Liveblogging in Solidarity: Vol. 3

 

On January 4, 2021, Juliet Escoria, Joseph Grantham, and Megan Boyle liveblogged in solidarity. This took place 29 days after the last time they liveblogged in solidarity. Read their days below.

 

JULIET ESCORIA

JANUARY 4, 2021

 

~6:30am: woke up feeling very afraid of (dream) but couldn’t remember what dream was.

 

~7am: woke up again to pee and eat one spoonful of dulce de leche* **

 

*I feel like it’s just good public policy for people to understand how easy it is to make dulce de leche. You take a can of sweetened condensed milk, remove the label, put the can in a giant pot of water, and simmer for ~3.5 hrs. Then you take the pot off the burner and let the water return to room temperature. You have to make sure the water covers the can at all times or else it can explode. If you follow these simple steps, you will have perfect dulce de leche.

 

**I take Seroquel for my brain. Seroquel makes eating sugar during the sleep hours taste so so good.

 

11am: woke up to alarm, felt very tired, slept on and off til 11:50. I’ve been going to bed a little too late and waking up much too late and I would be concerned about it if it wasn’t winter break. But it’s winter break so who cares, let’s party and get 9 hrs of sleep.

 

11:50am: stared at phone. Joey texted about liveblog and also a Nicolas Winding Refn movie about Reagan. Seems funny, an odd choice for the ole Nicolas. Joey mentions Reagan kind of a lot and I’m pretty sure it’s just a temporary coincidence due to him watching the Reagan doc on the Showtime but I love to imagine him as a closeted Reaganite lol. Megan also texted about liveblog and attending a cyber anonymous 12 step group tonight with another anonymous pal of ours. I agreed to cyber.

 

12:10pm: stopped staring at phone. got up, coffee, fed dog, etc.

 

12:28pm: sat down to type this. It is now 12:39. 

 

Here is a list of my tentative goals for the day, to be accomplished roughly in this order:

 

• Putter some gas on starting a new story
• Do this silly thing for school that won’t take too long
• Ask Scott for advice about my “educational goals”/maybe make some phone calls
• Work on Possible New Writing Project
• Yoga
• Cyber 12 step
• Maybe call mom, partially for “educational goals” advice, partially just to chat

 

I shall write more about each step as I do them so I will not elaborate on any of them for now!!!!!!! 12:43 now

 

1:34pm: I finished a long-ass story two days ago and now I feel like I’m out of story juice. Scott keeps on acting like it’s insane to think you can just write story after story, but I did that for Black Cloud and thought it would be easier than writing another novel. It is easier than a novel, much fewer crises, but I forgot that Black Cloud was only 20k words and I’m trying to write a full-length collection now, and a lot of the stories in Black Cloud I’d written in grad school anyway, and yeah, writing story after story is kind of hard. But I’m almost done, I have to write like 1-3 more, except I feel completely out of juice. I feel like a boat where you turn on the motor and it goes put-put-put and then it just turns off. I have a list of stories I want to write and none of them are screaming “me! work on me now!” the way they used to. I started working on one yesterday and felt completely not into it and I started working on it again today and I felt completely not into it and so I started writing one of the other stories and I felt like I could do it. I made a plan for tomorrow. I knew today wouldn’t go too well so my plan for today was to come up with a plan for tomorrow and I did that. It always works better if you have a plan. 

 

I now have to do some schoolwork. For accreditation you have to collect a lot of data and so I have to turn the work my students did into data and it’s very stupid. I have a problem with how the data is being collected, like I think it’s ineffective and confusing, and I also have a problem with the fact that we have to collect data at all. I think accreditation is good because you should have some sort of standards of what a college is, and I agree that a student should get basically the same thing from an English class regardless of what school they go to, but overall accreditation is a big racket and one of the major problems we have with higher ed, and if we had less insane accreditation processes and less insane administrative bloat then tuition could be cheaper and we wouldn’t be in such a crisis for student loans. Even though I think that this data nonsense is unethical and silly I will be a good employee and turn this stuff into data anyway. 

 

2:29pm: I completed the data. I did my best to be a good employee and do a good job. I had to ask Scott for help. I don’t know what the other faculty does, the ones who don’t live with another faculty member and can’t compare notes. Scott said he was in a horrible mood and we shouldn’t have stayed up so late last night but he helped me and I helped him. The data entering hurt my brain.

 

My course evaluations were also ready so I looked at those. Looking at course evaluations feels like looking at Goodreads reviews—it’s best to just not know what other people think sometimes—but I tried really hard this semester (probably too hard) to be a good teacher during stupid covid zoom school and I looked anyway. I only had one student mad at me (saying Disagree for some of the questions), probably this one student I got into a fight with because they cheated, and the angry student didn’t seem to leave any comments so all the comments were nice & I guess my extreme efforts at being a good professor paid off. So it was like looking at Goodreads and only seeing a nice review.

 

Realized I only have one week of break left, two weeks before school begins (next week I have the Week of Meetings). BUMMERINO MAN

 

It’s now 2:40pm and I need to spend some time figuring out my Educational Goals. I want to apply for promotion at school but I need more graduate credits in order to be able to do this. I don’t want to go into more debt and I don’t want to do another Master’s or a Ph.D. or an Ed.D. so I thought I was kind of stuck but then I found out about this thing called Graduate Certificates! They’re like half a Master’s and you don’t have to take the GRE or get letters of recommendation or the other sucky stuff, you just take some graduate-level courses. I found two that I am both interested in and wouldn’t have to go into debt for: one in Women’s Studies and one in Literary Journalism. I’m leaning toward the Journalism one but it’s slightly more expensive and only for 15 units, and I need at least 18 for promotion. I emailed both programs with some questions a while ago. The Women’s Studies person wrote back to me last night and said that they’re not offering a lot of the courses right now due to Covid, but I could sign up for a class now that’s taught via distance, and I wouldn’t have to apply or anything, just sign right up… so if I took it now, and enrolled in the Journalism program in the Fall, then I’d have 18 units, and I could also see if I can actually handle being in school right now so it seems kinda smart but I’m not sure if I’d have to pay for a bunch of fees by taking just one class, like if taking just one class would make it cost more overall. So I have to look at the fees. This is probably really boring info for anyone who is reading this but oh well!

 

3:08pm: I looked into the costs and called the bursar and it wouldn’t be a bunch of additional money to take a single class. I talked it over with Scott and he helped me figure out if it was a good idea or not, and I think it’s a good idea! It sounds really fun to me, to be a student again. The course is called Race, Gender, and Media– I feel like the reading and assignments for that would be interesting. Sometimes I look at my students’ papers and am like “ah, I wish I had to write a paper,” which I think makes me a psychotic nerd but yeah I kinda miss being forced to read things and write papers. It’s at Marshall University and I could then become a Daughter of Marshall. That’s their slogan – their students are Sons and Daughters of Marshall. Someone should tell them that’s gender normative of them. Scott is a Son of Marshall so then we’d be Siblings of Marshall. I emailed the lady back and told her I wanted to take the course. 

