Things + Friends
Oct. 15th, 2023 05:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
finefoxyladiesHere are things I'm enjoying despite my fixation on that main thing I'm fixated on:
1) Star Trek: Lower Decks: love that goofy-ass animated Trek show. Really loved the Betazoid spy ep and REALLY loved the latest All Killer Robots ep. That collective, particularly Peanut Hamper and Badgey (no offense Jeffrey Combs voiced one I always forget about), are this series's Q. Jack McBrayer is never better than when he is being intense and evil, and I felt sufficiently nerdy when they gave him a Lore and Friends storyline.
2) Fall of the House of Usher: I'm only two episodes in, but as with any and all of the Flanagan Netflix projects, I'm immediately all in. It has the dialogue grandiosity of Deadwood or perhaps a more melancholic Sorkin. I was about to say not as self-satisfied or preening as Sorkin, but I imagine someone could make an argument that it is. I could maybe do without the kids from his Midnight Club series ballut that's just my Gen X sulkiness talking.
3) Finally got around to listening to the Jordan Morris-John Hodgman Max Fun bonus content podcast "Shootin' the Bries 3," and it was a treat. Not just cheese talk--though so very much cheese talk, and I do have to track down some of that whole milk string cheese they tried and raved about--but talk about lessons learned in your dissolute youth and lots of meandering silliness.
4) While I hung out with Kate and Mike, we did some '90s music nostalgia YouToobin' and I developed a big appreciation for Pearl Jam, which I definitely did not listen to when they were Of My Time (I believe that was my guitar rock phase, where I was listening to a lot of Clapton and Tom Petty, like lots of other teenage girls!). Of course I owe a little of that to The Bear, which loves to rep for hometown-adjacent boy Eddie Vedder.
Today a friend visited for breakfast and coffee time along with their kid. She texted before she stopped to pick up Bruegger's Bagels (Bruegger's: We're The Closest To New York Bagels You're Gonna Get, Northerners), so by the time she pulled up, I had the eggs scrambled and the sausages done. The coffee had been on for a while.
This friend is in the midst of a tough time. Honestly she's had a tough time the last few years. She called Friday and asked about visiting after planning a last-minuteish overnight stay near here. Much of our visit was spent in conversation with the kidlet, who is a very active and chatty pre-K'er, but we were sometimes able to meander into general friend chit-chat and, when she was ready, to talk about the tough stuff she's been dealing with the last few weeks.
And at the end of the visit, when we hugged, she said, "I really needed this." I didn't think much of it at the time beyond a general sort of love and gratitude for my friend and for the opportunity to be able to be with her and be of use to her in that way. But as I continued along with my day, doing some puttery cleaning, finishing a letter, the more I thought about the start to the day and the preparation of breakfast.
I always ascribed the kind of caretaking magic my mom was capable of as something unique to her and to my grandma, her mother, something I would never be capable of as I wasn't a mother and was so different than the two of them in what I suppose are very superficial ways, as well as a sort of narcissitic belief that I am a lone wolf no one truly understands. Today I think I sort of sat with both the joy that I can be that source of care and safety, that I have functional skills in the kitchen to make breakfast happen, but also that I know how to do all the surrounding things to show a friend and her kid that I care and know how to take care. But I also sat with the knowledge that my lone wolfery is this residual sort of sadness and defensiveness that grew out of losing the one person I always felt so known by and seen by and unconditionally loved and comforted by. I wondered early on after my mom's suicide how I broke, what pieces of me were not quite glued back into place the same way or were missing, and I guess you don't really get to know that until way later in your life (or maybe sooner... if you're a little more self-aware than I am). And today it seems like I saw that a little bit. It makes me a hard friend sometimes, I imagine, because for all my flibbertigibbetness and wit and, sure, let's call it vivacity, I'm guarded and prone to get prickly or withdrawn. And realizing the warm joy and accomplishment I felt knowing that my friend felt known and seen and loved by me and by making breakfast--which my mom exceled at so much, and which I miss so much--it was the first time in a very long time I felt a warm sort of loving connection to my mom but also to myself as someone who can feel gratitude and not just mumble my way through it and know that I'm known and loved and appreciated too.
