more thoughts on homes

Yesterday a co-worker asked me to host a party. I said nah. We have been the go-to party hosts for like 15 years now, and the disappointment and frustration of trying to throw parties during the pandemic has me burnt out on it. If someone wants a party, why don’t they throw it themselves? I suggested to my co-worker that they host it and they said “nahhh, maybe if the weather was nice and we could be out on my deck but it won’t be nice for a while…” I thought maybe they were nervous about their place getting trashed by a rowdy crowd or something (even though that seems like a silly fear at middle age) so I said what about just having people over for a potluck than? My co-worker simply replied, “I can’t.” Now, they have a totally decent house, centrally located, plenty of space, so I’m not sure why they “can’t” have people over. We’re not talking about having a rager here, we’re talking about a dozen or less co-workers having a few drinks together.

Another co-worker overheard this convo and said basically the same as the first co-worker, that if the weather was nice they would be happy to have people over for an outdoor thing, but their house “is no good for hosting parties.” I’m not clear on what that means though because to me, most people just want a place to get drunk and smoke weed. It’s better if the venue is clean and tidy, and even better if it’s got a cool vibe but those aren’t necessary. So really, any house is good for hosting parties, by my standards.

My first thought is that maybe some people are ashamed of their homes, like I have been feeling about the prospect of moving into a mobile (ahem, MANUFACTURED) home. Maybe they know their places are messy, or they haven’t gotten around to patching that hole in the drywall, or they haven’t finished those 4-yr old renovations, stuff like that. Maybe they just think their places look shitty or smell bad, like they will appear poor or something. Anyway, I don’t know if this is necessarily the reason my co-workers didn’t want to host an indoor party but I bet it’s a fairly common reason. I think the other common reasons would be laziness (don’t want to decorate, clean up, have to deal with drunks at the end of the night, etc), fear of their stuff or place getting damaged, and fear of failure, ie hosting a lame party. Those are the things that have prevented me from having parties in the past.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting to encounter the possibility of other people being embarrassed of their homes right when I’m wrestling with that issue myself. Good timing, universe.

^{I just love this dang gif.}

lightning round

• I’ve had several friends bail or blow me off unceremoniously in the last few weeks and it really bugs the shit out of me. It makes me want to stop putting effort in, to leave the ball in their court and wait for them to make an effort to connect. I don’t like feeling this way, it makes me feel small, like I’m being insecure and juvenile. I don’t know what else to do though, getting blown off repeatedly really does stink and it does indicate an imbalance in effort on someone’s part.
• I used to think that the window between experiencing something and becoming nostalgic for it was ever shortening but now I believe it is pretty consistently around 20 years. For example, it seems like people in their early 20’s who are learning to be adults and do boring and sedate and demanding things yearn for the ease and simplicity of when they were kids 20 years-ish prior. And people in their 40’s seem to experience the same yearning for the hedonism and wild times of their early 20’s. So yeah, I think 20 is the magic number now.
• Does no one else ever get weird symmetrical acne? I’ve noticed this on myself for decades. I’ll have a clogged pore or ingrown hair on my right forearm, and in almost the same position on my left forearm, I’ll have something similar going on. I’ve noticed this on my legs, arms, torso…not really on my face though, at least that I can remember. I wonder if it’s a legit thing or if I’m just seeing a pattern because I’m looking for one. I looked for info on this online but couldn’t find anything, which was shocking to me. You think one of the other billions of human insects on this planet would have made some kind of similar halfwit comment about it since the dawn of the internet.
• It finally feels like summer is ending, and I love it. It’s been way too hot this summer so good riddance to it. Hello fall, you wonderfully temperate season, you. I can’t wait to go to the Cow Ex in a few weeks, that always feels like the official ‘ringing in’ of autumn. It reminds me of going back to school, orange and brown leaves, crisp evenings and mornings. Delightful.

scarecrow

Have I written about this before? I feel like I have but can’t remember for sure. Whatever, doesn’t matter. Feels right to talk about it now, regardless.

It’s easy to be blinded by infatuation and think that someone you don’t know well is amazing, great, perfect. Spend 10 years with them, go on vacations and road trips with them, make decisions about buying houses and property together, make decisions about how to live in a space together, smell their shit after they’ve punished the toilet. See them when they are short on sleep or stressed from work and at their worst, their most selfish, unkind, rude. Really give someone the chance to make it out of the honeymoon phase, and then see how perfect you think they are.

This is all to say: no one is perfect. No one is as wonderful as they seem during the honeymoon phase, and anyone who lets themself believe such a thing is thoroughly deluded.

