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Friday: so that happened
Sep. 8th, 2023 11:00 pmLOOK IF YOU ARE JUST GOING TO “FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS” ME, FUCK RIGHT OFF. DON’T READ ANY OF THIS. If you, “well, but you are so lucky”, oh, goddess, do I know, on this day of all days, how insanely fortunate I am. I did not at any point in any of this even feel like killing myself, _which is notable_, because I spent the first chunk of my life _wanting to die_ and once I hit puberty _having a detailed plan_. I got mad at my husband because of his choices, but I didn’t even want to divorce him, which is _also_ notable. I even had it together enough to clearly articulate both of those things to him when I told him how upset I was. This day on the calendar is a day I _really really really_ recognize, partly because if I can’t be happy because of this day, then something is really, really wrong. A weird effect of being disproportionately fortunate in life is that every single thing that is irritating or upsetting or whatever that in any way connects to the extremely good fortune is something that otherwise civilized and decent human beings will often choose not to respond to with empathy, but rather with, Hey You Should Be Grateful, and if there is a more irritating sentence in English I honestly do not know what it is.
The last 25 years of my life have been an absolute lesson in why the privileged are such assholes, or at least, why the privileged who really ought to know better because they started out normal-ish, are some of the _worst_ of the assholes. Humans are all about reciprocity, and there just is not fortunate enough to compensate for the replacement of empathy with envy.
There’s a shadow work lesson to be drawn here, something about, you know, walkitout, if you lived your values, you would be a lot less apologetic about complaining about problems that connect to your vast privilege. Feeling like I cannot complain to other people may in fact _be_ my current big problem and one worth working on. Which is pretty weird, considering for years during the pandemic I ran a collective/collaborative/community/cooperative suffering, inviting my friends to comment on their suffering and promising to delete anyone who belittled any of the suffering people posted.
When I got up, it felt like there might be a storm. R. said forecast was 30% chance. I joked that there was a pretty good chance of that 30% chance happening — meaning, I thought that 30% was a lowball, and a storm was very likely.
I walked with M. in the morning.
I had a delightful, long phone call with K. I still don’t know why I bought the K.J. Jackson book, but it definitely was not her — she does not own any. I did not really think it was her. There’s some chance I saw or heard a review that piqued my curiosity and that I never expected to enjoy it, but the most likely trigger for that would have been an SBTB review and I can’t find one over there for that book. *shrug*
We got off the phone around 2 pm, and not long after, the storm was getting going. I wondered whether they were really going to release the kids into high winds and stuff falling out of trees and thunder and lightning and pouring rain. No, no, they were not. They robo called an announcement that they would hold the kids. Also, the power went out. Also, cell service went out. I mean, not _fully_ out, but not usable — LTE, 1 bar, that’s it.
After a bit, things calmed down and then the cell came back up to multiple bars and then 5G came back and then I picked up robo voicemail. In stages, they said they would release the kids, and also don’t pick up at the elementary schools because they were holding them until after the high school and junior high were clear. Some bus stops were blocked by downed wires and trees so they were maybe going to return some kids to the school. Traffic outside my house was terrible for hours. The kids got home, altho A. had freaked out. They thought that was fear of lightning but what she was actually worried about — and they did not understand — was that she was afraid the structural integrity of the building she was in would not stand up to a tree or whatever falling on it. I told her, it has to stay up with snow load. It will be fine if a tree lands on it.
More robo calls, because downed wire at Conant, but around 6:20, the superintendent sent out a thank you to everyone and said the buses have all completed all their routes.
R. had been doing a ride on the 3rd floor when the power went out, but while his bike uses power for a variety of things, it will run off of his power in the event of an outage (for the telemetry) and once the cell service came back on, his ride reconnected and synced back up. He started the generator, showered, and then started a load of laundry, _including towels_. He had sweaty towels, but he was like, what the heck, put other towels in too. This will come up later in the story.
I had reported the power outage to Eversource twice (both times, getting, the we did not know message) on the web, and then signed up on the text and reported it there. I finally started getting estimates of 6 pm and then 5:45. I was trying to nap, but there was a lot going on in the living room and A. had calmed down, so I went upstairs and took a nap.
