[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

Here’s the birthday present I picked out yesterday at the fancy stationary store! A set of notecards and envelopes and a new bottle of fountain pen ink. It’s a shimmer ink, of course!

I love the store so much, it’s called Tabula Rasa and I’ve been enamored with it since it was a just teeny tiny shop in the corner of a now non-existent downtown mall when I was in college back in 2001. I bought my first ever dip pen there and a wax stamp. I don’t think I still have either of them though.

It was successful and became a larger store and moved to a place called Trolley Square which is an historic building that used to be a trolley depot and now has shops and restaurants and it’s just a gorgeous building and I love going there so much. It also has my favorite bookstore which has a ton of used and rare books.

Being out of the house cheered me up, so I was in the mood for a birthday dinner, so we went to the restaurant we’d been planning for and had a great time.

All in all, a pretty good way to turn 44!

[fucking-relax]

comfort check

lounging in an ouch position?

haven't taken a deep breath lately?

hungry? thirsty?

need to use the toilet?

too much sensory input?

this is your reminder to get comfortable! go do what you need to do!

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

After talking about my anxiety with Dude and having a small cry, a small, late breakfast, and then a nap, we are about to head out to my favorite store to get a present.

I don’t think I’m up for dinner at the restaurant we were going to go to, I just don’t have a big appetite, so we will have a bday celebration dinner later this week.

It’s amazing how much getting shit out of your head helps you feel better instead of just festering. Will I learn from this? Probably not.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

lol well I called it on my old glasses. They damaged the frames somehow.

I somehow knew from basically the moment I dropped them off to get new lenses with my new prescription that something was going to go wrong.

How did I know this would happen??? I swear sometimes I am just a little bit psychic.

It’s been almost a month so I just called and they put me on a long hold after I said why I was calling and when someone came back on she introduced herself as the assistant manager.

And sure enough, she said the lab damaged my frames I had dropped off and so I could come in and pick a new pair from their bottom two price points of frames. She didn’t say that specifically, she said the “blue and green tag frames,” but I assume it’s the lowest two prices.

And then they’ll just process my order for the type of lenses I wanted and give me back the damaged frames.

But the new glasses I have were actually some of the cheapest ones, because I didn’t like any of the really expensive ones, even though my insurance frame allowance was $175, these were $89.

I don’t remember if they had these frames in another color, but if they do I may just get those. But now I have to go back in! What a pain!

And the manager wasn’t terribly apologetic, especially since no one apparently was ever going to call me. She said, “Someone should have called you….” Literally trailed off and didn’t apologize! Like basic customer service! I was super nice and didn’t even act annoyed or anything.

I just said, “Well things just happen sometimes.”

But my internal eye roll was of Liz Lemon proportions.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

It’s my birthday!

But I’m not feeling very celebratory. I took yesterday and today off work but the dogs being sick has hampered my mood.

The plan was to go to a good restaurant for lunch and then to the fancy stationary store after so I can see if there’s anything I want for a present, since there was nothing I could think of to tell Dude I wanted.

But I managed to turn the rice I was making for the big dogs’ breakfast into porridge and they had to wait a long time for it to be done, so the routine was all off and they were super weirded out because they are very routine-oriented.

And then neither of them wanted to eat the rice. Walter ate about half of it by me feeding it to him by hand and Appa didn’t want it even that way.

So I’m just feeling anxious and slightly off.

I think I need to go on a solo vacation somewhere. Nothing fancy, but I think I need some solid alone time. With Dude not working I have almost no time at home alone and I think I am missing solitude.

I really need to get my art room back into working order. It’s cycled back into a catch-all storage space which happened every few years as things accumulate.

Having that space back to do my crafts and hobbies and witchcraft will be really good for my mental health, I think.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

Our child support obligation ends in September.

My crazy urge is to sell our house and put most of our shit in one of those moving pods and then like…move to Oregon. And keep doing my job without telling them I’ve left Utah and wait for them to fire me when they realize I’ve stopped going to the office.

Or maybe just tell my job I am leaving Utah and if that is still a dealbreaker and the company won’t make me fully remote (LIKE THE REST OF MY FUCKING TEAMMATES IN THE US) then I will be submitting my resignation. And then live off the sale of the house while we find new jobs.

We have a lot of equity in this place, just because we bought at such a good time and the market is so inflated right now.

I’m tired of Utah and the heat. I know every place has its drawbacks and downfalls, but I really really want to live in the PNW. That or Maine.

I need to be in a land with water and also near the ocean! I have been landlocked for almost 17 years! My So Cal soul yearns for the ocean.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

Dude just reminded me that we keep Marv’s food in a separate bin in the kitchen, so his food is still from the previous bag and not from the new bag of food we opened Saturday morning.

So I guess it’s entirely possible that it is indeed the new bag of food that is making the big dogs sick.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

I called the vet but I cycled through the hold message twice, so I texted them, since that is an option they advise in the hold message for non-urgent issues.

I wrote a three paragraph text with all the info about what’s going on LOL, so we’ll see what they say.

Probably just make sure they are drinking water and if it persists for another couple days to bring them in or if they stop drinking.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

TMI about dog poop:

Both of our big dogs have developed diarrhea in the last day.

Walter woke me up every two hours last night to go potty and has had runny poops a few times today. Appa went out once last night and this morning had a normal poop and then just now they both went out again and had runny poops.

