Bedding

Sometimes, you make a plan to sleep long-term on an air mattress you bought of Craigslist for twenty bucks.  An excellent plan, with just two major drawbacks.  One:  the words long term.  Two: the words air mattress.  Waking up on the floor after six hours is one way to ensure you will not be getting enough sleep, ever. 

So I Google and finally cave and ask my ex to send me the link to his mattress, because I remember that it was inexpensive and I happened to like sleeping on it.  He got the couch, which I bought originally, and left to him because I didn't want him to be able to say that I took anything from him.  I left him all of more expensive stuff I purchased for both of us while we were together and only took stuff I brought when I moved in or bought for myself.  He had insisted on paying me back for part of the couch, and I kept saying no.  Until I asked about the mattress, explaining the problem, and he went ahead and bought it before I could argue too much about it and said it was him paying me back for the couch. 

Honestly, I'm OK with that, because it is pretty fair, but I didn't want to accept it too easily.  I got dumped, and I don't want to be the bad guy.  He's still having to tell people he knows that I'm not a bad person, so, like, here, have a shit-tonne of evidence that I'm way nicer than I needed to be. 

I think I am going to build my own bed frame, though.  I will admit to being kind of a fan of taking somebody to bed and bringing it up as the opportunity presents itself.  Not that that's likely to be any time soon. 

Why Even Bother?

Whenever I have a job interview, or a really good posting pops up, I let my boss know. Every time, she says the same thing, "I don't want to lose you, but you do you."

We have had countless conversations about how this position does not allow me to live. Like, not just, "oh, doesn't pay for me to go out like a fancy person all the time," but, "I will very soon be in the place where I'm forgoing food because my expenses will be too great, unless something changes."  I don't know how much more clearly I can say, "If you don't want to lose me, you don't actually have to, fight for me to be full time."  Full time at my current rate would save me.  I wouldn't be exactly saving, but I wouldn't be short money every month unless I'm very careful, which is the current situation. 

So I have to find something else. Hundreds of people apply for positions. I can't find anything. I apply.

I'm feeling rejected and unwanted in every single aspect of my life.  Why even bother? 

Cleric of the Sandsculptor

My D&D character is a cleric of a god who she believes in, as an entity, but she's really uncertain about her role as a cleric, and whether she can really, possibly serve a god like a cleric really should, and whether the gods have any control over *her*. 

The irony of this is that the DM gave her a Paladin who is an unwitting servant of the god, too, so the Paladin turns to her for advice and Taavi, this poor little cleric defines it as well as she can, while she's literally getting confusing and unclear visions from her god and is mostly trying to ignore them as coincidence.

Today, while performing Thaumaturgical tricks and doing Identify spells and talking about my god for kids at a festival booth (Taavi never wants to do anything other than help- she is sometimes very not good at it, because the things the party wants to do have frequently been crimes, and Taavi's need to be helpful is at odds with her desire to also do good, so she's currently reasoning that helping her friends is probably good if not actively bad, maybe?  She really hopes her god is the laid back, understanding kind.), the DM gave her a teen who was being skeptical, and Taavi, through me, the atheist, the skeptic, the one my friend has to explain his wooga-wooga to in ways that make me stop raising my eyebrows at him, starts explaining her faith to this kid.  She says that her experiences make her believe the gods are there to help and advise, but it's up to us what we do with that information and the choices we make. 

There's a spell called Augury that tells you whether a decision you make in the next half hour is a good idea or not, basically. And I inform the kid this is a special spell that I can't use for just anything, but I'll cast it for him.  Does he have something he needs to decide to do next that he wants help with?  We cast the spell, and, after explaining how I'm going to cast, and what the answers can be, and taking all the flash out of the ritual, I ask him what he thinks the result is.  He thinks he's supposed to do the thing he wanted a decision about, and I say, "This is just advice, you can still make any decision you want, but come back tomorrow and tell me about it, OK?" 

There's a meme I enjoy about D&D that states that DMing is leading your party through weird parts of their own personality. I find myself wondering to what extent I'm Taavi and how or if that serves me in any way.  Especially now that I'm struggling with feeling deeply unnecessary and unwanted in most aspects of my life.  And because Taavi is deeply loved by the party, and I find her so very hard to play. Like, if I were capable of being Taavi full time, would that help? 

If it did, is that who I'd be OK with being? 

I Heard the Truth From Lenny Bruce Is Not Afraid

I'm angry tonight. I've been very concerned about my job, because I'm not in a great place financially (I do not need help as badly as a lot of other people, but the next year is going to be less than ideal), but I got word today that as long as there IS work, I will be OK. The rest of our part time staff can't work past Thursday, so they get two weeks of pay at 60% of the total average of their last four paychecks, and after that they're fucked. As most of them work multiple jobs and ours is the only one offering them anything, that's barely enough money to make a difference. My diabetic ex, and roommate for twelve more days, was trying to stave off depression yesterday when the owner of his part time job basically said that she doesn't believe in taking measures to keep anyone safe. And he fell in. He's convinced he's going to get the virus and die, and if that doesn't happen he's going to be out of work and get evicted and then the only option is to kill himself, because he has decided that this will be going on for six months.

So, this makes me the bad guy, because every night for the past four, I've been going out to pick up food and as soon as I get home get told something else I was supposed to magically anticipate him needing. I told him multiple times to let me know today what he needed, and I came home and that's when he told me half a dozen things we don't have, with the stores closing in an hour. In spite of my messaging him while I was at the store. Like, dude, I am doing this FOR YOU, and I come home and you freak out at me? I can't keep putting up with that. In 12 days there is a very good possibility that I am going to lock the door of my studio apartment and ignore when he knocks. His brand new, diagnosed-with-anxiety girlfriend can deal with him and find out what she got herself into.

I don't believe that, not exactly. I do right now, in exactly the same way he believes he's gonna die. He believed fervently for over a month that he was going to die from cancer and when he found out he DIDN'T have cancer, didn't bother to tell me about it for a week. I get that he isn't OK, but I don't know what to do with him. It's not just him, it's everybody like us. It's everybody who works a collection of jobs barely keeping them afloat. What's going to happen to all of us?