#one of my coworkers literally right now has covid and on our zoom call he was like well the vaccine wouldnt have done anything anyways

[acedavestrider]

does anyone have any advice on how to feel alive again

[deathnoting]

just a personal post about my unmanageable poly feelings

so i made some post about having a crush on my boyfriend’s ex-wife which was mostly a joke/just like a vibe, but now i’m going to make a v real post about a v real crush that i thought i was over but am certainly not. also poly, also someone with a close relationship to both my boyfriend and i, our friend E who i have been like slightly in love with on & off for like 2 years

- we all became friends pre-pandemic. actually E became friends with my bf first. she is exactly my age, and my boyfriend is 23 years older than both of us, but whatever. he prob has more friends my age than i do. (he has a lot of friends, and twenty-something girls & queer people especially love him bc he has angel mom energy)

- anyway we all worked together and my bf & E hit it off as soon as she started and he was like “you should become friends with E, i think you would love her” and i was like “girl you don’t know me” (we had been dating for like 2 years at this point i’m just disagreeable on instinct lmao). anyway i started hanging out with E and big surprise he was right, i fucking loved her. like a lot

- so anyway around late 2019/early 2020, the three of us were hanging out a lot, and she & i were hanging out a lot on our own, and i just got a huuuuge crush on her. i tried to repress it bc that’s my thing, but i had recurring dreams about making out with her so i was like. shit

- and i specifically had very strong poly feelings bc the three of us were just??? in love idk. she would often sleep over at our house on the fold out futon and one time my bf like did a big blanket swoosh over her and then kissed her goodnight on the forehead very chastely, and that was like? just the general energy. E’s parents are very shit and my bf just mommy’d her a lot, idk how else to say it? we cultivated very good found family vibes

- so anyway i eventually told my bf how i felt although i was very nervous bc we had never talked about poly anything. and he had been (rightfully) pretty hurt and upset when i got drunk and made out with a very hot girl at a halloween party so i was just like. he’s gonna be hurt or he’s not gonna be into it? but he was sooo supportive & just like, “yeah i know exactly what you mean.” i honestly don’t think he has ever had a strong sexual attraction to E but we talked out all our poly family fantasies about her & also it opened the door to. a lot of kinks but w/e

- anyway all this happened in early 2020 and then like literally a few weeks before covid hit and everything locked down, E got a boyfriend (another coworker and our mutual friend). i remember the night she told me bc i had been like sweating nervously to go out for pie with her (we had like an almost weekly pie shop date at that point) and then i just went home and cried to my boyfriend. i had known that it was a very loooong shot (many times your friends don’t want to date you & your much older boyfriend - i understand that, it’s cool) but idk i was just crushed by it anyway.

- so whatever, pandemic, there was a lot of craziness. we all got laid off and the bf & i laid low and we zoomed her a few times but mostly we didn’t see her for like the better part of a year and a half. she brought us christmas presents one year, we brought her a huge amount of birthday shit, but like she was very worried about getting covid bc she has had a lot of savings destroying, life altering health issues in the past so we just didn’t see each other. anyway, she moved in with that boyfriend and then they broke up last summer and i remember when she called me to talk about it i was like? oh wow? i’m over her? like i wasn’t like hopeful or anything, i was like, i’m just a totally chill supportive friend?

- so ok, our work reopened, she and my bf started woking together again, i worked there for a little while during the holidays but am just doing school full time rn, but we started hanging out a little again. and then after we all got covid in early january, we started hanging out together a lot. and now i’m back in the same boat???? i have a big crush again

- but joke’s on me bc she has another boyfriend now. who lives in montreal, and she’s going to move to canada for a year (or potentially forever) to be with him??? so now. i’m??? suffering???

- the big reasons i’m suffering???

