Is this thing on?
If there's anyone left here who wants to be friends, but doesn't want DW for whatever reason, I'm on Mastodon
@zhelana@disabled.social
A few days before the war in Ukraine started, I was told that Russia had bought 45k body bags. At first it sounded like they were planning on a protracted war, but then it came out that they thought they were going to have an easy time taking over Ukraine. What then were the body bags for? We learned recently north of Kyiv. They were for atrocities. Russia was planning to commit atrocities from the very start.
Because of this, I am done giving my clicks and content to Russia.
Find me on DW — zhelana.dreamwidth.org
Phew. Travelling with small children is not at all relaxing, y'all. I am going to need a vacation from my vacation. At least it is somewhat distracting me from the fact that today is Kevin's birthday.
I went to sleep right around midnight last night, and woke up at 11 but lay there for the hour before my alarm went off. I got up, ate breakfast, grabbed the last of my luggage and my dogs and went to my mom's house. My mom was in the backyard, so i left the dogs' food on the table and left pretty quickly. She thought I might be leaving late, but I was leaving exactly when I meant to.
I got on the road by 12:30, but there was a 30 minute back up on 75S right as 675 joined it and then again as I went to get off on I-16. Somehow or other between those two traffic jams and the time we spent packing the car at Tabby's house, the ordinarily 5 hour drive took 7.
Tabby lives in Dublin, which is like 3/5ths of the way to Hilton Head, which means this is my first drive to HH without stopping in Macon in many years. Y'all. I cannot believe I used to do this every month when I lived in Statesboro and had a psychiatrist in Atlanta. I remember it being long, but not this bad. By the time we passed Statesboro my eyes were crossing.
I went to sleep at some sort of reasonable hour last night. Maybe 11:30pm I think? Then I woke up at 11:30am. For once I felt fine. I had created a rather dier looking todo list last night, which was supposed to be split between today and tomorrow, so after poking my nose into Ukraine's business for a moment or two, I got started on that. Washing the towels so I could bring a beach towel with me and cleaning out the car so that 4 people and suitcases can fit in it on Saturday made up the bulk of the actually hard things to do, and I got those out of the way quickly.
One of the things that needed to be done was some photography. I was originally supposed to go to a park about a half an hour away with a waterfall, but I decided I had entirely too much to do to be driving for an hour (not to mention hoping that the price of gas drops before I actually have to drive that far for a photo op), so I used google maps to find another green space. I drove over there but it wasn't a park. It was a stadium. I took a couple pictures before realizing there was a guy sitting in a car watching me, and I was afraid he'd think I was a terrorist or something going to blow the place up (because really who wanders around a closed stadium with a camera?). So I stopped and went home. I did take about 10 pictures, so I called it photography for the week.
Today we are just all over the place. Rapid cycling from okay to miserable without much semblance of a reason. I fell asleep last night at 7pm. I expected to be back up around midnight and unable to sleep, but I was so miserable I had to just cut it off and try a reboot. Instead I woke up around 9am. Not entirely rebooted. I got up and read LJ and DW, then I putzed around RN. I did some art, and well once again I don't remember what I did with most of the day.
Katrina was supposed to come at 10 and she never showed up. I texted her, called her, and FB Messenger'd her. Not only did she never get back to me, but the "read" alert never showed up on either the texts or the FB messenger. So I am really concerned that she was like in an accident on the way to my house or something happened to her.
I went back to bed at 11 and stayed there until 1:30. Then I got up and ate some lunch and fed my dogs because Rogue would not take her pill out of my hand again, and I put it in her food bowl and she continued to just sniff at it until I covered it with food. I hope she doesn't continue getting smarter than this pill. I have literally nothing left to try.
I had just finished the day's quordle when my alarm went off to go to volunteer. I got dressed and drove out there, my GPS taking me a circuitous route I can only assume went past even worse traffic than what I ended up in. I got there for the last few minutes of recess, and then went upstairs.
oh boy, what happened yesterday? Uh, let's see, first I couldn't sleep. Then I couldn't stay awake, so I wound up going to sleep around 7am and waking up with my alarm at 10am. Then I had my psychiatrist appointment where I told her I was suicidal more days than not. Then instead of asking if I had means and a plan she started trying to convince me to go to the hospital "for a couple days." And then told me I had to convince her not to hospitalize me, instead of asking, as is legal and required "do you have means and a plan?" They wouldn't have kept me, because the people in the hospital would have asked the right questions but then I would have been stuck at the VA without my car. But she did ultimately agree to give me an antidepressant.
I went back to bed and woke again around 3. I read lj and dw, and decided not to go to Rainbow Village because I felt awful. I sat around on the internet until time for dinner, ate and then went to go on my walk with Donna. I figured maybe exercise would make me feel better. It did not. And I was so dizzy at the start of the walk that I was wandering off course into the next lane of people.
I came home and talked to Victor for a few minutes and looked at RN for a little bit. I read from a couple of books, but really felt awful, and finally went to bed around 9pm.
I went to bed around 1am last night, and don't really remember what I did between 11 and midnight, although I tried to sleep 11:30 and got back up at 12:30 just to go back down at 1. The dog did not join me in bed, so I assume he didn't figure it out this time. I don't know what the secret is to keeping the dog off the bed, but I'm glad it worked last night. I woke up around 2.
I don't know what I did all day. I remember telling Victor and Alex that I had a date, but that doesn't seem like it should take all day. I did check on Zelensky, and try unsuccessfully to get Rogue to take a pill (she ate it later when I hid it in her dinner). I feel like maybe I read LJ and DW, but I'm not sure about that. Literally I have no memories of the time between waking up at 2 and leaving for my date at 4:45.
Anyway, at 4:45 I left for my date. He sent me a text message at 4:50 saying he was there, and should he get a table. He got a table, but then met me at the door on his way out at 5:01. I was like "am I late?" but he said no, he just wanted to make sure he was at the right place, or something like that. Anyway, we got situated, and started talking, and kept talking until we finished dinner. When we were finished, the manager came over with a plate of garlic fries and said they were to welcome Michael as it was his first time at this restaurant. Personally, I would have brought over the appetizer before dinner, but okay.
Last night the women from fannish widows told me they all got antidepressants when their husbands died. The schizoaffective group also told me they all have antidepressants. Thus, I suspect my doctor of negligence in not giving me one, and have written to the new lady to ask for one. If she says no, I will complain to the patient advocate and see about getting one anyway. This "well it's just grief, you gotta get through it" is apparently bullshit and literally everyone except for me was given an antidepressant for it. Why my doctor is trying to torture me, I don't know, but I am displeased.
Well, I went to bed at midnight last night, and although Tabby texted a few times, I was certainly asleep by 12:30. I woke up no problem at 8:15 and ate some pretzels in case there was no breakfast at the thing today. Then I got on my way, and got to temple promptly at 9:30. There were boxed breakfasts with fruit in them as well as (duh) bagels, so I ate one and looked at the schedule for today.
Guys, when they asked me to speak at temple I assumed everyone was going to get a brief thing to say. After all, I am no one special. Well we finished breakfast and went for services and only two of us had been asked to speak. I had the topic "welcoming" and someone else had the topic "freedom." We sang a few prayers and I gave my speech. Everyone laughed when I said Rabbi Lebow had introduced me to Vivian on my first visit to the temple, which I hadn't meant to be funny, but okay.
Another day wasted to depression. First I actually felt better overnight, talking to Kali and Alex, and I got my youtube videos watched and generally had a good night. Then I went to sleep around 3 or 4 am, and woke up again around 3pm. And my head was just filled with misery. I lay in bed for a little bit trying to hide from reality, but eventually the dog needed to be fed and wasn't going to let me pretend to sleep anymore. I got up and fed him. I was hungry myself so I ordered a pizza from California Pizza Kitchen. It got here at almost 5.
I checked on Zelensky, and read DW and LJ while I waited for my pizza. I called T-Mobile to complain about the lack of internet on my phone. They said I had to turn it off and they'd call me back in half an hour after I managed to do that. Sure enough, they never called (but resetting the phone's network settings did get me internet back). Then I pretty much just wasted my time until Temple. I talked to Victor through temple, but tuned in for the shema, prayer for healing, and prayer for the dead. I'm annoyed with them, though because they say they start at 7:15 but the youtube countdown to services counts down to 7:20, and then they don't even start then it just goes to a "coming soon" screen. Which, like, come on. If you're going to make me drive all the way over there in rush hour at least start your shit on time. Especially since you keep going later and later at the end.
Today has been another crap day, thanks to depression. This is probably going to be a very short entry as I accomplished very little today. Despite going to bed at 3, I didn't get to sleep until after 5, when I earned my first "did you take your meds today?" from Victor, whom I had messaged with some crazy thing late at night. I don't think I did much else during the night. I think I watched one youtube video, and otherwise talked to Kali and Sarah, and basically sat around and moped because I was already depressed.
For most of the night I was having flashbacks and nightmares, and most of the time not even sure which it was.
I woke up around 2pm and found Jack in my bed again, with the pillows stacked next to the bed. I think I have prevented future occurrences by pulling the mattress back in line with the box spring. If he figures out how to get up there again, I'm going to have to buy a new bed sooner than I expected. I'm thinking of buying a day bed with a trundle under it, and then leaving the trundle out all the time so that when the dog jumps on and off the bed, he lands on the lower trundle, and then gets onto the ground safely. This can be had for less than $500, though I haven't priced the mattresses, which I understand can be pretty pricey. I don't think I need a hugely expensive mattress - the one on my bed at my parents' place is fine, and that was just a cheap mattress with a topper on it.
I got up and talked to Victor for a while, and read the usual internet sites. Somehow it was quickly 4pm and time for my social worker appointment. My social worker is moving to a morning shift, and I have to change social workers again - the 4th one since Kevin died, 9 months ago.
I wasted time until dinner, which I barely convinced myself to eat, and that only because all I had to do was push one button on the microwave. Anyway, I managed to eat and take my meds (after my 2nd "did you take your meds today?" from Wendy). But then, things just went haywire. I realized I need gas if I wanted to get to Dacula Park today to fight. Gas is currently running me about $70 a tank. I sat there and thought about whether fighter practice was really worth $70, and decided it was not, so even though I have to spend that same $70 to go to Temple tomorrow or the Shabbaton on Saturday, I couldn't convince myself to spend it. I hope that I can convince myself to spend it this weekend as I am lonely and bored, and need to see people.
It probably turned out to be a good thing that I didn't go to fighter practice, because by the time I realized I had to take my trash out, I was scared of the dark and couldn't convince myself to go outside. Victor fixed it, but if I had been out in public that could have been a bad thing. As it is I earned my third "have you taken your meds today?" from 2damn.
Anyway, I did the bare minimum for exercise and art, but then did spend a few minutes reading a couple of books (all three nonfiction - I'm not sure I can handle anything going poorly for a character today! Nor a character supporting Hitler. Or what else I'm not sure, but facts seem safer today).
I wrote an email to Nat, though I'm not really sure what to tell him. He's worried that his house is going to be foreclosed on while he's in jail or shortly thereafter, and without the large house that currently houses him, his wife, his wife's ex husband, their daughter, and two grandbabies, his wife is going to choose the family with the grandbabies, and leave him homeless. The only thing I can offer is to take his information and try to fill out Section 8 Housing applications for him so he gets moved up in the line instead of having to start at the bottom of the line in June. I think it's likely he'll wind up on the streets, though. I don't know. Maybe his brother will take him.
This brought us to 10 and time to write here, and so here I am. It's only 10:30, so I have been writing half as long as an entry usually takes me. I don't think I have anything else to say, though.
For most of the night I was having flashbacks and nightmares, and most of the time not even sure which it was.
I woke up around 2pm and found Jack in my bed again, with the pillows stacked next to the bed. I think I have prevented future occurrences by pulling the mattress back in line with the box spring. If he figures out how to get up there again, I'm going to have to buy a new bed sooner than I expected. I'm thinking of buying a day bed with a trundle under it, and then leaving the trundle out all the time so that when the dog jumps on and off the bed, he lands on the lower trundle, and then gets onto the ground safely. This can be had for less than $500, though I haven't priced the mattresses, which I understand can be pretty pricey. I don't think I need a hugely expensive mattress - the one on my bed at my parents' place is fine, and that was just a cheap mattress with a topper on it.
I got up and talked to Victor for a while, and read the usual internet sites. Somehow it was quickly 4pm and time for my social worker appointment. My social worker is moving to a morning shift, and I have to change social workers again - the 4th one since Kevin died, 9 months ago.
I wasted time until dinner, which I barely convinced myself to eat, and that only because all I had to do was push one button on the microwave. Anyway, I managed to eat and take my meds (after my 2nd "did you take your meds today?" from Wendy). But then, things just went haywire. I realized I need gas if I wanted to get to Dacula Park today to fight. Gas is currently running me about $70 a tank. I sat there and thought about whether fighter practice was really worth $70, and decided it was not, so even though I have to spend that same $70 to go to Temple tomorrow or the Shabbaton on Saturday, I couldn't convince myself to spend it. I hope that I can convince myself to spend it this weekend as I am lonely and bored, and need to see people.
It probably turned out to be a good thing that I didn't go to fighter practice, because by the time I realized I had to take my trash out, I was scared of the dark and couldn't convince myself to go outside. Victor fixed it, but if I had been out in public that could have been a bad thing. As it is I earned my third "have you taken your meds today?" from 2damn.
Anyway, I did the bare minimum for exercise and art, but then did spend a few minutes reading a couple of books (all three nonfiction - I'm not sure I can handle anything going poorly for a character today! Nor a character supporting Hitler. Or what else I'm not sure, but facts seem safer today).
I wrote an email to Nat, though I'm not really sure what to tell him. He's worried that his house is going to be foreclosed on while he's in jail or shortly thereafter, and without the large house that currently houses him, his wife, his wife's ex husband, their daughter, and two grandbabies, his wife is going to choose the family with the grandbabies, and leave him homeless. The only thing I can offer is to take his information and try to fill out Section 8 Housing applications for him so he gets moved up in the line instead of having to start at the bottom of the line in June. I think it's likely he'll wind up on the streets, though. I don't know. Maybe his brother will take him.
This brought us to 10 and time to write here, and so here I am. It's only 10:30, so I have been writing half as long as an entry usually takes me. I don't think I have anything else to say, though.
I fell asleep at 10pm last night, and then woke up at 10am. Once again my dog managed to pull pillows off the bed and use them to climb into bed with me. This is bad because at some point someone will come to my door or there will be a noise or something and Jack will jump off the bed, and I am afraid that he will hurt himself. He is too old for me to justify another $10k surgery on his back. So I don't know what I'm going to do about the dog getting into the bed. Maybe the answer is buying a new bed like I've been talking about anyway, but trying to get one that is lower to the ground so that the dog can just jump off of it without hurting himself?
I got up and checked on Zelensky, then read LJ and DW and RN. I wrote yesterday's entry and my reading Wednesday post, and that took like an hour. I really don't know what else I did for 5 hours, though. Mostly I think I just sat here being sad. I should have tried another cup of happiness tea, I guess, but that just seemed like so much work. I tried to talk to Victor, but he kept ignoring me, even though FB says he saw my messages. So that just made me sadder. I really just wasted this time, though.
At 3:30 my alarm went off and I went to Corners Outreach to volunteer (which thank god this is on Wednesdays, not Tuesdays, as it is right over the Jimmy Carter/I-85 interchange). I was made even sadder by a little girl who asked the other teacher for help. When the other teacher told her she was busy, but I could help, the girl was like "I'll wait for you." I have no idea what I did to make this girl not like me, as I've never even seen her before, but I was really sad after that. No one else needed homework help so I spent the period building with blocks with two little boys who had definite ideas about what to create and how to create it and made the exact same designs 3 times in a row.
I came home and ate dinner, and was just sad. I managed to convince myself to read a chapter of my book club book and the last chapter and epilogue of The Four Winds, which, btw, I have been reading since February of last year. I know it doesn't help that I almost completely stopped reading for like 6 months, but I still am not back where I want to be with getting things read, and I fear that I may still be reading things I started reading this week a year from now, and I have so many books that I want to read. I'm starting to stress out about reading, and that's not good, because reading is supposed to be what I do to stop stressing out. But seriously, I have 12 books just from BOTM that I haven't finished, or in most cases even started yet. Never mind all these other books I have around my house.
Mostly, though, I've just sat here being sad today. I don't know why I'm sad. It's not an anniversary of anything major changing. Kevin was awake but still in ICU last year, and that'll continue through the rest of this month. His birthday isn't until the 2nd. It's not anything important right now. I'm just sad.
I did pass 100k worth of writing for the year today. This puts me on par where I wanted to be by the end of the month. If I continue to write at this pace, I'll be at 110k by the end of the month, and keeping up this pace will give me 440k by the end of the year, assuming I don't do NaNo and Camp NaNo. If I do both of those, I'll wind up with about 500k, but I'm traveling during both camps, so not sure I'm going to bother with getting 50k for those. Nor am I entirely convinced that I'll be doing NaNo, at least with a 50k goal. I'll be writing more though, I think. And if HQ ever gives us permission to have in person write ins again, I hope to start up the year round one we used to have going, which would give me a lot more words by the end of the year. HQ says not to expect any word until June or July, though.
Anyway, today was mostly wasted time, and now it's 10:45 and I'm not at all tired, so I guess this useful trick of sleeping early and waking up at human hours is going to end tonight. Too bad, I was hoping it would continue until Saturday when I let Kyra talk me into a day of religious stuff (I'm not even entirely sure what I'm getting into except that I volunteered to write a page long speech on the theme of "welcoming - when have you been welcomed by our community at TKE" so I can't be late or skip services and just show up for the shabbaton part).
Eirini, it turns out, was 6 years old in 1994, making him younger than me by more than 5 years. I had been assuming he was old because he occasionally complains of not understanding "millennial things." I had assumed he was a boomer, but it turns out he's just a millennial who doesn't understand his own generation. I can relate to that! (I hate avocado).
I've been reading a book about one of the families that were movers and shakers during the 1930s. Although they are Americans, they are very involved with Berlin and Hitler, selling him parts to make weapons and tut tutting "oh it's a shame about the Jews but nothing we can do" even when German Jews show up on their doorsteps with a list of things they actually could do.
This book is highly uncomfortable to me because my family were actual movers and shakers during the time period, at least my dad's family were. And while I know that both of my grandfathers and my grandmother's first husband all fought in the war, I don't know what they were up to before that, or rather what their parents were up to before that. The book is about a modern woman, a history professor, who discovers these problematic people in her family. And damn if that's not hitting a little too close to home.
