
Not actually me, but a truly alarming likeness.
But it’s May! That has to make a difference, right? RIGHT??? No?? Don’t tell me that.
My ankles are covered with mosquito bites. I’m sure this is because I wear pajamas and a robe while walking Gidget at O-Dark-Thirty, and my ankles are the easiest targets. Later this month the bites will shift to the backs of my arms, especially right above my elbows. If mosquitoes had currency and could buy my Elbow Blood I could retire, because the blood right above my elbows is Mosquito Dom Perignon. When it’s not available, my feet and ankles are the domestic sparkling wine.
I’m obsessed with plotting retirement, seriously. I need an off ramp from this situation. The catch: I still need money, as my retirement is definitely underfunded. Not as in “I can’t afford to take four cruises a year,” but as in, I’ll still have to work to supplement my meager retirement funding, but I’d like to do something that is not killing my soul as my retirement job.
But, due to bad decisions over 40 years ago, I am in Florida. I cannot change the now, I can only roll with it and figure out where to go from here.
Disney sued DeSantis, as they should. DeSantis is insane, and has set fire to his own presidential ambitions before a campaign even got off the ground. Disney isn’t Florida’s only major employer by any means. We have defense contractors, tech companies, banks, all sorts of big players, who must all be going WTF about a governor waging war on a major employer because they continued to treat their many LGBTQ employees as people when Our Pouty Whiny Overlord said they’re Icky. I don’t think this is going to turn out as he imagined. Apparently going to Europe to pretend to be a contender while Ft. Lauderdale flooded was a bad idea? Who could have told him, besides EVERYBODY?
Oh, funny about that Disney wokeness: I was in Epcot last weekend and stopped by Sommerfest in the German pavilion to try the pretzel bread pudding everybody raves about. It was delish and totally worth grabbing if you’re there, but that’s not the funny.
The funny is that Disney recently changed their wardrobe choices for Cast Members to make them non-gendered. This was a break for the female cast members mostly, who were often in layered dresses and vests and stockings and stuff that was murder in Orlando heat, to make them look authentically in the Alps or wherever. Generally, the women’s wardrobe options were more elaborate, and often required long sleeves, high necks, long skirts, dark hose, and sometimes headwear (Haunted Mansion, I’m looking at YOU) in 96 degrees and 90% humidity. That’s one of the things that changed, and long overdue.
Basically, now if they want to wear what the guys wear (usually a themed variation on shorts or slacks and an open collared shirt with suspenders or something) they can. A CM can pick what they want to wear as long as it’s appropriately themed for where they’re working.
So, as I was leaving Sommerfest with the awesome pretzel bread pudding (lightly cinnamon-y, slivers of apple, and a lovely custard sauce, not at all as heavy as it sounds, try it) a CM came into the pavilion. He was over 6 ft. tall, blond, bearded and good-looking, and wearing the dirndl dress his female colleagues used to have to wear every day (he was not wearing hose, and was wearing normal food service worker footwear). We greeted each other cheerfully, and he went on his way.
I know there will be people who would hate to see that, but I thought it was hilarious, and I’m betting it was a bit of fun for his work team, and now fun is allowed. In a theme park??? ::clutches pearls, swoons::
I’m reading about deStinkus, and rooting for your Disney-adjacent life every day.