- 1) she wants to do mushrooms with me bc she is just struggling a lot with mental health and knows (from other friends as well as me) that it can fucking really change the game. (this is another story but yeah. i haven’t been depressed once since a pretty life altering mushroom trip i did last spring, and i have suffered recurring bouts of physically debilitating depression many many times a year since i was like 13 so. yeah.) that’s great for her and i want to help her but i’m a little worried if i’m on mushrooms with her i’m going to??? show my hand? tell her or otherwise communicate my feelings to her?? i was thinking of telling her outright beforehand & seeing if she still wants to do them, bc honestly i would be so upset with myself if i fucked up a possibility of emotional healing for her by confessing my feelings so. yeah. idk!!!!

- 2) last week when she was sleeping over, after our other friend left and my bf went to bed, i stayed up late downstairs with her and we talked about her impending move and her relationship and she started crying and saying she wasn’t sure if she was making the right decision? she really loves her bf i think but she was like, what if i can’t adapt to a new city? what if i get rid of all my shit and then things fall apart and i move back and have nothing? she said she wasn’t sad about leaving before bc she was barely seeing anyone anyway, but now that “we’re all hanging out again” she’s super sad to leave. and inside i’m just like!!!!!!!!!!!!!! stay with me!!!!!! but honestly it’s not workable bc she can’t afford to stay in our city now that everything’s so expensive, and it’s not like she could move in. we don’t have the space and we have my bf’s two kids half the week. if we had a house with a spare room then i’d confess my love for her on the spot, but we work at a bookstore. we're 2 adults & 2 kids living in a 2 bedroom apartment. we cannot afford a serious girlfriend???

- 3) ok last thing is that on the same night last week she said (to all of us) “honestly i know this is fucked up bc i keep having boyfriend after boyfriend but i think i’m only physically attracted to women. like i love the people i love emotionally, and trust is the most important thing to me, but i just. only really want to have sex with women.” and i’m like !!!!!!!!!!! screaming inside???? have sex with me and be in a loving romantic/platonic/familial relationship with my bf??? i’m down, he’s down???? he doesn’t need to have sex with you??? don’t move out of the country for someone you’re not physically attracted to???? (i know, i know, love is complex, not everybody prioritizes sex as much as i do, but??? maybe she would prioritize sex if she. had fulfilling sex? with me?) (sorry!!!! i’m just??? i’m suffering)

- 4) ok last thing is she said she told another mutual friend “jaye and john’s [bf] apartment is honestly one of the only places in the world where i feel safe” and that as she was saying it she started tearing up????

- ??????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’m ?? s u f f e r i n g

[thedisturbeddad]

That’s the Tooth

Dear Ms. Johnson,

I wanted to write something for Teacher Appreciation Week:

You have no idea (or probably you do) how much you’ve done for my son Skander. You might remember he had to miss school recently, when I had to take him to the dentist to have a baby tooth pulled. Back home, while his mouth was numb from injections (and he was drooling everywhere), it started feeling like those days he didn’t talk. We’d moved to Springfield when Skander was 4, and even as old as 5, he was still doing a lot of those “da da da” sounds.

But that’s years ago. Early Childhood tested Skander up on College St. when we first moved here, and Skander started kindergarten at Mark Twain with an IEP for his speech disability. It’s been so long ago it gets hard to remember what it was like to not understand him. But, after coming home from the dentist last week, I asked him if he needed anything, and we both started laughing when he said, “Muh nhhh ta ha.” I’m not being dramatic when I say it brought up old trauma with the kid. But then the most amazing thing happened: He started writing on a pad of paper what he wanted to eat!

I know a lot of people like to give awards to teachers: instead of actually finding a way to make teaching a lucrative career. I don’t have the power to do anything about that, and I don’t want to insult you with a meaningless ‘thank you’ either. I’m a veteran; so I know how that feels. I just wanted to say that I don’t know if you’re the best teacher in the world, but I do know that I couldn’t have gotten through the last 2 years without you.

And it’s not just because of Skander’s special needs. It’s Covid, and all the worries that it brought with it. I can remember how crazy it was when I started working from home early this year, (due to the fact my coworkers at Grizzly Industrial wouldn’t wear masks) and I was too worried about my mom’s life to try arguing with them. Even though the pandemic made me feel like I wasn’t in Kansas anymore (and all alone), Skander was at home with me. And you were there too! And we all tried, badly, to figure out how to make Zoom work, and we all tried to make it through the curtain.

