Archive of ‘personal’ category

13
Apr
2020

I need to come up with better titles for these.

categories: personal, RPGs; word count: 387 words

Good news: I am starting to get the hang of the “turnip exchange” in Animal Crossing, so over the course of several days, I actually completely paid off Tom Nook for the first time ever by doing all of the renovations on our house in this game and getting them all done and out of the way. Bub seems to like this game a lot, although he prioritizes certain things over others. I also laid down one of the best bridges in the game (Best Bridge For Bub!) and it should be built tomorrow since I paid the full Bell cost for it. We’ll see how that goes when I boot the game up tomorrow morning and… see whether or not it has actually been built. And so far, on our island there has never been an exceptionally good turnip sale price, so we’ve always been at the mercy of other people’s islands to sell turnips over there. I wish we would, at least once, peak with a good price. I’d probably give our island’s Dodo Code out to good friends of mine to start with before I took advantage of more official sites like the Turnip Exchange, even though I’ve used it myself to travel to other islands with higher turnip sale prices. I’m still getting my feet wet over there with the whole process, because on busier islands it takes awhile what with the whole game pausing whenever someone enters or exits, heh.

People are still panic buying certain things during this pandemic, which has made shopping a bit amusing.

Some of my friends have begun to get the economic stimulus payment (“Coronavirus check”), and we haven’t yet, but I’m waiting to see when we get ours since there’s me and two dependents to be tabulated.

Apparently Social Security re-routed my most recent disability application for a hearing, and this one won’t be held in person due to the distance. I anticipate just plain having to fight them until one of two things happens… I eventually get approved for disability benefits (SSI), or I give up. I don’t want to have to give up.

Chronic, intractable migraines are still my primary disabling diagnosis at present.

I would be doing a lot more (like even playing video games more frequently, seriously) if I didn’t have these.

12
Apr
2020

Happy… no Easter Vigil, or something, y’all.

categories: personal; word count: 338 words

Well, it’s been a decade since I rejected Catholicism. I still feel content that I did so, knowing that I made the right choice since I disagreed with all of its doctrine… and I mean all of its doctrine. You have to agree with all of it, or at least agree to submit to all of it, in order to “become” Catholic as an adult convert, so me “going through the motions” to shut someone up would have culminated in me lying to people at various stages in the process (RCIA, as previously mentioned) and I didn’t want to waste my time or anyone else’s time dragging that whole process out, especially because Catholicism artificially inflates their numbers by “not allowing you to quit” once you are on their rolls. And furthermore, I didn’t even want to crack the door open of “well, Bub needs to be baptized because that’s what our family does! and you’re the custodial parent, so we need to get your consent for it some way! and the easiest way to do that is just to shotgun convert you!”.

Because of the coronavirus pandemic, anyone who is getting… certain public benefits that may come due for a renewal automatically has those benefits renewed for the length of time that they had normally been getting them, so my medical insurance through the state was renewed for another calendar year. I am glad that I don’t have to worry about that. I mean, until they find some excuse to take it away from me. Well, that.

My state governor apparently wants to sign an executive order next week “helping businesses start to get back to work here soon”. In a global pandemic. Okay. Once you start to talk more about that, I’ll see what you “have in mind”, and then I guess I’ll see how hard I have to go in on you like Barret Wallace from Final Fantasy VII on your social media because we still have someone in power who does not understand science.

09
Apr
2020

One thing that I actually did not realize…

categories: personal; word count: 457 words

I found this out through talking about the Catholic religion with some of my friends, but apparently you are supposed to be interviewed prior to enrolling in RCIA classes. Bub’s paternal grandmother knew about this, and she was able to hide the fact that this was an interview from me by interrupting the interviewer after nearly every single question that he asked me so that I would not catch on as to what “classes” I would actually be attending, let alone had signed up for (since, prior to the “interview”, these things being put in quotations because I would never have filled out the forms in the first place if I had actually been given a chance to read the forms or had been told what the purpose of the classes actually were, let alone even been given the name of the classes so that I could read about them at any point — remember, Bub’s father and his grandmother were adamant in making sure that the name of these classes were not even given to me for this reason). They also had me put down on these forms that I “was raised” in the Mormon faith, even though this was a blatant lie. Not only was I not raised in any faith at all, seeing as how my parents respected my lack of belief in anything, but Bub’s father was also pretty adamant about “sticking with this story”, even though he himself knew that I didn’t believe in the existence of anything supernatural and did not want this to come out at any point. I’m assuming that he wanted me to “fake it until I made it” and lie my way through these classes so that he did not get in trouble for knowing that I did not believe in anything, or he thought that somehow these classes would actually succeed in making me believe (or want to believe) in the existence of the supernatural and somehow “reason” that the Catholic church was right all along. Fat chance on that given how his mother would not stop running her mouth about how wrong all of my relatives were, even though I wasn’t particularly close to that many of them, having met very few of them in person.

But this should speak to how nefarious my ex and his mother were, that they would go to the levels that they did to hide the fact that I was “being interviewed” (because apparently they interview you before the classes even start to get an idea “where you’re coming in from”), and she had apparently told a lot of people that she went to church with that I was “excited about converting” and that I “wanted to convert”. Yeah, no.

06
Apr
2020

Some… questions about this that I’ve gotten.

categories: personal; word count: 483 words

Periodically, some people like to ask me if I’ve “forgiven my mom yet”, as though somehow I will… for lack of a better way to put it, be more amenable to doing so, want to come around to the idea of it as more time passes since her death. These tend to be some of the shorter conversations that I have about the matter, as they start and end with the word “no”, and the philosophy that has lent me the most inner peace is that I have not wanted to bring her up when I am not describing to a new audience… what happened (since actually writing about what took place, and the fact that I will never again have positive feelings toward her, as I do not and will never again have any sort of feelings even remotely resembling those you might expect one to have toward a biological parent that did raise them and was a part of their life until, well, said death).

As sad as it is for me to have to say this, I look forward to the coming months and years because the time period between her death (and “when I saw her last”) will progressively grow longer, spanning decades, until I too eventually pass. I will simply forget. Everything. And I am at peace with that. I will forget what it is like for her to have been a staple in this house, what she looked like — especially with hair, as they had to shave all of that to remove the brain tumor that would otherwise have killed her, and then it never really could grow back once she began cancer treatment — as well as what she sounded like, they will become distant memories, and then they will become no memories at all because she will eventually become someone that I just do not think about. I intend for the active “do not think about her at all” phase to begin at the one-year anniversary of her death, which will be this May. And coinciding with this, even though I have my own personal feelings on the… matters, I also feel that it is not (or should not) be “my” decision to forgive her. It should not rest solely, or even exclusively, at my feet. Bub, for lack of a better way to put it, is doing just fine and doesn’t seem to be indicating in any meaningful way that he thinks about her. (But I’ve also had it brought up by friends that even if he did one day convey to me that he had forgiven her, that I have the right to choose not to make that same decision myself if I do not want to, and I mean… my friends are right.)

For the people who have insisted that I “get over it”, this is precisely how I intend on doing so.

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