It is because of this that I hope to hell that I die before Jenn. I like me lots but I know how difficult I am at the best of times, and don’t want to go through having to show another person all of my flaws, insecurities, worst aspects. I don’t want to thoroughly disappoint anyone in the way I am sure everyone else would disappoint me.

: )

the politics of dog walking with new neighbours

It’s a rainy fall morning and I’m listening to Dead Can Dance’s The Serpent’s Egg on my rad vintage home stereo system. This is a wonderful start to a day.

Yesterday I took Stella for an evening dog walk. As we were heading up the road, I bumped into a girl who appeared to be in her early 20s, walking her own dog. She and her dog were really nice, and we ended up chatting while our dogs played together for about 10 minutes. She mentioned she had just moved to the neighbourhood so we introduced ourselves and closed the conversation saying that we will likely end up dog walking together at some point.

It was all fine except for the fact that something in her face reminded me of another young woman, one I worked with who was positively one of the most toxic, fucked up individuals I’ve ever had the misfortune to get to know. It’s not like my new neighbour displayed the same twisted traits of my now ex-coworker (thank Lucifer in hell she’s long gone), it’s just that she sort of looked like her and seems to be around the same age. But I’m scarred enough from the coworker that even these similarities were enough to put me on edge.

In addition to that, while continuing on with my dog walk I got to thinking about how despite seeming very nice and friendly, I didn’t really want to dog walk with this girl because I’m afraid we’ll get to talking about some contentious issue like religion or politics or what the best horror movies of all time are and I’ll suddenly find her intolerable, or vice versa. The less you know a person, the easier it is to like them; conversely, the more you know someone, the more opportunity there is to dislike them. Occasionally, this makes me apprehensive to even try being friends with new people in the first place.

I don’t like that. Yeah, I like being a cynical twat, but I don’t like being hamstrung by my cynicism. It’s too goth. It reeks of the “if I never try, at least I’ll never fail” mindset that I generally reserve for pathetic, fragile losers. There must be a balance between being cynical and being open to new stuff despite the likelihood of disappointment. So I decided that I will dog walk with this young woman and just hope for the best, and if she turns out to be a fucking annoying wench, well I guess we won’t dog walk together anymore and I’ll just have to learn to wave politely when I see her and pretend that I’m always too busy to dog walk with her anymore. That’s a very unattractive situation to contemplate but I guess it’s less unattractive than being paralyzed by my fear of the situation.

when to let shit go and when to speak your mind

Today I received two bitchy, passive aggressive emails from a person working for the city of Langford. They were in response to an email I had sent them about some missing traffic signs. I hadn’t been rude or angry or anything like that so I was surprised and annoyed that this person was being so small and high school-ish.

I’ve blogged before about ‘choosing happiness,’ letting go of things like this instead of investing energy in dwelling on something that only makes you feel shitty. But like everything else, I find it’s a balancing act, because there are certainly times when it’s appropriate to stand up for yourself and call a person out when they are being a prick. It’s not always clear which situation calls for which approach, and this email exchange was one of those grey area cases.

After the second rude email from the city employee, I started writing an angry email back. I could feel myself getting worked up so I asked myself, “is this worth the effort? Am I being small too, am I allowing my pride and indignation to get the best of me?” I ultimately felt that yes, those things were happening to some degree, but I also felt that it was unacceptable for a professional and a representative of a local government to talk down to someone like they had. I think everyone needs to be chill and respectful to everyone else, but I have higher standards for people who have a good education, who make a huge salary, who are in positions of authority. They don’t have an excuse for not being more self aware.

Pompous twats really inflame my ire.

So after the two vaguely rude emails from this person, I said “fuck it,” hopped on my high horse, and told them what I thought about their tone and how inappropriate it was, especially coming from someone in their position. The person called me about an hour later and apologized, saying they hadn’t intended their email to come across that way, and I thanked them for the call.

I don’t think I believe the person didn’t intend to come across as condescending, but that’s not important. What’s important is that at least they made the effort to confront the problem and deal with it. I appreciated that, and can only hope that my Christ-like self-righteousness was annoying enough that they will consider their tone more carefully before talking down to other plebes in the future.

Was I being small? Am I just trying to justify my insecure, quietly aggro response? It’s very possible but with a grey area like this, you can second guess yourself to death. I think you just have to make a decision based on how you feel at that moment and hope you’re doing the right thing. Only time will tell if you were being an insecure dickhead.

I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for this one.