1) Star Trek: Lower Decks: love that goofy-ass animated Trek show. Really loved the Betazoid spy ep and REALLY loved the latest All Killer Robots ep. That collective, particularly Peanut Hamper and Badgey (no offense Jeffrey Combs voiced one I always forget about), are this series's Q. Jack McBrayer is never better than when he is being intense and evil, and I felt sufficiently nerdy when they gave him a Lore and Friends storyline.
2) Fall of the House of Usher: I'm only two episodes in, but as with any and all of the Flanagan Netflix projects, I'm immediately all in. It has the dialogue grandiosity of Deadwood or perhaps a more melancholic Sorkin. I was about to say not as self-satisfied or preening as Sorkin, but I imagine someone could make an argument that it is. I could maybe do without the kids from his Midnight Club series ballut that's just my Gen X sulkiness talking.
3) Finally got around to listening to the Jordan Morris-John Hodgman Max Fun bonus content podcast "Shootin' the Bries 3," and it was a treat. Not just cheese talk--though so very much cheese talk, and I do have to track down some of that whole milk string cheese they tried and raved about--but talk about lessons learned in your dissolute youth and lots of meandering silliness.
4) While I hung out with Kate and Mike, we did some '90s music nostalgia YouToobin' and I developed a big appreciation for Pearl Jam, which I definitely did not listen to when they were Of My Time (I believe that was my guitar rock phase, where I was listening to a lot of Clapton and Tom Petty, like lots of other teenage girls!). Of course I owe a little of that to The Bear, which loves to rep for hometown-adjacent boy Eddie Vedder.
Today a friend visited for breakfast and coffee time along with their kid. She texted before she stopped to pick up Bruegger's Bagels (Bruegger's: We're The Closest To New York Bagels You're Gonna Get, Northerners), so by the time she pulled up, I had the eggs scrambled and the sausages done. The coffee had been on for a while.
This friend is in the midst of a tough time. Honestly she's had a tough time the last few years. She called Friday and asked about visiting after planning a last-minuteish overnight stay near here. Much of our visit was spent in conversation with the kidlet, who is a very active and chatty pre-K'er, but we were sometimes able to meander into general friend chit-chat and, when she was ready, to talk about the tough stuff she's been dealing with the last few weeks.
And at the end of the visit, when we hugged, she said, "I really needed this." I didn't think much of it at the time beyond a general sort of love and gratitude for my friend and for the opportunity to be able to be with her and be of use to her in that way. But as I continued along with my day, doing some puttery cleaning, finishing a letter, the more I thought about the start to the day and the preparation of breakfast.
I always ascribed the kind of caretaking magic my mom was capable of as something unique to her and to my grandma, her mother, something I would never be capable of as I wasn't a mother and was so different than the two of them in what I suppose are very superficial ways, as well as a sort of narcissitic belief that I am a lone wolf no one truly understands. Today I think I sort of sat with both the joy that I can be that source of care and safety, that I have functional skills in the kitchen to make breakfast happen, but also that I know how to do all the surrounding things to show a friend and her kid that I care and know how to take care. But I also sat with the knowledge that my lone wolfery is this residual sort of sadness and defensiveness that grew out of losing the one person I always felt so known by and seen by and unconditionally loved and comforted by. I wondered early on after my mom's suicide how I broke, what pieces of me were not quite glued back into place the same way or were missing, and I guess you don't really get to know that until way later in your life (or maybe sooner... if you're a little more self-aware than I am). And today it seems like I saw that a little bit. It makes me a hard friend sometimes, I imagine, because for all my flibbertigibbetness and wit and, sure, let's call it vivacity, I'm guarded and prone to get prickly or withdrawn. And realizing the warm joy and accomplishment I felt knowing that my friend felt known and seen and loved by me and by making breakfast--which my mom exceled at so much, and which I miss so much--it was the first time in a very long time I felt a warm sort of loving connection to my mom but also to myself as someone who can feel gratitude and not just mumble my way through it and know that I'm known and loved and appreciated too.