I recently wrote about an ambush we initiated six days ago (me working remote on this).

There is a lot to unpack here.

The New York owners showing up led to the third owner flying in from Austria to see what the fuck was going on.

Essentially:

• The office manager has been fired.
• The pest-control service has been fired.
• The landscaping company has been fired.
• The maintenance guy has been fired.
• The entire property management company has been fired.
• The military has finalized removing the complex from its list of approved housing.
• New companies have been hired to start fixing shit, which she says has made a seachange in the prior 48 hours.
• The fire marshal shows up Monday to do a unit-by-unit inspection to ensure that each has functioning smoke detectors and a functioning fire extinguisher.
• A mysterious dotted-lined-to-the-owners woman has appeared to handle the boots-on-the-ground problems.
• Several tenants on illegal leases (i.e., signed in someone else's name) have been evicted.
• Narcotics is looking into the complex.
• The Killeen Police Department is stepping up patrols.
• The roaches are gone for now, the hot water is working again, and her grandson could be heard in the background (the "little bug" uses my old phone for games).

I mean, not bad for a couple of plebs.

The owners seem to have been caught totally off-guard and seem genuinely alarmed by the state the complex was allowed to get into, and they are not holding back on fixing things even though they've lost all their soldiers.

The military determination can be reversed with corrective action, and you really don't want to own a complex in Killeen when you're blacklisted from service members.

All in all, could have been a worse result. The funny thing is, the local reporter didn't show up to the ambush as scheduled, but all of this is happening all the same.

As I well know, you really don't want to get on my ex's bad side. Machiavellian is a kind term for what she can do, and when she brings me into the mix for plotting, we are a destructive force.

The complex pissed off the wrong person.

That's right, folks, it was Church Night again.

I had all sorts of ideas for this story, but I increasingly believe that absolutely everything is said in confidence.

The guy who introduced me to the burner scene actually came out for once. We chilled in the parking lot, with his former garage dweller.

So, we're all drinking beers and passing around a joint. Said ex-housemate has gone full-on MAGA, which basically led to me remaining silent. If it's racist or misogynist, he said it.

After spinning our wheels awhile, we joined the group. I spent the better part of two hours accidentally chatting with someone who lived in a van for three years and is looking to do so again.

My friend drives me back to my van with a ladder, and climbs up himself to put my roof vent back on its track. Then, it's back to the warehouse.

All of it was pleasant ... but these nights remind me of what I don't have the other six nights of the week.

Imagine you've just met someone, but both of you know that you are meant for each other. This actually happens all the time.

Well, not all the time, but we aren't unique. Things escalate wildly in timeframes that are not accepted by others.

People said I was moving too fast with my editor in college. It was eight days from hating each other to me waking up in her apartment. You just fucking know.

This was glacial.

Except you don't. It's viewed as hate. Trying to figure out what the fuck is going on takes cognition. While everyone else in the newsroom is well aware of the trajectory.

It takes love to hate. I'd have liked to learn that earlier.

And thus, I became a journalist. Seriously, it was one woman, not an interest in the field. But you know how it goes with your girlfriend when she knows how to design pages better than you.

This means war. And I of course went raver because I was too scared of having middle-age sorted out at 19.

But let's say you're not needing a career. Now the concerns are different.

And then you find out why the term "soulmate" exists. As with porn, you know it when you see it.

The main issue is you can't see what you're looking for. No one in their right mind is looking for the other half of them.

I suppose a better term is "twin flame," and what we proceeded to do suggests this as a more valid label. We still support each other.

I realize why we can't possibly work, but that doesn't change the physical feeling when she touches me or I touch her. This was initially alarming.

In 2009.

So we got married, This was not a great idea, as neither of us wanted what had happened. Sometimes, wants have to cave to reality.

We've been divorced for a decade, but this seems irrelevant once one considers the touch. It's, uh ... not what you expect out of life, but what ever is?

She remains Mrs. Powderhorn. And we are scrambling to figure out how the fuck we still can't detatch. There's no world in which we act any other way than as decadeslong partners.

This has made looking for new partners over the last decade difficult. When you have irritating, challenging perfection, what the fuck's the point of anything else?

I should likely stop here, as this sounds insane unless you've felt it.

To be clear, I am not asking for sympathy, but when I was very young, I talked about my life in Texas.

Problem was, I grew up in Arizona and had never been here short of a Dallas layover. Some 11 years into being in Austin, the fact that I could talk about living in Texas but could not provide details is to be expected when one first starts talking as a toddler.

Thing is, I don't really know much about the state outside of its climate and politics. This all feels rather circular.

One explanation is that not-quite-reincarnation is real, and I've hit the end of the cycle and will end up back in Phoenix in 1979, a la Groundhog Day. Do I believe that? No. But Occam would suggest such an explanation, because it's damn specific.

I sort of feel as though I've done what I was meant to do.

If I get towed tomorrow because of the paving being done on my street, where No Parking signs were erected Friday alongside heavy machinery being parked here all weekend, I no longer have the home I built out. My sole hope is that being in the van will mean I can't be towed, as it's illegal to tow an occupied vehicle.

