Category: social justice

  • The Girl in the Basement Apartment

    25 years ago today, I survived psychological torture and likely real physical danger.

    And the particulars don’t matter anymore; I am safe in February 10, 2026, not February 10, 2001.

    But I have to wonder what my neighbors of the time thought. They had to hear the screams; I screamed for my life that night. No one responded. It was a 55+ community probably not used to domestic violence issues.

    I don’t have to wonder about why it took that precise incident for me to decide to have the boyfriend of the time move out. It took precisely that sequence of events to upend our lives like that.

    And I don’t have to wonder because I know: I reclaimed his old room as my own, and rechristened the energy of that space the very day my Mommy came to clean up the trashed apartment he left in his wake on the last day of February when he moved out. 

    My Mommy brought my baby cat Cricket to live with me that day, and Cricket and I went on to live there a good while longer.

    And that day, that lowest of lows, was a turning point. It was the day I decided no man was worth my safety. No man, no matter how long I’d known him, was worth giving up my self-respect.

    I was done settling after that night.

    Thankfully, mostly good men followed that purging of my life.

    I am so grateful that I got to marry the best one.

    Jared is the one who has tolerated living in the light 24 hours a day for years on end.

    Jared is the one who answers the ghosts that aren’t there when I hear noises in the night.

    And Jared is the one who wants nothing from me other than my happiness. He doesn’t ask me to be anything other than real, he doesn’t ask me to perform for him. 

    He only asks me to accept his love as a gift. And that it is: a gift.

    And 25 years on: I know for a fact karma is real, as sad as that is to say in this particular instance.

    Tonight I will go to bed safe, having worked on a new jute bag for most of the day.

    And I will go to bed grateful for the new lease on life I got in 2001.

  • Randomness

    You know what? I sure have missed writing.

    Also, randomness: I’m pretty darn good at Russian on Duolingo. Apparently there were hidden subconscious benefits to spending a good amount of time in my toddler years in a college language lab, as Russian, Greek, and Spanish are all fairly intuitive in addition to the French I did actually study.

    And, there’s a new job to get ready for, and I am glad.

    And it’s nearly tax season, and I am glad about that, too.

    But, it’s bedtime. And with said job on the horizon, routine is becoming super-duper important.

    And apparently my back is really messed up. I don’t know why my spine is a corkscrew, but it is.

    Poor Abby has to have a dental on February 2; she has an infection in her mouth and will have to have several teeth pulled too. I guess that comes from us not brushing her teeth– sorry girl. She’s been a trooper but we finally got her to the vet today. I am so thankful my therapy dog only has to have a dental and it was nothing worse to worry about. I was afraid she had kidney issues.

    Aside from the trip to the vet, it was a good day.

    I’m thankful to be getting back into the headspace that I can concentrate on writing. It’s been a long winter and I am grateful that the fictionalized memoir is still a project on the horizon. It may take me a decade to write, but will be well-worth it.

  • Bye Analytics, It’s Been Fun

    Some one (or more likely, some bot, or maybe some bot programmed by someone though that is a stretch I know) has been really interested in finding old content on this blog, content that doesn’t exist on this blog because it is old content that I wrote years ago at both other hosting, on other domain names.

    And admittedly, I’ve let the mystery drive me nuts for several weeks now. But the game is getting tired, and honestly, I have much better things to do. And it’s stopped me from doing what I really like to do anyway, which is take pictures and write.

    And we’ve tossed, Jared and I, theories around. Could it be someone poking around at my old Tickle the Sun domain? Not possible at the moment, as that points to Substack. And, I didn’t even own carolineprice.com the domain name until 2020 or so, or maybe 2021 (I don’t remember), but I know it was at least March of 2020 because we were sitting in the office (which was the dining room really) of the Holmes Drive house, while Jared was working remotely during the pandemic, when I bought that domain. So the content, which I did write and which these are titles or names of pictures of content that I did write, was never hosted at this domain name.

    And I’ve never had solid luck uploading old XML files with old blog posts into new iterations of a blog, so I gave up on that probably 5 years or so more ago now.

    So, my best guess is that someone somewhere out there has taken to the Wayback Machine to look at my old blog posts, and somehow those are being fed into some bot that is scraping my current site to see if any of it is active.

