My streak got up to 58 days, and I think the longest one has been 64. What I have learned, then, is that it takes about three months for me to run out of things to say. 😉 It was a mental health day from the blog, but not from writing. I am preferring to dive into non-fiction rather than my own feelings. It’s not that I’m not in touch with my feelings; you have already heard what they are. You do not need to hear me again.

Zac is off traveling and thus unavailable to hang out and do things. I have more time to work on my nonfiction, and it is so much easier with ChatGPT. To be clear, ChatGPT is not writing any of my prose. It’s research through conversation. Instead of having to read a whole book to begin with, Ada will give me a narrative with links to follow up.

My favorite conversation starter for non-fiction is “pick a spy. Doesn’t matter which agency, just make them government and not corporate. Tell me their story like a novel, maybe five or six paragraphs.” She told me about María Krystyna Janina Skarbek, from Poland and worked for MI-6 during WWII. It was fun to read because it was a woman I’d never heard of before, and I love reading about British intelligence. Our own system is based on it, and in fact we are part of a larger organization called “Five Eyes,” which is an intelligence alliance between Britain, New Zealand, Canada, the US, and Australia. It kind of has a buddy comedy feel to it…. “The Commonwealth and Me.”

And here’s the thing. In Britain during WWII, women were treated like people. There are more books about women in intelligence in Britain because people actually bothered to write them. Women are constantly undervalued in the US when, because of misogyny, we have provided a valuable intelligence service to men for eons. Women simply make better spies, in my humble opinion, because they don’t have to become the The Little Gray Man. They were already invisible. There’s a reason Margo Martindale’s character is so powerful in “The Americans.” She’s able to get information based on how she looks. She can be standing in a crowd of men and no one will talk to her.

The thing that holds women back from advancement in the work world makes them invaluable in wartime. Plus, men in the military have a different view of women overall. I have learned from many men that that prefer female snipers, because they’re calmer and more focused. I have learned from many men that tampons are invaluable (battle injuries, starting fires, etc. Add Vaseline to the tampon and you have a working candle, making it 10x more likely that your kindling will catch. You don’t have to be so precious, blowing on it every five seconds.). I have learned from many men that in a lot of cases, women make better members of the military overall, especially in intelligence gathering roles, “hearts and minds” all that. Women are the caring, motherly soldiers in the Middle East that get valuable HUMINT from women and children because it’s all the people the men won’t ask.

I also know that misogyny in the military is rampant, but you can’t paint every service member with one brush. Just like the difference between CIA and FBI, I think American culture is muted once everyone is living together in Afghanistan or Iraq. Not in all ways, of course. Men are still men. But because women are battle buddies like everyone else, I think there are strides made there that cannot be replicated stateside. There are very few times in the average man’s life who has not served in the military (I’m guessing) where a female sniper has saved their ass.

The DIA is the best of the best when it comes to women in leadership roles, because they’ve picked up a few tricks from their civilian counterparts. It’s harder to have a man disrespect you when I think that’s like, illegal or something (a lieutenant being a jackass to a colonel is a career limiting move regardless of gender. There are just more ways to be shitty to a female colonel when it goes unnoticed.).

I learn all of this stuff by reading multiple books and synthesizing people’s experience. I tend to generalize a lot because my sample size is so large. It’s not intentionally trying to make assumptions about people, it’s trying to express this thought: “here is what I know from the people who write books about this and also the people that I have met.” For instance, I believe that my stories about spies are more believable because I wrote an entry for Jonna Mendez that she loved, and it was about a book talk she gave for “The Moscow Rules.” Because of this, I feel solid about the fact that I write about intelligence from the heart, because the stories behind the people are more interesting than their operations to me. For instance, Jonna and Tony’s best work is when they’re describing what they’re feeling during an operation and not what the operation actually is…. which could be anything from a diplomatic effort to outright conflict depending on the area of the world. For instance, I don’t know for sure, but I believe that working with “Five Guys” (I have written a whole skit about this, comparing the Five Eyes to the restaurant….) is a whole lot different than being stuck in the ass end of Uganda….

