#Furniture Truck

[fungus-of-death]

I should buy a bed tomorrow. Guys remind me to go buy a bed

[purplesaline]

In our current society (in North America and much of the western world) we can't completely avoid capitalism, but with some work and dedication we can reduce how much we have to participate in it.

Building community is hard, and it often requires a lot of up front investment in time and energy before you start seeing returns on that investment. I know not everyone is in a place where they can make those expenditures without getting anything back right away which is why it's even more important for those of us who can to start building sooner rather than later.

When you have a healthy, thriving community of people you can start withdrawing yourself more and more from reliance on a broken capitalist system. Yes there's mutual aid within a community but what's even more exciting to me is the option of participating in a barter/trade economy because it's so often more empowering for disabled folks and other marginalized groups that struggle in a capitalist economy.

And even more importantly than that, it's how we can survive a political landscape that is openly hostile to us. It's as impossible to avoid the fallout of the current political situation as it is to avoid participating in a capitalist economy, but being part of a strong and healthy community can at least help mitigate some of the harmful effects.

Neighbours sharing produce from their gardens can lessen the chances of food-borne illness as a result of lax food safety regulations.

Creating, maintaining, and sharing resources that help marginalized groups can help protect vulnerable people in your area when the larger resources are being dismantled or when people acting in bad faith are pretending to be a helpful organization.

Communities have more leverage (and resources) when it comes time to put pressure on local government to make progressive changes

As communities grow, empathy and compassion for the people in the community also spreads and that can help create allies against the bigotry and prejudice some of the community members face. When you're in community together with someone it's harder to depersonalize them. They aren't [insert oppressed group] member, they're the person who walks your dog and brings you beets in exchange for piano lessons, or the person who loaned you a spare tire so you could go to work and when you got home that evening they'd fixed your flat tire for free because they had the time and some spare material laying around from a repair they did on their own tire.

It's going to be really easy to give in to despair in the coming months and I'm not going to lie and say you can survive it. Some folks won't. I'm not going to lie and promise if you can make it through that things will get easier, they might not!

But if you can hang on I can promise you there's a chance things will get better, and I can promise you there's a whole heck of a lot of us out there trying to make sure it does get better. I can promise you that building community will help you survive when things start getting harder, and I can promise you that community can be a beacon of light in dark times, a bastion of hope in a desert of despair.

I know you're tired and I'll understand if you can't keep fighting, but I really hope you've got enough resilience left to hang on long enough to find a community to be part of.

[andromeda3116]

like i really think people outside small towns - especially in the south - wildly underestimate what it takes to leave them

like, here's what it took for me to move 450 miles from home:

familial support on both sides of the move, i.e.:

--people to help pack the u-haul for free

--someone to drive the u-haul for free

--a place to stay overnight after arriving in the new city for free

--people to help me unpack the apartment for free

--people to chip in on gas

--people to buy lunch/dinner on the way over

--people to give advice on where to look for apartments

--people to give me a place to stay while apartment-hunting so that i didn't have to go in sight-unseen to a new home

--a big one: a brother with whom i lived for a year at very cheap rent and expenses to save up what i could

a decent job in a niche in-demand field back home, which allowed me get a well-paying job here in the same in-demand field with enough experience to start off in a good place

a reliable, reasonably fuel-efficient car that could travel 450 miles without concern (which was paid off beforehand)

a $4500 personal loan from the bank (which i used every single penny of) - which also required:

--good enough credit to qualify for a personal loan

--enough income from the previous year to get enough from the loan to move

enough income pre-move to cover expenses for my final month at home and my first three weeks of work here before getting a paycheck

(aside: people were like "why would you start your new job less than a week after moving?? that's so stressful!!!" like my doll my dear my darling i needed the fucking paycheck as quickly as possible after moving)

enough food to bring along so i could eat between moving and getting that check

related, and also in the "familial support" column: people to help me pay for gas and/or feed me if i ran out of money/food

of course the baseline of a home to stay in at all back home, internet to do the zoom interview and find apartments to rent, as well as the structure in the hometown like a u-haul facility and a good bank with which i have a long-standing account

also, only having to move myself and my pets rather than having children who would need to have either daycare or schooling lined up on the other side of the move

now, like, obviously you can move without these things - and of course any kind of support system can take the place of my family, either friends or community groups or government programs - but they are not easy things to necessarily contact or interact with from hundreds of miles away, and not having them leaves you potentially very vulnerable in the new place, sometimes to the point of life-threatening

and i wasn't even that poor! i mean i was below the median income, but only by a few grand - and it still required a solid baseline at home, support on both sides of the move, and a personal loan, and i still barely managed to do it

"why don't you just move???" is such a severely, blindly, mind-bogglingly classist statement that it makes me just immediately disengage with whoever is saying it

like, even if you don't have roots in the place you're at, moving away is fucking hard and fucking expensive

--signed, someone who has been rankling deeply at the casual way people talk about "just mov[ing]" like that's a normal, easy, obvious thing to do and not something that is absolutely price-gated to hell and back

[transjemder]

Long awaited reveal- Rainer! Hes a binturong :)

[creaturefeaster]

hey uhmhmgmdmn

asking for a friend, a chum, a pal

but can we hear more about fernando? quite possibly??….

