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omaewokorosu...to really do much in the form of updates and also been busy, you know, packing and setting things up in the house.
So let's break these things down...
Stardew Valley 1.6 Console/Mobile Update - SPOILERS!
So the update went live day before the election at 1000 ConcernedApe's time which ended up being 1300 mine and I would be lying if I didn't still check every five minutes to see if maybe it went live early. This update was coming out at a good time on a good day because if there's one thing I love it's escapism and at least this is slightly less frowned upon escapism. I'm a rundown cog in a wheel who suddenly doesn't want to be just another brick in the proverbial wall and I give it all up to move to Stardew Valley, taking ownership of my grandfather's very neglected farm. Do I know anything about farming? No. Do I know any of these people? No. (Technically yes, this isn't my first time playing this game.) But I will turn this overgrown place into a booming business and who knows, maybe I'll find love along the way.
Like that emo boy who really likes frogs.
But I was only on the Meadowlands farm (named "MetLife" because I couldn't pass up that Jersey Meadowlands reference) for a hot second because in my other save, the one I started months ago when 1.6 came out for the PC, I'd just finished the Community Center and I'm not up for starting from scratch at the moment. I can still see the new content added and updates in this pre-update file, it's just I won't see any of the Year 1 and most of Year 2 additions (since I'm almost done with Year 2). But I do get to see everyone's winter outfits, especially Sebastian's.
Who I married in this save, like I do every save.
*
Moving and Packing Updates
Outside of some things I can just shove into a couple of reusable bags and my computer stuff I am pretty much done packing up my office.
Which looks so empty and so much bigger than it really is because I have virtually nothing on my walls except pushpins that mounted things and a wall decal I may or may not take (since this would be the second time I've had to unstick it and idk how well it'll stick to a wall at this point)... It's quickly becoming apparent that in a short amount of time this space will hold none of my personal touches and will simply be an empty shell consisting of four walls and questionable, definitely not level flooring with no subfloor.
So I've moved on to the next packing area: across the hall. The majority of things to pack are books and manga and my wife's computer stuff; the rest is basically trash. I managed to pack up all of my manga and manhwa today, all almost 200 volumes of it (and somehow used less boxes this time around but the box sizes weren't consistent either). I still have to do the light novels, strategy guides, art books, and whatever else that is manga adjacent (like old issues of Shonen Jump, doujinshi, etc); there's some other things too like photo albums and mini scrapbooks but outside of that it's just decor left (which Serena said she would handle). From there...it'll be books, books, and more books. Did I mention books?
And trash.
I don't see this room taking terribly long, especially if at the latter part of the day it's two people working together on things. It's been hard though since we've been preoccupied with Sadie (our 16 year old cat), who has arthritis and a couple of other issues that can be treated with medication. She's improved but there isn't a fix for old age unfortunately, especially in cats.
*
House Update
Separate from the moving and packing... Even though Progressive said that everything with our house was fine, and the inspection was fine, suddenly Progressive is saying that our roof needs an immediate replacement and it needs to be done within a month or else they're dropping our coverage and there is nothing that can be done, no leeway or anything.
We're in New York.
It's November.
They want everything done by December...and done basically immediately. Which is impossible. No one gets exterior work on their house done when winter is coming in fucking New York and a lot of contractors and roofers alike will tell you it's gonna have to wait until spring.
So they gave us the name of an affiliated-but-independent-of-Progressive insurance company that will (according to them) insure our house. It's like how Allstate refused to insure Egg's house so she had to go through an affiliate office. Might be more expensive but we need insurance because we have a mortgage. So yeah. They are more likely to be more understanding and also they're local to us.
In all of the homeowner groups I've read, this is a very, very, VERY common issues. The roof is fine but because they don't think it's fine (to their standards, more or less) we need to drop $xx,xxx on a new roof and it has to happen right now.
We can do it in the spring, where there might only be rain delays and there being tarp on the roof isn't a bad thing because it's just rain. But having a tarp and then 8 inches of snow gets dumped on the house? That's gonna cause problems especially since I plan on using the attic space for something.
So yeah. Welcome to homeownership!