I came back down around 6, and somewhere in there I had texted stat to get another update and it was now midnight. *sigh* I’d been posting to FB; R. had also noticed and had gone out to take a look around. He fed A. dinner and then went to go see his show. I was like, are you sure? Note to self: next time clearly express, “Hey, the generator is running and if that does something weird I do not know what to do could you please stay home?” In any event, I did not say that clearly and he left, not realizing that I wanted him to stay home.
I did Duolingo after 6, and A. joined in so we did Spanish, but she always wants to verbally articulate the grammar rule associated with every fucking error I make and I just want to blast through the lesson and let the dark part of my brain figure it out without me thinking about grammar rules (I just want to be clear: I’m _so_ _good_ at languages with that part of my brain. This is NOT a choice I am changing.). I told her, look, if you can’t stop yourself, we are not doing this together. So she left and when my 15 minutes 2X was over, I said, come back and say it, and she did and she acknowledged she was not saying it for me, just for her. Which is fair! Sometimes ya gotta. Once we were done with Duolingo, I realized the washing machine had stopped running, so I went upstairs to deal with that.
That’s when I discovered all those towels. I did NOT run the dryer (come on, I do actually understand how this works), but it was a PITA finding places to hang a bunch of towels. Meanwhile, A. wouldn’t give me five uninterrupted minutes to get through all this, because she wanted a blondie and couldn’t find a light switch and the Alexa to turn the lights on wasn’t working for her.
I was now around 7:30, and I realized I was feeling hot and irritable. No cool air coming out of the AC. I called R., rather than going to the breakers, because I wanted to know what he _thought_ the status on the AC should be, because maybe it can’t run with the generator. He said, the downstairs one should be running and he walked me through check the breakers. They were definitely off. He told me to flip them, I was like, are you sure this won’t mess with the generator. It’ll be fine, he says. First one is fine, I’m like, are you sure you want me to flip the second. It’ll be fine, he says. The lights do the jittery thing and then it is dark. *sigh*
He talks me through going into the garage, pulling the cord so I can lift the garage door (we have powered openers) and where the screwdriver is(not, actually, so I have to get the other one). I go out to the generator, and I say, “It’s still running.” Oh, so, next step: unplug the house and plug it back in. I do. Nothing changes. Turn the generator off and then back on again. Except the generator persistently does not turn back on again. R. says he’ll come home, but he’s in Somerville so it’s going to be a while.
I’m pretty upset, because I _had_ been hot and cranky, but with lights, internet, etc. Now I’m hot and cranky, but no lights. Remember: the power went out during daylight. The generator was on and we had lights before night time. It is now night BUT we had not tracked down flashlights and so forth because we did not need them. That just changed, unfortunately. I still have cell internet, and plenty of battery. If I want to do my friday night zoom, that’s fine. But I’m thinking, this is (and I’m actually wrong about this, it is not today, it is tomorrow) the anniversary of my last day of work. And it’s a big deal number — the year my retirement is old enough to rent a car, the silver anniversary, etc. This is a day on the calendar that is arguably more of a big deal to me than my birthday, and that I have definitely been observing longer than this marriage, but I _can’t_ celebrate it with friends because it’s _mean_ to do that to people who are maybe thinking they’d like to retire but can’t. My friends are lovely, and will celebrate this because it is important to me and they love me, but also, come on. I should be at least marginally sensitive. But my husband and his family of origin benefit from my good fortune, so at least _he_ should be respectful of this day. And he completely forgot it.
Also, I would not live in a place that I expected to need a generator for except for him. When the generator is running, I need him around to keep it running, so I’m kinda frosty when he leaves it to go to a show. That’s all _ignoring_ the fact that there was a thunderstorm watch for the entire travel path to and from — there was a good chance that going to that show was going to turn into a whole Separate Thing, altho fortunately it did not.
By the time he got home after 8 but before 9, I had delayed my Friday zoom because of above, and sat on the couch with A. watching TikTok in the dark on the ipad using my cell as a hotspot. She worried whether we should do this I mean what if we need the battery for an emergency. I said, “This is an emergency.”
