channonyarrow

HAY I STILL HAVE POWER YAY.

Also, thank god I broke the snow free from my door last night around ten, when I had FOUR INCHES of blown snow up against it; I would not have gotten out the door this morning if I hadn't. I almost didn't anyway! See, I have the ONLY screen door in this building because I have the only exposed door in the complex, so the door opens in but the screen door doesn't.

Today is going to be a good day, if I can get to a mailbox. Note on Christmas cards - I haven't gotten to a mailbox in WEEKS and my car is STILL not going to be moving, I'm hoping that it warms up enough Tuesday that I can move it to the street in front of my building, because otherwise, I can't go anywhere in it.

And I'm getting worried about money and paying rent for January. FOOLISH YET THAT IS HOW IT IS.

Dear self,

Okay, you know what? This is absolutely fucking ridiculous, that's what. So. Sit down, shut up, and fucking just live each day as if it's your last. STOP trying to make contingency plans for what you'll do in 2013, STOP worrying about the death of capitalism (you don't like it all that much anyway) and STOP rerunning issues of Transmetropolitan in your head.

Because you know what?

There is nothing you can do about it. You can't. You're not a city planner, you're not an automotive engineer, and your only involvement in the process is to make sure that the city planners and automotive engineers have really good books to read while they're figuring all this fucked up shit out.

Stop and think about it, self: on balance, you would prefer to see the end of oil. You would rather see culture become far less mass-culture, you would rather see peoples' carbon footprints disappear, you would rather see a lot less overconsumption. The sight of a stack of 300 pairs of jeans at the store does not fill you with joy.

And you know what else?

If push really, really comes to it, you will have warning. You will have warning, and you will be able to throw it all over and go buy a fucking farm in the Midwest and raise your own food. You may never leave that farm again, but you'll at least have that option. You will not starve. You will not be naked. You have skills, and you will survive.

You can do nothing right now, except be prepared. It's a porcupine; you're not going to reach into it and get anything other than spikes, no matter how hard you try.

And you know what else, else?

You're a pessimist. Humans are inventive creatures. You are an inventive creature. You will not live your life to a normal span and never see your friends again or be able to take that trip around the world you're thinking of: it will be bad for a while, but people are willing, always, to go with fast and expensive, in the end, and if America is faced with the end of oil, America will figure its shit out really damn quick and do something else. You are discounting the billions of people in the developing world who are also thinking about this problem; America itself may be too tied to Big Oil to be able to think straight, but there are millions of people out there who want American lifestyles, and don't have Big Oil.

Remember all that. Keep breathing, and remember that. Remember that you make the changes you can, and that you support the changes you need, and that as long as you are alive, tomorrow is another day.

And someday you will have that again, that feeling of driving with the top down and the radio up on the way to nowhere except that you can go.

You do not live in an age of limited choices. You are an American, and quite frankly, Americans will not stand for limited choices.

You live in an age of decisions: how much, how long, and what's the tipping point?

But not limited choices. Not yet.

Remember, also, these things:
Live each day as if it is your last. Plan for the things you can see happening, but do not try to lock in plans contingent upon the apocalypse happening. Have some grace. Remember that every empire falls, and that is not always a bad thing; by the time it falls, the empire is rotten. Remember that you can make the future, every day.

And remember to breathe.

Breathe.

Do not borrow trouble. Trouble will come, with interest, regardless, but borrowing it makes it that much worse.

Remember to breathe.

Everyone faces a world-shaking catastrophe; the question is getting through it with grace. Do not assume no other changes to your life than the increasing cost of oil: you have no idea what you will be doing, what options will be available, in five years.

And remember that even if it all goes to shit in five years, at least we'll have stopped global warming, and that's not a bad result to have.

But remember: every year, every winter, we get better and better, and we refine who we are and who we are becoming, and who we want to be, and how we want to be those people, and the main thing, the absolute main thing, is to do it with grace.

Live each day as if it is your last.

Love,
Me

You know what?

I know what, anyway.

If the bandomsecrets post that I thought was about me was, in fact, about me, then either the person I thought did it didn't actually do it (which opens the field, whee!) or else that person has a big, hefty serving of hypocrisy coming to them.

I have to quit shopping in the men's department at Target, but if I had done that, I would not now have an Autobots tshirt, so there's always a reason not to. I also finally cracked and bought a coffee maker (we'll see if I can learn to make coffee now) and a new toaster, which is shiny steel red and is the first appliance ever to make me want to name it, simply because, well, it is shiny red steel.

