library.  

Perhaps you've heard, Minneapolis/St. Paul and surrounds have been bombarded with snow. 6-8 inches, easily. Yesterday, when I was driving around the visibility wasn't EXACTLY whiteout conditions, but the fourth or so block way from wherever I was, was that hazy blur you get in those kinds of snow storms.

So, of course, the library needed me to come in at 5 pm.

In a surprise to no one (but probably library administration) hardly anyone wanted to be out at the library last night.  Well, that's not entirely true. While I was shelving books in the adult comic book/manga section, I overheard two gentlemen discussing where they were planning on sleeping after the library closed. Let's say, instead, last night wasn't a high book turnover night.  So, when it was my turn on the AMH (colloquially known at Maplewood as "the oven,") there was not much for me to do.  I even asked my supervisor if I should be doing something else and she looked at me somewhat askance and said, "Read a book."

So, I hunted around for a first volume of some manga or other. I ended up readed Sapuri / Suppli by Okazaki Mari. (Amusing note about the title, it's merely a 'translation' into the same sounds as spoken by an English speaker.  This sort of thing drove me crazy in Nana when I read it because the scanlators insisted on writing Reira when she specifically says she was named after Eric Campton's 'Leila.'  If you're translating everything else into English pronunciations just write her name Leila. It confused me because I'd have to stop every time her name came up to remind myself to say it "Leila" in my head. I've seen people do this with the name Alice, too. It's dumb, because the last thing you want a reader to have to do is break the pacing of the story for something that USELESS and easily remedied.)  At any rate, the book was okay. I had checked it out and returned it within an hour.

At any rate, the roads were pure ice and packed snow on the drive home at 9 pm.  That sucked (though not as much as having to figure out how to sleep somewhere in the rough.)  I saw two accidents on the way home.

Today, at least, we have bright sunshine. However, it's stupid-ass cold, 17 F / -8 C.  Tomorrow is supposedly the Twins' first home game... they play in an open-air stadium. I heard on NPR that they're hosing off the stadium seats (metal, btw) with hot water.  Fans (if they go) are going to be sitting on ice cubes.  

While I was at the library, I also picked up some novels to try.  I have no idea if I'll actually crack these either, but fingers crossed.

How about you?

 Well, maybe you're not pagan, so you're not on her list!  But, the Ostara bunny came to ours.  She left her usual basket and a few Goddess themed eggs:


Image: blue Ostara egg with yellow Brigit's Cross

The actual basket:

Image: Ostara basket filled with eggs, candies, treats, and a smiling cat toy.

One more of the Goddess eggs:


Image: a mottled purple Ostara egg with a silvery-blue moon.

Mason told me that he feels too old to do the actual HUNTING for the eggs, but he does still like getting the basket. I told him that he can keep getting an Ostara basket as long as he wants. I'd even send one to college, because WHO DOESN'T LOVE PEEPS AND CHOCOLATE COVERED MARSHMALLOW BUNNIES???!!!???  

Yesterday, I also changed over the altar to its spring clothes... no that that's stopped the snow from falling. When we headed out to school/work this morning, a light dusting was falling. I can see the it's sticking in places. I don't like to complain about the weather too much, but, OMG, the snow could stop any time now. People I know in Chicago are posting pictures of flowers in bloom.

Ah well.

That means I missed "What are you reading Wednesday?" which is probably okay, since, once again, I read a lot of yaoi and not much else.

We had one heckuva storm here on Monday. Luckily, Mason came downstairs early that morning complaining of an upset stomach. I mean, that part isn't lucky, per se, but because of Mason's irritated bowels, I was able to convince Shawn to stay home, too. After all, we'd been promised this big storm and it seemed to have missed us. We all deserved a snow day. Shawn agreed.

Best. Decision. Ever.

The snow started sometime late morning. By noonish, I couldn't see the end of the block, the winds were blowing so hard and so much snow was falling. We ended up officially getting 12.5 inches, but with the wind there were easily drifts bigger than that in a lot of places. Schools didn't close early and some students were stranded until AFTER MIDNIGHT. I can only imagine how horrible it must have been for some of the kids, especially the very little ones.

Tuesday, St. Paul did declare a snow day. I'm sure, in part, just so students who had been traumatized would not have to get back on a bus. The main drags were clear by Tuesday morning, but our street wasn't completely plowed until afternoon. St. Paul spent the day digging itself out.

Mason and I celebrated the day off by going out to ramen at one of our favorite places up the road. We timed it perfectly again, as the plows had come through by the time we came back from lunch.

