pleasestopasking @ pleasestopasking @reddthat.com

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2 yr. ago

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I was taking a little me time at a cabin. Pretty remote, a 45 minute drive down a dicey mountain road to the beginning of civilization (a convenience store and a church). I was there solo to unwind.

One night I made a nice little fire down a hill from the cabin, maybe 40 yards away. Around 10, I put the fire out and started back up to the cabin. The porch lights were on and throwing some nice ambient light, so I decided not to turn my headlamp on and harsh the vibe with blue light. I couldn't easily see the ground where I was starting from, but the path was well-maintained gravel and I was familiar the terrain.

After ten feet, I froze. I'm a person who struggles to trust my instincts sometimes. But my lizard brain was picking up on something not consciously perceptible, and I have never before or since had every part of my screaming that something was wrong.

I turned on my headlamp and saw, about twenty feet up the path, a fucking rattlesnake. Then I immediately started second-guessing myself. Do we even have rattlesnakes in this part of the country? And it didn't even rattle, isn't that their whole thing? Also it's night, aren't they active in the daytime with the sun? I stared without moving an inch, barely even breathing, just silently gaslighting myself. After a few minutes it continued on its way and finished slithering across the path back into the woods.

I ran up the rest of the hill and into the house. Promptly grabbed my phone and typed "rattlesnake [regional area I was in]" in the search bar. So, it turns out there are rattlesnakes there, and yeah their pattern is exactly the same as the one I saw. Something primal in my body knew, and I'm really glad I listened to it.

Aww man, I thought Bobby was great in the reboot.

Need to start calling it Simulated Intelligence, because that's what it is.

Very true. But, to extrapolate on Plath's metaphor, you must select the ones that look best and harvest them, dry them to properly preserve them, and store them in a way to prolong their shelf life until you are ready to eat them. Without that planning, they'll simply rot.

"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

–Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

Not strictly necessary items, but not brainless consumerism (at least I don't think so). A few Christmas gifts for my husband–baseball caps from store that does made-in-USA reproductions of vintage minor league and negro league team caps. And some makeup and hair care products from a local business that I already use on a regular basis. I kept them hanging out in a cart from a few weeks ago to see if they'd do a sale.

It had already previously happened to her son and uncle without national attention.

Do you know why he cut contact? Either what he told you or what you suspect based on your experience?

Not my choice for sure, but since I have to live in it, committing it to memory seemed worth it.

I think having a somewhat traumatized childhood also makes you want to live as a child freely again

I call this the "very mature for your age" to "youthful energy" pipeline.

Therapy

There are some great pieces of media out there that pioneered or popularized a genre, game mechanic, whatever. Playing/watching/listening to it for the first time years after release (whether or not you've experienced it before and had your memory deleted, honestly), these groundbreaking pieces of media can seem very derivative even though in reality they blazed the path.

I think the television show Arrested Development is a good example of this. Watching it for the first time today is a totally different experience than when it aired because of how much it popularized mockumentary-style single camera comedies.

Good to know a few phone numbers even if you aren't at a protest, though. Everyone should memorize the phone number of at least one partner/family member/friend who lives local to them in case of an emergency. Lawyer is a bonus.

If you cook, bake, brew, anything with food and drink.

Common volume conversions: 3 teaspoons in a tablespoon, 4 tablespoons/2 fluid ounces in a quarter cup, 8 fluid ounces in a cup, 2 cups in a pint, 2 pints in a quart, 4 quarts in a gallon.

Common weight conversions: 28 grams in an ounce, 16 ounces in a pound, 2 pounds and 3(ish) ounces in a kilo.

And common volume to weight conversions based on ingredients you use. For me: 200 grams in a cup of sugar, 125 grams in a cup of AP flour, 6 grams in a tablespoon of cocoa powder.

Makes it a lot easier to halve/double recipes, or use a scale for a volume written recipe.

Feeling like my body is fat and gross and there's nothing I can do about it. (Even though I know I can.)

No patience, just sheer terror.

Felt cute might be a good time to go to the gym and get some sleep.

Wow I feel seen and attacked.

Yes, exactly. But also when I have to force quit my browser and it asks me if I want to reopen the tabs, I immediately click no. It's like I've been released from an evil wizard's curse. Then I can start a fresh tab hoard.

Yeah, I was thinking the 30 from your original post is rookie numbers.

That I'm my age. I'm in my late thirties, but sometimes I still feel like I'm nineteen.