Ramblings of an EdMan

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We Live Here Now

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It’s been weird since the fire on Saturday.

We are lucky that we still have cats and stuff and a place to live.

But we are displaced until the home is safe again.

And so we live in a hotel, nice that it has a kitchenette, although that has limited usefulness. It is still nice to have cold milk and such.

And we keep bringing more stuff over. Very happy we could get Squiggy here on Saturday night. I wish capturing Lenny was as easy. That has been a saga. We even got him a trap but that failed like 4 minutes later. We got a Lenny camera through the Alfred app and an old smartphone, which has been nice. On a second trap now, I hope we can end that part of the saga and just be here for now.

And I can’t work since I work at home in a locked office due to HIPAA. And this hotel would not work with my taking calls all day with Lanna in the same studio.

It’s been weird being in each other’s space too. Having a door would be nice, but so it goes. And the toilet is awfully small, I miss our upstairs bathroom and having two bathrooms.

Luckily, this is temporary. Hopefully we can get Lenny tonight or tomorrow and be back in the house in a week or so. I am a bit of a pessimist though so I keep thinking that week might get extended.

Cleaning Madness

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We haven’t had a guest in a while, I think it’s been months.

It’s good to have them, one because we like being hosts and seeing friends.

Another big one is it forces us to clean.

Unfortunately, when no one visits things tend to accumulate in the guest bedroom. And we don’t change the shower curtain, or clean the tub or big stuff like that.

So still a bunch of stuff to do tomorrow and figuring out where things go.

But at least we got some laundry done, doing some dishes, vacuumed the living room floor, and cleaned the sink, toilet and tub in the bathroom.

It’s definitely a start.

And since we both procrastinate, it takes until the guest is almost here (arriving tomorrow night) until we actually get stuff done.

But we do have a spare bedroom so please come visit. And if we get more visitors things will be kept nicer!

I’m a Cat Man

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I’m still shocked Hillary Clinton won’t be President.

But so it goes.

I have cat time, I have music, I have books.

I have lots of cool people I know on social media, a lot of which I should probably know better in real life. Online relationships are a strange thing, that is going to stay true.

And I have internetting and going down the rabbit hole which is fun.

And Lenny jumping up on my desk demanding pets without a keyboard. Squiggy being sweet. Lanna enjoying “American Horror Story” Season 2. I am not up for that tonight.

I have snacks and chocolate and words.

Hi ho.

It should be a long, strange trip. But we will get through this like we do everything else.

So if you can’t deal with this anymore just do what gives you joy. For me it’s cats, words, my wife, music, food. Although I could use more conversation.

And I certainly could be far, far better at finding social capital and working with it.

But I have a comfy shift, I’m listening to Ella Fitzgerald, I had two cats behind me a minute ago, was sipping some armangac, things are good.

Things are still good.

And maybe this will bring better, stronger change in the future.

Sleep is Not the Enemy

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I’m reading a novel about someone who left everything while manic “Too Bright to Hear, Too Loud to See” by Juliann Garey. It’s very good and the last chapter I read involved being hospitalized in Kenya. After not sleeping for weeks jabbing his hand with a shrimp fork to stop the buzzing.

I have had major mania but in never went that far.

One major mania I had, and the one that wasn’t hospitalized was in my last MBA class at the Oxford Trade Program.

Geneva was great but when I came back to Oxford it got weird especially at a company visit to Birmingham. I do wish though I took the bus to London with the class. It was in August, 2001 and I planned to travel around Europe after.

That didn’t work out. I was pushed out of Oxford to London which thought was an incredibly strange decision. I should have just been hospitalized in Oxford. It was a far more approachable city than being completely alone at Imperial College in the middle of London.

I bought too much stuff, made some odd decisions, lost some stuff at a hostel, it would have been a good time for a private room. And I missed a flight to Edinburgh.

And I didn’t fly out of Rome in early October, I flew back I think to Los Angeles but maybe Newark. I honestly don’t remember.

I do wish I kept my space in Claremont though. It would have been a great place to transition. It’s one of the best places I have ever lived.

I think the mania went down across the ocean, but I don’t really remember. It was fifteen years ago. I do know I was depressed for a very long time. And I slept a lot the next year and didn’t do much. I think it has affected my career since but who knows.

I will say I am very happy I had no new incidents until my dad died in April, 2013 which was also a huge mania where I was hospitalized and have talked more about on the blog in the past.

I also had a smaller mania in April, 2015 that also involved hospitalization. A small mania in December, 1992, I think looking back. And one after graduating college in December, 1997 that was surreal and involved hospitalization.

Maybe I take less risks because I do have major mania. I am happy though I had structure and was able to heal.

The Obscene Becomes Normal

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I only heard in passing this morning about the terrible shooting of 50 people having a good time in Orlando yesterday at a gay bar.

I can only take so much.

It’s becoming so normal to have a shooting somewhere.

For people to snap.

We are all taught to fear each other from an early age now. “Stranger Danger”. Kids aren’t running around town. Instead of the police being there to help you in need, you fear them giving you a ticket. Even if you really aren’t doing anything wrong.

Instead of getting to know our neighbors we close our doors.

Instead of kids running around the neighborhood and like in many culture knowing they can ask someone for help and often get it, children are taught to fear.

We lock our doors. We fear going for medical attention even if we have insurance. Worried about the bill.

We fear the calls on the phone. Whether we can’t afford student loans, medical expenses, credit cards, payday loans or anything else. And there are debt predators everywhere trying to make a buck. It’s terrible.

We are in a nation of greed where money is worshipped. And an absolute shyster becomes a major party’s nominee for President.

Where we fear the other. Other religions, other races, our nations, even our neighbors. There is often suspicion.

I really can’t deal with it. After work I did look at Facebook briefly and I did look at a New York Times summary of events. I Googled “Orlando shooting.”

It’s being called the worst shooting in American history. That’s not true. It’s not a major war, it’s not bombings, drone strikes, Civil Wars, trench warfare.

It’s not Antietam, Petersburg, France, the Battle of the Bulge, the Indian Wars, the Trail of Tears. It’s extremely sad.

It’s someone who felt hate and had an assault weapon shooting up people looking to have a good time. It’s something that makes us very afraid.

It’s becoming all too normal.

As for me I have been playing games. Mainly against myself, although there was some Hearthstone online. Magic: The Gathering (Landfall R/G, Naya W/R/G, and Goblins Red), Splendor. If I lived in Portland, I might be at a place like Arcadia right now. I would so much rather be making decisions and cards and chits then thinking about tragedy.

Be kind to yourself, turn off the news if you need to, watch a favorite movie, go for a walk, pet the dog, pet the cat, take a nap.

I wish it would say it isn’t going to happen again but it probably is.

I just think we need to learn to love each other again. Stop the insane security state, stop American Empire. Realize no one needs AR-15s, and that includes the military. So many people have been terrorized with similar weapons like AK-47s around the world.

We all just want to fart around. To eat, to laugh, to have a home, find work, get by. It shouldn’t be this difficult.

With love,

edmund