This week has been one step beyond. All of the simple tasks were not. All of the boxes ticked done were not. All of steps taken were right off the cliff.

I mean, honestly, nothing happened. We're body and soul together. No-one is sick, fired, jailed or lost. We've got food on the table; money in the bank; and each other.

But every single step this week was crawling over broken glass through fire while some asshole kept moving the finish line further down the road.

But I ended up with 8 flourishing houseplants--two of them are not good for cats to chew on but not dramatically poisonous. My parents are buying me a little home improvement for my birthday: some fancy wallpaper, matching paint and the skilled labor to install it. Nervous about getting that started, with the crews having to be in the house and all, but exctied about having something nice.

I have nothing to say.

I wish I could respons to anything without extreme annoyance.  That has not been possible this week. We'll see how next week goes.

There's a meme going around, listing a state, how many votes the dickhead won by, and the number of African-Americans in the state who did not vote (usually the much larger of the two numbers). It's factually accurate and semantically misleading. "Did not vote" where "did not" should read "were intentionally disenfranchised.

I've done elections work for years at a good government nonprofit--primarily voter education research. I also did voter protection for several elections (general and primary) until 2016. There is so much interference with the polling places and the people in predominantly Black precincts. Very professional-looking circulars, telling people their polling places have moved. Very official-looking people, lying about lines and which doors to use. 

And that's the obviously intentional interference. That's not the criminalization fo being poor. The refusing to let people who were in prison once ever vote again. That's not the lack of simple clear instructions about how and where to register. That's not the laws making it impossible to register if your housing is unstable.

No, very often it's not that people do not vote but that other people have done everything possible to keep them from voting.

I am completely burned out on my job. Not the work itself, but the fact of working, and the institution itself. It's a great institution! It has an important niche, an excellent reputation and really good working conditions.

But I'm burned. I'm tired. My greatest wish is to quit my job. 

One of my cousins just arrived for freshman year in Indiana and I am fucking terrified for him. I know what I think I'd do in that situation but it's easy to make pretend choices.

This is a Singer 401. There are many like it, but this one is mine.

Full Metal Jacket analogies aside, the 401 is an excellent machine. It has all-metal internals, comes with many stitches pre-programmed by the virtue of having an internal cam stack. It can also accept an array of swappable cams for even more stitches.

But it has some drawbacks. Despite being manufactured in the 1950's, the foot pedal (technically called the 'motor controller') is the same model that Singer used since the 1920's. It's a graduated resistor, that lowers resistance until a simple circuit is achieved at full pedal depression. The side effect of this is that when you aren't using the machine, the pedal tends to heat up. Since its resistance is blocking the current flow. Additionally, since carbon tends to build up on the disks in the resistor, older pedals tend to make the machine leap into action with not a lot of control at slower speeds.

Which is a problem.

There's a later series of machines called Touch & Sew, called Touch & Throw or Touch & Swear by afficionados. They have a more powerful two speed motor with an electronic motor controller. By a quirk of manufacture, the motor in the T & S machine is the same physical size as the one in a 401. So, with some simple mechanical skill, a bit of soldering a little fabrication and a whole lot of creative cursing, you can upgrade a 401.

We spent a fair chunk of today doing much-needed, long-overdue house care. Everything has been so hard since the last election. It has, of course, only gotten worse in the last year, even before the pandemic. We lost a close friend to an overdose on Christmas eve. Time is such a millstone now.

Otherwise, I'm disgusted with our Mayor barricading downtown. I'm horrified with how ineffectual and complacent to the point of complicit the Senate is.

I'm ashamed to admit it but I can't even tell you how much I want a cigarette. 

I've avoided thoughts today. Mostly, I did chores, poorly. Kept failing to get the glass of water I've wanted since shortly after midnight.

Mostly I looked at the things that never get put away because the things which are put away need to be culled and then put away again in a better configuration. We are white middle class hom

I ordered Ikea things in May, when my office decided we would never be going back to our offices. The accessories have arrived, but not the furniture. So everything is a bit of a mess. We're fortunate we have enough space, but being in the house 24/7 is making small things much more irritating. You know, the light you never fixed; the box you never unpacked; the neighbos who never fucking stop screaming and slamming doors.

Short fuses. I got em.

I have a dream of never voting for a prosecutor for public office (other than Cook County State's Attorney #TeamFoxx!) ever again. Kamala Harris is complicating that--not because she's some magical prosecutor, not because she gets a pass, not because her record is exceptionally good as a prosecutor. 

Kamala Harris is complicating that because, well, she's requiring me to think about what chances for advancement in a political or legal career a woman has and how much those chances narrow when that woman is not white (skinny and pretty!). Running for prosecutor? That's one of them. Or at least has become one very recently. Brennan Center talks about that shift here. 

But Brennan Center examines the change in terms of prosecutorial reform, rather than from intersectional feminism. The intersectional feminism angle is why Kamala Harris is making me think more about it.

But I don't know much about Harris' career, or her record as a DA. I know the headlines are calling her Senate record "More liberal than Bernie!"

I also know the birthers are already out in droves. That photos of her are being darkened and chosen by editors because she looks angry. I recall people saying she can't be Southeast Asiam because she doesn't even pronounce her own name right.

I know I'd rather see her one old guy from the Presidency than Mike Fucking HIV-enabling Pence.

I spent most of today randomly crying. Then working on a thing at work which I am perfectly capable of doing and sufficiently informed to do accurately but which felt insurmountable and now I am terrified to share the draft with my colleagues.

I wish I could retire. I wish that my pandemic response was retirement. But I have a couple years still before I can be rejected for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. So I have to keep working.