all the way home

Internet dating remains bizarre. Catching up to my previous entry, the Tinder guy was a sweetheart boat mechanic who looked too startled to argue when I said that I would pay for myself. Then there was an unpleasant guy from OkCupid who, after ascertaining that I don't play video games, said, "This will probably go right over your head, then," and explained how if you die in this game he was playing you had to go all the way back to the start. He also didn't care about Princess Leia and was a surprise kisser, though at least there was no tongue. :/ Fortunately, he lives about 90 minutes away, so we met at a city in the middle, which has a Target, which is the only place that carries the tea I'm obsessed with. So, eh.

Met another guy off OkCupid whose opening salvo was, "I like your taste in books." (Panty dropper.) We've gotten together a couple of times for drinks and walks, and we text a lot (every day since we met); I can't quite determine if he's interested in me or if he's just trying to make new friends, because he just moved to town and is going crazy from boredom. No moves have been made. In "This is a small town" news, the first time we met, my friend Sara's husband was at the bar with his family, which I found comforting -- like if this goes SUPER POORLY, at least Shawn is here for backup. When I ran into them on the Greenway yesterday, he said he clocked the guy walking me to my car and waited to make sure he came back. Good dude. We're going to go for a hike later this week, so if nothing else at least I have a hiking buddy now. A stupid cute one. Argh.

Last week, I went to an after-hours meeting of our substance abuse/recovery advocacy coalition that lasted from 5:30 to 7:30. I'm not a content expert, I just show up because I care about creating a community where folks can recover from addiction, both because of the substance abuse in my family and because I spent all of my college years self-medicating my untreated depression with alcohol. There was a discussion panel with some community members who had experience with addiction or the treatment process in our county, and one of them is a lawyer around my age I've met a couple of times. I ran into him on my walk yesterday evening and we had a nice chat; his mom is actually the owner of the bookstore where I spent all the money I made at my first job. It's always nice to meet other Democrats here, and he jokingly gave me a lot of shit, which is a quality I like in my friends, so hopefully we can hang out again sometime.

A couple of weeks ago, my aunt told Shannon and me that our uncle, who lived with our grandmother, had said that if we wanted anything of hers, we needed to get it soon, because he was going to start throwing things out. I don't know if that's actually how he phrased it or just how she heard it, because they have a contentious relationship, but it was very upsetting to both of us. I tried really hard not to dwell on it, but I was not entirely successful. Anyway, Shannon and Max came back down this weekend and we spent six hours cleaning out Grandma's bedroom. It fucking sucked. My aunt needs a hip replacement but won't be approved for one unless she can lose weight, so Shannon and I did a lot of the moving and packing. We both took some clothes and little things from her purse; Shannon took some of the art hanging in her room and I have her lifetime membership card to the National Gardening Club in my wallet now. Our junkie cousin (aunt's daughter) showed up about five hours in, after we had done all the hard shit, to claim every piece of jewelry our Grandma had.

When my maternal grandmother passed away, it took us a year to go through her jewelry. I have a ring of hers that I wear all the time, and it's important to me because I have memories of her wearing it. My paternal grandmother never wore jewelry, because she was always elbow-deep in dirt somewhere making green things grow. So I am okay with not having any of that stuff, truly, but I am so upset over the way our cousin did this. My mom commented that she was just there to go shopping. And she started fighting with her mother almost as soon as she walked in the door. God, she is exhausting. In the car on the way home, my aunt was crying and asking if "[cousin] had snatched everything [I] wanted," and all I could do was tell her not to worry about it. She knows her kid is an asshole. I say "kid"; this bitch will be 31 this year. I just hope she doesn't sell Grandma's stuff.

Prior to the shittiness of going through our Grandma's stuff, Shannon and I went to the Greenway, and I ran a fucking mile! I have not done that since high school. It was awesome. I felt awesome after doing it. I might need to get running shoes.

I knew that this weekend would suck, so last Wednesday or Thursday I asked Heather if I could take today off as a mental health day, which she had no problem with. She is a good person and a good boss; she just drives me fucking nuts on the regular. I gave myself the little gift of sleeping thirty minutes later than normal, then did some stretching and drove to the state park about half an hour from my apartment, Stone Mountain. The weather today looked like something out of a horror movie, fog and drizzly rain, and I didn't see another human soul while I was up there. I love that hike and I've done it a couple of times, but only in nice bright weather. The last time I was there, when I got to the summit I could see for miles; today it looked like this. I felt like the only person on earth. I hadn't been up there since they did a controlled burn earlier this year; a lot of the trees have scorched trunks, so parts of the trail were quite eery.

A few weeks ago I watched the PBS documentary "Storm Over Everest," about the 1996 climbing disaster, which concluded with this quote: "The mountain doesn't care whether we're here or not. It doesn't compete with us. It isn't burdened by our hopes and dreams. Everything it means to us is only what we bring to it."

When I got back, I invited OkCupid guy to lunch and chatted with him a bit - part of my confusion is that I initiate all our get-togethers - then spent two hours at the car shop getting my brakes serviced while it monsooned outside. Came home and failed at napping, so I caught up on chores I ignored yesterday in favor of beautiful weather, then made bread. Now I'm just waiting for the damn laundry to finish so I can put sheets back on my bed and go to sleep.

Weird Internet stuffs. Complicated family stuffs. Running shoes. That's where I'm at right now.