TikTok helped us feel better, and then R. got home and as he drove onto our street he saw that there were street lights. So he flipped whatever he flipped to go back to street power and now everything was working again including the AC. I explained to him my feelings and thoughts and he felt really bad about forgetting (and to be fair, it wasn’t today, it is tomorrow, but at the time I said that, I still didn’t realize that, and he sure did not correct me, either — he really had completely forgotten).
I started my zoom and texted everyone that It Is On, and people started checking in. I explained I was in a shitty mood, and that it was the 25th anniversary, and they celebrated with me and commiserated with me and were delightful friends and I started feeling better. I told R. he should take all those towels and run the dryer and after my zoom I read for a bit and went to bed.
The last 25 years of my life have been an absolute lesson in why the privileged are such assholes, or at least, why the privileged who really ought to know better because they started out normal-ish, are some of the _worst_ of the assholes. Humans are all about reciprocity, and there just is not fortunate enough to compensate for the replacement of empathy with envy.
There’s a shadow work lesson to be drawn here, something about, you know, walkitout, if you lived your values, you would be a lot less apologetic about complaining about problems that connect to your vast privilege. Feeling like I cannot complain to other people may in fact _be_ my current big problem and one worth working on. Which is pretty weird, considering for years during the pandemic I ran a collective/collaborative/community/cooperative suffering, inviting my friends to comment on their suffering and promising to delete anyone who belittled any of the suffering people posted.
When I got up, it felt like there might be a storm. R. said forecast was 30% chance. I joked that there was a pretty good chance of that 30% chance happening — meaning, I thought that 30% was a lowball, and a storm was very likely.
I walked with M. in the morning.
I had a delightful, long phone call with K. I still don’t know why I bought the K.J. Jackson book, but it definitely was not her — she does not own any. I did not really think it was her. There’s some chance I saw or heard a review that piqued my curiosity and that I never expected to enjoy it, but the most likely trigger for that would have been an SBTB review and I can’t find one over there for that book. *shrug*
We got off the phone around 2 pm, and not long after, the storm was getting going. I wondered whether they were really going to release the kids into high winds and stuff falling out of trees and thunder and lightning and pouring rain. No, no, they were not. They robo called an announcement that they would hold the kids. Also, the power went out. Also, cell service went out. I mean, not _fully_ out, but not usable — LTE, 1 bar, that’s it.
After a bit, things calmed down and then the cell came back up to multiple bars and then 5G came back and then I picked up robo voicemail. In stages, they said they would release the kids, and also don’t pick up at the elementary schools because they were holding them until after the high school and junior high were clear. Some bus stops were blocked by downed wires and trees so they were maybe going to return some kids to the school. Traffic outside my house was terrible for hours. The kids got home, altho A. had freaked out. They thought that was fear of lightning but what she was actually worried about — and they did not understand — was that she was afraid the structural integrity of the building she was in would not stand up to a tree or whatever falling on it. I told her, it has to stay up with snow load. It will be fine if a tree lands on it.
More robo calls, because downed wire at Conant, but around 6:20, the superintendent sent out a thank you to everyone and said the buses have all completed all their routes.
R. had been doing a ride on the 3rd floor when the power went out, but while his bike uses power for a variety of things, it will run off of his power in the event of an outage (for the telemetry) and once the cell service came back on, his ride reconnected and synced back up. He started the generator, showered, and then started a load of laundry, _including towels_. He had sweaty towels, but he was like, what the heck, put other towels in too. This will come up later in the story.
I had reported the power outage to Eversource twice (both times, getting, the we did not know message) on the web, and then signed up on the text and reported it there. I finally started getting estimates of 6 pm and then 5:45. I was trying to nap, but there was a lot going on in the living room and A. had calmed down, so I went upstairs and took a nap.
I came back down around 6, and somewhere in there I had texted stat to get another update and it was now midnight. *sigh* I’d been posting to FB; R. had also noticed and had gone out to take a look around. He fed A. dinner and then went to go see his show. I was like, are you sure? Note to self: next time clearly express, “Hey, the generator is running and if that does something weird I do not know what to do could you please stay home?” In any event, I did not say that clearly and he left, not realizing that I wanted him to stay home.
