The worst visit yet to the farm
The weather was lovely, but relations chilled by the end of a 2-day visit
I guess it’s hard being a “have.” I went to my friends’ farm the other day, for the first time in over a month. Herman picked me up at the train station on Tuesday, and I planned on returning on Thursday (in time to get some stuff done around the house, and go to the gym). Come Thursday, Shelley had all these errands to do in Davis, which was where I had to go. She had to go with her mother to pick up her car (her parents had a $2700 air conditioning system installed in a car that’s worth $700), she had to get gas, she said she had to buy booze, and she had to come back and get Chris so they could finish turning in their paperwork for the county’s health care for the uninsured (they would be open from 1-3. She had tried to go the previous 2 days, but hadn’t called ahead, and the place had been closed both times! harsh!). So the plan was that she’d come back and get me and Chris- bringing me to the train (2:25 train), and him with her to turn in the paperwork. Ah, the burdens that the landowner whose parents throw money at her must carry.
I made sure to keep an eye on the camp when I was out in the field, cuz I knew I’d want to be ready really fast when she got home. I figured she’d get back around 12 or 12:30, right? Well, when 1:00 rolled around, Chris was all calling her and trying to find out where she was. She said, “I’m in line at the store, and then I have to get gas.” Chris interpreted this as being her getting back in a half an hour. Please note that she prioritized buying booze over buying gas, over getting the paperwork thing turned in so they’d have health care, and over bringing me to the train. Why was she buying booze now if she was supposedly going to go back into town? Good question. Somewhere in one of these calls she intimated that she might want to turn in the paperwork before bringing me to the train. It got to be like 1:30 and he called her and she said she was going to go try to turn in the paperwork without Chris (assuming he didn’t need to sign anything). Fucking bitch!
I was so infuriated at her fucking selfishness. She had committed to bringing me to the train, and Herman was busy with translation work AND irrigation work. He was doing three people’s work that day, by himself (he doesn’t know how to ask for help). I had to interrupt him and ask him for a ride. And I really had to get to this train, cuz the next one was 2.5 hours later and I was NOT going to wait around in town, lugging my dirty laundry and veggies around on the overloaded bike.
I come out to the farm partly to see my friends (ie, hang out), and partly to be on the farm, which includes helping out. Apparently having me as a friend and as a visitor on the farm is not worth the trouble of making sure I can get there and back. Ie, my help in the field, unloading crap from the truck, cooking, washing dishes, and being another person there to converse with (I think that Chris especially needs this, particularly when he has limited internet access) is of so little value that she can’t even give me a fucking ride to and from the train station. I noticed earlier this year that she has some weird (possibly thinking she is an alpha-female) thing where we’d go out into the field to transplant seedlings, and she’d assign me to some other task (weeding) while she took control of the fecundity. Besides that last insult, when I go to the farm, I have to endure all kinds of disgusting things, because we have different standards of cleanliness. She had some pet baby voles that she found last weekend, and she kept them in a little cardboard box, which she rotated between the stovetop and the cutting board on the counter– where food is prepared!!! She once noticed a flea or a tick on one of the mice, and on Herman’s advice, she changed the bedding. That meant taking out the glove that she had them nested in and leaving it ON THE COUNTER. (In theory, they had pooped and/or peed all over that thing, and there could have been mosquitos or god knows what else all over it) I didn’t take a shower the first night since they don’t have warm running water, but by the second night I was desperate. So I did like she did and took a sponge bath in the shower. This is because 1. the water is so fucking cold, and 2. the drain is clogged, so you’d end up standing in all kinds of nasty water from the backed-up wastewater tank. So even at the end, as a way of washing my feet, when I poured some of the leftover water over my feet, some crap washed out of the drain. How gross is that? (If it were my farm, I would have made setting up an outdoor solar-heated shower area with some kind of greywater drain and mosquito prevention a top priority, but guess what? They don’t take my suggestions very seriously, since I’m not a rich landowner like them) Oh, and earlier in the summer, I had to harass her to wash her hands after pooping. (you wonder why i seem to have a stomach bug the first 2-3 days I’m there, every time I visit)
There’s all kinds of other things, like the time she came to the Bay Area and brought veggie boxes to damn near everyone else except me. Or like, Molly went to visit once and they gave her tons of veggies without thinking to ask her to bring some to me (she lives 2-3 towns north of me, 10 minutes on the freeway or whatever). I can’t carry very much with me at a time because I don’t have a car.
Herman complains about how she doesn’t follow through on the things that she commits to doing. Today (Friday) on the phone, I tried to give him advice on how he could set up a system of consequences and rewards, to teach her a bit of responsibility and accountability (ie, don’t sign the forms for the loan money for her house until she has finished a task, such as starting seeds for the fall/winter crops. go out to dinner when they have harvested all of the onions. things like that). He didn’t want to do that. He just wants to spoil her rotten like everyone else in her life has done, since someone will always give her something, whether she has done her share of the work, or taken responsibility and apologized for not doing it. Well, she’s not going to learn that way. She won’t become a better person. (he tried to say that she acts “autonomously,” and I tried to explain to him that anarchists don’t think that autonomy precludes accountability, so his use of the word autonomous is incorrect– the word he’s looking for is probably “selfishly”)
How do I stay friends with Herman and Chris, both of whom I cherish so much as friends, when they are involved with this cunt (I don’t mean that word in a positive way)?
I’m having trouble figuring out the whole upload/link to photos thing here, but the larger version of the photo, if you can’t link to it, is at http://themahtin.com/main.php?g2_itemId=392
Seeking video of Nacho Libre saying “Whatever”
I’ve been using this expression, “Whatever,” with the trademark Nacho look to the side, in a disappointed way. None of my friends aside from Zak have seen the movie. I am wondering if anyone has/can find an online video clip of him saying it.
I have to show Bradley!
The movie’s website is NachoLibre.com, btw
Some thoughts about wordpress
Hm, so I’m clicking around here… I see that Word Press has a way to import posts from other systems, like Blogger and Livejournal. I will have to check that out. It’s interesting that you don’t have to go in and search around in all kinds of html and div tags to add links to your blogroll… Interesting.
Tomorrow is Word Camp. I am kinda sick and shouldn’t be closed up in one building with poeple all day. Plus my house is dirty and if I feel better I really need to go to the gym. It sucks, cuz I could hang out at it with Bradley. Also, I finally looked at the list of suggested workshops, and I see some interesting things, like “Word Press as a CMS for Indymedia” (which i have an opinion about, similar to my opinion about Drupal. I’m partly biased since my partner had a lot to do with developing and expanding on sf-active for Indybay). Folks who are starting up a Women’s Indymedia site are still arguing back and forth between Mir and Drupal and whatever else as a CMS. I hate Mir. Sorry.
I’d also be interested in “WordSchool: Blogs In Health — Tips for patients or health care providers in starting a blog about health topics. Introduction to the community of medbloggers. How to avoid privacy violations.” And “Information Warfront For Bloggers — Tips and update about information warfront between blogger and media” and stuff. I guess that one of the things they were talking about was podcasts and stuff from the conference. That’d be good.
Aww, I just noticed that one of the people who won’t be able to be there is Josh Wolf.” How sad. I’ve been doing a lot of coverage of his case.