I got up and checked on Zelensky, then read LJ and DW and RN. I wrote yesterday's entry and my reading Wednesday post, and that took like an hour. I really don't know what else I did for 5 hours, though. Mostly I think I just sat here being sad. I should have tried another cup of happiness tea, I guess, but that just seemed like so much work. I tried to talk to Victor, but he kept ignoring me, even though FB says he saw my messages. So that just made me sadder. I really just wasted this time, though.
At 3:30 my alarm went off and I went to Corners Outreach to volunteer (which thank god this is on Wednesdays, not Tuesdays, as it is right over the Jimmy Carter/I-85 interchange). I was made even sadder by a little girl who asked the other teacher for help. When the other teacher told her she was busy, but I could help, the girl was like "I'll wait for you." I have no idea what I did to make this girl not like me, as I've never even seen her before, but I was really sad after that. No one else needed homework help so I spent the period building with blocks with two little boys who had definite ideas about what to create and how to create it and made the exact same designs 3 times in a row.
I came home and ate dinner, and was just sad. I managed to convince myself to read a chapter of my book club book and the last chapter and epilogue of The Four Winds, which, btw, I have been reading since February of last year. I know it doesn't help that I almost completely stopped reading for like 6 months, but I still am not back where I want to be with getting things read, and I fear that I may still be reading things I started reading this week a year from now, and I have so many books that I want to read. I'm starting to stress out about reading, and that's not good, because reading is supposed to be what I do to stop stressing out. But seriously, I have 12 books just from BOTM that I haven't finished, or in most cases even started yet. Never mind all these other books I have around my house.
Mostly, though, I've just sat here being sad today. I don't know why I'm sad. It's not an anniversary of anything major changing. Kevin was awake but still in ICU last year, and that'll continue through the rest of this month. His birthday isn't until the 2nd. It's not anything important right now. I'm just sad.
I did pass 100k worth of writing for the year today. This puts me on par where I wanted to be by the end of the month. If I continue to write at this pace, I'll be at 110k by the end of the month, and keeping up this pace will give me 440k by the end of the year, assuming I don't do NaNo and Camp NaNo. If I do both of those, I'll wind up with about 500k, but I'm traveling during both camps, so not sure I'm going to bother with getting 50k for those. Nor am I entirely convinced that I'll be doing NaNo, at least with a 50k goal. I'll be writing more though, I think. And if HQ ever gives us permission to have in person write ins again, I hope to start up the year round one we used to have going, which would give me a lot more words by the end of the year. HQ says not to expect any word until June or July, though.
Anyway, today was mostly wasted time, and now it's 10:45 and I'm not at all tired, so I guess this useful trick of sleeping early and waking up at human hours is going to end tonight. Too bad, I was hoping it would continue until Saturday when I let Kyra talk me into a day of religious stuff (I'm not even entirely sure what I'm getting into except that I volunteered to write a page long speech on the theme of "welcoming - when have you been welcomed by our community at TKE" so I can't be late or skip services and just show up for the shabbaton part).
Eirini, it turns out, was 6 years old in 1994, making him younger than me by more than 5 years. I had been assuming he was old because he occasionally complains of not understanding "millennial things." I had assumed he was a boomer, but it turns out he's just a millennial who doesn't understand his own generation. I can relate to that! (I hate avocado).
I've been reading a book about one of the families that were movers and shakers during the 1930s. Although they are Americans, they are very involved with Berlin and Hitler, selling him parts to make weapons and tut tutting "oh it's a shame about the Jews but nothing we can do" even when German Jews show up on their doorsteps with a list of things they actually could do.
This book is highly uncomfortable to me because my family were actual movers and shakers during the time period, at least my dad's family were. And while I know that both of my grandfathers and my grandmother's first husband all fought in the war, I don't know what they were up to before that, or rather what their parents were up to before that. The book is about a modern woman, a history professor, who discovers these problematic people in her family. And damn if that's not hitting a little too close to home.
Let's see what I remember of yesterday. I woke up at like 8am, and ran around the internet for a while. I read a very little bit, then went back to sleep until noon.
I cleaned my kitchen and cooked dinner, and ate dinner. Then I failed to get together the oomph to finish putting away dinner until later in the night after fighter practice.
I went to walkies with Donna, which took longer to get to than expected because there was a terrorist incident on a greyhound bus on I-85 between Jimmy Carter and Pleasant Hill. I live right on Jimmy Carter, and police were having everyone who would normally be on the very packed 6 lane highway come down and join everyone on the also already typically packed 2 lane street right where I live. Donna saw the SWAT team passing her by this morning as she took the highway, so this has apparently been a thing all day.
Fortunately, I was going away from the problem when I went to fighter practice, and I was the first one there. Ben and Charlie were so late that I was about to leave when they showed up. We got some good fighting in, and I'm not quite as rusty as I may have expected.
Michael had texted me earlier and I told him about the practice. He was having dinner with his mother just around the corner so he showed up. I introduced him to Ben and Charlie and we stood around talking about fighting for a while. He said he's interested in trying, so that's cool. :)
I got home right around 9, and just kind of wasted time for an hour (I should have written this entry then!) then at 10 I fell asleep and slept through until 10.
I cleaned my kitchen and cooked dinner, and ate dinner. Then I failed to get together the oomph to finish putting away dinner until later in the night after fighter practice.
I went to walkies with Donna, which took longer to get to than expected because there was a terrorist incident on a greyhound bus on I-85 between Jimmy Carter and Pleasant Hill. I live right on Jimmy Carter, and police were having everyone who would normally be on the very packed 6 lane highway come down and join everyone on the also already typically packed 2 lane street right where I live. Donna saw the SWAT team passing her by this morning as she took the highway, so this has apparently been a thing all day.
Fortunately, I was going away from the problem when I went to fighter practice, and I was the first one there. Ben and Charlie were so late that I was about to leave when they showed up. We got some good fighting in, and I'm not quite as rusty as I may have expected.
Michael had texted me earlier and I told him about the practice. He was having dinner with his mother just around the corner so he showed up. I introduced him to Ben and Charlie and we stood around talking about fighting for a while. He said he's interested in trying, so that's cool. :)
I got home right around 9, and just kind of wasted time for an hour (I should have written this entry then!) then at 10 I fell asleep and slept through until 10.
I am writing very early today because I really might collapse into bed at any moment and I like to write on the day of before I sleep and forget everything. Last night I went to sleep at 8pm and while I momentarily woke up around 3am, I slept until 7:30ish am. My dog is now tool using. He can't jump up on the bed anymore. So last night he pulls all of Kevin's pillows off the bed, stacks them next to the bed, and uses them to climb up onto the bed. Then steals the other dog's food which I keep on the bed specifically so he can't do that. Then starts licking my face until I am awake. So now I am awake and it is 7:30am.
I got up, checked on Zelensky, and decided to try a cup of Native Happiness Tea from roogenics. I immediately noticed a mood uptick and then noticed that it seemed to help with my ADHD some, too. I could read more entries before getting distracted when I tried to read LJ and DW. So that is useful information. Unfortunately, shipping went up from $10 to $40 in the last 6 months. They must have used Russian oil or something, because that's a lot real quick. I guess that if I buy several boxes it might come out to an okay price, but good grief.
I spent the next several hours reading my books and not even being overly ADHD about it. I was also talking to Sarah, who inadvertently reminded me that I have to refill my prescription since I've been trying to do that for a week now and the VA's patient portal hasn't been working. I tried it on my phone today, and that also didn't work, so the problem is not on my end. It's because of whatever they were trying to fix by changing how you login. So i had to actually call the pharmacy (and phone calls are stressful), and the first time I called it just hung up on me, but the second time I got some kind of automated phone tree that eventually let me refill my prescription. Of course, I also got not one but two emails that I have secure messages from my doctors on the patient portal, which I can't figure out how to access.
Today started in earnest around 3pm. First I had to go to the post office with the forgotten package. Fortunately that was just run in and out and drop it on the desk. Then I went to a park on the bank of the Chattahoochee where I took several photographs in about 15-20 minutes that I walked around. There was a longer walking trail, but I had an appointment, so I didn't really have much time to explore. Perhaps I'll go back once Spring seems more sprung, and when I have a little more time.
From there I went to the gym, where I had my first meeting with my personal trainer. He's a fun guy, who was pretty talkative about other hobbies. When I told him my goal was to be better at sword fighting, not to lose weight, he actually respected that and asked me what kinds of movements I need for sword fighting, how much my armor weighed, how much a sword weighed, and whether I needed endurance or bursts of speed more. So I am quite pleased.
From there we did a few exercises - some squats, some rows, some push ups, something else I've forgotten the name of which is probably bad because it'll probably come up in my homework and I won't know what it is. Then we worked a little bit on burst of speed exercises. He measured various parts of my body and wrote that down in my journal. Then he told me to eat more protein, but I don't need to track every calorie if I'm not trying to lose weight and I'm not actively gaining weight.
He also said that he would email me 4 more workouts to do this week. I think that's a little more than I'm likely to get to - I was planning on getting to the gym 3x a week, walking with Donna and swimming with Donna and of course sword fighting once a week for 6 workouts a week. I don't think I have 7 full workouts a week in me. I'm not even sure when I could even consider doing them.
I was with him for an hour, and then got dressed and went to my mother's house for dinner. I pretty much collapsed into the chair where I found her like "I can't move any more." Which led to a little bit of defending myself in spending money on a personal trainer. But the fact is when I made my budget I assumed I would spend 3/4ths as much as Kevin and I together spent on food. The actual amount is more like 15%. So there's enough extra money without having to take more out of the stock market to afford this.
Mom and I went to a Cuban restaurant where I decided on something besides my usual. It was good, I think even better than my usual, but still not as good as the mystery item Kelly got when we went together and she got the best thing by far. I don't know what else to try for that. I'm pretty sure it was a sandwich and mom is pretty sure it was chicken, so there can't be too many other things to try??
I remembered to go upstairs and get the painting of Kevin and me we had done on our honeymoon, but then I couldn't access the fireplace to put it up because there are several boxes of bubble wrap blocking the way. I put it in my office, where I will never see it, and I'm not sure it's any better that it is home. Then I came home, and got here around 6:30.
I got dressed for bed, took my dinner meds, and let the dogs out before collapsing onto the couch, surrounded by my animals, to stare sadly at the internet. I talked to Sarah and Kali until Kali had to go for dinner and Sarah had to go give a cat a shot (she referred to it as shooting her cat, which was somewhat concerning). Then I checked off all my dailies on habitica, which brought me just barely to level 14 - the first level at which I can skip tasks without losing health by using some of my manna. So that's good because now I don't have to stress about what to do about unfinished tasks. Considering yesterday I went back to lvl 1, the speed with which I got to 14 is rather alarming. I forgot to look at how many days it took me to get to 100, but I think it was in the 70s, which means every 2-3 months I'm finishing the game. That's a little frustrating, and I would like to stay at higher levels longer while still improving my character, which stops at lvl 100.
I had a conversation earlier today about the HIV vaccine that just went into human trials. I said something like I hope they make it safe for infants to protect the babies in Africa from people who think raping a baby will cure their AIDS. Everyone my age knew what I was talking about, but no one under the age of 30 had any clue. Did we stop talking about this for some reason? Is it because it is not PC for us to suggest that Africans do anything bad? Several news articles, including some recent ones, talked about this... but none of the younger members of a fairly politically astute group had ever heard it before. Weird. Weirdness aside, it's great that the technology that we developed to get Covid vaccines might actually mitigate the AIDS crisis as well. I enjoy living in the future.
The book we're currently reading for book club is... well I think it's a history book meant for historians, not for lay readers. It has all that dry, dusty feeling that historians use to communicate with one another. It has thus far made courtship, marriage, and divorce seem dry and dull in this woman's life. I really hope once they get into the espionage it picks up a little. Still, this is a book I'd really like someone to read for me and send me like a summary I could read in 30 minutes with all the exciting or interesting bits. I do not give one fuck about this lady right now to the point that I can't even remember her name (which is the title of the book!) And the worst part is I don't even see any Jewish content in the book. The titular subject is French and it is about an espionage ring in Nazi France which I assume does not include many Jews.
The second book we're reading for book club also does not have main characters who are Jewish. I think one of their husband's might be, but he's gotten two lines of text in the past 100 pages. Also, it is a second WWII book, and I thought we had all agreed that we didn't want to read much WWII material. So, basically... I am not happy with book club right now.
I've been trying to stay up to midnight so I can pester Victor before he wakes up tomorrow (it's his birthday. I almost always message my friends at midnight on their birthdays. It's my thing). But honestly I'm tired, and I think if I can sleep, I should. Maybe this going to bed early and waking up early thing will even extend until Saturday and I'll be perky and awake for the Shabbaton! (Wouldn't that be nice!)
I'm down to needing like 250 words per day to get to 100k by the end of the month (for the year), so that is a goal that if I haven't accomplished it tonight, I almost certainly will within the next couple days.
I got up, checked on Zelensky, and decided to try a cup of Native Happiness Tea from roogenics. I immediately noticed a mood uptick and then noticed that it seemed to help with my ADHD some, too. I could read more entries before getting distracted when I tried to read LJ and DW. So that is useful information. Unfortunately, shipping went up from $10 to $40 in the last 6 months. They must have used Russian oil or something, because that's a lot real quick. I guess that if I buy several boxes it might come out to an okay price, but good grief.
I spent the next several hours reading my books and not even being overly ADHD about it. I was also talking to Sarah, who inadvertently reminded me that I have to refill my prescription since I've been trying to do that for a week now and the VA's patient portal hasn't been working. I tried it on my phone today, and that also didn't work, so the problem is not on my end. It's because of whatever they were trying to fix by changing how you login. So i had to actually call the pharmacy (and phone calls are stressful), and the first time I called it just hung up on me, but the second time I got some kind of automated phone tree that eventually let me refill my prescription. Of course, I also got not one but two emails that I have secure messages from my doctors on the patient portal, which I can't figure out how to access.
Today started in earnest around 3pm. First I had to go to the post office with the forgotten package. Fortunately that was just run in and out and drop it on the desk. Then I went to a park on the bank of the Chattahoochee where I took several photographs in about 15-20 minutes that I walked around. There was a longer walking trail, but I had an appointment, so I didn't really have much time to explore. Perhaps I'll go back once Spring seems more sprung, and when I have a little more time.
From there I went to the gym, where I had my first meeting with my personal trainer. He's a fun guy, who was pretty talkative about other hobbies. When I told him my goal was to be better at sword fighting, not to lose weight, he actually respected that and asked me what kinds of movements I need for sword fighting, how much my armor weighed, how much a sword weighed, and whether I needed endurance or bursts of speed more. So I am quite pleased.
From there we did a few exercises - some squats, some rows, some push ups, something else I've forgotten the name of which is probably bad because it'll probably come up in my homework and I won't know what it is. Then we worked a little bit on burst of speed exercises. He measured various parts of my body and wrote that down in my journal. Then he told me to eat more protein, but I don't need to track every calorie if I'm not trying to lose weight and I'm not actively gaining weight.
He also said that he would email me 4 more workouts to do this week. I think that's a little more than I'm likely to get to - I was planning on getting to the gym 3x a week, walking with Donna and swimming with Donna and of course sword fighting once a week for 6 workouts a week. I don't think I have 7 full workouts a week in me. I'm not even sure when I could even consider doing them.
I was with him for an hour, and then got dressed and went to my mother's house for dinner. I pretty much collapsed into the chair where I found her like "I can't move any more." Which led to a little bit of defending myself in spending money on a personal trainer. But the fact is when I made my budget I assumed I would spend 3/4ths as much as Kevin and I together spent on food. The actual amount is more like 15%. So there's enough extra money without having to take more out of the stock market to afford this.
Mom and I went to a Cuban restaurant where I decided on something besides my usual. It was good, I think even better than my usual, but still not as good as the mystery item Kelly got when we went together and she got the best thing by far. I don't know what else to try for that. I'm pretty sure it was a sandwich and mom is pretty sure it was chicken, so there can't be too many other things to try??
I remembered to go upstairs and get the painting of Kevin and me we had done on our honeymoon, but then I couldn't access the fireplace to put it up because there are several boxes of bubble wrap blocking the way. I put it in my office, where I will never see it, and I'm not sure it's any better that it is home. Then I came home, and got here around 6:30.
I got dressed for bed, took my dinner meds, and let the dogs out before collapsing onto the couch, surrounded by my animals, to stare sadly at the internet. I talked to Sarah and Kali until Kali had to go for dinner and Sarah had to go give a cat a shot (she referred to it as shooting her cat, which was somewhat concerning). Then I checked off all my dailies on habitica, which brought me just barely to level 14 - the first level at which I can skip tasks without losing health by using some of my manna. So that's good because now I don't have to stress about what to do about unfinished tasks. Considering yesterday I went back to lvl 1, the speed with which I got to 14 is rather alarming. I forgot to look at how many days it took me to get to 100, but I think it was in the 70s, which means every 2-3 months I'm finishing the game. That's a little frustrating, and I would like to stay at higher levels longer while still improving my character, which stops at lvl 100.
I had a conversation earlier today about the HIV vaccine that just went into human trials. I said something like I hope they make it safe for infants to protect the babies in Africa from people who think raping a baby will cure their AIDS. Everyone my age knew what I was talking about, but no one under the age of 30 had any clue. Did we stop talking about this for some reason? Is it because it is not PC for us to suggest that Africans do anything bad? Several news articles, including some recent ones, talked about this... but none of the younger members of a fairly politically astute group had ever heard it before. Weird. Weirdness aside, it's great that the technology that we developed to get Covid vaccines might actually mitigate the AIDS crisis as well. I enjoy living in the future.
The book we're currently reading for book club is... well I think it's a history book meant for historians, not for lay readers. It has all that dry, dusty feeling that historians use to communicate with one another. It has thus far made courtship, marriage, and divorce seem dry and dull in this woman's life. I really hope once they get into the espionage it picks up a little. Still, this is a book I'd really like someone to read for me and send me like a summary I could read in 30 minutes with all the exciting or interesting bits. I do not give one fuck about this lady right now to the point that I can't even remember her name (which is the title of the book!) And the worst part is I don't even see any Jewish content in the book. The titular subject is French and it is about an espionage ring in Nazi France which I assume does not include many Jews.
The second book we're reading for book club also does not have main characters who are Jewish. I think one of their husband's might be, but he's gotten two lines of text in the past 100 pages. Also, it is a second WWII book, and I thought we had all agreed that we didn't want to read much WWII material. So, basically... I am not happy with book club right now.
I've been trying to stay up to midnight so I can pester Victor before he wakes up tomorrow (it's his birthday. I almost always message my friends at midnight on their birthdays. It's my thing). But honestly I'm tired, and I think if I can sleep, I should. Maybe this going to bed early and waking up early thing will even extend until Saturday and I'll be perky and awake for the Shabbaton! (Wouldn't that be nice!)
