Yesterday, Swistle on steroids:
• washed two bathroom floors, regretting that she’d ever married or had children
• ordered a set of SIXTY Burt’s Bees lip oil pens
• left a comment on the Facebook post of an older Christian woman (one of Swistle’s role models as a child), telling her that her “Moral and Ethical Choice” presidential candidate was corrupt and that she, Swistle, couldn’t understand how she, the woman, and other women of God, could be supporting him when he consistently and persistently did the opposite of everything Jesus said to do
So perhaps I will not dabble in street drugs. And it might be wise to have Paul as a double-check on actions/decisions for the next four days.
I can partially explain the lip oil pens, and you may be particularly interested in an explanation if you remember my rather meh review of the one I bought awhile back. The thing is, it WASN’T worth $9, but I DID like it. I kept reaching for it, especially when my lips were kind of chapped and I wanted something nice and soothing. It was a little fussy to have to use the silly brush, and it didn’t last long before it needed to be reapplied, but I really liked the FEEL of the oil. And now I’m home all the time so I can use it throughout the day if I want.
So when it ran out, I looked for it online, thinking I could buy one for my Christmas stocking. Also, I was misremembering and thought it had been SIX dollars, which still seemed too high, but more reasonable. I was a little alarmed when I couldn’t find it at Target, and then when I found it on Amazon it looked like it was being sold the way discontinued things are sold: odd prices, various sellers. So then I looked on eBay, which is where I have successfully bought supplies of several discontinued items. I found basically what I’d expect: one listed for $6 with free shipping, another listed for $4 with $2.99 shipping, etc.—until I came upon SIXTY of them for $30 with free shipping. Well. I mean.
At this somewhat more sober moment, I realize I should have scrolled a little further, since there was an option to buy SIX of them for $14, which is approximately five times the price per pen, but is still a very nice price, and is approximately as many pens as I am likely to be able to use before they go bad. But at the time, I did not scroll any further, instead I hit Buy It Now, and now they have shipped and are on their way to me. If we do any sort of care-package thing in the future, YOU MAY BE SURE of getting a lip oil pen or two or ten.
Swistle-on-Steroids posts are amazing. Keep telling us everything!
They so are.
They are also an eye-opening display of the effects of steroids – they’re rapid, they’re hard to predict, one does bizarre things. And, Swistle’s things have all been rather benign and amusing but there’s another person out there who is less prone to benign and amusing and, well, you get my drift…
You beat me to this! A commenter on a Twitter thread said he couldn’t have been president to his cat on the steroids that have been in the news currently.
I’m a church-going Christian and I applaud your choices. It’s one of the many reasons I finally deleted Facebook: too pointlessly infuriating.
Also, I can so see the appeal of sixty lip oil pens, as a person on zero steroids of any kind who has a large number of school supplies (24-packs of crayons, glue sticks, index cards, notebooks, pencils, erasers) purchased when the price was similar and dropping $10 on TWENTY packs of crayons seems like a brilliant idea. They’re crayons, someone will use them – and it is ever so convenient to have a notebook, or whatever, in the house when someone needs/wants one than to truck to target and sometimes pay SIX times the price for the same notebook.
They’re lip oil pens – excellent for care packages, stocking stuffers, etc, FOREVER. It makes so much sense to pay $30 for that than it does to pay the same $30 and get 3 or 5.
(I also usually have at least 30lbs of flour, 60 rolls of tp, 20 boxes of pasta, 5 jars of peanut butter at any given time. Oh, and a half of a cow in the 2nd – purchased for that reason – chest freezer. This is normal behavior for me is what I’m saying)
I am now the proud owner of 50 red, blue and green plastic folders for a similar reason. The kids always need them for school, they don’t go bad, hard to find when I need them etc. seems very reasonable to me.
I am here for this content!! (Obviously I hope you’re feeling yourself again soon…but in the meantime please keep writing.)
Same!
I disagree with, but sort of almost grasp the anti-abortion therefore-Trump voters, if the number one issue for someone is abortion [which: there are somewhere around 800,000 abortions per year; it *is* an honestly large number] and if they are focused on possibly making abortion illegal rather than looking at the things that reduce actual numbers of abortions (access to contraceptives; healthcare and worker protections such that having a baby is not going to bankrupt someone; cultural changes – the non-objectification of women and the “hey, actually, sex is not the most important thing in the world” stuff which neither side is promoting).
But the Law and Order ones: how many illegal things has Trump done? And how many things has he done to stoke violence rather than create peace?
And obviously the racism-based ones have no Christianity-based backing. Oy.
(Re: your specific argument on Facebook, there’s also the combination of Matthew 7:15-17:
15 “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves. 16 By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
And Galatians 5:22-23:
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
—
Also known as “so, uh, which of those fruits have you been seeing where?”)
