Unexpectedly, my New Year's tradition became wearing my grandmother's wedding tiara. 

Some years, my sister would steal it away, but most years, I wore it.

My grandmother was born in 1918 and I'm not sure exactly when my grandparents got married, but she was 25 when my dad was born, so 1938? 1940?

It's gotten too fragile too wear. It still has all its sequins but it wilts and one of the spires is now cracked beneath the surface. Perhaps I'll try to repair it this summer.

Happy new year.

I voted by mail at least a week ago. I like voting by mail. I used to vote by mail in order to volunteer for 866-Our-Vote, but I have not done that since 2016. Many reasons, not relevant here.

Today, I am off the internet, except for the part where all my work is done remotely. Tonight I'm hanging at my favorite bar which is running karaoke tonight, so no teevees. I suppose I'll see some returns without trying, but I'll try anyway.

I always vote. I have often canvassed. I've volunteered. But I have never enjoyed the U.S. tradition of sport in elections, and, for more than 20 years, that tradition has made me sadder, angrier, and increasingly disengaged each election. I do my research; I make my choices; I cast my ballot but I can't care. And I simply will not watch. I will not engage with the game.

It's the tribalism. It's the reactionary "they're all the same".  It's the bluster and shouting, dressing up disengagement with critical thinking as passion. It's the denigration of expertise, service and the refusal to accept that complex problems, large systems—as well as the balancing of differing interests—do not have simple or universally appealing solutions.

So I try to find things which tell me which choices acknowledge that none of this should be a game, none of it should be us vs. them. It's not bon mots, soundbites, zingers or points. It's people's lives and health and well-being. I make my choices; I cast my ballot and I disengage.

I don't know if that's right but it's sustainable in all this despair, rage, helplessness and terror.

Nos et mutamur in illis.

I started hanging around Metafilter in law school, late 90s. I was a 10ker who managed to snag an account during the wild days of sign-up windows, which were randomly open for very short periods of time.

For years, I was a monthly subscriber and a regular member of local meet-up host committee. I spent a lot of time on Metafilter, for twenty years nearly. I have remained logged-in but not actually looked at anything over there in years; early pandemic, I think, is what finally drove me away for good, including ending my subscription.

Now, it seems, the financial situation is dire and the place may shutter. Which seems about time to me. Not because Metafilter has changed—though it has—but because the internet has.

A friend (a 1ker) has always said "Never read the comments, including at Metafilter." And he's right. When I first went there and stayed, the comments were irrelevant. In 1998, the internet was random and hidden.

In 1998, you went to Metafilter because the front page was the fruit of people spending hours, clicking random links and find that place where a person posts her daily ode to today's random insect or that place where another person is documenting every published photograph of Cher's knees or a grand conspiracy theory about Violet Beauregard. Finding fabulous things you would never have stumbled across on your own. Gawping at strange obsessions. Laughing with the wonderful things people do when they are doing them for self, not audience.

This is not the internet anymore. Everything now is someone's pitch, someone's product, someone's public face. Curation not needed any longer. Whatever the internet is now, it's not random. It's not personal. Treasures are not hidden. Back then, when they were hidden, Metafilter found them and shared them. It was invaluable.

But the internet changed; Metafilter changed, more or less successfully. And Metafilter—for me—lost its purpose as it became about the discussion, the conversation, the community. I can't imagine going back.

I turned to spouse the other night and wondered out loud who was going to die next. And said I was tired of people dying. And wondering who would die next.

This was the saved draft in this app, which I have not opened since September 2021. I opened it back up today because I wanted to think about this statement "Grief is disrespectful. It shows up unbidden. It interrupts dreams, work, joy. People say it’s messy and I get that, but mostly I think it’s uncontrollable" from AHP's newsletter today.

Earlier this year, I tried to find a therapist but remote therapy did not work for me. I might try to pick up again with the woman I was talking to, if in-person seems rational, because as I talked about nothing from a safe screen-shielded distance, she interupted me to say "this sounds like you have a lot of unresolved grief."

And this is true. But as I was telling my mother the story (we were sitting in a beautiful bar at an extremely posh resort where I finally caught Covid, despite the entire course of vaccines), she asked "did she give you suggestions for how to resolve it?" and I had to say no.

So this is what I've been thinking about and where Ive landed is: there is no way to resolve grief. It's that F, hanging out in the C Major chord for the rest of your life. 

"Texas House Bill 1927 permits people to carry handguns without a permit, unless they have been convicted of a felony or domestic violence. This measure was not popular in the state. Fifty-nine percent of Texans—including law enforcement officers—opposed it. But 56% of Republicans supported it."

Fuck those Republicans. Fuck those people who don't vote against them, run against them, donate against them, protest against them. And fuck those people who don't protest them. And especially fuck the 41% of Texans who did not oppose this law.

