From what I'm seeing online, some people didn't know that getting gang raped at fraternity houses while drunk is not unusual. It happened to my college roommate in fact (and may have contributed to her flunking out her first semester). The only things that are surprising about the Cornell case are that (a) she reported it- most of us don't because it'd be likely to expose us to a lot of crap for no reward, and (b) the University actually punished any of the perpetrators at all and shut down the fraternity.

My roommate's experience led to me making a rule that I wouldn't have sex with anyone under the influence unless we'd had sex before and I could more reasonably presume consent. This baffled the drunk men I rejected; I told them to get in touch when they were sober but they rarely did. I still never drink on first dates because I want to keep my wits about me. (I wish I could use it to make awkward first dates more fun and less stressful, but not only is it unsafe, I wouldn't be able to accurately assess whether I wanted a second date.)

bestest boy

My life revolves around my aging dog a lot more than it used to. He's never been chill, but since he lost his hearing he worries more about where I am. If I leave the room for more than two minutes, he goes looking for me, and I feel terrible if he subjects his aching hips to the stairs unnecessarily. Sometimes he doesn't realize I'm behind him while he's looking so I tap him to let him know. He also seems more stressed about being left home alone, especially after dinner, so I try not to do it.

He sleeps much more deeply. Sometimes when I have a short errand I'm torn about whether to sneak off and hope to get home before he wakes up, or have him watch me go and be sad. (I think disappearing on him gives him more reason to be anxious than making sure he knows I left.)

Like most of us as we get older, he gives fewer f's about doing what he's supposed to. He's trained to come to me on walks when a car or person is coming, but he's stopped doing that and just stands inconveniently in the middle of the road. He's also trained to come to me at the point in the walk when his leash is supposed to come back on, but he's not having that anymore either.

I changed my morning routine a couple years ago when he started taking pain meds. Instead of going for a walk as soon as I wake up, I want to let his meds kick in, so I deliver his breakfast in bed and then get back in bed myself for an hour before we go. Which can be a cozy respite, but it's harder to get to work on time.

He turns around much earlier on walks than he used to, even though he's still eager to set off. Sometimes it's because something worries him (a truck goes by; he smells the dogs that attacked us a few years ago) but sometimes I'm not sure of the reason. We need to go at least a quarter mile before I can safely let him off leash. So occasionally I put him in the car (even though he doesn't like that, and has trouble jumping into it these days but, like my mother, refuses disability aids) and drive a half mile to a hiking path. I'd do this every day, but sometimes he acts like he doesn't enjoy that walk either. 

Today though was glorious. He ran around like a puppy, and the golden hour sun was burning the fog off the field while we watched, and the leaves are turning, and the sky was blue. I'm so grateful to have this time with him and to know he's not done yet.

not much of a eulogy

The mother of my closest friends growing up died recently. They lived across the street from me and I spent a huge amount of time at their house. She was kind to the weird neighbor kid, including me in family dinners and getting me a bank teller job when I was in high school. This despite the fact that she frankly didn't care for children much: here, too, there was kindness and community along with exhaustion and frustration. 

I felt a lot of nostalgia going through old photos of my extended family at our Adirondack cabin, yet there was a lot of abuse and simmering resentment underneath those scenes. I didn't know any of that as a child, and there was love and beauty there too. I wonder if my current tendency to leave relationships which include significant irritations means I miss out on the potential for net positives? Without anything like the family ties which forced everyone to find ways to spend time together, maybe I give up too quickly. But then, the line between abuse and annoyance can be hard to see when you're living it, and some of the things I know now permanently twisted some of my family members' lives.

the kids are all right

My daughter wandered solo through a large swath of Europe, came home for a festival over Labor Day, headed back to her apartment and partners in Buffalo, and found a job within a week. It's not a great job- she's a receptionist at an optometrist office, making just above minimum wage with no benefits- but it does not involve waking up at 3am and working weekends like her last two bakery jobs. (I'm hoping she keeps on looking for something better but know it's really hard to motivate oneself to do that while working.)

It is a delight to see her navigate life so well. She's not doing things the way I would but she is figuring things out and doing cool stuff despite a high baseline level of anxiety, a horrifying political landscape, a disastrous entry level economy, and less socially robust culture than we had pre-cell phones. 

books!

 * Ode to the Half-Broken by Suzanne Palmer: One of the Horserobots of the Apocalypse and a dog-robot go on a hero's journey in a purple VW bus. There are a lot of recent stories which present artificial intelligences as benevolent towards humans (this one, Murderbot, CatNet); is that our wishful thinking or our self-centeredness?

* The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler and Devil of the Deep by Falencia Jean-Francois both use mysteries in the ocean to explore humans' relationship with nature, colonialism, and climate change. I recommend the first on paper because it includes visuals of the octopus language, and the second on audio because the narrator does a good job.

* And I coincidentally listened to two books taking place on islands near Seattle. Folly by Laurie King was marketed as a thriller but it's really about strategies for surviving grief and PTSD. Whidbey by T. Kira Madden is about the fallout after a pedophile dies, told from the perspectives of his mother and two of his victims. I found both of them moving, and the authors did a good job of getting inside the heads of the (sometimes unreliable) characters. Both also however failed to stick the landing. The last 10% of Folly turned into the thriller that was promised but it felt tacked on out of now. The last quarter of Whidbey introduced new first person perspectives and a detailed explanation of the death, which would have been more powerful if left open-ended.

SINCE ALL MY RESEARCH FUNDING WAS CUT I HAVE TO BE A SUBJECT NOW

A few years back I was part of a longitudinal study of HIV; I think they were excited to recruit a slutty woman my age at the time. This year they expanded it into a social network study. Curiously, they defined "social network" as "the people you have had sex with or used drugs or alcohol with in the past year." We went through a list of names and relationships, and at the end, the data collector asked me to connect which of them had had sex with each other. In past years this would have been a complicated diagram, but as far as I knew, NONE of them had. It was a somewhat sad realization, but we've all gotten older. (Though here is a post about 50+ sex parties, with a "very Gen X-friendly start time of 3 p.m.") 

I also completed the study to treat dry eye, which meant a painful weekend with an amniotic membrane covering one eye and then four sessions of IPL, which involves sticking metal shields in the eye and zapping the skin with a hot bright instrument. So far, minimal benefits. Which sucks because it would be nice if my eyes didn't hurt all the time, but at least I didn't have to spend $2500 to learn that IPL is not helpful to me.