iRiDeScE

Monday, May 18 2020 Today was grocery day. Last night I gave some food to a lady on facebook who said she was distributing it to folks in need, and I could afford to replace it. Frankly I just wanted to be rid of food I like less and get some things I've been wanting. Also I'm addicted to drinks and needed more drinks. I went to Big Lots and Food Lion and got a moderate amount of food and an extreme amount of drinks. Four 12 packs of diet soda, gatorade zero, the obscenely expensive canned Starbucks Nitro Cold Brew I like (IDK why I balk at the price of these, it's the same or cheaper as actually going to Starbucks lol), various other things I like or wanted to try. This should last me for a while, I hope. I need to get back into uhhhh, water. I now have a pyramid of drinks atop my fridge. It's kinda sad that groceries are the highlight of my day, let alone my week. I got a new mattress cover cuz mine was 5 years old and had stains that wouldn't come out. And uhhh my card declined at Big Lots oops. That was just one account, I had another card, but I guess I couldn't really afford to replace the food I gave away. I thought I had more money then I did, apparently. It was drizzly today. I did walk to the store, but I wore a raincoat. Obviously I had way too many drinks to carry home so I called my dad to pick me up. It's supposed to rain all week and I am absolutely dreading this. I need to get out of the house to feel alive, and right now going for walks is basically the only way I can do that. In the past I'd go to coffeeshops or restaurants (counter serve places so it was hopefully a little less weird to be eating alone) and constant (window)shopping. Can't really do that now. My house, my bed felt like a prison even before. I've basically spent the past 7 years in this bed. I've tried to switch to sitting in a chair while using my laptop at home but I think a chair as comfortable as the bed would cost hundreds of dollars. I bought a $40 chair and it hurt my butt, a $100 chair and it hurt my back. I saw a youtube video a while ago about this "extreme minimalist" lady who has no furniture. She sleeps in a hammock and sits on the floor. I don't want a hammock as I'm a stomach sleeper but spending my time on the floor with pillows seems very serene. I tried to be a minimalist for a while but I couldn't do it. I kept getting more stuff to replace what I gave away. A few years ago I used to be essentially a maximalist as far as possessions. I'd save a lot of things in case I needed them, and buy stuff on clearance just because it was cheap. And my room became a cluttered pigsty. It works better for me to just be a regular person, keeping stuff if there's a good chance I'll need it again but (trying to) not buy random cheap crap just cuz it's cute and cheap. I am thinking I will be going out in the raincoat and just have to deal with being soaked. The idea does not really appeal to me, but the alternative is worse. There was a lot more of this post but I decided it was too self-indulgent and personal to post. Not that the above is any less self-indulgent. It's mundane drivel, but it's what I have right now. I have a lot in me, I really do, but I don't know how to put it into words. My broken dyspraxic hands can't put it into art, so I must learn. I'm practicing. That's what this is. Saturday, May 16 2020 I got up late yesterday and frittered my time away on Aywas, Marapets, and general internet clicking. I didn't manage to get moving until about 6:45pm when I left for my walk. The weather was just gorgeous, not a cloud to be seen. I decided to walk to the river. I noticed a frozen yogurt shop had reopened for takeout only and damn did that sound amazing. I resisted for the time being, but I'll probably go once we have another hot sunny day. I have a lot of good memories from that place as a kid. They have a merry-go-round in the shop (obviously not open right now) which I loved. The river was disappointing. It was somewhat dirty and not very interesting to look at. I only stayed like two minutes before turning around and walking home. I did see a little girl riding in the back of a Jeep with the roof and doors off. She looked like she was having a ball. I would have loved that as a kid. Never been in a Jeep except to clean a few back when I worked at a car wash. What a nice way to spend a quarantine Friday evening. The vibe of the warm but not quite hot, just before sunset weather was "carnival". When I was a kid my town tended to have one around this time of year. I think normally they still do, but I haven't been in at least 10 years. Of course not this year. It's too bad. I fucking loved that shit. I loved the rides, especially the big swings, the umbrellas (that's what I called it, I don't think that's the proper name. Okay I googled it, it's called the