I don't even really know what I did with myself yesterday... oh, yes, I was very social. My friend naomikritzer came over to chat about life and eat a pot pie I made with some leftover turkey. Later that same day, my friend Sean Murphy came by to talk about Marvel movies and eat pizza. Mason stayed late to work on robotics.

Today, in fact, Shawn and I will be at the Washington Technical Robotics... event? evening? I don't know what they're calling it, but it's a little demonstration of what they do for everyone's parents. Oh, I think they're just calling it "parent night." Anyway, it should be fun. Mason hinted that I might get to pilot a robot. That would be cool. Tonight is also Wyrdsmiths, so I'll be rushing from parent night to my writers' group.

I'm also feeling kind of low today. I'm not sure I got enough caffeine. I came home and made a pot of coffee rather than stopping at my favorite coffee shop to get an espresso. Also, the anime I'm watching while I do the dishes is low-key depressing.

I'm watching Natsume's Book of Friends / Natsume Yūjin-chō. There are some 76 episodes and I think I'm on... 11, maybe? Natsume is a high schooler who can see yokai and who has also inherited from his grandmother a book containing the names of the monsters she's defeated and enslaved. Natsume is very kind-hearted and is quite happy to return the stolen names of the enslaved creatures. So, a good number of the episodes feature the stories of the various yokai and Natsume helping them out in one way or the other.  On the surface, this is all very light, even feel-good. Except, Natsume is really lonely. We find out that he's been shuffled from relative to relative over the years because his parents are dead and no one believed him when he told them what he could see (yokai are traditionally invisible to most people, except the gifted.) Even in episodes where things work out, he just sort of exudes this sadness...  it's really hard to explain.  I mean, he's finally in a place where he's stable.  The relatives he's with now are childless and very loving, they've very much adopted him, but he still acts like a guest. He found another student who  is partly gifted, with whom he COULD share some of his burden, but he doesn't.  Likewise, there's an exorcist potential mentor type that skirts around the edges of Natsume's life that he could form a friendship with, but, as he said in this last episode, he's lived so much in fear, he doesn't even know how to begin to trust in order to open up.  Part of his personality is that Natsume actually gets along better with the monsters than he does humans.  And, I like that a lot, but it's just... like I said, low-key sad.  

I just finished an episode (and the dishes) and I've wandering around the house feeling lonely.  I blame Natsume.

I'm a Minnesotan. I actually don't MIND snow, but I was not entirely ready for the snow this morning and the cold. But, this is March, right? I guess that old saying has some merit: In like a lion, out like a lamb. Only this year it was in like a lamb, out like a snow-covered Siberian TIGER.

Also, it is Monday. So far today, I've dealt with at least one school issue and my cat's prozac prescription. Next on my list is getting myself an appointment to get my own prescription renewed (for an asthma inhaler, though I wouldn't necessarily turn down prozac, if offered, ATM. ;-)

The school is maybe fixed? Thing is, Mason's school has this required after school program hour, which they call 510. It extends Washington Technical's hours to 3 PM, which is nice, and provides a stable structure for all sorts of sports and theater and other enrichments. It's an elective, so students sign up for their own things. Mason's choices this year were 1) Baseball, 2) Krazy for Komputers (which is only open to people with a A or B GPA), and 3) Chess Club. When he looked at his schedule on Sunday, however, he discovered he'd been put in something called "Science Museum." He was disappointed. I asked, "Well, so what is 'Science Museum'? It sounds like it could be cool." Well, that's one of the problems. There are many, many things I love about Washington Technical, but this is an on-going problem: there are NO class descriptions to be found anywhere (not even available to the students from what Mason tells us) for these 501s. I mean, baseball seems obvious, but what is Science Museum? A series of field trips? Something more hands-on? He has NO IDEA. We can't find any info anywhere.

Now, I'm a big fan of staying out of Mason's business at school. I normally don't even ask him what he's signed up for because it's entirely up to him. But, if we can help him navigate the system in order to get into what he wants, that's my job as a parent--to advocate.

A back and forth with Mason's counselor got Mason into baseball, his first choice. But as part of that conversation we found out who normally is in charge of 501 assignments and... it looks like MAYBE (if we remember right) the person in charge of the assignments is in fact the very person running this mysterious 'Science Museum.' When I called Shawn to tell her all this, that gave us some pause, because, okay, so if the person in charge put Mason very specifically into her program.... well, is that because it's particularly suited to his interests?

One of the things I love about Washington is that there is a lot of coordination and teamwork among the teaching staff. They figured out that Mason needed to be not just in advanced 7th grade math, but advanced 8th grade math. He's been really, REALLY flourishing there. So, for the most part, I tend to trust their choices for him.

