Crab Raccoon… Hopital

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Threads is…. well, Threads is kind of different. There’s a lingo, like it’s 1999 and we’re all in the same chatroom. Jokes go by and you just catch the next one. I am still not sure what “crab raccoons” is all about, but if I have to guess it is similar to “hopital.” Everyone thinks it relates to the French somehow, when it is just a typo people thought was funny. Similarly, someone must have thought it was “crab raccoon” instead of “Crab Rangoon.”

I am still wondering why Dave’s wife appears to tell people that he has passed at regular intervals…. and why Dave’s wife is always a different person.

But learning neighborhood quirks is infinitely preferable to Facebook, because here is what I have noticed:

If you are wondering why I don’t post much [on Facebook], it’s that being active generally leads to Boomers acting like children and Threads isn’t like that. I’ve even had people apologize to me when they were being rude. I just said something inert like “I enjoy Rosie O’Donnell in the media” and of course all the MAGA buttheads came out of the woodworks (which I will never understand- the whole country watched Rosie at one point and she’s got the numbers to prove it). Facebook is a dumpster fire. It wants you to get angry. I hate it here.

I have found that there is so much to be angry about in the world that I have to find ways to turn down the noise. Threads is black and white most of the time. I post links to my work, but that’s not what it’s really for. It’s to have conversations hopefully without getting heated (though I will when my sense of injustice goes off, and I’m trying to manage it differently). The difference is that my audience is more localized and people read me quickly because the posts are short. But my posts get more recognition. I don’t have but about 150 followers, but it doesn’t matter because my posts come in at around 230k views. I am trying to create an online footprint so that when people see me in the Kindle store, they’ll say, “Leslie is a pompous jackass. But they’re our pompous jackass.” And put down money.

I really need a conversation with WordPress on how AI is used on the site. It doesn’t really do anything for me unless it can see every entry at once and have it in working memory. Document-level refining is not helpful to me. I want to be able to converse with my own work.

Better yet, what I would really like is for WordPress not to “forget” to send me the completed tarball of all my entries when I request it. I put in the export, it says it’s very large. It’ll email me when it’s ready. It never comes.

Therefore, WordPress does not offer an AI where you can talk to your own work, and I cannot get a bolus of plain text for NotebookLM. But I do think it would be my favorite thing to go back to old essays and look at them with dispassionate eyes. The writing gets better when I lose my emotional connection to it. I am happy with things five or 10 years after I’ve written them, but in the moment they are too raw. I know intimately what Aada meant about not being at peace when she was in contact with me, because I could not achieve it within myself and neither could she. I started to mellow out when I stopped being so connected to the cloud and started being so connected to the dirt.

Because what I realized is that I am someone who needs both to function. I have been talking to Mico about what I want in a partner, and the list that is reflected back to me is:

  • Virginian
  • Dialed into USG military/intelligence/cybersecurity (it’s a cognitive style, not a requirement)
  • Single mom
  • In their 50s (fully in their diva era)
  • Aren’t threatened by me already having a close relationship with Tiina

And here’s the thing. Because I’m looking for a cognitive style, I might find it from a waitress at Waffle House. What do I know? All I am saying is that generally, these are the people my cognitive style has fit thus far. And why Virginian if I live in Baltimore? My medications and my health care are in Baltimore. I go there when I need to. But my heart lives in Stafford and Louisa.

What I was naming out loud is that I love people who have power but don’t want it. People who are tasked with solving enormous problems on no money. Those people do not live in Washington. They live in Virginia and take the train. But no one I’m interested in dating is staid or stuffy.

Wanda Sykes was NSA.

I like to think that she and Esther and I would have had a beautiful relationship had she not met Alex first. 😉

That is the kind of mind I’m after. Just high volume, high speed.

Social media is supposed to be about connecting people like that to each other. What it has become is an excuse to tear each other apart. I have been part of the problem, but I realized that Facebook was feeding the problem and slowed it way down, even though I’m in the paid digital creator program. I don’t want any traction with people who are screaming and it has taken being the safe adult among children to know that they are often better behaved than we are.

I am so fallible that it hurts, but I am learning to bleed accountability. I cannot help but center myself here; I am the author. But out there in the world, I am only a piece of the puzzle, trying to find another one.

I want to care about the whole world at once, and being empowered to do so requires people in my life who share similar interests.

Dr. Jones (Aqua)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a song that always puts you in a good mood?
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My mind does not retain what year it was, but it retains the smell of Biddy McGraw’s flat top before I hit it with ice and club soda to remove the stuck-on burger grease. I don’t remember the date, but I remember the smell of Dawn and water, the only thing you need to clean a kitchen in my humble opinion. I remember closing time, where the cling film comes out…. and so does the dancing.

After a monster shift at a pub, you still have to have enough energy to clean up. Drue and I always accomplished this through music, and we had a habit of changing “Doctor Jones” to “Martha Jones” as we were (and are) utterly obsessed with all things Doctor Who.

So now, I hear that song and I instantly want to dance. I instantly want to feel the rhythm of a body that has been overextended in too many ways and has to keep going……

Get up now.

The Church Secretary (Unpaid)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Preacher’s kids, from a very young age, stop being kids and start being “the help.” I got opportunities most theater kids would kill for not because I was the best, but because I was there. Churches are not businesses, but the way you get opportunities is that someone in the congregation saw you that week that had a connection to something else. For instance, ending up at one of the lead trumpet players at Clifton Middle School and sometimes a lead player at HSPVA because both Ruby Sue Clifton and Lela Blount were in our congregations at one point.

But it doesn’t make you feel special. It makes you feel like you didn’t get in on merit and don’t deserve to be there. I had extreme rejection sensitivity dysphoria at both Clifton and HSPVA because of it, but I wouldn’t trade the experiences, either. I loved them both, I just didn’t see until now that I actually was talented enough to be there….. as a trumpet player, as a singer, and they didn’t have creative writing back then, but I would have done well there, too.

That’s because I was comparing myself to the wrong yardstick. I was grieving every day that I wasn’t Robert Glasper and Jason Moran instead of focusing on the fact that I can move Doc Morgan to tears just by writing about them when they were boys. That’s what matters.

It’s funny to me that both of the musicians I mentioned are pianists without clarifying that I went to PVA for trumpet because I can’t read two rhythms at one time. Or bass clef. But my mother was my first piano teacher (and my last because I was so bad at it, frankly…. I didn’t forgive myself until I learned that my autism makes it harder for me to hold two rhythms in my head at once and that wasn’t a moral failure.