I was doing my taxes this last January, hoping Biden would pass the stimulus he promised, and the TurboTax AI kept asking me if I bought supplies for my classrooms.

I couldn’t help thinking, “Why do teachers buy supplies for their classes?!”

I wouldn’t even bring doughnuts to my last job. Though I’ll admit they paid me a lot less than a public school teacher, while I expertly sold their expensive machines. This last February, Grizzly eventually had me listen to a recording of a customer who was urging me to go pick up my son from school at the end of my shift. I tried to tell him I couldn’t leave and had to continue taking his long order, even though that would have made me late. “It’s important” he’d said. That didn’t change the fact that I got a final warning for doing what he told me to (but I know now that he shouldn’t have had to tell me). In any case, I don’t work there anymore, and I’m not sure if I’ll find a job in time to make sure Skander and his brother go to Twain next year. But I wanted you to know that I understand what working for an employer who doesn’t pay you enough feels like.

But let’s get back to teachers appreciation week! And congratulations for getting a whole week, by the way! Must make you feel special. Veterans don’t even get that kind of guilt induced holiday. But society needs teachers more than veterans. Society probably feels that veterans have already been used up, but all you educators are still such juicy little morsels that people can throw into our American economy so we can pretend we’re not subsidizing child care for greedy companies (who pay parents, like me, such low wages). I’m sure Grizzly liked all the free babysitting you gave me. Don’t get me wrong. I know you guys do a lot of things, but let’s be honest about why y’all are considered essential workers.

But, all these things you do helped my son (and my family) make it through these last two years and got Skander to start talking. And, it’s not just you. It’s all of Mark Twain Elementary. It’s Ms. Richardson, his kindergarten teacher, and Mrs.Goodman the art teacher. It’s Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Wills who help him with his IEP. And Mr. B, who helps us with his stop sign in the mornings, as I drop Skander off each day. It’s everyone there.

You’ve all helped me communicate with my son and kept this city going through one of the worst pandemics in modern history. You guys are magical for how you adapted to these changes. And yet, magically, nothing ever changes for teachers and their wages. Don’t you just want to say ‘blah blah blah’ at how we all know this old story? I mean, it’s getting old to me.

But now I want to share a little magic of my own with you:

I’m not sure if Skander has told you, but we found out recently that half our family tree lived right here in Springfield. There’s a church cemetery north of town, called Mt. Comfort, which is basically a treasure trove of our DNA. I mean, if you think about all those dead bodies buried under there, which I try not to. But isn’t it amazing that we lived in a house, for over 2 years, that was a fifteen minute drive from that graveyard full of my dad’s ancestors?!

Skander and I don’t have my dad’s last name. My father’s name was Paul Reed, yet I took my mom’s last name of Barlow, because I never knew him growing up. Even though Skander and I have his Y chromosome, we were unaware that we descended from the Reeds in Springfield.

I’ve found a lot of colorful characters in our family tree, but my favorite Springfielder was Sherman Reed, a city firefighter, who was born in 1867.  Around the time Billy the Kid was being shot and killed, Sherman would have been a teenager when his family moved to Springfield. I first found the Reeds in the 1900 census records for Greene County, where Sherman’s dad lists himself as a blacksmith, working for the railroads. Sherman’s occupation was fireman. When I read old newspaper stories about him, Sherman talked about how he liked taking care of animals, particularly horses. You see. Back when Sherman was helping to keep everyone in town safe from fire, the people of Springfield weren’t sure about the new fangled fire engine they’d bought, so Sherman made sure that the horse drawn fire wagons were always ready to roll. Skander was the one to point out that the horses would have been scared of all that fire. We figure’d that Sherman must have been good at keeping the animals calm while putting out fires.

Sherman had a couple of kids (one of them my great grandfather), but got divorced before his kids were grown. I found him living in an apartment on College St. by himself when he was middle aged. I don’t know if you’ve ever read Harry Potter. If you have, then you may remember why Dumbledore always sent Harry back to the Dursleys each year.