I actually had a knock on the van today, and upon emerging, a guy asked me if I was interested in selling my van. I said I actually was. He asked how much I wanted, and I answered $16K, which was too rich for his blood. I personally designed and installed $8K of upgrades to a $12K vehicle that I only put 1,000 miles on, so that's a deal.

I'm not really sure what he was expecting. I pointed at the solar panels, the R-15 insulation on all sides in the living space and the 600Ah of LFP. I think he just wanted a tool truck, but seriously, who goes up to a van in the middle of a rainstorm and asks if you're looking to sell a 26-year-old Class 5 commercial vehicle?

One thought that occurred to me was offering to sign a waiver for any damage, and as I'm about 30 inches (~75cm) from the asphalt, having looked at the equipment hanging out roadside, nothing looks quite wide enough to actually do much damage.

But I have nowhere to go and my starter batteries are dead (I have a jump box, but also, have you seen diesel prices lately?).

To say nothing of the fact that I've been running a fever for a week and a half and have not been legal to drive in that time. I was actually, at my mom's urging, considering going to the ER, but once the temporary towing signs sprouted up, if I leave my van for that, I may have no home to come back to.

This is an ideal time to self-medicate.

I have altered policy in many places as a writer and editor. I interviewed (several more times than necessary) a queer activist and wrote the copy for his GoFundMe last month. I saved my ex from a decaying complex just this week.

I'm really good at saving others, but this isolation and shit continuing to go wrong while feverish is not an ideal circumstance.

Over the past 18 months, I've gotten now 22 direct offers of help and solutions, and zero have panned out. It's like job applications, but applied to mutual aid.

I'm exhausted, my sleep schedule is totally fucked, and god only knows when the paving starts in the morning.

I usually know how to pull off miracles, but there's too much here at once in a compromised state. I have six figures of debt, my dad died last fall, my fridge hasn't been reliable in over a year, and my roof vent went off the track last year, so if we have a south wind and rain, I have indoor rain. It also appears my insurance was canceled, which saved me $150 this month, but when I started my policy, I hadn't let my credit go to shit yet.

Oh, and I learned the place I had an appointment with for new dentures doesn't, you know, well, actually do dentures.

I'm sick of having hope. The geopolitics don't help. I live in a constant state of fear and anxiety, having been told by society my skills don't count. That's why I implored the admins to give me the U.S. News community when it started up three years ago. It's not exactly the same as being an editor, but selecting stories off the wire and presenting them to an audience is just ... what I know how to do. I just have more sources now.

I don't know what comes next, but as I said, I feel as though I've done what I was meant to do in life. Years in a choir, a semester as an exchange student and then winning national awards for editorial and column writing, hed writing, design, graphics ... you get the idea. I had no intention of going into journalism, but it tends to find you if you're the right person.

At least, it used to.

I hope my worst fears here aren't borne out, but I have too much data of late to believe otherwise. My little oven is squalor, but it's my squalor. Losing it won't end well.

This too shall pass, they say. And it would take a miracle. I'm too exhausted to storm the castle.

Im traveling to visit my parents next month for a few weeks, unfortunately home for them is Texas. It’s been three years and I’m not exactly thrilled to go back (only happy to see them & my sibling).

I’m stuck between having a list of things we need to bring back (ie: can’t buy abroad/cheaply), wanting to eat international food that can’t be found here, and really really really not wanting to support the government. I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but everything sounds so… expensive and destructive.

She's as hard-headed as I am, so when she asked me to help last month with the issues at her apartment complex by demanding I do nothing, I had to rely on the communication style one can only read decades in.

"I don't want to talk to a journalist."

Babe, what the fuck do you think you're doing right now?

The original issue was her water being about to be turned off in her apartment complex, and while she is my ex-wife, I can't just let her go without water.

After contacting two news outlets in her city counter to her explicit request, the water stayed on. No stories were published that I'm aware of.

Well, the situation has worsened, and the woman I fell in love with is back to her shenanigans. She's sleeping out on the porch tonight because of the German roach infestation that had been solved a few months back, but pest control does unit-by-unit spraying, thus sending the unwanted roaches into someone else's unit.

She does not have hot water after the maintenance guy broke her water pipes "fixing" a leak. As such, her grandson can't stay with her, as is customary for a weekend.

If you think pissing off a mother is bad, it's worse when it's Oma.

When we were together, years ago, and an emergency happened, we could handle it with blinding speed. Basically, triage, and we'll figure it out later. Just without the time in the waiting room.

Things have further deteriorated (roaches were not an improvement), and she has an appointment with her lawyer (via the EAP) at 2 p.m. today. At 4 p.m., the Herald reporter will be showing up. Meanwhile, she went so far up the flagpole that two of the complex's owners flew down from New York and will be there from 2 to 5 p.m.

This is not by accident.

It is, however, a reminder of why her independence and grit was such an attractive force. I mean, her manic-pixie look got my foot in the door, but when I realized she was just as manipulative as I am, I think the deal was sealed. We'd already agreed to lie to her brother the night before I met her, so this has a rich and storied tradition.

Some 15 years later, she has the city investigating multiple violations like not having smoke detectors or fire extinguishers in units. My initial work on her behalf last month meant this was a folo, not a random story for the Herald.

So, now it was time to plan the whole interaction. She smartly told the reporter to meet her at the leasing office instead of her unit. If they bring a photog along, that's not particularly useful, but she's now happy to let them in.