Marv eats the same food as they do, but in smaller quantities obvs, and he has been fine.

They have both been drinking water fine and seem fine, energy and personality wise.

We are in the midst of a heat wave right now, so it’s possible that drinking more water has caused it? But we did just fill the food bin with new bags of food on Saturday morning. But if it was the food, I would think Marv would have an upset belly, too.

We’ll see how they are doing tonight and tomorrow and if it hasn’t cleared up I’ll call the vet. Maybe I’ll call them tonight just to see what they say, if we should maybe give them rice or something.

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, I think that college should be free and also not a requirement for employment outside of highly specialized career fields

[kineticpenguin]

At the risk of sounding like an effete intellectual, I do actually think you should be allowed to just take college courses indefinitely

[yourunderwaterskies]

technically you can, if you don't care about degrees.

Free Harvard courses. Free Courses from Stanford. Free Courses from MIT. Free courses from Yale. Free courses from Princeton.

Free courses on Coursera.

Free Courses on EDx Free Courses on Alison

For paid, there's The Great Courses+/Wonderium. 20$ a month for unlimited courses.

When searching, the phrases you're looking for are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or you can do a general search of say, "free online college courses." Oh, and so you don't get surprised like I did, have an avoid: Hillsdale College is a conservative Christian site and not a valid MOOC place. Sign up with them and you will get things like THIS IS WHY THE LEFT IS TURNING YOUR KIDS TRANS AND GAY in your inbox.

[aloeverawrites]

@yourunderwaterskies I wanted to say thank you so much for adding these links, seriously, they've been life-changingly helpful to me-

And I also wanted to mention that humanitarian organisations have free courses too, like the Red Cross on international humanitarian law.

Humanity in War

Learn more about the Red Cross International Humanitarian Law (IHL) Program to train policy professionals, government officials, academics,

Kaya

Kaya is a free humanitarian learning platform which offers hundreds of training opportunities across a range of key topics, including the hu

[baronfulmen]

They sent a proof of life photo

And now of course everyone is arguing about whether or not it's AI. I don't see any obvious tells, but it's hard to say these days. I'm not going to claim it's AI without evidence, but I also wouldn't put it past them. So I guess I'll just sit back and see how this plays out.

[baronfulmen]

#Someone needs to find that newspaper and check the date

So fun fact, they did. It's the newspaper from that day, I think New York Post? It's totally possible the photo is legit, but if not I think it's safe to say there's no proof because the only accusations I've seen of it being fake have vague "but look at the pixels" comments rather than any good arguments.

[ralfmaximus]

It would be so easy to put him on TV for 30 seconds or even a brief facetime session; he's a public figure and should expect that scrutiny. The fact they're not doing that is telling.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

Honestly the inclusion of the newspaper makes it even MORE suspicious to me. Only ever so slightly included at the edge with his hand touching it, so people can’t say it’s an old photo that’s been doctored, not too obvious an attempt to make the date it was taken clear, so it doesn’t look like a fucking hostage photo.

I can’t tell if it’s AI or not, but that’s the point we’re at with the technology.

[certifiedeviandrinker]

darkest timeline where data is chatgpt and therefore stupid and bad

[ralfmaximus]

Brent Spiner should record PSAs about ChatGPT as Data.

[hyenaswine]

i think people are starting to confuse class analysis with bioessentialism. like... no not all men do this, but Men as a constructed social class do do this. that's still okay to say. that is regular material analysis of the world around us.

[hyenaswine]

this is true, but it is not bioessentialist. both cis & trans men WILL see a mouse & eat it. this is because it is in their best interest to eat mice. they benefit from eating mice. this is essential to their class position, not their biological makeup.

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

Goddamn mice in the vegetable garden!!!!

I watered this morning and then went over to just check things out a couple hours later and there was a little jerk mouse (could have been a small rat) running through!

So I got out the giant jug of garden cayenne pepper used in the evenings for rodent deterrent, and basically poured a thick border around the whole garden and then along each row of plants.

Stay away you tiny little demons!!!

[swamp-spirit]

The real horror of a Stepford Wives situation isn't 'the suburbs are creepy' or even 'conformity is creepy' or 'I don't wanna be replaced by a robot'

The horror is the idea that you might choose to spend your life with somebody only to realize they don't actually want a partner and friend, somebody with ambitions and thoughts and joy. They want somebody productive, compliant, and sexually available, and all your internal life is nothing but a barrier to that. That the person you love only loves what you do for them, and the less of the an actual person you are, the happier they are.

[homunculus-argument]

A three-circle venn-diagram where the circles are "sex workers", "the furry community", and "people working in morgues". I don't know what the overlap parts are.

[flufflogic]

Fourth circle needed: IT workers

[homunculus-argument]

You say that with such confidence that I am compelled to trust your vision. Personally I have no idea where this is going.

[trytocallmecal]

i'd say the overlap between "sex workers" and "people who work in morgues" is probably "seeing naked strangers a lot"

[homunculus-argument]

"professional handling of bodies of strangers"?

[approaching-the-scrungularity]

Putting my neck out for you folks here

[tryan-a-bex]

Okay I’ve gone through many of the reblogs and “prefer when clients don’t talk to them” is peak

[depsidase]

[areweperfectlywhelmedyet]

Literally for nothing. I would give it up for nothing.

Except “giving it up” would mean it had a meaningful place in my life and it doesn’t. I would GIVE a lot just to have it destroyed and/or severely limited.