While we're angry about things, I'll be angry about that.

Also, donate:

https://janesdueprocess.org/

https://keepourclinics.org/

https://linktr.ee/WestFundTx

https://www.clinicaccess.org/

https://thebridgecollective.org/

https://fundtexaschoice.org/

https://linktr.ee/AfiyaCenter

https://linktr.ee/FronteraFundRGV

https://linktr.ee/teafund

https://www.wholewomanshealthalliance.org/

https://www.bucklebunnies.org/

https://avowtexas.org/

Tomorrow I get my vaccine second dose. Trying to get my first dose was fraught and then I felt guilty when I won the appointment lottery--especially because it was not only just about week to wait but also was less than 2 miles from home. A bartender friend who scored an appointment a day later had to travel over 10 miles from home to get there. 

Spouse's doctor's office contacted him to schedule an appointment shorly after I'd made my appointment. Then about 10 days later the hospital associated with my gyne (but not my primary care) contacted me to schedule and appointment. Then my primary care doctor. And today. the County health department called to help me schedule if I needed to.

So the difficulty in getting a vaccine appointment, the guilt in scoring one, feels ridiculous within just a few weeks

(My vaccine was Pfizer, administered by Walgreens, which means it was done not at the recommended 3 week interval, but the easier-for-their-auto-scheduler 4-week interval. I'm not worried or annoyed by that, just noting the timeline. Spouse also got Pfizer, at the hospital, but his first shot was after mine, and his second shot before)

My nephew is a 13 year old Latino boy living in Chicago.

I walked away from the internet at the appropriate time today. I already knew that the video would show police had lied about the encounter. I also knew that I'd not be able to avoid a great deal of analysis and commentary from people I work with in the coming weeks. (It's our job)

But I just can't. How are we supposed to live in a world where adults meet children with lethal force? And even more when they have the color of law?

Scrolled past some random bit of internet "news" I am neither interested in nor have any background for about actress Margot Robie and had the idle "ugh, I hate Margot Robie" thought and came to a screeching internal halt.

I've never actually seen a movie with Margot Robie in it; never read an interview with Margot Robie; or watched a clip in a pop culture something or other. Never had a conversation with anyone about a movie she's in, or what they think of her performances. I know exactly one thing about her:

how heterosexual cisgender white men talk about Margot Robie. 

So in actuality, I have no opinion of Margot Robie, but I absolutely hate everything heterosexual cisgender white men think, say or do with their idea of Margot Robie.

How fucking tedious.

My mom has reached the age which is the average life span for an American woman. She's white, been financially secure since her 30s, still married to my father, has not smoked since 1986. So her life expectancy is probably 7-8 years higher than her current age.

Seven or eight years is nothing. And she's just lost an entire one of them to this bullshit pandemic. She's vaccinated now, as is my Dad, but we've been talking about the lost time. What it means for her, as she's keenly aware of how little she has left. What it means for her only grandchild who spent the first year as a teen like this. What it means for me, a person who's 50, who lost an ordinary year. Not one of the easily-numbered ones I have left. Not one of the exciting new ones.

But mostly she talks at angles about what it's like to have lost one of so few remaining years. What it's like to know all her accumulated things are of limited utility to me and my sister, no matter how much we love her or how fondly we remember them. 

When my first grandmother died, I was sitting through finals my last year of law school. There was little value in postponing them, so I did not go home. My mother and my sister cleaned out her house rather quickly, my sister looking carefully for the one thing we both wanted: a pendant she'd worn in the 70's. A large crystal fishbowl, studded with tiny goldfish. She'd hold it up to the light, pull the chain along behind it, showing us how the fish would swim.

They did not find the pendant. 

I have a vaccination appointment for Friday. I felt sick when I got it. Like I was cheating or cutting in line. Pushing my luck. Stealing. 

But I have my appointment. I have it not only because I have fast reliable internet, and a fast reliable computer, but because when the appointment flashed, I could click "yes" before bothering to read the details of where or when, without worrying about how I'd travel to the appointment (although, frankly, our car could die at any moment) or whether I could take the time off from work. I am completely able to accept a random Walgreen location within the city limits at whatever time and date they throw at me.

I can tell my boss I won't be at work at that time (even if there's a meeting) without fear of losing my job or being docked pay. I can drive my own car (hopefully still running! and in reality, spouse will drive) or pay for the cab or Lyft without thinking twice.  It's 2.5 miles away--I could ride my bike or even walk. Or even take the bus (though I would not want to get on the CTA or in a cab right now)

I know that if I had hesitated or had to consider those things before clicking yes, I would have lost the appointment. 

Spouse does not have an appointment, so life won't change much. My parents are both vaccinated now, so in a little over six weeks (two weeks past the second dose), I can ride the commuter train out to see them. When Spouse mentioned that to me, I sobbed. 

Still I feel I'm tempting fate.