She has been amassing fellow residents beyond pissed to participate in this mutiny. The complex is 80% occupied by military, unsurprising given that Killeen essentially exists only because of Fort Hood. The military pays for off-base housing in certain situations (not my wheelhouse) and has decided the complex no longer meets their standards.

So, we've got the lawyer coming, the press coming, the owners coming and base commanders coming -- all at the same time. It almost sounds like a porn.

And, in a way, it is: competence porn.

Over the course of a two-hour call, I managed to steer her in the directions I thought would be most useful. First off, they have a community grill, so I asked if she had hot dogs and buns. The fastest way to a journalist's heart is through their stomach (she's assuming the reporter will be male, which exposes her latent bias, but I'm not going to gender ahead of time).

And if she's got at least six residents along with everyone else, it's always good to break bread in order to break the ice.

I also told her what part of the story to lead with. There are several concurrent problems here, and she was doing the whole manic thing of "oh, my god, the roaches!" Well, there are multiple lease violations, including forcing fees not listed in the lease.

"If you want to bring them down, babe, lead with the lease violations. Sure, being unable to bathe and the roaches is human interest, but that's not near as strong of a story as 'hundreds of people have been paying junk fees for months.' Make it a widespread issue."

The Herald only publishes a print edition on Sundays (I looked it up, trying to figure out what timeline to expect). So Saturday at 4 p.m. is about the sweetest spot you can hit. They may hang out for an hour or two, but if they're headed back to the office by 6, there's plenty of time for this to become Saturday for Sunday (newsroom jargon).

She assumed that meant it would have to wait a week. Well, I mean, they publish online daily, but a print edition still carries weight, and why the hell she thought a story couldn't go through the sausage machine in five hours is beyond me. I mean, I was married to the woman for years, and she still finds journalism to be a black box. To a certain extent, this isn't all that surprising since she doesn't care how a newsroom works.

Just that she can pull the strings.

Sound like anyone else you know?

I don't really operate in default society, which is important to note going forward.

I was totally on the fence about going to Church Night, a weekly event at the burner warehouse where I totally whiffed on getting involved. This week, it was RGB LED testing, and that's not something you walk into.

This places me outside, which isn't the worst. I'm watching the hot dogs grill, and then comes the unexpected item in burner area.

Apparently, as with the admins here, I've been identified as a rogue actor in a stable community. In both cases, we move forward.

I end up talking with a woman who happened to sit next to me for an hour. She teaches fifth grade and, well, she meets my physical interests. But we've talked before, so this is just shooting the shit while I'm getting weed from the right-hand side.

Then, it's back to the person tending the fire. Tiny Tim informs me that they've both flagged me as a risk within the community and subsequently de-escalated. "I got you wrong," they said.

We are still at the fist-bump level of physical interaction, but I doubt much more would be useful. It's a step up from vitriol.

From here, we head off to gallows humour. And by this I mean Gallows' humour. Oh, yeah, we all have burner names. There isn't much point in having you guess what mine is.

Anyway, Gallows is one of the leaders of the space. He's very much neurodivergent and has been encouraging me to explore that, because, once again, I'm being told my behavior only makes sense within that context

This is another hour or so wherein he give me a couple of cigarettes.

So, we're drinking and smoking, and Leonard comes up. We chat for a bit, he said he's tired, and would I like a ride home?

This always ends the same way. He knows where I'm parked, some three minutes away, but we talk for at least 30 minutes.

This week, Leonard brings up Young Sheldon. I leave it as an exercise for the reader as to why this is amusing.

You know you've truly become part of a community when people are basically fighting for your time when they see you idle. Hopefully, I won't wake up feeling the loss of community, but this was the first time I just pinballed from connection to connection.

No less than Stephen Pinker claiming this is news?

This happened with a fresh-out-of-college designer (god forbid copyeditors had editing skills) in 2015. In Austin. I was there that night.

I was on a different team, but come morning, yeah, we were all mocking her for her lack of a hyphen. At the same time, I was the only designer exempt from running a site's heds verbatim. Of course something like this was going to happen.

To claim this recently happened with a nonsensical upside-down folio is ... I usually reach for "absurd" here, and as I've already burned "nonsensical," I'll just go with "unhinged."

Pinker knows better, and I'm slightly inclined to point out the provenance that claims a local paper we neither owned nor designed (already an ethical violation) was responsible for what I saw happen in real time in Austin.

God, I hated those stylesheets, but they're rather damning when it comes to proving A) this was designed at the hub; and B) you're claiming local reporting -- complete with byline -- you didn't do.

Anyone still confused about why I walked away?

It appears I've used this hed before. But there's a reason for that.

Look, I like to spend most of my day letting everyone know things they need to know. That's why I basically told the admins to just hand it to me when U.S. News was created.

Thing is, informing people never gets old. So I'm going to keep doing it.

For those who came in late, Church Night is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect.

And this week? Well ... this is the week where we're finishing the effigy. I wrote my own piece on one of the pieces of wood, and I have to say, some of the others were just this side of heartbreaking. But I have no art of it because as I was trying to grab one to send to my ex, the project lead came up to me and asked if I'd received permission to take that photo.

Burners, amirite?

