Spouse is better. Seems like he just wore himself out. I admit, I am concerned about the delta variant and the potential waning effectiveness of spouse's vaccination. We're about as low a risk for exposure as anyone could have in the US. Plenty of people still habitually wearing masks indoors (us included), and even outdoors. I am just not interested in begging uncle sam to be kind if spouse catches covid and develops some unlucky long term side effect that damages his eligibility. Uncle sam isn't trustworthy and doesn't care. Best case scenario is still the same: don't catch the bug.

There is a forum for people going through the same hiring process spouse is going through, because the job is specialized and it's a long process made worse by a near cruel lack of transparency. So naturally people want a place to commiserate and pass little pieces of gossip, or hear success/failure stories. Not only is the qualifications bar high but the extended time commitment and uncertainty is more than a lot of people can reasonably bear. They really put you through the mental grinder. If someone has kids or a career minded spouse I can't even imagine how much rougher the process would be. Spouse and I have it about as easy as it gets, since I can work in any state, we are vagabonds anyway and only have the kitties. Send us wherever, we'll make it work. Anyway, there are people on the forum who lost their big chance due to covid. Invest months, sometimes years of your life into this process and then nothing, not because you didn't measure up, but just due to the timing of a virus. Soul crushing. We would be devastated. My whole attitude since I heard about the virus and knew it would spread to the US has been, I am not going to let this fuck up spouse's ambitions. An applicant has just two chances to try in their lifetime by the time they reach a certain age. Spouse is on his second chance, and he's on the threshold for age. The fitness requirements have no age modifiers, so the older you get the harder a passing score becomes. There is no "wait and reapply later" for spouse. There is no later. It must be now.

Once he gets past training I will relax. Until then we mask up indoors and hope for the best. Supposedly they have relaxed the covid restrictions at training some, especially for those with the vaccine, but they are still not allowing trainees to be gone overnight (no weekends home - Cat is going to be upset). Also, sounds like they aren't letting visitors come for the graduation ceremony. Mild bummers. Spouse and I know how to be apart. Neither of us put much value on ceremonies.

Spouse has heard rumors that the august training is full so it could be late September? But who knows, really. At least we won't be moving in dec/jan. Anything but that! I don't think we're gunning to go back to Alaska. Not only due to seasonal timing, but due to spouse's family politics/drama and also just sheer adventure. Maybe we're not ready to go back to the shire. I think we will always want to go back to Alaska eventually, and since they are usually hurting for people (people decide the winter is too hard and transfer out - for a while they even offered bonus money) it shouldn't be too difficult to transfer there after a few years. But anywhere else in the L48 is going to be an easier move. It's not really the distance, it's passing through a foreign country and the drastic seasonal conditions in the north.

The newest drama with spouse's family is that his nephew apparently spent the night in jail for assaulting his mom's (spouse's older sister) boyfriend. We know the nephew - he's an affable person but he has some anger/authority issues. We don't know the boyfriend - but he's been around for a few years and hasn't caused drama (aside from the circumstances of sister's divorce, which I don't think the nephew liked). They all live in a small rotting house with spouse's parents outside of Seward. A vehicle and money for gas are necessities to get to the jobs in Seward, because there is absolutely nothing in their immediate area. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous, earthporn level beautiful, but for a young adult it may as well be the Sahara desert as far as what opportunities it offers.

There's roughly 7 adults or more, plus a couple young kids, crammed in this tiny house, and nobody has stable employment or career prospects. Spouse's dad's disability pays the mortgage. Without that house they'd all be homeless, but it has roofing problems, a poorly working toilet, the well can only draw so much water, black mold in the basement, etc. The house being in the remote location it is, it keeps them poor because saving the ~$2k for moving out is nearly impossible. The car always needs repairs, gas is expensive, heat is expensive, groceries are expensive, internet is expensive. It's not as bad in summer because a person could go for a walk if they needed space, or even camp out in a tent. But winter is coming, and it will make that house an overcrowded dark prison. Gives me the heebie jeebies just thinking about it, and I have a high tolerance for clutter. Like, this nephew needs to GTFO soon to preserve his mental health. Ideally he should buy a plane ticket out of Alaska and go somewhere warm where he won't freeze to death if he ends up homeless. He needs opportunity, fresh surroundings. But just getting out of Alaska is SO expensive and then he will have no safety net, no transportation, and he doesn't know how life works in the L48 (I doubt he's been Outside ever). Just like there's a culture shock to living in Alaska, there's a culture shock to the L48. He doesn't have good living skills because he wasn't taught good living skills. I really feel for him because so much is stacked against him and it's not his fault. Assaulting the mom's boyfriend is inexcusable, but shit, Gandhi would be pissed off if he had to live in that house. But even if we had money to give the nephew, it would not solve his main problem, which is he has no solid goals or plans. Can the nephew make a big change like leaving Alaska? Because that's what it's going to take. Maybe not the military but americorps? Some kind of volunteer thing where they need warm bodies willing to go anywhere and they'll take care of room & board?

