mood:
listening: musk ox - et la neige
weather: cloudy
time: 14:03

and now it's already another week.. time keeps on passing me by to quickly. i want it to pass by but it feels like im running out of it (in regards to my future plans) but i feel like i talk about this every time i write an entry so i guess i wont complain about it anymore. besides you already know what im going to say anyway.

for some reason i didn't mention this in my last post but my WORST fear came true a few weeks ago.. i had an electrical fire =[ my dishwasher had been making a sort of burnt plastic smell so i turned it off. i thought my nose was just confused because i was fresh out of the shower after using a new soap, had just scrubbed the floor downstairs etc. so there were a lot of smells. i figured just in case though i would only hand wash my dishes from now on.

jump to like.. 1 week later. i was supposed to drive down to florida to attend my gma's funeral (which was cancelled anyway) and spend some time with my family but my car's wheel bearing was at the point where i didn't feel safe driving on it anymore. i spent all day trying to find a shop taht would fix it to no avail so i came home. was so tired from having been at it since early in the morning so i decided to run a load in the dishwasher.

i was upstairs and heard a bunch of popping but thought it was the cats knocking stuff around downstairs when i realized my wifi was out. went downstairs and flipped switches to realize that the breaker had been tripped and i was smelling the burnt plastic smell even more now and realized that something was Really Freaking Wrong..

called the landlady, she got an electrician out hours and hours later. he couldn't figure out wht was wrong and was down in the crawlspace when he started freaking out and told me it was smoking down there so i grabbed my fire extinguisher and.. it was completely empty and expired. luckily this electrician guy is also my neighbor and he ran to his unit to grab his. while he was down there putting it out i started smelling smoke and slowly began hearing flames crackling.. when i opened up the dishwasher there were flames spewing out of that mf!!!!!!!!!!

electrician came out of the crawlspace and we started throwing any kind of water we could find on it. simon managed to get out of the bathroom i had shut him and margot in during all this and it was COMPLETE chaos. what's even scarier is since my wi-fi was out, i didn't have cell phone service and couldn't call 911. i had to sprint down the road to pick up signal and even then i lost it again while on the phone with the dispatcher.



basically whoever installed the dishwasher didn't check to make sure the actual dishwasher wasn't going to be pressing against the plug/outlet and shoved it so far back against the wall that overtime the heat/vibrations melted the cord... if it had been plugged into the lower outlet it would've never happened. thankfully we got it put out before it spread and the fire department came out with thermal cameras to make sure it wasn't spreading through the walls. to make everything better, the smoke detectors in my apartment were so old that even putting new batteries in them didn't make them work.

so ya... worst fear ever came true im just glad i didnt go to florida and i was able to be home and catch it... seriously scared the shit out of me. im not like diagnosed with ocd or anything but i do have compulsions to unplug everything in my house before i leave anywhere because im scared about electrical fires and everyone always acted like i was being extra so to have my fear confirmed kind of made things a lot worse lol i didn't leave the house much after that happened.

but shout out to the freakin fire department they were so nice and thorough and gave me some smoke detectors when they checked and saw the ones i had were so old they didnt function anymore. in hindsight i couldve gotten really fucking angry at my landlady because ive only lived here for 2 years the extinguisher and smoke detectors shouldve been checked before i moved in and they obviously werent but she's elderly and the sole caretaker for her husband w/ dementia and as someone who used to do a lot of volunteer work with sick/homebound seniors IDK i tend to feel soft towards them

still dosent excuse any of it though. she was super apologetic and bought me new smoke alarms (i now have four in my studio apartment lmao) and 2 fire extinguishers. i think if it were an apartment complex yeah i probably wouldve gotten super fucking livid but idk i live out in the middle of fucking Nowhere and rent from some old ass lady gotta pick and choose your battles right... in the end it doesn't matter to me because im moving soon anyway

regardless its all over now and the dishwasher got hauled off to who knows where. friday we had the tropical storm/remnants of hurricane ian pass through. it was good to finally get some rain again and we kept power throughout the whole thing despite the pretty intense wind gusts we got. bc im from the gulf coast i get pretty serious when it comes to hurricane preparedness even though i live pretty far inland and hurricanes arent rly a problem for me anymore. harvey was the last one i went through and after that i decided id never live in an area that has to worry ab hurricanes. im lucky to have been able to move away from there i know a lot of people just cant and ppl dont seem to understand that. what makes me even angrier was all of the wealthy college ppl on tiktok making jokes about how theyre too much of a patriot/floridian to evacuate.... its always people like that tht end up in trouble and it happens ever major hurricane

summer is coming to an end pretty early this year it's only october but im cold enough to want to turn the heater on (i wont until nov.. this is my rule..) its been getting down into the low 50s at night which is a little chilly for this time of year in this part of NC. apparently late this week some kind of arctic front or whatever is supposed to come down and cool things off even more but im not complaining it's been really nice to actually get to experience the seasons this year. watching the forest thin out week by week on my nightly walks has been a strange feeling, it's definitely gotten smaller just in the last year. last winter if you peered through the trees you'd still see more forest falling away into the dark, but now you can see right into peoples backyards. more construction, more development. it makes me so sad, this place is so unique and full of wildlife. soon there won't be anymore deer, foxes, weasels, hawks, crows. just more and more ugly massive houses all built in that same hideous "modern craftsman" style. they all look exactly the same.

the old houses here also violate my vision of the perfect untouched forest, but at least they're small and modest and have been designed to maintain a "forest" lawn with no sod/grass, just pine straw yards with plenty of trees. this makes the most sense to me- it at least tries to preserve a little bit of the forest and use it to the home's advantage- the pine trees provide year-round shade and save on a/c costs. these new houses struggle to keep their lawns alive and aim to take up as much space as possible, crowded onto as many imaginary "lots" as they can manage.

but still, when i walk through the neighborhood at night i look at these smaller, modest houses that are full of so much character and my heart Yearns to be able to buy my own house someday. renting really is abysmal and i keep reading more and more headlines about how my generation and the following will never be able to buy their own houses. part of me wants to think its not true and that its landlord propaganda trying to goad people into giving up, but its hard to not believe it a little when theres less and less available and the rent keeps spiking.. whats a guy to do!!!!

on a lighter note im trying to get back into doing art again. ive been really exhausted and i know its because of diet/sleep but the brain fog has got me so bad right now. things come in waves though i guess because i just recently left a period where i felt super inspired/connected so its only natural that things ebb abd flow you feel. just waiting for the inspiration to come back as well as the energy.. doesn't help that its getting colder either. this is normally the time of year i start thriving but maybe its just circumstance lining up to where im so tired and exhausted.. who knows. boredom and uninspiration are a Trap and Disease so i am trying not to fall too deeply into it and push myself creatively wher i can but whoo wee it sure is hard out there. especially when things are like they are in the world right now - community is scarce and everything is so unbelievably expensive. costs so much to do anything now.

well thats all i got for now for this week. im sure ill have more to spew about before the week is over though, im trying to get away from social media which is hard when you have no IRL social life. being lgbt in a rural area makes it pretty hard to befriend anyone safely and now that my 2 friends i worked with have both left i spend a lot if not all of my time alone. i dont mind it so much but i do understnad that humans are social creatures and need to interact with each other to thrive. for now i just try to enjoy my time alone and savor it (virgo, the hermit, etc, you get me) because soon im going to be moving to a much different place where ill be surrounded by ppl much like myself. ebb and flow like i mentioned above...

ok but peace out for real though