It has been so long since I posted here, I forgot the password. It has been so long since I posted here, I had to read the previous post to 1) figure out what I’d last shared and 2) brace myself for how far back I’d need to go to catch you up. It’s been so long since I posted here, I had a moment (okay; maybe several) of nostalgia for the days when I wrote all the time and my life didn’t feel like a series of complicated situations I’ve neither asked for nor want, but nonetheless probably shouldn’t air publicly because… reasons.

(Let’s ignore the fact that that plenty of people think the entire 20 years of entries here shouldn’t have been aired publicly. Ahem.)

It has been so long since I posted here, back when I wrote that last entry I was blissfully unaware that actually, yes, a democracy CAN go backwards, “that could never happen here” or “that could never happen again” could very well be words to choke on, or that we could find ourselves living in a time when it’s truly embarrassing to be an American. But here we are, living the dream hellscape! Wooooooo!!

Life goes on, of course. But the small measure of existential dread I’ve always lived with has multiplied a thousandfold. So that’s fun.

Anyway! So much to catch you up on!

When we last left off, Otto had had some mystery crud and then Monkey had some other mystery crud, and the rest of the summer passed without incident, health-wise. Otto likes to refer to any trip to Urgent Care or the ER for me as “date night” (har har), so I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I did, in this intervening time, manage to feel around in a deep kitchen cabinet and slice the tip of my finger open. No, we don’t leave random knives in the cabinets. I have one of these bad boys and SOMEONE (I’m not naming any names, mostly because it may well have been me…?) left one of the inserts blade-up on the edge of the little shelf that’s way in the back. Whoops. So I was feeling around for my candy thermometer and the next thing I knew, I was bleeding everywhere.

Otto wanted to go to Urgent Care right that second, but I was looking for the candy thermometer because I had hot sugar on the stove because I was making a meringue buttercream. (Anyone who bakes is nodding. Anyone who doesn’t is now all, “… so??”). I wrapped about four layers around my hand while explaining that I HAVE TO FINISH THIS FROSTING, and by the time the frosting was done, it didn’t seem too bad, so we didn’t go. But at bedtime I discovered it was still kinda bleeding, and the next morning it STILL was, so we went.

They glued me back together and we went on our way. It’s all healed up, now, but my devices no longer recognize my fingerprint on that finger, which is kind of a drag because it’s the pointer on my dominant hand. But I’m sure it could be much worse.

ALSO, that Urgent Care trip was much nicer than the one we ended up taking in… I can’t remember, either late September or early October, when I came down with the crud and had tested negative for COVID and also had had my flu vaccine already and yet in the space of about 2 days went from “mildly unwell” to “I think I’m dying.” Otto dutifully drove me to Urgent Care while I alternately dozed and prayed I would not burst into flames due to my high fever, and when we got there, I got out of the car and headed to the entrance. Obviously Otto did the same thing, right? Nope! He did not! He got out of the car and STARTED TAKING PICTURES OF THE PAVEMENT. When I realized he was not behind me, I turned and saw him clicking away, and I said, “Really??” And he looked up at me, then back at whatever he’d found so fascinating on the blacktop, then apologized and followed me inside.

[Sidebar: Otto is truly one of the VERY VERY VERY FEW good men I know, and my opinion of middle-aged white dudes isn’t so great these days, you understand. He is not only objectively an awesome human being, he is my favorite person on the planet. Furthermore, we’ve now known each other for… ummm… 35 years (hi, we’re old), and stopping to take pictures is what he does, and I know this. BUT. 1) Maybe don’t stop to take random pictures when your wife is dying, and 2) maybe don’t expect I won’t milk this for all it’s worth when you screw up this way so rarely. Sorry not sorry, honey!]

Despite my negative home test, it turned out that I did indeed have COVID. Fun! But not really! Somehow Otto didn’t get it at all, that time, and Monkey was mildly ill so we assumed they had it as well, but don’t really know. I was pretty sick for a few days, but not nearly as sick as I’d been the last time I had it, so… small favors, I guess.

Aaaaaaand… just a few weeks ago, Monkey got the flu, and shared it with us (damn me, teaching that kid to be a good sharer). At this very moment everyone is healthy, but maybe nobody move, or sacrifice a chicken or a virgin if you must. Whatever it takes.

Now, the detail-oriented among you may realize that I said the flu thing was “a few weeks ago,” but also back in July I said that Monkey would be moving out “soon.” Additionally, those of you who don’t live under rocks are probably aware of the enormous clusterfuck the federal job sector recently became.