I dunno what's going to happen with that house. If we move back to Alaska we're going to get more drawn in, and spouse's mom and older sister are bigtime drama llamas and enjoy allying with each other against anybody who gives pushback. It's hard to want to help, but knowing that the root problem is psychological, and without real progress on the mental front, a million dollars wouldn't be enough. "Put your oxygen mask on first before helping others" but spouse's parents cannot grasp this concept. They've always got that house crammed with too many extra bodies (spouse calls them strays). This would be admirable if they weren't churchmouse poor and suffering from serious health problems. Nevermind the message they sent to their kids was "strangers on the street are more worthy of our attention and resources than you". They just throw their meager resources at whomever for the high of helping. It's a bit like they've got rampant white savior complex, except the only people they are in a position to help are in such terrible shape that they need real professional help and government resources. Domestic violence, schizophrenia, hard stuff. The parents indulge in pot to ease the health problems they can't afford to treat, and that is a no-go with their kids who have federal employment. Of the four siblings who have successfully established their own households, none of them can be around pot. Then the parents feel snubbed because they won't bring the grandkids over to visit. On it goes.

Anyway, no, I don't really want to move back to Alaska right now and get guilt tripped/forced to listen to trainwreck political opinions from people who are close to being good subjects for the TV show Hoarders. You know how sometimes they'll have a hoarder who has too many pets? Some pets are starving, some have illness, home is filthy and destroyed, but the hoarder thinks they're doing great? Spouse's parents are basically exactly like that except they hoard people. Family members or random people, they always have that house crammed and everyone has mental health issues. It's a really sad situation and nothing seems to get better, because they don't want real change. Gosh I hope the nephew gets out. Please get out. Two generations are bad enough, but the third is heartbreaking.

The Jan 6th hearings are interesting. I was nervous that day about spouse working but dang, in retrospect, how amazing is it that he got to be in the area? He got to experience one of the most significant events in US history. He'll have that firsthand perspective for the rest of his life. I can't be as open as I'd like about his experiences (and there's probably stuff he can't tell me), but at one point he had to make sure his brand new coworkers understood that whatever happened, they would not shoot first. Fortunately events did not escalate to involve him personally. I imagine once we move he will trot out the story often (esp with the red hat relatives - pretty hard to dispute your son's eyewitness account). It wasn't antifa or BLM or the "radical left" trying to make red hats look bad. It wasn't a false flag. It wasn't any of the lies they invent to soften and obscure the truth of who they are. They were asshole terrorists that day. They spouted off about being asshole terrorists for weeks on social media, and then they tried to act out the asshole terrorist plans they bragged about and were so clumsy and spoiled they couldn't even do that right, and now hundreds are facing charges because for all their tactical wankery opsec braggadocio, they didn't have the discipline to keep from posting selfies on facebook. They swallowed the Big Lie fed to them by a malignant narcissist with no redeeming qualities. They aren't patriots. They aren't good christians. They don't have integrity or honor. They aren't for law and order. They're a bunch of easily misled crybabies with anger issues and inflated entitlement, afraid to be perceived as getting the short stick in any facet of their life. Exactly like the person they have put on a pedestal. Fucking face the mirror and grow up. (oh gosh I am just going to be a treat the next visit with spouse's parents)

I doubt we'll see proper justice done, because someone should have been impeached for real justice. But I hope the committee is able to make a record of the extent of the rot. Even if we do slide into fascism in the next few years, the rest of the world will know and those truths will still be out there. Please witness this, European Union, Canada, actual first world countries, etc. Carry the torch of sanity. Even if the fools get into power and bury the US records and tell lies about what happened, they cannot scrub the truth from world memory.

Those of us who want to do better, will. But man, we have a lot of empowered dipshits right now. Ten years ago I would have laughed at the possibility of the US going down the same path as nazi Germany. Today it seems like we're going to have to work to avoid it. I keep thinking about Jojo Rabbit.