Paratrooper), and when I got a little older the Gravitron. I really liked the sensorimotor stimulation and being able to get up high and see everything. I was scared of the Skymaster and the Zipper, but did conquer that fear eventually. I still refuse to set foot on any sort of drop tower, I despise the feeling of them. The last time I went to the local carnival, as a teenager, they played My Chemical Romance while I was on the Gravitron. That was an excellent combination of things. I also just liked the vibe of the carnival and seeing all different types of people. I long for that sort of vibe right now. I won't be getting it for a while, except for whiffs of it in the air when the weather is nice. I looked at pictures today of in October I think where I went to this "Harvest Festival" that was really a glorified craft fair, but it was very enjoyable people watching. Good barbeque (this was before I went vegetarian). Amazing apple pie. The cloggers were not very good, but they were just kids so you can't blame em. It's part of the charm with kid's performances, sometimes. I enjoyed sitting in the grass and watching with my food. The sky was lovely and blue with white fluffy clouds. It was that kind of fall weather where you're taking your hoodie off and on every few minutes. One thing I noticed was that even though I was like half an hour from home, the culture felt different since we were in a rural area. My hometown is a college town, technically a city though a very small one. The nearest larger city is an hour and a half away, the surrounding area is rural. I love my hometown, but it feels bland and cultureless to me compared to when I go somewhere else. I think it's not at all, just when you live the same place 95% of your life you get used to the vibe and don't feel it. Like how you get used to the smell of cats when you own them and don't smell it anymore. Except the vibe of a city/town is much more pleasant then cat smell, so it's actually a loss. I do think that large towns/small cities and suburban areas tend to be a bit more similar to each other across the country then big cities are to other big cities and rural areas are to rural areas. I love to soak up the vibe of a new place when I travel. Unfortunately I've never had many opportunities to travel in my life. I've been up and down the east coast, mainly as a child, but never out of the country or any further west then Ohio. Someday I'll go more places, I hope. Walking home some teenagers were ignoring social distancing entirely and playing basketball in the church parking lot. This made me very angry, but I gritted my teeth and walked on. It's their funeral. What could I really do about it, yell at them? Call the pigs? Not going to do any good whatsoever. One thing I did manage to accomplish yesterday was *drumroll* one load of laundry. Yay me, I get to wear the clothes I like best again. I even put some of them away. Today it was cloudy. I went for just a short walk, which was boring. I washed my sheet. It needed it badly. I wanted to do another load of laundry and I had it all ready but the washer was doing some weird blinking thing so I'll wait until my dad takes a look at it. I wanted to get Jimmy Johns but I need to eat the stuff at home so I had a Lean Cuisine "Farmer's Market Pizza" for dinner. It would have been better without any mushrooms. I might get Jimmy Johns tomorrow cuz I got a coupon in my email that expires tomorrow. I worked at Jimmy Johns for over a year and ate it nearly every shift yet managed to never get sick of it. That's how much I like it. Unfortunately they only have one sandwich I can have as a vegetarian, but even as a non-vegetarian it was my favorite on the menu so I'm not complaining too much. Oh wait, they also have the veggie club but that has eight slices of cheese on it, gross. I love cheese but that is too much. Almost no one ordered that. One lady ordered it with extra cheese for some reason though. Tonight I was really feeling annoyed with social distancing. I felt like I couldn't handle it for one more second and was about to run into the street in my nightgown and scream. Thankfully that feeling didn't last too long. I know it's too early to reopen, regardless of what politicians say. However I have to hold out hope that they'll be able to ramp up testing, put more safety measures in place, so we will be able to safely go more places even if there won't be carnivals or concerts for a long time. I absolutely cannot do months and months more of this. I didn't want to write about COVID shit too much on this blog because a. it sucks. b. it's boring. c. everyone is. d. hopefully it won't be relevant all that long. But what else is there? Memories? Nothing else is happening in my life right now. So Quarantine diaries it is. Also, I do not recommend putting Mio