*
THE ELECTION CAUSING EVERYONE TO LOSE THEIR MINDS (if not already lost)
I woke up on Tuesday with a small - very small, mind - hope that we would have our first Madame President voted into office. That this country would be on the right side of history for once. That Gen Z would save us--you get the point. It was a very small hope the size of a full stop but it was at least hope. We bought cake that was either going to be Celebration Cake or Depression Eat-Our-Feelings Cake and hoped it would be the latter, and General Tso's with fried rice because we hadn't had that in a while and who wants to cook on Election Night? I hoped we wouldn't have to eat our feelings in cake slices and poor food choices the day after, hoped we wouldn't need to sob into whatever food we got to eat from Wegmans the next day.
My wife was working on this Election Day and everyone in her Teams chats and Teams meetings were wondering the same thing. Everyone was nervous but still held out for the smallest of small hopes that things would go the right way. That there would be that blue wave again drowning out all of the red.
Serena and I left the house to do our civic duty at the firehouse half a block away from the house. There were quite a few poll workers there. We didn't need the ID we brought anyway because you never know these days. Someone in a ShopRite shirt was in the booth. I didn't recognize them but I didn't see them from the front, only from the back and I didn't want any conversation anyway. The main poll worker told a story about these tadpoles she had to move from her property so that work could be done; I politely laughed because though the story was interesting it wasn't as funny as she made it out to be. We got our ballots and went to the booths and despite the pen I was given not really working that well I was still able to fill the bubbles in. Blue across the board.
Kamala Harris.
Kirsten Gillabrand.
Pat Ryan.
Etc etc etc.
I was done first so I fed my ballot through the machine and left the place since more and more people were arriving and it was getting noisy. A guy coming to vote said hello to me before he went inside which I always find weird, strangers greeting you, but that's what happens in this area, I guess. Strangers trying to make some kind of connection with another human. It's a human thing after all, isn't it? Trying to find common ground with someone else? I can't fault anyone for wanting that. He looked familiar but I can't place his face in any one specific location. Maybe he came through my line multiple times when I cashiered at ShopRite. Maybe that's why he said hello, because he does know me in some way, some surface level way.
It doesn't matter anyway, I'll be out of this place soon.
Serena popped out a couple minutes later and we headed back to the house holding hands as we always do, hoping that we would be making history.
I want to be able to say, "I was one of the votes that gave us our first female president."
We walked back the 1000 or so yards down the street from our polling place. Egg said nothing because she doesn't say anything to either of us. We're strangers now, quasi-landlord meets quasi-tenants and everything is a business transaction, nothing more. She's stopped trying for any kind of human connection.
I hope when I'm 70 I'm not anywhere near as miserable as she is with her life. Then again I have a happy marriage and two beautiful girls and a beautiful house in need of a new roof but everything else is good and we knew that before we closed. I didn't settle because if there's one good thing Egg taught me it's to never settle for second best. I have the best of everything. She's jealous.
We went upstairs and downloaded the MSNBC Fire TV app so we could watch Election Map Boyfriend (Steve Kornacki) and Rachel Maddow and if I needed any further proof that I love women just watch my excitement when she comes on and starts speaking about what the fuck is going on with this crazy fucking world. We stepped away after a bit to feed the girls and feed ourselves. Heated up in the microwave the General Tso's because what was the point in wasting time cooking when we could be doomwatching election coverage? So we chowed down on that and it tasted good though it wasn't as spicy as I remember it being. Maybe I've gotten used to spicy things since I crave it constantly.
Things were already off to such a rough start and I knew, in that moment, we were fucked as a nation if things didn't turn around. I still had hope because it's always really red at the start but then things balance out after a while as votes are counted and everything is combined (mail-in/absentee, early votes, in-person done on Election Day)... The blue wave is coming, I thought, as I scooped up one of the pieces of chicken. Everyone talks about this blue wave, this "vote blue no matter who". This wasn't going to be another 2016. America wasn't going to make the same mistake it did with Clinton, right? To say I was anxious is an understatement as I saw the numbers getting higher and higher on Trump's side and barely nudging on Harris's. I got even more nervous when they started discussion as Steve circled things on his map and explained different counties what demographics in those counties were voting for who before being interrupted by Rachel saying, "Polls have closed in PA so we can call those and it's...too early to tell."