I have been named an emergency contact in case anything weird, unusual, or embarrassing happens to a friend's housesitting sister. Apparently, I can't solve flooded basements, but I kick ass when ninjas show up in your home. Though apparently, if it's ninjas, I'm supposed to bring someone else with me, who is also quite competent at ninja-butt-kicking. The qualification was that my friend felt that if something really weird happened, I would be able to have an axe in hand and be there within fifteen minutes. I feel like this is an achievement that I would like immortalised on a medal, because it makes me giggle, and then I could wear that medal proudly.

"Armed and Ready To Fight Off The Weird", or something.

Beyond that? Weekend off, people. Halle-fucking-lujah.

You know the rain is bad when you see a military convoy going to Bellevue.

My goal today: Get everything done and go home.

my teeth fall out of my fucking head?

Mission for the moment: Find out if dentist is overly pessimistic (he's new to me) or if this is real. I have phenomenally bad teeth and he's all "Yeah, you're going to start losing your teeth in a couple of years. If you brush and floss and make it your new religion, maybe five, maybe ten. But someday you're going to get a cavity we can't fix, given how crowded your mouth is and then you're going to start losing your teeth."

Bear in mind, ladies and gentlemen, that this is a diagnosis made after I have TWO cavities (and one totally-eaten-by-weevils-tooth-that-needs-a-crown) after SIX years without dental care. This is relevant because after the time I didn't have an appointment for a year and a half and I had a cavity for every month that I missed (so, eighteen) no one suggested this then.

Sooo...either
a) my dentist is a paranoiac and playing cover-your-ass-fu
or
b) I will be adjusting my dentures in my fucking head from the age of thirty two onward. Thirty-two - a magical number in dental establishments. NOT THAT I HAVE THIRTY TWO TEETH ANY LONGER. I think I have twenty eight. Maybe twenty seven.

And this has never, ever, ever come up before in my life within my hearing. See, if you have teeth like me, you either pay attention to what is said around you or you wind up with someone doing a totally unnecessary root canal. Seriously. So I can, despite having a memory like a sieve in other instances, remember the precise dentist who first mentioned this oral surgery (rejected because strangely, I don't WANT to have both my jaws broken, my palate dropped, and HUGE ledges of bone sawed off even if I AM under anaesthetic - call me crazy), which was Dr Peter Shapiro, a very nice and extremely tiny man, whose equally-tiny wife was my allergist in related matters and who was never actually bitten by me, and his office was up near Children's Hospital and it was on the fourth floor and I REMEMBER these things, you see. I can remember all of my dentists, most of the fights, most of the treatment plans (at least, beyond "And this week we want you to hold your toothbrush at an angle when you brush, but don't get too attached because upcoming research will indicate that you should be rotating it in small circles, and by the way we're going to try to get you to buy a HUNDRED DOLLAR toothbrush for the rest of your natural life and we'll give you a new reason for it every single time and it won't ever be something simple like "We're getting a kickback from sonicare." or anything that makes sense at all."). I know which dentists I bit, which ones I didn't, which one I threatened with grievous bodily harm if he came at me with a needle full of Novocaine like that again, and all of it.

And nowhere in there was "even if you brush your teeth religiously and floss them often and well and adapt your life to accomodate your teeth totally you'll STILL lose them." Because if someone had said THAT, I would have just had them yanked-the-fuck-out at the age of twenty and spent the rest of my life, as someone I know does, pretending my dentures were REAL.

Seriously. I am feeling that I am wasting my time by brushing my teeth now, and I've only been out of this appointment for four hours. There's nothing like telling someone that what they're doing is going to have no effect at all to keep them doing it.

I want a second opinion, but I want to be able to trust my damn dentist for ten minutes, too.

Maybe I should bite him next week. During the consultation when he'll presumably outline the total-plan-of-disaster for my mouth. I should look for the disaster film crews hiding in the fish tank next week, shouldn't I.

FOUR APPOINTMENTS ALREADY AND WE'RE NOT EVEN ONTO THE MATTER OF WHETHER OR NOT I NEED A ROOT CANAL FOR THIS DAMN CROWN. AND I need to figure out how to pay for THAT with my student loans coming due and I said - for whatever INSANE reason - that I'd buy my dad a GUN for his birthday - a gun that costs like a thousand dollars! Granted, my brother's going in on it, but I don't have this sort of money when I have student loans!

And all I can think of is that you know, I got off real light on the student loan front. And apparently light on the teeth, too.