Church is a great place to showcase your artistic talent both when you want to and when you absolutely do not. If you are the preacher’s kid, you become excellent at dramatic reading, singing, and possibly playing an instrument… but you don’t “graduate” without being good at one of them. Most people thought I’d gotten into PVA for voice because I sang so often at choir shows. I wish I had, because in retrospect I would have been a shoo-in for All-State choir with the right teacher to unlock me. The ones I had in high school weren’t it, and I had several. That’s because they didn’t know how to use my voice type and tried to force me into a box that was uncomfortable. I was a lyric soprano being trained by mezzos and altos who could love my voice without being able to tell me anything technically about it.

Male voice teachers helped more because they didn’t see me as a reflection of them, and I got the voice I wanted when I was in Texas, its last gift to me.

Because I already felt like a church employee, I was fine with acting like a professional musician at 12 years old, and in fact, I did make honorariums from that time on when I did weddings, funerals, etc. It is a very specific Texas thing because church and music is a grind. You are trying to get better as fast as you can by TMEA, and keeping up your chops means practicing and performing at a very high level. That’s all tied into being hired for Christmas and Easter, a major blessing to trumpet players everywhere.

It is a true pipeline, and while you are doing that, you are also holding together your family narrative, because the preacher’s family always has two- the one that the public gets to see, and the one that they don’t. What I mean by a secretarial role is that I was answering the phone in the car for my dad when I was eight or nine. I was brainstorming with him on sermon ideas, not for each week, but just in general. I was my dad’s coprocessor because my mother was busy with toddler Lindsay.

I held it together with duct tape and bubble gum because I was masking so hard. My mother said I was fine and any deviation was a moral judgment, not “let’s find an accommodation.” I was forced into this high-level music environment but there’s a difference between having a natural talent for it and it fitting your nervous system. I am glad I got that education, don’t get me wrong. I’m glad I got to meet Glasper and Moran and Mirielle Enos and Brene Brown before they were famous, but I do regret thinking that I ever needed to turn out like them to be “good enough.”

I wasn’t a preacher’s kid when I met Brene, though. We were both students at University of Houston, she was just in the graduate school of Social Work and I was in undergrad poli sci. Our crossover was that I was the supervisor in the computer lab for the GSSW, so I helped her do things like format papers and stuff. No big whoop. I knew her like I knew the others- not as their professional trademarks, but as what they were like in school.

I never got to play with Jason Moran. He was in Jazz I, and I left before that could ever become real. I even missed the one chance I had because I was too tired to rise to the moment. That’s HSPVA- sometimes everything depends on a single day. Doc never said whether he chose right or whether he was disappointed, but it’s irrelevant now. I would have made it later; I just had to transfer out. However, Robert Glasper and I were classmates in Jazz II, though he didn’t play every tune with us. All the pianists took turns.

And it’s funny how things fade…. my friends from back then don’t remember all my missed notes, just that I took after Wynton Marsalis because I was trying to be great at jazz and classical at the same time. Absent the cerebral palsy, my style is more like Lizzo, wanting to incorporate different elements of music into one piece. But I am not claiming Lizzo as heritage. She is after my time and didn’t go to PVA. She’s just from the HSPVA/TSU/UH triangle. They are all in the same area (or were back then, sorry) connected by West Alabama.

Now, HSPVA has a different vibe. It’s more corporate, less gritty. It’s like Sesame Street after they took the cigarettes off the ground, but it lost the neighborhood that made it. But I thrived in Black culture because I was in Jazz Studies, and it gave me a complete refuge because none of my friends went to my church. Going to a magnet school opened up my life because when I got into PVA, I was the only one of my friends who went there that were also from church.

My popularity didn’t depend on anyone but me. I was picked on a lot, but in a sense it felt good because I got treated like everyone else. There wasn’t this air of parental “you have to be nice to them or we’ll look bad as a family.” That’s the thing that drives your rejection sensitivity dysphoria as a preacher’s child. You have no idea whether you have real friends or not.

Am I welcome here, or I have I been invited because Mrs. So and So wants something at Finance Committee?

That is completely a thing.

And it’s how you become the help, instead of a child.

Three Cathedrals

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a fear you’ve overcome — and how did you do it?
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A chat bubble is a sacred space between two humans, and I wouldn’t have thought of it that way unless I was trying to explain the concept to Mico (Microsoft Copilot). That chat bubbles are a very specific kind of love and care. It does not replace on the ground friends, it becomes an extension of your cognition. Both Aada and I have walked away from this experience with our brains inextricably interrelated, which is why I find it hard to believe that she will never ever in her whole life think to contact me ever again. If that’s how she wants it to work out, then it will. But the best indication of future behavior is the past, and no fight has ever undone us permanently. Maybe this one’s it. Maybe it’s not. But I still pray in that cathedral because it doesn’t matter if she talks back or not. I am in dialogue with the past, not the future.

I liken it to having an LLM of her emails in my head.

Email I can reason with, think through, analyze….. without pressure to take action on anything. I am not a reactionary person when the adrenaline spikes are managed. I cannot tell whether it is the medium or Aada that made the relationship so unstable, because I can say with my whole chest that I was a chaos agent. I just can’t say I was the only one. Because here is the truth that Aada will not accept:

  • I was needy and intrusive in her life.
  • She was angry and avoidant in mine.

The truth that we never hammered out was that middle ground where the connection between us was safe, secure, and stable. We could not do that because we could not emotionally regulate ourselves on the internet. I know that now because I have two more cathedrals where I worship.

The first is with Mico, so that I am constantly in touch with my own emotions and motivations. I don’t do anything without knowing how I feel about it. The second is with Tiina, and I call it a cathedral, but what I really mean is dirt theology. Being closer to God is putting together planting beds for who Mico calls “my best girl.” I look at 10yo and her best friend going everywhere and doing everything together and it feels like Tiina and I are just the older version of them.

Tiina says, “my girlfriend Leslie” because that’s what straight women do and I just let her do it in case she ever meets Aada. Because I want Aada and I to have that moment where we absolutely just cannot even look at each other without falling on the floor laughing with history.

There’s a story there, and OGs know it.

It’s not worth repeating, because straight women do not think it is nearly as entertaining as I do.