I'm down to needing like 250 words per day to get to 100k by the end of the month (for the year), so that is a goal that if I haven't accomplished it tonight, I almost certainly will within the next couple days.
I slept from 1 to 6 on Saturday night, then got up and ate breakfast and read LJ and DW and checked on Zelensky. I went back to bed from 10 to 2. When I got up at 2, Jack was in bed with me. Jack cannot jump into the bed and that's a good thing because I don't want him jumping down from the bed. My dog is now tool using. He can't jump up on the bed anymore. So last night he pulls all of Kevin's pillows off the bed, stacks them next to the bed, and uses them to climb up onto the bed. Then steals the other dog's food which I keep on the bed specifically so he can't do that. Then starts licking my face until I am awake. I lay there and pet Jack for a few minutes before getting up again.
I went to the gym as soon as I got up, and did some weight lifting activities. Then I came home and read my books. At one point I lost internet, and for some reason the modem just randomly turned itself off until I unplugged and replugged it. It was literally working fine 2 seconds before. Who knows?
Anyway, other than reading and a little bit of writing on a prompt I didn't like and didn't do much with, I didn't accomplish much yesterday. I was going to cook except then I kept thinking how much I wanted chicken tikka masala. Well, I don't usually want a food. Usually I just eat because I have to eat. So the fact that I actually wanted a specific thing, I decided to buy it for myself. My first order got canceled, so I had to order again and it took like an hour and a half from the start of the first order to get anything. And then once I got it the "medium" had absolutely no spice to it at all and was very disappointing. Alas. And now I still want chicken tikka masala.
Other than showering, I didn't manage much else before I absolutely collapsed into bed at 8pm.
I went to the gym as soon as I got up, and did some weight lifting activities. Then I came home and read my books. At one point I lost internet, and for some reason the modem just randomly turned itself off until I unplugged and replugged it. It was literally working fine 2 seconds before. Who knows?
Anyway, other than reading and a little bit of writing on a prompt I didn't like and didn't do much with, I didn't accomplish much yesterday. I was going to cook except then I kept thinking how much I wanted chicken tikka masala. Well, I don't usually want a food. Usually I just eat because I have to eat. So the fact that I actually wanted a specific thing, I decided to buy it for myself. My first order got canceled, so I had to order again and it took like an hour and a half from the start of the first order to get anything. And then once I got it the "medium" had absolutely no spice to it at all and was very disappointing. Alas. And now I still want chicken tikka masala.
Other than showering, I didn't manage much else before I absolutely collapsed into bed at 8pm.
I think it was warmer than 61 outside today. I was walking around in sandals and was not at all cool. But that's what it says and I don't know how to find out any more accurately.
Anyway, getting to sleep was a trick. Starting at 10 I took a sleeping pill, then tried to sleep an hour. Finding myself not at all tired, I took a cup of herbal sleep tea, then tried to sleep an hour. Finding myself not at all tired, I took 20 mg of melatonin then tried to sleep for an hour. Finding myself not at all tired, I took some nyquil and finally, finally fucking fell asleep around 2am. I had been up 25 hours and until I took the nyquil, I still had the energy to go run a marathon or something. Like, I was just not going to sleep. At any rate, once I finally got to sleep, I slept until my alarm went off at 1:30. And actually a little past that to 1:45.
I got up too late to eat or think, and just put a bra on and made a run for the door. I got to the gym at 2, promptly, so I guess 15 minutes is a pretty accurate guess for how long it takes me to get dressed and drive there. There were actually spots available in the parking lot, which is amazing, so I grabbed one and went in, showing up at 1:58.
Today was my first work out with a personal trainer. We did some ab work that I already knew how to do, then used these little handle things to do some squats and some other body weight exercises. Then we moved to some things with dumbbells before going out in the main room to use the "for dummies" machines to do hips and back exercises. I guess this took about 20 minutes, and then they put me on a treadmill on an incline about like the big one at the park. I lasted 5.5 minutes before my back gave out (which is honestly why I've tried to either do cardio or weights on a given day and not both because I know I don't have the capacity to work out for that long). When I gave up, they had me sit down and sign a contract for a year's worth of PT and pay for the first month.
They gave me a little book to write down my measurements once a month as if I'm going to lose weight. Indeed, they kept focusing on weight loss and changing how I eat and I'm just sitting there like "I'm not going to change how I eat, I'm not going to lose weight. I'm aware that I can't lose weight. Please just help me develop bursts of speed and energy and some endurance and the ability to lift heavy things in my arms and hold them out in front of me for long periods of time. Look, there is something actually wrong with me which my doctor will not investigate that is preventing me from losing weight. Maybe microtumors on my thyroid, or something like that. The simple fact is that even if I do everything perfectly, i will not lose weight. I didn't even lose a single pound when I started taking thyroid medicine. It's just not going to happen.
Interestingly, however, the little doohickey you hold in your hands and it tells you what percent body fat you are tells me I have 132 lbs of muscle and bone. Which is interesting because according to my BMI the absolute most I should ever weigh is 130 lbs. So that would be less than 0% body fat which seems... like maybe what I've been trying to tell my doctor about BMI not being a good way to determine what I should weigh has more merit than I thought. I know that my body fat percentage was low enough to join the army at 170, which means I'm really only 60 lbs overweight, not 100. Which doesn't really mean anything to me other than as it pertains to my risk of dying of Covid.
I have no idea how, but it was about 4pm when I got home. I ate breakfast, since I was starving and not going to eat dinner on time. Then I checked on Zelensky. I only had 40 minutes to do whatever I was going to do, and I spent it talking to Alex. Like 2 minutes before I had to go, i forgot that I was about to have to go and started a Ukrainian lesson on duolingo. Of course, my alarm went off in the middle of it, so I put it aside and left.
I headed to the pool, and we walked and talked for an hour. The only problem was that I actually looked at my heart rate at one point while we were walking and it was only 103. So this isn't exactly exercise the way I'm doing it. I mean, sure it will burn more calories than sitting on my butt on the internet or reading a book, but not by much. I decided I wanted some leg and wrist weights like Donna has to maybe make me work a little harder. The problem was I wanted them with velcro not a little clasp, and no one had this. I know it exists, because Donna owns it. Yet even amazon didn't have any such thing. I eventually found two pairs for $37 a pair on some kind of site for disabled children (I have no idea what this has to do with disabled children but a lot of what they sold was wheelchairs and lifts to get disabled people into and out of a pool). Then shipping was $10! Sighs. I sucked it up and paid it because it would be nice to actually get exercise at my exercise sessions. Even if it is weights and not cardio.
I came home and it was past dinner time and I had finished my meal I cooked in 3 days instead of 4, so I had no food. I ended up ordering some chicken fingers from bojangles, but it turned into a mess. They sent me rice and beans instead of fries, didn't send me a biscuit even though I ordered two, sent me an apple pie I didn't order, and didn't send me three cookies I did order. They also didn't send the ranch dressing I ordered. Uber eats offered me $3 compensation for this, which is not nearly enough. It won't even pay the delivery fee for next time I order something, so now I am cranky with them.
Someone sent me an email asking after an ebay package. Sure enough, I found the item sitting in my staging area and had apparently completely forgotten to send it. Of course, it is Saturday, so there's nothing I can do tomorrow, but I'll have to actually bring it to the post office in person on Monday since I can't trust the mail lady to actually come pick anything up. Maybe I can make some offers on some other things for my ebay junk and see if I can sell anything else so that the trip is worth it. Well, only two things were currently eligible to make an offer on, but I did that and hopefully one of them will sell tomorrow.
I pretty much did nothing after dinner. It was 7pm then, and I did a couple duo lessons, listened to one song I didn't even like on spotify, talked to Alex, and Sarah and Kali, scrolled FB, and generally wasted 3 hours because I felt like it was a big day, and didn't really have spoons leftover. Now I am going to read LJ and DW and I don't know what all I'm going to get into but it probably won't be much. I'm out of all leveled spell slots, and relying on cantrips now. Writing here is a cantrip, somehow or other. And checking RN or scrolling FB is a cantrip. Hopefully I can convince myself that reading LJ and DW is a cantrip. And hopefully I will go to bed at some kind of reasonable hour, especially since I tried everything yesterday, which means absolutely nothing will work today since there is nothing that works two days in a row for me.
I have 5 minutes left of my audiobook and they still have to travel to a distant planet, convince two different alien races to fight a war, and have a war. I am slightly concerned that this book is not going to have an ending and I am going to be left wondering what ever happened to all of the characters. Goodreads does not say it has a sequel, though someone asked that question in the comments section of the book and the answer given was "the author says fingers crossed" so maybe it's supposed to be the first of a series but that series hasn't come out (yet?). This one came out in 2020 so I don't know how fast sequels generally come out. But I feel like I am about to be seriously pissed off.
I adjusted my monthly writing goal to 27k because that will get me to 100k by the end of the month. Depending on how I deal with NaNo, I may get to 500k, but will almost certainly get to 400k if I'm a quarter of the way there by the end of the 3rd month. I want to be a more reliable writer than NaNo has left me, but also all my friends are trying to write a novel in a month in November, and I may feel left out if I don't try some kind of writing project. A bunch of short stories? A related collection of short stories? Use my book of prompts every day for a month? I just don't know.
Anyway, getting to sleep was a trick. Starting at 10 I took a sleeping pill, then tried to sleep an hour. Finding myself not at all tired, I took a cup of herbal sleep tea, then tried to sleep an hour. Finding myself not at all tired, I took 20 mg of melatonin then tried to sleep for an hour. Finding myself not at all tired, I took some nyquil and finally, finally fucking fell asleep around 2am. I had been up 25 hours and until I took the nyquil, I still had the energy to go run a marathon or something. Like, I was just not going to sleep. At any rate, once I finally got to sleep, I slept until my alarm went off at 1:30. And actually a little past that to 1:45.
I got up too late to eat or think, and just put a bra on and made a run for the door. I got to the gym at 2, promptly, so I guess 15 minutes is a pretty accurate guess for how long it takes me to get dressed and drive there. There were actually spots available in the parking lot, which is amazing, so I grabbed one and went in, showing up at 1:58.
Today was my first work out with a personal trainer. We did some ab work that I already knew how to do, then used these little handle things to do some squats and some other body weight exercises. Then we moved to some things with dumbbells before going out in the main room to use the "for dummies" machines to do hips and back exercises. I guess this took about 20 minutes, and then they put me on a treadmill on an incline about like the big one at the park. I lasted 5.5 minutes before my back gave out (which is honestly why I've tried to either do cardio or weights on a given day and not both because I know I don't have the capacity to work out for that long). When I gave up, they had me sit down and sign a contract for a year's worth of PT and pay for the first month.
They gave me a little book to write down my measurements once a month as if I'm going to lose weight. Indeed, they kept focusing on weight loss and changing how I eat and I'm just sitting there like "I'm not going to change how I eat, I'm not going to lose weight. I'm aware that I can't lose weight. Please just help me develop bursts of speed and energy and some endurance and the ability to lift heavy things in my arms and hold them out in front of me for long periods of time. Look, there is something actually wrong with me which my doctor will not investigate that is preventing me from losing weight. Maybe microtumors on my thyroid, or something like that. The simple fact is that even if I do everything perfectly, i will not lose weight. I didn't even lose a single pound when I started taking thyroid medicine. It's just not going to happen.
Interestingly, however, the little doohickey you hold in your hands and it tells you what percent body fat you are tells me I have 132 lbs of muscle and bone. Which is interesting because according to my BMI the absolute most I should ever weigh is 130 lbs. So that would be less than 0% body fat which seems... like maybe what I've been trying to tell my doctor about BMI not being a good way to determine what I should weigh has more merit than I thought. I know that my body fat percentage was low enough to join the army at 170, which means I'm really only 60 lbs overweight, not 100. Which doesn't really mean anything to me other than as it pertains to my risk of dying of Covid.
I have no idea how, but it was about 4pm when I got home. I ate breakfast, since I was starving and not going to eat dinner on time. Then I checked on Zelensky. I only had 40 minutes to do whatever I was going to do, and I spent it talking to Alex. Like 2 minutes before I had to go, i forgot that I was about to have to go and started a Ukrainian lesson on duolingo. Of course, my alarm went off in the middle of it, so I put it aside and left.
I headed to the pool, and we walked and talked for an hour. The only problem was that I actually looked at my heart rate at one point while we were walking and it was only 103. So this isn't exactly exercise the way I'm doing it. I mean, sure it will burn more calories than sitting on my butt on the internet or reading a book, but not by much. I decided I wanted some leg and wrist weights like Donna has to maybe make me work a little harder. The problem was I wanted them with velcro not a little clasp, and no one had this. I know it exists, because Donna owns it. Yet even amazon didn't have any such thing. I eventually found two pairs for $37 a pair on some kind of site for disabled children (I have no idea what this has to do with disabled children but a lot of what they sold was wheelchairs and lifts to get disabled people into and out of a pool). Then shipping was $10! Sighs. I sucked it up and paid it because it would be nice to actually get exercise at my exercise sessions. Even if it is weights and not cardio.
I came home and it was past dinner time and I had finished my meal I cooked in 3 days instead of 4, so I had no food. I ended up ordering some chicken fingers from bojangles, but it turned into a mess. They sent me rice and beans instead of fries, didn't send me a biscuit even though I ordered two, sent me an apple pie I didn't order, and didn't send me three cookies I did order. They also didn't send the ranch dressing I ordered. Uber eats offered me $3 compensation for this, which is not nearly enough. It won't even pay the delivery fee for next time I order something, so now I am cranky with them.
Someone sent me an email asking after an ebay package. Sure enough, I found the item sitting in my staging area and had apparently completely forgotten to send it. Of course, it is Saturday, so there's nothing I can do tomorrow, but I'll have to actually bring it to the post office in person on Monday since I can't trust the mail lady to actually come pick anything up. Maybe I can make some offers on some other things for my ebay junk and see if I can sell anything else so that the trip is worth it. Well, only two things were currently eligible to make an offer on, but I did that and hopefully one of them will sell tomorrow.
I pretty much did nothing after dinner. It was 7pm then, and I did a couple duo lessons, listened to one song I didn't even like on spotify, talked to Alex, and Sarah and Kali, scrolled FB, and generally wasted 3 hours because I felt like it was a big day, and didn't really have spoons leftover. Now I am going to read LJ and DW and I don't know what all I'm going to get into but it probably won't be much. I'm out of all leveled spell slots, and relying on cantrips now. Writing here is a cantrip, somehow or other. And checking RN or scrolling FB is a cantrip. Hopefully I can convince myself that reading LJ and DW is a cantrip. And hopefully I will go to bed at some kind of reasonable hour, especially since I tried everything yesterday, which means absolutely nothing will work today since there is nothing that works two days in a row for me.
I have 5 minutes left of my audiobook and they still have to travel to a distant planet, convince two different alien races to fight a war, and have a war. I am slightly concerned that this book is not going to have an ending and I am going to be left wondering what ever happened to all of the characters. Goodreads does not say it has a sequel, though someone asked that question in the comments section of the book and the answer given was "the author says fingers crossed" so maybe it's supposed to be the first of a series but that series hasn't come out (yet?). This one came out in 2020 so I don't know how fast sequels generally come out. But I feel like I am about to be seriously pissed off.
I adjusted my monthly writing goal to 27k because that will get me to 100k by the end of the month. Depending on how I deal with NaNo, I may get to 500k, but will almost certainly get to 400k if I'm a quarter of the way there by the end of the 3rd month. I want to be a more reliable writer than NaNo has left me, but also all my friends are trying to write a novel in a month in November, and I may feel left out if I don't try some kind of writing project. A bunch of short stories? A related collection of short stories? Use my book of prompts every day for a month? I just don't know.
So, I never slept after posting last night around 1am. I did, however, feel weak and lethargic and unable to accomplish much of anything. So. what did I do? Well mostly I listened to a playlist of songs on spotify that Kali put together of artists from Ukraine who are doing things to help Ukraine. Around 6am I mentioned that I was doing this to Victor who gave me youtube links to a couple of his favorite songs in Ukrainian. I liked two of them, but not the third. One of them was later on Kali's list. We both posted a couple ukie songs to the "What are you listening to" thread on RN.
I talked to Sarah for most of the day also, and at some point Alex poked me.
Around 10am I went to the gym and had another "wander" I did a few more things this time, discovering a crunches machine and 3-4 arm exercises, but only one leg exercise, and that one required me to lie on my stomach, which was uncomfortable when I tried to move my legs, so I don't think I'll be doing that again.
I came home and went back to the ukie music though I spent a small amount of time reading and did some photoshopping.
At 2, I had a video chat with my therapist, but she sounded like she was in a tin can and I could hear my own voice echoing back at me as if she was using regular speakers instead of headphones. She claimed she didn't know why I was hearing that, but ended up calling me on the phone and we talked for a while. She said she would put in a consult for the chaplain because apparently therapists can't do grief therapy? That falls to a chaplain? Who will be the wrong religion and just... whatever. I am annoyed.
When I was done with that I went back to the ukie music until about 3 when I decided I was tired and would rather try to sleep for 4 hours than stay awake 4 more hours. Unfortunately, I didn't sleep. I didn't really think, either, though. Just lay there awake.
An hour and a half later I got up and ordered dinner from a new place. 5 minutes later I was feeling really sick. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with me or if they cross contaminated my food with some fish. Tuna was on the menu, so I suppose it's possible. Anyway, won't be eating there again.
Since I wasn't feeling like trusting my stomach, nor trusting my reflexes to drive, I watched the temple services on zoom. When they said abbreviated services, they weren't kidding. They did the prayer for the sick, the dead, and the shema, and called it good. Then they did the purimspiel, which is a pop culture rendering of the book of Esther. The theme this year was woodstock, and I recognized exactly one song that the sang in the thing because none of the music had been relevant for 60-70 years. (the song I recognized I knew because Donna introduced me to it in high school, but it also had not been relevant for the past 60-70 years).
That ended around 8:45, and then I went back to talking to Sarah and Kali for another hour before writing here. I've now been up over 21 hours, and I am not tired at all. I suppose this calls for looking to see if I can find a sleeping pill or a nyquil or something sedating. And then seeing if I can swallow it without throwing up. I guess aiming for that with a sleeping pill would be better since the things are tiny.
Anyway, duolingo has said they are giving all their ad revenue from their ukrainian course to ukraine's defense so I'm back on duo trying to learn ukrainian, even though I don't really learn anything from duo's method of learning. I spent a year trying to learn Russian, and you know what? I speak less Russian than when I started. Yet I will poke the ukrainian course. I mean given that all I know now is a few swear words and "home is where the dogs and cats are" I guess I can't actually learn less....