I did Duolingo after 6, and A. joined in so we did Spanish, but she always wants to verbally articulate the grammar rule associated with every fucking error I make and I just want to blast through the lesson and let the dark part of my brain figure it out without me thinking about grammar rules (I just want to be clear: I’m _so_ _good_ at languages with that part of my brain. This is NOT a choice I am changing.). I told her, look, if you can’t stop yourself, we are not doing this together. So she left and when my 15 minutes 2X was over, I said, come back and say it, and she did and she acknowledged she was not saying it for me, just for her. Which is fair! Sometimes ya gotta. Once we were done with Duolingo, I realized the washing machine had stopped running, so I went upstairs to deal with that.
That’s when I discovered all those towels. I did NOT run the dryer (come on, I do actually understand how this works), but it was a PITA finding places to hang a bunch of towels. Meanwhile, A. wouldn’t give me five uninterrupted minutes to get through all this, because she wanted a blondie and couldn’t find a light switch and the Alexa to turn the lights on wasn’t working for her.
I was now around 7:30, and I realized I was feeling hot and irritable. No cool air coming out of the AC. I called R., rather than going to the breakers, because I wanted to know what he _thought_ the status on the AC should be, because maybe it can’t run with the generator. He said, the downstairs one should be running and he walked me through check the breakers. They were definitely off. He told me to flip them, I was like, are you sure this won’t mess with the generator. It’ll be fine, he says. First one is fine, I’m like, are you sure you want me to flip the second. It’ll be fine, he says. The lights do the jittery thing and then it is dark. *sigh*
He talks me through going into the garage, pulling the cord so I can lift the garage door (we have powered openers) and where the screwdriver is(not, actually, so I have to get the other one). I go out to the generator, and I say, “It’s still running.” Oh, so, next step: unplug the house and plug it back in. I do. Nothing changes. Turn the generator off and then back on again. Except the generator persistently does not turn back on again. R. says he’ll come home, but he’s in Somerville so it’s going to be a while.
I’m pretty upset, because I _had_ been hot and cranky, but with lights, internet, etc. Now I’m hot and cranky, but no lights. Remember: the power went out during daylight. The generator was on and we had lights before night time. It is now night BUT we had not tracked down flashlights and so forth because we did not need them. That just changed, unfortunately. I still have cell internet, and plenty of battery. If I want to do my friday night zoom, that’s fine. But I’m thinking, this is (and I’m actually wrong about this, it is not today, it is tomorrow) the anniversary of my last day of work. And it’s a big deal number — the year my retirement is old enough to rent a car, the silver anniversary, etc. This is a day on the calendar that is arguably more of a big deal to me than my birthday, and that I have definitely been observing longer than this marriage, but I _can’t_ celebrate it with friends because it’s _mean_ to do that to people who are maybe thinking they’d like to retire but can’t. My friends are lovely, and will celebrate this because it is important to me and they love me, but also, come on. I should be at least marginally sensitive. But my husband and his family of origin benefit from my good fortune, so at least _he_ should be respectful of this day. And he completely forgot it.
Also, I would not live in a place that I expected to need a generator for except for him. When the generator is running, I need him around to keep it running, so I’m kinda frosty when he leaves it to go to a show. That’s all _ignoring_ the fact that there was a thunderstorm watch for the entire travel path to and from — there was a good chance that going to that show was going to turn into a whole Separate Thing, altho fortunately it did not.
By the time he got home after 8 but before 9, I had delayed my Friday zoom because of above, and sat on the couch with A. watching TikTok in the dark on the ipad using my cell as a hotspot. She worried whether we should do this I mean what if we need the battery for an emergency. I said, “This is an emergency.”
TikTok helped us feel better, and then R. got home and as he drove onto our street he saw that there were street lights. So he flipped whatever he flipped to go back to street power and now everything was working again including the AC. I explained to him my feelings and thoughts and he felt really bad about forgetting (and to be fair, it wasn’t today, it is tomorrow, but at the time I said that, I still didn’t realize that, and he sure did not correct me, either — he really had completely forgotten).
I started my zoom and texted everyone that It Is On, and people started checking in. I explained I was in a shitty mood, and that it was the 25th anniversary, and they celebrated with me and commiserated with me and were delightful friends and I started feeling better. I told R. he should take all those towels and run the dryer and after my zoom I read for a bit and went to bed.