May All Your Hogswatches Be Bright

 It's finally behaving more like winter here, which is an odd thing to be excited about. Fall used to be my favorite season, but in the past decade autumn leaves and the smell of tree decay has become more strongly associated with nausea and fatigue and I guess I just haven't done a good job of taking life by the horns and steering it in the direction of: pumpkin patches, hot cider, walks down idyllic trails (and they are idyllic!), and Souptober (or Souptember if you have hard time waiting).

I've been able to manage ~3 Tasks per day on off days which is up from ~1 task per day on fieldwork days. Yesterday's tasks looked like: dishes/kitchen, folding the horrendous backlog of laundry, cleaning and tidying the dining room and kitchen/dining room floors. 

It doesn't sound like much, really. But, I guess, we also went to a playdate at the trampoline park with L's new friend A but had to switch venues because of a small electrical fire. Luckily it was sunny and the kids are Alaskan so we just pivoted to a nearby park at a balmy 41 degrees. Then I picked up my salads for the week* and we finally picked up some incense at the local magic store.

Oh hey - it was the second No Kings rally yesterday! For some reason news outlets don't seem to be reporting numbers just saying it was "comparable to the last one", but from the pictures it actually looked a little bigger. Anyway. Thousands! I didn't go, but S did after work. He says it's very heartening, but I continue to be concerned about things like ICE being sighted and starting to do stuff in Anchorage. 

I was listening to Factually the other day and he and his guest were discussing the enshittification of America - and I agree, as boomer-like as it makes me feel. It was sort of reassuring to hear that, yes, the internet used to be more open sandbox, it used to be easier to find content related to what you actually wanted to find versus getting shunted down the bottleneck of what search engines want you to find (which is probably unrelated - no matter how good you are at plugging in search terms). And anyway, that's how I learned about Kagi and I'm going to get a subscription, I think, because I need to be doing some research going into my capstone and Duck Duck Go goes...pretty far...but maybe not as far as I would like. 

Also this week lots of I've Had It which is refreshingly left-wing but also registers as kind of Rush Limbaugh-ey if that makes sense.

Hm. What else. I've made these 2-3 times this past week and I think we're going to make it at home today (energy permitting). Oh - and they are pretty fucking easy and pretty fucking good! ...and pretty kid-friendly to make, if that's helpful to know.

The girl from my childhood homeschool group who was missing has been found and is safe, so that's good! I forget if I mentioned that in previous posts. If I didn't: she was missing - somewhere in Texas. But isn't anymore. 👍👍

Alright. Time to take some Tylenol and get ready for humanist church.

*I have the desire to eat salad, but lack of desire/executive function to make it, so I've been ordering and picking up salads from a local pizza joint. I'm sure they wonder wtf is going on with that, but they don't care enough to ask questions. Salad but no pizza? Yes. Mind. Ya business.

Robin Williams Really Does Hold Up

Do you remember that moment in the mid-to-late aughts when, at the end of yoga classes, the instructor would circulate the classroom and rub peoples' feet with scented oil while they lay in savasana? Kind of bananas to think that that was ever a thing - because: feet. Ew.

I'm feeling a little better the past couple of days because S has started dropping L of at school in the morning. I cannot overstate how nice this is. I went to a doctor's appointment on Tuesday early in the morning and dropped L off at school right before (for the last time in a little while, I guess), and had pretty fucking high blood pressure by the time I rolled into the office. They took it again at the end and it was 20 points lower on the systolic side and, anyway, my point is that the morning rush out the door is the most stressful. One time I even copped a nosebleed on the way out the door! That hasn't happened in a while, but if we could take that off my plate I think everyone would benefit ok thanks.

Fieldwork continues to go pretty okay; the last day with my first FW educator is this Friday and I suppose I should write a nice thank you note and hopefully I'll get my life together enough to do this. He was nice if not exactly the kind of teacher I vibe with, and hopefully writing the deadline down will be enough to make it real in my head.

The world is still on fire, idk if you know; I can't find it in my heart to be too excited about the Israel/Gaza current uneasy peace because is this administration really going to finally resolve millennia of conflict? To that I say: ha. And: no. And: no, I couldn't do any better but that's not really in my job description anywhere and that's on purpose because if nothing else I try to be realistic. Blame it on the northeastern European epigenetics if you like.

Spooky movie fest has predictably veered off the rails a bit, but I'm okay with it. I saw Something Wicked This Way Comes for the first time recently and L chose Matilda for her pick last night because: "She controls things with her mind; that's kind of spooky!" Okay. I would have tried to sell it with The Trunchbull a little more, but you do you, boo! My turn tonight (or tomorrow night because we've been shit at watching an entire movie in a sitting), and she's too young for Rocky Horror so I'll have to think about it a little bit. What's the right age for Rocky? Uh....how about...11? Yeah. 11.

Otherwise I am watching Season 9 of LIB (finished the French season - it seemed relatively mature, but perhaps that was just because je nais parlez) but it's more of a compulsion at this point and I do put it on 1.25x speed because Colorado, man.

Okay, better go get (only myself - omg!) ready for the day. Skibidi Ohio rizz let's go, etc.

