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okay-victoria · 3 years

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Random Personal Rant

For anyone somehow here not from the original thread, this started off me getting asked what finishing school is and me getting shit off my chest that is only mildly relevant about how I could both be of the social class that gets sent to finishing school and grows up on welfare.

With an understanding that in many parts of the world it wouldn't qualify as so, as far as the US goes, my dad is from what counts as a very old money family from Baltimore & Philadelphia. Both his siblings went to college and one now owns a major hedge fund, and his sister is married to a C-level executive at a huge conglomerate. His parents went to college. His grandparents went to college. All eight of his great grandparents went to college. My dad...did not go to college. He was not about that life, and while I don't mean it as an insult, when I say his primary occupation until I was ~5 was a drummer in a mediocre band I mean that he opened for a lot of great acts, and if you lived in the Boston to Atlanta area in the 80s you may have heard him play, but he was never a huge national name. But he wasn't an amateur band playing for free at some random local gig either.

My mom grew up on a chicken farm in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania but also completely rejected her heritage and became a model, sort of like my father, of mediocre status. Not Giselle Bundchen, but had national contracts and if you have a Graco ad/box from 1990-1993 you might see both me and her on it. They met because my mom's friends placed bets, one each, on who could sleep with a member of their favorite local band first and my mom picked my dad and...my mom was actually supposed to go be a model in Tokyo and found out she was pregnant with me and couldn't go 😂

So, after my parents had two kids back to back with a third on the way and determined they needed lifestyles more in line with having three children, they became much poorer than they originally were because my mom stopped working and my dad, with a barely-passed-high-school education but needing a true "day job" worked day labor in construction. My dad's father was too proud to give us money/help if my dad didn't beg for it; despite having eventually four young children my dad never did so we ended up on all the state assistance programs one could imagine. My grandma jokes that dinners at my parents house were BYOC - bring your own chair, because we didn't own any.

My mother and paternal grandmother had no such pride issues and I live in eternal gratitude that my welfare childhood was not as crappy as it should have been because my grandmother would have my mom accompany her on grocery runs and buy us food without my father or grandfather knowing, and every Christmas and birthday my grandparents/godparents could give us the one big ticket gift all the kids wanted that year. But, on the other side, I once got stung by a bee inside my mouth because my brother threw a hairbrush through a cracked window at me and broke it and we couldn't afford to fix it for about two years and a hornet got in one day and rested himself in my coke can (my parents were the very American type that fed me coca-cola in baby bottles at age 8 when I was jealous of my younger siblings lol).

It is hard not to believe in "toxic masculinity" when two men warring over dumbass pride issues would rather their children/grandchildren go without food than suck it up and decide 'help' isn't the worst word in the English language, and you know you've only been saved by two women who came from totally different backgrounds and entirely disapproved of each other but reached out the hand to shake when it came down to toddlers getting the short end of the don't-bend-the-knee stick. It wasn't that either of the men were bad people, I loved them both and got along great with both, but on a societal level I feel they were socialized in a very fucked up way if that was the end result, as both claimed "male pride" in these instances [my dad took multiple thousands of dollars I'd saved from working during college from me during the 2008-2010 financial crisis and didn't tell me and that was the reason I was given for why I hadn't been informed/asked, because it would be too emotionally difficult for an adult man to ask a young woman. My graduation present was them repaying me 1/3 of the money they'd taken from me without asking because I'd like, trusted them when it had been in a joint account that was a holdover from when I was <18 and couldn't have my own bank account].

While in some ways my parents on the surface achieved the American dream of going from nothing to a bunch of money, the real factor in play was that my dad's father was the bank. My parents had no credit and couldn't get real loans. My dad worked construction and during the two major periods that flipping houses was very lucrative, he never had to get an actual loan or pay actual interest, he just had to ask his father to pay out cash and then repay him at a flat 2% interest rate that didn't even accrue over time, just...whenever you are ready, repay the value of the loan + 2%. Because my father was doing something productive, in these instances, my grandfather was happy to pay, because it wasn't giving away money, it was loaning it. I had a very weird situation of mostly being poor but like also getting taken to the "big donors" events at the Kennedy Center and my grandparents regularly buying me a dress as a child worth more than my mom's wedding dress and also needing to pretend I fit in with these people.