Monkey’s job story here is truly the embodiment of bad news/good news/bad news: The security clearance required for the job they were offered (for which they were sent a contract to sign, which basically said “as long as you pass clearance, this is your job”) was the highest level, which means it takes the longest to obtain. We’d been told the process could take up to a year, so we were braced for that, but also things were humming right along. Until…

Bad News. The in-person investigators for government security clearances are, I’m told, most often retired military or policemen. I’m not saying that means anything in particular, you understand, but I mention it in light of the following: The man assigned to talk to Monkey in person and interview friends/colleagues/neighbors as part of their background investigation was, to put it mildly, a massive dick. He was rude and antagonistic and macho and absolutely COULD NOT wrap his feeble little man-brain around the nonbinary nerd in front of him being a regular human being. He misgendered and deadnamed Monkey a hundred times during the process—to Monkey’s face, to his friends and workmates, CONSTANTLY despite repeated correction—and looooong after this all ended, we had multiple neighbors we don’t see very often tell us about that “rude fellow who came around and seemed to think we were all hiding something about Monkey.” That investigator is supposed to interview the subject ONCE. After the THIRD time he called Monkey post-interview—always with a *gotcha* vibe of “ha, I found the way I can say you failed the screening!”—with a little guidance from us, Monkey emailed HR to ask if there was someone they could speak with about the process. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and the background check was still marked as “in process.” Monkey emailed HR again, this time to ask where they could lodge an official complaint about the investigator. MAGICALLY, the day after that email, their investigation was closed as complete/passed.

This meant there was only one hurdle left: The polygraph. If you don’t know the history and principles of lie detector tests, I encourage you to take a deep dive sometime, when you’re bored, because it’s fascinating. But here’s your Cliff Notes: Polygraph tests are useless. Every expert out there agrees that they are not a good measure of anything other than discomfort/anxiety.

So, naturally, our government continues to employ them as a mandatory part of the high-level clearance process. Because they may be garbage, but at least they’re also expensive and time-consuming!

I obviously have a lot of feelings about this (not that the government cares) (about anything). Basically when clearing a person for security access this high, all they’re trying to do is make sure that you’re telling the truth and that no one is going to be able to blackmail you. The polygraph is used not because it’s accurate, but because there is a system the government thinks is useful, and it’s basically this: you go in and do the poly, and they tell you that you failed (no matter how it went). Then the two administrators of the test basically Good Cop/Bad Cop you for a while, trying to convince you that if you just come clean right now about the thing you were lying about, you can still save your chance of getting clearance. But this is a trap, because apparently if you then confess something, that means you lied, which means that’s it; you’re out. If you do not succumb and reiterate that you were truthful, they’ll send you away and tell you to reschedule another attempt.

In Monkey’s research, they found that the average number of times employees of their intended agency had to take the polygraph was… three. On the day they took it, they were in a group of 47 people. ONE person in the entire group passed, and Monkey overheard them on the phone, outside, and it was their third attempt and they were soooo thankful to be done, finally. (Mind you, it apparently isn’t wasteful for the government to fly all these people to DC, put them up in a hotel, give them a per diem for their meals, and fly them home… just to do it all over again. And again.)

Anyway. They took the polygraph. They failed (as expected). They’d been told the next “block” of scheduling for polygraphs would open the following week and they could schedule to do it again.

The day the block was set to open—we’re at… mid-October, by this point—Monkey received a form letter that was sent to EVERYONE who had a conditional offer from that agency and was going through the clearance process. The form letter said that the agency was rescinding all conditional offers. No explanation. Just “Oops! Bye!” And “thanks for your interest, please apply again in the future!”

“NO THE FUCK I WILL NOT,” bellowed my blindsided child, who’d just spent six months working toward a “guaranteed” job which had just gone *poof* before their very eyes.

I’m not going to lie to you; the rest of October was HARD. As was much of November. The unexpectedness of it. The unfairness of it. And as time went on it became clear that the investigator had rattled them even more than they’d originally let on, but they’d kept a brave face because it was a step toward this great job and then… no job.

But then…

Good News! HahahahahahahahahHAAAAAAAA*sob* it feels very, very wrong to characterize the nation electing an orange baby-handed tyrant to our highest office as a good thing, but I can say that after weeks of feeble “Things will work out, you’ll see” reassurances, everything that unfolded after the election turned our most common refrain from that to “THANK THE GODDAMN SPAGHETTI MONSTER YOU DIDN’T TAKE THAT JOB.” First it was merely idealogical, but given the last month? Yeeeeeeeah.

By our calculations, Monkey most likely would’ve relocated and started working at the end of January. And then they would’ve been fired just a few weeks later… after moving and locking into a lease they would no longer need.

So never let it be said I’m all doom and gloom, because YAY THE GOVERNMENT SCREWED MY KID and we’re all so grateful—now—that they did. Because the only thing that would’ve been worse would’ve been starting and then being fired.