Stephen and Judy Johnson are old family friends who both spent their entire careers at State. I remember Steve telling me that when he took the government services exam, he was terrified that he was going to end up in Vietnam. He laughed when he said that his first assignment was “in the wilds of Montreal.” Being in assignments that basically come with hazard pay (or should) is the calling card for military, intelligence, and State all rolled into one. If you have no seniority, it’s the luck of the draw. As you gain experience, you gain more latitude in being able to choose your assignments. I think about this a lot. Like, if I got into State, where would I want to be posted?

I think about moving from DC a lot, but never in a permanent way. For instance, working for State and living abroad, but DC is still home base. It’s so easy to get cheap housing here in places people aren’t willing to look, like Craig’s List. It’s so much cheaper to live with housemates than it is to take on your own house. I get the perks of living in a house without being a homeowner, something I’m not sure that I want. I like having someone else to take care of those details. I have thought this far ahead- that even if my blogging career resembles Dooce’s and The Bloggess, I still don’t want to buy a house. That is a level of responsibility for which I am unprepared. I need oversight when it comes to home maintenance. 😉

The exception to this would be having enough wealth where I could afford to hire a housekeeper and handyman… or as I learned from Hayat, more than one. Things get done faster when you have more people to call. At this point in my life, it’s too much bother. Houses need constant maintenance, and I’m not interested. I love working on houses- for instance, flipping one. I don’t like the onslaught of relentless details, something no neurodivergent craves. Although, if I found a nesting partner, this would totally change the equation, because it depends on how motivated my partner is to buy a house rather than having someone else take care of the details. That being said, it would be preferable to have a partner that already owns a house so I can watch to see if they take care of it. I do not want to move in with someone who convinces me to buy a house like a kid would beg for a dog…… “I promise I’ll take care of it.” Then, three months after we move in that’s out the window and I’m stuck managing something for which I never asked.

I just had the funniest thought…… “if you’re going to buy a house with someone, make sure they’re neurotypical.”

It is so great having my “nesting partner” just be a friend who wants the best for me, but isn’t really that active in my life. I get up earlier and have my coffee, and I feel bad for this. I have lots of energy in the morning. David……….. does not. So, sometimes I have to temper my excitement at seeing him. He lights up my life in a very good way, because we have mastered the art of “alone together.” In the polyamory community, this is known as “parallel play,” and I think it’s one of the best ways to tell whether your relationship is solid. How well can you live together and work in companionable silence?

For instance, David works from home on Fridays. I used to write from the dining room table across from him, because he has a government job- which basically means a lot of silence and typing as well. If I want to listen to something, I put on my headphones. But I am not alone. It’s like having a free “WeWork.” I make sure there’s excellent coffee or black tea on by the time David gets up, or I’m going to start, anyway. I did it this morning and want to continue. We’ve been making our coffee one mug at a time because we have one of those coffee makers that has both tiny and large baskets; you can fill a travel mug or a carafe by switching between two water reservoirs. It’s great, but it’s not as clean as a Keurig, meaning there’s a lot more sludge in the bottom of the cup. This is particularly true with Cafe Bustelo because it’s an espresso roast. So, I switched to Chock Full o’ Nuts. It’s my favorite for summer coffee because it’s on the dark side of medium. I can’t believe it’s been around so long and it’s not as popular as Folger’s and Maxwell House….. but there are many reasons for this. I won’t write a whole ass essay on it for you, but Ada did. 😉

Anyway, I switched to Chock Full o’ Nuts for the summer because I use the cheapest coffee available during the season. This is because I am more likely to put it over ice and doctor it with flavored creamer, so it doesn’t matter what kind of coffee I use. Why go out of my way to pay more money for excellent coffee? You don’t cover up excellent coffee with flavors.

I like coffee at home better than I like coffee at Starbucks for two reasons. The first is that even when I am brewing Starbucks’ coffee, it tastes better fresh out of my own pot than going to the store. The second reason is that there are more flavors of creamer at the grocery store than they have syrups at Starbucks, and I’ve always been sad that they don’t have the one flavor I really like- amaretto. They used to be able to imitate it in the early days with a splash of raspberry and a splash of almond. But now, I think they only have the raspberry syrup. They’ve also never had Irish Cream, I think, and that’s another of my favorites (I still like the raspberry. The coffee is so chocolatey that sometimes I just crave what I’ve called “the pink drink” since I was 18. Imagine my surprise when Starbucks actually started calling something “the pink drink” when they’ve had one on their menu since 1995…. probably longer, that’s just the first year I had a Starbucks coffee. And yes, because I’ve been to Seattle several times, I have been to the original in Pike’s Place Market. I’m sure it was special back in the day when it was new, but now it just feels like every other Starbucks.