Now that I've completely confused you, this is a warehouse where burners create things. The meeting room was full of people turning aluminum cans into art, while the effigy itself was being worked on in the main space.

Out in the parking lot, I was initially being lazy. A couple of chicks (let's not play that game when they refer to themselves as such) seem to be spending entirely too much time on a painted wooden board.

As one does, I asked what the fuck they were doing. And upon getting closer, the issue was self-evident. These are message boards used annually at the regional burn, and, well, they've accrued a lot of staples.

And there are seven of them. And they're double-sided.

I worked on three sides before another participant asked me to tend to her burn-barrel fire while she was feeding the people working on the art in the conference room.

I get that this sounds weird if you're still clinging to corporate America, but the person who asked me to watch the fire actively hated me only two months ago. When we work together, it's amazing what we can overcome.

Also, I'd misgendered them and their partner and was a bit of an asshole about it. Not my finest hour.

Tonight, she provided food and weed. I gave her shit for "stealing" one of my beers from the communal fridge where once you put it in there, it's fair game. Like, she literally used the burn barrel to do veggie hot dogs, crappy hot dogs, chicken and pork.

This, my friends, is what a resilient mutual-aid community looks like.

"Hey, I really didn't like you, but can you do me a favour?"

"Sure."

"Thanks. Would you like some weed?"

Don't get me wrong. I explicitly asked for this. I don't pray, but I do communicate my intentions to the universe.

Yeah, I'm a dirty hippie. Last thing my ex-wife would have expected. And she's pissed. She's a nudist hippie, and I was a good corporate shill while we were together.

"Why the fuck couldn't you have gotten here while we were together? We'd have been set for life!"

Well, now I'm further pissing her off by having been invited to join a commune that's starting up. I don't quite understand the animosity, but had she chosen to go raver, I'd have been a bit miffed.

Thing is: Hippie + Raver == Burner.

We all talk about PLUR.

She was just pissed about the music I listened to and uninterested in understanding why I sometimes don't like lyrics to tear me out of my zone. "Childish music," she said of trance.

What she's really pissed about is that I found my way here by way of supportive people and a fair amount of serendipity. Could she have broken me of the corporate ideology? It's possible, but she was at the time draining my limited funds, and I was still caring about paying bills.

So she was not the correct vessel. This was going to take a village that didn't include her.

And, indeed, after attempting to make things work for seven years, we fucking hated each other for some eight years. It was only last fall that we started talking like adults, a decade after the divorce.

She's fucking pissed that she had who I'd become but played it wrong. Expecting me to pay for your prior decisions to have kids is not going to nudge me to hippie.

It was rather inevitable. Working in journalism for decades exposes you to the bullshit. I just had to get there for myself by being broken down by the system. When "work hard and you'll get ahead" is demonstrably false, well, now you need a new worldview.

There's part of me that really wishes I could have learned life's lessons thus far in a linear manner. Thing is, I'll be up there in the next couple of weeks. She'll do my laundry, buy me food and cuddle against me in bed.

I'm not an asshole, but for a staunch feminist, she's oddly interested in playing tradwife. And in no world is she straight.

From a young age, I was allowed to leave the house by bike and be home by dinner. I still have scars from that, but, you know, it's not really terrorizing.

Let us contrast this with whatever the fuck passes for parenting these days.

We're buying the concept that parents can't raise their own kid, and thus the government needs to step in.

Well, some are. But seriously, the past 40 years of destroying critical thinking worked.

There are few reasons to be thankful for being 46. We don't exist in the media, and we're somehow never mentioned. Boomers ... Millennials. Um, you missed a step.

we're back at it again with these posts after some absence. currently reading American Psycho

Was I any good at it? Was this a perceived trajectory?

No.

Had I gone to Cornell or Berkeley, both of which I'd been accepted to, my life would not involve journalism. After all, I was there for computer science.

Oops.

The issue with CSE142 was it was stupid. Yay! Writing Hello World in C! I had a specific disinterest in wheel reinvention, and holy shit did the CS department want that.

I took precisely one course and realised these were not the people I wanted to be around.

But who were? Because you can't just want "not x" but rather elucidate "y".

Well, this was an entire accident, and there's some sex involved. It's a college paper! But I quickly learned I wasn't here for fun.; rather, I wanted to learn and excel.

When one lives with his editor, shit starts looking a bit dicey. I mean, we didn't move in together immediately, but eight days in, well, I told my parents that my editor gave me a raise.

This of course refers to tumescence, but I was trying to be less than obvious.

The only reason that I moderate U.S. News is Rachel. I figured it would be fun to try journalism as part of my time in college. And it was, but ... there's simply no way I would land here without everyone at UW in 1998.

Now, you may look at eight days and think "wow, how did it take that long?" It didn't. The issue was we were both 19 ... she was six-and-a-half days older than me. She doesn't get the full week because I was born in the morning, and she was born in the evening.

No, we were already exuding clues. Everything kept piling up in those eight days. I was rubbing her shoulders, and she was fixing my layouts. It would later become apparent that literally everyone in the newsroom realised we were an item.

My god, we hated each other. But, you know, that's usually where you're fucked. If you care enough to hate, there's an underlying emotion that's not been expressed, and eight days isn't really enough time to deal with your first true love while also attempting to think this isn't happening in the first place alongside "oh, fuck, I have no idea what's going on here."