And look. When I say "these people"...honestly, by and large, most wealthy people, whether inherited or not, are not the assholes you want to imagine. Most of them are extremely nice. Most of them are generous when it comes to the less fortunate who are in their personal sphere of being. Most of them are just really out of touch. The 100% kindest of all of them that I know once relayed to me that she thought people would be happier if once a year they did what she did...go to the airport with a purse packed full of absolute necessities, buy a one way ticket to the most appealing destination on the flight board, buy your clothes and book your accommodations after you'd arrived, and come back after you felt you'd 'centered' yourself. She didn't understand why there were so many unhappy people who weren't taking this very obvious route to being happier. I didn't quite know how to explain that saying "most" people couldn't afford to do that either financially or from a job/career angle didn't even cover it, as "most" sounds like 70% instead of 99.7%.

I was both my parents eldest son and eldest daughter in the worst combination possible. I was the eldest son because I was the most stereotypically male of all my siblings, in everything from desire to physically fight the battles I was given to dislike of shopping/fashion to lack of emotional connection to my relationships, so I can now fix your average household plumbing/drywall/electrical issue better than most "city" guys I interact with and remain less clingy to them in the process. I was also very much the oldest daughter from a responsibility perspective, I managed our household and from age 10 - 24 managed the finances of our family business, my mom almost died giving birth to my youngest brother after a ruptured uterus that should never have happened in the first place if we had adequate insurance to get her a non-emergency C-section (I was just past 9 years old at the time) and I was informally withdrawn from school for two years to take care of the family when she couldn't because there is no paid parental leave in the US and we got double-fucked by the medical industry because she got a bad "mesh" put in and then had to have a further surgery to repair that which we also had to pay for and didn't have the money to win a lawsuit over.

I don't know quite how to put this, but in the deepest fuck you of the universe, my rich-immigrant-ggggg grandfather's money led to him owning banks, insurance companies, etc, and the family cashed out in a big way when their ownership was bought by and merged with what is now Cigna, one of the biggest US healthcare insurers, and my nuclear family specifically got screwed by the American health insurance industry, but anyway, we were the people selected for that karmic comeuppance so if you want to feel schadenfreude at my expense, I'll allow it without begrudging the sentiment, my family might have fucked up your family’s life too, not just their own.

I got up twice a night to feed my brother because my dad had to sleep unmolested in my room to get to work and my mom was too weak to carry my brother or even hold him against her while she nursed so I had to hold him up to her. Adjusting to living in a city and hearing lots of random noises all the time was not easy when I'd had mom sound instincts from age 9.

I learned to drive the fall my youngest bro was born because my mom couldn't and I had to get my middle brother to preschool and go the grocery store on my own. While I hold absolutely no ill will towards my father or grandfather for this and given that about 1/3 of my paternal family either has an autism diagnosis or should, I fully feel the struggles they both went through to be communicated with, my father wouldn't ask for help, and my grandmother that lived 20 minutes away couldn't give enough help because my grandfather refused to do a single dish on his own as that was outside their "marriage contract" type agreement and she couldn't ever stay with us overnight when there wasn't a clearly-communicated need, so they let the burden fall on a 9 - 11 year old child and that really shaped a lot of my life in both good and bad ways. My youngest brother is 22, and we have only just climbed out of the medical debt his birth left us with between my dad's life insurance and my oldest brother and I paying for the extra cost of out-of-state college tuition.

