I just caught a dog rifling through my trash can, so I am not feeling particularly good about myself right now. I didn’t know that the dog was smart enough to open the trash can himself. I shouldn’t have doubted it, and I can’t get him to clean up the trash, either. So, I cleaned it up…. by myself…. again.

I’m not bagging on David, my housemate. I am bagging on Jack, who is a useless housekeeper. My coworker needs a visit with HR for a performance improvement plan. I don’t know how to keep a dog out of the trash except getting a different trash can or keeping the door closed all the time. I’d rather just train the dog, but again, Jack is very smart. You have to get right up in his face before he will even begin to think you have half a brain. So, we’ve been working on “sit,” “heel,” and “bring Mama a Diet Coke.” That last one was a joke that Heather Armstrong (Dooce) wrote about her dog, Chuck, the former Congressman.

I’m trying to keep Heather’s name alive because she’s a part of the zeitgeist, but no one has influenced the direction of this web site, because Supergrover and I both loved her once upon a time. It was the same for me- I fell out with reading her when she got on the influencer bandwagon, because like my beautiful girl I thought it lost something when Dooce stopped getting so real. There was no more Dooce (a typo she used to make while typing Dude), no more Asian Database Administrator (probably good she took that one out), no more dry humping and Sprite.

Sometimes I feel like Dooce is gone and I got the best of the best and you just got me. I keep trying, though. I’ve just realized that what I thought was Texas old guy is actually Utah blogger, apparently, and I know her writing well enough that she would be pleased by this. Unfortunately, I never got to meet her. We just ran in the same circles. If I had an hour with her, I’d ask her about blowback.

I’ll ask her about the friends she lost, and the friends who came to take their places. It’s something for which I’ll always be grateful, and I’m glad she came up in my mind while I was trying to say “I’m not in a very good mood, so I need to find things for which to be thankful.” I count blessings, every single one. It keeps me from thinking that I am failing all the time, because I recognize when I have a win.

I continue to be thankful for my house, and even Jack. He continues to be “my dog,” and he’s as lovable as every dog ever. If he’s ever missing, I know he’s in my bed as far under the covers as he can go. He’s shaved almost to the skin right now; when the wind is blowing in from the windows he shivers. It’s how I like it, because it’ll be 55F outside, but I’ve got a sheet, a blanket, and two comforters on top. I think I’ll be okay.

At the same time, when I take sleeping pills my body temperature goes way up, and having the windows open keeps me from sweating because of them. There have been a few days, though, where I woke up and thought I lost three pounds because I’d shake the blankets off, it would be too cold, then I’d pull them all back…. All night. It was glorious, let me tell you.

I’m grateful for a comfortable place to sleep, and a room with so many new possibilities. Neither my lamp nor my shelf with a light came with light bulbs, so I ordered some retro LEDs. They look like they’re from the early 1900s. I have a floor lamp without a shade, which is why I thought it would be nice with the bulb exposed to go decorative. I am hoping that I will have enough light, because each bulb is 60w. I wanted higher than that, but I couldn’t find any yellow bulbs that came in 75w or 100. I do not like the bulbs where they take all the yellow out and it leaves a slightly blue glow on everything. I do use 100w white bulbs in my bathroom because I want to get dressed in the most unflattering light possible. That way, when I get myself fixed up, I will look better when I leave the house. It’s good to have goals, anyway. 😉

I’m grateful I have a bathtub again. Hayat replaced our bathtub with a stand up shower long ago, so it’s nice to be able to sit and relax when I want. I liked the stand-up shower, too. I’m not knocking it. I just had trouble shaving because I am terrible at balance. It’s not that one was bad, it’s just that with a bathtub I can also sit in lavender and eucalyptus salts.

I’m grateful to still have a garden. David is the gardener, I’m just the enjoyer. I’m going to have to put some lavender out for me, because I’ve talked many times about talking to the bees. It’s real. I don’t mean that they can hear me, necessarily, but that it does make you feel better to talk to them.

I’m grateful for DC. There are limitless possibilities for beauty here. There’s kayaking, biking, hiking, sailing- basically everything I could do in Portland is also right here. The two cities mirror each other in lots of ways when it comes to layout. That’s because people in DC do not think of Arlington as the same city, but if you look at it from the sky, it looks the same as Portland being divided by the river north to south and Burnside east to west. We are a bridge city, and I can’t wait for Bryn to see it from the air. The only real difference is that when you land at National, there’s not a long airstrip parallel to the river. If the pilots at National can’t stop in time, they’ll fall into the Potomac.