We got a place a few months later, and we wallpapered the bedroom with layouts. This immediately meant the escalation of page design; now we were in competition, and what generally takes years happened in weeks. I wasn't going to lose to her, and, as a result, suddenly, we were winning national design awards.

Just to one up each other.

She ended up as managing ed the next year. I'd decided to go raver and fuck up our life (there was a party in B.C. that she came with on), but I'd decided if I'm going to have the full college experience, I needed crazy.

The second Rachel was a raver in Canada. Yeah, I ended up with the horrific "Canadian girlfriend" in the '90s. To the extent that on Thanksgiving 1999, I drove from Portland to Victoria (there's obviously a ferry involved here) and brought her down to the gathering at my roommate's.

They were surprised in two ways. First, I actually had a Canadian girlfriend, which at the time was a protomeme, and one of his friends "had a girlfriend in Canada," leading to my holiday sojourn. Like, fuck you, I will spend the better part of a day proving that.

She was also 6'2" and, well, sturdy. She was still doing the hair-down-to-her-ass thing, which thankfully got solved a month later. Of course, the problem there was not recognizing her at the restaurant we'd agreed to meet at.

She didn't just cut off four feet of hair; she bleached what was left. This is not a complaint. It was just a point of confusion.

Rachel Nr 1 was displeased with my shenanigans, but I relieved her as managing editor, and she ended up marrying my best friend (long story that starts in Vic).

But without her, you would not have a U.S. News mod. I would have dabbled in journalism and moved along.

Nichol's apartment complex just fucked up royally, and the water is to be shut off. She doesn't want to be involved in the coverage, so I said, "Let me handle this. This is exactly the hour to provide a news tip."

So, I call the Killeen Daily Herald, and the first person I speak with is a designer (I don't miss that entry-level function ... it's often idiots trying to settle bar bets). I get transferred to what I expect to be a reporter, but turns out ... well, he's on the desk.

So much the better. Now I can be blunt.

I fucking miss talking with other journalists. We aren't here to shoot the shit, and I was clear about what I'd personally experienced in the complex and what was hearsay.

It's funny ... I once wrote a column entitled "Don't piss off the news editor," and this is the sort of thing where, well, you don't know who you've just pissed off, and you also don't know whether their ex-husband happens to be able to get through newsroom structures to provide a tip.

I closed the conversation by wishing him a pleasant evening -- but hoping it won't be too boring. "Easy nights are not why I enjoy being on the desk." And he responds in kind: "Completely agree." I provide my number and mention the reporter should text first, as I don't answer calls from people not in my phone. His response? "Neither do I. Too much bullshit."

Afterward? Calling KXXN. You want redundancy in this situation. I had good conversations with both, but I'm a source in Austin covering a problem in Killeen, which I can't effectively do and therefore need local journalists to finish the job.

Nichol has switched her approach from "I'd never be caught talking to a journalist" to (after much explanation of what all of this is going to entail) to ... "well, I didn't ask for your help, but you knew I was asking for your help."

Yeah, babe, I do. You didn't bring this to my attention because you wanted pity. You wanted me to step in and do what, well, I do.

And I have now gotten the ball rolling. Which, as manipulative as it may have been, was what needed to happen.

If a reporter shows up, she's now happy to entertain them. She wasn't going to be able to sell the story to anyone, so, well ... I just had to step in. Of course she didn't ask, as that would be weakness.

This said, she remains the only person who can, with a single touch, make me twitch violently.

And I remain the only person in her life that can blast through newsroom walls and get shit done. Will they cover her situation? I put 60% odds between the pair of outlets.

But she had a 0% shot without me navigating this, so that's an improvement. Sometimes I wish I didn't still love her, but I had no choice in this case. She was pleading without pleading, and I knew exactly how to get through the gates.

Over the past month, I've interviewed Mike four times. The first two were useless, but I finally broke ground on the third go-round.

I was only there because of a friend of his, and our conversation last night led me to the conclusion that he just wants everyone else to swoop in and fix his life.

I feel for the guy. I like the guy.

But do not tell me I now need to write three thank-you notes just because I kicked off the campaign. That's what I was hired for. This is not.

Additionally, I find it unethical to provide form responses to strangers giving you money. Put some fucking effort into it. They literally sent you money they didn't have to.

When talking with Ra last night, she expressed similar concerns and was blunt about getting me involved so it was less work for her. So, Mike thinks he can just shift the burden.

There's an episode of TNG, Man of the People, that takes this to its logical extreme.

I'm happy to help; I'm happy to join Ra and her husband's planned commune.

What I'm not happy to do is be expected to do unethical things for no pay.

"You're going to write about it, aren't you?" Ra asked as I got back into the car. It was a resigned tone rather than excited.

We ended up in the parking lot for some 20 minutes, as the first problem on her end was that she was ordering too many calories via the app.

She was going to cover my lunch, but as she had one of the boys in the car, that caloric limit needed to apply to them. I reluctantly download the app, and after navigating the labyrinthine process to order a fucking burger, when it comes time to check out, my only active card is not accepted by the app.