I haven't been doing so hot this past month or so. My mood has been at a steady 3-4 out of 10: "glum". It feels like by all metrics I should feel better/have way more energy than I do and I am frustrated with myself. I dunno if it's spouse's ongoing job process or the fact that we are backsliding with covid or worries about the future or whatever. Getting that bad headache for a week didn't help. I've been trying to eat less dairy, but it feels like food is becoming a minefield. I gave up real cream in my coffee w/ sugar free syrup (which I very much liked) in favor of boring non-dairy creamer. Now my coffee is full of defeat first thing in the morning. I kinda want to stomp my foot and say, "Screw food, I'll just drink meal replacement shakes forever!" but those things are expensive, I looked. I'm tired of negotiating food. I'm tired of matching up what I want to eat with what I can eat. I've allowed myself apples because even though they aren't technically low carb, they distract me from cheese. I'm tired of being the one who always thinks up what to make for dinner. I'm tired of constant cooking and dishes. I'm tired of mentally tracking what we have stored and making shopping lists. Maybe it's worse because it's summer and hot. I spend a minimum of 2-3 hours just focused on food related tasks per day.

Maybe I can figure out a recipe for some kind of dense food bar and just live off that. I've been working on a pumpkin based protein bar recipe. Spouse got a bag of protein powder he either doesn't like or forgot about, so I keep trying to get rid of it in baked goods. Moderate success. I'd have to figure out the macros properly and, perhaps, write down the recipe. If I could make 2 weeks of that at a time and just fetch a bar out of the freezer every day, all I'd have to do is make breakfast for spouse in the morning and then dinner for us both at night. Less thinking, fewer dirty dishes. *taps forehead*

It's not just the food thing, though. I'm just down. I'm in a low enough mood that it's hard to even do things I might want to do, because it feels like I don't deserve anything good. I know it's a cycle. The headaches are hard because I feel so worthless for getting behind on the things I need to do. I failed because I ate too much of this or not enough of that or didn't get the right exercise on some biological ledger I'm not allowed to look at, and then I get the headache hammer. Then I fail to accomplish what seemed reasonable. It's really depressing and battery draining. I try to kickstart myself out of it but sometimes it just feels so futile. I work on not blaming myself, but ultimately the work that needed to be done, wasn't. The reality is I failed, and no matter what I do, I will fail again in the future.

Anyway I'm struggling a bit. Rearranging the living room and getting the chair were positive steps, but wasn't enough to get me over the hump. I took my jewelry out for a few weeks and now I have to stretch my ears out again. No jewelry = depression. Nobody tells you how annoying it gets to sleep with large pieces of metal/glass in your ears. There's rubber o-rings that are constantly trying to yeet themselves into the void, and if you lose the o-ring, the jewelry will be pushed out. So there's an ongoing battle to check the o-rings, and if they disappear, check the jewelry, but eventually one day you wake up with nothing in your ear hole and you just say, fuck it, I don't care, nobody's going to see me, and take it all out. That's nice, until you realize it's been too long and you're going to have to stretch back out. I'm lopsided right now because I stretched back out to 8mm, got the jewelry in, promptly lost an o-ring, and now my left plug is gone somewhere and I haven't cared to look for it for two days. Constant circus of looking for tiny things on the floor. Nobody tells you when you start stretching that you'll be hunting for o-rings and plugs every day. I have some screw back pairs but they are so cheap the threads seized in my ear and I had to get the pliers to take the back off. I do not recommend cheap screw backs. I have soft silicone tunnels but they trap moisture and make my ears super itchy.

Masks are too tricky to wear with my larger, fancier jewelry so I was looking forward to putting covid behind us so I could wear large pieces again. Guess I may have to figure out some hybrid way to wear masks. I was planning on masking up for tattooing in the future anyway. If you think about it, hovering over open skin, breathing on it, is gross. Pre-covid we had disposable masks at the shop to wear if we had a cold. Masking up when you're in someone's personal space for hours seems like the polite thing to do when you're supposed to be hyper aware of hygiene. Plus I made myself cool masks from recycling old tshirts and I like them. If I could just figure out how to easily take the mask on and off with the giant earrings I like to wear, that would be great.

I'm watching Making the Cut on amazon prime - it's the amazon knockoff of Project Runway. Project Runway was amusing but skewed too SKINNY MOODLE FASHION NO FATTIES for my pedestrian taste, and they stuck to the "bugs in a jar, shake 'em up, make 'em fight" reality show strategy. Making the Cut removes some stress elements (like budget, and gives offscreen seamstress access), shows contestants cooperating and helping each other, but is savagely commercial to the extent that the designer makes two separate looks, runway and "accessible" which means "can be made for cheap and will fit fat people too". And then they actually do produce the winning accessible look and coordinate the sale with the episode. The judging and winning criteria are relentlessly focused on BRAND and the designer's potential to make money, so there's a lot of nervous marketing doubletalk about "brand DNA" and whatnot. On the one hand, it has a certain refreshing honesty to put the ugly side of modern creating square in the spotlight. Project Runway was more coy. It flirted with salability but pretended to be about art. Making the Cut bursts in draped in mardi gras beads shouting, "WHO WANTS TO BE THE BEST CORPORATE WHORE??" So, is a mixed bag.