 

3:35pm: dicked around some, complaining to Scott about the data, doing some laundry, editing this. Time to work on New Writing Project. I am unwilling to discuss New Writing Project much because it seems insane of me to even attempt and I am superstitious so I will just say it is going to require some research. I yam going to drink a Red Bull and conduct some very important research.

 

4:17pm: just kidding, I called my mom. We talked about politics and how stupid trump is and my Educational Goals and I told her some Cool Facts about my Possible New Writing Project and we talked about how much we like our robot vacuums and neither one of us had much to say because that is Life in the Age of Covid: nobody ever has anything interesting to say.

 

5pm: Read a long article and organized the notes I have some. 

 

I listened to Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin as I worked. I was Completely and Totally Obsessed* with Led Zeppelin in 9th grade and now I listen to them like a normal person: every year or two I listen to them for a while, think about how great they are, and then don’t listen to them at all for another year or two. The Led Zeppelin listening was prompted by Scott & I re-watching Mindhunter (which was prompted by me reading the book)—there was a scene where they played “In the Light” and Scott & I discussed that this was a good song, kind of a “deep cut,” and the music for Mindhunter is good and uses a lot of “deep cuts.”

 

*Not really sure why I keep wanting to use Incorrect and Excessive Capitalization but I’m just going to Roll With It.

 

The lady from Marshall wrote back and told me how to enroll.

 

5:09pm: I sent an email to the registrar, asking to enroll in the course. Going to heat up dinner (eating on the early side because I want to do yoga/shower before cyber meeting). Dinner is: brown rice, sweet potatoes, arugula & herbs, and baked tofu. I like this meal a lot.

 

It looks like this

Fyi I have had nothing to eat yet today except the red bull and spoonful of dulce de leche because I’ve been eating too much due to the holidays and want to shrink my stomach and also I like feeling floaty from not eating. Is this disordered eating? I don’t know!!! 

 

5:43: dinner is over. Scott and I discussed our writing and my desperate need for his approval (I just want someone to tell me I’m making a good decision) re: my Educational Goals (he approves) and made some yuck-yuck-yuck funny jokes. One of the jokes was about his Farsi translator telling Scott that he reminded him (the translator) of Mac DeMarco lol

 

The professor for the class wrote me with the reading list and it looks so fun!!!!!!! I’m so excited!!!! I am such a nerd!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

6:15pm: I did a yoga adriene video. I find yoga adriene to be generally annoying unless I am having a really hard day (today is a good day and she was annoying) but she always makes me feel better so I don’t mind being annoyed by her. also she has a hot bod and nice glowy skin.

 

6:23pm: worked on this liveblog some and also wrote the professor back, gonna shower now and also I think I heard the UPS man come, hopefully he has my presents from my Christmas gift cards that I ordered

 

6:28pm: scott was in the shower when I went upstairs but the UPS man had indeed come with my gift card presents, here they are:

I love the Tatcha lotion so much, it’s so good, I’ve bought the travel size before and I now I get the big enchilada with a tiny coke spoon attached to the lid.

 

I also got a new pair of “joggers” along with the Sephora crap. Pretty much wear “joggers” all the time during covid winter (in covid summer I wore long dresses and shorty shorts). Scott says they make my butt look good, that my butt is round and juicy due to my Greek ancestors climbing the rocky Greek terrain. 

 

My new pants are nice and soft

 

Ok heard scott get out of the shower

 

7:19pm: showered and got dressed for the meeting (meaning I put on some makeup and brushed my hair) and am now in front of my computer with the zoom zoom open. Scott was telling me about the making-of feature for Possession that he was watching just now, from the DVD I got him for Christmas that we watched last week. He told me I was right, that there was a political message in there, in addition to a personal one. I figured you can’t make a movie set in Berlin in ’81 without something political going on in it. like tami taylor in friday night lights, I am right 100% of the time

 

8:28pm: the meeting is over. It was a nice meeting. I love anonymous 12 step programs, they make me feel good and like the world is not a complete disconnected hellscape. I love to see megan and our anonymous pal.

 

8:42pm: I heated up some soup and poured water in the humidifier and lit a candle and ate the soup and scott and I decided we’d get HBO (the showtime from last liveblog ran out) and are now watching a documentary about MURDER, my favorite topic

 

12:27am: we watched the murder doc (Crazy, Not Insane) and kept pausing it to discuss things like whether multiple personality disorder is real or if the women in it was a kook. I don’t know how I feel about the death penalty except I’m pretty sure it’s bad.

 

Then we watched a documentary about DB Cooper because it is True Crime All the Time in this household. 

 

tried to find the Nova episode from 1992 about John Douglas (Mindhunter guy) but it apparently doesn’t exist on the internet.

 

what’s my PBS passport for if you won’t give me 28-year-old Nova episodes, huh?? what a rip off I’m cancelling my recurring monthly donation 

 

now we’re watching random youtube clips about john douglas on youtube

 

TRUE CRIME ALL THE TIME 

 

There’s not that many john douglas clips actually so now we’re watching an ed kemper interview

 

ed kemper was a little bit sexy 

 

or at least sexier than I thought he’d be

 

my dad claims he knew a victim of ed kemper but I don’t know if that’s true, my dad is a storyteller

 

man ed kemper is fascinating, no wonder he started a whole new department at the FBI

 

I finished the face mask I was embroidering, here it is (still have to wash off the backing, which will get rid of the red lines):

I put the face mask on and scott said “what is that, I should have gotten a mask like that”

 

It came in a pack of 3 and I said he could have one. (this is funny because when I got the masks, I explained they were nice and asked if he wanted one and he said no.)

 

Scott has been wearing a filthy n95 mask underneath a “K95” mask I got him in an attempt to make him stop wearing the filthy n95 mask and he said it’s hard to breathe, which is like no shit dummy, you’re not supposed to wear that many masks

 

Will be good if he actually starts wearing ONE mask that is actually CLEAN

 

1:15am watching a dahmer interview and then we agreed to go to bed

 

1:33am: was naughty and checked my work email. responded to a student and also completed a survey about vaccination (supposedly I’m getting vaccinated soon through my work)

 

dahmer is also a good interviewee too but he’s not charismatic like kemper

 

TRUE CRIME ALL THE TIME

 

I feel like true crime is hella mainstream now and I don’t need to explain my love of murder but just in case somebody is judging me because MURDER IS BAD (yes, murder is bad) just know that you can SUCK ON EGGS BUDDY

 

imagining somebody trying to “cancel” dahmer now on twitter

 

1:46am: gonna warsch my face and slather lotion on it and brush my teeth

 

2:02am: I’m now in bed with a clean moisturized face and minty breath, medicated and with all my sleep props situated

I need a lot of props to sleep:

-2 special pillows

-humidifier

-air purifier 

-lip balm

-sleep mask

-reading glasses

I also found and gave scott the 3rd face mask

Now I will write “see liveblog” in my diary and read some. I’m reading We Keep the Dead Close, which scott bought me for Christmas. The parts about the MURDER (the book is about a MURDER) are good but the parts about the author’s life are bad. I feel like when people write things they call “nonfiction” it makes them feel like they have a license to write bad sloppy cliched sentences to sum things up. This is a lie! Just because it’s called nonfiction doesn’t mean it’s ok to be lazy!

