…that surfing was made california’s official sport which i guess makes california’s unofficial sport moving to texas.

we hired movers. “you’re lucky, ” said the Head Mover Dude “if it wasn’t for covid we’d have been booked out months and it would cost five times more.”

god bless covid-19, i guess.

i wish we here in california could move into a more realistic response to this thing. as time goes on and it becomes apparent that maybe we didn’t need to tank the economy i’d like to see us move to somewhere between this guy:

and the hand-wringing Gwyneth Paltrow who – when she’s not hocking $72 vagina-scented candles on her website and arguing that water has sentience – is spreading hysteria and misinformation on social media.

then again these paternalistic moves toward increased subordination of citizens is one of many reasons i’m leaving. say what you will about #afloridaman, at least he’s not being chased out of the water by a bunch of jack-booted storm troopers of the state.

this move has led to my husband and i having A Very Bad Mom Year with both of us coming to terms with the fact that neither of us exactly won the maternal lottery and having to intellectually reframe this period of our lives in terms of both emotionally and physically distancing ourselves from our respective mothers who have been more damaging than supportive.

actually, it’s not just our relationships with our mothers that have gone south, this move has resulted in the severance of many familial relationships and our newfound appreciation for what it means to come up from poverty. poor people can say what they want about gettin’ paid but we’ve discovered that the fastest way to alienate our penurious family members is to stop making fantastical prognostications about what you’d do if you won the lottery and actually risk all your resources in making the leap into something that will require you to hustle your ass off and hopefully yield actual bona fide wealth.

never have i encountered a truism that requires more psychological unpacking than “crabs in a bucket”.

all of this has resulted in a lot of second-guessing and anxiety that we’re using logic to push through and since we’re both 46 years old it’s a bit late to start repairing the damage so maybe we’ll just move to florida and play new roles as damaged and neglected yet lovable weirdos.

c’est la vie.