Too early to tell.
Too early to tell.
Too early to tell.
And if it wasn't "too early" it was "too close" until we found out that this state went for Trump and that state went for Trump and then my birth state of New Jersey was pulled up and Hudson County was mentioned and my heart sank when the early votes were all red. To say it felt like some kind of betrayal...would be apt. It ended up blue in the end; the other 20 counties were giving out their numbers and a large amount of New Jersey turned red.
Is New Jersey now a swing state? a post in r/newjersey asked, with a picture of the election map.
It's certainly a lot less blue and more purple, in my opinion.
(More on that stuff in a bit.)
As the night wore on, despite my determination, I couldn't keep my eyes open. The amount of caffeine I had, you'd think I'd be fine. No. I was going to need to rest because tomorrow would be a day of celebration, right? I would wake up to something like
KAMALA HARRIS TO BECOME THE 47TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!!!
When I awoke at 0338 to use the bathroom I refused to look at the news coverage still on our TV though the sound was a lot lower so as to not disturb me, and whilst I tried to go back to sleep...I couldn't. I needed to know where we stood with everything. So I ended up on TwitterX doomscrolling, as one does, and as I do when I have nothing better to do and can't sleep.
Kamala Harris lost. Lost.
DONALD TRUMP TO BECOME THE 47TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
This country would rather have a convicted felon who thinks white supremacists are "fine people" as president than someone who is competent simply because she's a woman. All of these other countries in Europe have female heads of state or a large amount of women working in parliamentary positions and here this fucking backwards ass country is embarrassing itself on the world stage once again.
One person on TwitterX asked why this country hates women so much.
No one had an answer for her, but it all boils down to Patriarchy.
Because I like charts and maybe I'll look back at this in the future and use it to compare...
My birth county, Hudson, where I could once see the NYC Skyline and wondered how I could live away from the views.
Passaic County (highlighted), where I lived until 2018 (in Pompton Lakes); I worked in Morris County (red, kind of below and kitty corner to Passaic) until 2017.
Pike County, PA (highlighted) is where I worked up till recently. Where businesses have signs and flags supporting Trump on their store fronts, pop-up roadside stands consisting of folding tables shilling Trump merch open in front of abandoned, half-dilapidated buildings that haven't been occupied since I've moved up here. Where our regular customers would proudly wear their red TRUMP 2024 trucker hats and this one old couple in particular would come in multiple times a week decked out in Trump merch from head to toe and didn't fail to deck out their rollators as well... Most of my coworkers were also raging Trumpists. It was Trump all the time every time.
This is Orange County, NY, the county I will very shortly no longer be living in.
I am surrounded by so-called "patriots" who wouldn't know actual patriotism if it bit them in the ass.
*
I spent all of Wednesday in a complete fog. Wandering my house checking random boxes, not even knowing what I was looking for or what I was trying to do. Aleks tried to swap out the door latch on our storm door only to find out we're lacking at least one tool but it doesn't matter anyway because all it needed was a different strike plate (where the latch "catches" so that the door remains closed) so it's fine. I guess if we want a different latch at some point we can just buy metal shears or something. I don't know. We tried to keep busy, and because I hate silence I had the police/EMS scanner on in the background telling us what 911 calls were going out in Tioga, or Steuben, or Tompkins, or even Chemung. My thoughts went back to Clarion Inn Guy who ended up dying in the pool in what was ruled an accident. No one could reach him because he was all the way at the bottom of the pool. The call for that went out for 20 consecutive minutes but emergency response and subsequent mutual aid was tied up with a bunch of MVAs involving deer (one guy's car was completely totalled).
We have cat themed bathroom signs I wanted hung up but we didn't have nails and Aleks just said "fuck it" and reorganized the linen cabinet out in the upstairs hall, putting our box hair dye away and figuring out what shelf would be the first aid/medicine one and does this screw need to be tightened? He tightened screws for the railings. I ripped up the stair treads, not that there was anything wrong with them but I wanted something that didn't require vacuuming at some point. I ended up using some of the old ones anyway for the landings.
