the_rck

I think I overdid, physically, in the days leading up to Christmas. I crashed hard Christmas afternoon and am still dragging a bit now.

Scott and Cordelia spent a lot of time on a Zoom call with Scott's parents, siblings and siblings' families. I listened in while I was still upright, but I didn't say much or try to get on camera.

Christmas dinner was weird because we didn't plan well relative to the Zoom call (it wasn't clear how long that was going to be) and because we didn't plan the dishes well relative to each other. I suspect that a big part of the problem was that I wasn't up to doing a lot of the work and that Scott simply had no experience with the logistics of getting several dishes to edibility within a small time window.

But, seriously, three continuous hours on Zoom was NOT a help given that Scott put the turkey breast in before the call started.

I got some John Prine CDs that I hadn't previously been able to get (as part of a boxed set that included some that I already had but was still cheaper than buying the ones I lacked individually). I got the Murderbot novel. I got season 3 of The Librarians (we had 1-2 and 4 but had somehow not bought 3).

I got some footie socks with the little grippy bits on the soles; they're even the right size. I've bought online before and gotten things that claim to fit US women's 7-9 but are too small for my size 7.5 feet, and things that slide on our hardwood floors to the point that I'm afraid to take a step without shoes.

I also got a cotton cover for my neck pillow that I can put on and take off easily. I'm not enthusiastic about the texture, but I'm hoping that washing will help that because my hands really can't manage getting the thigh high stocking on and off even if those feel better on my skin. I feel like I owe my MIL an extra thank you for this one, though, because she had an awful time navigating Etsy to place a special order. Etsy is well outside of her online comfort zone.

Cordelia and I got Scott season 3 of The Expanse on DVD and a hot glue gun sort of thing that he says will be extremely useful at work. His parents gave him a bulky winter coat.

Cordelia mostly got books. Scott got her a yearlong membership to one of the genealogy websites, and she stayed up very, very late exploring that. She says that my mother's family isn't much fun to trace because my mother has done all of the work already, but that my father's family is too difficult because of things like one of my great-grandmothers having a cousin with the same name who was born in the same place and same year as she was and because several of the names are just a couple of steps up from John Smith in terms of uniqueness. Scott's father's family is easier because their family name isn't common.

I'm trying to remember family stories about my father's father and his parents. My father knows a bit, but a lot of it is completely lost.

I know Grandpa's family always lived in the Detroit area. I know that his parents left Northern Ireland and passed through Canada to the US, crossing at the Windsor-Detroit border. I don't think they ever lived further south in the US than that. I know that my great-grandfather was a carpenter who made the pews in the church they attended. I saw those once, but the building has since been renovated, so I think the pews are probably gone.

I have a bookshelf that I think he made. It's very utilitarian, and I'm not 100% sure it was meant for books as the shelves are deep enough for two rows of hardcovers. It would be sturdy enough for dishes, I think.

During the Depression, my grandfather was sent to live with relatives who managed an estate near Cleveland and could support him. I think there was some bitterness there because he was the only one of the three children sent away. He was the middle child but the oldest boy, and I'm not sure he'd have been older than ten at the time. Probably not much older, anyway, as he was born in 1922 (per Cordelia's research). He was, according to the Census, living with his parents in 1930 and in 1940.

I'm not sure if the 1922 birthdate makes sense, though. I know that Grandpa just barely got through basic training (army) before the War ended. He never deployed anywhere. He also didn't attend college (he strongly resented the idea that college got people better jobs and more promotions), so if he was born in 1922, there are years unaccounted for between high school and enlistment.

I'm not sure when my great-grandfather died or when my great-aunt developed rheumatoid arthritis. Grandpa abruptly needing to support a family of four might well do it as might a sudden spike in medical costs.

(And I've now talked to Cordelia again. The dates for that part of the family are wrong in several ways that I can confirm, mostly incorrect death dates by a couple of decades (I would remember if those great-grandparents were still alive when I started high school), which makes us less sure about the birth dates. Cordelia says that Grandpa was listed as 17 in the 1940 census. He and Grandma married in 1943. Cordelia's now looking for his military records.)

I keep trying to write this up and wandering off into verbal flourishes and logical snags. The analogy here doesn't work 100%, but definitely the part about only the House winning, in the casino sense, does.

And only some people ever have the option of becoming part of the House.

I see a lot of people talking about history, politics, and justice (social and otherwise) in terms of zero sum games. People on various sides work hard to convince everyone else that the issue is or isn't really a zero sum game. I consider that a distraction from the real issue.

The real issue is that most of us-- possibly all of us-- are trapped in thousands of intersecting rounds of the Prisoner's Dilemma. Our risks and the cost we're putting on other people are real. And once a person receives the highest penalty from one round, the penalties for them in later rounds get bigger and nastier, the hole the backstabber can push them into get deeper.

Unfortunately, the level of penalty for being an asshole who's willing to sell everyone else down the river also seems to go down over the long term. At least, this is my best explanation for vast swathes of history and politics.

I think that it's easy for all of us to overlook that the Prisoner's Dilemma is like any form of gambling-- Only the House wins. It's never a choice between a good thing and a bad thing or between a good thing and a better thing. It's a choice between penalties.