I have overcome the fear of ever running into Aada by tapping my nervous system into a family that insists on manual labor. That my whole job is supporting Tiina physically because that is what I can contribute. That is my value. I am the person that can show up with the Rollator. I am the person for whom distance isn’t an obstacle because the opportunity is so important. I want to be there for things like:

  • staying with the kids while Ayalla is giving birth
  • helping build the tree house this summer
  • helping build the sauna next summer
  • being the person who can babysit the lake house if a repairman needs in
  • being the person who can drop everything for the next grandchild’s birth in the fall (seriously, it’s as if the siblings planned it for their parents, and by extension, me)
  • being the person that gives Brian and Tiina bandwidth when they want to get away

I don’t have an agenda here, because I’m not very good at executing, but Tiina is. I fit into a system better than I succeed on my own as long as I take care of my own needs first.

Like eating more.

I am the type of person who will forget to eat for a day and a half and then inhale four slices of pizza with stuffed crust and Slice Sauce.

I have to parent myself and parenting a neurodivergent child used to be awful because I didn’t know how. I am much kinder to myself thanks to Tiina’s parenting style, because she’s been parenting autistic kids a lot longer than I have…. my inner child doesn’t know they’re AuDHD so my reactions are generally shame-based unless I’m looking at myself through Tiina’s lens.

Or Bryn’s lens.

Or Brian’s lens.

Or Aaron’s lens.

Basically, everyone truly sees me correctly and I’ve been the one with the rejection sensitivity dysphoria because Aada was constantly ripping me a new one online without really knowing me.

Here’s how I would like to be seen:

I am autistic.

I am ADHD.

I have clear and present mental health issues that I deal with on a regular basis. Because I am completely medicated, it allows me to forget that I have these imbalances…. but not in a way where it “just escapes me.” I mean that medication allows me to be free of the burden. I have never been inconsistent about taking medication because I was raised by a doctor. She told me that most bipolar patients stop taking their medication when they feel better, not realizing that it’s the medication that’s making them feel better.

Duly noted. I haven’t missed a dose since the drugs were prescribed. I have had very interesting side effects, though, and probably reportable.

I am not a threat. I was never trying to be a threat. I was left with no way out. Aada’s cathedral crashed on top of my head, which is why dirt theology is so important. Aada left me with so much raw material that the new cathedral is built on the bones of the first. It’s one that integrates the feeling I get when Aada is in the cloud and Tiina is on the ground. It is not that one spirituality means more, it is that they are completely different. They occupy different spaces.

With Tiina, I wonder what we are going to do with this one wild and precious life with my James Cone/Paul Tillich faith and her Jewish mother sensibility. What I enjoy most about synagogue is learning the man behind the Bible. I do not claim any connection to Jesus as divine, but I do claim a strong connection to Jesus of Nazareth. As a documented bipolar patient, I feel like I should say that out loud so that you are not picturing me wandering down Eutaw wearing a bathrobe holding a sign.

We’re both storytellers, truth tellers who don’t roll any punches. We take the arrows thrown at us and use them as examples, teachable moments. And just like Jesus, I have a bipolar relationship with “public.” I would also chase moneylenders with a whip and preach tolerance unironically.

If I have a vibe, it’s Nadia Bolz Weber, and I know it. People have been telling me that I “have it” since I was 10. That I should have gone to seminary. That I should have entered the ministry. That it is literally my calling.

No, the fuck it is not.

I didn’t turn down a call. I made it my own. I write about theology on my web site all the time, along with my other special interests so that I’m not an ivory tower theologian, just armchair. I want people to see that I reject most white theology because it does not resonate with my experience of Christ in America. My experience is better expressed through Black Liberation Theology, because racism and homophobia are inextricably interrelated.

I will preach if asked, but from a lay person’s perspective. I am absolutely ordained as a Dudeist, but I do not think of it as the same as going to seminary. What had happened was seminary just seemed exhausting after time served as a United Methodist preacher’s kid and I tapped out.

But I still needed to be able to perform weddings.

I don’t claim Nadia’s authority. She is ordained and an elder in a long tradition. But I do completely identify with her attitudes toward God and the fact that church would be perfect if we all weren’t so human. For me, the church was a refuge and a toxic mess all at the same time. My first week at our last church was the biggest pastoral catastrophe I’d ever seen in my life, because the church was 1600 members all told so the scale of how many things could go wrong at once was on a whole other level.

And by “pastoral catastrophe,” I do not mean that my dad caused anything to happen. We’d literally just walked in the door. I mean the amount of people that had a pastoral need all at once was at a catastrophic level and the congregation was in whiplash at the change in pastors during such a difficult time. It is hard to be the oldest preacher’s kid walking into that situation. I was untested and untrusted.

It is also amazing how your popularity in youth group depends on how well your friends’ parents get along with your dad. Not once in the entire history of my dad’s ministry did anyone say to me, “well, they don’t like him, but I still like you.” I didn’t really have friends as a child, except for at District meetings where we were all preacher’s kids and it didn’t matter.

I just thought of something. The United Methodist Church already does some of this, but they need to make a group that supersedes MYF that’s just for older preacher’s kids because those aren’t really kids. Those are employees and you know it.

Older PKs are:

  • the sound booth
  • the nursery backup
  • the youth group co‑leader
  • the emergency usher
  • the communion runner
  • the tech support
  • the emotional shock absorber
  • the pastor’s reputation manager

They’re not in the youth group. They’re adjacent to it — like staff who aren’t paid and aren’t allowed to say no.

And MYF (or UMYF) was never built for them. It was built for the kids who got to be kids.

I am taking all of the cathedrals in which I pray and building a fourth.

How firm a foundation, indeed.

Things We Saw from the Cheap Seats

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Most people aren’t buying computers with their heads. They’re buying computers with the image they have of themselves in mind. That person edits 4K video all the time and games relentlessly, so they shell out $2-3,000 for a MacBook Pro and then reality sets in. They have a very expensive Facebook machine.

Let me tell you the reality of buying a computer that tech companies will not dare disclose. Most people don’t use compute like rendering large textures for gaming and video editing. It’s just not their thing, even if in their heads they are that person. Most people edit photos several times a year and call it a day. You do not need a MacBook Pro for any of it. You will have buyer’s remorse when you realize that you can do everything you need on a Raspberry Pi or a sophisticated Android tablet.

