There are more showings today, so here is more stream of consciousness

I am moving slower today than yesterday and my brain is a lot more somber so I doubt this'll be quite the romp it was yesterday. 

Not nearly as many showings either. As I begin writing this blog, we only have four scheduled. And the scheduled pick up of our dumpster!

Let's see how the day goes. 

10am

It's already warmer outside than it was yesterday, but there's a mad breeze. It looks like the 10am was already waiting outside for me to leave.

I love an eager buyer. Now we just need someone to make an offer. 

My brain is in a weird dichotomy of happy/sad right now. 

We did Linda's with Ross and Nat as planned and it was (as it always is) a fabulous experience, made even more fabulous by a surprise at the end. (No it wasn't an offer, although we did get one during dinner. It was way under asking though.)

But I feel super weird talking about happy stuff like that with the 44th mass shooting this month.

THIS MONTH. 

But no, lets police bodies and books and let mental health and gun control fall to the wayside. 

That seems to be going wonderfully, doesn't it?

While mental health is the main underlying factor for these shootings, they wouldn't be as easy to accomplish without the help of guns. 

Particularly ones that can fire a lot of rounds quickly. 

I know the gun lover folks want to argue the "assault rifle" ban online by saying, "Oh those guns aren't really assault rifles, so an "assault rifle ban" won't make a difference."

Semantics in the face of death is just an ugly look, bro. 

Yeet! The dumpster has been picked up and we have full access to our driveway once again!

Just in time to leave. 

But seriously, I see all these "thoughts and prayers" posts and I wonder what good that does. I know there is so much more I could be doing that's not just writing about my outrage on the Internet, but what is it?

What can I, a normal citizen with a challenging brain, do to make a difference?

This is where I'm stumped. I can call and email my elected officials, yes, but I wonder if they even see them or if it's just some poor overworked intern scrolling through endless tirades. 

When we sold lollipops, I sometimes made a "flavor" we called "Thoughts & Prayers".

I put flavor in quotation marks because the lollipop was completely flavorless. 

Pointless, I would say the the curious customers, just like thoughts and prayers. 

This made some people mad and they didn't buy lollipops from us. 

I was okay with that, because I don't want to be around people who get angered by something so silly. 

Especially when we were using this flavor of lollipop to do good. 

See? We charged an extra dollar for these lollipops, so they were $3 each (I mean, they were Fancy AF, after all).

Ooh, just got a text from the realtor asking us to call him! I hope that means we got an offer. (We got one last night, but it was way under asking.)

Welp, I called him. We got two more offers, one even wayer under asking than the one from last night and one a SMIDGE under that's a VA loan. 

A VA loan will not work with our timeline, I don't think. 

Ok, so these T&P suckers - we'd sell 'em for $3 each and donate those sales to a worthy cause. The whole sale, not some "percent of proceeds" bullshit. 

These worthy causes were always people we knew - a friend's family who was displaced due to a hurricane, a medical fund supporting a co-worker's surprise illness. It wasn't much, but we helped people. And oftentimes, even if they didn't buy the Thoughts & Prayers lolli, they'd donate their change to the bucket we had set up on our table. 

I hope to get to a place where I can do this on a grander scale and, now, I can see a bit clearer how I would like that to work. 

But I need another T&P to make it happen: Time & Patience. 

11:45am

Okay, let's do this, buy our dang house, y'all. Obviously, I'm back on the pretty porch. Here is a different view than yesterday:

 

Last night at dinner we had a single dirty martini each (Linda's has the best in Orlando, imho - cripsy cold and the blue cheese olives are incredible) and shared a bottle of wine. 

This is the first time I've had more than a single drink since last summer. 

And honestly, I'm meh on it now. I don't like the way it infiltrates my brain with negative thoughts the next day. It really spills over into how to treat other people and how I treat myself. 

I used to brag a lot about my tolerance and how I never got hangovers, but now that I have some space from those days, I realize what an unhealthy brag that is!

And I also realized during the pandemic that while I didn't get traditional hangovers, with the headaches and the turnt up tummies and just general bleh feelings...

I DO get emotional hangovers. Where I'd just feel bad and depressed after drinking more than a drink. 

It is past 11:45am and these folks have not yet arrived. It seems cooler than earlier though, so that's a plus. 

So, back to drinking - I like the taste of things. I loved the chilled martini and the bold red wine we had. I loved tasting the flavors and how they worked with the foods we ordered.

But there always comes a point (historically) where I forget to enjoy the flavor and just want to consume. 

Because, here's the thing, it would make being around people easier. 

It removed the filters in my brain keeping me from taking part in conversations and talking until the end of my story instead of just the end of the amount of time my brain could handle me being the only voice speaking. 

It made me social and all the time growing up I didn't want anything more than to be socially accepted.

I believe, from what reading I've done on the topic already, alcoholism is seen in the neurodivergent community quite frequently.

Last night, I didn't get to the "CONSUME" part of drinking, but I could feel the buzz of it coming on just as we were leaving. And I did not like it. 

So, I'm just not interested in getting drunk anymore. I think I used to use it as a way to avoid feeling things partially and also partially because I didn't realize it was okay to just be. 

Aka, I never knew how to relax. 

I have since figured it out, obviously. 

Ok, I gave the 11:45 folks 30 minutes to show up and they did not. It is hot so I am going back inside. 

It is now 12:40pm and we've just been kicked out of the house by our 11:45am appointment. 