But yeah it is a true crime book because TRUE CRIME ALL THE TIME

night night

 

 

◊ ◊ ◊

 

 

JOSEPH GRANTHAM

JANUARY, 4 2021

 

7:21am: woke up. but really i woke up much earlier than this because ashleigh kept waking me up. felt like an endless cycle of ashleigh waking me up. i have a headache. white noise machine is blasting white noise. looked at texts. 

text from brad listi from 11:33pm: 

‘i think we should sell “social media director” shirts/gear w your face on it in 2021’ i agree brad, i agree 

 

7:26am: sneezed into phone. typing this into phone with right eye shut. rubbed corners of eyes with pinkies. right nostril feels congested, left not so much. i checked the tracking numbers on packages i’d ordered. one is a christmas present i ordered for ashleigh a long time ago. it’s been sitting somewhere about 45 minutes away from our apartment for 18 days. upsetting. the other packages are books. 

 

7:32am: got out of bed and peed into toilet in bathroom. ashleigh explained why she kept waking up. she wanted to wake up at 6 but then she realized she’d have to feed the cats if she woke up at 6 and then they’d think they get fed at 6, so she decided to stay in bed. i’m back in bed. head still hurting. white noise machine still going. 

 

7:36am: briefly read article about new mutations of the coronavirus and just felt pissed. really pissed off. not at the coronavirus but at the fact that i’m probably going to get the coronavirus while working a minimum wage job. i want to be on lockdown again. for selfish reasons i’m sure, but also because it makes sense. we went on lockdown earlier this year when the pandemic wasn’t as bad as it is now and now everyone got bored and decided…it’s fine now….we can use hand sanitizer…and masks…we need to go back to work…we need money. pissed. pissed at the human race. 

 

7:44am: clearly in a bad mood today. smelled incense burning and felt annoyed. felt headache getting worse. texted ashleigh an article about how incense smoke inflames lung cells etc etc, https://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=172365 

 

7:45am: today seems like a bad day to live in an apartment with me. 

 

7:55am: brushed teeth. put water on for coffee. opened windows. opened bathroom window and screen and tilted camping chair on fire escape so rainwater would fall off the seat. felt like an old lady in nyc dumping water off of fire escape. 

 

7:56am: waiting for water to boil. sounds of ambulances and some kind of construction are comforting right now. the person in the ambulance is probably not having a good day but their need for an ambulance and the ambulance’s need for a siren has now comforted me. thank you ambulance. say ambulance twenty times fast.

 

8:14am: toasting a piece of dave’s killer bread. drinking coffee. looking at the rick steves europe calendar ashleigh got me for christmas. each day you tear off a page and there’s a new place in europe he tells you about. today was edinburgh.

i’d like to go to edinburgh. this is how philistines like me find out where to go in europe. by using a calendar. gave ashleigh a kiss and told her why i was being cranky. showed her the rick steves edinburgh picture and ashleigh asked if i wanted to see her pictures from when she went to scotland for a cousin’s wedding when she was 14. so we looked at the pictures. there was a funny one of her and a monk and another one of her aunt dorice and the monk. aunt dorice was wearing an all pink outfit. ashleigh said ‘this was when we met a monk’ she said the monk’s name was ‘basil.’ 

 

8:30am: back in bed. my goal today is to finish reading ‘under the volcano’ 

i have forty something pages left. then i would like to watch a documentary about malcolm lowry. the stakes are low today. finish reading a novel, maybe watch a documentary. that’s it. i was supposed to work today but my friend teddy wanted more hours so i said he could work my shift today if he wanted to. the shift was 1:30-7:30pm. 

ashleigh just texted me sorry and that she just got the article i texted her. i replied: ‘it’s okay i was being a little bitch’ 

okay i’m going to read for a while in bed. 

 

9:12am: read a funny anecdote about malcolm lowry and his excitement re: this hand drawing he was able to include in his novel. this is the hand:

it is the same hand that thomas hardy uses in ‘jude the obscure’ and i guess using that same hand was very important to lowry. i quote him here:

“My hand! My hand! Very important, very original … I haven’t got it in my version, but what I refer to is a little drawing of a human hand, pointing, (as inexpensive as possible) which should be placed before A Parian. I swear this is not frivolous and to get it in I will sacrifice the box round Quauhnahuac and anything else you like. While prepared to admit it may be slightly childish, it nonetheless – possibly for that reason – has a positive sinister emotive effect, and if you don’t believe me take a look at the one in Jude, it’s somewhere in the first 100 pages, and is followed by the words To Christminster.” 

the dude loved this hand, and you know what, i’ve taken quite a liking to it myself the more i look at it. i’m glad malcolm cared about the little hand. 

 

9:15am: earlier i was thinking about the rick steves calendar ashleigh got me for christmas and i kept having this thought: ‘that gift was the sleeper hit of the year…who knew that the rick steves calendar would be a sleeper hit’

why do i wake up in the morning? so i can see the new place in europe that rick steves is going to tell me about. yeah, the calendar is a sleeper hit. loving that calendar. not sure how i feel about rick steves. why is he who he is? how did he get to be the man he is? why does he get to travel so much? i’m warming up to rick but i still have my questions about him. 

 

10:02am: still in bed, reading ‘under the volcano’ 

in a much better mood than i was when i woke up. sometimes it’s good to get all the bad out of you early in the morning so you can make room for the good mood. let the good mood prevail. let the good mood enjoy the day. 

 

10:10am: wow, ashleigh’s christmas present is finally out for delivery. maybe it was this liveblog that gave the package good luck. it’s a brass ring from new orleans. i can say this now because she won’t read this liveblog until tomorrow at the earliest. and hopefully she will be able to open her present tonight. it’s not a ‘we are getting married’ ring. it’s just a nice christmas present ring. but when i ordered it my sister told my mom i was going to propose to ashleigh and then my mom was sad that i had said nothing to her about how i was going to propose and then we had to tell our mom that we were joking. ashleigh wanted a cool ring for christmas because earrings aren’t as fun to wear when you also have to wear a mask all the time. i hope she likes the ring. it is described as a ‘minimalist brass ring’ 

so maybe it will be like a raymond carver short story. the ring, i mean. just kidding. that’s just a little literary/jewelry joke for you. there’s more where that came from. or not. 

 

10:16am: cats are in the bedroom with me. they are looking out the window together. they are hoping for a better world:

now they have moved and are at the end of the bed looking at me expectantly:

11:01am: showered, dressed for the day, now in kitchen eating hummus with pita chips. thought ‘a taste of the mediterranean…’ 

 

11:22am: hair is wet and cold, sitting next to space heater on couch. a candle is burning near me, it smells like a christmas tree. i like candles and incense okay? sometimes incense is too much for this guy. too much in the morning. it’s a lot in the morning. i’m ashamed of myself. 

 

11:56am: possum came and sat on my lap while i was reading. his head smells like our kitchen sink and like indian food leftovers from our kitchen sink. his left ear is wet from sticking his head in the sink:

12:56pm: standing next to oven, heating up a piece of cornbread. that’s the kind of guy i am. i’m a ‘heating up a piece of cornbread on a monday afternoon’ type of guy. i’ve got the ‘heating up a piece of cornbread on a monday afternoon’ blues. 