We're already there, so I go in. I try ordering exactly what I just had at the counter. Fuck the kiosk; if your app doesn't work, that about all I need to know about your tech stack. The cashier seemed surprised that McDonald's sells McDoubles and repeated my order back to me as a Quarter Pounder. An Abbot and Costello routine ensues, but at least the order was correct.

Meanwhile, back in the car, Ra has placed a second order to obviate the caloric limit, which, let's be reasonable, is absurd coming from the establishment it does. What if, just hypothetically, you're buying hamburders for an entire football team?

Needless to say, I deleted the app.

That's roughly four hours ago as I type this sentence (I have no idea how long this is going to turn out, but I have a week to cover, and it took this long to explain 20 minutes).

We're in Temple, Texas, where I've just spent two nights after five with my ex-wife in Killeen, but the destination is Austin this time ... thankfully, I park surprisingly close to the Atheist Community of Austin, which is her destination, so dropping me off was far less of a delay than it could have been (the McDonald's fiasco made her late to the lecture).

I will say, indoor plumbing and real meals for a full week was rather nice.

So as not to be redundant, the basic setup is this: We had a wild temperature swing forecast for last Saturday that I was trying to figure out how to mitigate when I got a text from my ex, to whom I'm now been doing monthly sojourns since December, saying she's unexpectedly free for the weekend.

The unusual thing on this trip was ... there wasn't really an end date. We eventually settled on Tuesday, but then Amazon double-charged her for an order that left her unable to cover my ride home until her check clears Thursday.

This opens up an unusual opportunity. Temple and Killeen are far closer together than Austin is to either, and Ra wanted me to come back and do another round of interviews with Mike, a former journalist in desperate need of donations for medical bills.

Ra saved half the cost, and my ex paid nothing, so, really, win-win.

So I settle in at her place and hang out in the garage with her husband so I can vape while he smokes. There may have been weed involved; I definitely cracked a beer.

Ra's husband, whom I'd met once before, is genuinely one of the more interesting people I've crossed paths with in years. Another one was who I was waiting on a ride to go see.

My first round with Mike was fascinating on the conversation front, but left me with no clear narrative on how to convince strangers to donate money to the cause. He got some heavy-hitters in journalism to donate for his last campaign and that well is dry.

I thought we had an angle with "longtime queer activist" (this is how he was sold to me at the start of the project), but he wants to leave that out. I fully respect that, but as I told Ra, who is high up in Temple Pride, that would have been an angle I can work with far easier than "grizzled veteran journalist suffers two brain hemorrhages and a stroke, ends up severely immunodeficient."

This time, I switch tacks. I bring a six-pack and just try to shoot the shit. It works.

We talk about his childhood (it wasn't pleasant) and his career (it was) more fully, and about my life -- to establish rapport. I've finally broken down the wall, and we're talking as equals.

But two hours in, he's due his pain meds and muscle relaxer, and I feel I've sort of expended his energy (he'd had physical therapy just before we arrived). And he's been meandering and incoherent frequently without those.

I text Ra for a pickup, and we all agree that I'll come back Friday so we can continue.

Putting me back in the garage with Ra's husband, with occasional cameos from Ra. The conversation flows for hours, as though we've been doing this for years. As the atheist seminar was his idea to attend, in addition to being a leftist anarchist, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised.

The funny thing is, he isn't a burner. I'm sitting in that garage solely because Ra and I are. He always has reasons behind surprises, and in this case, it's that the animist in him wants to commune with nature when camping, not be subjected to amped electronica and flashing lights.

I can't argue that point.

Speaking of communes, that quickly becomes a topic of discussion, as he's looking for acreage to start one -- right then, on his phone. I mention that I've had vegetable gardens and raised rabbits, and I sure as fuck know how to set up and maintain offgrid solar (though Ra's electrician goddaughter is still insisting she'd be much happier if she could fully go through my system).

I'm immediately invited to join.

The timeline is murky, as they have to sell their house in addition to finding the right patch of land. And he's doing due diligence, much preferring an unimproved site that already has a well and septic tank (these are oddly surprisingly frequent ... I guess people get that done and then run out of money?) and a decent forest canopy.

"Chickens," he says. "Rabbits are great, but that's going to get old for every meal."

Thus begins the tale of how I got my rabbit from a farm where they cohabitated with chickens, so this is clearly not going to be an issue.

The remainder of the evening is sociology, geopolitics, political theory, linguistics, the adventures of being homeless ... every time the topic veers somewhere new, both of us are ready to engage.

It was fantastic! I was able to go into my preferred register for vocabulary and still be understood without a single question as to what I was talking about. As much as I love my ex, she cannot provide such mental stimulation.

Things wind down, and the next morning, I'm up way too early, as I'm sleeping in the living room and they have two boys.

Turns out, Ra has to work today, so now I'm going to be in the garage until at least 5 p.m. The conversation proceeds apace, and we just chat when he's available (he's a stay-at-home dad to two special-needs kids).

Finally, it's time to head to Mike's. Thankfully, his prognostication is correct, and he's of sounder mind than yesterday. With yesterday's chat, I was just trying to establish rapport.

This time, it's an interview.

Much of what we talked about is in confidence, so I can't really spill the tea ahead of whatever we settle on for fundraising copy. Thankfully, Ra is handling the back end; I just need to write.

