Getting a Laptop . . . | . . . Written on , posted on
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Content Warning: Marital fighting, Shitty parents, (very brief) menstrual product mention, dysphoria, implied transphobia
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(Note: As noted above, this was primarily written on 14.9.2024, and edited & posted long after that.)
Hello lovelies! It has been a very eventful two-days-over-a-week! Many interesting things have happened.
First of all, I’ve got a laptop now! I’m actually writing this blog post with it right now! I’ve been meaning to get one for a while now, so I’m pretty happy! Mami gave me $100 (I think it was ‘cus I said I could begin using my debit card through the bank’s app, before the physical one arrived (which in retrospect I’m not sure was true)), so I got to searching for a laptop online!
I was planning on getting a (shitty, low quality) chromebook. I was gonna follow Mr. Chromebox’s instructions to liberate my device of chromeos, and then I would put GalliumOS on it. After that I’d get my ol’ bootable usb and try to boot a live session of linux mint (with read-write this time)(without breaking anything)(Context: I tried to use it with a school laptop, and it wouldn’t boot windows anymore (IT guys fixed it really quickly and I didn’t get in trouble, so don’t worry)).
I know Mr. Chromebox doesn’t recommend getting a chromebook to use as a cheap linux device, ‘cus it being a chromebook would still saddle it with limitations, linux or no, but c’mon. I wasn’t looking for anything fancy, or even necessarily good.
Primarily, all I wanted was to figure out how to use a bootable usb. I consider the usb to be my actual computer, so the capabilities of the chromebook would be secondary. And while I would like to have games and coding/game making software on my device, as long as I’d be able to use it for school (which so far has meant accessing certain sites and using google docs), I’d be okay. So it really didn’t have to do much. As long as it isn’t significantly worse than a regular chromebook.
So! I was planning on getting a chromebook. A real cheap one, y’know, second hand and on ebay an’ all that. I found one that was $22 and had no shipping cost. My mum said that she’s gotten laptops on ebay before and that they never work, but I was willing to take that chance. The laptop was already pretty cheap, but I could get it even lower.
I had been wanting a laptop for a small while now, but it had actually slipped from my mind. There’s been a lot going on, and I got used to the fact that I just wasn’t able to get one right now, so with the matter closed, I just forgot about it. What reminded me about it was something my dad had said while he and my mum were fighting. He said that he’d pay half for anything we wanted/needed, specifically listing laptops as an example.
While I was loathe to take him up on that offer, since it’d require interacting with him in at least some capacity, I only had $100. It sounds like a lot to me, but if I got everything else I immediately wanted to buy (binder, menstrual cup, earmuffs), I’d already be out of money! And notice how I hadn’t even gotten a public transport pass, let alone fill it up? $100 can get a lot less than I’d think it would!
So every dollar counts. So I’d take him up on that deal.
But perhaps I could worm my way out of directly interacting with him! I hadn’t been to an atm yet (this may have been the same night my mum gave me the cash, actually), so I couldn’t buy the laptop using my card. So, I asked mami if she could buy it, have papi pay for half of it, and then I’d pay her the other half once I’d deposited my money (pretty sure that’s how it went, at least).
Truthfully, I was a bit nervous to do it like this. I’d send her a link to the listing I was looking at, and she’d tell papi how much was half. She could just lie to him and get him to pay more than was needed, and pocket the excess. I don’t know if she’d actually do this. She’s lied about money before, but mostly in the vein of not telling people she’s spent money that was given to her on things considered unimportant, so that they don’t give her less money (‘they wouldn’t understand and would think we already have tons of money’, she says).
In fact, she wanted me to keep the $100 a secret from papi. Which I was happy to oblige with, ‘cus I don’t actually care about his finances that much. Like. The possibility mami would get him to pay more than he needed to clearly didn’t get me to care enough to talk to him and tell him exactly how much he needed to pay. If mr “I’m exploiting a legal loophole to withhold child pay until you talk to me” gets scammed out of a few dollars, then okay. Lol. Consider it a bit of payback for all the times I’ve had to listen to him go on a bigoted rant.
ANYWAY. My mum asked me how much the laptop was, and after telling her it was $22, she said she could just pay for it herself. That offer did make me a bit nervous, since my parents had just been arguing about finances earlier that day. I don’t really remember what was said, but I assume it had to do with low finances, and I think I was more shaken up then usual ‘cus that conversation involved when I would be receiving benefits, and why I hadn’t made a claim yet, and when I would be enrolling in trade school, which are things I don’t want to talk about much in the first place, let alone with these people.
As I was saying, my mum offering to just buy the chromebook outright made me a tad nervous. However, if she is willing to buy things for me then I will gladly take her money. I need to conserve my money, to get as many important things as I can. And not just for me, either. I need to make sure we have enough toilet paper, soap, etc. Things I can’t trust her to prioritise over buying clothes for us without asking that none of us want.
(And then getting all sad and put off when none of us want it. Like you can just avoid that happening by asking if we want it before you buy it. And if that’s not possible, just don’t buy it. But she wants to buy them, and just really hopes that someone else will put it to use so that she wouldn’t have wasted money. But I suppose those feelings leading to poorly concealed disappointment is better than what she used to do in the past, which was guilt us into keeping it, or just try to convince us to wear them.
(Edit: this happens with more than just clothes. It happens a lot less now, thankfully. Can't remember the last time it happened.)
One time I told her that I didn’t like it when she did that, ‘cus I felt like I had to wear whatever she got since it cost money and we’re poor. I couldn’t convince myself not to keep them even if I didn’t like them (usually because they made me dysphoric). I couldn’t even convince myself that I hated them even when I clearly did. It’s functional. They’re clothes. They work as clothes. So I could wear them. Even when the act of wearing or imagining wearing them made me dissociate ‘cus of the dysphoria.