 

1:07pm: shared cornbread with ashleigh. ie broke bread with ashleigh. took vitamin b tablet because i saw the bottle in front of me and thought ‘why not?’ 

 

2:11pm: finished ‘under the volcano’ 

possum is purring in my lap. 

the last sentence of that novel was really good. i won’t put it here, you have to go find it for yourself. 

 

3:36pm: did the dishes while listening to some scottish men discuss ‘under the volcano’ and malcolm lowry. making more coffee now. ashleigh has been in the bedroom most of the day teaching mfa students on zoom. mfa on zoom seems depressing to me. 

 

5:44pm: large gap of time spent on couch with tammy sleeping between my legs under the blanket. reading the introduction to ‘under the volcano’ 

today has been the day of ‘under the volcano’ 

what will tomorrow bring? 

 

6:24pm: ashleigh is roasting broccoli in the oven. i am making rice and i just made a peanut thai sauce and this is what we will dine on tonight. she has to attend a zoom reading at 8. i don’t have to do anything. i don’t have anything to do. i finished reading the introduction to the lowry book. i have to pick what i’m going to read next. i am standing in the kitchen, leaning against the sink. i am charging my phone. i gave ashleigh her brass minimalist ring and i think she liked it. 

 

7:27pm: i let the broccoli stay in the oven too long and it kind of burnt but the sauce was good on the rice and i didn’t mind the burnt crispy broccoli. sat on the bed watching ashleigh play assassin’s creed valhalla, asked neighbor/friend/coworker to bring charger i left at work home to me. talked on the phone with my dad about ‘under the volcano.’ he was reading it with me and he finished it today too. we both enjoyed it a lot. going downstairs to meet teddy now who is my friend and also the rescuer of my charger. 

 

8:30pm: met teddy on the stairway up to my apartment. he handed me the charger and i gave him two bottles of wine ashleigh hadn’t finished and didn’t want. i don’t drink much and i haven’t been drinking hardly at all so ashleigh can hardly ever finish the wine she buys from her work. each bottle had about 1/3 left in the bottle. on the stairway teddy told me about his day at work and we talked about work and then he convinced me to go with him to get a ‘sweet treat.’ i wanted a piece of pie and ashleigh had to be at the zoom reading at 8 so i figured why not, i should get out of the apartment. teddy drove us to the pie place in hampden but it was closed so we walked down to a vegan restaurant and all they had were whoopie pies and teddy got a whoopie pie and i thought maybe i’d get one and split it with ashleigh at home but then i thought about how i would have to say ‘whoopie pie’ to the woman at the takeout counter and i didn’t want to have to say the words ‘whoopie pie’ to the woman at the counter or to anyone really. teddy drove us home and he parked on our block and we went our separate ways. i told ashleigh that i didn’t get anything. i went into the kitchen and poured a bowl of life cereal and ate that in bed while i listened to some of the zoom reading. ashleigh still has assassin’s creed: valhalla going on the TV. i thought of a pie story that makes me laugh. maybe i’ve told it to you before but it’s short and sweet. last year, the day after christmas i went and saw ‘uncut gems’ in theaters with my parents and my dad snuck a piece of pie into the theater. and he ate the piece of pie while watching ‘uncut gems.’ that’s the story. and it makes me laugh. 

 

8:39pm: trying to think about what book i should read next. i have a scottish coworker who recommended these gritty irish crime novels and maybe i will read one of those for a change of pace. and then i can talk about the book with neil. i’m going to make some tea now. my throat is always bothering me. it’s always mildly sore and then sometimes it’s really sore and on christmas i had a fever of 103 degrees and i got tested for covid and it was negative. i kind of feel like woody allen when i tell you this. not child molester woody allen but neurotic/hypochondriac woody allen. i saw an ENT a few months ago and he said my tonsillectomy from a few years ago didn’t heal properly and that i’d have to have another surgery or else i’d keep getting throat infections. seems like a good thing for you to know. you meaning you. you reading this. heard the person on the zoom say ‘i hand my characters visions’ 

 

8:48pm: brad is texting from a cabin somewhere in california. he said: 

‘kids are terrified’ 

‘never been this close to nature’ 

brad is probably going to read this liveblog and he is probably going to search his name first to see if i talk about him. hello brad. i see you. 

 

8:50pm: ashleigh is rowing a viking boat. she said ‘i’m gonna finish this raid and then you can get on here’ 

i said, ‘you can watch this thing with me’ 

and she said ‘a movie?’ 

and i said ‘a documentary about malcolm lowry’ 

and she said ‘okay’ 

the zoom reading she had to attend is over and she shut her laptop

 

8:55pm: saw a picture of a writer guy on twitter and imagined him performing cunnilingus in some internet porn, he just had that kind of face. i don’t know what i’m saying. he looked kind of horny and pompous or something. not that you have to be horny or pompous to perform cunnilingus. although, being horny would probably come in handy.

listening to clicking of ashleigh’s PS4 controller as she swings a sharp object at digital anglo saxons who have health bars above their heads. she just said ‘where the hell is my crew?’ she’s talking about her viking crew. she just fell into some murky water. 

 

9:02pm: saw that michael richards is going to star as ronald reagan in a biopic about reagan directed by nicholas winding refn. watched his racist rant again for the first time maybe since it first happened and it…is still very racist. it’s bad. it’s a bad thing to see. he said some bad stuff. he…he is going to play ronald reagan in a motion picture. 

 

9:10pm: sent a voice memo to megan and julia in a standup comedian voice sort of roasting my liveblog today. 

ashleigh heard me doing the voice and she said ‘nutty…’ 

 

9:40pm: made tea and fed the cats because they were crying and kept running around me. their food smelled strong and not good. they are fed in separate rooms because otherwise tammy will scarf her food down and then eat her brother’s food. back in the bedroom, saw a viking on the tv and the viking’s name was ‘Cola’ 

 

11:34pm: drinking second cup of tea. took some homeopathic tiny little pellets to stop postnasal drip. took bath with ashleigh. now watching lowry documentary in bed. 

 

11:45pm: a british man in the documentary told a story about lowry walking by a horse and the horse made a sound and lowry thought it was the horse kind of scoffing at him and it offended him and then the man telling the story in the documentary tried to make the sound the horse made and he stopped and said ‘no i can’t do it’ and then he tried to make the horse sound again and stopped and said ‘no i can’t do it.’

turned off the movie and went to sleep.