The irony of all of this is that because my father died before his father, when my grandmother dies, my siblings and I will all inherit enough money (as a non-blood relative my mom, despite keeping her vows to part at death and not having remarried in eight years, is cut out entirely) to make this a non-issue, but my grandfather couldn't conscience spotting his unluckiest child some money in the end of days to pay for my youngest two brothers' education and take that worry off my father as he was dying. The day before he died I had to hold him down in bed to keep him from trying to climb in his truck to go to work because he was so anxious about trying to provide for us in spite of his father having fuck you money, because his father didn't think it was fair to the other siblings (who, at the time, still owned a major hedge fund and were married to a C-level executive of a huge conglomerate). A day and a half later I went back to my job because at the time I was then the sole provider for the family and didn't want to risk asking for the standard week's bereavement leave when I knew I was capable of showing up at work the next day and was fresh out of college so hadn't built up a reputation yet.

My father worked the day each of us was born, so I suppose it is only fair and he smiled at the choice. In spite of what it may seem, I gave a baller and very heartfelt speech at his funeral to all his rich friends that over and above everything, he'd taught us how to be happy with our own lives no matter what, and multiple of them emailed my mom in the aftermath to say they'd reassessed their relationship with their children in light of it, although...tbh I kind of doubt that lasted and they probably changed nothing 😅. The last good talk I had with him, two weeks before he died [his liver was going and it sent toxins to his brain that de-personed him after that and he no longer recognized me as his daughter, but as his sister], I reassured him that though we would all be sad he'd gone, we'd live on just fine without him because that's how he'd raised us, and according to my mom that was what gave him the final bit of peace he needed. Although honestly, I don't think I will ever see the strength in another human again that it took my grandmother to sit next to him and stroke his hand and tell him to close his eyes and imagine he was happy on a beach and die, for God's sake, because he was unaware and in pain and just prolonging it for our sake by then.

That type of obsession my grandfather had with assessing his children and grandchildren on the basis of economic productivity and a very black and white idea of "fair" is one you don't easily forget, I promise you. My hedge fund uncle is currently positioning himself to screw us out of our inheritance because of janky writing in the will and I'm doing my fuck all best to gain the wherewithal to go toe-to-toe with this cold motherfucker in court as the oldest and representative member of my happily much nicer and softer younger brothers who I want to remain that way not because I even care that much about the money, I know what bills affect your credit first and what you can put off paying and all of us have good enough career prospects to do our own thing, but just because I want to give the middle finger to a man that was a multi-millionaire and drew lines on his milk and orange juice bottles when I came over so he knew if I drank what my parents couldn't afford when I was approximately six. Anyway, ask me why I support major reforms in wealth taxation. I don't care who it goes to, just not that guy, you feel?

Having expendable income was very exciting for a bit after I started working but once I got to the hateable point of assessing my annual bonus and internally complaining that I'd spent the money I should have spent on a Sauternes cellar to drop five digits on bedset materials (to be fair they are drop dead gorgeous, very comfy and the factory pays a living wage for people to handmake the sheets/duvets/pillows to people in San Francisco, which is not cheap, so maybe I did more good than harm with that), I two seconds later nodded to myself and went "the government needs to confiscate more money from me". The narrative is always that the "undeserving" will use it for dumb things they don't need like iPhones or refrigerators...?...but like...I could also have gone to Bed Bath and Beyond and bought a very nice sheet/comforter set for at most a tenth of what I paid so am I really spending it responsibly either....?....who is going to get more joy out of this misspent money....?....not me, that is for sure, I probably would have had more fun going to BBB and laying on all the demo beds and buying something there.

My lifelong dream, which may become possible if/when I do have something of an inheritance, is to provide food security for one of the many towns in the US were most residents don't have it. It's the thing I remember the most distinctly over the years. I never could quite believe it when I got to the point that I could just...pay to eat at a restaurant. One of the most disappointed my mother has ever been in me is when I was twenty five and confessed I actually had no idea how much a gallon of milk cost in a city grocery store besides that it was probably between $1 and $5, because I didn't have to know. For now I make a weekly drop off of my excess produce to a mom group I met under somewhat weird circumstances but I was walking through the cut-through that went through the low-income housing back to my apartment at like 2 AM on a Saturday and these moms were out there partying and smoking weed with their kids all strapped in strollers around or the older ones watched by a rotating member of the group and I felt very safe and like these moms had a very good vibe of both living their own lives [seriously for mental health parents but in most cases specifically mothers need to be able to keep up relationships with people their age] but keeping their children safe and accounted for while doing so and trying their fuckin' best against all the odds to figure out how to make that happen when life had dealt them a shit hand.

