Good Things Friday (154) and Link Love
February 4, 2022
1. I’d been hoarding my Bing points. I normally redeem for Target gift cards which either cover Lakota Giving or diapers, both of which are eminently worthwhile, but I’ve been in need of a dopamine burst that hit differently. And here it is! We were not going to do our normal Lunar New Year feast with friends, and I was a little sad about that, but mostly realistic that I simply did not want to make the extraordinary effort to make it happen. There’s a very popular place nearby that does Asian BBQ foods that’s a huge pain to buy from. You can’t call in an order, they rarely pick up and if they do pick up, they may not fill your order for hours. Also: we were gifted Doordash gift cards for the holiday. For the sake of the businesses, and our pocketbooks, we do pickup direct from local restaurants as much as we can but there are many days where we can’t deal with the pain of running out for another thing at the end of a hard day. We hoard Doordash money against serious need. (We have a lot more of those than we’re willing to admit and we should do better on that front.) But this is one way we can win win win: a combination of my points redemption and their gift card = a big order from this restaurant. This will supply some delicious BBQ for our Lunar New Year dinner so we don’t have to waste hours of energy fetching it and I will be able to freeze a few portions of it for future dinners when we are on the ropes. It’ll wipe out our reserve but I think it’s worth it.
(After the fact: the delivery was botched but we got part of our order and that was yummy!)
2. I finally got a spare 20 minutes to thoroughly clean one part of the kitchen. That was so satisfying.
3. I have so much rage. About this pandemic. About the anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers and pandemic deniers. About the persistence of racism, white supremacy, the rise of Naziism being TOTALLY OK in the US. The prevalence of bigots, police brutality, the people who only care about harming others, all the people who could do things to make life a little better and choose not to. All the people who could help others and choose not to.
After a big push from friends, I have channeled that into a small project wherein I express that rage in creative curses. These are on Amazon because that’s the most accessible for me at the moment on the creator side (no minimum payment threshold, I can stay anonymous, I don’t handle fulfillment) but I’d like to explore other platforms if these entertain people. I had a quick look at Redbubble and their $20 payment threshold means I’d probably never cash out. Much like my Ibotta account! ANYWAY I hope these are as funny as my friends thought.
Tote bags:
- May your foot find…
- May the cat always pounce…
- May your tires go flat…
- May your clothes fall ….
- May your door always ….
Pillows:
Challenges this week: Our workday with JB home was rougher than expected. It wasn’t all bad, just tougher.
I’m very curious about how the quality of care here would work: California’s chance for universal health care. I hate that health insurance is tied to employers, I very much support everyone having health insurance coverage (WITH dental and vision, come on!), I am deeply appreciative of the quality of care we have with our plan with Kaiser now, and I want everyone to have this level of care and coverage. I wonder how likely that would be under this plan.
‘Every Quivering Fold of Flesh’, Jennifer R. Donohue
Bridging My Family’s Language Barrier, One Filthy Russian Idiom at a Time. This made me a bit sad for how much secondary language I’ve lost, how long it’s been since I had to translate anything for a relative whose English was nonexistent. And I feel old thinking back to times when I had the capacity to absorb so much language as a teen and young adult. Now I’m lucky to have the English words I need to get through a day.
Car shortage could change buying behavior forever. Yuck. I don’t think the current system is any good but I hate the idea of preordering cars. First, you can’t test drive anything (right now anyway). Second, the way they do it here is they charge an extra $$$$$ for preordered cars just because they can. I don’t see them passing along any of the savings they’ll see when they’re not spending money on advertising and such either.
From our own Brynne Conroy: I failed at multi-level marketing. It taught me a lot about my priorities — and myself.
GUINEA PIG LATE FOR WORK‼️ COMIN THRU‼️ pic.twitter.com/PB7ogxR2CW
— PIG PAPA (@GUINEAPIG_PAPA) February 1, 2022
I am there with you on the rage. Especially since now all these mommy-bloggers who should know better are parroting alt-right talking points. As if pretending that the pandemic doesn’t exist will make it go away. But they trust a news media that is more interested in clicks than in reporting things responsibly, or perhaps the rest of the media has also been infiltrated by alt-right people. The Atlantic reporting started a definite inappropriate headline trend with the new editorial staff (I cancelled my subscription weeks before the latest anti-mask article came out).