 

 

◊ ◊ ◊

 

 

MEGAN BOYLE

JANUARY 4, 2021 

 

 

1:20am: watching ‘trolls 2’ with Blake he just went to pee I’m getting sleepy

1:30am: decided to move from the tent to bed 

‘Trolls’ 2 is a funny good time 

Ate an l-tyrosine and dissolved two homeopathic silica tablets under tongue ‘for fatigue  and irritability due to overwork’ (I’m a little fatigued from quitting vaping and read that I  might become irritable but that hasn’t happened much yet, bought the pills last night) 

L-tyrosine is an amino acid that helps rebuild dopamine 

My dopamine receptors are all out of wack because I’m addicted to nicotine and I’ve  been reducing my intake of it 

Nicotine does something terrible to the brain over time that I barely understand right  now but knew pretty solidly about a week ago 

Reading about it was enough to motivate me to throw away all of my vape stuff 

1:39am: asked Blake in a vaguely eastern European accent if he wants to watch a little  more of ‘trolls 2’ and he either didn’t hear me or acted like he didn’t 

He’s looking at (just wanted to call it ‘baseball stats’) football or nba stuff

Gawked at that parenthetical as I typed it, in disbelief of its boringness

I’m too tired to interact anyway 

The light is on 

1:53am: we watched a little bit going to slee now 

9:01am: hit snooze 

9:21qm: it’s been a real comedy of errors so far this morning 

Typing this on my phone because a disturbing screen keeps appearing on my desktop:

‘Keeps’ is because…I’ve restarted my computer twice without resetting the password, to  get this screen to go away, and both times it has rebooted with that ancient-looking  reset password prompt 

The first time I tried to wake up the computer I couldn’t use my mouse; it was turned on,  but I got a screen that told me how to turn it on:

I selected the ‘My keyboard isn’t working when typing my password to log in’ option  from the prompt and it took me to the startup disk  

Exited out of that somehow 

Seems to be rebooting normally now 

9:28am: texted group chat some pictures of the disturbing screen and that I was ‘livin on  the edge’ this morning 

Hope I am not hax0red 

What if I am pwned by a hax0r 

That made me feel so warm to type…to see that…I was young again, for a moment

Was able to type password in normal-looking screen and now regular things are loading

9:31am: gotta poop hold on 

9:36am: I pooped and brushed teeth 

9:38am: typing on desktop now. i thought maybe the password reset screen happened  because my computer updated overnight and there was some error, but this little  fuckhead that i usually make disappear by clicking ‘later’ and ‘remind me tomorrow’ is  still in the upper right corner of my screen:

unless…it updated without my permission last night and has *yet another update* *for  my convenience* 

hohoho 

9:47am: i’ve been filling in some details of the above updates. the other ‘comedy of  errors’ thing this morning is…i had to find an electrical outlet for the coffee maker to plug  into, because most of the outlets in the kitchen aren’t working  

including the fridge outlet 

the power went off a few times last night, i think due to running space heaters and our  regular heaters on full blast. i’d reset the fuses, but the fuses never came back on in the  kitchen 

last night i thought it was just the fridge, so i made a work order for maintenance to  come look the fridge 

but now…i see…that it’s three total outlets that don’t have power

soooo 

taking it on the chin and grinning 

9:50am: when i woke i wanted to remember my dream, this is something i remember  from it (i have therapy at 10am so i’ll be gone for an hour): 

i was in a beach town in japan, taking an anti-drug class. jordan was in the class with  me. we lived in this hostel/dorm that cost $481 per semester, and the night i moved in, i  was ‘lectured’ by a young woman about how bad a deal this was. she and all my  classmates other than jordan seemed benignly pretentious. i remember moving into the  dorm, thinking ‘i won’t make friends here. i’m glad i have a friend here already.’  remember walking around the town one day with jordan (in an incarnation of his 2015ish ‘devendra banhart on lsd’ designer wardrobe phase), going inside a 7-11 before class,  putting food items from a little buffet into containers of clear-brothed soup, talking about  how we didn’t want to go to class. in class, we were doing a rhetorical analysis of ‘mr.  tambourine man.’ i raised my hand to say ‘what we’re doing is pointless, right now,  because the song isn’t about drugs. it refers to a tambourine made of straw. the song  was written by a person in a community where the people lived in huts with straw roofs,  and they made tambourines by weaving straw through old steering wheels. that’s all this  is.’ jordan laughed and some people in the class clapped for me 

it seems like a ‘drug dream,’ a theme i have…noticed…in my dreams

9:59am: blake texted i could get white noise machines from bedroom  gonna therapize niw 

11:19am: that was a long good one 

we went six minutes over time, and then i dropped the white noise machines back off in  bedroom/blake’s desk room 

11:23am: blake came in to say he wasn’t liveblogging today. he offered that maybe  since we’re having weird power outages, my computer just rebooted on its own or  something, during the night. i feel bored by this topic…the mundane detective work of  life…just…whatever happened: happened. and it’s happening. it is nowhere and it’s  now 

no updates from maintenance people 

11:32am: texted the maintenance phone number this: 

Hi there! I placed a maintenance request for a broken fridge in [address] last night. It looks like, after multiple manual resets of the fuse box, some electrical outlets in the apartment are not receiving power. Is this a concern for MTV Properties or BGE? An  update on the situation would be much appreciated. Thanks for your time, Megan 

i signed the text because the texts turn into emails, or something…many people receive  the texts at once, it seems like…i don’t want to get into it lol 

but i like how it sounds like i’m thanking megan for her time: ‘Thanks for your time,  Megan’ 

feel like i should just call BGE (electric company) 

i bet it’s just a busted fuse, wish i knew how to replace it myself 

11:41am: blake can’t use an electrical outlet in bedroom and he walked behind me to  get our only other extension cord from the sunroom 

feel like blake will be on a mild hellride today, because of the electrical inconveniences,  and some other inconveniences i’m intuiting he’s dealing with 

from the bedroom, he just laughed a fatalistic ‘HEHh…!’ as if to say ‘just goes to show  ya!’ 

my attitude about inconveniences is more like a resigned vonnegutian ‘hoho’ ‘hoho, so it goes’ 

doesn’t he have a ‘hoho’ tic in a book? 

oh, it’s ‘hi ho’ 

from ‘slapstick’…one of my favorites, of his…that i read in 2002, 2006, and 2016…in  2016 i mostly read it in the bathtub of the house my parents were renting…but i was  either drunk or high on something and don’t remember it well 

it’s weird how i forget total books, now…that i’m older…i really hate this about getting  older. but it’s also kind of cool, because i forget most of the content of the stories in,  say, ‘like life’ by lorrie moore, so if i pick it up again, it might be like reading one of my  favorite books for the first time (i picked ‘like life’ because i found this to be true when i  reread ‘self-help’ in 2018)  

hoho sits with me more than hiho 

just got a text  

wonder if it’s the maintenance people oh man i hope i hope i hope

11:41am: it was from a person selling their home without a real estate agent, on zillow,  whose house blake and i tried to coordinate seeing with our real estate agent, but they  ‘didn’t want to work with real estate agents,’ so they refused. it was a really good house,  it had everything we wanted. i decided to be sneaky and text the seller directly, as they  requested on their zillow page, and they said they had an offer on the house already but  if it fell through they’d text me 

so 

they just texted me because their offer fell through 

since their last text, blake and i found a better house, and he made an offer on that one,  and the gears are in motion for us to move there at the end of the month 

hoho 

so it goes 

yeah, there’s a jovial spirit behind ‘hoho’ 

seems so insane to me still, that i’m with someone who…wants to live with me in a  house…bought a house for us…i never thought this would happen…like…any of  this…hahaha 

i was gearing up for a life of celibacy in this apartment 

that was fine, i was fine with that 

but really, i was sad with that 

11:53am: okay, i need to do some ‘actual work’ 