I find it strange that most people don’t talk more about how cruel it was to send him back to those muggles every summer, but the old wizard explained to Professor McGonagall one time that it was because of an old magic spell his mother had placed on him (which ended up giving him his scar). Dumbledore talked about how older magic (based on blood and bone) were basically keeping Harry safe from He Who Could Not Be Named, and Harry needed to be housed with his kin each year to keep it working. Petunia was the only one Harry had left with his mother’s blood, you see.

You might think I’m weird, but it feels magical that Sherman once lived a few blocks from where Skander was first tested at the Early Development Childhood center on College St., before I even knew my family had lived here a hundred years ago.

I’ve included an article I found about Sherman, right before he died. He was 70 years old and had worked all his life without retiring. He’d never received a pension from Springfield. After all that invaluable service, he literally had nothing to show for it. If you read between the lines of the strangely familiar editorial piece I’ve included, you realize that, at age 70, Sherman was still hanging out at the firehouse like an old dog. Too old to do anything, but no one wanted to take him off the payroll because they knew he would have nothing to live on.

Isn’t that great? Thanks Springfield!

What was this whole letter about? You might be thinking. Well. I don’t have any way of really thanking you. And I’m not going to bring you fattening doughnuts as a gift either (I’m not saying anything to offend; I just know most people added a few pounds over the last couple of years).

But. I just wanted you to know. From experience. That, maybe, someday – some great granddaughter of yours might end up in Springfield, needing help. And when that future descendant of yours does…. If there’s still magic left in Springfield…. Then there’ll be somebody who works for the city (and who doesn’t get paid enough) who will be there to help. Cuz they’re hard workers who care. I know that doesn’t do you any good right now, but if Sherman is any indication: it’s all you’re going to get.

Thanks anyways,

Jeffrey Reed/Barlow

[ithinkitsdanny]

29 MARCH 2020

COVID THOUGHTS

Who would have thought we would live in such interesting times? Every day goes by, and what was strange yesterday seems like normal today. Remember when the worst threat to our sanity was the thought of Sarah Palin as our Vice President? 

I never once thought that I would live in days that would line the pages of future textbooks (or whatever it is we’ll be using to teach history to students in the future). I grew up in a boring suburb of tuCsoN, aRIzONa, and part of me thought that I would never leave that place, and nothing would happen, and that was life. But that was not the case. Things are always happening, and things just seem to keep getting stranger in certain ways. 

Most people my age remember waking up one day and getting ready for school, or maybe you were at school, and seeing on the news that two towers in New York had fallen over. We watched as our country decided to invade a country most of us didn’t know existed (don’t judge, I was only in second grade, and the only other places I knew about were from watching the 2000 Sydney olympics with my family the summer before). We watched as our president and congress decided it was necessary for us to invade another country that many of us knew nothing about. We saw friends go off to fight, and sometimes just die in the desert, for something that made very little sense to us. 

Michael Jackson died one day. A man accused of molesting children. Yet people mourned his loss. 

One day, in high school, my friends and I were planning to go to the mall and just hangout in the air conditioning, like high school and middle school kids. But on the radios, the TVs, the cell phones, came news that a young man, living only ten minutes from my house and pictured right next to my oldest brother in his yearbook, had shot up a grocery store where a local beloved congresswoman was holding a rally. Six people were killed. A federal judge died that day, Gabby Giffords, our representative, was shot, and a six year old girl was killed. They held the funeral at the church my mom would drag us to every Sunday. But nothing changed. People kept their guns and decided they were more important than the lives of the children and neighbors around them. To make things worse, a radical christian group, one that is still active today and that just recently visited Maui, came to protest the little girl’s funeral and even claimed that their god wanted her dead. 

Nothing changed. Hate speech is protected by the first amendment and people will die for it, and people will let a thousand children’s lives perish before anyone can “take our guns.”

There was some hope though. Our president was black. His middle name was even Hussein. There were people in office fighting for LGBTQIA+ rights and leaders states were slowly legalizing weed and gay marriage. We had a hispanic WOMAN put in the supreme court. There were plans to fight climate change (though they were weak). But there were still shootings popping up around the country and kids in the middle east were still being bombed daily. We’re still there, still bombing too. But for eight year, there was progress, and a lot of it. 

