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CWs: mental health, suicide mention, family stuff, religion, death, food

We just got back from what will likely be our big vacation of the year. We went to Seattle for 5 days (Sun-Thurs), and it was really lovely. Got in Sunday afternoon, left late Thursday afternoon. Tuesday was rainy pretty much all day, which was actually pretty nice. We had rain jackets, so we just wore those and were totally fine. Glad we went to Bainbridge Island on Monday when it was nice and sunny. I’ll write at a little greater length soon, but wanted to write something tonight at least. We didn’t get in until almost 1am on Friday morning, and didn’t get home until almost 2am, so we were pretty tired the next day. We picked up the kitties from boarding first thing Friday morning and it seems to have gone well. The cat boarding place we’ve used for years, which was in town as well, is closing, so we had to find a new place. This place is maybe 15-20min down the road, so not terribly far, but not nearly as close as the other place. However, I think this trial run went very well and we’ll be using them again. They said the kitties were great and sounds like they had a good time!

I’m being a little hyperbolic here, but at the same time I’m not. I haven’t had a proper vacation in about 7 months (when we went to San Francisco), and I have all of next week off, as well as Memorial Day, so that will be lovely. I love my job, but it’s exhausting and draining even on the good days, so recharging and self-care are of paramount importance. And I’m grateful to have the time off, although this will clean out most of my available leave time, but that’s OK. After a particularly busy run of things, I often conjure up the memory of that Spaceballs scene where they’re running through the corridors, being pursued, and everyone leaps through the door just before it closes. That is a pretty accurate way to describe how I feel right now. I think there’s also a track on the Ecco the Dolphin soundtrack called “After the Storm,” so maybe that bubbled up to the fore of my consciousness as well, I dunno.

Some thoughts on friendship have been percolating lately. We saw friends last night for the first time in probably about a month (they tend to be quite busy, while we aren’t usually), and it was really nice to catch up. I don’t have many friends locally; some friends live elsewhere, and some friends I only know online. I’m okay with that, though. Quality over quantity any day. Reminds me of back when I was on Facebook, or Myspace, and everyone was so proud of having so many “friends” on there. I heard somewhere that you can only have meaningful connections with under 100 people or so, but can’t remember exactly what that figure was. I had a lot of “friends” on FB because people would add me, and the system encourages “collecting” friends rather than forging meaningful connections and actual friendships, in my opinion.

“Gladly reading,” a phrase that just popped up in my head. I’ve not been great about reading for the past few months, honestly. I’ve been playing a lot of videogames most days and/or watching TV instead. Years ago I used to read for 2-3hrs/night and just roll through books. I picked up Emily Wilson’s Iliad translation awhile back when it first came out in hardcover, and while it’s lovely, it’s daunting, and I think I’ve gotten a bit tripped up on reading and needed a break from it. Recently I read a collection of horror stories by the Denver Horror Collective called Terror at 5280’, which was really good. My spouse bought it for me as a gift a couple of years ago, and I just got around to reading it. After I finished that, I picked up Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves, which I’d been wanting to read for a long time, and again, which my spouse bought for me (in April 2021, per the gift receipt inside the book). It’s been a quick read so far and I don’t think it’ll take me that long.

There in the title, that’s the post.

CWs: brief politics/war mention