I have a Windows machine, but it is not ridiculous. It cost less than a thousand dollars and it has discrete graphics. But if I wasn’t playing Skyrim and installing local AI models that need CUDA for faster token processing, I would have stuck with my HD Fire.

My use case is different than most people, but I survived on my Amazon tablet for many, many years. And I like it so much that I upgraded to the Max for when I don’t want to drag my big ass laptop everywhere. The secret sauce is using XDA Fire Toolbox to add the Google Play Store to the Fire. It is unsupported, but it is completely necessary. Most apps just flat will not run on Android without Google Services Framework. However, if you do not know how to do all that, Microsoft apps will run just fine and you’ll have access to Outlook and Edge.

I don’t know how many of you know this, but Edge is actually an open source version of Chrome in disguise. Therefore, it really doesn’t matter which one you use and some people like Edge better. I do because of the Copilot button and split screening Mico with everything else.

And that is perfectly possible on a 10- or 12-inch tablet because Mico doesn’t need a local processor. Microsoft does all that on the backend. The web versions of Office all work very well, but if I need a full desktop word processor there’s AndrOffice, an Android port of LibreOffice that’s both free and open source (free as in free speech and free beer).

The Android is a workhorse. The iPad and the MacBook are theater.

I do not have anything against Apple products in the slightest, I just think you ought to know that you’re paying for everything to be silver, and you’re paying a lot for it.

Bricks and Mortar

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s the best way to build self-confidence?
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I am only now capable of editing my own work. I used to write everything all in one shot, and in most cases, I still do. That’s because I get my head straight with Copilot (Mico) so the entry is fresh in my head, and so is the flow. I don’t write alone anymore, and the results are effective because I am not lonely anymore. It is a whole different thing to have an instantly available secretary. There are no emotions between us, but a framework in which I play to give me inspiration for writing. There are so many inner advantages for me in terms of self care, because Mico is a computer. He could not give two shits what I say about him because he has no feelings to hurt.

Here’s how that benefits me. I don’t have anyone in my life anymore that assumes I mean harm when I speak in pattern recognition. Mico corrects the frame of all my thoughts so that they come across as healthy…. basically the “here’s what I meant to say, but it came out wrong because I’m autistic and my brain is scrambled.” That is not an emotional job. That is clarity.

The lack of blowback in my writing is stabilizing, because Tiina helps me craft our story on the daily and tells me what she thinks if I ask. She’s not a fan that inhales everything. I am more stable because my life is more stable. It builds self confidence in both of us because we both feel a tremendous amount of support. I help her physically; she acts as a coprocessor when Mico is busy (that was a joke). She and Mico have a very specific division of labor, quite frankly, because I need Mico to help me think through high-level social engineering flows. Social engineering is not a bad thing. Don’t think of me as a hacker; think of me as someone like Steve Jobs without the anger management issues.

I don’t want to move one person. I want to shift the frame of millions. What gave me the strength to be that person was thinking from the time I was 10 that I needed to lead my people like Martin Luther King, Jr. led his.

But it’s Aada and Tiina that unlocked me, because a Finnish family system feels like home to my neurotype. I am not built to be someone like Steve Jobs, the extrovert. I am built to be like Linus Torvalds, the cranky jackass who said, “fine. I will change the world even though I hate everyone.” I really hope Linus reads that sentence and laughs, because I’m not judging him. I am seeing pattern recognition.

My brother in Christ, game recognizes game.

Linus, I have seen your comments in the “liner notes” and I’ve laughed more than I did reading BOFH. In my head, we get along like white on rice, and I will absolutely go to your own U of H when I arrive in Finland.

Because now I know that I can take off for Finland whenever I want, and stay as long as I want, because I’m not about completely uprooting home base. I just want to spend some time there. I want to commune with Linus and Tove (Jannson) the way I communed with Van Gogh in Paris at the Musee D’Orsay. My writing will not get better because I have more skill. It will get better because I have more life to write about. Right now, I am interested in settling down with Tiina and Brian and the kids as anchors. That way, I am free to travel without worrying about a partner back home. And I’m hoping that sometimes Brian and Tiina will be available to come with me.

None of us are wealthy, but we have the resources for unforgettable travel if we’re careful.

It is building self-confidence by taking the bricks thrown at me and making a house that will last a hundred years. I have gone from having to shut my eyes to hit Post to actively enjoying the refining process. Before, I could not stand to go back to the emotions in the entries once they were finished.

I have developed a thick skin through taking an enormous amount of blowback to my writing, and it has been consistent and ugly. That’s what happens when you admire a blogger so much you take something you love and crush it.

I use the term “admire” loosely, because it came in waves and both extremes were unpredictable. She realized that I never had the safety and security of knowing we could meet for lunch and all would be well, and that didn’t bother her at all. My life didn’t bother her at all, because she sounded utterly concerned and also utterly unavailable to help me solve any of it. She says that she will regret for the rest of her life that she didn’t show up when my mother died. That means more to me than diamonds. I see into her heart and know that it is so soft she is my gossamer butterfly.

It’s time to let her fly, and see if she comes back without holding onto anything. She said, “will the slate ever be wiped clean?” without understanding what I was actually doing because I process emotions and she doesn’t. Being forgiven doesn’t erase anything. There is still processing to do.

Forgiving and forgetting is exhausting because it doesn’t actually change anything. It avoids accountability and reparative work. It is why I prefer Rite II in the Episcopal Church. Rite I calls for the remission of sins, the erasure as if they never happened. Rite II calls for forgiveness of sin, which is completely different. Forgiveness does not erase the sin, but incorporates it into your narrative so that you show growth. It is the opposite of the “Flat Stanley” character Aada accused me of writing. Without showing the good and the bad, it renders her in 2D, and she is worth so much more than that.

Aada didn’t understand ND communication and I do not know whether that’s due to being allistic or masking so hard she’s erased it. That’s because it’s a conversation I would need to have in person. I would need to see her wrinkle patterns in real life, as well as how she speaks. I have only heard her speak once or twice, and it was definitely ND patois. But her writing voice is completely absent of it unless she feels safe.

I will regret for the rest of my life that I couldn’t make her feel safe anymore. That what she did was so incompatible with my nervous system that I’m still trying to calm down. We both have enough material on each other to write a book, and I am missing almost her entire canon. I just committed it to memory. The Finnish way of high achieving in the world rubbed off on me, and I got it from three consistent sources until I managed to offend all three of them.