...anyway, looping way back to the original question of what finishing school is, when I was almost done with middle school my dad had built a legit construction business that then very quickly took off because we lived in a commutable zip code to the now-rich-in-their-own-right people he went to high school with who trusted him to redo their homes. We eventually moved to that zip code but I stayed and commuted back to my old high school. But, i was a pretty wild kid which my father appreciated for a long while because I would follow him around on jobs and enjoy doing physical labor, but once I was mid-puberty and also he had to maybe show me to his high school friends that did not fly.

I snapped - not broke, snapped - my left thumb and my parents had to trap me like a wild animal to get me to go the hospital. Then I got a deep cut that partially injured a tendon in my leg and at eleven I tried to beat the shit out of my dad to prevent him from picking me up to strap me in the car and go to the hopsital. Next I got a deep splinter due to my eternal-barefoot tendencies and it wouldn't come out so got infected and I refused to go to the doctor [another weird back story but I was minorly sexually assaulted [[to be clear, not raped or anything big traumatic]] when I was eight and had to stay in hospital for a week and my parents couldn't be with me all the time so I have a permanent heebie-jeebie about going to the hospital, not true anxiety, I will go if I know I need to and I don't breathe heavy or anything, and I'm actually not permanently weirded out by sex or anything, just doctors in hospitals specifically I kind of unconsciously try to justify not needing to the extent I can rationalize it] and my dad was tired of my antics so he was like "fine if you don't go I will slice your foot in half with a Swiss Army knife to get it out" and I called his bluff and laid down on the floor, stuck my foot on his lap, and he didn't really know what to do when a barely fourteen year old girl called his bluff so my brothers watched in fascinated but horrified awe as I got my foot sliced open spectacularly so that the infection/splinter could come out and I didn't even make a sound out of spite despite it being quite painful to my recollection almost twenty years later.

They saw me cry from pain exactly one time when while trying to break up a fight between all three of them (it was over ice cream) I got pushed and my ankle got dislocated and what actually made me cry was snapping it back in place and they realized it was not a joke. These dumb assholes that I love have ragged on me for "skipping" chores the day after I was in the hospital because the day before that I had to spend 18 hours running Thanksgiving as a good sub-hostess like I didn't have a serious infection that needed treating and couldn't rest because none of them were up to any task beyond peeling potatoes.

After the Swiss Army knife incident, my dad's discussion of sending me to finishing school became real, which I knew when my mom made me take a walk with her and talked about it. Finishing school is like...etiquette school....? In ye olden day when finishing high school was not the norm for anyone, wealthy men finished high school and wealthy women often went to "finishing" school to have a combined education on being a proper lady but also being able to hold a decent conversation with your presumably-educated husband, so it wasn't entirely etiquette non-academic. It was more just like "what a rich man wants in a wife" school, which was sort of household management and knowing enough about cleaning/cooking to correct the staff if they fucked up, how to be a polite hostess, and how to not entirely bore him when you were alone together and had done your five minutes of sex or whatever so actually had to have a conversation. In modern times it has obviously expanded to be less bleak.

I said miss me with that, I can be a girl on my own, so I went full throttle into the girliest sport they offer in high school and ever since have gained the inestimable advantage of knowing how to also use femininity to my advantage, which I am very grateful to my parents for making me learn. It would be great if we lived in a world where that didn't count, but it did/still does, and they really set me up to operate in all the worlds.

It is weird for me to tell the story to Internet strangers because it's one of those things that makes your parents sound terrible and abusive in the general tone of the Internet nowadays, and while I support gender nonconforming children I don't remember my childhood or parents that way. But, I feel like the bits and pieces of my life I've given don't always make a ton of sense together without the context, so here it is, and in the end, I think a number of parts of it are areas where you can probably understand where it makes me have the opinions I do when I write.