Also, here's a playlist of bands that are helping Ukraine. It has everything from electronica to folk so sure to have something to please. Here
I talked to Sarah for most of the day also, and at some point Alex poked me.
Around 10am I went to the gym and had another "wander" I did a few more things this time, discovering a crunches machine and 3-4 arm exercises, but only one leg exercise, and that one required me to lie on my stomach, which was uncomfortable when I tried to move my legs, so I don't think I'll be doing that again.
I came home and went back to the ukie music though I spent a small amount of time reading and did some photoshopping.
At 2, I had a video chat with my therapist, but she sounded like she was in a tin can and I could hear my own voice echoing back at me as if she was using regular speakers instead of headphones. She claimed she didn't know why I was hearing that, but ended up calling me on the phone and we talked for a while. She said she would put in a consult for the chaplain because apparently therapists can't do grief therapy? That falls to a chaplain? Who will be the wrong religion and just... whatever. I am annoyed.
When I was done with that I went back to the ukie music until about 3 when I decided I was tired and would rather try to sleep for 4 hours than stay awake 4 more hours. Unfortunately, I didn't sleep. I didn't really think, either, though. Just lay there awake.
An hour and a half later I got up and ordered dinner from a new place. 5 minutes later I was feeling really sick. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with me or if they cross contaminated my food with some fish. Tuna was on the menu, so I suppose it's possible. Anyway, won't be eating there again.
Since I wasn't feeling like trusting my stomach, nor trusting my reflexes to drive, I watched the temple services on zoom. When they said abbreviated services, they weren't kidding. They did the prayer for the sick, the dead, and the shema, and called it good. Then they did the purimspiel, which is a pop culture rendering of the book of Esther. The theme this year was woodstock, and I recognized exactly one song that the sang in the thing because none of the music had been relevant for 60-70 years. (the song I recognized I knew because Donna introduced me to it in high school, but it also had not been relevant for the past 60-70 years).
That ended around 8:45, and then I went back to talking to Sarah and Kali for another hour before writing here. I've now been up over 21 hours, and I am not tired at all. I suppose this calls for looking to see if I can find a sleeping pill or a nyquil or something sedating. And then seeing if I can swallow it without throwing up. I guess aiming for that with a sleeping pill would be better since the things are tiny.
Anyway, duolingo has said they are giving all their ad revenue from their ukrainian course to ukraine's defense so I'm back on duo trying to learn ukrainian, even though I don't really learn anything from duo's method of learning. I spent a year trying to learn Russian, and you know what? I speak less Russian than when I started. Yet I will poke the ukrainian course. I mean given that all I know now is a few swear words and "home is where the dogs and cats are" I guess I can't actually learn less....
Also, here's a playlist of bands that are helping Ukraine. It has everything from electronica to folk so sure to have something to please. Here
hmm. Do I remember what happened yesterday? I don't really. That's why I always try to write night of what happened during the day, and still half the time I can't remember properly. Anyway, here's a go at it. I went to bed when I was exhausted at 1am, but didn't fall asleep until 3am. Still, I was so tired I couldn't even move my arms and legs, so I just lay in bed for the 2 hours it took me to fall asleep. Then I didn't wake up again until 3pm.
I got up and checked on Zelensky, then I had a really hard time motivating myself to do anything else and pretty much just sat there. i had a migraine, but this time on the left side of my head, and migraines have literally always been on the right side of my head before this, so I left an email with my GP about it. Hopefully she will do something to investigate and not just give me migraine meds, although migraine meds would also be welcome. I had to go back to bed until the migraine subsided a little.
Around 5 I wondered why I was hungry, but then realized it was dinner time. I ate the last of the stuffing casserole. It wasn't much food, and I was still hungry, so I ordered some ice cream later.
After dinner, there was writers group. We were working on editing my story the whole time since I missed 2 weeks ago. It went alright except that Scott never asked anything like "what do you like about this story?" which made it seem like it was all criticism. We ended with the homework to rewrite my story for a 3rd draft without looking at the 2nd draft to see what we come up with.
Writers group ended at 7 and I read LJ and DW and then collapsed into bed by 9. I woke up again at 1 and started writing here, and I hope I can fall asleep for another 4 hours at least at some point tonight. I'm tired but not sleepy now, so we'll see. I have to charge my watch before I can go back to bed. I usually do that while I write for an hour, but of course that didn't happen. I don't want it to be dead by the time I wake up tomorrow, which is what will happen if I don't get it charged now.
I got up and checked on Zelensky, then I had a really hard time motivating myself to do anything else and pretty much just sat there. i had a migraine, but this time on the left side of my head, and migraines have literally always been on the right side of my head before this, so I left an email with my GP about it. Hopefully she will do something to investigate and not just give me migraine meds, although migraine meds would also be welcome. I had to go back to bed until the migraine subsided a little.
Around 5 I wondered why I was hungry, but then realized it was dinner time. I ate the last of the stuffing casserole. It wasn't much food, and I was still hungry, so I ordered some ice cream later.
After dinner, there was writers group. We were working on editing my story the whole time since I missed 2 weeks ago. It went alright except that Scott never asked anything like "what do you like about this story?" which made it seem like it was all criticism. We ended with the homework to rewrite my story for a 3rd draft without looking at the 2nd draft to see what we come up with.
Writers group ended at 7 and I read LJ and DW and then collapsed into bed by 9. I woke up again at 1 and started writing here, and I hope I can fall asleep for another 4 hours at least at some point tonight. I'm tired but not sleepy now, so we'll see. I have to charge my watch before I can go back to bed. I usually do that while I write for an hour, but of course that didn't happen. I don't want it to be dead by the time I wake up tomorrow, which is what will happen if I don't get it charged now.
It was not supposed to rain today, but here we are.
I fell asleep at midnight last night. I don't even remember what I did from 10:30 to 12. I think Alex contacted me. But I don't remember spending the time doing anything. I went to bed early, and woke up at like 9:30 in the morning. I got up, checked on Zelensky, and read LJ and DW. I read a chapter of my book club book. I put away last week's laundry that was still sitting in the dryer. I cleaned up after Monday's cooking adventure and ran the dishwasher. I am very sad to report that I don't have to do dishes any less frequently than I was doing them when there were two of us. I guess most of each load is pots and pans rather than plates, so those get used every time I cook. That's a little annoying, since that was Kevin's job, and now it is yet another thing on my plate every week. Anyway, a bunch of other 10 minute tasks like this ate up the bulk of my morning.
At one point I talked to Victor, who was getting ready to go out on a hike. I asked him if he didn't have to work on a random Wednesday, and he said 2 hour lunch breaks on occasion are one of the perks of his job (which is a fairly high level executive of some sort, maybe CTO of a fortune 500?). Must be nice! It's not really a 2 hour lunch so much as "as long as you work 8 hours, we don't care when," which he uses to have extended lunch breaks with hikes in the middle of the day fairly frequently. It also helps that his job is WFH and he lives in the middle of nowhere with lots of good hiking around. Somewhere near the Hamptons, but not even that urban. It would take me a good hour round trip to get to the nearest real hike, and even that would just be stone mountain, not a nature spot.
My phone hasn't been charging for the last several nights. It charges in the car, but not in the bedroom. I tried to buy a new wall to USB charge thingie and it was supposed to come today, but now amazon says it is delayed. Fortunately, I can still plug into my computer while I'm out here, and I can plug into my car while I'm driving, because when I woke up this morning I had 35% charge and was going to be a sad monkey if it ran out before that piece gets here.
Anyway, I poked away my time ten minutes at a time getting a lot of crap done until my alarm went off at 3:30. It was time to go volunteer at Corners Ministry, the academic help place for ESL kids. I got there a little earlier than intended, and found them all outside, so I helped pass out snacks and then followed them inside to their classroom. I helped a young man figure out analog clocks (which honestly, do we still need that skill? I can't read a clock without numbers on it without counting and I do just fine) and counting by 5s. Then I helped a young woman figure out how to make inferences from her reading. Between classes I wound up coloring a picture because everyone got done with their homework and moved on for a while.
The kindergarteners came in and the kid was supposed to finish the sentence "If I found a pot of gold I would..." and then draw a picture. He kept either staring at me or trying to copy the original words "If I..." instead of answering. Eventually I asked the other teacher in the room if I was allowed to speak to him in Spanish and she said "please do" so I asked him what he would do if he found a lot of money. That didn't work (probably because of my verb tenses, which were all wrong), but eventually asking him "what do you want most in the world?" got a usable answer. Then another little boy in the room told me I speak Spanish very well. It clearly wasn't very well, but maybe they weren't expecting the middle aged white lady to bust out with any Spanish at all.
All the kids in the 3rd period also finished their homework early, so I left around 5:45 instead of 6. This meant I would get home at 6:15 and have to leave my house again at 6:45, so instead I drove directly to LA Fitness, and found a restaurant in their parking lot (Buffalo Wild Wings). So I ate dinner, and was done perfectly in time to scoot over to the gym for my appointment.
Or, well, I would have been perfectly on time if this dumb bitch had not been sitting in the middle of the aisle of the parking lot waiting for someone else to get in his car and back out, and that guy was showing no hurry whatsoever, and I spent 10 minutes sitting behind this dumb bitch who refused to move no matter what, even though there was a line of 6 cars all honking at her trying to get through. So I was 10 minutes late.
The guy came out and walked me around the gym and showed me all the things that gyms usually have around them and got me signed up for a membership at LA Fitness. He also got me registered for a fitness assessment, which sounds awful, but is the first step in getting a personal trainer, which I clearly need because I keep going into gyms and just... wandering aimlessly, which is a waste of both time and money.
He kept talking to me about losing weight and I was like "I really don't care? As long as I can move around and have some bursts of activity holding heavy things, I'm fine at my weight?" Like, really, I want to work out to extend how many years I can continue to fight for. If I happen to lose weight in the process, fine, but I'm not trying to lose weight. That way lies madness.
When we finished our talk, I took a 10 minute walk on the treadmill. I was sad to learn that if I hold onto the heart rate monitor, my apple watch doesn't register it as a walk. I did a few weight lifting things, but I couldn't find the legs machines, and most of the machines were very busy, so I just did like two things, then left. I got home an hour after I got to the gym, and I'd guess that half of that was the tour and half of that was exercising, and about 15 minutes was driving.
I got home, and there was a small flurry of activity that kept me up and active for like 10 minutes. Somehow the dog let me get until 3:30 without feeding him, but he was rather insistent when I got home at 8 that he was hungry. He also needed to pee. The cats needed to get into the bathroom to eat and pee. I needed to put my pajamas on and take my meds. I don't know. Things just kept coming up.
I finally sat down around 8:30 and spent half an hour just trying to calm down and breathe. Then at 9 I actually read a little from the two textbooks that I am reading, which brought me to 10, and time to write here. I seem to have spent more than my usual amount of time writing this entry, possibly because I am also chatting with Alex, and possibly because it was a long full day.
Possibly also because I have yet another migraine. I am concerned that the number of migraines seems to have increased exponentially from one every few months to one every few days. I'm certain this means I have brain cancer or something. I suppose that I should email my doctor and see if I can get an appointment. I mean at the very least maybe she can give me migraine meds that actually work, and maybe she will actually investigate why it has increased so much. Of course now that I've decided to do this, the webpage is down for maintenance, and also doing the thing it was doing last week that had me clearing my cache today to log in and message my endo my blood sugar readings from the past week (since I stopped taking the med that was making me sick). So, fuck the VA, as usual. You know, I wonder if these headaches aren't actually high blood sugar, not migraines? I guess I should give the endo a chance to fix me before I start asking for brain scans.
I fell asleep at midnight last night. I don't even remember what I did from 10:30 to 12. I think Alex contacted me. But I don't remember spending the time doing anything. I went to bed early, and woke up at like 9:30 in the morning. I got up, checked on Zelensky, and read LJ and DW. I read a chapter of my book club book. I put away last week's laundry that was still sitting in the dryer. I cleaned up after Monday's cooking adventure and ran the dishwasher. I am very sad to report that I don't have to do dishes any less frequently than I was doing them when there were two of us. I guess most of each load is pots and pans rather than plates, so those get used every time I cook. That's a little annoying, since that was Kevin's job, and now it is yet another thing on my plate every week. Anyway, a bunch of other 10 minute tasks like this ate up the bulk of my morning.
At one point I talked to Victor, who was getting ready to go out on a hike. I asked him if he didn't have to work on a random Wednesday, and he said 2 hour lunch breaks on occasion are one of the perks of his job (which is a fairly high level executive of some sort, maybe CTO of a fortune 500?). Must be nice! It's not really a 2 hour lunch so much as "as long as you work 8 hours, we don't care when," which he uses to have extended lunch breaks with hikes in the middle of the day fairly frequently. It also helps that his job is WFH and he lives in the middle of nowhere with lots of good hiking around. Somewhere near the Hamptons, but not even that urban. It would take me a good hour round trip to get to the nearest real hike, and even that would just be stone mountain, not a nature spot.
My phone hasn't been charging for the last several nights. It charges in the car, but not in the bedroom. I tried to buy a new wall to USB charge thingie and it was supposed to come today, but now amazon says it is delayed. Fortunately, I can still plug into my computer while I'm out here, and I can plug into my car while I'm driving, because when I woke up this morning I had 35% charge and was going to be a sad monkey if it ran out before that piece gets here.
Anyway, I poked away my time ten minutes at a time getting a lot of crap done until my alarm went off at 3:30. It was time to go volunteer at Corners Ministry, the academic help place for ESL kids. I got there a little earlier than intended, and found them all outside, so I helped pass out snacks and then followed them inside to their classroom. I helped a young man figure out analog clocks (which honestly, do we still need that skill? I can't read a clock without numbers on it without counting and I do just fine) and counting by 5s. Then I helped a young woman figure out how to make inferences from her reading. Between classes I wound up coloring a picture because everyone got done with their homework and moved on for a while.
The kindergarteners came in and the kid was supposed to finish the sentence "If I found a pot of gold I would..." and then draw a picture. He kept either staring at me or trying to copy the original words "If I..." instead of answering. Eventually I asked the other teacher in the room if I was allowed to speak to him in Spanish and she said "please do" so I asked him what he would do if he found a lot of money. That didn't work (probably because of my verb tenses, which were all wrong), but eventually asking him "what do you want most in the world?" got a usable answer. Then another little boy in the room told me I speak Spanish very well. It clearly wasn't very well, but maybe they weren't expecting the middle aged white lady to bust out with any Spanish at all.
All the kids in the 3rd period also finished their homework early, so I left around 5:45 instead of 6. This meant I would get home at 6:15 and have to leave my house again at 6:45, so instead I drove directly to LA Fitness, and found a restaurant in their parking lot (Buffalo Wild Wings). So I ate dinner, and was done perfectly in time to scoot over to the gym for my appointment.
Or, well, I would have been perfectly on time if this dumb bitch had not been sitting in the middle of the aisle of the parking lot waiting for someone else to get in his car and back out, and that guy was showing no hurry whatsoever, and I spent 10 minutes sitting behind this dumb bitch who refused to move no matter what, even though there was a line of 6 cars all honking at her trying to get through. So I was 10 minutes late.
The guy came out and walked me around the gym and showed me all the things that gyms usually have around them and got me signed up for a membership at LA Fitness. He also got me registered for a fitness assessment, which sounds awful, but is the first step in getting a personal trainer, which I clearly need because I keep going into gyms and just... wandering aimlessly, which is a waste of both time and money.
He kept talking to me about losing weight and I was like "I really don't care? As long as I can move around and have some bursts of activity holding heavy things, I'm fine at my weight?" Like, really, I want to work out to extend how many years I can continue to fight for. If I happen to lose weight in the process, fine, but I'm not trying to lose weight. That way lies madness.
When we finished our talk, I took a 10 minute walk on the treadmill. I was sad to learn that if I hold onto the heart rate monitor, my apple watch doesn't register it as a walk. I did a few weight lifting things, but I couldn't find the legs machines, and most of the machines were very busy, so I just did like two things, then left. I got home an hour after I got to the gym, and I'd guess that half of that was the tour and half of that was exercising, and about 15 minutes was driving.
I got home, and there was a small flurry of activity that kept me up and active for like 10 minutes. Somehow the dog let me get until 3:30 without feeding him, but he was rather insistent when I got home at 8 that he was hungry. He also needed to pee. The cats needed to get into the bathroom to eat and pee. I needed to put my pajamas on and take my meds. I don't know. Things just kept coming up.
I finally sat down around 8:30 and spent half an hour just trying to calm down and breathe. Then at 9 I actually read a little from the two textbooks that I am reading, which brought me to 10, and time to write here. I seem to have spent more than my usual amount of time writing this entry, possibly because I am also chatting with Alex, and possibly because it was a long full day.
Possibly also because I have yet another migraine. I am concerned that the number of migraines seems to have increased exponentially from one every few months to one every few days. I'm certain this means I have brain cancer or something. I suppose that I should email my doctor and see if I can get an appointment. I mean at the very least maybe she can give me migraine meds that actually work, and maybe she will actually investigate why it has increased so much. Of course now that I've decided to do this, the webpage is down for maintenance, and also doing the thing it was doing last week that had me clearing my cache today to log in and message my endo my blood sugar readings from the past week (since I stopped taking the med that was making me sick). So, fuck the VA, as usual. You know, I wonder if these headaches aren't actually high blood sugar, not migraines? I guess I should give the endo a chance to fix me before I start asking for brain scans.
I spent some time talking to Alex last night, and arguing with Wendy as to whether I had said "nobody cares about me now" or "nobody cared about me until I was 26." She's still convinced she's right, but I've stopped caring. I deleted the posts in question because I was afraid of mamasin using them to hurt me, so now there's no evidence either way. Nonetheless, I don't think I would have said nobody cares about me. If Kevin dying taught me one thing it is that people from the temple do care about me.
Anyway, I went to sleep early, around 2am, I think. And then I woke up at 12:30. I got up and checked on Zelensky before starting my morning routine (I kid - checking on Zelensky now is my morning routine). I talked to Victor a little bit, and read LJ and DW. I don't really know how I managed to spend 2 and a half hours doing that and reading at RN, but I did, and it was soon time to go.
My adventure for today was homework help at a transitional living place called Rainbow Village. I got there and the place had actually flooded and was going to spend two weeks on the 3rd floor, usually reserved for administrative types of things. So I went in and the guy asked who had homework. Only one kid said yes (actually there were only like 5 kids even there, so I'm not sure where all the kids were but okay). So anyway, I went into another room with this kindergartener and another teacher and an older kid on a computer that the teacher was apparently monitoring but not really doing anything else.
