Love as a verb is fine.

I prefer action words as much as possible. There is no "but she is your mother and loves you" as an excuse. If you replace love with what you truly desire and the sentence does not make sense it's time to reevaluate a relationship. "but she is your mother and protected you" nope. "but she is your mother and was kind to you" also nope" On and on. This is also a typical play of abusers. They push you and push you, for weeks, and then make the final push in front of other people. You react strongly. Your reaction matches the fact that you've been tormented about this topic for weeks, even asking, no begging, for this to stop. However, the people present for the last push only see that and you look crazy for the reaction.

When time devours the future.

 I'm in the process of the new job. But we are not home and dry yet. Personally or as a world.

Forward, onward, hold steady. 

No wonder I sobbed for three days

Children don’t want to break off their relationship with their parents, whether that child is twenty-five or sixty-five. The Still Face Experiment by Dr Edward Tronick in 1975 showed babies will attempt to fix a bond with their caregiver.

"An infant, after three minutes of 'interaction' with a non-responsive expressionless mother, rapidly sobers and grows wary. He makes repeated attempts to get the interaction into its usual reciprocal pattern. When these attempts fail, the infant withdraws [and] orients his face and body away from his mother with a withdrawn, hopeless facial expression." — Edward Tronick

When the mother goes back to being attentive and expressive, the infant is overjoyed. This experiment shows our need for connection with our parents starts very early in life. Much like the infants in this experiment, as a grown-up child I would feel overjoyed if my parents apologised and proved they had changed.

Maybe these children leave their parents because they are brave, not because they are ungrateful brats. Maybe they gave their parents plenty of chances to repair their bond.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/lifestyle/familyandrelationships/i-have-no-idea-what-ive-done-wrong-why-i-distrust-parents-of-estranged-children/ar-BB17K0ml?ocid=sf

Humans need humane men

https://www.pittwire.pitt.edu/news/study-men-scoring-higher-man-box-scale-are-prone-violence-mental-illness

To help clinicians more efficiently monitor their male patients’ attitudes, the researchers developed a shorter version of the survey including only the five items that had the strongest associations with violence and poor mental health:

1. A man shouldn’t have to do household chores.
2. Men should use violence to get respect if necessary.
3. A real man should have as many sexual partners as he can.
4. A man who talks a lot about his worries, fears, and problems shouldn’t really get respect.
5. A gay guy is not a “real man.”   

Function follows feet.

Fucking knees hurt so badly after a day at work with 14K steps. Feet hurt intermittently. At least I was useful.

My value in life is surely to be of use.

Eat the rich, however bad they taste

"So you talk about mobs and the working classes as if they were the question. You've got that eternal idiotic idea that if anarchy came it would come from the poor. Why should it? The poor have been rebels, but they have never been anarchists; they have more interest than anyone else in there being some decent government. The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all. Aristocrats were always anarchists."
- G. K. Chesterton
The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare

Via Whiskey River

Remarkably comfortable

Started wearing a corset last week. It seems to help my poor back, improved posture. Costume history and research.

And I have a bit of a waist again, which is good for my head.