Anyhoo, this makes my life sound far worse than it is, I actually have a great life and I am not unhappy with it at all and feel I was on the whole blessed with many more turns of luck than unluck, so, please, do not take this as a depressed artist rant, it is more like a rant of a very energetic person who rants about a lot of things all the time and didn’t need to come out but just did because the question was asked and the time was right with my life being in a bit of flux to think about how I got where I am and where I want to go and why.

Always remember no matter what problems it seems like I have, if I didn’t solve them on my 2 year round the world traveling hiatus I took from working, it’s my own fault, I definitely had the time and money to solve them and just chose not to.

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giantsfootball0 · 7 years

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Is Boston Red Sox’s Craig Kimbrel the best reliever of this decade? – Boston Red Sox Blog

A few months ago, with Craig Kimbrel in the midst of a 15-inning scoreless streak, fellow Boston Red Sox reliever Matt Barnes took stock of the closer’s excellence.

“Craig has been this good for, what, six years?” Barnes asked.

Eight, actually. But Barnes’ point was well taken. Since the first time Kimbrel scaled a major league mound, on May 7, 2010, in Philadelphia, he has been pure, unadulterated nasty. With a fastball that averages 97.8 mph, a curveball that bends like a banana and a pre-pitch stance in which he holds out his arms like a bat’s wings while he leans in to read the catcher’s sign, he has turned out the lights in the ninth inning for three teams, including the Red Sox for the past two seasons.

So, yes, Kimbrel’s early-season five-week run of not allowing a run and retiring 46 of 49 batters — 28 by strikeout — was impressive. But it was hardly out of character.

It also is a microcosm of Kimbrel’s season. Entering Friday, he hadn’t allowed a run in 55 of 63 appearances, while permitting 47 baserunners in 65 innings and striking out 121 of 240 batters (50.4 percent). He had a 1.38 ERA, a 0.66 WHIP and 33 saves in 37 chances. Kimbrel has allowed only 101 balls to be put in play and is holding opponents to a .131 batting average. Right-handed hitters are 12-for-122 (.098) against him.

“Nothing is ever given or automatic,” Red Sox manager John Farrell said, “but he’s pretty darn close.”

Rank*ERA1.791stSaves2891stWAR17.71stK7671stK/914.82ndWHIP0.9093rdOpp BA.1542ndOpp SLG.2281stOpp OBP.2423rdOpp OPS.4711st*Among relievers with min. 100 IP

Indeed, at a time when the Red Sox are trying to close out the American League East, get Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts hot at the plate, keep Dustin Pedroia healthy, determine whether David Price is viable as a reliever and figure out why ace Chris Sale has ceased dominating like Randy Johnson over the past two months, their closer is one thing they need not be worried about.

“Guy throws anywhere from 97 to 100 mph from down here,” Barnes said, dropping his arm to mimic Kimbrel’s release point, “and then he has a breaking ball that comes right off of that same plane. When he’s commanding it, the numbers kind of speak for themselves. I think he’s been undoubtedly the best closer in baseball as long as he’s been in the league.”

Barnes is biased, of course. He also might be right. A strong argument can be made that Kimbrel is the best reliever of the decade.

Consider, for one thing, that this might not even be Kimbrel’s best season. In 2012, his third year in the big leagues, he struck out 116 of 231 batters (50.2 percent), posted a 1.01 ERA, notched 42 saves in 45 chances and allowed opponents to bat only .126. At one point, he gave up just two runs in 37 appearances spanning 16 weeks.

Kimbrel made his debut for the Atlanta Braves in 2010 and became their closer the following year. Among relievers with at least 100 innings pitched since 2010, he ranks first in ERA (1.79), saves (289), WAR (17.7), strikeouts (767) and strikeout percentage (42.0); second in strikeouts per nine innings (14.8) behind New York Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman (14.92); and third in WHIP (0.909), trailing Koji Uehara of the Chicago Cubs (0.833) and Los Angeles Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen (0.872).

About the only thing Kimbrel hasn’t done is win a playoff series, but that isn’t his fault. He converted his only save opportunity in eight postseason appearances, including two non-save situations for the Red Sox in last year’s division series sweep by the Cleveland Indians.