There is no more sadness over that job evaporating, is my point.

Still…

More Bad News. Monkey signed that contract in April, I think. And they continued working on campus (they are somewhat underemployed, but happy, to have continued working in the same department where they interned and student-worked while still in college), so they weren’t sitting around twiddling their thumbs, or anything. But. Know what they WEREN’T doing? Applying for jobs. Because they had a job (or so they thought).

By the time they’d regained their equilibrium enough to start applying again, it was November. Know who hires folks in November/December? NOBODY. I swear there were actual tumbleweeds blowing around on LinkedIn. It’s just… the wrong time. So it was a slog through the holidays, assuring Monkey that things would pick up in January.

Welp. Now it’s March. Guess who still hasn’t found a job? I mean, our government is SUPER stable and awesome, so I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with that. Nor does it have to do with the fact that an INSANE number of “entry level” job listings specify that your degree must have been obtained in the last 12 months (and if you spent 7 month getting dicked around by the government and now you’re 13 or 14 months out from graduation, too bad), OR the fact that several major tech employers have recently had huge layoffs, and the market is saturated with computer scientists.

Lord. What a time to be alive! Our fearless leader has his head firmly lodged in Putin’s rectum, AND computer scientists can’t find jobs. (Monkey has many classmates in similar boats, so it’s not just them. It’s just a bad time to be “entry level” in the field, I guess.)

Monkey is antsy, and I don’t blame them. In the meantime we are fortunate that they have SOME work, and that they’re able to stay here at home, but they’d like to, you know, get started on their adult life, please and thank you.

So that’s that. (If you know of any entry level CS jobs, particularly in UI/UX, web design, or data science, please hit me up. I think the sad truth is that you can’t get a job without connections anymore.)

Meanwhile, Chickadee and Sunny celebrated their first wedding anniversary, and we are definitely not placing bets on when their marriage is going to be declared unlawful, because that would never happen, right? Certainly not. For their part, the girls kind of shrug and say “Whatever, we’ll have another wedding later,” which I think is sweet, and maybe they just figure I can handle all of the outrage for all of us, because I am SO PISSED ALL THE TIME, let them think it’s no biggie, I guess.

Also my youngest has an X as a gender marker on their passport, and at first we went “Yay for having gotten it done before everything went insane!” and now they say they’re afraid that if they travel they might be detained. And unfortunately I cannot reassure them, because they’re probably right. Because the party of smaller government says it’s not a problem to fit their itty bitty little righteous gonad inspector right there in your pants.

Weird, I keep coming back to the same thing. Huh.

What else, what else…? Oh! One of my oldest and dearest friends has been struggling for a long time, and I did everything I could think of to be supportive and there for her, and when it became clear that she was just… not participating in the relationship, I guess, I sort of called a come to Jesus about it because I was really, really worried about her. She ended up swearing that she’s doing better and it’s not me and we’ll talk soon! … and then I never heard from her again. So now I’m still worried, but also heartbroken.

Other stuff has happened, of course. There’s a bit of medical drama I may come back and tell you about, eventually, if only because it was so ridiculous. (I’m fine. Or not! Hard to tell!) Also my doctor told me to start a keto diet for various issues I’m having (my favorite thing about chronic conditions is the vagueness of it all, and constantly being told that [insert absolutely any symptom at all here] is caused by “widespread inflammation”), and I hate it and I dream about eating sugar but also maybe it’s helping? I don’t know.

I was in a show! Otto took students to Paris! My new hobby is felting, because STABSTABSTAB! The dogs continue to be utterly ridiculous, and also expensive! We’ve started taking Turnip with us whenever we get the mail, and putting her inside the mailbox and taking a picture. Because why not? It makes as much sense as anything else.

Look; we’re all fine, broadly speaking. That’s true.

Also our country is being destroyed by egomaniacal toddlers. That’s also true. I don’t know how much difference calls to our reps really make, but I’m doing it, anyway. We’re being more thoughtful about where we spend our money. (I was really sad about canceling our subscription to WaPo, but play stupid games, win stupid prizes.) I do know that those of us who have more privilege cannot just shrug and pretend everything is fine. Everything is NOT fine. Every day I’m struck all over again by how this is 2025 in America, and it’s impossible, but here we are.

So. In conclusion:
In America, everyone is supposedly created equal. That was the idea. Not equal unless your skin is a certain color or you believe there’s more than two genders (which: JFC, take a basic science class, you sex-obsessed ignoramuses) or only if you’re a white man. No one ever got great by hating on and othering other people. I cannot imagine anyone reads here who would want to argue with me on this, but if you DO want to argue, go someplace else. I’m not arguing about my children’s humanity with anyone.

P.S. I am maybe a little cranky. Probably because I’m a woman, amirite?