Today was math day, so we spent our time looking at different math problems. Most of my day consisted of repeating "is this a plus or a minus sign?" and him getting it wrong more often than 50/50 chance would dictate. We got through that page counting on our fingers, and then there was a page of counting by 5 to 100 and this called for a full blown meltdown which required another adult to deal with.
When we were done with his math, I went back into the other room where the kids were watching some weird cartoon about a girl who turns into a panda. Curtis, the guy who is in charge was like "well I really don't have anything else for you to do" so I left. He said they expected to be on the 3rd floor while they cleaned out the 2nd for another 2 weeks. Fortunately, I only go there every 2 weeks, so hopefully by the time I go again, they'll be sorted out.
I came home and had an unexpected hour in which to figure out what I was doing with myself. I decided to start taking pictures of Kevin's warhammer stuff to get to the second hand shop that said they'd look at it and give me an estimate. Guys, there was so much more stuff than I thought, and this took me from 5:30 to 8pm. I was so pleased with myself for getting it all photographed. Guys, there are 70 photographs with 15-25 models in each photograph. And 80% of it is unpainted. Kevin could have lived an entire second lifetime just painting what he already had, and yet every birthday and Hanukkah, he asked for more models! What was he doing with them all? He wasn't actually playing the game, he was just painting. And yet there was so much left to paint! I might be a teensy bit angry at him right now for how much money he spent on these damned models that he didn't even paint.
And then I checked RN and Wendy had asked me if I had taken my dinner meds. Crap, no, not only had I not taken dinner meds, I hadn't even thought about dinner! I got up, microwaved some of the leftovers from the other day's stuffing casserole, ate, and took my meds an hour late. I'm probably fine - my body doesn't know the time change happened yet. Sooner or later I do need to change time zone, though.
In addition to not eating, I hadn't exercised, done any art, or read my book club book today either. I started working on those tasks around 8:30 and it was 9:30 by the time I was done. I'm not entirely sure how it managed to take an entire hour, and I had hoped to get a shower and do some more reading that is not my book club book, but clearly that wasn't going to happen today. It is going to be a very sad Reading Wednesday tomorrow.
I also told Valerie that I'm not planning on continuing as ML. The reason I gave her was basically that I was really sick of online write ins and my reason for being a part of NaNo was the in person write ins. I agreed that if NaNo does allow us to go back to in person stuff this year, I'll run the hops and a weekly write in near me, but otherwise, I'm done after April Camp. That's one of a bunch of reasons I don't feel like I can support NaNo anymore (including some reasons that are not NaNo's fault at all but come down to my own interest in noveling). But, I do like the in person write ins, so I'll try to organize one again as soon as possible without actually lending my name to NaNo. I feel like I can support my friends at NaNoLanta without supporting the international nonprofit NaNoWriMo.
So anyway that and a brief conversation with Sarah and Kali brought us to 10 and time to write here. There are now words. The storm outside is quickly becoming a bad storm outside, and my head is responding to that with the traditional migraine that storms bring. So I'm not sure I have much else to say today.
The guy I gave my phone number to gave me his number, but then continued to use the messaging system on asexualcupid to talk to me, so I'm really not sure what that's about. But we'll see.
Anyway, I went to sleep early, around 2am, I think. And then I woke up at 12:30. I got up and checked on Zelensky before starting my morning routine (I kid - checking on Zelensky now is my morning routine). I talked to Victor a little bit, and read LJ and DW. I don't really know how I managed to spend 2 and a half hours doing that and reading at RN, but I did, and it was soon time to go.
My adventure for today was homework help at a transitional living place called Rainbow Village. I got there and the place had actually flooded and was going to spend two weeks on the 3rd floor, usually reserved for administrative types of things. So I went in and the guy asked who had homework. Only one kid said yes (actually there were only like 5 kids even there, so I'm not sure where all the kids were but okay). So anyway, I went into another room with this kindergartener and another teacher and an older kid on a computer that the teacher was apparently monitoring but not really doing anything else.
Today was math day, so we spent our time looking at different math problems. Most of my day consisted of repeating "is this a plus or a minus sign?" and him getting it wrong more often than 50/50 chance would dictate. We got through that page counting on our fingers, and then there was a page of counting by 5 to 100 and this called for a full blown meltdown which required another adult to deal with.
When we were done with his math, I went back into the other room where the kids were watching some weird cartoon about a girl who turns into a panda. Curtis, the guy who is in charge was like "well I really don't have anything else for you to do" so I left. He said they expected to be on the 3rd floor while they cleaned out the 2nd for another 2 weeks. Fortunately, I only go there every 2 weeks, so hopefully by the time I go again, they'll be sorted out.
I came home and had an unexpected hour in which to figure out what I was doing with myself. I decided to start taking pictures of Kevin's warhammer stuff to get to the second hand shop that said they'd look at it and give me an estimate. Guys, there was so much more stuff than I thought, and this took me from 5:30 to 8pm. I was so pleased with myself for getting it all photographed. Guys, there are 70 photographs with 15-25 models in each photograph. And 80% of it is unpainted. Kevin could have lived an entire second lifetime just painting what he already had, and yet every birthday and Hanukkah, he asked for more models! What was he doing with them all? He wasn't actually playing the game, he was just painting. And yet there was so much left to paint! I might be a teensy bit angry at him right now for how much money he spent on these damned models that he didn't even paint.
And then I checked RN and Wendy had asked me if I had taken my dinner meds. Crap, no, not only had I not taken dinner meds, I hadn't even thought about dinner! I got up, microwaved some of the leftovers from the other day's stuffing casserole, ate, and took my meds an hour late. I'm probably fine - my body doesn't know the time change happened yet. Sooner or later I do need to change time zone, though.
In addition to not eating, I hadn't exercised, done any art, or read my book club book today either. I started working on those tasks around 8:30 and it was 9:30 by the time I was done. I'm not entirely sure how it managed to take an entire hour, and I had hoped to get a shower and do some more reading that is not my book club book, but clearly that wasn't going to happen today. It is going to be a very sad Reading Wednesday tomorrow.
I also told Valerie that I'm not planning on continuing as ML. The reason I gave her was basically that I was really sick of online write ins and my reason for being a part of NaNo was the in person write ins. I agreed that if NaNo does allow us to go back to in person stuff this year, I'll run the hops and a weekly write in near me, but otherwise, I'm done after April Camp. That's one of a bunch of reasons I don't feel like I can support NaNo anymore (including some reasons that are not NaNo's fault at all but come down to my own interest in noveling). But, I do like the in person write ins, so I'll try to organize one again as soon as possible without actually lending my name to NaNo. I feel like I can support my friends at NaNoLanta without supporting the international nonprofit NaNoWriMo.
So anyway that and a brief conversation with Sarah and Kali brought us to 10 and time to write here. There are now words. The storm outside is quickly becoming a bad storm outside, and my head is responding to that with the traditional migraine that storms bring. So I'm not sure I have much else to say today.
The guy I gave my phone number to gave me his number, but then continued to use the messaging system on asexualcupid to talk to me, so I'm really not sure what that's about. But we'll see.
I still have that crying hangover where your head feels wrong after crying. Usually that goes away in a couple hours, but today it has continued all day and since 3pm yesterday. I haven't been able to get anything done. I spent last night mostly trying to sleep, which finally worked sometime between 2 and 3am. Then I woke up again at 3pm feeling sluggish and awful. I fed the dogs and checked on Zelensky then suddenly it was after 4 and I have no idea where that hour went.
I picked up my camera and got dressed and went to a small local park I had never been to before. I was surprised that it was so close to downtown Norcross and yet I had never heard of it. It was basically just a baseball diamond and a small playground, though, not even anywhere to walk or explore. I took about a dozen pictures before deciding I had done everything I could at that park.
I went to my mom's house for dinner. We decided on burgers from BurgerFi, so we went over there. We spent most of the time talking about her trip and her more generic experiences of cruising. We also spent some time on what I was doing about a gym. I told her how when I googled LA Fitness, all the ads for free trials of other gyms had come up on facebook, so I had been going to different gyms for free, but in the end I'm likely going to join LA Fitness. Most of these other gyms are just too far to get to regularly, and they don't have a pool or spa (though one of them has hydromassage which I'm not sure if I would like or not).
The BurgerFi shares a parking lot with LA Fitness, and the parking lot was packed, which makes me think the LA Fitness may be crowded a lot of the time. I guess I'm going to try a 3 day pass with them and see if there are too many people there during the times I want to go to the gym. All of the handicap spots were taken tonight, which means it may be a long walk into the building.
After going to dinner, I forgot to go to the gym, which I had meant to do. I didn't feel like driving all the way back there, so I did some exercise in my living room, and uploaded my pictures, and spent a lot of time reading.
I went to RN and Wendy said something about "Never Again" meaning only Jews, and maybe it should be expanded to mean Ukrainians, too, to which I replied that it already did mean everybody, and is why I supported the Iraq war because of the treatment of the Kurds. Well, Wendy just lost her shit on me throwing some kind of fit telling me it was insulting for me to tell her she was wrong. I didn't even tell her she was wrong, in fact I said "to me" or "I think" at least 4 times in the post she took as insulting her. And, I was fucking agreeing with her that "Never Again" should apply to Ukrainians. I don't know what the hell is going on here, but I don't have the spoons to deal with Wendy being mad at me. I've had almost no spoons for days, and this is pushing me into negative spoons categories, where I start hallucinating and losing touch with reality. The voices are usually my friends, but today they are yelling at me, and telling me mean things, and I don't know how to regain control.
I picked up my camera and got dressed and went to a small local park I had never been to before. I was surprised that it was so close to downtown Norcross and yet I had never heard of it. It was basically just a baseball diamond and a small playground, though, not even anywhere to walk or explore. I took about a dozen pictures before deciding I had done everything I could at that park.
I went to my mom's house for dinner. We decided on burgers from BurgerFi, so we went over there. We spent most of the time talking about her trip and her more generic experiences of cruising. We also spent some time on what I was doing about a gym. I told her how when I googled LA Fitness, all the ads for free trials of other gyms had come up on facebook, so I had been going to different gyms for free, but in the end I'm likely going to join LA Fitness. Most of these other gyms are just too far to get to regularly, and they don't have a pool or spa (though one of them has hydromassage which I'm not sure if I would like or not).
The BurgerFi shares a parking lot with LA Fitness, and the parking lot was packed, which makes me think the LA Fitness may be crowded a lot of the time. I guess I'm going to try a 3 day pass with them and see if there are too many people there during the times I want to go to the gym. All of the handicap spots were taken tonight, which means it may be a long walk into the building.
After going to dinner, I forgot to go to the gym, which I had meant to do. I didn't feel like driving all the way back there, so I did some exercise in my living room, and uploaded my pictures, and spent a lot of time reading.
I went to RN and Wendy said something about "Never Again" meaning only Jews, and maybe it should be expanded to mean Ukrainians, too, to which I replied that it already did mean everybody, and is why I supported the Iraq war because of the treatment of the Kurds. Well, Wendy just lost her shit on me throwing some kind of fit telling me it was insulting for me to tell her she was wrong. I didn't even tell her she was wrong, in fact I said "to me" or "I think" at least 4 times in the post she took as insulting her. And, I was fucking agreeing with her that "Never Again" should apply to Ukrainians. I don't know what the hell is going on here, but I don't have the spoons to deal with Wendy being mad at me. I've had almost no spoons for days, and this is pushing me into negative spoons categories, where I start hallucinating and losing touch with reality. The voices are usually my friends, but today they are yelling at me, and telling me mean things, and I don't know how to regain control.
Last night neither Kali and Sarah nor Alex were around to talk to. I watched some youtube, and stared helplessly through my silent internet. At some point I decided to pick a fight with a transphobe, for which I got in trouble with the (cis male, of course) admin. Maybe telling the bigot that when he repeats Russian propaganda, he is sucking Putin's cock is taking things a step too far, but I really don't think so. The bigot is from USSR originally and maybe he should go back to Russia if he wants to repeat Russian propaganda. The final word on this is that the bigot was "needlessly cruel" but I over reacted. Whatever. Don't let people be "needlessly cruel," and you won't have people reacting to them, now will you? Whole thing could have been avoided with one post from the admin admonishing the bigot.
Anyway, back in December I had purchased tickets to see the interactive Van Gogh exhibit today, so I got up and went downtown to their location. When I got there it looked like a construction site. I was about to ask google if they had a better location for it than apple when a guy came up to my car and asked if I was supposed to be a volunteer. When I told him I was there to see the exhibit he told me that they got delayed and aren't opening until June. I had gotten an email telling me this, and should go home and reschedule for June. I went home. Sure enough, the email was in spam telling me how to redeem a voucher for the exhibit.
So now I'm supposed to go in June, and I am very upset with them for not calling me to make sure I got the email when I didn't respond to it 24 hours before I was supposed to be there. If they're going to be 3 months behind in their construction they can at least make sure people don't drive down there. Plus, they wouldn't let me use the voucher on the website; I had to use an app. Having to use an app makes me very unhappy with whoever it is forcing me to use my phone for anything. I had to actually download something onto my phone for this to work and I am hugely pissed off that they made me download yet another piece of shit app onto my phone that I will use for exactly one thing ever.
And then their instructions on what to do to get the new tickets were terrible, and told me to click on things that did not exist, so I'm even further pissed off at them. And at this point, I just want my money back, because no matter how cool this exhibit is, it isn't cool enough to justify giving these shit heads money.
I came home and fed the dogs and cats, and continued my argument with the above mentioned bigot, or at least the admin who is protecting him, for an hour or so before it was time to go meet Donna for a swim. There was some kind of a class going on with a bunch of high school or college aged kids, maybe lifeguarding? or swim instructor training? They took up the entire deep end, and the usual lane full of kids in a lesson was full of kids in a lesson, which didn't leave much space for Donna and me, although there was almost no one else there. Still, it was better than usual because there were no kids splashing us. I guess parents don't bring their kids to the pool when it is 25 degrees? Maybe just Donna and I are crazy enough for that.
I came home and ate the last of my chicken sandwiches for dinner, which was already late, but anyway, ate and took my meds, and continued my argument with Victor who was defending the transphobe. Meanwhile I read a chapter of my book club book, which turns out to be a WWII book, and I really don't want to read it, and yet I am going to because the description on Goodreads says it is about an American family, even though the first 20 pages of it have thus far been set in the ending days of the Weimar Republic. So my assumption is that they move to America soon, and it's not a Holocaust book. It also is a 500 page book, which means if I'm going to read it in 12 weeks, I have to actually put in a significant amount of effort. 40 pages a week means reading 10 pages on more than half the days. All of the rest of my reading is going to suffer. :(
Speaking of reading, I finally restarted The Sound of Stars this afternoon! I'm terrible at estimating how long audiobooks are going to take me, but I anticipate finishing it on Friday if I actually get myself to the gym twice this week. Then I have to cancel my gym membership, and sign up for a gym membership at the closer gym. Because I'm clearly not going to the farther gym, even though it is cheaper. But I think I would actually go to the closer gym, especially since they have a spa and pool.
I let Kyra talk me into going to the Temple's Shabbaton which is like a musical/artistic/prayerful day of activities for women at the temple. This sounds like a lot of fun, but it's an all day thing, and it means I have to wake up around 8:30 to get there on time, and I am not very good at waking up at 8:30 am.
Anyway, back in December I had purchased tickets to see the interactive Van Gogh exhibit today, so I got up and went downtown to their location. When I got there it looked like a construction site. I was about to ask google if they had a better location for it than apple when a guy came up to my car and asked if I was supposed to be a volunteer. When I told him I was there to see the exhibit he told me that they got delayed and aren't opening until June. I had gotten an email telling me this, and should go home and reschedule for June. I went home. Sure enough, the email was in spam telling me how to redeem a voucher for the exhibit.
So now I'm supposed to go in June, and I am very upset with them for not calling me to make sure I got the email when I didn't respond to it 24 hours before I was supposed to be there. If they're going to be 3 months behind in their construction they can at least make sure people don't drive down there. Plus, they wouldn't let me use the voucher on the website; I had to use an app. Having to use an app makes me very unhappy with whoever it is forcing me to use my phone for anything. I had to actually download something onto my phone for this to work and I am hugely pissed off that they made me download yet another piece of shit app onto my phone that I will use for exactly one thing ever.
And then their instructions on what to do to get the new tickets were terrible, and told me to click on things that did not exist, so I'm even further pissed off at them. And at this point, I just want my money back, because no matter how cool this exhibit is, it isn't cool enough to justify giving these shit heads money.
I came home and fed the dogs and cats, and continued my argument with the above mentioned bigot, or at least the admin who is protecting him, for an hour or so before it was time to go meet Donna for a swim. There was some kind of a class going on with a bunch of high school or college aged kids, maybe lifeguarding? or swim instructor training? They took up the entire deep end, and the usual lane full of kids in a lesson was full of kids in a lesson, which didn't leave much space for Donna and me, although there was almost no one else there. Still, it was better than usual because there were no kids splashing us. I guess parents don't bring their kids to the pool when it is 25 degrees? Maybe just Donna and I are crazy enough for that.
I came home and ate the last of my chicken sandwiches for dinner, which was already late, but anyway, ate and took my meds, and continued my argument with Victor who was defending the transphobe. Meanwhile I read a chapter of my book club book, which turns out to be a WWII book, and I really don't want to read it, and yet I am going to because the description on Goodreads says it is about an American family, even though the first 20 pages of it have thus far been set in the ending days of the Weimar Republic. So my assumption is that they move to America soon, and it's not a Holocaust book. It also is a 500 page book, which means if I'm going to read it in 12 weeks, I have to actually put in a significant amount of effort. 40 pages a week means reading 10 pages on more than half the days. All of the rest of my reading is going to suffer. :(
Speaking of reading, I finally restarted The Sound of Stars this afternoon! I'm terrible at estimating how long audiobooks are going to take me, but I anticipate finishing it on Friday if I actually get myself to the gym twice this week. Then I have to cancel my gym membership, and sign up for a gym membership at the closer gym. Because I'm clearly not going to the farther gym, even though it is cheaper. But I think I would actually go to the closer gym, especially since they have a spa and pool.
I let Kyra talk me into going to the Temple's Shabbaton which is like a musical/artistic/prayerful day of activities for women at the temple. This sounds like a lot of fun, but it's an all day thing, and it means I have to wake up around 8:30 to get there on time, and I am not very good at waking up at 8:30 am.
Well, here it is shabbat again, and I feel a little guilty for being on the internet, but since I'm equally certain that I would have nothing to do without the internet, and no one to do it with, and would thus be stressed the entire time just counting down minutes until shabbat ended, I choose to use the computer on shabbat. As well as the lights, because I would be scared without them for most of the time I'm awake. Maybe one day I'll come up with some way to celebrate shabbat that is unique to the day, but I don't know what that might be.