Then 2015 came. Who the fuck did we piss off upstairs to give us 2015? A reality TV show host started his presidential bid by calling mexican immigrants criminals, thugs, and rapists. And for the first time in my life I realized that I wasn’t white (my mom is white, my dad mexican heritage from Sonora and Northern New Mexico). I remember talking to my dad, and he even said to me that in his fifty-five years of life that he never had once thought that his last name or the color of his skin could have an effect on the way people saw him. People supported this man. 

I can understand why though, and it is totally ignorant for liberals or other left-leaning people like myself to not look into what made this orange man so popular. He was different. Democrats failed to improve the lives of working class peoples. Identity politics were taking the place of actual progress and stances, and Hillary was a person with a very scary past.

Trump won, and all the sudden Nazis were, like, back. People openly identifying as Neo-Nazis and white supremecists were all the sudden marching in the streets. A person was killed because a neo-nazi thought it would be okay to hit a protester with her car. But these people are protected by the first amendment and hate-speech is not a crime (though murdering someone with your car most definitely is in fact a crime). Counter protesters were out in the streets being harrassed, and some people were, like, totally fine with this guy being in office. 

Basically, a lot of weird shit has happened. To recap anything I missed:

     - Black kids are being shot by cops and the cops are getting off free sometimes even when there is video evidence that show their wrongdoing 

     -Republicans stole a supreme court judge from Barrack Obama, and then appointed a known rapist to the highest court in the country, and paid no attention to what this might mean for their daughters, sisters, and mothers

     -There was a financial collapse (how did I forget to mention this?) and people were forced out onto the streets while houses sat empty

     -England left the European Union

     -Somehow, people living on Native American reservations still don’t have electricity and most of us are just fine with that

     -Refugee children are being held in cages in America and sleeping on floors

     -And uhh, coral reefs are dying off, plastic is killing animals in our oceans, and human-made climate change is real. 

I am not saying this is anyone’s fault. Everyone is to blame for issues taking place. People my age buy cheap clothing from sweatshops and then throw it away a month after having it. I know tons of people that are my generation that do not recycle anything, and plenty that won’t even take the five minutes necessary to register to vote. My vehicle only gets 17 miles a gallon and I eat SO MUCH FOOD THAT IS SO BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT. So, we all suck in a way. 

But here we are now, in the year 2020, a number that sounds made up. It feels like the times we are in are totally made up. We are not allowed out of our houses. There is a deadly virus that is spreading across the world, and people are literally dying all over. At least twenty people I know are on unemployment at the moment, the gyms are closed, and it doesn’t seem likely that I will see my students again this year. 

But people seem united in a way. People are calling each other. Cousins are setting up Zoom meetings with family members from all over the world so that we can see each other. Aunties are sewing face masks for hospital workers to use. Restaurants are giving free food to laid-off service industry employees. People are singing to one another from their balconies. Waters around busy port cities are clean enough for animals to return. Air over China has cleared up. Cities and towns are doing whatever they can to keep small businesses afloat in these hard times. Co-workers are calling each other to check in. And for the first time in my life, it actually feels like people really love each other. This virus, though it sucks, has made our world look the closest it has ever looked to an actual real live Coca-cola commercial (you know the ones on TV where all the people are singing and dancing and holding hands just because someone popped open a can of diabetic sugar water). The world is paused.

.

.

.

In a way, it feels nice. 

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.

.

This situation sucks, but we are doing what we need to do: we are S L O W I N G D O W N. I am bored in my home, and I am sure most of us are, but I don’t know if I have ever seen people so united. I don’t know if I ever will again see this.

But for this moment in time which none of us will forget, we are showing each other the our best sides. We are showing what it means to really be human. 

We will get through this. This will make us all stronger. You will not give up on me. I will not give up on you. We will not give up. 

We are together. 

Thank you for reading and I hope you take some time to call your family members, your friends, your coworkers, and you neighbors today. 

Danny

Also, abolish ICE and eat the rich.