Suffice to say, I think I have enough to craft something decent. And, oh, this is actually a paid gig: $100 on delivery for maybe three or four grafs. That's the immediate one. There will be another that's much larger so he can go to one of the clinics that specializes in brain stuff (think Mayo).

Two prominent (I'm taking his word for it) local neurologists have said he still has a chance of full recovery with the right treatment, and he's been working on a book documenting the hell he's been through in the U.S. medical system. Oh, he also could use an editor.

At this point, I point him to Beehaw on his phone and pull up a random recent post, putting it to him: This is my writing style; does this work for you? Anything past "yes" would sound like narcissism, but he assented.

So I promised him, then Ra, that I'd have something ready by Monday at the latest. Her goddaughter is going to try to come by tomorrow.

Of course, I'd set myself a Monday deadline in that moment. When we talked last night about heading down to Austin, she said she wanted to be out of the house by 1 p.m. Then one of the boys started acting up, so her husband didn't end up coming along.

"Just for the record," I said at 1:03, "I had everything packed and ready to go at 12:59."

"By 1!" Ra said.

"And you said it to someone who works off deadline."

I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but there are significant opportunities here with people who, you know, actually follow through on plans, so my hopes aren't exactly at baseline.

Early tomorrow afternoon, my ex was to pay for my ride home. I've already been here longer than planned for financial reasons.

But I do not head to Austin (fuck you, AP, it's the 11th-largest MSA in the country) tomorrow; rather I'm headed to Temple, Texas (not a major city).

The burner activist who brought me up there a month ago wants me to crash in Mike's room for a couple of nights. I'm assured there's a second bed and a private washroom.

The idea here is to get to know him enough to finally get closure on the story I couldn't write from our first interaction.

Luckily, Killeen (I think we've established I'm in Texas, despite having to say that) is far closer to Temple than Austin. My friend pays half the price, and my ex pays nothing.

Speaking of which, last night, while we were talking about other things, I was bitching about her getting all the stuff and me getting all the debt. In the manner that one can only do in middle age, she pushed back.

"What the fuck do you mean? I ended up 11 grand in debt because you hadn't been paying things for months."

Now, I'd been paying things as billed, but our landlord was a bit shady, so I'd not be surprised something like this happened.

The thing is, I never knew. I moved out in February 2016. She expressed anger, rage, jealousy, but she is fucking terrible at communicating the real problem.

As am I.

It will be nice to focus on something in the vicinity of journalism for a couple of days, but there's a full can of worms waiting in Temple.

Out of the pan, into the fire. I suppose it's apt for a burner.

I asked for life to get interesting as a homeless guy in a van. Be careful what you wish for.

ever since Tucker Carlson has been independent he's somehow attracted the attention of liberals and even a few leftists. a lot of them will act like they're doing so begrudgingly, like they hate to say something good about him but hey when he's right he's right.

...except no, he isn't, and no, you don't have to praise him at all, because he is grifting. you know that thing he did his whole fucking career? yeah he's still doing it. only this time you are falling for it like a goddamn idiot and i need you all to wake the fuck up, please.

Tucker Carlson does not have principles. He has demonstrated this time and time again and has been a puppet for the far-right as soon as they started becoming his primary audience. Carlson realizes the MAGA cult is fracturing. he's laying low right now because it's the safest route to become a vocal polemicist in the public eye again. if he disavows Trump, he can pretend he was always "one of the good ones." literally nothing he is criticizing Trump for is anything he gave a fuck about with any other Republican president. Trump has done some unique shit but a lot of his horrible positions are from the Republican playbook spoon fed to him.

"Wow, Tucker Carlson's new merch is rather biting. He's really sticking it to AIPAC," you say stupidly, not realizing Carlson's direct support of right-wing agendas has given us AIPAC and continues to allow politicians to be bought and sold. lol

please, he doesn't give a fuck that AIPAC is funding our congress. he's just mad it isn't the group he supports. he's upset that he isn't benefiting. and you are legitimizing his attempt at manipulating people when you praise him for creating merch that exploits how real people with a soul feel (unlike Carlson).

he hasn't changed, he hasn't become more moderate, he isn't more levelheaded now that he's a free agent.. stop. stop it, fucking stop. i am seeing this way too frequently and it is disgusting and scaring me. i hope some of these positive comments are from bots tbh.

As previously referred to, I refer to my ex as "babe" in standard conversation.

My time here has been unexpectedly extended, which is fine by me ... don't threaten me with nutrition, HVAC and indoor plumbing!

Somehow, saying "hey" feels sharper than "hey, babe."

I finally asked tonight if she was OK with that, as she has noticeably excised her use of the term. Pulling an "I love you" without part of me in her is just this side of impossible. She said she was fine with it, but for me, it's just muscle memory.

This is the trip where I finally realized I don't give a shit about a good sex life. Just being around her regulates me fine, and I can't complain about the free food.

We banter, we cross over into giving each other shit, and life proceeds apace.

I know very well why we got divorced a decade ago, but as we head into Day 5 of this visit, the practical reasons we've had the luxury of ignoring when I travel up here seem ... distant.

What concerns me most here is that I've experienced reality turning into fiction decades ago, and right now, sitting in her living room feels like reality, and my van feels like fiction.

Something is going to have to give, and soon.