At any rate, I've got a bunch of friends with shit going on right now who could all use prayers, but they're not my stories to tell, so I will simply ask that if you have extra positive thoughts or prayers, you direct some at Alex and Teddie. I spent a good bit of last night nervously waiting for Alex to contact me, and trying to watch some youtubes. I finally went to bed around 2:30 after getting word that Alex was alright, and then I slept through until 3 this afternoon. I was awakened briefly for someone to cancel my therapy appointment and schedule a new one. And I was awakened several times by the bad dog barking. And I was awakened several times by bad dreams.
As so often happens when I oversleep and/or have nightmares it was hard to get going to do anything today. I sort of stared at the internet without reading much or doing anything really for an hour and a half, before deciding I was hungry and didn't want the same sandwiches I'd been eating all week. I ordered Chinese, read a few pages of my writing book, and did a grocery order to come later in the night. Then I went back to staring through space.
Dinner came and I ate and then had a big bout of "dun wanna" when it came to exercising and taking my meds. Eventually, I was convinced to take my meds by Wendy asking me to. Then I started to notice I was hallucinating a bit, so figuring on a bad night I thought I'd better exercise while I still have the faculties. So I did that.
Then it was time for Temple, on zoom. I turned it on but didn't really pay any attention to it, but, guys, it did not end until 9:30 pm. The new rabbi moved our start time up 45 minutes, which we all assumed meant we'd be home at reasonable hours, but then he just... keeps talking. Keeps going. 2 hours and 15 minutes! That is long enough to be a High Holiday service. It is WAY too long to be a weekly prayer service! We complain about it once a year, never mind every week. And last week we didn't get out until 9, either, so apparently he just thinks this is okay! It wasn't just "oops went a little over" it was like "this is our new normal." Holy Fuck and I am annoyed. There's currently a congregational survey going around so hopefully a bunch of people will mention this.
Anyway, it was 9:30 when I was done with that, and I ate a snack because I had said the prayer over bread, and you shouldn't say a blessing and then not do something with it. Then I went to find Jack, who had gone into the bedroom and not come out, and I was worried he had gotten into the dog food again. Instead, he had figured out how to pull Rogue's dinner off the bed and onto the floor, where he was digging through a pile of laundry picking it up piece by piece. Rogue will be fine, because she stole most of Bennett's dinner earlier today, so I'll have to figure out how to better protect her food tomorrow.
This brought me to 10 and time to write here, and so now that's what I'm doing. Theoretically I still have 45 minutes left to write here, but I don't think I have 45 minutes worth of more to say. And I've said enough as far as my WC is concerned, so I think I'll go read a chapter of my book club book. Or find something to clean.
Most of my friends are on their way to Gulf Wars, and I am not, so I am sad. But on the other hand the feels like temp tomorrow night is going to be 7F, which is even colder than the Castle Wars I noped out of, so maybe it's for the best.
At any rate, I've got a bunch of friends with shit going on right now who could all use prayers, but they're not my stories to tell, so I will simply ask that if you have extra positive thoughts or prayers, you direct some at Alex and Teddie. I spent a good bit of last night nervously waiting for Alex to contact me, and trying to watch some youtubes. I finally went to bed around 2:30 after getting word that Alex was alright, and then I slept through until 3 this afternoon. I was awakened briefly for someone to cancel my therapy appointment and schedule a new one. And I was awakened several times by the bad dog barking. And I was awakened several times by bad dreams.
As so often happens when I oversleep and/or have nightmares it was hard to get going to do anything today. I sort of stared at the internet without reading much or doing anything really for an hour and a half, before deciding I was hungry and didn't want the same sandwiches I'd been eating all week. I ordered Chinese, read a few pages of my writing book, and did a grocery order to come later in the night. Then I went back to staring through space.
Dinner came and I ate and then had a big bout of "dun wanna" when it came to exercising and taking my meds. Eventually, I was convinced to take my meds by Wendy asking me to. Then I started to notice I was hallucinating a bit, so figuring on a bad night I thought I'd better exercise while I still have the faculties. So I did that.
Then it was time for Temple, on zoom. I turned it on but didn't really pay any attention to it, but, guys, it did not end until 9:30 pm. The new rabbi moved our start time up 45 minutes, which we all assumed meant we'd be home at reasonable hours, but then he just... keeps talking. Keeps going. 2 hours and 15 minutes! That is long enough to be a High Holiday service. It is WAY too long to be a weekly prayer service! We complain about it once a year, never mind every week. And last week we didn't get out until 9, either, so apparently he just thinks this is okay! It wasn't just "oops went a little over" it was like "this is our new normal." Holy Fuck and I am annoyed. There's currently a congregational survey going around so hopefully a bunch of people will mention this.
Anyway, it was 9:30 when I was done with that, and I ate a snack because I had said the prayer over bread, and you shouldn't say a blessing and then not do something with it. Then I went to find Jack, who had gone into the bedroom and not come out, and I was worried he had gotten into the dog food again. Instead, he had figured out how to pull Rogue's dinner off the bed and onto the floor, where he was digging through a pile of laundry picking it up piece by piece. Rogue will be fine, because she stole most of Bennett's dinner earlier today, so I'll have to figure out how to better protect her food tomorrow.
This brought me to 10 and time to write here, and so now that's what I'm doing. Theoretically I still have 45 minutes left to write here, but I don't think I have 45 minutes worth of more to say. And I've said enough as far as my WC is concerned, so I think I'll go read a chapter of my book club book. Or find something to clean.
Most of my friends are on their way to Gulf Wars, and I am not, so I am sad. But on the other hand the feels like temp tomorrow night is going to be 7F, which is even colder than the Castle Wars I noped out of, so maybe it's for the best.
I took a sudafed before bed last night, which was at like 10 pm because I was exhausted. Then when I woke up around 9:30, my blood sugar was 134 after eating a muffin (I forgot to do fasting), so that's not great for fasting sugar but it's not as dyer as the 190 I got yesterday. Of course, I also didn't eat after 10 yesterday, when I usually eat something around midnight (but also usually take meds at midnight instead of only taking the if I happen to wake up hours before dinner). So, uh, I don't know. Cleary we require more data. But my head still doesn't feel bad, so that's good.
My nose was not running when I woke up, but since I had had a 24 hour sudafed I wasn't sure whether that was actual improvement or just drugs. But now that I am writing this at 10 pm, my nose still isn't running, so it looks like improvement. I had canceled going to reading anyway, though, as I had to make a decision last night.
I was up for a couple hours, read LJ and DW, and then went back to sleep. I was awakened at noon by the AC company trying to schedule my yearly maintenance, which got scheduled for two hours in the future. I fell back asleep and woke up at 1:30, then tried to do a little bit of cleaning of the hallway so the guy could access the AC unit.
About 2 minutes after I finished that, the guy came to mow my yard, and of course the dogs went ape shit the whole time. He was here for about 45 minutes, and the dogs did not even slow their barking the entire time. He left, and I read one chapter of one book, and if I had known it was going to be my only book for the day, I would have read the book club book instead of the Jewish book, which I am already nitpicking at because she claims 1800 was the first time Jews were seen as a race, but I'd argue for 1492 since the Spanish Inquisition was definitely race based with one drop rules, etc. What do I know, I'm just a historian.
Anyway, around the time I finished that, the guy from the AC company called me and said he'd be here in 30 minutes, so I let the dogs out one more time, and spot checked to make sure no one had peed on the floor, and apparently lost track of how long half an hour actually is because I should have sat down to read a book (which happens in 15 minute chunks most of the time) but instead I just hit refresh at RN over and over again.
The guy eventually showed up, and apparently my not turning on the heat until it's fucking cold saved me not only on my heating bill, but the stupidly expensive filters for the AC unit looked like it was still very new, so he just scraped off a little of what was there (like scraping your lint filter), and put it back. So that's like $25 saved! It'll be awful after summer though - I use the shit out of my AC. He had to come in and out the door like 5 times, and each time the dogs went ape shit.
The WWP Talk guy called at 4, which was right before he left. We talked for a while about my plans for the week and month and my goals. We were in the process of hanging up when AC guy stopped to hand me a bill (for $0 but they always hand me a bill) causing the dogs to go ape shit again. Then everyone was gone.
I already had the dog on a leash, so I decided to walk two of them (poor Rogue didn't get to go but I'm not sure she cared because she also didn't run to the door or bark at me). We walked about 10 minutes, and when we came back I put the dogs in the door and then took up the trash can. When I came back in the house, Bennett was lying on the floor just inside the door looking like a beaten puppy. I took his leash off, and he stood up, but instead of going back to bed, he walked into the living room where he stood and cried for the next 2 hours. I have no idea what he wanted, and my mom says he never cries so she doesn't know what he wanted either. He had water, a treat, a walk, dinner, I just don't know.
I had eaten my dinner plans for lunch so I needed dinner. I ordered a calzone, which took an hour to get here, but they kept backing up when they said it would get here from 30 minutes to an hour in 5 minute increments. So I didn't do anything because I kept expecting my dinner to get here. It was tasty, and I am certain I have not had a calzone in the last 2 years, so it was something novel.
When I was done, I read a blog by a historian turned... IDK popular history writer? She used to work for the school I got my MA from but got fed up with academia and now makes a living trying to convince children (and I guess now adults) that history isn't boring and is worth studying. I wind up loving about three quarters of what she writes and for $5 a month it is the cheapest quality entertainment you'll find.
This made me one minute late for my gaming session, but Rac was over an hour late and Bek was 10 minutes late, so I was actually the second one there. We wound up just playing games today because our characters went to a fair. So it was a lot of fun, if a little light on story. I kept expecting something important to slap us upside the head while we were playing, but it didn't.
We ended at 9 and I took a long shower and put on my new shirt which says "Puck Futin" and has the Ukrainian flag and trident on it (the same design as my default LJ icon if you're looking over there). It's another shirt I will have to remember not to wear to volunteer. There are a few of those, almost all political. This is the only one that swears, though, so it's like extra important not to wear it to be around kids. Then I hit refresh on RN another time before starting to write here.
Tomorrow I want to try to get to the gym, even though I've already decided this gym is too far for me to actually use it and want a membership. Still, it's like a quarter of the way to Temple, so I can theoretically bring a dress with me, and then change in the bathroom after I work out, and do both.
Wow, I totally just lost 15 minutes. I was going to look at how long google said it would take me to get from the gym to the temple, and somehow it was suddenly 15 minutes later. That's a little concerning. My head feels a little empty, too, a sensation I often attribute to someone reading my mind, or stealing my thoughts. It's very unnerving.
Anyway, it's very early on the 11th in Russia, so this may be goodbye to those who did not follow me to DW. I hope you all know how much I have enjoyed sharing our lives. 💖
Of course, most likely, nothing is going to change, so carry on.
My nose was not running when I woke up, but since I had had a 24 hour sudafed I wasn't sure whether that was actual improvement or just drugs. But now that I am writing this at 10 pm, my nose still isn't running, so it looks like improvement. I had canceled going to reading anyway, though, as I had to make a decision last night.
I was up for a couple hours, read LJ and DW, and then went back to sleep. I was awakened at noon by the AC company trying to schedule my yearly maintenance, which got scheduled for two hours in the future. I fell back asleep and woke up at 1:30, then tried to do a little bit of cleaning of the hallway so the guy could access the AC unit.
About 2 minutes after I finished that, the guy came to mow my yard, and of course the dogs went ape shit the whole time. He was here for about 45 minutes, and the dogs did not even slow their barking the entire time. He left, and I read one chapter of one book, and if I had known it was going to be my only book for the day, I would have read the book club book instead of the Jewish book, which I am already nitpicking at because she claims 1800 was the first time Jews were seen as a race, but I'd argue for 1492 since the Spanish Inquisition was definitely race based with one drop rules, etc. What do I know, I'm just a historian.
Anyway, around the time I finished that, the guy from the AC company called me and said he'd be here in 30 minutes, so I let the dogs out one more time, and spot checked to make sure no one had peed on the floor, and apparently lost track of how long half an hour actually is because I should have sat down to read a book (which happens in 15 minute chunks most of the time) but instead I just hit refresh at RN over and over again.
The guy eventually showed up, and apparently my not turning on the heat until it's fucking cold saved me not only on my heating bill, but the stupidly expensive filters for the AC unit looked like it was still very new, so he just scraped off a little of what was there (like scraping your lint filter), and put it back. So that's like $25 saved! It'll be awful after summer though - I use the shit out of my AC. He had to come in and out the door like 5 times, and each time the dogs went ape shit.
The WWP Talk guy called at 4, which was right before he left. We talked for a while about my plans for the week and month and my goals. We were in the process of hanging up when AC guy stopped to hand me a bill (for $0 but they always hand me a bill) causing the dogs to go ape shit again. Then everyone was gone.
I already had the dog on a leash, so I decided to walk two of them (poor Rogue didn't get to go but I'm not sure she cared because she also didn't run to the door or bark at me). We walked about 10 minutes, and when we came back I put the dogs in the door and then took up the trash can. When I came back in the house, Bennett was lying on the floor just inside the door looking like a beaten puppy. I took his leash off, and he stood up, but instead of going back to bed, he walked into the living room where he stood and cried for the next 2 hours. I have no idea what he wanted, and my mom says he never cries so she doesn't know what he wanted either. He had water, a treat, a walk, dinner, I just don't know.
I had eaten my dinner plans for lunch so I needed dinner. I ordered a calzone, which took an hour to get here, but they kept backing up when they said it would get here from 30 minutes to an hour in 5 minute increments. So I didn't do anything because I kept expecting my dinner to get here. It was tasty, and I am certain I have not had a calzone in the last 2 years, so it was something novel.
When I was done, I read a blog by a historian turned... IDK popular history writer? She used to work for the school I got my MA from but got fed up with academia and now makes a living trying to convince children (and I guess now adults) that history isn't boring and is worth studying. I wind up loving about three quarters of what she writes and for $5 a month it is the cheapest quality entertainment you'll find.
This made me one minute late for my gaming session, but Rac was over an hour late and Bek was 10 minutes late, so I was actually the second one there. We wound up just playing games today because our characters went to a fair. So it was a lot of fun, if a little light on story. I kept expecting something important to slap us upside the head while we were playing, but it didn't.
We ended at 9 and I took a long shower and put on my new shirt which says "Puck Futin" and has the Ukrainian flag and trident on it (the same design as my default LJ icon if you're looking over there). It's another shirt I will have to remember not to wear to volunteer. There are a few of those, almost all political. This is the only one that swears, though, so it's like extra important not to wear it to be around kids. Then I hit refresh on RN another time before starting to write here.
Tomorrow I want to try to get to the gym, even though I've already decided this gym is too far for me to actually use it and want a membership. Still, it's like a quarter of the way to Temple, so I can theoretically bring a dress with me, and then change in the bathroom after I work out, and do both.
Wow, I totally just lost 15 minutes. I was going to look at how long google said it would take me to get from the gym to the temple, and somehow it was suddenly 15 minutes later. That's a little concerning. My head feels a little empty, too, a sensation I often attribute to someone reading my mind, or stealing my thoughts. It's very unnerving.
Anyway, it's very early on the 11th in Russia, so this may be goodbye to those who did not follow me to DW. I hope you all know how much I have enjoyed sharing our lives. 💖
Of course, most likely, nothing is going to change, so carry on.
I went to bed at 11 last night, woke up at midnight, but was back in bed around 1am. Then I woke up at 9 or 9:30. I got up and read LJ and DW. Then I watched RBG, the documentary about RBG. I had meant to watch it before, but then had kind of forgotten about it until it was a selection for film club. So that took most of my morning.
I haven't gotten that weird dizzy thing a single time since I stopped taking one of my meds, which is great, except that my fasting sugar was 189 this morning, so apparently I actually need that med. Dr. Rhee will have to come up with something different to do, though, because I'm not willing to feel that awful all of the time.
I mostly spent the afternoon reading a little bit and scrolling through RN. I ate leftovers for dinner, and the meal was actually good cold, too, without being reheated. I also did not cook baked beans, which I should have done, but it was fine. Just more of a lunch than a dinner.
At 7:30 Ximon posted that he had opened a Zoom Room for us to talk with the SCA so I went to that. We talked for an hour and a half before I had just had enough noise and logged off to finish my reading. Well at any rate, I read all of my paper books and my book club book. One of my POV characters died, so I'm angry because I hate it when POV characters die. So this will be the lowest I've ever rated a Kristin Hannah book. I still have another chapter and an epilogue to read but I hardly even care.
That got me to 10 and time to start writing here. Now I am exhausted and I am sick with a nose running so much it actually started bleeding earlier today. I took a Covid Test and it was negative, so it's just a cold or a sinus infection or something. But it meant that I canceled all of my plans for today and plan to cancel my plans tomorrow. Well I have gaming in the evening which doesn't require seeing any people, so I'll still do that, but no fighting and no reading in the elementary school.
At any rate, I'm tired now, so I may go see about taking a sudafed and trying to lie down. Maybe I'll be back up at midnight, but with the sudafed I doubt it.
I haven't gotten that weird dizzy thing a single time since I stopped taking one of my meds, which is great, except that my fasting sugar was 189 this morning, so apparently I actually need that med. Dr. Rhee will have to come up with something different to do, though, because I'm not willing to feel that awful all of the time.
I mostly spent the afternoon reading a little bit and scrolling through RN. I ate leftovers for dinner, and the meal was actually good cold, too, without being reheated. I also did not cook baked beans, which I should have done, but it was fine. Just more of a lunch than a dinner.
At 7:30 Ximon posted that he had opened a Zoom Room for us to talk with the SCA so I went to that. We talked for an hour and a half before I had just had enough noise and logged off to finish my reading. Well at any rate, I read all of my paper books and my book club book. One of my POV characters died, so I'm angry because I hate it when POV characters die. So this will be the lowest I've ever rated a Kristin Hannah book. I still have another chapter and an epilogue to read but I hardly even care.
That got me to 10 and time to start writing here. Now I am exhausted and I am sick with a nose running so much it actually started bleeding earlier today. I took a Covid Test and it was negative, so it's just a cold or a sinus infection or something. But it meant that I canceled all of my plans for today and plan to cancel my plans tomorrow. Well I have gaming in the evening which doesn't require seeing any people, so I'll still do that, but no fighting and no reading in the elementary school.
At any rate, I'm tired now, so I may go see about taking a sudafed and trying to lie down. Maybe I'll be back up at midnight, but with the sudafed I doubt it.