THE ‘ACTUAL WORK:’ 

-finalizing a letter i’m sending to a person whose manuscript i got to edit, along with the  edited ms and a ‘sample structure’ i made of the book 

i want to edit more books 

going to make a website offering my editorial services soon 

if anyone reading this wants help on their manuscripts in any stage of development,  boyle is your gal 

i’d say more but i’m distracted by wanting to get down to businesstime

11:57am: opened the letter, chewing a nicotine gum 

i stopped vaping on 12/25, thanks to a book called ‘quit vaping’ by brad lamm, which i  read and do assignments from mostly every day (haven’t yet today) 

i use the phrase ‘a Bildungsroman in fractioned collage-like bursts’ in the letter

see, i did a good job 

the author did a good job too 

the purpose of finalizing this letter is to be sure i did a good job, though

the purpose of this update is to transition from liveblogging mode to businesstime mode thanks for your time, 

businesstime, 

megan 

1:15pm: finished the letter, it’s 1733 words 

okay 

sending time 

it’s the ‘sending time’ portion of businesstime, the final stage of businesstime

or should it be ‘sendingtime’ 

i don’t like ‘businesstime’ anymore, it should be ‘business tiem’ i think

my tone feels a little forced 

1:16pm: i’m going to read it once more before sending 

1:32pm: while i was doing all of that, blake was on a real hellride about car titles and  emissions testing. we just talked in the kitchen and figured out a solution. currently  eating a vanilla almondmilk yogurt that is close to room temperature (it’s probably  between 58 and 63 degrees in my apartment so it’s not a terrible temperature for  yogurt). have been topping my yogurt with salt lately; it tastes really good 

i need to call BGE, i think…about the fridge…outlets…stove not…working… hoho

i’m not very present in liveblogging today 

feel an underlying current of…just…submission to the stuff of life, today

poured another coffee in cup 

looks like i’ve drank 22oz water so far 

i don’t remember drinking it but i remember filling it when i woke 

1:42pm: just resolved a ‘locate document’ crisis. the editorial letter was only showing up  in onedrive. i couldn’t attach it to the email, but then blake helped me figure out this  thing i don’t want to forget: 

1) Save a Copy 

2) On my Mac 

3) Desktop 

he’s helped me with this before but i forgot 

we hugged, bouncing/jumping in a semi-performative maniacal manner, and he said, in  one of our joke voices, something like ‘WE HEPP EACH OTHER WITH PROBLEMS  SO ALL THE POO POO COMES OUT,’ then pulled down my housepants a little and  was off on his way 

that’s what i like  

i need to shower 

1:53pm: I SENT IT I SENT IT I SENT IT I SENT THE THREE ATTACHED FILE EMAIL  THREE FILE STOP SUPERSTORE SHOP FOR ALL YOUR EDITING HELP NEEDS EMAIL 

1:55pm: damn now i feel empty…no more…immediate purpose things…oh cool, i can write a ‘reminder email’ to someone about another manuscript 

2:10pm: sent the reminder email 

read the above update and semi-shittalked my ‘western insistence on purpose as being  sourced from material things one does rather than ontological things one is’ 

also, did i really need to say ‘material’ and ‘ontological’ in the above sentence? i just like ‘ontology’

ont 

such a surprising little prefix  

it looks like a typo 

also like a noise i make after i stifle a sneeze (that’s more like ‘ont-nn-n–schhhhhhi’)

2:13pm: yeah, see, i do like this, i do like thinking about words and stuff 

until recently i’d kind of…given up…the idea…that ‘words and stuff’ mattered to me, as  more than necessary tools one uses to relate oneself 

they’re interesting, though 

i often think about this thing…how it’s possible to see what someone’s general  philosophy/approach to life is, through word choice. like. i think people can probably tell  mine is a mixture of ‘emotionality/cause and effect’ (have noticed this comes to me  naturally; i’ve been trying to change it over the years) and ‘internal locus of control.’ i  say things like ‘just’ and ‘only’ and ‘should’ more than i’d like to, but then i say sentences  like the one i’m writing currently, where i feel like i’m the boss 

this idea is from a style book that has the word ‘fish’ in the title. i haven’t read it, my  therapist just tells me about it sometimes and i like it  

doesn’t seem like maintenance people will respond to my text or maintenance request my property management company is ‘mtv properties’  

mtv stands for mt. vernon 

if anyone is looking for a corporation to lash out on, please feel free to negatively review  mtv properties 

[deleted 971 words i decided i disliked the tone of/was embarrassed for typing ~4pm]

2:46pm: calling BGE 

damn i just got…it was my own voice echoed back to me 

i said ‘hello? hello?’ 

2:51pm: an automated message just said the outage will be fixed by 5pm

like hell it will, man…!

wonder who would actually believe the automated message in a situation like this

someone pure of heart 

i almost believe…almost… 

just remembered the part in ‘hook’ where a character is dying and someone asks  someone to clap their hands and say they believe in fairies, to save the character  

2:55pm: mtv properties updated my maintenance request on the app i use to make  maintenance requests 

they’re sending a technician…tomorrow  

3:06pm: it feels really dark in apartment today…the light…darker than most days i smell electrical burning  

3:08pm: checked the sunroom for burning smell; the smell was indeed greater in that  room. unplugged the space heater 

what’s going on hahahahaha 

what’s going on… 

heyyyyyyyyyyyy heeeeyyyyy i said hey what’s going on 

today feels a little dark to me too, emotionally 

typing about it elevates my mood a little but when i stop typing the mood is there

i feel bad from my expectation that things would go smoothly today and i’d be creative

it wasn’t even really…a conscious expectation… 

have chewed five nicotine gums so far today 

that’s a lot for me to chew by 3:11pm 

blake and i talked about getting ice for the fridge so our food doesn’t die

talking about fixing it revealed a mutual attitude of indifference to fixing it 

and sometimes, some january 4th times, that’s what it is: it’s the kind, kind embrace of  indifference

it’s mostly veggies, in the fridge 

might have to lose these greens to apathy 

though i think they keep better than most people assume they will…i think refrigeration is more of a suggestion than requirement, for veggie freshness 

3:12pm: blake going on his run now. we had a nice short interaction in ‘the tone of the  day,’ of…just…feeling cranky, accepting the world’s demands begrudgingly, giving little  updates on what we’ve been doing and what we’re about to do 

typing about all of this improved my mood 

considering exercising to improve mood 

i also want to do my ‘quit vaping’ reading and journaling but that’s seeming less likely 

julia and i are doing a 12-step meeting with jordo tonight, that’s something to look  forward to 

have headache 

going to chug some green juice  

3:48pm: re-reading my editorial letter…i say ‘these are just suggestions’ like four times godddd 

goddddddddddd 

lol 

(not really four times) 

4:04pm: just saw blake in the window, walking up the stairs, returning from his run

i’ve been reading liveblog, i’m embarrassed by some of it 

4:07pm: peed while watching blake undress. asked him how he was feeling. he seems  to be in a ‘not wanting to talk’ mood, which…i feel that too, really 