“I’ve always liked Kimbrel at the top,” one National League scout said when asked for his list of the decade’s best relievers. “He gets you out three ways if he wants to. Filthy breaking ball, and he pounds the swing-and-miss from the letters in the zone to eye level. Excellent fielder. Does the little things so well.”

Unlike most closers, Kimbrel was raised to be a reliever. He got his first taste of it during his freshman year at Wallace State Community College in Hanceville, Alabama. After dropping a panel of drywall and breaking his left foot while on a construction project with his father, he was eased back to the mound in a relief role before going back to starting again.

“His conditioning was riding a bicycle, and I decided, I said, ‘Look, we’re just going to put you in that closer’s role,’ because I had doubt, to be honest, about whether he could condition enough to be able to go six or seven innings,” Wallace State coach Randy Putman said. “So it kind of fell into place for him, and he loved it. He loved it.”

While Kimbrel’s broken foot healed, he maintained his arm strength by throwing from his knees, part of a program developed by Putman. The result: Kimbrel built up his lower back and obliques and picked up steam on his fastball. Suddenly he was lighting up radar guns in the mid- and upper-90s, velocity not typical at the junior college level.

“I’ll never forget, his sophomore year, we were playing in Tuscaloosa in a fall game, and I’d say there were probably 25 scouts in to see him. Every pitch was at 98, 99, and it was on the kneecaps,” Putman recalled. “That was the tip of the iceberg. He had signed at Alabama, and I told the coaches there, ‘You ain’t getting him. He’s going to go [pro].‘”

Indeed, the Braves scooped up Kimbrel in the third round of the 2008 draft and had no doubt about his role. They saw him as the mirror image of Billy Wagner, the former All-Star closer with the undersized body and rocket arm.

Kimbrel didn’t make a single start in 121 games in the Braves’ minor league system. As a matter of fact, 80 of those appearances lasted only one inning, a pedigree that has shaped why Farrell has been so reluctant to extend Kimbrel beyond three-out saves the past two seasons.

“At the time, I think the preferred development path for even relievers was to give them multiple innings to allow them to develop their pitches,” said former Braves general manager Frank Wren, now the Red Sox’s senior vice president of player personnel. “But I think that’s what was exceptional about Craig. It was pretty universal in our thought process that we will try to get him multiple innings at times, but this guy is a closer.”

Kimbrel was traded to the San Diego Padres on the eve of the 2015 season and dealt again to the Red Sox before last season. By Kimbrel’s standards, 2016 was a down year. He posted a career-high 3.40 ERA in large part because his walk rate skyrocketed to 5.1 per nine innings. Not one to make excuses — or talk about himself, for that matter — Kimbrel can safely attribute his struggles to midesason surgery to repair cartilage in his left knee.

“His health and usage are huge keys this year,” the NL scout said. “I also think he’s comfortable knowing AL teams now, whereas he was very cautious when he first arrived.”

Regardless, Kimbrel is back to being, well, himself — dominating at a level that has the Red Sox entering the playoffs with the best closer available. Kimbrel also has vindicated Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski, who was widely criticized for giving up three prospects for a closer.

Now the Red Sox have to at least consider a contract extension for Kimbrel, who will be 30 when his $13 million team option runs out after next season.

“As I say, ‘typical Craig Kimbrel,'” Putman said. “He’s having the kind of year that he expected to have. He’s the best closer in the big leagues, in my opinion, and he may go down as one of the best closers ever in the game.”

Said Barnes: “The guy strikes out the world. It’s kind of ridiculous.”

Eight years of ridiculousness make Kimbrel as good as it gets.

The post Is Boston Red Sox’s Craig Kimbrel the best reliever of this decade? – Boston Red Sox Blog appeared first on Daily Star Sports.

from https://dailystarsports.com/2017/09/22/is-boston-red-soxs-craig-kimbrel-the-best-reliever-of-this-decade-boston-red-sox-blog/ from https://dailystarsports.tumblr.com/post/165622772386

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