flavor in seltzer. I thought it might be good, but the flavors didn't mix well. Seltzer is better by itself and Mio is better in plain water. I'm running low on sodas but I have a bunch of those Mio pods and am trying not to go to the store so I'm likely going to be drinking those a lot this week. Thursday, May 14 2020 I had my therapy session and I wasn't late, for once. It wasn't the best session I ever had but not the worst either. Just talking about my feelings around quarantine and wishing for things to get back to something closer to normal, as well as the issues I've been having with my family members and an incident that upset me at the store last week. Afterwards it started to rain and my heart sank. However, it turned out to be just a passing shower. I stopped by the post office to check my PO box. Walked along downtown looking at the signs in the shop and restaurant doorways, checking out what was open and what wasn't. Listening to my iPod sipping my Cherry Coke Zero I almost felt good. I walked home and somewhere along the trail I got tired. I wished to be finished walking already and be at home. I felt a little bit dizzy and out of it. I pushed on and walked all the way to Taco Bell, which was quite far. In all I walked nearly 6 miles today. After I got my food it was really pretty outside, especially when the sun started to set. I did bring my camera and I wanted to take some photos but I didn't have the energy. Plus it would be depressing when I inevitably couldn't do anything justice. I have taken hardly any photos since quarantine started, even though I've gone on a lot of walks. It's a damn shame, but I don't feel up to it for whatever reason. There are a lot of things I wanted to use this time for, but haven't felt up to. I really wanted to clean my room once and for all again. I can hardly manage to do my laundry on a semi-regular basis. Oh well. I think this happened to a lot of people so I try not to feel too bad about it. When I got home I found some of the things I ordered had been delivered, including My Solo Exchange Diary vol 2 by Nagata Kabi. Which has inspired me to write about my life a bit, I guess. A little while ago I opened a soda and it exploded all over my bed and sheets. I have no idea how it got so shaken up. So I'm waiting for my bed to be a little bit drier before I can go to sleep. At least it was diet. I feel a bit disappointed in this entry because I want to be doing some kind of Big, Important Writing instead of a bland diary entry. But I think that any writing is good for me right now, when I struggle to even attempt it at all. I tend to let wanting things I create to be Good as well as Deep and Important get in the way of me picking up the pen/camera/textedit document at all. It's better to make something then nothing, probably. I also am ambivalent of sharing my personal thoughts and activities in a format like a blog, website or zine. I'll decide I want to be a person who shares things and post stuff, then later decide I want a more mysterious, private vibe and delete them. However, I tend to overshare in other formats such as Discord servers because it feels less permanent. However technically almost everything I've ever said on Discord is still there, even if no one will ever bother to dig it up. I often end up oversharing to the point where I irritate others in group chat formats. So it's likely better to post on a blog or something because in the long term I have more control over it. But I don't get that instant feedback I crave... oh well. Even if I were to post on Tumblr or something else more social media-esque then neocities, I'm awful at behaving in an influencer-type way that algorithms and/or other users like so I never gain a following. Which I only want for a modest amount of attention and feedback. I do despise what the internet has become. The commercialism, the capitalism, influencer culture. Fuck that bullshit. I love how Neocities is trying to bring back a bit of how things were when I was a kid, where people did/made things online for fun or to make friends instead of to capitalize. I understand why people try to become influencers, a lot of people want to be a celebrity and it can be a better option to make a living then slaving away in an office or retail or somesuch. But I constantly long for the internet of my childhood and teens (as well as the earlier times I don't have personal experience with). I don't like that this kind of thing is dismissed as shallow nostalgia. Maybe it's nothing but nostalgia, but it's deeper. And this ended up about 3 times longer then I intended it to be. Oh well. I wrote a thing, and that's better then writing nothing. I'll accept it. I have a track record of not keeping up with blogs, but at this point in time I intend to keep up with this one. We shall see. home