I’m so glad I’m not on Facebook, I guess, is what I’m saying…
I really believe they are Pro Birth, rather than Pro Life.
Pro Life is infuriation to all of the injustices against BIPOC esp this summer. The indifference to the active lives right before their eyes is ….. I just don’t know how they sleep at night.
Definitely pro-birth. And I mean…what is their end goal? If it gets overturned it would get kicked back to the states and so it’s not like they’ve abolished abortion.
Some definitely are Pro Birth; some are just “we want to punish women who aren’t ours for having sex.” Also some are definitely just racist.
*But* some others have a different news feed, which showed almost entirely not the peaceful protest side of the protests, nor the reasons for the protests, but focused on every case of looting or arson or injury or conflict with police, ignoring whether it originated with BLM protestors or with… other… groups. In many cases, these people would be “fine with peaceful protests, but these aren’t peaceful” – ignoring the, uh, shall we say, lack of options for peaceful protests to exist in areas that have effectively banned them, and ignoring the difficulty of exactly how unarmed peaceful protesters can exclude absolutely everyone with any ill intentions, and the difficulty of remaining totally visibly peaceful while being shot with rubber bullets from one side and tear-gassed from the other, etc. These people also typically have a deep, lifelong, fundamental belief that police are the good guys who are only against criminals, and therefore anyone the police are against is probably a criminal, and anyone against the police is *definitely* a criminal; it’s a huge challenge, under these circumstances, to upend the comforting internal narrative of “the US has mostly fixed its racist problems, except for a few bad actors; we’re personally not in a position of exceptional privilege compared to law-abiding citizens of a different color; we have what we have because we earned it and are good people.” It’s not appealing to find out that other people were shoved down for you to rise higher; it’s not appealing, especially to tired people, to have to realize that systemic, disruptive, difficult change needs to happen to systems they’ve trusted all their lives to basically work and that have *looked* like they’re working fine, to them. And if you add in that the heavily-filtered nature of what you’re being shown by the news sources you trust and the people you usually morally agree with, then it’s really an uphill battle; someone has to actually seek out and personally confirm things that are contrary to their identity and self-interest. And some have done this! I know a few! It’s really cool! But a lot haven’t gotten there.
There’s also the numbers aspect: if you consider every embryo a human life, then there are a *lot* of Black lives killed that way each year, vs. “comparatively few” who die at the hands of police. (I’ve heard this argument against BLM, actually: “then why aren’t they against abortion? It’s the #1 killer of their people each year!” – *BUT* I’ve only heard this one from oh-dear-definitely-racist people, so I am not sure whether this whataboutism gets any traction elsewhere.)
Then there’s also the helpless/innocent aspect. The two most devoted anti-abortion women I know both suffered traumatic miscarriages of very, very deeply wanted babies – all abortions are of future babies to them, not masses of cells or embryos. And given that the embryos literally can’t fight back, they’re also on the top of the “helpless/powerless” list; and given that they literally can’t have committed a crime while in utero, they’re also “innocent” in a way that someone busted with a ridiculously small quantity of marijuana or pulled over for speeding *technically* isn’t (again, remember, if you belong to a group which doesn’t get arrested except for *real* crimes, not stupid things like being caught smoking pot or going 10 miles over the speed limit, then you assume people who are arrested have done something wrong to a significant level).
But the people who do really know the things like treatment of refugees and other Really Bad Stuff: some of them are definitely having a hard time sleeping, trying to decide between this previously-established don’t-even-have-to-think-about-it priority of Making Abortions Illegal (since that has been the goalpost since Roe v. Wade and because of hundreds of thousands of innocent going-to-be-babies just like theirs, per year) vs. the egregious wrongs that they know of under the current president. I’m hoping that some of them can see the data on abortions under Democratic vs. Republican presidents and realize that some policy items Democrats tend to be for and Republicans tend to be against *actually reduce* the number of abortions significantly and settle their single-issue priorities that way.
Of course, none of that does squat about the racist/misogynist/etc. ones who will vote to “own the libs” no matter what, or for whom another issue is the single issue; but if I know a few people honestly struggling between these two bad options [Trump: need we say more? – and from an anti-abortion point of view, anyone explicitly pro-choice is an Absolutely Not], there are likely more of these awake, “thinking hard” people out there? I hope?
KC, I love this long, informative and thoughtful comment. If I may, I’d like pick up on your observation of “all abortions are of future babies to them, not masses of cells or embryos” as a reason for some people to be anti-abortion.
For what it’s worth, I think of abortion as ending something that has the potential to become a baby and a human life, not just masses of cells or embryos, and I am STILL pro-choice for a couple of main reasons:
1) I do not have the right to make such a deeply personal decision for anyone else. It is none of my business and I have no way to truly put myself into the shoes of anyone who is trying to figure out what would be best for them. If I’d gotten pregnant unexpectedly I believe I would have continued the pregnancy, but I never had to make any such decision because it turned out that I needed fertility drugs to get pregnant.
