Is there anything more Midwestern than meandering through Meijer?
Remote
Midwestern Possum
@savagegoose@weirder.earth
hometown 4.5.18+hometown-1.2.1Earnest Poster, active but not constant.
Not a robot. US Midwest. Communicates in anecdotes, inside jokes, and knitting or crochet patterns.
With occasional cross-stitch and frequent ethics.
UU
She/They
White / Middle Class / MBA / US Citizen / non-binary (gender apathetic) / pan, het marriage / active UU / 30s / probably a "Young, Urban Creative"
127 Followers
133 Following
16 Posts
Joined September 24, 2018
There's always going to be a part of me that's a child in a lawn chair that's looking up at the Southern Cross and Big Dipper, just before summer break started.
There's always a part of me staring up at the big dipper at the top of a desert hike, making peace with the stars never being quite right.
I'm homesick for something I don't quite understand. The little creature comforts for nostalgia aren't available. What I'm homesick for doesn't exist, the fragments are the earth away.
I got wheat exposure last week. Because celiac in my body usually holds things instead of expels things, it took a few days to realize how bad the exposure was. I was starting to get muscle hives, and was retaining fluid, and the mood swings were there. Kinda an aside, I don't think we go over enough about how histamine reactions can really disrupt moods.
The treatment for this, after talking with my doctor, is basically an OTC colonoscopy prep or I get steroids.
I ask for the strength to resist potato salad in the future, and a hot compress.
Replying to
@mayorbeetles@pagan.plus these are all valid worries.
One of my favorite things about ENM is that, when it's healthy, it gives people the space to feel these big, heavy emotions and communicate them with others while also giving the other people space to have boundaries.
As a femme person, when I'd have monogamy with masc people, their jealousy always turned into a thing that was my responsibility to fix. Really, a lot of my overall frustrations with (arguably cultural) monogamy is this assumed codependence between the parties where there's little meaningful communication and full responsibility for the other person's mental well-being.
ENM communication, specifically, helped give me the tools to figure out how to have boundaries on what was actually my responsibility.
It also helped me realize that there's no one better than me, just different. And that shitty, abusive people exist in any relationship system and will be shitty, abusive people. ENM gave me permission to not try to save them.
Replying to
@mayorbeetles there are legitimate concerns for not being able to read by about 9. How reading interventions work changes drastically between a child at about 6 and a child closer to 10.
But blaming the parents and forcing mothers to shoulder most of the blame ignores the systemic issues in place that make this a possibility. Universal childcare, mandatory Pre-K and K, accessible housing, food programs, and programs like this are the only real options we need to invest in. If we're still in a literacy crisis after making sure we have the systems in place to provide children with the right environment to learn and be kids, then we can look to the parents.
(Also having early education be focused on play and building foundational skills.)
My state doesn't require education until the year they turn 7, they start them in first grade. It's not uncommon for kids to still be in early literacy or in pre literacy that year.
Having a Republican House Representative is so weird.
This is the question he's asking for his winred donation link.
Imagine looking at this reality and going "this is normal and good"
Imagine spending years being a racist about Obama and celebrating a UFC cage match on the White House lawn.
Just deeply unserious people high on their own WASP supremacy.
Imma be honest
DBT skills are worth it.
Because wtf are the other people in my life and how completely unmanaged their mental illnesses are
I want to get a copy of the NRSVue.
I don't need a $100 Bible. I don't really need a $50 textbook.
I just want a copy of the NRSVue in a basic ass study Bible format.
Like all the NIVs and KJVs and CSEs.
And the utter difficulty in finding a print copy is reminding me of my overall frustrations with not evangelical spaces.
The amount of emotional labor that goes into joining not evangelical or fundamentalist communities and conversations in the US is so high.
I could call any Baptist Church in my city and get a study KJV for the cost of a Bible study.
And most of those churches are doing fine, financially.
There has to be a better balance between all of this. People can get paid for their labor while we also invite their work to the general public.
I confused the Balkans and the Baltics the other day.
I'm drawing so many blanks on how to start the seed planting part of service for Sunday
Replying to
@mayorbeetles@pagan.plus I've found it to be a very rewarding journey tbh
It's also forced a lot of paradigm shifts in my understanding of relationships and my relationship to self. I've started framing my relationship to myself and my own needs and wants the same way I do with my relationships with my partners. Which has helped a lot with a self sacrificial tendency I can have in relationships, and has given me a bit more resolve to hold firm on boundaries so I don't damage the relationship that I have with myself.
Complicatedly, I think being explicitly selfish has made me a better partner and a better community member because it's forced me to be honest with myself about my needs and wants.
I don't really like explicit hierarchy in ENM, but that relationship you have with yourself really has to be the main priority. You have to live with yourself regardless of what else happens.
Replying to
@mayorbeetles working in foster care sounds like it can make anyone jaded. That's a rough gig and it's such a harrowing look at how broken it all is.
I don't have any data to back up my thoughts here. I do think that parents right now, overall, are in a complex cultural space where consumerism and a lack of community are coming to a head. With the deceased birthrate, the overall decrease in children, and a culture that does not value life above profit, I think we're able to really focus on how absolutely fucked raising children is and has been. I don't particularly think the shitty parents of today are any worse than the shitty parents of a few decades ago. I do think that the decrease in children has helped to highlight just how bad the shitty parents are. Culturally, "good" parenting often seems to look much more at how much money is spent on children and if parents are raising a consumer. With how the US is set up, a fiscally involved parent is often a physically involved parent.
The Purple Wiggle is physically fit in a way that terrifies me.
I really love the youth service
Replying to
@mayorbeetles@pagan.plus kinda an aside on the renting market in the Midwest / flyover
A friend got a 2 bedroom house that needs fully reno-ed for $350/mo in 2017. She moved out in 2023 when the rent was $900. No improvements to the property had been made, everything was getting worse.
In 2019, the property was sold for $25k. The new owners increased the rent because they needed the ROI.
It still hasn't been reno-ed. The foundation is crumbling, the porch is rotting, there's literally dollar tree duck tape holding parts of the venting together. The carpet was threadbare when she moved in, with subfloor showing when she moved out and in the rental photos.
It's currently being rented for $1,300/mo. If they fixed the porch, the main entry to the house, a porch so rough USPS won't deliver on it. (They moved the mailbox off the porch, instead of fixing the rot), they could probably charge $1,600-1,800.