I didn't sleep last night. A couple times I slept for an hour, but then I'd wake up and be wide awake again. I blame this primarily on mamasin, who woke me up blowing up my phone on fb messenger asking for the money she had gifted me when I had a gofundme up back. She kept acting like I should know she needed the money back and was a bitch for not seeking her out to give it back ages ago. She complained that I had not shared her fundraiser on FB and hadn't donated to it myself. Of course, she and I are not friends anymore, and I had no way of knowing she had a fundraiser. She claimed to have contacted me via paypal, but paypal doesn't do PMs and doesn't even email me when I have funds never mind when someone tries to use it to contact me (can you even do that?) She kept repeating that she had contacted me several times, but of course she hadn't.
She threw one of her patented borderline personality disorder fits, even after I told her I'd give her the money back. She kept repeating that "everybody" at RN would be happy when her husband died, which I finally told her was paranoia born of her mental illness and not of reality. She said she is going to work magic against us and punish us all for not giving her money for her husband when she has been banned and isn't even a member of that community anymore, though she does still creepily read everything we post there she just can't respond to it. On the plus side I figured out how to block someone on FB Messenger now. I've never had to do it before, but now I know how. Hopefully she won't go about finding new ways to try to communicate with me...
Anyway, hopefully that is over. I managed to sleep an hour at 5 but was wide awake again by 6 so I got up and ordered starbucks, and then went to bed again, but I just kept sleeping for an hour and then waking back up for several hours. I finally got up for good at 3:15 since I had to be up at 3:30 anyway. I poked the internet with a stick for half an hour.
It was time for my writing lesson with WWP, but they kept not letting me into the zoom from the waiting room. They wound up starting 15 minutes late, which seems pretty disrespectful to me, and meant we did one fewer writing activity since we ended with 30 minutes left which wasn't enough time to write and share but was really too long to just sit there awkwardly looking at each other. If we'd had another 15 minutes, it would have been perfect.
We started out writing short stories about being invisible. Then we were told to throw a wrench in our characters' plans and write what happened next, which gave me about a 1000 word short story about being invisible. Once again people were very impressed with my writing, though I was more impressed by a sci fi piece the one guy in the class did.
When we were done, I realized I had failed to buy grated cheddar for my recipe today, so I had to eat it without the cheese. It was still really good, and I'll definitely do it again. I probably should have made some baked beans or something to go with it, because I'm still hungry. I did eat the last of the macaroni salad though.
After dinner, I alternated looking at RN with reading a couple of my books, but I really struggled with reading because I didn't sleep last night and just couldn't concentrate anymore. Eventually, I wound up cleaning up the kitchen until 10 when I started writing here.
My brain wants to curl up into a little ball and fall asleep, but my body still feels like I should keep going. I don't know what to do about this. I'll probably finish up this entry and then try to sleep since it's not like I can really do any good at anything else.
Did I mention, I'm rich? Okay, I'm not rich, but I did get my tax refund today, and because Kevin only worked 2 months last year, I qualified for an earned income tax credit, which is a little bit of money I didn't have before.
I texted Tabby to see what the plans are for our vacation, if I'm picking her up or what to get down to Hilton Head. She hasn't gotten back to me yet, which is annoying. At any rate, if I'm picking her up then I'm going to try to save The Sound of Stars to listen to on the way to pick her up, and then when I get there we can listen to whatever the book club book was that I don't remember the name of but bought today. That's supposed to happen in 3.5 weeks, and we haven't said anything about it in a while.
I'm going to try to watch Spiderman tomorrow at Studio Movie Grill so that I'll be caught up when Dr. Strange comes out. I'm supposed to volunteer at Corners again, which means I probably need to take a shower tonight. Then I'll go from there to the theater, which hopefully will take less than 30 minutes to get there so I can get a ticket and order dinner. Hopefully they are serving dinner again. Last time I went there was for a matinee and they weren't serving any food. I will be very hungry if I don't get any food until 9pm.
She threw one of her patented borderline personality disorder fits, even after I told her I'd give her the money back. She kept repeating that "everybody" at RN would be happy when her husband died, which I finally told her was paranoia born of her mental illness and not of reality. She said she is going to work magic against us and punish us all for not giving her money for her husband when she has been banned and isn't even a member of that community anymore, though she does still creepily read everything we post there she just can't respond to it. On the plus side I figured out how to block someone on FB Messenger now. I've never had to do it before, but now I know how. Hopefully she won't go about finding new ways to try to communicate with me...
Anyway, hopefully that is over. I managed to sleep an hour at 5 but was wide awake again by 6 so I got up and ordered starbucks, and then went to bed again, but I just kept sleeping for an hour and then waking back up for several hours. I finally got up for good at 3:15 since I had to be up at 3:30 anyway. I poked the internet with a stick for half an hour.
It was time for my writing lesson with WWP, but they kept not letting me into the zoom from the waiting room. They wound up starting 15 minutes late, which seems pretty disrespectful to me, and meant we did one fewer writing activity since we ended with 30 minutes left which wasn't enough time to write and share but was really too long to just sit there awkwardly looking at each other. If we'd had another 15 minutes, it would have been perfect.
We started out writing short stories about being invisible. Then we were told to throw a wrench in our characters' plans and write what happened next, which gave me about a 1000 word short story about being invisible. Once again people were very impressed with my writing, though I was more impressed by a sci fi piece the one guy in the class did.
When we were done, I realized I had failed to buy grated cheddar for my recipe today, so I had to eat it without the cheese. It was still really good, and I'll definitely do it again. I probably should have made some baked beans or something to go with it, because I'm still hungry. I did eat the last of the macaroni salad though.
After dinner, I alternated looking at RN with reading a couple of my books, but I really struggled with reading because I didn't sleep last night and just couldn't concentrate anymore. Eventually, I wound up cleaning up the kitchen until 10 when I started writing here.
My brain wants to curl up into a little ball and fall asleep, but my body still feels like I should keep going. I don't know what to do about this. I'll probably finish up this entry and then try to sleep since it's not like I can really do any good at anything else.
Did I mention, I'm rich? Okay, I'm not rich, but I did get my tax refund today, and because Kevin only worked 2 months last year, I qualified for an earned income tax credit, which is a little bit of money I didn't have before.
I texted Tabby to see what the plans are for our vacation, if I'm picking her up or what to get down to Hilton Head. She hasn't gotten back to me yet, which is annoying. At any rate, if I'm picking her up then I'm going to try to save The Sound of Stars to listen to on the way to pick her up, and then when I get there we can listen to whatever the book club book was that I don't remember the name of but bought today. That's supposed to happen in 3.5 weeks, and we haven't said anything about it in a while.
I'm going to try to watch Spiderman tomorrow at Studio Movie Grill so that I'll be caught up when Dr. Strange comes out. I'm supposed to volunteer at Corners again, which means I probably need to take a shower tonight. Then I'll go from there to the theater, which hopefully will take less than 30 minutes to get there so I can get a ticket and order dinner. Hopefully they are serving dinner again. Last time I went there was for a matinee and they weren't serving any food. I will be very hungry if I don't get any food until 9pm.
Today was an ominous and oppressive day. I mean, I walked outside to my car and if my mother wouldn't have killed me, I would have turned around and gone back to bed because the air just felt so wrong. I fell asleep immediately after writing here last night and woke up around 8am but stayed in bed until 10am. I don't know what was wrong with Jack, but he just wasn't going to let me sleep anymore. So I got up and read LJ and DW and RN.
The weather app told me it was going to start storming between 3 - 4 so I texted Sally to see if she could meet me a little earlier so I wouldn't have to drive with an anxious dog in a storm (which makes B really even more anxious). We agreed to meet at noon, so I had another half an hour to poke the internet.
I headed over to the parking lot where I was supposed to meet Sally. I was pretty early, but facebook reminded me that it was the cats' gotcha day, so I headed to PetSmart to grab some wet food for them figuring if I got something that the main ingredient was tuna, maybe they'd eat it. (Aggie did - Aaron did not). While I was there I grabbed some treats for Jack, Rogue, and Bennett.
I got back in the car and headed over to Target, but was still early. I checked my email and there was one from my vet reminding me to pick up heartworm and flea medications for Jack and Rogue. Literally my vet is in the PetSmart that I just left, so I headed back there. Then they had some kind of complication regarding what day my plan rolls over and needing it to roll over before I could have the meds. So we sorted that out, and by that time Sally had texted me that she was in the parking lot.
I went back to Target, and walked around the lot a bit but didn't find her (I walked two of the aisles in the opposite direction from her apparently). She saw me, so she walked up with the dog and then with the dog food. Then Bennett and I came home. B tried to jump into my lap at a stop light, so that was kind of bad, but fortunately he lay back down once the car started moving and didn't come back into my lap again until we reached my house when he frantically jumped into my lap. Maybe he's afraid he's going to be left in the car when it stops? My mom does that sometimes (with the AC on), so maybe I should tell her not to?
I got home and did some of my reading before realizing that I am stupidly busy all week and if I want to add photography to my week, I needed to do it pronto. I grabbed my camera and headed to a park in downtown Norcross. I took about 20 photographs, and then came home. As I got back in my car, it started raining. Good timing.
I came home and realized that I had failed to put dinner in the crock pot last night, so I had nothing to eat. I ordered Japanese and guys? I think I found the Japanese place that doesn't use fish sauce. Kevin and I had found one, but Kevin didn't tell me what it was called, but I think I found it again! Huzzah!
After dinner I went back to hitting refresh on RN and reading a bit. I also did some exercise when it did start raining because I knew better than to try to get to the gym when it's thundering (Holcomb Bridge floods and then backs up and is a mess). I did 10 minutes of cleaning my kitchen and got the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded as well as getting a bag of trash out and a couple packages of meds opened and sorted. Not bad for 10 minutes. Tomorrow I need to try to do ten minutes again, and get this room sorted a little bit. Jack has made a mess of things in here.
I did all of my reading except for the two textbooks, which I will attempt to do if I can stay awake after writing here. I did move my writing time up an hour because I'm pretty tired and was thinking I might fall asleep before 11pm again. I don't know that that's going to happen, but my poor brain feels full and tired, and I've been up a long time for my usual experience.
I've seen the rumors that Russia is leaving the internet on the 11th. I'm not overly concerned, but if we haven't connected elsewhere yet, DW is Zhelana and FB is Katy Skoog. That's all the social media I use other than goodreads, and I don't really keep up with friends on goodreads. (DW friends can also feel free to connect via FB if we haven't already).
For the fact that it has been a miserable week full of miserable memories, I'm not doing too badly. I've managed to do four of the seven things I need to do each week for my goals, and have plans for one more tomorrow (a walk - though it is supposed to rain during it so I may wind up walking at the gym on a treadmill or just doing weights and trying to walk if it stops raining on Thursday. I'm not really a fan of the treadmill, so we'll see. The fact that the first sunny day this week is supposed to be Saturday might mean I just have to grin and bare it on the treadmill. It's unfortunate that my headphones aren't working, though.
Speaking of listening to stuff, I really need to go back to the book I was listening to before I went to Orlando in the car. I've been listening to music, but I want to finish that book, and start a new one. I don't remember what books we picked for next in book club and Jayne didn't email us today, so I emailed her to ask her for the titles. Hopefully at least one of them will be available on audible, but I do have like 12 weeks to read even the soonest one since first we're doing Leonard Cohen.
The weather app told me it was going to start storming between 3 - 4 so I texted Sally to see if she could meet me a little earlier so I wouldn't have to drive with an anxious dog in a storm (which makes B really even more anxious). We agreed to meet at noon, so I had another half an hour to poke the internet.
I headed over to the parking lot where I was supposed to meet Sally. I was pretty early, but facebook reminded me that it was the cats' gotcha day, so I headed to PetSmart to grab some wet food for them figuring if I got something that the main ingredient was tuna, maybe they'd eat it. (Aggie did - Aaron did not). While I was there I grabbed some treats for Jack, Rogue, and Bennett.
I got back in the car and headed over to Target, but was still early. I checked my email and there was one from my vet reminding me to pick up heartworm and flea medications for Jack and Rogue. Literally my vet is in the PetSmart that I just left, so I headed back there. Then they had some kind of complication regarding what day my plan rolls over and needing it to roll over before I could have the meds. So we sorted that out, and by that time Sally had texted me that she was in the parking lot.
I went back to Target, and walked around the lot a bit but didn't find her (I walked two of the aisles in the opposite direction from her apparently). She saw me, so she walked up with the dog and then with the dog food. Then Bennett and I came home. B tried to jump into my lap at a stop light, so that was kind of bad, but fortunately he lay back down once the car started moving and didn't come back into my lap again until we reached my house when he frantically jumped into my lap. Maybe he's afraid he's going to be left in the car when it stops? My mom does that sometimes (with the AC on), so maybe I should tell her not to?
I got home and did some of my reading before realizing that I am stupidly busy all week and if I want to add photography to my week, I needed to do it pronto. I grabbed my camera and headed to a park in downtown Norcross. I took about 20 photographs, and then came home. As I got back in my car, it started raining. Good timing.
I came home and realized that I had failed to put dinner in the crock pot last night, so I had nothing to eat. I ordered Japanese and guys? I think I found the Japanese place that doesn't use fish sauce. Kevin and I had found one, but Kevin didn't tell me what it was called, but I think I found it again! Huzzah!
After dinner I went back to hitting refresh on RN and reading a bit. I also did some exercise when it did start raining because I knew better than to try to get to the gym when it's thundering (Holcomb Bridge floods and then backs up and is a mess). I did 10 minutes of cleaning my kitchen and got the dishwasher unloaded and reloaded as well as getting a bag of trash out and a couple packages of meds opened and sorted. Not bad for 10 minutes. Tomorrow I need to try to do ten minutes again, and get this room sorted a little bit. Jack has made a mess of things in here.
I did all of my reading except for the two textbooks, which I will attempt to do if I can stay awake after writing here. I did move my writing time up an hour because I'm pretty tired and was thinking I might fall asleep before 11pm again. I don't know that that's going to happen, but my poor brain feels full and tired, and I've been up a long time for my usual experience.
I've seen the rumors that Russia is leaving the internet on the 11th. I'm not overly concerned, but if we haven't connected elsewhere yet, DW is Zhelana and FB is Katy Skoog. That's all the social media I use other than goodreads, and I don't really keep up with friends on goodreads. (DW friends can also feel free to connect via FB if we haven't already).
For the fact that it has been a miserable week full of miserable memories, I'm not doing too badly. I've managed to do four of the seven things I need to do each week for my goals, and have plans for one more tomorrow (a walk - though it is supposed to rain during it so I may wind up walking at the gym on a treadmill or just doing weights and trying to walk if it stops raining on Thursday. I'm not really a fan of the treadmill, so we'll see. The fact that the first sunny day this week is supposed to be Saturday might mean I just have to grin and bare it on the treadmill. It's unfortunate that my headphones aren't working, though.
Speaking of listening to stuff, I really need to go back to the book I was listening to before I went to Orlando in the car. I've been listening to music, but I want to finish that book, and start a new one. I don't remember what books we picked for next in book club and Jayne didn't email us today, so I emailed her to ask her for the titles. Hopefully at least one of them will be available on audible, but I do have like 12 weeks to read even the soonest one since first we're doing Leonard Cohen.
I don't know why I didn't manage anything last night. I talked to Alex and I really don't know what else I did because I didn't watch youtube, and that's what I usually do. I didn't take my glimepiride, and sure enough, I didn't feel sick for most of the night, so tonight I try a half dose, and see what that does for both feeling dizzy and sorting blood sugar. But, it might not be a great time to try it as I seem to be getting sick. About 10 minutes ago I started coughing deep in my chest and feeling like I can't get enough air. I also took a nap at 8 - 9 because I felt bad. So we're going to try this half dose and see if it makes me sick... when I'm feeling sick. Great. Maybe I should just give up and go to recording morning blood sugar instead.
Anyway, I fell asleep around 4 this morning and Jack woke me up around 2 this afternoon. I stayed in bed another half hour with him whinging and me yelling at him to shut the hell up the whole time. I got up, fed him, and poked RN for 15 minutes until it was time to go to book club. We discussed The Ladies Auxiliary and everyone seemed to like it, but I am not alone in seeking more of an ending to it. Next time we will discuss the poetry of Leonard Cohen. I'm not looking forward to it, because I'm not really into poetry that much.
After that I was hungry so I ordered Chipotle and ate dinner/lunch. Then I did some of my reading, and read LJ and DW, and RN. I also talked to Kris on texts for a while about trying to find Kevin's favorite restaurant in Gatlinburg but I don't know what it's called or exactly where it is or if it survived the fires, never mind the pandemic. We're gonna try, but who knows? I spent about 10 minutes writing. I set a timer for 15 minutes, but ran out of anything to say after 10 so I just quit.
Around 7 I was so tired I was going to collapse, so I went in to take a nap and got up again around 9. At 9 I started coughing. Mom called me around 9:30 to make sure I had talked to Sally about getting mom's dog tomorrow. I had, and I have to go do that tomorrow.
I am really struggling to come up with something to talk about, I really have nothing going on in my life right now. And yet I feel the need to talk, to connect. I don't know. This is always my problem - I want to talk to people but I don't know what to say to them. And now I'm exhausted, too, even though I don't think I'd actually sleep if I went to bed right now.
Anyway, I fell asleep around 4 this morning and Jack woke me up around 2 this afternoon. I stayed in bed another half hour with him whinging and me yelling at him to shut the hell up the whole time. I got up, fed him, and poked RN for 15 minutes until it was time to go to book club. We discussed The Ladies Auxiliary and everyone seemed to like it, but I am not alone in seeking more of an ending to it. Next time we will discuss the poetry of Leonard Cohen. I'm not looking forward to it, because I'm not really into poetry that much.
After that I was hungry so I ordered Chipotle and ate dinner/lunch. Then I did some of my reading, and read LJ and DW, and RN. I also talked to Kris on texts for a while about trying to find Kevin's favorite restaurant in Gatlinburg but I don't know what it's called or exactly where it is or if it survived the fires, never mind the pandemic. We're gonna try, but who knows? I spent about 10 minutes writing. I set a timer for 15 minutes, but ran out of anything to say after 10 so I just quit.
Around 7 I was so tired I was going to collapse, so I went in to take a nap and got up again around 9. At 9 I started coughing. Mom called me around 9:30 to make sure I had talked to Sally about getting mom's dog tomorrow. I had, and I have to go do that tomorrow.
I am really struggling to come up with something to talk about, I really have nothing going on in my life right now. And yet I feel the need to talk, to connect. I don't know. This is always my problem - I want to talk to people but I don't know what to say to them. And now I'm exhausted, too, even though I don't think I'd actually sleep if I went to bed right now.
I watched all my youtubes last night and then fell asleep around 3:30am. I woke up when the dog woke me at 2pm. I fed him and then tried to find something to feed myself and wound up with cheez-its. I read LJ and DW, for the first time in like 3 days because I've been dysfunctional. So there was a lot of reading to do. So then when I finished that I went back to bed even though I only had 40 minutes before my alarm was set to go off.