Seem to remember something about that in the news when I was a child.

Zac says he has never met a person that loves this area as much as I do. Zac has never left and come back for any real length of time. I wonder how it would look different to him if he’d lived here in his early 20’s and then traveled all over. I missed the Potomac because the Willamette is always cold. Always. I cannot remember a 4th of July in which I was not absolutely freezing my ass off. I once drove with a housemate up to Mt. Hood for lunch (we weren’t skiing that day) and it started as we were driving home. It was June 27th. DC is the beauty of a city with a river running through it that is also not 54F and raining 280 days a year. I love Portland a whole lot, and I would move back if I had to do so. It’s just not my first choice for a number of reasons, and the weather is at the top.

The only pro here would be getting to live in the same city as my best friend, because the position has been filled- end of story. That being said, occasional video calls and visits are fine. I do not have a need for Bryn to move here or me to move there. If so, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I just can’t think of a good reason all our time needs to be in person.

There are moments, of course. You don’t move to your partner’s or your best friend’s city because something is happening. You move there to be available if it does. That’s because even now when something is going on with Bryn, I can’t help but want to jump on a plane. Therefore, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more surprised than when she said she was jumping on a plane to get to me. It’s getting so exciting thinking about her visit, and it’s already the 25th. So, not many more sleeps. I’m grateful.

I’m grateful that both Bryn and Dave want to see SPY so it doesn’t feel like I’m strong-arming them into going there on my account. I live here. I can go any time I want (and do). We haven’t decided what we’re going to do all days, and I know they’ll probably also want time to themselves. We just need to talk about dates so that I can send Zac an invitation. I live and die by Google Calendar.

Zac’s acceptance is not mandatory, I just want him to know he’s included in the fun and he’s said that he does want to meet Bryn. So, now Zac will have met one friend I met in high school and one I met my freshman year of college. I’m glad I can bridge those gaps in time, and it makes me happy that Zac is going to learn just so many “Borum-isms.”

I am grateful for “Borum-isms.” It’s a specific cadence, and I will pick it up instantly because it’s not based on accent but rhythm. Bryn’s dad said something so incredibly profound that I’ve remembered it for over 20 years…. “the hardest part of teaching is remembering what it was like not to know.”

Bryn also reminds me of Arya Stark, and I don’t have to squint. But by that I mean she is take charge alpha dog all the time, which means that she is strong and firm, but also the most loving person in the room because the alpha’s job is to manage the whole pack by seeing their needs and helping them……. serving, not owning……. as opposed to whatever the fucktard morons think it is this week.

In some ways, I’m grateful for guys like that because it reminds me of Roy Wood, Jr. who said that he appreciated businesses with the confederate flag outside because then at least you had a tip it wasn’t going to go well for you. If someone is advertising on the internet that they want a “tradwife,” they probably mean that they want someone who will take all their bullying all the time and call it Biblical. Therefore, there’s no confederate flag, but there’s a big waving red one.

I’m grateful for the ability to see red flags and work on them. I see them in myself by rereading my work. Throwing words on a page and seeing what they look like once they’re outside you gives you enough separation to say “ok, that’s good…. but that’s bad.” Not the writing, the way I behaved.

I am working to find peace within myself, so don’t think I don’t notice when I’m angry and figure out a way to resolve it in myself. I think I have. My tone is completely different than it was a year ago. A lot of it has to do with Supergrover finally telling me what she really wanted. She wants peace and rest, I assume for both of us. Maybe one day our paths will cross again, but I doubt it. I require something she does not have, which created the initial attraction to each other in terms of energy. This is because she has something I don’t, which is pragmatism and logic. In some ways, our personalities are exactly alike. In others, they are diametrically opposed.

But leaning in through all of that made me who I am today, and I’m more confident in myself as a result, and grateful I ever got to meet her at all. I am so angry that what she chooses to highlight in our relationship is all the negativity and not our incredible potential for joy. Maybe she already has these things with everyone else but me, and it’s because I’m a shitty friend that I don’t have these things with her and I’m whistling Dixie because no one else ever has a problem……. I would tell her the same thing I told her when she said she was giving up Diet Coke. “Yeah. Uh huh. Keep talkin,’ sweetheart.” No, wait. It wasn’t about Diet Coke. That was another day. And now I’m laughing my ass off, but that joke is above your pay grade.