The rug tape the kit came with sucks and we'll need better ones. Gorilla makes rug mats you can cut to size and I've used them before and they work really well. Maybe we'll spring for that. For now they're there and as far as I know aren't a trip hazard since the tread is also attached to the rug tape still there (and still quite sticky).
We ate our cake. It wasn't a time for celebrating, but mourning. Conspiracy theories abound on social media; talks about Russian interference and Elon Musk interfering and someone else interfering as if people are just discovering that American elections aren't won, they're bought like everything else in this country my ancestors fought to create and would weep over how fall it's all fallen. These same politicians claiming that this is what the Founding Fathers wanted when the Constitution states otherwise just like how they say Jesus Christ himself wants Trump in the White House and everyone else thinks he's the third antichrist Nostradamus predicted hundreds of years ago and he's definitely no friend of Jesus and would try to deport him instead.
As someone with a presumably working uterus who can maybe get pregnant, I feel like a hypothetical baby has a lot more rights than I do as someone decreed "female" at birth, even though abortion access and rights will be enshrined in my state's constitution, there is no guarantee the federal government won't try to force each and every state to ban it. Boys fresh out of preschool and men old enough to be my father alike are telling little girls and women your body, my choice.
As someone who identifies as trans and has many a trans brother, sister, and sibling, I'm not even considered a person. I am an abomination who needs to be "corrected". I'm not straight and I'm not in a heterosexual marriage so I am still lesser, I am still without agency and without personhood status. And many of my trans siblings feel this way too, and are scared, nay frightened, of what's coming. What's going to happen to my marriage? Again, New York's state constitution says that same-sex marriage is legal and valid, but how long until the federal government forces states to invalidate it?
There are many questions and no answers.
We cannot allow this to consume us lest we end up stuck in this endless swirl of despair. We have to move forward and if we must fight for everything that we lost then so be it. We will fight. We will raise hell. We will throw bricks and Molotov cocktails.
We will not go quietly into the night.
So let's break these things down...
Stardew Valley 1.6 Console/Mobile Update - SPOILERS!
So the update went live day before the election at 1000 ConcernedApe's time which ended up being 1300 mine and I would be lying if I didn't still check every five minutes to see if maybe it went live early. This update was coming out at a good time on a good day because if there's one thing I love it's escapism and at least this is slightly less frowned upon escapism. I'm a rundown cog in a wheel who suddenly doesn't want to be just another brick in the proverbial wall and I give it all up to move to Stardew Valley, taking ownership of my grandfather's very neglected farm. Do I know anything about farming? No. Do I know any of these people? No. (Technically yes, this isn't my first time playing this game.) But I will turn this overgrown place into a booming business and who knows, maybe I'll find love along the way.
Like that emo boy who really likes frogs.
But I was only on the Meadowlands farm (named "MetLife" because I couldn't pass up that Jersey Meadowlands reference) for a hot second because in my other save, the one I started months ago when 1.6 came out for the PC, I'd just finished the Community Center and I'm not up for starting from scratch at the moment. I can still see the new content added and updates in this pre-update file, it's just I won't see any of the Year 1 and most of Year 2 additions (since I'm almost done with Year 2). But I do get to see everyone's winter outfits, especially Sebastian's.
Who I married in this save, like I do every save.
*
Moving and Packing Updates
Outside of some things I can just shove into a couple of reusable bags and my computer stuff I am pretty much done packing up my office.
Which looks so empty and so much bigger than it really is because I have virtually nothing on my walls except pushpins that mounted things and a wall decal I may or may not take (since this would be the second time I've had to unstick it and idk how well it'll stick to a wall at this point)... It's quickly becoming apparent that in a short amount of time this space will hold none of my personal touches and will simply be an empty shell consisting of four walls and questionable, definitely not level flooring with no subfloor.
