Eight hours of uninterrupted baby sleep! The gods are good.
My understanding of how to pray to Greco-Roman gods is limited, but I imagine there should be a coin involved. The handwritten note might be overkill, but is there ever a bad time for a nice handwritten note? I maintain that there is not.
Placing the coin there did make me wonder how inflation works for the gods though. Will they be pleased with my offering because an American quarter is worth a billion times more than an old Roman coin to them, since gods love shiny new things? Or will they be very upset that I am giving them a coin that is so worthless it amounts to an engraved hunk of belly button lint in the god world? Also, will they be pleased with a 2022 newly-minted quarter specifically? Because I certainly am not. Who decided to give Washington this new boring hair, so flat and lacking the wispy and curly detail of his coin-pressed predecessor? And why is his jawline chubbier and less defined all of a sudden as well? At least they left his bizarrely beefy neck, which has always struck me as the artistic imaginings of some lovelorn coin minter who wished that Washington was training for a Strongman competition instead of what was much more likely, that he had a regular-sized neck to complement his old man body, and made Hamilton do his deadlifts for him.
Anyway, there has been a lot of talk about a baby and not a lot of talk about North Carolina, but I would be remiss in my musings if I did not make it clear that somehow North Carolina is Oregon but better. Am I a genius for seeking an upheaval and moving to pretty much exactly the same place I am from but with all the things I was missing? You know, like when you break up with someone who is absolutely perfect except for their raging addiction to meth and then you meet their brother who doesn’t have a meth addiction and also their clothes are nicer and they don’t beat you. North Carolina is like that and clearly I am a genius.
The trees are greener and the forests are less threatening. Why do I keep moving to forests when I find them threatening? I cannot answer that, except if we refer to my aforementioned genius then it is probably for an excellent reason. Perhaps forests would be less threatening if I knew anything about them, which is why I have spent most of my days looking up what various trees are, because usually when I have been drinking I have the distinct knowledge that the trees don’t like me, and much like when I feel that way with strangers on an elevator, I find introducing myself and asking their name means they will see me as a human being and then be less inclined to murder me, and perhaps knowing the trees’ names will make them less inclined to call together the spirits of the forest to murder me as well.
North Carolina is also home to the most walkable waterfall trails ever, which is wonderful when one has a newborn. I would love to be one of those women who post their artfully done photos of them artfully done up with an artfully posed baby somewhere deep in the woods, but when I say I would love that, I mean I would absolutely loathe it because I can’t think of anything worse than being deep in the woods with myself, let alone a dependent creature. Given the amount of bees that are in our front yard, I just don’t feel like I am equipped to manage such a situation.
Most notable about North Carolina presently is that fall is upon us and it is, how shall I say, fucking perfect. The mornings are in the 50s and the afternoons are the in the 70s, and unlike the summers that are barrages of gorgeous tropical rain and summer storms, it is dry as a bone, which means the leaves are not the soggy and horrific mess that they are back home, they are crunchy and dry and easy to brush off the dog who runs into every leaf pile she can.
Anyone who has spent more than five minutes with me nearing the end of August knows that last year I stumbled upon a new term that I had never in my life heard before, and that term is leaf peeping. This is the dumbest and most amazing term I have ever heard in my life, and it was stumbled upon at the base of the Catskills, where Northeasterners proclaim to have the most picturesque autumn vistas in the US. I spent six weeks in upstate New York last September and October incredibly excited to peep some leaves, and the sentiment I left with was that respectfully, the Catskills can suck North Carolina’s forest phallus because the autumns here are the best and the Catskills look like pure unadulterated trash trees compared to the lush fiery beauty of the Blue Ridge. When you add in that last September in the Catskills it was colder than the heart of whomever redesigned Washington’s new quarter, I will pass on Northeastern autumns altogether.
Oh, and also add in that they charge you $30 just to step foot on an apple farm. Not to pick the apples, just for the pleasure of standing around watching an inordinate amount of women clothed in orange and brown push their husbands to hold the apple basket higher next to their baby’s face who is also dressed in orange and brown so that everyone will know they are aware of what fall colors are and also spent $80 on apples on social media where I could see all of that for free. So far I can also see it for free in North Carolina, but I did not spend $80 on apples because I was not wearing enough orange and brown to be in a respectable photo and also there was a very long line to purchase anything at all and standing in line is probably one of my least favorite activities right next to eating red apples, so perhaps the apple orchard is not intended for me.
Having grown up in Portland, I have never really known a real fall, because all of the trees are coniferous, and the ones that are not are very bad at executing their fall colors, because they are coy bastards who will say oh would you like me to change colors? LOOK NOW nope you missed it you IDIOT and then they will drop all of their leaves in less than five minutes and it will be very wet so when you try to rake them into a leaf pile to jump in, it will be soggy and full of slugs and the trees will mock your attempts to engage with them, which is why Oregon is full of lumberjacks who like to aggressively cut down trees, because they know the trees would cut them down too given half the chance.
So North Carolina fall is an absolute revelation, and I am enjoying immensely driving down the road and seeing a subtle change of color in the mountains while still getting a sun tan in October. Unlike when it is warm in Oregon in October, where I can’t enjoy the weather at all because it smacks too broadly of climate change and merely exacerbates my anxiety that we are all going to die, slowly, warmly, and with the Douglas firs mocking our existence.
Unlike modern fiat money, Roman coins had intrinsic value. The contents of the gold of the coin itself determined its worth.
The aureus coin for example was set to be minted at 1/40 a Roman pound of gold (8.18grams). Gold per gram currently is $52.98 so ($52.98*8.18)/40 = $10.83
A current quarter can buy 0.00471876 grams of gold which equals 0.1887505 of an aureus coin or $2.04 in todays value.
So basically you gave them $2… aka they’re pissed