But that begged the question for us... is this the same sort of thing?

Well, I just got an email back from the coordinator. Turns out "Science Museum" is a placeholder because they're still coordinating things like who gets to be in baseball, etc. Our sense is that baseball is highly competitive (naturally) and they wanted to make sure that Mason would have somewhere to go, if he couldn't get in.

But... Ugh, okay, this part of the process is frustrating. I mean, I will bet you money they are getting INUNDATED with calls and emails right now. We know for a fact that Mason's friend Rosemary was complaining of "mistakes" in her 510, too. I just wrote another email thanking the coordinator for getting back to us so quickly with an explanation, but also wondering if it would be possible in the future for everyone to have better sense of this process--for their sake and those of the parents and students.

Also, why is it so hard to attach descriptions to some of these courses? I get that they change and someone would have to write them and update them and that's probably a big job, but this is where volunteers are super-handy. (I know for a fact that they have student workers who could probably do something to help with this or take over some other teacher's make-work duties so that she or he might have more time to devote to this. These are high schoolers and very smart. Some of them are very eager to have things for resumes, so you know, win/win.) Also why not have a course simply called "Placeholder" so students would be alerted they are in line for a high demand 501 and will just have to practice patience until things are sorted out? If they had a 501 course catalogue this could be explained, i.e., "If you see this course, 'placeholder' on your schedule please understand that you are in line/on the waiting list for a highly competitive course. Please check back in x many days."

Ah, well. The good news is, this is mostly sorted. And we now understand how it works.

I also had to call my vet today to try to get pills for Inky, because we've been using this liquid stuff and it's not only super-expensive, but he and I both HATE it. He hates it because, from his behavior, it's clear it tastes super-gross and is generally disgusting, and I hate it because it's clear he hates it and he ends up drooling everywhere and trying to throw it up. Weirdly, he accepted pills better.

And they were cheaper.

But I think I made my vet's office mad because we're basically asking them to give their money to someone else. I tried to explain that if there was a cheap, pill version IN HOUSE, we would totally take that. But, it doesn't seem there is.

So today so far? A lot of negotiating and back and forth.

I think I will leave off calling my doctor's office for a bit.

Also... did I mention? We have snow. It's a very spring-like snow, wet and already melting, but it is there. This Monday is being very Monday.

I haven't seen the movie "Captain America: Winter Soldier" yet, and I might not get out to it tonight because we got 6+ inches of snow on the ground and it's still falling. However, I read the review that the Star Tribune gave of it http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/movies/253753221.html and I wanted to say that if you hated Marvel's Civil War, you're going to hate this movie.

It sounds very much like (which I had guessed from the trailer) that the main conflict is going to center around the idea of security vs. freedom, which was, in effect, the issue that tore apart the Marvel Universe in Civil War. The Tribune's reviewer seemed to think that the issue was given complexity, despite the fact that Cap is very clearly on one side of this issue, and very strongly so, from his line from the trailer, "This isn't freedom; this is fear."

Personally, I hope they deal with some of the issues that were brought up in Brubaker's run of the Winter Soldier collections (vols. 1-4) in particular the fascinating role his Bucky played in the war. I say "his" Bucky, because, quite obviously Brubaker's Bucky is a complete recast, being a lot older than the original. But Brubaker did some cool things with that, particularly with the idea that Captain America was the symbol of America during the war, so there were missions that the uniform couldn't go on, because AMERICA couldn't be involved. But, Bucky could go.

Because he was a crack shot.

And the war needed winning.

Maybe this messes with what a lot of people think of as the core of Captain America, which is to say that he's somehow always does the Right Thing and is always on the side of truth and justice and some idealistic 'American Way' that never existed anywhere in Real Life (tm). I don't know how Cap could have gotten through WWII without losing a little faith in humanity. We like to think of WWII as this nice, clean war, but that's simplistic. Of course it wasn't. It was a war. Wars are always ugly. Full stop.

So I'll be curious where they go with it in the movie. Hopefully, the roads will clear and we can get out and about soon. I'd love to be able to see this tonight, in fact. But, I actually kept Mason and Shawn home from school and work today because, as the driver, I said 'no.' Saint Paul Schools are still open and so I had to call Mason in as sick, and I'm sure the roads are more passable than they look, but why risk it? I think he'll survive a day without. If M.I.T. rejects him because he skipped school on a snowy day, well, then M.I.T. isn't worth our time, anyway. :-)

Because, seriously? This is how it looks outside right now:



Here's our car before we unburied it:



Yeah...