So I've moved on to the next packing area: across the hall. The majority of things to pack are books and manga and my wife's computer stuff; the rest is basically trash. I managed to pack up all of my manga and manhwa today, all almost 200 volumes of it (and somehow used less boxes this time around but the box sizes weren't consistent either). I still have to do the light novels, strategy guides, art books, and whatever else that is manga adjacent (like old issues of Shonen Jump, doujinshi, etc); there's some other things too like photo albums and mini scrapbooks but outside of that it's just decor left (which Serena said she would handle). From there...it'll be books, books, and more books. Did I mention books?
And trash.
I don't see this room taking terribly long, especially if at the latter part of the day it's two people working together on things. It's been hard though since we've been preoccupied with Sadie (our 16 year old cat), who has arthritis and a couple of other issues that can be treated with medication. She's improved but there isn't a fix for old age unfortunately, especially in cats.
*
House Update
Separate from the moving and packing... Even though Progressive said that everything with our house was fine, and the inspection was fine, suddenly Progressive is saying that our roof needs an immediate replacement and it needs to be done within a month or else they're dropping our coverage and there is nothing that can be done, no leeway or anything.
We're in New York.
It's November.
They want everything done by December...and done basically immediately. Which is impossible. No one gets exterior work on their house done when winter is coming in fucking New York and a lot of contractors and roofers alike will tell you it's gonna have to wait until spring.
So they gave us the name of an affiliated-but-independent-of-Progressive insurance company that will (according to them) insure our house. It's like how Allstate refused to insure Egg's house so she had to go through an affiliate office. Might be more expensive but we need insurance because we have a mortgage. So yeah. They are more likely to be more understanding and also they're local to us.
In all of the homeowner groups I've read, this is a very, very, VERY common issues. The roof is fine but because they don't think it's fine (to their standards, more or less) we need to drop $xx,xxx on a new roof and it has to happen right now.
We can do it in the spring, where there might only be rain delays and there being tarp on the roof isn't a bad thing because it's just rain. But having a tarp and then 8 inches of snow gets dumped on the house? That's gonna cause problems especially since I plan on using the attic space for something.
So yeah. Welcome to homeownership!
*
THE ELECTION CAUSING EVERYONE TO LOSE THEIR MINDS (if not already lost)
I woke up on Tuesday with a small - very small, mind - hope that we would have our first Madame President voted into office. That this country would be on the right side of history for once. That Gen Z would save us--you get the point. It was a very small hope the size of a full stop but it was at least hope. We bought cake that was either going to be Celebration Cake or Depression Eat-Our-Feelings Cake and hoped it would be the latter, and General Tso's with fried rice because we hadn't had that in a while and who wants to cook on Election Night? I hoped we wouldn't have to eat our feelings in cake slices and poor food choices the day after, hoped we wouldn't need to sob into whatever food we got to eat from Wegmans the next day.
My wife was working on this Election Day and everyone in her Teams chats and Teams meetings were wondering the same thing. Everyone was nervous but still held out for the smallest of small hopes that things would go the right way. That there would be that blue wave again drowning out all of the red.
Serena and I left the house to do our civic duty at the firehouse half a block away from the house. There were quite a few poll workers there. We didn't need the ID we brought anyway because you never know these days. Someone in a ShopRite shirt was in the booth. I didn't recognize them but I didn't see them from the front, only from the back and I didn't want any conversation anyway. The main poll worker told a story about these tadpoles she had to move from her property so that work could be done; I politely laughed because though the story was interesting it wasn't as funny as she made it out to be. We got our ballots and went to the booths and despite the pen I was given not really working that well I was still able to fill the bubbles in. Blue across the board.
Kamala Harris.
Kirsten Gillabrand.
Pat Ryan.
Etc etc etc.
I was done first so I fed my ballot through the machine and left the place since more and more people were arriving and it was getting noisy. A guy coming to vote said hello to me before he went inside which I always find weird, strangers greeting you, but that's what happens in this area, I guess. Strangers trying to make some kind of connection with another human. It's a human thing after all, isn't it? Trying to find common ground with someone else? I can't fault anyone for wanting that. He looked familiar but I can't place his face in any one specific location. Maybe he came through my line multiple times when I cashiered at ShopRite. Maybe that's why he said hello, because he does know me in some way, some surface level way.