I'm kind of sad that we have all these showings going on during our last week at this house, because I don't feel like I can get any pool time in. 

That's okay, though, cause I'ma make whirlpools at the Professor House. 

So I have been using this new social media app and I really kind of love it. 

It's called "BeReal" and I love it for its simplicity. 

Basically once a day, you'll get an alert from the app and it gives you two minutes to post a photo of what you're doing, while also taking a selfie with your selfie cam. 

And then you caption it and share it! That's it. There's something really unifying about it to me. You know, all us taking a moment to stop and appreciate what's happening RIGHT THIS SECOND. 

There's no staging involved, just a real slice of life. You never know when it's gonna happen so you can't prepare. 

I dunno, there is something pure about it. 

I've seen some really neat things, but I only have one friend on the app so far and its Mickey. I would like more and I would increasingly like to get away from Facebook so let's beReal friends!

I still adore TikTok, though, don't get me wrong. 

And also, yes, I realize that this is another possibility for data gathering and profile building, but the way I figure it my phone already knows where I am and what I'm doing. 

Now, I'm just sharing it with my friends, too. 

Also, my profile is boring AF, y'all. I'm always home. Always watching TV. Sometimes floating. It's not a big mystery. 

OK, the 11:45-ers are gone. They spent a decent amount in the house, so I hope that's a good sign. 

RANDOM

Welp, it's 1:57 and our realtor just called to say that someone is outside, wanting to look in, so I'm living that porch life once again, lol.

Before being interrupted (this interruption is definitely okay, I want to get this house sold), I was listening to our next edition of "Your Favorite Episode". It's a good one with our friend Nick Pupo! It comes out Sunday. 

Even though I was on the recording as it was happening, I still like to give it another listen from a listener's perspective. 

This does a couple things for me. 

1. It allows me to hear how Mickey edited the show together. Now this one surprised the fuck out of me because the first thing I hear on the Pupo episode is my own damn voice. I very passionately introduce the episode by talking about the director and how he used to direct music videos. It was an interesting listen, because I had already forgotten all those facts I spouted. 
2. It gives me the opportunity to plan out our marketing for the episode. I have been slacking on this lately with so much else going on and I feel kind of bad. I need to make a playlist for our Office UK episodes with Tara and I just haven't had the brainspace to do it yet. 

That is a couple things. 

So weird to not have a five item list. 

Someone's car alarm is going off. 

My brain is still very ate up with the fact that our President is wailing about gun violence all over social media today, but we can't seem to do anything about it. 

I am always very curious about people's experiences with firearms, especially since I grew up in Georgia where it seems like hunting season was an excused absence for many of my classmates. 

I learned to shoot a variety of guns with my papa at their house in South Carolina. They lived in the woods with a dock and sometimes a lake if it wasn't too dry. 

I did it. I know how to do it. I do not want to ever have to put the skills to work. 

Another thing I'm curious about with people's relationship with firearms, especially when they passionately defend their need to own multiple guns, is if they'd ever lost someone to gun violence. 

Or simply known anyone personally who died at the hands of a gun. 

I knew two people and both would most likely still be alive if there were not a gun in the house. 

The first person I knew was a middle school classmate, we had a technology class together. He died by accident. I don't remember the details completely, but someone was either showing him the gun or cleaning the gun near him and it went off and killed him. 

The second person was a high school friend, who was in a very dark place. A call was made to the cops because there was fear for her safety. When the cops arrived, she grabbed the family gun and shot herself in the head. 

Obviously, we could deal with the root of the issues when it comes to mass shootings and that is mental health.

But we can and SHOULD also do something about the guns. 

The two things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Better access to mental health and no fast shooting guns is a good start, I think. 

But if we learned anything from Sandy Hook and everything else, it's this - the general population doesn't care when kids get murdered, they need their guns. 

So I'm don't think any single thing is gonna change, tbh, but seeing Ol' Joe fired up about it this much gives me a little bit of hope. 

3pm

As I was walking over here I saw two lizards doin' it. Get it lizard buds. 

I am honestly gonna miss the lizards here in Florida. No foolin'. 

I love seeing them around the house, eating up the bugs. 

Or outside our 'doorwall' showin' off and doing pushups. (I call those pushup lizards).

Or even crawling around the tiled walls while I take a bath. 

I don't mind them. They ain't gonna hurt me. 

I feel sad when I see a dead one, but I am also pretty reluctant to move them. Not because I'm afraid to touch them, but... you know what? I honestly don't know why I don't move them. 

What is the thing that makes a car motor run really loud? Not because they are in bad shape and need repaired, but because the car is all souped up and show off-y.

That's what whoever is waiting in our driveway sounds like. They are idling SO LOUD. 

When I went inside between showings last time, I had a rumbly tumbly so I did something that I never do. 

I ate leftovers. 

Granted it was veal parm from Linda's La Cantina, but I am never a leftovers kind of gal. My brain just doesn't like 'em. I've never been able to figure out why. 

Might have something to do with sitting at the dinner table for hours on end trying to choke down wads of meat, but it also might not.

Who knows.

What I do know is that these leftovers were SOO YUMMY. It was the perfect amount of food and I'm no longer rumbly. 

I am, however, a pile of sweat. 

This will probably be my final showing of the day where I'll bring out the laptop, because I feel like doing a think. 

4:30pm - TBD

For those keeping score - we've had three offers so far, none of them at asking.