THIS LITTLE LIGHT OF MINE

 Ugh, I had to do a very hard thing the other day.

A few years ago, I bought myself, and my late friend, Sara, a couple of friendship lamps for Christmas.

What is a friendship lamp, you ask? (Well, maybe you didn't, but I'm going to pretend you did in case someone new has shown up.) Friendship lamps are a set of two little LED lamps that you hook to the internet. You each get a code and go to the website and register the lamps together so that they get linked, and when you turn them on, when you touch your lamp, the lamp at your friend's house changes color, or blinks, or whatever they are designed to do. Basically, it's a nice, subtle way to let someone know you're thinking about them. I mean, yeah, you could text or call or write a letter, but this way you can just say "Hey, I'm thinking about you right this second!" and it's a nice, quick, warm fuzzy you can send without making a big production out of it.  Shut up, it's nice.

I got one for Sara because I missed her and because I knew she was very unhappy living so far away from her friends and family. Her marriage wasn't going well (I can say that now, considering...) and she was lonely. When I found those lamps, I got them immediately so that she would always have a link to someone back home. I can only imagine what it's like living far away from all the people and things you love, and I wanted to give her a link back so she would know she wasn't forgotten about. 

I think she liked having it as much as I did. It was cool to be sitting next to it and it suddenly turn blue because she had tapped it at her house. Then I'd tap it and it would turn red at her house.  I dunno, it's hard to explain, but it was comforting.

And then she died.

The lamp stayed where it was for months and months because it felt weird to move it. I have a hard time letting things go, we all know that, but getting rid of that lamp felt almost sacrilegious. How can you just get rid of a link to your best friend?

So, every time I'd sit in my living room and it got quiet, I'd inevitably end up staring at that lamp and it would hurt my heart. Losing a friend and knowing there is no hope of ever seeing or hearing from them again is agony. Looking at the lamp just reminded me over and over that it would never light up again. I knew I couldn't keep torturing myself like that, because that is what it was: torture. A mild form, to be sure, but torture all the same.

So I finally moved the lamp. Then it sat in the new place for months and months and I could still see it and it still felt bad. So finally, I had to make myself get rid of it last Friday. I didn't really want to, but I didn't think it was a healthy thing to have something staring me in the face that made me feel like that. You shouldn't keep shrines of the dead, because that way lies madness.

I felt like I should have some kind of ceremony or do something specific, but that felt weird. So I simply had to throw it away. That felt very wrong, but I didn't know what else to do. I suppose I could have bought a second lamp and sent it to someone else, but there is no one else that wants to be reminded that I'm thinking of them. Not anymore.

So I threw my best friend lamp into the garbage and I still want to cry, but I won't/can't because there is nothing that will change the fact that she's dead and I'll never see her again, and she'll never touch that lamp again. It would just be a dark reminder that my best friend is gone. 

I know that in time it won't be so bad. Such is life. I'm sure this was an important step in closure, and closure is important. 

Anyway...it was a hard thing. 

MORE RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) The other day I was watching Doctor Who (the regeneration episode of Jodie Whittaker's character) and there was this scene right in the middle that made zero sense, but it was so weird that it might be one of my favorite scenes of that show of all time. The bad guy (The Master - shut up, he's canonical) had time traveled to 1916-ish and set himself up as Rasputin (possibly actually being Rasputin, and not just pretending to be him...again, time travel) so that he could trap the Doctor in the ballroom of the Winter Palace and do some nefarious stuff. Believe it or not, it wasn't the nefarious stuff that didn't make sense.

So there they were, the Doctor stuck in a trap, surrounded by evil space robots, and The Master is walking around as Rasputin being menacing and unhinged. Then he does this:

It makes NO sense. It didn't do anything for the plot! I think it was literally only a scene created so that a guy dressed as Rasputin could dance in the Winter Palace to the Boney M song "Rasputin" and I wholeheartedly loved it.

I also now love the song. It's been stuck in my head almost daily for a month or so. I bought it on Apple Music and listen to it all the time. It takes three and a half "Rasputins" for me to get to work in the mornings. It's a fun song, but then again, I have a very soft spot in my soul for disco music, so maybe it's just me. It's a lot of fun, and you should listen to it, too!  (You can just listen to the song, though, and not have to watch the Doctor Who scene. I know you don't care for the show.)

2) Did you know that Steve planned a long, fun, not-work-related vacation in Florida for the week of our anniversary?  It wasn't with me, but at least one of us got to spend some time down there. 

I don't know why it bothers me, since our anniversary is never that big of a deal, but it's the principle of the thing.  At least he'll be back by the 11th unless he gets trapped there by the hurricane. Sorry, I'm a little bitter. It'll pass.

3) For Halloween, one of my coworkers brought in one of those plastic, almost human sized skeletons. I've named it Skelly Pratt and it's been in the office as a decoration since then. Every evening before I leave work, I move him to a new location and pose him doing some kind of boring office thing. It has become one of the things I look forward to every day, because being an adult is stupid and we have to find joy where we can.

I put the turkey hat on him today. I plan on decorating him for every holiday in the hopes that they will let it stay here with me all year. Today he's at the coffee machine.

Seriously, what is my life?

