Angela Beegle ☕ ☕ @Chotiari@social.quodverum.com

Of course it’s true that parents’ job description can be (jokingly) boiled down to “keep the small people from killing themselves”. So I made her laugh by using examples of kids jumping off the roof to see if they can fly, stopping them from drinking bleach, etc.

I also emphasized that if she finds it isn’t what she thought would make her happy, she can try other things (as her sister has done - stopped taking T and has accepted her female body. Is now into ear gauges. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I finally cornered her and told her, my job as a parent has been and will always be to try to guide and keep her safe. Her job is to try to find a life that makes her happy. We may well disagree on her choices, but they are still her choices.

I emphasized that this is not me approving of her desire to take testosterone, and that I consider it unsafe and unhealthy. But that I can’t stop her. And I don’t have to live in her body - she does.

I finally found out why my youngest daughter isn’t talking to me and is sad all the time.

She wants to start taking testosterone and knows I won’t agree.

I can’t stop her (legally). She is 19. She wants a beard.

I don’t understand any of this. I just don’t.

Hubby says his job at T-Mobile is being phased out due to the merger with Sprint. He thinks another year? He is a c, c+, c++, and more coder with SQL server and Excel mastery. He is also 55.

I am fully confident that he can move forward and find a position where he will be challenged and fulfilled, as well as being well paid.

But he isn’t. :(

Have *this* kind of day, if you can.

And I realize I told this story a couple of days ago. I’m sorry. I’m grieving.

I have blocked her from texting me. I will not answer her phone calls. I will not read her emails. I cannot stop her from dropping by my house and as I do have stored at my house a couple of decent quality guitars belonging to her son, I would allow that for retrieval. But I’m done.

And I’m sad. I feel desolate, bereft, and perhaps a little cold.

I have never asked for much. And I have given and given and given. My time, energy, assistance.

Or vaccines… And of course she took that as a reason to go on another rant about politics and vaccines. And then she said I know you don’t like me anymore but… Another screed. Then she said I won’t bother you again. Two days later she’s back with another link to yet another video explaining why she has come to believe what she believes. I haven’t been watching them. I haven’t replied. But I’m done, I am running out, and I’m tired. I’ve watched her do this repeatedly over the years.

I have parted ways with my friend if more than 10 years. Some of you have seen part of the story, her house burned down a couple of years ago, the trailer they were given to live in burn down more recently than that, she’s been living with no water or electricity. She delivers dogs from breeders to owners by driving around the country. And she listens to endless YouTube videos while she drives. She has become progressively more radicalized until I stated I would not discuss politics anymore.

I’m sad because I have known her for 10 years. I’m relieved because I don’t have to deal with that.

Her last text to me was full of sheer stupidity and accusations of things that are so simply inaccurate that I don’t see how she got there.

I keep wanting to talk to her. It’s been a thing for a decade. I stop myself. It’s a little like a death. ☹️

My friend - now ex friend - the one Saul said needs a psychiatrist (and I think he is right but not my problem anymore) has dumped me after 10 years because I told her I don’t want to discuss politics or vaccines.

Because her endless looping screeds about gov lies and manipulation- which get worse the more YouTube she consumes while delivering dogs around the country - got so conspiracy heavy I was dreading every conversation

Apparently a *friend* would listen to all of it.

Personally, I still think the jogger was aggravated because an oblivious pedestrian stopped without warning and made the jogger risk a collision or a fall.

Jogging on the sidewalk carries these risks.

I played devils advocate: perhaps this was the verbal equivalent of blaring your horn at an idiot driver who made you swerve, and that since the jogger had not actually used a racial slur when he could have, it might not have been racist at all.

Oh no, came the replies. Minorities KNOW when something is racist because they deal with it constantly and I should stop making apologies for such behavior.

Sigh.

I know how Japanese culture treats non-Japanese, but bringing that up wouldn’t help.

A woman posted on the local FB group. She had been walking in a sidewalk and stopped to read a sign.
From behind her, a short white older man out for a jog suddenly screamed that she should “get out if the f’ing way!”, went around her and continued on.
She proceeded to opine delicately that perhaps this had been race based as she is Japanese and with all the anti-Asian violence…

Cue ALL the groveling apologies that she had been through such an awful thing.

If Charlie gets a single flea, he starts chewing his hair off. And then he just keeps chewing.

I see leftists calling anyone not as far left as they are, “fascist”. And rightists doing the same.

Anyway, The Green Berets is presumably about military matters, where leadership is strict, and the rules are different from civilian society.

And was written and produced when real WWII fascism was well within recent memory.

She’ll be one of the “friends” who would gladly put me in prison or up against a wall for transphobia.

A woman I know who is in the throes of backlash against a conservative religious upbringing was watching the John Wayne movie the Green Berets the other night and declared it to be 50% fascist propaganda. I don’t think she even knows what Fascism is unless she takes her definition from Wikipedia. Every other source of definition says dictatorship, with suppression of opponents and differing opinions.

No idea what she thinks it’s called when leftists do these things.

If any of our Quods are anywhere near Weed CA, get your go bag ready and be prepared to evacuate. The Mill Fire is growing rapidly and satellite fires have been reported.

Someone, can you finish this sentence for me, which is a paraphrasing of something Saul says:

There are no democrats or republicans, there are only individualists or ____________.