I have a soft spot for watching contestant based reality shows just because 1) you don't really have to pay attention and 2) it's fun to watch other creators and get a feel for their personalities and how they handle challenges. Who can keep themselves calm and who can't. Whose confidence is real and who is fake. Who plays it safe and who goes too far. Plus I like making stuff and sometimes you can pick up little tips and tricks for handling different materials. I've watched a lot of face off (special effects), inkmaster (tattooing), forged in fire (knifemaking), project runway, etc. I don't watch the performance focused shows - I like the ones where they show the process of making stuff.

So we're at 6 of 8 episodes in the second season of Making the Cut. It's better than first season. The designers in first season left me cold. I liked the woman from Germany who made exclusively black garments, but she seemed like a terrible fit for an amazon brand from the start. Of course they are going to constantly harass her to work in other colors when she had no interest. It was sad that "winning" would ruin the specific aesthetic that served her so well. At a certain point, creating becomes more about how well you can cater to a mass audience of laypeople and ignore your own preferences that you have worked so hard to develop. If you watch Making the Cut with an eye for exploring how creators resist the temptation to exploit themselves (or surrender to it), it gets more interesting.

I'm bringing this up because season 2 has Gary, a middle age guy from rural New York. He's socially awkward and struggles with his self esteem. He likes gothy historical inspiration and gets a little nerdy with his fabric choices. He is one of the most interesting true creators I have seen in a while. Doesn't hurt that I like his aesthetic. Gary has developed his ability to create and problem solve in amazing ways. It's not due to portraying confidence, or finding a rigid groove that appeals to him (like the german woman who works in black). He's interested in real risk-taking and has made peace with risking himself in the process. He has that flexible mentality that I would love to cultivate in myself. Because he's older, he has the experience to succeed where someone younger would be lost. It probably comes from a lot of failure, and you can see that in how he talks about himself, too. He has failed and failed and failed. Failed so much he's genuinely surprised when it goes right. This is not a guy who brags about how much better his stuff is than another contestant. You see him volunteering to help someone with last minute sewing or try on a sleeve or just give a compliment. He doesn't have much ego to get in the way. He just tries to make something interesting. Man, I really want to be like Gary. It's pretty rare to see someone on these reality shows that you wish you could hang out with. There was a standout contestant on Face Off I really liked - Laura from season 5. It's less about what they make (although they are very talented), and more about how they go about making it, and their internal attitudes and goals.

I want Gary's attitude - I want to be humble and positive and sturdy enough to try and fail. I want to turn a problem upside down to get something fresh out of it, and then commit and execute. I want to be unthreatened by others who are more skilled or more admired or have a different viewpoint. He just seems like a cool guy making cool things. I'd love to listen to him go on about his creative process. He has learned some good lessons, I can tell.

I don't care if Gary wins - in some ways it might be better if he doesn't, because even the accessible versions of his designs will have details left out and lower quality materials substituted by necessity of the sweatshop process. In season 1 there was an awkward later episode where the final designers had to pitch themselves at amazon corporate. I cringe to think of Gary in that situation, because it feels demeaning to make him parrot marketing jargon and talk about his brand like a brood mare. I think Gary makes it obvious who he is and what he's about, and people respond to that honesty, because he's worked so hard to learn how to speak through his work. He's not calculated like some of the other contestants. One of the others, Andrea S (the one from Colombia), would be a perfect fit for mass made fast fashion. I think her aesthetic is tacky and derivative. They keep saying she's "old hollywood" but I see none of that - she's more like upcycled Dynasty (the 80's drama) costume chic. She's put literally nothing on the runway I think is innovative or shows skill and I don't know how she hasn't gotten booted off. She's perfect for amazon. She desperately wants that trophy. Give it to her. She's exactly what they want and deserve. Her stuff could be easily paired with the person who won the first season.

The final episodes will be out next Friday and then we'll see. The show as a whole is trainwrecky, but I have really enjoyed watching Gary.

Guess I should wrap this up - I've just been adding more rant to this window all week. Fat load of nothing going on in my world right now.