4:09pm: i’m going to delete the things i’m embarrassed by…i don’t like my tone in this  2pm rant thing. i’m just talking to myself but i sound like i’m speaking ex cathedra, ‘for  the greater good of humankind’

deleting rants is not in the spirit of liveblogging, but it is in the spirit of being the one who  calls the shots in my own life, which was my original purpose for liveblogging in 2013,  so it’s good 

4:17pm: maybe my mood today is related to lack of immediate nicotine to my ballsac

i mean ‘blood’ but i thought ‘ballsac’ 

the third through fifth day without vaping felt the worst to me, so far 

‘the worst’ for me has just been impaired focus/concentration, headaches, constipation,  and fatigue. i have that a little bit every day. on the third and fifth days i just took naps 

cravings are annoying but they’re not insatiable 

4:20pm: currently eating a ‘single serving snack tray’ of cheese, almonds, dried  cranberries, and chocolate chip-shaped ‘greek yogurt drops’ 

eating mostly for fear that it will go bad, because dairy 

4:35pm: ‘i’m looking at you, february,’ said blake from the sunroom 

we did some light troubleshooting on our electrical problems after realizing BGE  probably won’t come before 5pm 

he’s going to look for an extension cord in his car 

i drank ~24oz ‘uber greens’ juice and ate a garlic clove, vitamin d3, vitamin b sublingual  tablet, l-tyrosine, three tablespoons fish oil 

headache is going away 

4:43pm: i really don’t want to exercise which means i probably should exercise

craving a nicotine gum but i don’t want to get too attached 

yes, i want to keep this hot baby at arm’s length 

wait at least two hours before i give this baby the time of day 

on christmas eve blake and i watched ‘swingers,’ and since then i’ve been getting a lot  of joy from saying ‘you’re so money and you don’t even know it’/‘[thing] is so money and  it doesn’t even know it’ about stuff 

surprised by how much i liked the movie…and how…i keep thinking about it lol

4:46pm: just got a sweet text from mom: 

‘Happy gloomy Monday Meggio. I hope you went ahead with P. Piggy. I didn’t yet  because I’m out of cloves! I’ll update u after…I made the cheesey gratin which wasn’t  that great to me. I like the old style with a cheese sauce. Hope quitting vaping is going  well! C an u talk wed? Lots of love and hugs’ 

then BGE auto-texted that they intend to repair the outage by 7:15pm today

i don’t believe it for a minute 

i haven’t caught up on group texts yet, i’m saving that for a reward 

before i can reward myself i need to do something that merits rewarding

okay so i’ll exercise and then i’ll do the fun 

damnit 

dinner 

i want to just…lay…down…….lay 

i’ll just save my ‘quit vaping’ reading for tomorrow, i did that the other day and it was fine my situation isn’t too dire 

4:57pm: GOING TO DO A HIIT WORKOUT OKAYOKAYOKAYOKAY 

5:44pm: finished this leg workout (https://youtu.be/7WQRjMjCkvI) and commented  ‘thank you based heather Robertson’ 

Now sitting crossed legged on yoga mat 

I checked the spelling of ‘Robertson’ but it’d be funnier if I spelled it wrong

I don’t think heather Robertson knows about based things 

I barely know about based things 

Almost to the point where…I shouldn’t thank based things, because of how little I have  listened to lil b over the years 

No wait you can like a phrase without liking the whole book 

Not that I don’t like lil b

I don’t know him well enough to like or dislike him 

I just don’t listen to music much anymore and I rarely listened to rap when I did listen to  more music 

From what I remember, I lean towards liking him 

The music in hiit workouts is always garbage 

It’s like…’music of today’…it all sounds like commercials for existential bankruptcy

Maybe my comment will make heather Robertson put lil b in her workout videos

Then I’d get to listen to lil b and decide whether I like him or not 

There’s a 0.0000000000000012% chance my comment will do that and I’m not invested  in it doing or not doing that 

5:48pm: stood 

Lol 

Good update 

I’m going to talk with blakester about dinner options. Seems as though his car trip  produced no extension cord results, and neither of us are motivated to take the trip to  the hardware store 

6:00pm: ordered delivery from an upscale ‘fast casual’ salad place 

chewing a nicotine gum (i didn’t really plan on waiting two hours) 

feeling really…tired…pleasantly so, kind of 

blake asked me how i was feeling, in sunroom, if i was feeling ‘irritable like him’

it was nice to be asked, surprised me… 

i said i was tired physically and that i’d realized i hadn’t formed expectations today, i  was just working from a baseline assumption that everything would go smoothly, but i  didn’t consciously think that or plan for loopholes, and i wanted to pay more attention to  choices i could make/the role of choice in my daily expectations 

something like that 

i felt annoying, as i said this

we talked about how the day was going for him and how little things can be frustrating

we talked a little about the adorno book he’s reading as i was ordering a ‘fish taco bowl’

a little later he entered the office and i said i hoped i wasn’t annoying

he said i wasn’t 

we said things about how we only have three more weeks of living here and hugged  and kissed and did cute voices and i felt a surge of gratitude for him 

6:18pm: another blake interlude  

he said, smiling/giggling a little, ‘i saw ‘i hoped i wasn’t annoying’ on the screen’ and  asked me about what i felt annoying by 

i said i thought i was being selfish today and he said he thought he was being selfish  today and we decided we’re not being selfish 

snickered as i typed that 

my language capacities aren’t functioning as well 

talked about some options for tonight, little things we have to look forward to: watching  ‘arf’ (what we call ‘shark tank’) and eating dinner, my meeting with julia/jordo, and  finishing ‘trolls 2’ or watching another movie with very low overall ratings 

the other night we decided we were going to watch all the movies with 0% approval  rates on rottentomatoes.com 

we started with kirk cameron’s ‘saving christmas’ 

one of cinema’s greatest moments 

maybe i’ll type more about it later 

that’s a good way to ensure i won’t type about it later: typing ‘maybe i’ll type about it  later’ 

there’s another thing i want to type more about…about…pervasive kinds of ‘weirdness,’ that we discerned in the car the other night 

might want to write that as an article or something instead, though…an article called ‘the  new normal,’ about how certain celebrity temperaments have popularized a mainstream idea of people thinking they’re so ‘weird,’ and how ‘weird’ things aren’t weird anymore because of this and other things 

before blake left i said ‘brapatisto’ with an italian accent, rolling the ‘r’ hard, and he said  it making a raspberry sound for the ‘r’ 

6:31pm: wow that really took 13 minutes to type 

nuts 

i’m going to shower now 

feeling better 

6:32pm: another thing that’s been tickling me lately is mentally spelling the word genius  like ‘genious,’ like, pronouncing it ‘genious’ in my head 

it came from an idea i had for a celebratory mockumentary called ‘genious’ about  someone who thinks they’re really smart but they’re really dumb 

i’m getting excited for my article idea, maybe i won’t liveblog about it

6:34pm: OKAY I’M GOING TO SHOWER NOW 

6:55pm: SELECTED THOUGHTS WHILE SHOWERING: 

-‘…it’s an advancement in consciousness to think symbolically, it was silly how i shittalked myself for noticing ‘annoyingly symbolic’ things in 2013…’

-‘dr. bronner’s has new copy on the bottle about psychedelic drug therapy; how trendy’