Why we can’t wait until 0-5 kids are fully vaccinated and hospitals get less stressed to start pretending the pandemic is over, I don’t know. Or even for daily cases to drop back down to a reasonable point. We’re still at 150/100K, which is really high. I don’t know how our hospitals are doing because they stopped reporting that.
Our weekly roundup tomorrow also has a little rant about how anyone trying to do the right thing, to put people at ease, to care about other people, has started to be demonized not just by QAnon and Sad Puppies people, but by these same women as “virtue signaling.” The alt-right has won if we’ve decided to demonize anybody who cares about anybody other than themselves. We’re selling fascism when that happens. Nobody should feel ashamed for trying to help about other people. Nobody should feel ashamed for showing that they care about other people. Virtue is a good thing, and if signaling it means other people feel more able to be virtuous as well, then that is what we should do.
As Mike the Mad Biologist says (noting the same coordination of alt-right talking points not in mommy blogs but in other communities that should know better), Rage is the appropriate emotion.
I don’t know that I’ve read the mommy bloggers you’ve seen lately, but maybe I can privately get those from you specifically to avoid if I run across them. There was the latest from Not a Wasted Word today though and OMDG’s comment about virtue signaling with masking made me see red for a minute because I personally know people who caught COVID from friends they were with outdoors in wide open spaces and unmasked with even though all adults were triple boosted. Yes that’s anecdotal and you know what? I don’t care. My health is fragile, I’m going to take every damn precaution until I am good and ready to take that step of unmasking. Frankly it doesn’t harm anyone else for us to be masked, so fuck off with calling people in SF problematic for choosing to mask ourselves outdoors when you wouldn’t. And that’s before taking into account the lack of vaccines for under 5s. I get it, those commenters people don’t care about their 3 and 4 year olds getting sick. They don’t get to make that same call for me and for my kid. Calling us hysterical for giving a shit about whether our kids get sick? I could just slap them, honestly.
And honestly, it is not that hard to wear a mask. If it is, then folks should try a different style mask. DH will wear his alone in the car just so he doesn’t forget to put it on before going inside someplace. That’s not even trying to help people (and it’s certainly not him worried about getting Covid by himself in the car) it’s just efficient for him.
Very true! I wear mine in the car when I’m heading out otherwise I’ll just forget when I’m going into the store or whatever since I’m on autopilot at that point.
With you on the rage. (I think it’s why I don’t post to my blog as much anymore.)
Makes me very happy and have hope that there are people like you out there, though!!
The CA universal health care push is quite interesting. Free at point of use? Even in NZ we pay something out of pocket (I think my charge is $17 per appointment, which are partially or fully subsidized for those with diagnoses of certain conditions). I think they were finding that some folks were going too much/abusing the free aspect – I guess the charge is to cover some of the costs + deter folks from going for every little thing?
I’m glad when you do post, though!
The CA universal health care seems really aspirational but I really hope there is a sensible version that happens soon. I wonder how much abuse there is in other countries that don’t charge anything at all at the point of service. I think Taiwan does that?
I adore the curses. I am glad you at least had something yummy for Lunar New Year. (I have started to view every “New Year” beginning of every kind, calendar, my birthday,Lunar, Rosh Hashanah…) as an opportunity for everyone to start acting as though we all live on the same planet, and in a pandemic, share in the responsibility for the well being of everyone around us. I expect to be disappointed, but I can hope. I cannot BEAR the fact that there are parents out hear who are not only putting their kids at risk of death and disabilities they wouldn’t otherwise have had by not vaccinating (themselves or eligible kids) or masking, but they are refusing parental consent for children capable of discerning the risks and ASKING for protection, and many of them are very LOUDLY declaring that their own children’s health and safety isn’t worthy of a little inconvenience. Because conspiracy, “politics” (virus doesn’t CARE about that, it’s a virus,) or the disinformation being propagated by either lack of reporting or the opinions of selfish twits, or being a selfish twit. And a lot of children can understand all of this, even the under 12s. What is that doing the mental health of these kids? I know what having a parent make choices and TELL YOU all about how you’re not important enough for them to make a different one, feels. So, yeah: I’m constantly horrified and May Lego they don’t own constantly be underfoot when they get up to pee at 2 am.
Thanks 🙂 I had fun making them anyway. Maybe they’ll resonate for some folks too.
I cannot bear the direction this country is going, either. Attempts to undo all mandatory childhood vaccinations?? WTF!!
I just cannot.
I’ll just keep it light and say BAHAHAHAHA your curse merchandise is amazing. GOLD.
🙂 Thanks!