Happy New Year, y’all
I always feel a bit of a letdown after New Year’s Day. You?
Things have been pretty uneventful in terms of anything that might interest any of you, with the possible exception that we’re waiting to hear news about one of the dogs. Not gonna get into it any further than that until I hear, and you’ll hear tomorrow at the earliest.
Also, this post almost didn’t happen. It was a toss-up between “network issues” (Substack being glitchy, mostly) and me just sort of losing my momentum. So, sorry if it’s boring. I’m kinda dragging myself along, mentally kicking and screaming.
Guess I have a green thumb after all
Oh, hey. Remember my adventures with this? How I almost lost it to a fungal infection?
That was late October. Deux an’ a ‘alf months lay-terrr…
This was from today.
Uh, I’d say we’re out of the woods now. Yes?
Not sure what’s going on but if I had to guess, I’d figure the root system has now found the (organic standard) fertilizer spikes. Oops.
That white pouch on the soil surface contains my new pets. I’ve got a fungus gnat issue and while it doesn’t seem to be hurting the mint, I didn’t care to wind up with another fungus problem too. Plus they like to fly up my nose at inopportune times while I’m in my room. They’ve gotta go. So I ordered some predatory nematodes and we’re trying that route. I think I’m seeing a difference, but I’m not sure yet so it’s basically change out the packet once a week (watering the packet itself daily) and hope to see a difference. It was this or sticky traps, but I’m trying not to be too much of a monster.
Meanwhile, Green Lady, you need a haircut. Whew!
But I also have a purple finger
So my left ring finger got into an argument with a frozen turkey yesterday, and… lost.
Given how it feels, I can tell there is no joint damage (whew), and I probably didn’t break the bone either; at worst there’s a hairline fracture. More interesting to me is the question of whether I’d have the swelling anyway (it looks worse from the side) or whether it’s all the damned internal bleeding doing it. It hasn’t been fast bleeding, though, and I suspect it stopped pretty early and this is just the stuff spreading out in the tissues. I touch-type and am still using this finger for W, S, and X without a problem, and I mean on a normal keyboard, not a soft little laptop keyboard. I’m probably okay. I just wish the swelling would go down. I’m a mite impatient.
But yeah, those frozen turkeys are bastards. Whose dumb idea was it to breed food birds that massive, anyway?
And in completely unrelated news
I still more or less like my “boss,” the one I do the odd job for directly, but she’s pushing the envelope a bit. First there was the shit she stirred last week, and I’m a little suspicious about that because she said she still had the text messages with Neighbor but never offered to show them to me and now I’m not sure whether she misremembered or whether she outright lied.
I wonder about it because yesterday she made some remark about how I had to move faster because I’d been so much earlier the previous week, in fact I had gotten there at seven-thirty last week, but yesterday I was running late.
Uh. No. Last week it was just after Christmas and there was a LOT of material for me to pick up. AND I started a bit later last week than I did yesterday. But at first I gave her the benefit of the doubt — my memory can be shit sometimes.
Until I got into the truck to leave her place and go on the second half of my run up in Oregon. And then I sneaked a look at my texting history with her.
Oh, would you look at that:
So I was there processing stuff with her for an hour and a half. Point is, though, I got there at quarter after eight last week. Now when did I get there yesterday?
Oh.
Oh, would you look at that. Twenty-five minutes earlier than when I’d gotten there last week. I didn’t stay for an hour and a half this time, either, because there was less stuff and we kind of rushed it due to her thinking I was running “late.”
So I don’t know what’s going on with her. She seemed a bit duller yesterday than usual and I know they’re prepping to move a bunch of stuff to Nevada this week. Maybe it’s just got her absent-minded. But this was a pretty big thing to get wrong when all she had to do was check her goddamn text messages.
So from now on, if she’s got something to say about Neighbor, I am letting it go in one ear and out the other. With all the shit I’ve had to deal with from people throughout my life, I’ve gotten good at that. It’s left a lot of people assuming I’m stupid, but that’s okay with me. I don’t wake up in the hospital afterwards. That’s all I need to know.
P.S. And I got back nice and early. Did she remark upon that? Bite yo’ tongue.
Same old same old. It is really hard for me to want to do things for people when I might as well not be lifting one fucking finger. But I still benefit from this arrangement, so whatever.
And another thing
Of course, the other reason I do this is it helps Neighbor. Yes, he pays me too, and of course that was a big draw, but I have a feeling I’d have said yes even if he’d only offered to cover expenses.
We’ve been over this before, but I haven’t spoken about it in a while so I thought I’d offer an update. I suppose this is an object lesson for me since normally I like to run away from feelings and that sort of bullshit. I was afraid I’d have to shut him completely out in order to damp things down, because I was tired of the unrequited-feelings thing.
But, basically, I’m not as infatuated as I was, and I didn’t have to avoid him to get there. I won’t say I’m not infatuated, but it has subsided into something quite manageable. Unless people are following me around reading my shit and not telling me, he doesn’t know and L doesn’t know. I’m happy to leave it that way. Someday far in the future when we can all look back and laugh, I might tell him then. It would just complicate things now.
But I do still care about him a lot. It has been a tremendous relief to be able to socially interact with a man on more than a casual basis without him making the situation fucked up or weird. It’s happened a few times in my life but, outside of my family, has been pretty rare. I don’t know if I will still want to interact with him once I’ve moved out of L’s or if I will go avoidant after all, but I suspect that unless something goes horribly wrong, I will always consider him something of a friend regardless. He seems to be one of the good’uns.
And it’s not even that I’m homely. I see him interacting with women quite prettier than me and he’s never anything but respectful. I don’t get why this is so fucking difficult for so many other men in this world. And he’s even an abuse survivor, which so many of y’all trot out as your excuse to shit on women. Y’all need to straighten up.
—
Okay, I’m done forcing myself to finish this. Got stuff to do elsewhere. ‘Later.