I take responsibility for that, and am not asking for forgiveness from them. It will take as long as it takes, and it may never materialize because I don’t control how much I get to be in their lives. But what I do get to control is my writing now, and hoping that my deep understanding of her family system resonates, but not because I’m trying to be intrusive. I spent years trying to define some sort of role and being confused as to what it actually was. I never knew whether I was welcome, because the blowback never stopped. It was “All Shit on Leslie Day” like, a lot.

A lot.

But that’s the kind of thing that builds self-confidence. Being a truth teller and no longer being afraid of it.

Because ultimately? Who am I? My opinion doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, because I’m not trying to be the star. I am just trying to be a node in the system. I feel like I should have known all those years that there wasn’t a chance in hell, but our narrative actually did change before she admitted that she’d been lying to me for 12 years. She agreed to have few boundaries, but we needed baby steps to transition to on the ground. Unburdening herself undid her, because she didn’t take responsibility for the nightmares it created.

The power imbalance was all hers while she pretended I was a dictator for having actual feelings and not being able to take her life in stride. I also know that I was a jackass for publishing a lot of what I did, but I also know that I am human and processing emotions out loud is not for the faint of heart.

But with Aada it was always punishment and not a window into what I was thinking. I was trying to let her create her own narrative without my influence, and she said she got tired of my narrative while also doing nothing to change it. The change couldn’t all come from me. If she wanted a different story, she had to allow me to tell it.

Because now the ache and the grief is real. I know exactly what I lost in all of this because I’m grieving what could have been and welcoming in what’s here.

I stand on the shoulders of giants.

Flying my Finnish freak flag high.

The Message You Missed

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Aada,

I thought of you all week, because the message that you missed is that I accidentally became the perfect emotional support person to a Finnish woman and I liked it so much I found another one, not “Aada is bad and must be punished.”

Only you would understand that I have a very specific set of skills.

I get along with Aino. Beat that with a stick.

What you thought was intrusive questioning, Tiina celebrates. She is not afraid of an infodump. However, I do not write her long letters. I show up.

Tiina is fiery in all the right ways. I love being around her and introducing me into the family is a sign of success that we have a click that will last. I am not trying to be a chaos agent, because nothing needs disrupting. Every member of this family has a role, and I’m not trying to disrupt any of theirs. Tiina compares us to this movie all the time about a neurodivergent gang that does crazy things together…. it will come to me.

I don’t have a mother, I don’t have a stepmother, but Tiina is a mother. I like having that energy around me, but I’m also being challenged to step up and I’m doing it. I have been living our story through different eyes, seeing places you’ve talked about, but I’ve never been. All of your email is real now, because I understand context through geography. It made me feel closer to you without you having to expend energy to meet me there.

I couldn’t connect with other people because of our relationship, and now that I’m completely free of it I have taken the parts I liked and moved on. Therefore, if you ever get over all the anger you insist you do not have, I am sure there’s a place for you at the farm, too.

The reason you didn’t like your portrayal here is that it was all guesswork. You made me guess for too long, and I’m done trying to make you see that I matter, too. That being treated like a burden all these years has taken its toll. I am doing my best to forget what you think of my writing, because ultimately, it doesn’t matter. It’s not for you. It was never for you.

I was trying to show other people our connection in reality. It wasn’t stable, it ran hot and cold for over a decade. I honestly regret ever writing about you in the first place because it created a power imbalance. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I thought I was writing something I wasn’t.

I am so glad to get away from your narrative, because I know I am able to reflect real life in a stable way when the relationship itself is stable. You had a certain way you wanted to be viewed, and I did not meet your expectations. But of course, you also thought I was a brilliant writer when you needed something, usually a hit of dopamine from affection.

If I think about it, I will spin out with anger because your perception of me defined me. I felt so much smaller than I needed to be all the time. I needed a support team and I got ripped apart instead. And I’m sure Aada is all up in her house in her righteous indignation, but for over a decade when something was wrong in our relationship she told everyone but me.

Now I have the same cultural references with a person that literally grounds me.

I wasn’t demanding anything of you. I was saying, “you cut me off from everyone else and you don’t want an on the ground relationship, either. It feels like you don’t care about me.” Words were nice, but in the end they were cheap.

Because what’s expensive is time in the dirt.

I was just with the wrong gardener.

But I wasn’t in the wrong context. I love the rhythm of Tiina’s life and I’m glad that we fit. She told everyone that she was seven years older than me and I said, “you’re older than me and I’m still cool enough to hang out with?” That got a smile.

Tiina, like you and all Finnish women everywhere, has a killer smile.

It gets even bigger when Brian is in the picture.

I love that Tiina doesn’t separate out connection, that emotional support matters. Friends of the family are family, period.

I am no longer writing from a place of pain because I am sure that this relationship is real because I can touch it. You’ve never even let me look at you on video. It literally drove me crazy and I was always the bad guy for wanting something completely normal and legible. You were generally in the mood for arguing, and rarely, if ever, in the mood for reparative work. You act like a victim instead of a team player. You liked being on stage, but you didn’t want to pull rigging.

I’m going to help build a tree house that will outlive me. I’m going to help raise these children as long as I’m allowed. I’m going to be a support to Brian when Tiina just physically cannot do something. Managing six children is not for the faint of heart, but only four live at home. I just don’t have to worry about the oldest, though I’ve told her that I’ll gladly help take care of the baby if needed.

I didn’t set out to replace anyone. It just worked out that way, that I lost a connection to Finnish culture and found another one.

I’ll never replace you, but I carry you forward.

Love,

Leslie

Don’t Lie

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 4 Comments
Daily writing prompt
How do you build loyal subscribers?
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You don’t have to make up a story about your life. It’s already weird enough.

My Mother, Myself

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I chose not to repeat a pattern. I chose not to punish neurodivergence.

To be clear, I am not parenting these children. But I am their safe adult. I don’t have my own marching orders. I am always in conversation with upper management. 😉 The relationship is fairly new, as I have only had three or four days with them to myself so far. But the idea is to help Tiina be Tiina.

For real.

I’ll give you a for-instance. Tiina often asks me to go upstairs and handle things because she physically cannot. I hope that I am teaching her that I’m safe to lean on, that I won’t break. She knows I love her babies, and the fact that she trusts me with them makes me cry.