-‘i’ll be 40 soon and then 90’ 

-‘the man on tv said old age was a disease that can be treated but i don’t think that’s the  right way to think about it’ 

-‘in february i can take baths in a bathtub’ 

-‘it’s weird how much of my body i can’t see’ 

-‘[memory of the time i put a garlic clove up my vagina] that wasn’t the right way to go  about it’ 

-‘you can lead a butt horse to water but you can’t make it drink’ 

time for dindin 

8:40pm: just got out of 12-step meeting with pals 

meeting felt powerful to me 

glad this meeting is so small that everyone has to share…i just assume that i’ll talk, and  for the most part, i don’t worry about it

i forget what i shared, which is a good sign…like. i wasn’t stewing about what i was  going to say, i just listened instead, and let the words come out when it was time for  them to come 

whenever i think about what i’m going to say before i speak, it’s terrible 

the thing ends up coming out of my mouth and it’s like when you call BGE and all you  hear is your voice echoing ‘hello? hello?’ on the other end of the telephone 

8:49pm: blake walked by me eating a cookie and kissed me, ‘feeding’ some chewed-up  cookie to me in the process 

so far today blake has pansted me and ‘baby bird’-ed a cookie to me

actually i guess he was the mama bird 

listen: this is what i crave in relationships 

this is the relationship taste that keeps me coming back 

that smooth, menthol pantsed mama bird taste 

seriously though i’m so happy i can share this silliness with another person 

in the words of michael scott to jim and pam when he learned they were a couple, ‘my  heart…soars’ 

9:02pm: i’m leisurely attending to texts 

there is a michael richards joke in group chat…we’re checking in about our  liveblogging…i said mine was a lot shorter this time, and joey suggested i add the  speech that got michael richards cancelled to my liveblog, to ‘give it some girth’ 

then julia said i should add mel gibson’s too 

i said i should add tom cruise’s too 

then joey said ‘mandatory michael richards rant in all of our liveblogs okay?’ 

then we were all going to do it, and i really believed we were all going to do it and i was  gearing up to do it and giggling 

but then it was just a joke 

it’s better this way

9:11pm: blake wants to watch ‘inland empire’ (i just wanted to update at 9:11) 

that sounds like something i could make up about blake, like, ‘oh, blake? he wants to  watch ‘inland empire’ every night’ 

but it was true, that was just the thing that happened at 9:11, or i guess a little before  9:11–we talked about watching that tonight 

9:16pm: i showed that to blake and he laughed and said ‘oh no i was caught being  blake!’  

dang 

my mood has improved so much since 12-step meeting 

it’s so easy for me to forget i’m an alcoholic drug addict (because it’s so easy for all  alcoholic drug addicts to forget we’re alcoholic drug addicts) 

but then you hear other people talk about it and we all have the same background of  cyclical thought distortions around the topic of misappropriating spiritual experiences to  substances  

and it’s so good to hear it 

i don’t even know why 

it means i don’t know everything and i don’t have to know everything, that’s why

and other people don’t know everything either 

but we’re in it together 

this is a good moment for me to insert michael richards’ speech 

9:28pm: okay i’m going to read through this once and text a little and then do some  ‘inland empire’ watching 

10:33pm: i’ve elaborated on some things 

i said i’d stop typing/reading in ‘the 10:30s’ so this seems like a good time to stop 

one more thing, though: the moment i finished eating, i asked blake what time it was,  because my phone was charging in the bedroom. he couldn’t find his phone, and i went  to the bedroom and it was 7:31, which…i almost missed the meeting. it was cool that i  was just ‘guided’ there at the right time, i felt guided

another moment in the meeting…when a woman was narrating her process of picking  the next person to talk, i thought ‘pick julia’ at her really hard, and she picked julia, and  julia said ‘for some reason i felt that coming’ 

10:36pm: time to get lynchy with block buttham 

10:39pm: just went to sunroom to rally the troops for ‘inland empire’  

i forget how it happened but i ended up singing ‘we are we are / watching a movie’ to  the tune of ‘youth of the nation’ by p.o.d.  

10:49pm: I haven’t done many pictures today. Here is Blake trying to pour seltzer water  into his mouth:

10:59pm: okay now we’re finally getting the movie going 

Blake said ‘maybe we should stack up the recycling before we leave’ 

Baltimore doesn’t pick up recycling anymore so we’ve been driving it to the shitdrop  station 

We haven’t done it in like three weeks though 

Here is one of our cute little recycling piles: 

He just said ‘barf party party carts’ 

Blake says the funniest nonsequiturs, I have a list of them he’d probably be  embarrassed about me including 

I’ll just say my two favorites: ‘bye bye Bill’ and ‘holy Paul’s party’ 

11:03pm: in tent now 

Blake said ‘I hate that ‘I wanna be your dog’ song by the stooges’ 

I said I didn’t like iggy pop or the stooges, but I used that title in an instagram post that  said ‘i wanna be your liveblog galleys include dog tags’ 

Blake said that’s okay, that was funny. He said ‘iggy pop’s thing is like, ‘ohh yeah I’m a  sexy meathead who’s neither sexy nor a meathead’ 

I said ‘yeah, he’s so money and he totally knows it’ 

Now he’s doing Beavis’ voice to shittalk himself 

He just went into butthead voice, said ‘my butthead sounds like the…what’s the Ali g  character who…Bruno! I have too much Bruno in my butthead. ‘too much Bruno in your  butthead,’ that’s like, a Brit pop song’ 

Blake is popppong off with tthe funnies tonight 

I told him to slow down so I could write it all down 

11:10pm: okay inland empire time here we go 

Blake said ‘you already missed an important plot point’ when the title card showed

Lol 

I believe it though, I believe he means that and it’s fun to think about that being a plot  point 

The movie stopped playing when I started typing that, as if it knew I needed a break to  type more 

Now we’re restarting for the 3rd time and Blake is doing David lynch voice and it’s  making me laugh

11:58pm: took a break so Blake could pee and I could make toast 

Blake talked excitedly about new things he noticed about the movie, that Laura dern  says the same line Dennis Hopper says in blue velvet but reversed 

I said I thought the old woman was Laura dern in another dimension, that the alley  behind the marketplace appears at the end before she goes into the movie theater,  other things 

Blake said everything is happening at Laura Dern’s house…all the settings… 

Earlier he paused the movie and asked me if I wanted to liveblog and I kissed his head  and said ‘no but that’s very sweet of you to ask’ because it was 

There was a moment in the beginning I almost thought to take a liveblog break… 

I wanted to type about how I stopped myself from interrupting the movie to say how the  ‘rabbits’ scenes are like what watching ‘the big bang theory’ feels like, to me

It seems hard to explain the intricacies of why I stopped myself from saying that

Now we’re saying things about how Laura dern is a likable person

She seems like someone I could be friends with…we could all liveblog with her, I think

Toaster just dinged 

Blake said ‘the ding the ding the ding my dingus—fuck’ 

Toast is smelling so good 

Joey and Ashleigh gave me this toaster so long ago and I can’t believe I went so long without a toaster:

Wonder what the gang posted today

This will be my last update tonight 

Thanks for your time, 

Megan