We have a noder that has checked out and left the site for a while, leaving Iron Noder.

I am going to miss him, but if he is being harassed, I agree that he should not put up with it.

I do feel like everything2 has been getting darker over the last year and people are meaner and more irritable. Maybe my writing is nastier or gloomier and I have more consistent serial downvoters. It's nastier in meatspace, too. My clinic has felt like a circle of hell pretty much since I got back from my August vacation. A patient died of ovarian cancer three days ago, a little younger than me. That's normal, but my patients are grumpy and I am grumpy and unhappy. On Friday I had to call my malpractice. I call them about once every three years, with a question about a patient situation. This time I called about three patients. I have never had to call about three at once. And two were serious, going off the rails, do I call the police for this person's safety? The answer was yes for one of them. I didn't want to but I had to. And even though it is the right thing to do, I think it will just make the person hate me more.

I think that having meanness in the White House, disrespect on Twitter, open lies with a mocking smile, is affecting everyone.

Don't let it. I want our noder who left back and I don't want us to let the Mean Liar Twit in the White House destroy what is left of the site.

Martin Luther King jr said, "“He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.” and “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."

Sending love.

Iron Noder: Tokyo Drift 11
Rainshadow Chorale's concert went brilliantly yesterday and we get to do it again today. Joy and a candle in the dark.

Another year, another breakup.

I knew dating a Minnesotan just learning to be social in his 40s was a bad plan, but I did it anyway. He lived right on the edge of the Oakland hills in a decaying 70s era apartment complex with a stunning view of the sunset, the Bay Bridge, and the Golden Gate. In the morning, he made me coffee, and overnight oats with fruit over the top. The fruit was from a 20-30 year steady relationship with the San Francisco Ferry Building farmer's market: the oats a recipe he'd been making for decades.

Some engineers have disciplines that change slow, and steady, eroding away their work into a smoother shape. He had that kind of patience, and intolerance for sudden crisis.

But he was kind, he listened, for a while he felt safe. It wasn't anything too serious, and was never going to be, but it was nice to be with him whenever I was in the area. I fell in a semi-casual kind of love with his competence, methodical approach to life, and excellent taste in produce.

Well, one of his friends was a serial rapist, a manipulator, the kinda guy you see in the dictionary next to dark triad. I figured it out before he did, and it turned out between the stresses from arguing about it, the fact that Oakland boy had two other girlfriends, and no conflict resolution skills, things went very rapidly to hell.

Half his fault, half mine. I'm an op: more often the mode is triage, not erosion. He'd never seen me triage.

This might have been something I had the patience to work through, but my ongoing corporate plotting to move back West to Portland hit a snag, and Dad ended up in the ER, and my patience for the absence of the boy evaporated. Probably the last straw was hearing just about nothing about my father.

So. Back to the drawing board.

It's not all awful. This last week I've been in recuperative mode up in Vermont, listening to REDACTED talk about REDACTED, shooting guns, eating bacon, drinking whiskey, and taking way too little else in the way of self care. It's been a good few days to wear the jeans with holes, refuse to go out into the wintry climes, and listen to people talk about tooling. There's a pair of cats who seem to claim they never have attention.

The tight feeling in my throat fucked off after two days, and I still feel a bit afloat in my head, but it's helped to be with friends, to sit on the couch, to do very little but exist.

This next week, it's back to Boston.

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