4) Is anyone else just not feeling the holidays this year? not to sound gloomy and I'm not quite to Bah Humbug status or anything like that, but it just feels like all of the stuff that is usually fun is just something I need to get over and done with so I can breathe again. Maybe I'll feel differently in the moment. I hope so! I'll be traveling out of state for work for a chunk of December, which is going to be a pain, but maybe I'll be allowed a little fun while I'm out there. I dunno. I'll keep my fingers crossed!

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1) I got to wear three costumes for Halloween this year! Well, not all on Halloween, and not all at the same time, but over the week I got three different chances to wear costumes!  I haven't had that many costume changes since the boudoir photoshoot I did with that nice stranger on the internet!  

He still hasn't paid me for that, by the way. Huh. Anyway...

I FINALLY got to wear my Star Trek TOS uniform. I bought it years ago, and wherever I got it from (probably China) sent me a severely wrong size. Like, such a wrong size that I tried to put it on when I first got it and had a panic attack because I got trapped with it over my head and couldn't get it off. At any rate, while it's technically still very snug, it fit well enough for me to wear it to our office Halloween party! Everyone liked it! I did feel a bit exposed while wearing it, because the skirt was so short, but I wore dark stockings and didn't bend over in front of anyone. I don't see how any woman on the Enterprise could do their job in such scanty uniforms, but what do I know about working on a constitution class star ship? Maybe they didn't have to bend over very much.

I had to scrape together another costume for something called a "Dead Wine" party that the mother of a friend put on. We decided to go at the last minute, and since my Star Trek costume was damp from the washer (and washing it snagged a seam and took the gold off of my insignia) I put together a kind of Dia de las Muertas thing. I didn't want to be culturally insensitive, so I didn't do the calaveras face paint, but I did wear the flower crown. The shirt for my costume was too short and showed my torso, so I think I had my arms wrapped around myself the whole time to keep that hidden. 

A Dead Wine party is a neat concept. People bring their old and unloved bottles of wine that they don't want anymore, and the people at the party taste them to see if they like them. It's apparently a way to try new stuff and get rid of old stuff. I drank water, but it was fun to watch people who know wines trying everything, getting drunk, and talking about how gross some of it was. Steve and I had exactly one bottle of wine in our house, so it was sacrificed on the Dead wine altar. Apparently it was "Good, but sweet." Whatever that means. It was from Publix, so your mileage may vary. It was also from 2015, so technically it was old.

On actual Halloween I wore a Chewbacca dress. It was made to be subtle, so it wasn't like I was covered in fur and carrying a crossbow. IN fact, I think it might have been totally wasted because I had to wear a coat all day and I didn't go anywhere that night. but still....COSTUME!

2) Do you want to know what is humiliating? Finding out you've been muted on someone’s social media. They say you can’t know who mutes you, but there are ways to find out. Granted, it's not the slap-in-the-face kind of humiliating, but it's a creeping, heat crawling up the back of your neck kind of humiliating. I suppose this explains why I’ve been getting no responses from them.

Did I deserve it? I don't think so. I usually try to stay pretty neutral about things online, so the why part of it is unclear to me. It's also just embarrassing, especially when you don’t think there is a problem. I know the whole "mute" function is supposed to be a "nice" way to unfollow someone, but it isn't nice. If you're going to say "fuck you" to someone, say it loud enough for them to hear it. Geez. 

3) Things at work are still going well, but I am still 100% exhausted every day. I never knew there were so many things in the world to keep up with at the same time! 

Right now we are planning holiday parties in several different states, and it's...something.  There are so many little fiddly details and decisions to make, and when you have to keep up with things in 7 states, something is bound to fall through the cracks. I'm terrified we are going to forget something important, like paying for food or inviting people. There is a chance that some of us will have to travel to these different states to attend the parties and make sure that everything is going the way it's supposed to, but that decision seems to keep getting pushed off. I hope they don't put it off too long, because we have to actually have plane tickets and hotels and things. I dunno, it's kind of a mess, but we are hanging in there! I will be glad when this part is done with, though, because we've been running in high gear for weeks and my brain is fried. I wake up in the middle of the night worried about party details and whether or not we remembered to picke wines. I'm not sure I'm built for this kind of thing.

I'm also still working for the church, and unfortunately our congregation is dwindling, so there aren't as many people to do things as there used to be. I need a real vacation, but that isn’t going to happen. I’m so tired.

4) I keep buying converse shoes. I can’t stop! It started with a red pair, and then I got a black pair, and I keep finding colors that I want and it’s getting out of hand! I have a custom pair and I even bought a pink pair, and I don’t have anything pink to wear them with! They’re pretty much the only shoes I wear now, and I wear them with everything. I’m afraid wearing Converse has now become my personality. I may need an intervention.

5) Oh, speaking of social media, I joined Mastodon. I haven’t started using it yet. Mostly I did it to get my actual name as my user name. I only know one person on it so far, but no one who would bother to follow me back. I’ll need to find people eventually. I guess if Twitter goes kablooey, at least I’ll have a place for my nonsensical musings! I hope Twitter doesn’t get stupid, though. I like my little group of Twitter people. They are comforting! I’d hate to think the owner could screw it up so badly that he’d cause people to leave, but I think it could happen. Sigh. Stupid owner. I guess it doesn’t really matter. Everything ends.

6) I had a bunch of things to talk about, but now that I’m here, I can’t remember what it was! So I’m going to stop here and hopefully remember what I was going to say! 

I hug you!