    Why? I have no idea. I can only think of one person with the motive and expendable finances to do something like this, and that person hardly needs to haunt my analytics in some backward attempt to find. a way to make me look more unstable. I manage to freely admit that fact myself.

    And so….. with that, I’m giving up the ghost and while I am not unhooking Google Analytics, I’m certainly going to take a long break from looking. It’s not that fun a game anymore.

    But, the “My Me Too” post was one of the pages that was attempted (and doesn’t currently exist) two days ago, and seeing that prompted me to remember that it wasn’t here, and yes, I do actually have a copy of that post, and I think that’s the next up for re-publication.

    I don’t know what’s up with my analytics; I know my life is not that interesting, my following is tiny, and anyone who might be inclined to haunt my analytics in this way should know me well enough to know that any antagonization will just make me double-down in my talking about the past and the really bizarre things I have experienced in my life.

    And thankfully, before I posted this, I had a long chat with Jared about my history with paranoia and that yes, I really am okay, things really are weird with my analytics, and maybe it’s just time to get back to writing and taking pictures and in general enjoying my life. I really have gotten quite delayed in writing that lightly fictionalized memoir I am writing.

    And in the meantime, my husband is being the safety professional at home that he is in his work life.

  • July 7, 2003

    Date: Mon 7 Jul 2003 10:32:30 -0700 (PDT)
    From: “Caroline Ellison” <cosettecie@yahoo.com>
    Subject: A not-so “Manic Monday”
    To: “Jared Price” <maxtheape@yahoo.com>

    Jared,

    I had a great time during our chat as well; the time really went by too fast! I did have a good visit with my grandparents; though I’ve only lived an hour or so away for most of my life, they love having me ten minutes down the road, and I go several times a week to have dinner with them.

    I look forward to hearing anything you’re willing to share about Jerusalem .I think the most intriguing thing I’ve heard from other people is visiting the Western Wall; the social dynamics of how strict they are about keeping the men and women separate fascinate me. But I’ve only heard the Jewish perspective on that; How does it work with the other faiths?

    My absolute favorite song in the entire world is Josh Groban and Charlotte Church’s version of “The Prayer”… :) Their voices make an incredible combination.

    Well, I’m calling it a short day at work today; during the week I do data entry, and I just can’t stare at the computer screen to edit our database anymore! It’s pretty deserted because lots of people are still on vacation. I love my job and the fact that it’s a flexible schedule, but the downside to that is that sometimes there’s little motivation to make myself stay all day!

    I hope we can chat again soon,

    Caroline
    ____________________________________________________________________

    You know, I abandoned my Yahoo email account probably about 2007, maybe earlier than that. I’ve long wondered what fragments of thoughts might be hanging out in those old archives.

    But I don’t wonder enough to hunt down wherever Yahoo data breaches have ended up to see if anyone was willing to fish around for it for me.

    Not that interesting.

    And anyway, I have a sizable amount of my old emails printed out. For instance, the one quoted above that I sent my now husband.

    But, I figure someone out there has access to my old cosettecie@yahoo.com archives, because someone in China pinged my Google Analytics yesterday with the precise time stamp as if they were trying to access a post like this on my blog.

    So since someone was so interested, or maybe even had read it already: here it is for the rest of the world.

    There’s other interesting tidbits in my Google Analytics; lots of nonsensical links that would naturally take someone to the search field on my 404 page. Which is why my 404 page is now customized with a photo of myself in my ex Chris’s foyer, holding Muffin, the cat that I gave him at some point in probably early 2003 after she nearly destroyed some very sentimental family items and scraped up my face and hands with a scar that I still have on my left hand, in fact.

    And, actually, someone or some bot simultaneously from Coshocton, Ohio, and Lake City, Florida, looked for /7-July-2003/ on my blog earlier today, as well. In fact, the Lake City, Florida visitor remained on my 404 page for three minutes and three seconds.

    So, whoever you are, if you have access to my old cosettecie@yahoo.com archives, good for you. I’m sure there’s a lot of heartache and happiness and just general drama around in those old archives, as that was one of my college emails. I feel really bad for you if you are stuck sorting through that melodrama on behalf of anyone.

    While you’re at it, you might as well hunt down my old Hotmail archives as well, I’m sure caroline_gsu@hotmail.com archives would be a read of melodramatic young adult drama, as well.

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