Even when I did like them, which I think I did like some of them, I couldn’t even enjoy them, or figure out if I even did. ‘Cus I didn’t have a choice not to accept them, and the clothes were all wrapped up with guilt.
Well, I didn’t tell my mum all of that. No way I could keep that all straight in my head. I can’t remember that many things! I at least told her that I felt I had to accept all the clothes she bought for poverty reasons, and that I couldn’t enjoy them fully even if I did like them. I might’ve mentioned the dysphoria? This was after I came out. But I’ve never been very brave about sticking up about my transness. To add insult to injury, I told her this in response to receiving a dress (and skirt?), which happened shortly after I came out. She denies remembering this.
I told her my feelings about receiving clothes, and she told me that I should be grateful someone was thinking about me enough to buy me clothes. She was angry. She said some other things as well, but I don’t remember what they were. That was what really stuck out to me.
So at least she doesn’t guilt or otherwise try to convince us to keep the clothes (or other objects) anymore. But I know she still thinks this way, since she said essentially the same thing to papi two days ago about a shirt her mum gifted him. I wonder if the disappointment she shows when we decline clothes is really just poorly concealed, or if it’s meant to guilt us.)
ANYWAY!!! SO YES, I WAS FINE WITH HER PAYING THE $22!!!!! Okay. So she said I could buy it with her card. And after some hassles with her bank’s app, I was gonna buy it!!!
…Only for it to turn out that there was shipping, and that it was $80. I actually had checked earlier to see if it was really “no shipping”, or if it just thought I was in the us. So I went to the checkout and filled out my address. And it still said no shipping! I guess it only calculated the shipping once it got to the last stage, the “check your details to see if they’re correct” part.
So I was just gonna try to look at some stores in-person, looking for cheap chromebooks, although I would probably not find them as cheap in a store (they would probably not be second hand, for example. Maybe I could find a refurbished one). I asked mami where to put her card ‘cus I was done with it, which got her to asking about the laptop. Think that was the order of events. I said the shipping was like $80, so I was gonna try looking at some stores in-person the next day. She suggested I should just go with papi.
So. I ended up going with papi. It kind of stunk. He didn’t do anything particularly horrible, at least. Not like I know he can. Not like he has. I think he might be holding himself back when interacting with me. Not necessarily around me though, since he and mami fight like normal. Still, even if nothing particularly bad happened, it was still uncomfortable.
It was kind of cool going to the store. I recognise it, we’ve gone there for many an electronic before. Well, I think it was cool? At least in part. I couldn’t really discern what I was feeling, but there was definitely some negativity there. Well, I thought the fact that there was a nearby, public bathroom that was unnaffiliated with any of the stores was cool.
The spending limit was also increased to $500, and papi would pay for all of it. That was also good. I ended up getting a windows laptop, which is also-also good ‘cus that’d be a lot easier to boot from a usb on then a chromebook. I’m relieved, I’m not entirely sure I’d be able to do it on a chromebook. There are a lot of steps involved. I still want to, since that seems really fun, but now it’d be without the pressure of possibly bricking my only laptop! So even better! (Not that it wouldn’t be fun if it was my only laptop, but it’d definitely be a more relaxed process)
Baby and Mama [redacted] (papi’s mum) had actually come along too, although they did not come into the store with us. I actually felt a bit better with her there. Like she was a buffer. I’m not actually sure how much she would discourage his bad behaviours, but at least her being there meant I wasn’t alone with him (well, I guess baby would be there too. But he doesn't even go to school yet).
We went to mcdonalds after. If nothing else, it was fun hanging out with Baby, there. I also got to eat some french fries, which I enjoyed.
So yeah! I got a laptop! I got it all set up, so my siblings can use the windows part (download whatever they want, customise anything, make new accounts if they want to), and I can use Linux Mint Cinnamon by booting from my usb!
Setting up the usb and exploring linux mint has been so fun! Like wow <3 My own little thing <3. I was planning on talking about it here, but this got away from me! There’s a lot I want to talk about, and I simply do not have it in me to make a blog post as long as this one for all of them, so I’m gonna try to be more concise in order to get to it all!
Oh, also, I have realised that I actually can use the internet whenever I want here, not just when papi’s turning on his hotspot like I previously thought. I can still use mobile data here (data roaming). I actually figured this out when I first got here, but I decided not to use it ‘cus I know my grandma would be charged extra for it. And since The Matter Was Closed, I didn’t think on it further, and ended up forgetting that was an option.
My siblings use the data. I’m not exactly sure how gm’s charged, but I think it’s like, she’s charged the same if any of us use it at all, irrespective of how much it’s used. But that could be completely wrong, so I’m trying to use it sparingly. It is actually important to use the internet. But also I want it for entertainment. Grandma’s clearly okay with us using it for now. She’s gonna let us use it for a little bit, but eventually she’s gonna cancel our plan since it’d be too expensive to keep up internationally. If she were truly not okay with us using it, then she’d tell us. So I’m trying to be okay using mobile data for non-essential things.
We’re getting internet sometime next week, I think. Plus I should be getting a new sim card anyday now, which would enable me to use hotspot (maybe. Mami’s already received hers, which is the same one as mine, and she seems to be struggling to connect to the internet with it). So internet will be getting better for us all soon.
Hah… I’m tired. It’s 8:07pm, on 14/9/2024. I’m gonna go to sleep, and edit this in the morning. Hope you all have a good day! Wish you all the best! <3