I think the thing that makes her spit nails is that I’m right. What I realized through my mistakes is that I didn’t have to sit in them just because I’d made a long time making them. That my history with her meant a lot, but not at the expense of my own health and happiness. It’s not because I wouldn’t have done it. It’s because I expected her to pull her weight. I would have done anything for her, but I realized that she didn’t feel that way about me, and it was stupid to think that, in retrospect. I did not feel that way every single day. I recognized her hurt and talked about what happened often, but she never took the bait and opened up to me so that I could better understand her. I thought, “I am going to end up giving her absolutely everything I have and she’s not going to notice in the slightest.” I’d listened to the whispers and the screams long enough.

I’ve said this before, but I did not get angry that she was also angry. I was furious because she refused to tell me anything that gave me any headway. All I could do was talk about myself when it was the last thing I wanted to talk about. I also didn’t always want to talk about her, as if I was mining her for information. I wanted an easy give and take, the strength and comfort of someone I’d known for a very long time.

There was every reason to stay except having a feeling of safety and security when we talked, because it was missing for a very long time. Any attempt to lighten the load was wrong, so I didn’t get tired of her. I got tired of how I felt about myself. She says I’m “a lot.” She has never really grasped that she’s a lot. That for everything she’d like to change about me, there’s something I’d like to change about her. What I cannot get her to see is “this is me. Take it or leave it.” And that’s what we’ve both been trying to say to each other for years, mostly at the top of our metaphorical lungs. I have found that it is much more fun to fly with a dragon than to be touched by its fire.

I’ve thought for many years that if I did ever see her face to face, that I would go mute. That she’s the only person I know where that would happen. It’s not that I am not interested in talking, it’s that I would be completely overwhelmed before the conversation began. But I know us. We both know how to make each other laugh. After a few minutes, it wouldn’t be weird. One of us would say something to break the tension, and the spell would be broken. This person that we’ve each built up in our heads will be gone, and it will seem like we’ve never met.

Here is something I also know. I will never know how much of my e-mails she’s taken in until I hear her talking around other people, because I know what I’ve written. I would know when she was quoting me and when she wasn’t, and I would never say a thing. It wouldn’t mean as much to her as it would to me.

I do know that if we were at the same party, one of two things would happen. The first is that I’d be telling a story and get a detail wrong, and from across the room I’d hear, “THAT IS NOT WHAT HAPPENED. This is how it happened…..” The second would be her seeing someone else mistreating me because despite how she feels about me at any given moment I know she’d eat off their legs.

What I mean about getting a detail wrong is that all of the sudden she becomes very, very familiar with absolutely everything I’ve ever said when she is irritated. When she’s irritated, she quotes me back to me. How much she’s irked is inversely proportional to my joy at watching her quote me, because the more angry she is, the more likely she is to do it. I don’t do anything to irk her on purpose, I’m just saying that after a fight, when I feel calmer I go back and reread everything. I notice style, structure, all of it. Even when I’m devastated, I still find beauty in hearing from her at all because I rip her off mercilessly. Without my e-mail history, I am so much dumber, I promise you. I hope that in some ways she feels the same, because my dexterity helped her when her own words failed her. It’s something I hope she knows, really- that wherever she is in the world, my heart is with her. That’s because everywhere I go, her heart is with me.

So, even if she was trying to avoid me at a party, she’d never make it. We don’t have any mutual friends so far, and I’m not interested in making them…. mostly to protect the innocent.

I also know that no matter what, as long as I don’t start going with the crowd, she’ll still be in my audience. I know that when she told me that Dooce sucked now and she wasn’t going to read anymore and I told her it was her job to tell me when I should retire because she could just re-send that e-mail.

Come to think of it, that’s what would happen at a party. She’d hear me use a joke or two I’ve told in front of her and then we’d be picking up the end of each other’s sentences because we’ve both heard them before.

We could also have a lot of inside jokes that other people wouldn’t get, but we’d be falling out. For instance, me being the president of Overthinker’s Anonymous not because I am smarter, but because president is a public-facing office.