If I Could Teach the World To Sing In Perfect Harmony, Would They BE Teachable?

Thank the goddess for Spotify and that things like nausea relief frequency are readily available on Spotify. And that I've never gotten around to cancelling my Spotify Premium over the years. This morning I was sat on a stool in my kitchen and just couldn't move. Because I just...didn't feel good.

L: "Are you feeling okay?"
Me: "No, not yet."

I made it out the door in time to be 10 minutes late after vomiting up everything I had for breakfast and dinner the night before. Why is this how humans reproduce, again? This is a stupid system. My CI is underatnding, thank goodness. I've only had to excuse myself from 5 minutes of one session today for the morning sickness. The bathroom I chose had BM in the toilet just chilling when I got there. Today's...just Not It, in a lot of ways. I pulled the 8 of Swords and that's been on the nose. I risked having goldfish and jello for lunch. L let me borrow her water bottle because I left mine at home. And I'm having the little bit of black coffee I am allowed to have. We'll see how all that goes.

L's started making some friends at her new school - which is good! A little boy, evidently, who is either in 2nd or 3rd grade (we're not sure) but is in the same math level as herself. I did the whole send the phone number with L so she can pass it to whomever she wants to really so we can schedule a playdate. Well, yet again, the person in charge of scheduling a playdate on the friend's end is the dad. And a divorced dad at that. And I feel anxious because I feel in some way S is going to take issue with this and start some nonsense because L just happened to hit it off with this one particular kid in this one particular situation.

He's still taking issue with the situation in which I was fielding scheduling playdates with the dad of someone in L's former class who also happens to live in our neighborhood and frequents neighborhood playgrounds. As in: I feel like I've been forced to ghost this perfectly awesome family who L asks about every once in awhile. I can't really tell her, "Oh. Your dad doesn't understand that other families sometimes (or, in my personal experience, often) put the dads in charge of arranging playdates and thinks I am flirting with them! I am not, but he isn't able to comprehend that, so now I can't communicate with her parents and he refuses to. Sorry, honey! Better luck with your generation."

And Anchorage is a small town. We're probably going to run into them again and, as a matter of fact, I already have run into the youngest sibling of the family at my fieldwork placement in passing - they just don't really know who I am which is fortunate - but my point remains. Same neighborhood. Small town. Why you gotta be like that?

Someone else, probably: but surely you have options, Clara! You could stand up for yourself and do This Thing if you wanted to! You know what? Good point- and I probably could, but past experience suggests that that would just make my home life much less pleasant and while it's improved quite a lot I just don't think I can take the hit right now. 

All I was supposed to do is hang in there until I graduate and get my feet on the ground and can think for a minute and feel secure, and I suppose I am doing that, but I am now doing that while feeling extra-crummy with, if I don't miscarry, yet another child for whom to be responsible. O, Fortuna. I guess.

I did have a small epiphany at (field)work, though; I like kids. I'm not mad at the prospect of having another kid per se, it's the absence of choice and the overall situation I take issue with. Overall situation being factors like quality of home life, my brain not being choice (and me realizing the extent to which it isn't, now), and the world at large, etc. But I like (most) kids*.

Okay. Young Sheldon kid, then my kid, then a chill kid, then the weekend. We can do this! ...even if we shouldn't.

*And most (but not all) kids like me too; I am aware that second children tend to bring the curveballs relative to first children, so I'm under no illusions there, I suppose.

Rusty

This just feels like the wrong timeline. On many levels.

Sleep is one of my favorite things. While it always has been, these days it's because 1) dreams 2) I wake up feeling rested - at least for a little while 3) I don't feel nauseous, get body chills or tired when I'm asleep. The dreams themselves have been diverse lately. Pineapples growing on top of the house, taking a packed plane to the "town hall of Alaska" (whatever that is?) as part of going to the state fair and running into people I knew from preschool teaching. One kid was climbing high on a sign suspended at the top of a hangar and the sign fell. Don't worry they weren't injured, though.

We're three days into Halloween (?) movie fest 2025 and have so far watched Spirited Away, Addam's Family Values, and The House With a Clock In Its Walls.

Fieldwork is still going okay! Most of the sessions I've conducted this week have been fun, and documentation is a lot less laborious under the system they have at the clinic - and there's been enough downtime for me to work on a student project I'm working on with M. She's someone in my cohort who's at the same placement. It's been nice having a familiar face around. And work with!

S texted on Thursday saying he'd been asked to leave town again. This is surprising because we'd discussed leaving town previously as absolutely not being an option; it ended up being that he just needed to talk it through a little before coming to the conclusion that no, that's not a good idea no matter how much extra money it is. Maybe I'll regret the decision, but we've already had talks about how if there's going to be a new kid he definitely needs to help more because there are very hard limits as to how much I can do - especially in the first trimester. And so far he's taken over grocery shopping and occasional dishes which has been very helpful.

I think at one point during the conversation I said, "Well, plus you were supposed to take over dropping L off at school at some point." And he was like, "Oh, yeah." And...it's not that I can't. It's more that I need to know that he'll do what he's said he'll do. Everybody needs that. Anyway, ultimately he told his company he wouldn't be able to go. So that's that until next time.