Oh yeah!

He's shares a lot in common with Hannah; He's super laid back, easy-going, tech savvy and has a good heart. While Hannah specializes in engineering and machinery, his niche is a little more into coding, programming, and energy magicks, which go hand in hand with a lot of the robots and other devices Hannah builds.

He's often part of a stoner-type group-- which includes Cassidy!-- with which he loves road tripping, camping, hiking, and generally exploring the unseen. He and Han like road tripping together, but he's definitely the more outdoorsy of the two.

Despite having a fine home back in his home town, and a new place shared with Hannah, a lot of his time is spent living in his van. The one that Hannah has for a lot of the story. He considers that van his true home.

He is a born werecat on his mother's side, and unlike many he has a very good handle on the affliction. Honestly, he's probably even more chill as a cat than not. Catch him and his kitty crew basking in the sun high as balls on. catnip.

Really he's just a chill and friendly dude, he's a good source of wisdom and knows a lot of general survival skills... it's a shame the main crew doesn't meet him until much later, way after they've been struggling to make do in their new world u_u. He'd have been a big help!

[tarantula-hawk-wasp]

Life update - found out I got a job in NV, did the math and realized it would be cheaper to donate my furniture and extra stuff and move by plane, my dad flew out and helped, in 3 days packed and donated and cleaned and moved from FL to NV with 8 checked bags + 2 carry ons + 2 backpacks and about 15 packages (mostly books going media mail rate) in the post. Now I’m living with my parents again.

I am so exhausted and sore from moving furniture and cleaning frantically and moving almost 50 lb luggage.

While i was waiting for my dad to return the rental truck people kept staring and smiling it was amusing kids could not look away from me and my mountain of bags

[torchickentacos]

adding 'skeevy-ass gas station with two men loudly yelling in the dark somewhere (presumably at each other)' to my list of least favorite places to be late at night

[friendpilled-visitmaxer]

Bruh the ONLY job that reached out to me for an interview was the one I didn't really want

[painsandconfusion]

I FINALLY HAD WRITING SPOONS AND WANTED TO UPDATE WHUMPING THE WHUMPERS AND I SMASHED MY FINGER ON THE WSY TO THE COFFEE SHOP AND IT BLED SO FUCKING MUCH LIKE SO MUCH LIKE IT WAS SPURTING I HAD TO STOP DRIVING AND NOW TYPING HARD I WILL RAGE

[daisywords]

the worst part about being a pianist is that you can't just...simply take your instrument with you

[only-man-in-the-sky]

gonna kill this landlord for real. like bitch I don't live in your building anymore. fucking stop texting me about literal garbage

[soreheadinamblemood]

.

[septembermonologues]

feeling like screaming and crying and throwing up im not ready to move furniture tomorrow to begin with and now my dad said he's going to be in a bad mood AND he asked my friend to help without talking to me about it and my sister and her friend are spending the night on their road trip which is whatever but now i feel like i can't move freely through my apartment like i need to and im so over it

[elenadoeslife]

it's officially moving week! 🗝💕

[dickbaggins]

hey Janis how is getting moving quotes going?

Oh you said you had to talk the quote over with your husband so they’re creating a false sense of urgency by asking a superior if they can lock in the price? Oh she said yes and knocked 500 off the price but only if you put down a deposit right now? Oh he told you to put him on hold and call your husband? And then laughed when you said you didn’t appreciate the high pressure sales tactics and hung up??

Yeah and then he texted me lmao

Dylan I’ve worked in sales, I know what you’re doing and I don’t appreciate it. I’m just a fucking person trying to move my shit ok. I’ve done the pantomime of ‘let me call my boss and see if I can make this work’ only to come back with an outrageous deal. I sold fucking mattresses bro which is the shittiest sales job you can imagine. Ok. I know all your tricks.

Is there a zoomer moving company I can use where they don’t pull this shit because I HATe it and I hate the social contract where I’m supposed to pretend I don’t know what they’re doing when I have fucking been instructed in the awful art of doing it

[jensownzoo]

Got a new piece of alleyway furniture in need of love/repair yesterday afternoon:

It's the base of a hoosier cabinet in a pretty sad state. The sides are delaminating and at least two of the legs are splitting. And you can see the state of the finish.

Not a valuable antique so I feel no guilt in what I'm going to do to it to give it an alternative function.

It's going to turn into a combination plant stand (that enameled top makes it perfect) and cat bed (in the cabinet part. The drawers, which still work well, will be nice storage. Might see if my seed packet collection will fit or I might put cat toys and brushes in it, who knows?

It's not going to be a professional job for sure. I'll probably just sister some additional supports to the insides of all the legs to fix that issue. Then see about getting some thin plywood or Masonite board to fit into the sides. Remove what little finish remains, sand, and paint/stain.

Probably should either put a little lip on the inside of the cabinet part to keep the cat bed from slipping out. Or I could keep the door shut and just remove the left panel entirely to allow feline access. I'm a little concerned that if I make it too private, however, some little kitty (lookin at you, Princess Many Toes) will start using it as a litterbox.

Anyway, it's not a project I'm going to start until I finish the current garden project since I'd like to get that done before we hit 100F again.