A few days ago I was reading John Michael Greer's latest weekly blog post—plus the comments, which are always valuable—and in replying to one comment he made a passing reference to something he called the "Neopagan disability cult." Someone asked him what he meant, and he explained as follows:
I'm pretty sure when Scott Adams posted this he meant it as a political remark. Given what's been in the news lately, it probably has to do with the allegations of bribery against President Biden. But it caught my attention because this was always and consistently my experience with Wife! With her affairs. With everything else. This was always her go-to defense.
Or else she'd ask me what evidence I had. Then she'd give me a carefully-tailored alibi to account for exactly that evidence. After a while I caught on to the game, and stopped answering her questions. This made her accuse me of jumping to conclusions unfairly, but it was easier than playing the game over and over.
On the one hand, it was exhausting. On the other hand, I know Adams is right about what he says here.
Monday was the same way. That is to say, Sunday night I stayed up too late and drank too much; Monday was a waste. Tuesday night I stayed up too late and drank too much; today was a waste.
If there's a good part to the story, I'm drinking less than I was back in May and June. I look at how much it took to make me worthless today or Monday, and there was a whole week straight back in May when I had more than that every single night. Of course I wrote you about it too, so clearly it concerned me. (And except for writing all my West Highland Way blog posts, the month of May was pretty much a loss for me, as I discussed here.) Anyway, if I'm now tolerating less booze before it wipes me out, maybe my body is finally balking and telling me to quit. That would probably be a good thing, I suppose.
Also this morning I had a Skype call with Marie, and for the very first time we actually used the video link for sex. (I know, I know, other people figure this out when they are teenagers and not in their sixties. But Skype hadn't been invented back when we were teenagers.) In the moment it was exciting and fun, but I found myself feeling kind of squicky about it afterwards. That might be partly because I realized only afterwards that all my windows were open (though with the blinds drawn), so I wonder if anybody heard anything. Also maybe partly I was still feeling the after-effects of the hangover.
Maybe I can make tomorrow a better day.
The last couple days, just for grins, I looked at this blog's stats. (Also I checked the box to stop tracking my own views of the blog.)
To my amazement, I found that there are actually people reading these posts.
I mean, ten years ago, sure. Ten years ago I was part of a blogging community. We regularly read and commented on each other's posts.
But that was ten years ago. Lately, comments have been so rare that I assumed nobody was out there listening.
But the stats prove me wrong. Somebody (besides me) is reading my posts.
So my request to you is this: Whoever you are, if you are reading these posts, say "Hello." Add a comment. Post a URL where you can be found, so I can read what you write and comment on that.
I don't insist on your legal name in real life. If you can't risk giving me that, I totally understand. Go ahead and create an alias. Plenty of people in my former community wrote from behind aliases, for one reason or another. It was still fine.
But say "Hello." Let's start a conversation. You've seen by now what kinds of things I have to say. Let me hear from you. Let's talk.
I look forward to meeting you.
Yesterday I got an email from Marie about a recent phone call with her "little" brother Hermanito. It seemed pleasant enough: kind of aimless, but chatty in the way that sibling phone calls can be.
Had a very nice chat with Hermanito. We talked about my upcoming trip to Paris, his proposed big motorcycle jaunt next summer with his girlfriend (who was in the background, occasionally chiming in), his generator and home repairs (he's replacing his plumbing, his water heater, and his generator, all in the next two weeks), his proposal to visit Auntie for Thanksgiving if his girlfriend can get enough time off (she said she could, but he seemed more doubtful), [and so on]. It was a good conversation. He once made a comment about liberals like me and Natasha, but I deflected with a question about his summer plans. And he teased me about my book collection, so I agreed, compared it to Mom's doll collection, and recounted the story of how I showed pictures of her house to a doll-phobic coworker. So we happily agreed that I was evil, and that was that.
At the end he said love ya sis.
Maybe I'm learning how to talk to him again?
I was talking with Marie today, and an idea popped out of my mouth without my thinking about it. Maybe I had better explain what I mean.
Marie joined our Sangha last night; and during the discussion of the Dharma reading we talked (among other things) about how and why people in small towns distrust educated people from the Big City. A couple of different theories were advanced.
This morning Marie picked up the topic again and we discussed it a while longer. Marie tried to argue that the reason rural people resist regulation (she assumed that they do) is that since nobody else lives nearby it's not "intuitively obvious" that restrictions on individual behavior help everyone by protecting us from each other. I suggested (on the contrary) that of course rural people understand that; but their idea of what restrictions make sense is based on their experience. Since their experience is different from the experience of urban folk, they will accept restrictions that urban folk reject and vice versa.
The dharma reading in Sangha this evening started us talking about what would be important in our lives if we learned we were going to die soon. I didn't have anything profound to add, but it put me in mind of the time when Wife and I were still trying to hash out a Parenting Plan for the boys, as part of our legal separation.
Part of the Parenting Plan was an agreement about how much time the boys would spend with me each year, and how much time with her. In the end, we agreed that I got 50% +1 day, and she got 50% -1 day, so that I could claim them on my taxes. (Her income was small enough that the deduction would have made no difference.) But my initial proposal was that I should get a much larger fraction of time, because her mental health and parenting skills were both so poor. Naturally she disputed this. But during one of our discussions she said something very interesting.