It is now day three at my ex's. She ordered food again today, which was good (there's a local chicken place).

Because I'm socially maladjusted, I asked to talk about what we were doing during a commercial break.

The answer was not ideal.

She confirmed we have no future, implored me to accept the present for what it is, and it sort of feels like I'm Custer.

It has been about a year since I was last here on beehaw or the fediverse in general. Last time I was here the fediverse was a chaotic place where you didn't know if your home instance would last another week without randomly getting shut down. I am curious what has changed in my long absence.

It's SXSW right now, so things for locals are kinda fucked.

My ex texted me that she turned out not to have her grandson for the weekend, and would I like to come up? Lyfts were vacillating by the minute ... my first check, it was $100 (baseline is $50-60), then I got a notification that it had dropped to $70 after not booking. She checks what it would be in the other direction: $45 -- and then implores me to check again. Now it's $120.

At this point, I've given up on the idea, but I do check one more time, and it's $60.

As I'd resigned myself to the fact that this wasn't feasible, I'd not really done any packing ahead of ordering the ride. So I get down to that after booking, and when my phone dings for what should be the "here's who your driver is" notification, it was instead the "your driver is already here."

So, I'm frantically just throwing anything I can find for laundry into my suitcase. I made it out with a minute to spare before she took off.

On the plus side, I remembered my dentures this time.

Now, it may seem irresponsible to spend $60 to visit my ex, but the forecast wild temperature swings are hell in the van. It was in the low-90s today, which is barely survivable even with my fan. Tonight, we drop into the 30s, which would have required heat, and tomorrow's high is 51.

Spring in Texas is fun!

Unlike prior visits, this one was left a bit ... open-ended. Without her grandson needing to be here, there was no real deadline for when I'd leave. We addressed that this evening, and I said if I would stay until Tuesday, that would be ideal, given tomorrow's low as well. After that, it's back to May weather, so this is a fluke.

This has been a wildly different experience from my prior visits in some ways, while remarkably consistent in others. To address the elephant in the room, yes, we're still physically compatible, but there may start to be contours forming on what we're actually doing.

And I don't know what to define it as.

Once I'd loaded my laundry, we settled in, as usual. I took a shower, as usual. I ended up in her clothes, as usual. She then ordered food delivery, as usual. That $60 is starting to look like a bargain.

We watched a fair amount of Young Sheldon, which I'd not seen before starting to come up here. As usual. Given a bumper crop of cardboard, we start burning it in the fireplace, as usual.

We decamp to her bed and continue watching in there after what I've sufficiently described in the past.

My sleep schedule has been inconsistent for months, so while she nods off around 2 a.m., I'm up until 5.

Every now and again, while I'm watching TV on her laptop over her shoulder, she shifts as she's lying next to me, with the most popular surprises being a leg thrown over me and her grabbing my arm.

So it was with a fair amount of surprise that I awoke (well after her) to hear about how (we'd not yet covered my departure date) I was no longer welcome in her bed. Apparently, after I drifted off, I ended up putting my knees in the small of her back, and the snoring wasn't a plus.

Over the course of the afternoon, this softened into using the giant sock monkey she usually sleeps with as essentially a chaperone. She's already gone to bed, as she has a job, but I'm allowed to climb in after all.

Outside of intimate activity, we have barely touched. She's apparently gone the Pretty Woman route and wants sex without kissing, which is a bit dejecting with one's ex. She let me know that in the four years she was with her last fuck buddy, she only let him kiss her once -- and that was in public just to piss off his ex.

I have never claimed this was a healthy relationship.

Still, even though we both still had plenty of leftovers, she decided to make (way too much) salmon with a couple of sides for dinner.

Most of today was us not interacting. She's still a cigarette smoker, and thus frequently decamps to the porch. Add in the phones calls she had, which I have to be invisible for because of history, and it was pretty much me watching the show with occasional interruptions to talk.

We both have a couple of vices, so I'm sitting next to a bowl prepared before she retired. I'll just self entertain for the next two days while she works from home in her room.

I do like her ultrasonic denture cleaner, though.

While it's still unclear what we're doing, I think I may have had rose-tinted glasses on possible outcomes. We're not antagonistic or awkward in any way, and we do talk a fair amount, but it seems our goals come down to animalistic sex and just supporting the other warm body in the room.

Which is likely a good way to start framing the fact that I don't be able to see her at all once she moves to be closer to her grandson's mother.

She's at least covering my ride home, as usual.

Today's development is that I'm committing theft from content creators on YouTube.

OK. So, you think I, as an unemployed writer, am responsible for "content creators"? What the fuck does that mean, anyway? I've shot porn, written lots of columns and editorials, and taken photos.

This is back when we didn't call it "content." So what's your point? Up-and-comers need more money than corporate America and me?

I'm going to need a more compelling argument than "you're stealing if you use an adblocker." I simply don't have the energy to point out that if losing work as an editor makes me a thief, you should direct your ire to the media companies that no longer care to hire us.

If I were making six figures and owned my home, as I should at 46, sure ... fair play. I can afford YouTube Premium. Neither is true, so this feels mostly like a case of "shut up, nationally award-winning pleb who has literally run newspapers; you don't understand the media industry."

And in a manner of speaking, they're right. I understood it only while we had the audacity to commit journalism.