It doesn't matter anyway, I'll be out of this place soon.
Serena popped out a couple minutes later and we headed back to the house holding hands as we always do, hoping that we would be making history.
I want to be able to say, "I was one of the votes that gave us our first female president."
We walked back the 1000 or so yards down the street from our polling place. Egg said nothing because she doesn't say anything to either of us. We're strangers now, quasi-landlord meets quasi-tenants and everything is a business transaction, nothing more. She's stopped trying for any kind of human connection.
I hope when I'm 70 I'm not anywhere near as miserable as she is with her life. Then again I have a happy marriage and two beautiful girls and a beautiful house in need of a new roof but everything else is good and we knew that before we closed. I didn't settle because if there's one good thing Egg taught me it's to never settle for second best. I have the best of everything. She's jealous.
We went upstairs and downloaded the MSNBC Fire TV app so we could watch Election Map Boyfriend (Steve Kornacki) and Rachel Maddow and if I needed any further proof that I love women just watch my excitement when she comes on and starts speaking about what the fuck is going on with this crazy fucking world. We stepped away after a bit to feed the girls and feed ourselves. Heated up in the microwave the General Tso's because what was the point in wasting time cooking when we could be doomwatching election coverage? So we chowed down on that and it tasted good though it wasn't as spicy as I remember it being. Maybe I've gotten used to spicy things since I crave it constantly.
Things were already off to such a rough start and I knew, in that moment, we were fucked as a nation if things didn't turn around. I still had hope because it's always really red at the start but then things balance out after a while as votes are counted and everything is combined (mail-in/absentee, early votes, in-person done on Election Day)... The blue wave is coming, I thought, as I scooped up one of the pieces of chicken. Everyone talks about this blue wave, this "vote blue no matter who". This wasn't going to be another 2016. America wasn't going to make the same mistake it did with Clinton, right? To say I was anxious is an understatement as I saw the numbers getting higher and higher on Trump's side and barely nudging on Harris's. I got even more nervous when they started discussion as Steve circled things on his map and explained different counties what demographics in those counties were voting for who before being interrupted by Rachel saying, "Polls have closed in PA so we can call those and it's...too early to tell."
Too early to tell.
Too early to tell.
Too early to tell.
And if it wasn't "too early" it was "too close" until we found out that this state went for Trump and that state went for Trump and then my birth state of New Jersey was pulled up and Hudson County was mentioned and my heart sank when the early votes were all red. To say it felt like some kind of betrayal...would be apt. It ended up blue in the end; the other 20 counties were giving out their numbers and a large amount of New Jersey turned red.
Is New Jersey now a swing state? a post in r/newjersey asked, with a picture of the election map.
It's certainly a lot less blue and more purple, in my opinion.
(More on that stuff in a bit.)
As the night wore on, despite my determination, I couldn't keep my eyes open. The amount of caffeine I had, you'd think I'd be fine. No. I was going to need to rest because tomorrow would be a day of celebration, right? I would wake up to something like
When I awoke at 0338 to use the bathroom I refused to look at the news coverage still on our TV though the sound was a lot lower so as to not disturb me, and whilst I tried to go back to sleep...I couldn't. I needed to know where we stood with everything. So I ended up on TwitterX doomscrolling, as one does, and as I do when I have nothing better to do and can't sleep.
Kamala Harris lost. Lost.
This country would rather have a convicted felon who thinks white supremacists are "fine people" as president than someone who is competent simply because she's a woman. All of these other countries in Europe have female heads of state or a large amount of women working in parliamentary positions and here this fucking backwards ass country is embarrassing itself on the world stage once again.
One person on TwitterX asked why this country hates women so much.
No one had an answer for her, but it all boils down to Patriarchy.
Because I like charts and maybe I'll look back at this in the future and use it to compare...
My birth county, Hudson, where I could once see the NYC Skyline and wondered how I could live away from the views.