2) It might sound cold and clinical, but as someone with a background in science I don’t discount the fact that the world is overpopulated and unevenly resourced. Birth control should be easy and available, but when it is not or when it fails, from a global resource perspective having fewer people born means more resources left for the ones that do come along or are already here.
Thank you! And that’s a good thing to note! Yes, you can absolutely consider abortion as ending something that has the potential to become human life and still be pro-choice for a variety of reasons.
I’m mostly trying to note that it’d be good to hold some space open for the (possibly very few, but extant) people who are honestly trying to make ethically-sound decisions while having a different base perspective. (the people who aren’t worried about ethics but just want to punish all women for having sex with anyone except them, the proud racists, and the ones who are happy as long as a specific set of other-people are adequately unhappy: we can maybe make space for them on an otherwise unpopulated, isolated island somewhere with all the other misogynists? And if we could gather up all the ones who just don’t think about others, or who think that being maximally selfish is really the way to go, and run them all through an intensive kindergarten plus Mr. Rogers course, that would be lovely.)
It’s just that there are some people who are honestly having a hard time sleeping because of actual ethical conflicts with voting, and I really want those people to keep trying to sort this out, rather than giving up in despair and saying “well, may as well fall into line and pretend this bucket is okay; everyone in that other bucket has already decided they hate me anyway.”
So I want to hold space open for them – to hold hope and options open – so we can maybe come together to whatever degree is actually possible, to do things we agree on as good things.
I am intrigued by the lip oil pens. Did you find an assortment of colors? Or did you get 60 all in one color? I want to try these but not sure I can commit to one color in a big lot. Because the big lot really does seem the way to go.
All one color! That would have been another good thing for me to scroll awhile longer for!
I find it fascinating that we apparently both do the post-shopping-purchase continued-scrolling thing, which I can’t figure out any rational reason for. I mean, I think “I see it! Buy it right right right now while it is still available!” is a learned behavior from ye olde pandemic random-scarcity shopping, but man, once a purchase is irrevocably made, I really need to stop scrolling more…
That said, I currently have ebay sorted on “lowest price including shipping” and that increases the number of irrelevant things I have to scroll through, but reduces regret level. Except when I end up seeing that the next package is for *two* of the useful thing for only slightly more money… sigh.
Also! You may use a lot of the lip pens during the pandemic, being home all the time! Maybe you will get through more of them than you expect to! But also, hey, now you will have this definite thing to include in all present boxes and gifts and stuff *and* they were really cheap!
My mom keeps giving me lip balm for my stocking for Christmas, and I might have close to 60 of them. What I’ve done is stash them EVERYWHERE. I have two by my bed, three here at my desk. They’ll do in all my coat pockets for winter. Basically, because I have so many, I can just leave them tucked hither and yon so that I never have to look for one!
I don’t do this with lip balm, but we have scissors in literally every room of the house (except the laundry room, I think?) and I LOVE IT. The scissors basically never go missing when there’s always a pair within reach, since then they don’t get hauled to a different room, and if they were within reach in the first place, you’re more likely to put them right back instead of leaving them somewhere to put away “later” and stuff.
But what if you need to trim a loose thread or open a package of detergent in the laundry room? You should really get on that! ;)
HA! :-) Yes, clearly we need one more pair of scissors…
(but: bottled detergent, and we haven’t needed a pair of scissors in there yet and we’ve lived here five years so, eh, unless our laundry habits change again [pandemic laundry is… different], we’re probably set…)
I also do this, including the laundry room! Because sometimes I buy gifts for the kids and just throw them in there, and need to cut tags! But my bedroom, bathroom, two in the kitchen (in my mind one is semi food related, like for opening salad packages and such, and the other is for like, opening boxes that came in the mail and other non-food things)… definite scissors extravaganza here. When the kids were babies we had one small pair in the nursery, similarly for cutting tags as they moved up a size, or occasional other weird baby needs. Highly recommend.
Ooh. I’m finding Swistle on steroids rather impressive! I wish I was a bit more steroidal and less namby pamby and prone to midnight regret. ^_^
All of your wine-and-snacks lady friends can get a lip oil pen in their mailbox for christmas! Tie a candy cane on with a ribbon and you’re the most thoughtful social-distance friend around!
And now I’m imagining a candy-cane-with-nose-and-googly-eyes-and-pipe-cleaner-antlers with a lip oil pen stick and I’m laughing so hard! So *that’s* why Rudolph’s nose was red: he couldn’t figure out lip oil application and kept hitting his nose instead…
Oh i want to try one if there is a care package!