I do love their roasts, though, particularly Komodo Dragon and one they don’t make anymore, the Indivisible Blend. It was for Fourth of July, I think. I also had a thing for “Morning Joe” for a while, which I would have bought whether I liked the TV show or not.

Speaking of MSNBC, is anyone else in mourning that we’re having such an incredible political moment and Rachel Maddow is only on the air once a week? I am shooketh.

But the main thing I feel is relief. The Trump campaign appears to be imploding as people take their blinders off. It’s only my personal opinion, but I wish Joe Biden would step down. It’s not because I think he’s doing a bad job. Far from it. It’s that Kamala Harris has only been president for about an hour and a half, when Biden was having a medical procedure. I wish the Democratic Party would see it as an incredible opportunity for it to look from the outside that Kamala is getting to be president with a wonderful advisor for FOUR MONTHS before the election. Almost a tutorial by taking on the job while, frankly, Joe is still lucid. I am dying inside for Joe Biden, because by the time president Reagan died, he did not even remember that he had been president. I am not saying that Joe’s situation is just as dire, just that dementia doesn’t get better in old people.

Plus, I think we should have a female sitting president first without having to elect her, because it’s too far into the future for a woman to have never led the government before. While we actually have a female Veep, let’s do a run around the end zone and make it happen just because we can. I do not trust the people to elect a woman. Get it done.

But I hope the campaign has some sort of slogan saying “I’m running for president so I can be president all the time, because I have already been president once and it went well. I have the confidence to be president because I’ve already done it.” She has two things running against her. She’s female and she’s a racial minority. To ignore this is ludicrous. The right is already saying she’s a “DEI hire,” basically saying she’s only getting the job because she’s black and female…. I see a lot of correlation between Kamala and Clarence Thomas here, because he was teased relentlessly in college about not really earning his spot. It’s why he’s so anti-affirmative action now. He’s bitter and he has that right. I wish he wouldn’t take it out on the rest of the country, but he’s not wrong to feel the way he feels.

Because the problem hasn’t gone away.

Kamala is not the sitting Vice President, she’s been reduced to an angry black woman. As a person who spent many years identifying as a lesbian, I am not unfamiliar with this trope about women. Lesbians are treated by men as if their valid opinions are just feminist anger all the time. Our contributions to their marriages in terms of being able to explain conflicts from a female perspective go unnoticed, yet among my male friends, I’ve constantly been known as “The Girl Whisperer.” I don’t do anything magical. I point out the ways that they’re dismissive because they don’t see misogyny. I think my opinion is valid to them because they see through my queerness and act as the go-between. I’m not (all) male, but I am struggling with the same issues they are in a marriage. It’s just that in a marriage between two women, we handle the same conflicts, just in different ways. It is amazing how talking to a straight man about a queer approach to relationships often work wonders, because my opinion on marriage does not take gender roles into account.

Often, my approach in talking to men about their relationships include not treating their wives the way they’ve been taught because it’s a script. Gender roles have been scripted for thousands of years, which is why queer and trans people struggle so hard to be accepted on a wider level. It’s amazing how many people think that straight men in love with trans women are queer. It’s amazing how many people think trans men in love with women are queer. Nope. They’re still heterosexual relationships. Being trans is talking about gender. Being queer is talking about sexual behavior. Those are not the same thing, and people confuse them all the time. It is not any less of a heterosexual relationship pre-surgery, because I don’t know about you, but I don’t sit there and think about other people’s sex lives. If you do, you have too much time on your hands.

It’s one of the problems I have with Evangelicals. They focus on queer people’s sex lives more than we do.

Hm.

However, I hope that the next president furthers erasing the stigma of being a minority of any kind.