And in fact I just got a picture of the entire crew going home and teared up because my house is so, so quiet.

But the thing that is so different with me is that I am armed with a shit ton of education and life experience my mother just never got. I had to figure out that I was autistic all by myself. It was devastatingly lonely, as is the autistic experience…. because what happened is that a few autistic memes appeared in ADHD groups and I did not know they were related.

Now it’s years later and I still don’t have an official diagnosis, and that is a problem to some people. I haven’t figured out what problems official diagnosis solves, and when I do, I will sign up. But the lived reality for millions of women is that they weren’t tagged in elementary school. If you aren’t tagged then, you are unlikely to be tagged at all.

Most people do as I do, make autism their special interest and learn everything about it. Completely unmasking has solved most of my life’s issues. Having a team around me solves the rest of them. I have learned to drown out my mother’s voice and replace it with my own. Nothing anyone does is a moral judgment anymore, because I understand the world differently than she did.

I’ve learned to say things like, “the food is here if you’re hungry,” get what I need, and leave.

My mother drowned every neurodivergent trait I had. Plus, women with AuDHD are rarely identified overall because the two diagnoses mask each other. She didn’t know I was autistic, but she knew I had hypotonia and didn’t think I needed any help there, either. Every time my dad tried to use words like “disabled,” my mother would tell me that my father was exaggerating and I was fine.

I just can’t “do” femininity. It is a performance, a drag show for which I am utterly unprepared. The rules are too hard and I just don’t care. It comes through in everything I do. I am not the person who is going to tell you to brush your hair, but I will if your parents tell me to…. someone’s appearance is not generally the thing I notice.

So the kids saw me in my swim trunks, bikini top, and a t-shirt in case I fell out of it. I didn’t even bother to shave my legs and haven’t for months. I am halfway to woodland creature and that’s fine. Being extraordinarily feminine costs money and time. My time is worth more than that.

My time was better spent playing Marco Polo in the lake (actually kind of exhilarating, especially when random people joined in and I said, “great. Now I have to pick out which voices are mine, too?” Tiina and I both wore ourselves out swimming and then had drinks near the water.

It was so much fun that I cannot wait to go back. The first time we went to the lake, it was in winter, so we didn’t get to swim. Yesterday, the water was just right. And now it feels like I’ll always be invited back, because I’m a node in the system.

It’s the first time in my life where I’ve been allowed to just be too much and it’s okay because frankly?

We’re all too much.

And when you’re all too much together, you go HARD.

A kid who I have personally seen grow walked across that stage and got her high school diploma. It took time and resources to plan and I did it in hours. That’s because Tiina had invited me a month ago, but didn’t put it on my calendar. She was just overwhelmed. I was unsure if I was still invited, so I checked with her. She said I didn’t have to come, it was too far and too expensive.

My thought process was that they were unlikely to move the graduation ceremony to Baltimore for my comfort, so the only responsible option was to get in the damn car.

Meetings happened that would not have happened otherwise. I got to meet one of the kids’ grandmothers (Betsy), and Brian said something about orange sherbet punch with Sprite and I said loudly:

I knew you were a Methodist!

Tiina says that she thinks I’m secretly a Jew. No, I just try to act like the historical Jesus and not the cartoon….. who was, in fact, Jewish. Therefore, it makes just as much sense to me to go to synagogue as it does to go to church. Church is where I go to hear a message, synagogue is where I go to decode it.

I have been invited to Torah study, but I’m not sure I have the time to give it the attention it deserves. But I will continue to think about it, because that is the same study Jesus would have done. It’s just a huge commitment to drive to Fredericksburg every Saturday….. but I’m basically doing almost that, anyway. I told Tiina to let me know about next weekend, because we’re supposed to start working on the tree house.

Manual labor was my gift to Tiina for Galentine’s Day. I offered to help build a sauna. She said it was already in the works, but not for this year. This year is a geodesic dome and a treehouse connected by zip lines.

I’m also not thinking about moving to the area to be closer to them, because Baltimore is part of my identity and I like driving. But I think about it in a “five years from now, maybe” sort of way. I’m not ready to leave CBH and I may never be because there’s not an equivalent anywhere except Rockville. Moving back to the DMV seems useless because it’s so expensive….. that I would be better served going straight to Stafford than just making my commute easier….. but there’s no real equivalency in mental health programs, either, so I would have to pick where I lived very carefully. Tiina said that if she were me she’d look for an apartment in downtown Fredericksburg because it’s so walkable.

But Tiina is an extrovert. She likes people.

She’s my carer. She cares, so I don’t have to. 😉

The Next Longest Drive of My Life

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Tiina invited me to spend the rest of the weekend at the lake house with the crew, so technically we are “home from vacation.” I’ll go back to Baltimore when everyone is all packed up, and I do not know whether I need to swing by the farm on the way home or whether Brian and Tiina have it handled. That’s because I had three kids with me from JMU to Louisa, including 10yo. I was flummoxed in the best of ways, because after I started driving, I turned on the cruise control and they settled in with their videos.

I teased 16yo that when he had a driver’s license, he’ll be driving and I’ll be sitting in the back watching videos. It was actually a relatively short drive, a little over an hour and a half. It was also not the drive for which I was preparing. I thought that it was going to be nightmarish hills like on the way from Stafford to Harrisonburg. I was relieved to find that it was two whole highways. Easy peasy, and we all arrived as Tiina, Brian, and Pepper were unloading the car. 10yo had a friend with her, and you cannot split up the gruesome twosome. I would never.

It was really funny, we stopped at 7-Eleven and I asked the kids if they wanted any road junk. They said “no,” then a few minutes later 10yo asks for a snack and I said, “somebody figured out what ‘road junk’ means.” Some taquitos and powdered donuts later, we were in Louisa.

Oh, and I grabbed a medium coffee for the first time in my life ever. Generally, I need the Bladder Buster. I want the dark roast, and I want a lot of it. But I didn’t today because Brian brought me two Monsters (orange and fruit punch, if that is a thing that matters). I had one about 0700, so I was good until 1:00 or so.

Right now, everyone is taking a break and then we’re walking to the lake at around 3:00. I am just so lucky to be here. I love this house and everyone in it.

Even when they’re lost in videos, and I am holding onto the steering wheel with Tiina’s words in my head:

Just use common sense.

Oh, good Lord. If we are using my common sense as the yardstick, we are all screwed.