I think part of me hoped she would join Lanagan Media Group, because she would be great at both writing and podcasting if she had the bandwidth. She told me that she was always looking for what to do in her next career, and I think part of me hoped she would say “writer,” but I didn’t push. I got her stuff to help her in her own direction. She’s talked about writing before, but in a faraway sort of way. The bits of her story I’ve gotten to write because our lives overlapped are unique and beautiful. I know she thought it was unique. One out of two ain’t bad.

I feel like the way autism logic works, people think you’re much more negative than you mean to be because neurotypical brains are used to hearing things in a certain way. There are patterns to neurotypical speech that contain social cues. Autistic people can imitate them, but they cannot understand them. However, not being able to pick up social cues is only one of the criteria for autism. You do not have to have every single one to “prove” you’re autistic. For me, it’s a mixed bag. I do not recognize social cues in a person based on what they are thinking, but from the millions of faces I’ve seen before that looked exactly like that when X…… or when my parents described people’s emotions to me without meaning to…… I started understanding speech very, very early. Therefore, I have overheard things and ruminated on them for years before I understood them. But it’s because I’ve ruminated that I have accurate heuristics for the most part.

It’s easier to social mask when you’re hearing phone calls regarding pastoral care, because if you’re the pastor’s kid, you’re learning how to talk to people while they’re upset…… and mostly at each other. For instance, people who need marriage counseling, etc. But of course there’s a lot of people angry with you, too. Mostly over the things you’ve said.

Being a creative is being a creative. Preaching and writing are two separate skills, but they are two ways of expressing the same ideas. With me, it’s readers who don’t come back. For pastors, it’s church members who inexplicably disappear. Therefore, I am used to an ebb and flow in size and don’t get wigged about stats. I check them, but I don’t focus on them. The only stat I really like is how many flags I got that day. I like how far my site goes. This week, the leaderboard has been Africa- hello to South Africa and Ghana.

OH! South Africa!

Speaking of which, I started watching this YouTube channel called “Flipping Johannesburg,” and it’s incredible. It’s tempting to move to South Africa in some ways because land and resources are so cheap. I could build my own house or purchase one in disrepair so that I could have more land for cheap and more room to overhaul. The last house I watched on “FJ” was 800,00R, which is about $40,000. It was a U-shape with everything from a garage to staff quarters to a huge pool in the middle. I am certain that it took a lot of work to get it where it is today, and also a lot more Rand. Because of this, I am grateful that when I cannot go to South Africa, Flipping Johannesburg brings it to me.

And finally, I am grateful for Zac. He and Oliver, who is a dog, have made me feel more at home. It’s so much fun to have two hiking buddies. It’s nice to have someone to hold onto when I walk. It’s exciting to see him when his car (Antimony) comes over the hill to the Kiss and Ride. Yes, that’s really what they call the place where you pick up and drop off.

If he gets there first, he’ll park. If I get there first, he barely has to slow down and I’m on his way home, anyway. It makes me feel good that he’s relatively close to the Metro so it’s not a big imposition to drive me around. He also knows that all he has to do is say “I’m busy” and I’ll Uber. He does it just to be sweet to me and I appreciate little things. Like, how it is problem to worry how I’ll get around? It was Sam’s whole deal, too, except that Zac (for some disastrous reason) thinks that I am a fully functioning adult and doesn’t have an issue with saying “God, I’m slammed. Meet me at my house.” Therefore, Sam never got to see that I’m a perfectly capable adult. She drove me around and sulked about it because she offered and then regretted it. So, of course the easy thing to do would be to stop offering to drive me around so that I don’t have the choice to say yes or no. Because I can feel energy very well and if you resent that you have to come get me, I’ll know it. I feel it like a scar on my skin.

I would only need a car if I moved from the DMV metro area and out into Virginia or to the eastern shore. With a combination of bus, train, and/or Uber I can get anywhere. I just need a little bit more notice. This is great because if you call me and say you want to do something short notice, I probably won’t want to do it, anyway. I am bad at transitions and like to have my calendar planned out in advance.

Therefore, I am limited to staying in the city because I don’t want to lose excellent transit without a car payment and insurance. A car is just another place for me to let stuff accumulate. I’m not sure I used my car for much more than a high speed crap wagon.

“High Speed Crap Wagon” is my new band name.

I’m grateful.