Pondering bits of the past
May 9, 2023
When I set up our Synology system, a few years’ worth of photos didn’t transfer over so it’s been on my to do list since, oh, 2020? That’s about right.
Out of the blue, last week, I was hit with the “the moment is now” feeling that lets me actually do something on the list, so I’ve been doing manual photo backup for a week and change. All of 2018 is now uploaded and half of 2019 is too. That takes care of the big gaps. Once that’s done, I’ll have to edit the metadata for a chunk of photos that got relegated to the year 1970. Technology is great but also weird.
This process has brought up a lot of memories. Missing Seamus 🐶 a whole hell of a lot. Seeing the pictures of when he met Smol Acrobat for the first time, and finally realizing he had a “you’re joking” look on his face when he looked up at me after a long sniff. Then he took another long whiff and gave PiC the same look. It might have actually been an “I’m too old for this shit” look. It was an entire world away from when he last deeply sniffed a newborn and immediately claimed JB as his very own. That made me laugh and made me sad all over again. A dog’s love is so sweet. A totally invested clever dog’s love is intense.
The photos from the hospital stay, with occasional videos of Smol Acrobat snoring like the tiniest of frogs, reminded me of how deeply lonely that time was. Just me and my day old baby, with short drop ins from nurses, or PiC checking in because he also had to be home caring for Seamus (who’d only have another couple months with us). Smol Acrobat was so tiny. They’re still small for their age now, so I get to cuddle a smallish kiddo for a little longer.
As much as I will always and forever love cuddling itty bitty infants, I don’t ever want to do any of that again. Pregnancy was weird the first time. It was unbelievably scary, bizarre, unsettling and strange the second time in the first year of COVID during shutdown.
It got me thinking about how much things have changed in the past three, seven, and ten years.
I’ve gotten mighty comfortable in my current job, which was unexpected. This was my risky leap, a decade and change ago, I truly didn’t know what to anticipate.
I’ve become even more of a homebody, unexpectedly thanks to that same risky leap job that has become much more stable than I ever had the nerve to hope for. Travel doesn’t feel appealing anymore, especially with our small circus, but maybe that’ll come back in a few years. We’ll see!
We’ve made new friends because of the kids. Neighbors who never acknowledged our existence before JB came along slowly warmed up to us and some of them became, and stayed, friends. JB makes friends with the whole world but a select few classmates have parents who were open to socializing and we enjoy their company. That’s been a new experience. A lot of parents around here don’t seem to have time to even acknowledge a familiar-from-dropping-off face.
Our relationships with some chosen family has gotten a lot stronger. Our relationships with some family has gotten much more distant.
Feels like lots of new, mostly small, stuff to take the place of things I haven’t done in the past decade:
- Interviewed for a new job (less than zero interest)
- Dated someone new (also less than zero interest)
- Spontaneously agreed to vacation with a friend (semi interested in the abstract, depending on the friend)
- Gone out for drinks (zero interest)
- In the workplace: felt compelled to prove that I’m a good person, really, even if I would dropkick a person in a professional sense for being an asshole. I’ve never been good at pretending to be ok with politics playing assholes and I’ve gotten even worse at hiding it since my job got so comfortable (zero interest: but also I have a couple hypemen colleagues who warn people, ever so congenially, never to fuck with me as I can professionally dropkick them.) I like that the folks in the Kaiju Preservation Society understand you can both be a great person and not mistake that for weakness.