Passaic County (highlighted), where I lived until 2018 (in Pompton Lakes); I worked in Morris County (red, kind of below and kitty corner to Passaic) until 2017.
Pike County, PA (highlighted) is where I worked up till recently. Where businesses have signs and flags supporting Trump on their store fronts, pop-up roadside stands consisting of folding tables shilling Trump merch open in front of abandoned, half-dilapidated buildings that haven't been occupied since I've moved up here. Where our regular customers would proudly wear their red TRUMP 2024 trucker hats and this one old couple in particular would come in multiple times a week decked out in Trump merch from head to toe and didn't fail to deck out their rollators as well... Most of my coworkers were also raging Trumpists. It was Trump all the time every time.
This is Orange County, NY, the county I will very shortly no longer be living in.
I am surrounded by so-called "patriots" who wouldn't know actual patriotism if it bit them in the ass.
*
I spent all of Wednesday in a complete fog. Wandering my house checking random boxes, not even knowing what I was looking for or what I was trying to do. Aleks tried to swap out the door latch on our storm door only to find out we're lacking at least one tool but it doesn't matter anyway because all it needed was a different strike plate (where the latch "catches" so that the door remains closed) so it's fine. I guess if we want a different latch at some point we can just buy metal shears or something. I don't know. We tried to keep busy, and because I hate silence I had the police/EMS scanner on in the background telling us what 911 calls were going out in Tioga, or Steuben, or Tompkins, or even Chemung. My thoughts went back to Clarion Inn Guy who ended up dying in the pool in what was ruled an accident. No one could reach him because he was all the way at the bottom of the pool. The call for that went out for 20 consecutive minutes but emergency response and subsequent mutual aid was tied up with a bunch of MVAs involving deer (one guy's car was completely totalled).
We have cat themed bathroom signs I wanted hung up but we didn't have nails and Aleks just said "fuck it" and reorganized the linen cabinet out in the upstairs hall, putting our box hair dye away and figuring out what shelf would be the first aid/medicine one and does this screw need to be tightened? He tightened screws for the railings. I ripped up the stair treads, not that there was anything wrong with them but I wanted something that didn't require vacuuming at some point. I ended up using some of the old ones anyway for the landings.
The rug tape the kit came with sucks and we'll need better ones. Gorilla makes rug mats you can cut to size and I've used them before and they work really well. Maybe we'll spring for that. For now they're there and as far as I know aren't a trip hazard since the tread is also attached to the rug tape still there (and still quite sticky).
We ate our cake. It wasn't a time for celebrating, but mourning. Conspiracy theories abound on social media; talks about Russian interference and Elon Musk interfering and someone else interfering as if people are just discovering that American elections aren't won, they're bought like everything else in this country my ancestors fought to create and would weep over how fall it's all fallen. These same politicians claiming that this is what the Founding Fathers wanted when the Constitution states otherwise just like how they say Jesus Christ himself wants Trump in the White House and everyone else thinks he's the third antichrist Nostradamus predicted hundreds of years ago and he's definitely no friend of Jesus and would try to deport him instead.
As someone with a presumably working uterus who can maybe get pregnant, I feel like a hypothetical baby has a lot more rights than I do as someone decreed "female" at birth, even though abortion access and rights will be enshrined in my state's constitution, there is no guarantee the federal government won't try to force each and every state to ban it. Boys fresh out of preschool and men old enough to be my father alike are telling little girls and women your body, my choice.
As someone who identifies as trans and has many a trans brother, sister, and sibling, I'm not even considered a person. I am an abomination who needs to be "corrected". I'm not straight and I'm not in a heterosexual marriage so I am still lesser, I am still without agency and without personhood status. And many of my trans siblings feel this way too, and are scared, nay frightened, of what's coming. What's going to happen to my marriage? Again, New York's state constitution says that same-sex marriage is legal and valid, but how long until the federal government forces states to invalidate it?
There are many questions and no answers.
We cannot allow this to consume us lest we end up stuck in this endless swirl of despair. We have to move forward and if we must fight for everything that we lost then so be it. We will fight. We will raise hell. We will throw bricks and Molotov cocktails.
We will not go quietly into the night.
