Today, going through my dad's hall closet, I found a giant department store bag full of almost 30 years of photos all in a jumble of Fotomat envelopes and loose pictures and orphaned negatives and one crisp slide from 1958 and most of his elementary school class rosters, all of which are now mostly organized by year with the orphans, stuck-togethers and undated pictures of people I don't recognize set aside in their own separate containers.

I came away from the afternoon with two revelations: (1) My little brothers were unbelievably cute babies and toddlers, and (2) most people who knew our dad, if they had to guess what physical entity is lopsidedly overrepresented in this chaotic photo collection, would say golf tournaments or cars. Nope: it's cats. A good 3-4 times more pictures of his cats than anything else. This chaos bag ends at about 1996, so it's possible there's a newer chaos bag somewhere else full of nothing but jumbled-up grandchildren pictures, but from 1973 to a couple years after my youngest brother graduated from college there are waaaay more cats than any other single subject.

Nope: it's cats. A good 3-4 times more pictures of his cats than anything else. This chaos bag ends at about 1996, so it's possible there's a newer chaos bag somewhere else full of nothing but jumbled-up grandchildren pictures, but from 1973 to a couple years after my youngest brother graduated from college there are waaaay more cats than any other single subject.

I am so charmed by this.

That's so truly sweet JZ.

I am charmed by this as well.

Consuela I keep telling myself at least Im not still in FL. .

And last night I accidentally killed my computer headset. I felt something tug as I moved and then silence. Matthew's works so I know it's the headset and not the computer. It was just a cheap headset we started selling around Christmas and I can order another one at the same price so I'll just have to wait until it will arrive.

But in good news I figured out if I take the med at 8 I get sleepy around 10:30 and then wake up with my alarm at 7 and don't feel dopey.

I talked to Mom this morning. I thought she had lost power and gotten it back but she has not and there is a downed power line across the shortest way for her to get to the main road. So she's had no power or water for over 24 hours and can't find any info on when she will get it back. She's going to try and call the power company.

And I can't even say hey just drive down here and hang out /take a shower because of the stupid pandemic

So there is a local company giving away free paper masks 10 to a car. And I went to where they are giving them out and I literally couldn't not figure out how to get in the line to get them. They had cones blocking sections of a parking lot off but no signs or people directing anyone and between buildings and it being on a hill I couldn't figure it out. I tried following a car but they were doing something else at the location.

It makes me feel so stupid because I could see cars leaving and so I know thete is a way but I just couldn't figure it out. And this on top of the unemployment thing has got me to a mini meltdown. Why can't my brain just work like normal. I know the route to that drive thru line has to be obvious to most people but I just can't see it

I've had several moments where I thought "this is the prologue scene in a novel."

The whole "you can't vote in person because Cov-19 and also we can't fund the post office because THE ECOMONY because Cov-19" situation reads like backstory to Handmaid's Tale, Catch-22, or 1984.

There's a theory of bureaucracy -- I forget what it's called, but basically the idea is that you make applying for benefits (or jobs, or lotteries, or college) sufficiently difficult that only some people meet all the requirements on paper (even though many more people actually would meet the requirements, they just can't prove it). And then you don't have to pay out!

We touched on this in my food policy class (SURPRISE IT'S HOW SNAP WORKS) and I can't remember the name but I'm pretty sure it's something like "how to be a racist bag of dicks in the name of preventing fraud."

askye, that all sounds frustrating and stressful and no wonder you feel almost out of spoons. I have definitely had times when there was just so much else piled on that a simple thing like "where does this line start" felt like too much to cope with. You're not alone.

Good news out of Wisconsin, election-wise. We got a State Supreme Court Justice in spite of Boyer suppression by way of pandemic voting, and my good friend and former roller derby teammate won her election for mayor. (Not my town but close by.) reactions are kind of cool. [link]

There's a theory of bureaucracy -- I forget what it's called, but basically the idea is that you make applying for benefits (or jobs, or lotteries, or college) sufficiently difficult that only some people meet all the requirements on paper (even though many more people actually would meet the requirements, they just can't prove it). And then you don't have to pay out!

We touched on this in my food policy class (SURPRISE IT'S HOW SNAP WORKS) and I can't remember the name but I'm pretty sure it's something like "how to be a racist bag of dicks in the name of preventing fraud."

I studied this principle in January in Economics and Public Administration class, but in Hebrew. Somewhere under selective vs. universal benefits and cycle of poverty.