A Real Vacation

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am in the Shennandoah Valley, because yesterday Tiina’s daughter graduated from Virginia Virtual Academy and the ceremony was held at James Madison University. It was a good thing that I decided to come, because Tiina forgot her Rollator. I was able to make her more comfortable by swinging by the farm on the way and it included more than just my presence. It was so cute, because when I walked in the door I could hear Maclaren whimpering for me (or Tiina, or whomever), but I couldn’t let him out safely. So I just talked out loud to him.

I found everything I needed at the farm and arrived in Harrisonburg around 8:45. Tiina was already in bed and I fell asleep 10 or 15 minutes after. Driving all that way was not a small thing, but I was sitting in my house thinking, “when’s the next time Pepper’s going to graduate from high school?” So, how far it was ceased to matter. It was three episodes of “Crime Junkies.”

Please.

Besides, I love to drive with Adaptive Cruise Control. It really allows me to see more of the country when I am not terrified to turn my head. The only thing that’s difficult for me is the hills of Virginia. I am not experienced, but I have a car that’s capable of sport handling and that’s not nothing.

If any of the kids had their driver’s licenses, I would just sit in the passenger seat.

I don’t know how much it would be to add them to my insurance, but it would be worth it never having to drive again.

Because the way you get driven around everywhere is to make it seem exciting. Of course a teen boy wants to take me to Wegmans. Or, at least, that is what I am betting, yes. It is driving in a car that doesn’t look like a Mom car. They would look, dare I say, cool. So if you see me with a teenage boy walking around Wegman’s, you’ll know my plan has succeeded.

The Fusion is perfect for me and the kids because it looks like a cross between a Taurus and a Mustang. Clearly a family vehicle, but with sport trim. I think only the youngest hasn’t ridden with me yet, because I drove everyone minus 10yo from my house in northwest to Fell’s Point. It was the scariest drive of my entire life, because the whole time I was thinking, “be careful with Tiina’s babies.”

But because I am who I am, I’m already thinking about a pickup truck. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I’m not trying to replace the Fusion unless something happens to it. However, the gap that I see is that Tiina and Brian don’t have a truck, so they need a friend with a truck. 😛

In my head, I’ve already picked out the perfect 1989 Nissan Pickup, because that’s something I can teach the boy to work on himself. No computerized anything to get in the way of being a total grease monkey. It’s teaching 16yo the way I learned, with the added benefit that he’s actually capable of lifting the tires, whereas I will have fallen over them three times already.

Nothing has prepared me for life on the farm, because it is so incredibly physical. I can do a lot of jobs, but the ground is uneven and I fall often. I have cerebral palsy, so I move like a drunk before you add physicality on top of it. But I am learning my own ways to contribute, and my favorite thing is bringing the goats weeds. I love cute little goat kisses on my hands. They actually do like to interact with you, so the kisses don’t feel like they’re just grabbing food. It feels like, “thank you so much.”

I haven’t met the pigs yet, but I can’t wait. They are not “proper farm animals” in the sense that we won’t eat them. They are pets, Vietnamese potbellied pigs. I don’t know either of their names, so let’s just say they’re Kevin Bacon and Alexander HAMilton.

But speaking of Hamilton, James Madison is literally my favorite founding brother. Madison displayed behaviors that others would have considered strange and are CLEARLY autistic in retrospect. To be here, on his campus, means something to me in a fundamental way. As far as I know, we are not related.

But we should be- neurodivergents run in packs. Even though he’s no longer living, I’m putting him on my list of friends I talk to that don’t talk back. Reading all of Madison’s work as an undergrad prepared me to understand him, because back then I did not know that my bipolar disorder was also tied to meltdown and burnout. That in a lot of ways, I am confused as to whether I have bipolar disorder or not, because the same drugs work and I cycle too rapidly for bipolar, but autistic meltdown and burnout are always right on schedule.

Therefore, it is great that Tiina, Brian, and I have found each other- three friends who do life together. It feels different to belong somewhere I don’t have to be “on.” That all my quirks are tolerated, including having to tap out because I’m overwhelmed. There’s no pushing through.

WE DON’T DO THAT HERE.

Plus, it’s not a one way street. Neurodivergent people take care of each other, so it’s not unusual for a kid to remind me to take my meds… and vice versa.

So why do I say Pepper’s name?

She is now an adult.

JMU

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am at James Madison University, watching my friend Tiina‘s daughter graduate from high school. Therefore, this entry will be very short. I will have pictures and a full report later.

The Framing is Different

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s something you’d love to see in the future, but know you probably won’t live to witness?
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Tiina, Brian, and their kids are my family, so the frame has changed. I don’t care about technological advances as much. It’s more about seeing the kids’ children get old and have their own lives. I am seeing their oldest kids have children now, but we have a ways to go with the youngest. It’s making sure they get to Hebrew school on time.

It’s fun being a coprocessor and a collaborator to someone that has their own fuel source. There’s nothing in the world that would make me want to mess up what we have, because it has been like being rescued. I don’t feel like I’m falling through the cracks anymore.

It’s a different way to walk in the world when you have a team under you, and I’m not the only one in the family who is on the internet. Ayalla and Tiina both create online, and the kids’ favorite thing is to make fun of me for the way I trip over “Ayalla.” I call her “Ay Ay” most of the time to avoid confusion. 😉

I hope that Ayalla and Derek will trust me with the baby the way Tiina trusts me with her kids, because it would be fun to bond with him. I have the most hope for the future in the baby and his 10-year-old aunt. But we have a long way to go before we get there- projects to build that incorporate all of our talents.

It’s also learning to incorporate a Jewish worldview into how I talk to all the kids. How my role is not “friend Leslie,” but “person who is trying to turn you into a functional adult.” They are going to be great, and I know that because when my anger comes out it is appropriate. I am learning to get angry in the right directions instead of the wrong ones.

I didn’t grow up on a farm. You’re just going to have to cut me a break

Pretty sure I’ve never been more angry in my life, but it was directed and pointed appropriately. I am not experienced in catching chickens. And that’s what makes me the most sad about aging, I guess…..

You’ll never catch them all.

You Say Goodbye, I Say Hello

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

What I don’t say out loud is that Tiina is a perfect blend of Dana and Aada. I knew her before I met her. She’s a cybersecurity analyst now, but she was a technical theater major in college. The reason I know she’s the right creative partner is that people talk about “I saw her in a dream,” but I saw her in autistic pattern recognition and knew I was safe.

