Hi, friends!
I hope your weekend went well. I’ve been doing a ton of veggie garden prep and harvesting this weekend since we have a few nights midweek that are dropping to around 35 degrees at night. Thanks to the use of trellises, I can’t cover my summer veggies so you know, probably gonna have a lot of damage to my remaining tomatoes and beans. Shrug, it’s how fall goes every year. The kale and spinach will love those temps and I’ll love it killing off some of the bugs.
Anyways, for my friends and family group, I have hands down the biggest veggie garden and grow the most things. And it’s not much – it’s 5 raised beds (20 sq ft total) and 3 big planters. Usually 9 months of the year I’m eating something fresh from my garden. However, I’m well aware that there isn’t a chance in hell I could live off the land or farmstead and be self-sufficient.
And that is where we get to the topic tonight, delulu people. What’s a delusion that annoys the fuck out of you? The people who armchair quarterback sports despite having the physical abilities of a slug? The people who think they could take out terrorists like a special ops pro?
Every fucking time I hear some variation of “we should move out in the country and live on a farm!” for whatever reason – tradwifes, *cHeMiCaLs* in food, etc etc, I’m like come the fuck on. Really, Katelyn, you’re going to grow all your own food? Do you know how hard it is to produce that many calories out of the veggie garden to actually support your family? You’re willing to battle the various bugs and bunnies and squirrels and birds that want to eat your stuff, too? Not to mention the weather??
I got a former coworker who bought land in a northeastern state known for no produce except blueberries to “make a homestead.” Sure, that will work out. And everyone on facebook was like “omg so excited, going to be so great to grow all your food organically!” Spoiler alert, it’s been 2 years and there’s no updates about their fabulous crop success.
I lived with two.
Cokehead Narcissist believed she could run a drug empire as its cold blooded leader. Considering she’d get high on her own supply and freaked out at the smallest things… sure Jan. She used to constantly laugh at me and tell me I’m stupid. I realized it was gaslighting, but also her raging insecurities boiling out. In the end I’m not the one who did time in the slammer.
Former Housemate used to think he would be great at paintball despite no physical aptitude and piss poor hearing because he played a lot of FPS games against guys who claimed they were real life soldiers. The one time he came along to play, he got massacred. To be fair a lot of gamers think they can be Spec Ops Operators because they play a shit ton of FPS. He was decent at FPS (I suck at FPS which is why he though I was shit), but he forgot that paintball is way different (as different as paintball is to actual combat.)
The worst delusion he actually had was when he told me he got an all paid scholarship to my alma mater for engineering but decided not to go. I just nodded and tried not to insult/embarrass him because if he did get a full ride scholarship then he wouldn’t be living with me. I know two guys who did get a full ride scholarship and both of them are way smarter than myself (and so did my youngest sister but decided to go somewhere else.) A sentence later, he mentioned how bad he is at math… the only reason I graduated (barely) engineering was because of my math skills. You can’t survive in engineering school without math. At the time I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but what he said puzzled me for a long time.
The racist thought he was a natural leader, but I’ve never known anyone who was hated by his troops he led and his commanders when he was in the reserves. My understanding it is one or the other but not both. Whatever actual leadership skills he may have had weren’t in evidence. Like during one of my friend’s wedding when he begged to be best man and then shirked all his duties except at the actual ceremony. It royally pissed me off that I had all this work dumped on me by him, but I organized the events and made sure everyone had fun in a city I didn’t know. It wasn’t until I (and another friend who helped me) got praised for all the grooms events that he tried to take credit for it.
Yeah I don’t even want to organize a yard sale, let alone try to be a drug kingpin.
Comedian Bert Kreisher (the inspiration for Van Wilder) would be one of the rulers of those delulu people. At least from what I’ve seen, he thinks that he’s jacked… and that he can still drink like he’s in his 20s and not suffer any issues. He uses Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle as inspirations but they both died relatively young.
The emperor of them all though is Trump.
I’ve seen some of his content about his daughters just ripping into him and while it’s funny as hell at times, it’s sad he doesn’t see it for the indication of absent parenting that it is.
For people who are deluded that the rich and powerful are somehow focused on rational behavior that maximizes their profit and potential, I’d recommend Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_March_of_Folly
Of course people with all of the benefits of endless staff and every reason to make themselves rich will do the dumbest things, economically stupidest things possible. And they’ll do it with wise people telling them at the time just how dumb they’re being. How they’ll end up broken and impoverished. Why do people think the rich and powerful are immune to folly?
But on a more relatable level, my wife and a friend of hers used to have dreams of raising chickens. Now, one set of my grandparents raised chickens, and I heard the stories of what that entails. You have to be prepared for animals breaking through the fence and terrorizing the chickens, and wounding but not killing just for the kicks. Or the chickens falling ill to some kind of odd disease.
At which point you have to decide – do you pay hundreds of dollars per chicken for the vet to patch them up? Or are you prepared to kill them with your bare hands?
I knew that I wasn’t prepared for that. But my wife thought she might be.
But now another friend of hers is actually raising them, and has dealt with the trauma of racoons reaching their paws through the fence and pulling the chickens apart. Just recently some type of weasel dug under the fence and attacked several. There’s no more talk about raising chickens in my house.
Best example is X-“man,” Skum Nelo
There’s a decent number of people in my suburb who keep a few chickens and yeah, even in an area with basically no predators except hawks and the rare coyote, they still just up and die sometimes.
I am much happier to just buy eggs or meat and call it a day.
They’re mean to each other too. Pecking order is a literal thing – the lowest hen in the order can get her feathers pulled out and eyes pecked out. People want them to be fluffies but they’re mini T Rexes.
Hold on, now. Though to be fair, we never planned this. It just sort of happened. And thank god we don’t have to grow all our own food.
By the way, we’ve got a tomato plant that we put in too late and it’s got 25 tomatoes on it right now. We’re dressing it in my wife’s old nightgowns at night when it gets below 40 degrees. Will the green ones ever turn red? I would hate to lose them.
And what are fried green tomatoes? Are they any good. I mean, in case we can’t get them to turn red. The ones that did turn red were delicious, but things have slowed down last few days.
If they’re big enough that they’re full size but green, you can pick them and put them in cardboard boxes in a cool place (single layer) and they’ll slowly ripen over time. Some might rot, but most will ripen. A few years ago I did that because I had a bunch of full size ones and a night dropping below 30 so it was just a welp let’s try this trick I read about online. 🙂
Are you telling me you’re a 21st Century version of Eddie Albert married to a modern day Eva Gabor? Because that would be awesome.
Going totally off topic but my wife got me the first really good chef’s knife I’ve had.
Holy moly that sucker is sharp. It’s great how easily it cuts but it’s super scary.
Oh man freshly sharpened knives are fucking glorious!
Yeah but I’m scared to go in the kitchen now.
My sister got me one as a house warming gift many years ago. I still have it.
I was so used to my mom’s dull ones (because dad didn’t do a good job sharpening the blade.)