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Absolutely wild to me how sometimes you don't even realize the way you'd been taught to perceive things as a kid was kinda fucked up, actually, until decades later.

Example:

As a kid, I constantly lived in fear of damaging shit in my parent's house. The walls. The floors (especially the floors. The wood was beautiful. Shiny. But so easy to scratch). The cabinets.

As a sixteen-year-old, I once took my car to the dealership after work and paid a very dear sum of $250 ($10/hr cashier salary) to fix a slight scratch in the paint because I knew if my father saw it there would be hell to pay. It didn't matter that I parked far out, like I'd been taught, and someone scratched it anyway. It was my fault. I failed in my duties as a steward of my vehicle.

Every time I scratched a rim on a curb while parallel parking or got a door ding or, god forbid, didn't wash and vacuum that car every weekend, it was treated like some sort of moral failing.

Last year, when my husband and I first moved into our house, he scraped the side of our car when parking in our (Very Narrow) garage. When he told me, my first instinct was to be afraid for him. Like something terrible was going to happen to him because of this mistake. I urgently reassured him that it was okay, it was an accident, I wasn't mad. Baffled, he was like, "Yeah? I know? Like, thank you for the reassurance, but I'm only a little annoyed, I'm not upset. It's just a car." And I had to take several minutes to process that. It's...just a car.

We keep the car tidy. We maintain it. But we wash it maybe 4x a year. We only vacuum it after dirty road trips or when the dog hair starts to get annoying. It has scrapes and dings and the leather seats have stains. But that's ok. Because it's just a car.

This morning, I realized that a small rock had gotten embedded in the felt foot on one of our bar stools. Neither of us had noticed. There are now scratches on our beautiful hardwood floor. My immediate response was fear accompanied by a heavy measure of paralyzing guilt. "I'm so sorry," I told my husband, "I should have noticed. I'll figure out how to fix it, I swear. I can probably sand down that section and match the stain and--"

"Whoa, hey," he said. "It was an accident. And it's fine. Floors are going to get damaged. They're floors. We live here. There was damage in places before we even bought the house, remember? It's not a big deal. It's just a floor." Right. It's just a floor. Right.

My husband's mom is visiting and this afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitchen looking at the scratches on the floor, I offhandedly asked her if my husband had ever broken or damaged anything as a kid. "Of course," she said. Household items. A TV. A wrecked car during his teen years. I asked how she punished him.

"Why would I punish him for things like that?" she said. "They were all accidents."

Right. Of course. Right.

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Doctor: $140,000 a year

Furry artist on Patreon: $160,000 a year

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Oh my god is that TERRY?!

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THE OFFICE — 2.22 "Casino Night"

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A Constant Hum (found in a derelict factory)

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When you're re-reading Men at Arms and you get to the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness

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WINONA RYDER IS A BOSS CHICK 

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solidarity with california.

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Today I learned about hermit crabs being much larger than I thought and that Diogenes used to sleep in a big, clay, jar.

Giant hermit crab (Petrochirus diogenes)

This specimen is relatively small. P. diogenes is the world’s second-largest hermit crab species, growing large enough to inhabit a full sized queen conch shell and beaten only by the terrestrial coconut crab, which is a hermit crab that stops using shells when it matures.

I can only assume that the the “diogenes” in its name comes from some parallel drawn between the hermit crab’s shell and the philosopher’s habit of sleeping in a large jar.

(Florida, 2/27/21)

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Nice people make the best Nazis. Be mean, be tough, have a fascist tooth/skull collection.

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— Ocean Vuong, Because It’s Summer

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So cosy

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cuddling