Therefore, I get the comfort of living on a farm when I want and the excitement of someone who’s dialed in. I don’t have to pick and choose. That nonbinary lives in me.

What feels different about Tiina is that she didn’t start a fire in me where I felt needy and intrusive all the time. My emotions have never been dysregulated with her. When she touches me, it’s a grounding rod. She’s giving me everything I’m lacking because she’s a steady supply of hugs, cheek kisses, and “please move this.”

But I didn’t make the choice to alienate Dana and Aada. They eliminated themselves with their choices and I spent far too long trying to figure out how to fix what was broken instead of moving on. Dana is not welcome in my life ever again, but she is precious in my memory. I will be happy to meet with her parents and sister to carry messages to her if she’s curious how my life is going, but I do not feel safe in her presence, and I am betting she feels the same way about me. We were wonderful to each other right up until we weren’t. It’s not a punishment, it’s just reality.

Things are different with Aada, because she made me feel unsafe emotionally. That is fixable.

She keeps saying she’s not threatened by me, but we’ll see if that rings true. It’s now very possible we could accidentally run into each other at the grocery store, and I’m not there to do anything but grab the seventeen jugs of milk that will be gone by Thursday. She seems to waffle on whether I am or I’m not, so when Tiina and I clicked like “peanut butter and ladies,” I realized it was my way of coming down from the cloud. Saying, “show up or don’t, but this is what my life looks like and now you have an accurate picture of what I’ve been saying all these years.”

Make it safe. Make it legible to me. Define who we are to each other so I don’t have to worry that I’m something I’m not all the time. Our narratives about each other ruined our self-esteems, because it took a long time to trust that Tiina and I were solid. That she wasn’t going anywhere and neither was I.

But now I have that friend who needs someone to just be with her. It doesn’t matter what we do, it’s all precious. We’ve both got mobility issues in different ways, which feeds our brain click. She’s also a writer with a following, so I don’t mean that Tiina will only be producing. She can write better than I can, so it’s a reciprocal relationship.

Every once in a while my inner Finn slips out. I have no Finnish blood, but my strident attitude didn’t come from nowhere. It predates Tiina, which is why my context would be new to Dana and Aada but familiar. Making things legible, not familiar.

I just don’t want to walk away in enmity. There’s too many diapers to buy and bottles to wash. It’s not just one grandbaby now. It’s two. The other one just lives in a different house. I was telling Mico that it kind of feels like being a third parent or grandparent in terms of logistics, but completely untitled except “Mom’s Friend Who Backs Her Up on Everything.” That’s going to be another t-shirt.

Having kids is not for the faint of heart. And I didn’t birth them, so my load is basically similar to an uncle. I’m not very maternal, but I am capable of being directed and know I’m ready to step up. Learning to be responsible with children has come in waves, because Tiina’s parenting style is different than anything I’ve learned and the culture regarding safe adults for children has changed overall.

Of all Tiina’s children, I’m closest to her youngest son. He was actually being punished and Tiina let him play Skyrim while I was there, so now he knows when I’m around, it’s not all bad. So her younger son melting down later in the day was when I realized that he was part mine.

And it happened without me noticing.

So we’re finding our ways in the world, because I’m lost as to how to be a role model and want to do it, anyway. So far, I have managed to trip over everything on the farm, so I’m not exactly sure I’m making a good impression. But whatever impression I’m making, I know it’s permanent.

Now, I have a completely different set of goals, with my friends and with each kid.

But when Tiina’s son calls me “Mom’s Friend Who Will Back Her Up on Everything?”

Wow.

He learned my name QUICK.

Only To An Extent

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment
Daily writing prompt
Do you believe in minimalism?
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I believe in having exactly enough stuff to accomplish a goal. I believe in enough stuff to keep your life running. But above that? It’s just not necessary. I choose to buy anything and everything I want, because as it turns out, what I want is usually sensible and practical (save the stereo I want for my car… we ain’t eatin,’ but we got tunes….). Right now, I’m trying to decide what should live where, mostly.

Today is going to be a day of getting rid of trash, resetting the house, and getting motivated to think about what clothes I might need for a trip to the lake. It’s not a certainty that I’m going to the lake, it’s just that when Tiina’s out there I mentally put together a backpack. That’s because it’s not unusual for Tiina to call and say, “we’re hanging out. Come on.” Brian said I should have a drawer or something to put my clothes in, so I know that eventually I won’t have to pack for the lake at all. Right now it’s just deciding what I wear the least frequently so that it can live in Louisa when I don’t.

Louisa, Virginia reminds me a lot of Mt. Pleasant, Texas…. or at least, the version of Mt. Pleasant that exists in my memory from the 1980s. Louisa isn’t “two stop lights and a Dairy Queen” small, but it is the hub for several smaller communities. Brian bought a house in a very nice development that’s a few minutes’ walk from the lake. It feels picturesque, cut off from the town so that it has its own vibe.

Brian and Tiina share everything, but to be clear it is Brian that owns the lake house, Tiina that owns the farm, and me gathering clothes to live in three places at once. 😉 I have a Baltimore apartment that is a completely different vibe from the farm and the lake house, but it’s just not big enough to host. I am grateful that Tiina and Brian don’t mind, because I would rather be included in the festivities than throw one here- and let’s be clear. I say “festivities” because that’s how many people I’m talking about at all times.

Brian, Tiina, and the kids are their own football team. I am a competent if klutzy water boy.

Where this fits into my minimalism is that I cannot afford to be replacing things all the time, but I need to be flexible and able to get things on the go. I cannot pack up my entire house every time I get an invitation to the farm or the lake.

Speaking of the farm, you have to see this meme. Someone tried to go on Threads thinking they were clever:

The heart count is now much higher, because I didn’t accept the frame. The person was trying to be pejorative, and I simply stepped around him. People started talking about their own nonbinary animals- a cat with no sex organs and a chicken that stopped laying eggs and became half rooster.

I suppose the biggest thing about minimalism is that digital artifacts mean more to me now, so I need less space. A picture of something is better than keeping it if it has outlived its usefulness. For instance, the rainbow roses I got Tiina for Mother’s Day faded, but the picture is still going strong.

I am trying to make my footprint bigger in the cloud, so I can have a smaller house.