My alarm went off and I went to the pool. I was 15 minutes early, but Donna was already there, bouncing around and waiting for me. We walked and talked and made faces at a couple who were doing some R rated things in the pool (and excuse you, there are children. You really need to get arrested for some of that shit). The lifeguard was watching them with his jaw hanging open and not looking at the gaggle of kids who were jumping onto kickboards and then falling backwards, narrowly missing hitting their heads on the wall of the pool. I'm pretty sure the lifeguard is going to wank to their memory tonight instead of telling them that that was inappropriate behavior in a public place.
I came home and ordered Arby's and then caught up with RN while I waited for it. I was too whelmed to deal with sitting in the kitchen like a grown up so I ate on the couch and fed my dogs some of the burnt fries. After dinner I spent my time talking to Kali and Sarah. Eventually I took a shower because my head was starting to itch and honestly I don't think I've had one since Russia invaded Ukraine. It was just as awful as I thought it was going to be, but at least it is warm enough that my house isn't cold and I can be wet without freezing to death.
I spent the next hour faffing around the internet, from RN to FB to chat with Kali and Sarah. I somehow missed 10pm. I remember looking at my clock at 9:30pm and thinking "oh I still have half an hour" but then I don't know how it wound up at 10:15 a short time later.
At any rate, I accomplished next to nothing today. No reading, no cleaning, nothing. Well, a small amount of art. But otherwise nothing. I feel bad about this, since it didn't start out as a bad day. It wasn't really a bad day, I just didn't manage to convince myself to do anything with it. I don't know.
I managed to not fall behind on my monthly writing goals, despite the very short entry yesterday by writing a letter to Nat and then writing about 100 words of free writing. It was painful. I kept having to look and see how many words I had and if I finally had enough. It seems like a lot. But is really so little.
Tomorrow is book club and we are discussing The Ladies Auxiliary which I enjoyed, and plan to write fanfic for for April Camp. If I bother with April Camp. Valerie and I haven't said anything about any plans for Camp, and I'm pretty much done with NaNo overall, so not feeling like putting much effort into it. I do have several short stories lined up to write that are fanfic for this book, though, so maybe I'll bother to write something. I don't think I'm going to push for 50k though. I don't even know that I'm going to push for 50k in November.
If I do write these short stories and post them on AO3, it will be the second fandom I've originated on there, and the second fandom where I (still) have the only work. Talk about small fandoms. Sighs. The other one still only has 21 hits and no kudos. So, uh. Yeah. It's a lonely, lonely world for me on AO3. I wonder how things become popular on there. I mean there are things that weren't even all that popular when they were on TV that have large communities on AO3. But here's me like "I really like this thing. And I am apparently the only one on earth that does."
It's going to be a sad week for Reading Wednesday. I don't think I've read a single page of a single book this week. There's some chance I will tomorrow and Wednesday, but almost no chance of Tuesday. So hopefully I don't sink into the depths of despair, or some kind of crazy land, or anything else, and manage to get something read. Even if it's just one day. Or a couple of books. Do something even though it's a crap week.
Sunday I have tickets to the immersive Van Gogh exhibit. Mom said it was amazing when she and my father went, so I'm hoping I enjoy it. I'm not necessarily into visual art that much, but then neither is my mother, so we'll see.
My alarm went off and I went to the pool. I was 15 minutes early, but Donna was already there, bouncing around and waiting for me. We walked and talked and made faces at a couple who were doing some R rated things in the pool (and excuse you, there are children. You really need to get arrested for some of that shit). The lifeguard was watching them with his jaw hanging open and not looking at the gaggle of kids who were jumping onto kickboards and then falling backwards, narrowly missing hitting their heads on the wall of the pool. I'm pretty sure the lifeguard is going to wank to their memory tonight instead of telling them that that was inappropriate behavior in a public place.
I came home and ordered Arby's and then caught up with RN while I waited for it. I was too whelmed to deal with sitting in the kitchen like a grown up so I ate on the couch and fed my dogs some of the burnt fries. After dinner I spent my time talking to Kali and Sarah. Eventually I took a shower because my head was starting to itch and honestly I don't think I've had one since Russia invaded Ukraine. It was just as awful as I thought it was going to be, but at least it is warm enough that my house isn't cold and I can be wet without freezing to death.
I spent the next hour faffing around the internet, from RN to FB to chat with Kali and Sarah. I somehow missed 10pm. I remember looking at my clock at 9:30pm and thinking "oh I still have half an hour" but then I don't know how it wound up at 10:15 a short time later.
At any rate, I accomplished next to nothing today. No reading, no cleaning, nothing. Well, a small amount of art. But otherwise nothing. I feel bad about this, since it didn't start out as a bad day. It wasn't really a bad day, I just didn't manage to convince myself to do anything with it. I don't know.
I managed to not fall behind on my monthly writing goals, despite the very short entry yesterday by writing a letter to Nat and then writing about 100 words of free writing. It was painful. I kept having to look and see how many words I had and if I finally had enough. It seems like a lot. But is really so little.
Tomorrow is book club and we are discussing The Ladies Auxiliary which I enjoyed, and plan to write fanfic for for April Camp. If I bother with April Camp. Valerie and I haven't said anything about any plans for Camp, and I'm pretty much done with NaNo overall, so not feeling like putting much effort into it. I do have several short stories lined up to write that are fanfic for this book, though, so maybe I'll bother to write something. I don't think I'm going to push for 50k though. I don't even know that I'm going to push for 50k in November.
If I do write these short stories and post them on AO3, it will be the second fandom I've originated on there, and the second fandom where I (still) have the only work. Talk about small fandoms. Sighs. The other one still only has 21 hits and no kudos. So, uh. Yeah. It's a lonely, lonely world for me on AO3. I wonder how things become popular on there. I mean there are things that weren't even all that popular when they were on TV that have large communities on AO3. But here's me like "I really like this thing. And I am apparently the only one on earth that does."
It's going to be a sad week for Reading Wednesday. I don't think I've read a single page of a single book this week. There's some chance I will tomorrow and Wednesday, but almost no chance of Tuesday. So hopefully I don't sink into the depths of despair, or some kind of crazy land, or anything else, and manage to get something read. Even if it's just one day. Or a couple of books. Do something even though it's a crap week.
Sunday I have tickets to the immersive Van Gogh exhibit. Mom said it was amazing when she and my father went, so I'm hoping I enjoy it. I'm not necessarily into visual art that much, but then neither is my mother, so we'll see.
Last night after writing here, I went over to Donna's house around midnight. She was cooking naan (unsuccessfully) and I sat at her kitchen table and we talked for about 3 hours. It was a distraction technique, but it worked. She showed me a video of Zelensky playing piano that was just great. At 3am when I decided to go home, I thought I was so exhausted I was going to drop on the way home. Of course, when I got to bed, I couldn't sleep. I lay there for two hours before getting up and ordering Starbucks, then around 6 or 7 took a sleeping pill and finally fell asleep.
I woke up around 4 to a message to facetime my parents because they were worried about me, so I talked to my mom for a while. Then I went back to sleep for an hour, and woke up at 6. I heated some dinner and shoved that in my face, and then went to Temple.
Rabbi Sernovitz asked the pastor of the Atlanta Ukrainian Orthodox Church to come talk to us, which sounded cool, and I really wanted to hear what he would say, but he said he didn't like writing speeches and just talked from his heart. Then he went on a weird rant about communism and the NKGBVD which took me a minute to sort out into NKVD/KGB. He ended his prayer with "Slava Ukraini" and nobody said a word. Finally, a pause too late I'm like "ok I gotta say it" but also I don't know how to pronounce it and don't even really remember how to spell it to try to pronounce it. So I say something like "heroyam slava" which is clearly Ukrai-glish because "hero" is the word in English. Well he looks at me and laughs, so clearly it wasn't even close to right, but whatever, at least I didn't leave him hanging.
Services went on for almost 2 hours, and it was after 9pm when we ended. Gone are the days where Rabbi Lebow got upset if we went for more than an hour. I grabbed a snack before looking at my watch, but as soon as I saw the time, I got in the car and left. I got home around 9:45 and looked at my dailies for the first time in the day. I quickly photoshopped an image, danced for 10 minutes, ate the marshmallow cookies I had grabbed from the oneg, and ordered enough groceries to cook something next week and some hand soap to come tomorrow.
Suddenly it was 10:30 and long past time to write here, so I started this. I keep getting distracted, but I think I'm pretty much done anyway. Probably not going to sleep any time soon, since I didn't really get up until 6 this evening. Not sure what I am going to do. Maybe I'll actually watch youtube since I'm feeling pretty strong for once, and things seem to be going okay.
I woke up around 4 to a message to facetime my parents because they were worried about me, so I talked to my mom for a while. Then I went back to sleep for an hour, and woke up at 6. I heated some dinner and shoved that in my face, and then went to Temple.
Rabbi Sernovitz asked the pastor of the Atlanta Ukrainian Orthodox Church to come talk to us, which sounded cool, and I really wanted to hear what he would say, but he said he didn't like writing speeches and just talked from his heart. Then he went on a weird rant about communism and the NKGBVD which took me a minute to sort out into NKVD/KGB. He ended his prayer with "Slava Ukraini" and nobody said a word. Finally, a pause too late I'm like "ok I gotta say it" but also I don't know how to pronounce it and don't even really remember how to spell it to try to pronounce it. So I say something like "heroyam slava" which is clearly Ukrai-glish because "hero" is the word in English. Well he looks at me and laughs, so clearly it wasn't even close to right, but whatever, at least I didn't leave him hanging.
Services went on for almost 2 hours, and it was after 9pm when we ended. Gone are the days where Rabbi Lebow got upset if we went for more than an hour. I grabbed a snack before looking at my watch, but as soon as I saw the time, I got in the car and left. I got home around 9:45 and looked at my dailies for the first time in the day. I quickly photoshopped an image, danced for 10 minutes, ate the marshmallow cookies I had grabbed from the oneg, and ordered enough groceries to cook something next week and some hand soap to come tomorrow.
Suddenly it was 10:30 and long past time to write here, so I started this. I keep getting distracted, but I think I'm pretty much done anyway. Probably not going to sleep any time soon, since I didn't really get up until 6 this evening. Not sure what I am going to do. Maybe I'll actually watch youtube since I'm feeling pretty strong for once, and things seem to be going okay.
Today may be the worst day I've ever experienced. At any rate, it's the first time I've wound up talking to a suicide hotline. I didn't even need to do that immediately after Kevin died. Although then I had my family and friends surrounding me, and essentially accomplishing the same thing. I feel even worse because I can't really be emotional support for Alex and Victor right now, both of whom are going through some shit. Alex is trying to lean on me and Victor is not, but not being able to lean on Victor right now and trying to go out of my way to not cause him any extra stress is really stressing me out. I'm breaking. The person I am most relying on to stop myself from breaking is also going through some shit. In fact he's literally in jail. We're communicating through his county jail's email system and some poor guy whose job is to read jail emails is watching me have a mental breakdown on a guy who is literally in jail. *sighs* Life is so fucked up right now.
What is actually wrong, you ask? Well, it is a year to the day from when Kevin went into the hospital, and never came out again. I've been without him for a year, and nothing is alright ever again.
I fell asleep around 1 last night after talking to Alex briefly (or in the middle of talking to Alex as I woke up to more messages from him so apparently I failed to say good night when I went to bed). I didn't accomplish much of anything last night. I may even have gone to bed closer to 12:30. I don't know. I was awake like 6 hours yesterday all told. I got up at noon, and was starving to death. I ate my normal breakfast and then half a sleeve of thin mints because I was ravenous and didn't have any other food in the house. Or at least nothing healthier.
I got up and read lj and dw then went back to sleep for another hour. Then when I got up, I went to the gym. There was heavy traffic on the way back and I passed like 6 cops and 2 fire trucks, but there is often heavy traffic there, which is another strike against the gym that I'm currently at. The other one is closer, and the only traffic ever there is on Jimmy Carter heading back to my house.
The WWP Talk guy called me but we didn't talk long because I was too upset to be very communicative and instead of trying to help me he was just like "I sense that you don't want to talk today, so I'll let you go." Not very helpful for a mental health professional.
I made a joke about how Spanish puta and Russian Putin could be cognates, and someone responded "Putin doesn't mean little bitch in Russian." I was like Jesus have you never heard of a joke before? Is every joke you tell perfectly historically accurate? WTF? What I actually said was "some of y'all are entirely too literal. I'm just calling Putin a little bitch. Christ on a Cracker." I got an official warning for that, the first time I have ever seen them use an official warning against anyone. I'm not sure why Stephanie's panties are in a bunch today, but I've always hated her. Then the Chilean ML complained that puta means faggot, not bitch, in Chile, and even though she knows it's a mild swear in most of Latin America, it's really bad in Chile, and won't someone think of the children and censor me. So I got in trouble again, and I am entirely done with progressives at this point. Next up, they'll be warning the British mL for smoking.
This was the final push towards needing a hotline, which someone in chat helpfully provided one that would chat instead of making me use the phone (thank god because phones are stressful enough when you're not sobbing into them). So I talked to someone at IMAlive for a few minutes and they walked me through some calming exercises after ascertaining that I didn't actually have any means of killing myself immediately available.
At that point, Pika offered to go get coffee with me, which seemed like a good idea, even though I'd be skipping my creative writing class. I got to Starbucks at 5:45 and realized they closed at 6. But they said they wouldn't kick me off the back porch if I sat there, so I did. Pika didn't show up until 6:10, so they didn't get any coffee. We talked until 7 at which point we decided to go across the street to McDonalds, where we ate and talked until about 9.
I came home, and spent some time talking to Laird and I honestly have no clue how the past hour disappeared - maybe just staring depressedly into space. I might not have had a shower in a week, and I really don't care. If I'm going to fall apart I may as well smell to match. I actually don't think I smell, but my hair is pretty greasy and kind of itchy, so I should probably get a shower at some point. It just seems like such an ordeal. Even just taking my clothes off seems like an ordeal, never mind actually functioning in the shower.
I think the cats are locked in the bathroom, and I really need to go let them out... but that seems like a huge ordeal, too. It's not even that big a deal. I literally just need to stand up, walk about 10 steps, and open the door, and yet I can't do it. I give up. I've taken my meds, so anything else that gets done is a bonus. And I don't feel the need for many bonuses right now. Out of spell slots. Good thing writing a journal is a cantrip.
What is actually wrong, you ask? Well, it is a year to the day from when Kevin went into the hospital, and never came out again. I've been without him for a year, and nothing is alright ever again.
I fell asleep around 1 last night after talking to Alex briefly (or in the middle of talking to Alex as I woke up to more messages from him so apparently I failed to say good night when I went to bed). I didn't accomplish much of anything last night. I may even have gone to bed closer to 12:30. I don't know. I was awake like 6 hours yesterday all told. I got up at noon, and was starving to death. I ate my normal breakfast and then half a sleeve of thin mints because I was ravenous and didn't have any other food in the house. Or at least nothing healthier.
I got up and read lj and dw then went back to sleep for another hour. Then when I got up, I went to the gym. There was heavy traffic on the way back and I passed like 6 cops and 2 fire trucks, but there is often heavy traffic there, which is another strike against the gym that I'm currently at. The other one is closer, and the only traffic ever there is on Jimmy Carter heading back to my house.
The WWP Talk guy called me but we didn't talk long because I was too upset to be very communicative and instead of trying to help me he was just like "I sense that you don't want to talk today, so I'll let you go." Not very helpful for a mental health professional.
I made a joke about how Spanish puta and Russian Putin could be cognates, and someone responded "Putin doesn't mean little bitch in Russian." I was like Jesus have you never heard of a joke before? Is every joke you tell perfectly historically accurate? WTF? What I actually said was "some of y'all are entirely too literal. I'm just calling Putin a little bitch. Christ on a Cracker." I got an official warning for that, the first time I have ever seen them use an official warning against anyone. I'm not sure why Stephanie's panties are in a bunch today, but I've always hated her. Then the Chilean ML complained that puta means faggot, not bitch, in Chile, and even though she knows it's a mild swear in most of Latin America, it's really bad in Chile, and won't someone think of the children and censor me. So I got in trouble again, and I am entirely done with progressives at this point. Next up, they'll be warning the British mL for smoking.
This was the final push towards needing a hotline, which someone in chat helpfully provided one that would chat instead of making me use the phone (thank god because phones are stressful enough when you're not sobbing into them). So I talked to someone at IMAlive for a few minutes and they walked me through some calming exercises after ascertaining that I didn't actually have any means of killing myself immediately available.
At that point, Pika offered to go get coffee with me, which seemed like a good idea, even though I'd be skipping my creative writing class. I got to Starbucks at 5:45 and realized they closed at 6. But they said they wouldn't kick me off the back porch if I sat there, so I did. Pika didn't show up until 6:10, so they didn't get any coffee. We talked until 7 at which point we decided to go across the street to McDonalds, where we ate and talked until about 9.
I came home, and spent some time talking to Laird and I honestly have no clue how the past hour disappeared - maybe just staring depressedly into space. I might not have had a shower in a week, and I really don't care. If I'm going to fall apart I may as well smell to match. I actually don't think I smell, but my hair is pretty greasy and kind of itchy, so I should probably get a shower at some point. It just seems like such an ordeal. Even just taking my clothes off seems like an ordeal, never mind actually functioning in the shower.
I think the cats are locked in the bathroom, and I really need to go let them out... but that seems like a huge ordeal, too. It's not even that big a deal. I literally just need to stand up, walk about 10 steps, and open the door, and yet I can't do it. I give up. I've taken my meds, so anything else that gets done is a bonus. And I don't feel the need for many bonuses right now. Out of spell slots. Good thing writing a journal is a cantrip.
I didn't sleep last night. Like not even at 7 when I usually finally get to sleep. I talked to Alex until he went to bed, Kali until she went to bed, Gerda until she left, and Victor until he got sick of me or something. Despite not sleeping I couldn't convince myself to do anything productive for most of the night and didn't watch any youtube or do any reading. I mostly just doom scrolled and chatted. I also read LJ and DW, and did art and exercised before bed.
I finally got some sleep from noon to 5 but it's not enough. I woke up at 5 and read the internets for an hour, then ate dinner. Then went back to the same, read a small amount from two different books, but pretty much accomplished nothing today.
I thought I was supposed to go to volunteer, but when I wasn't asleep at noon I wrote them and said I wouldn't come in, and then they wrote me and said that they were off today, anyway, and were sorry they didn't tell me. So, uh. Yeah.
The good news is the reading volunteer thing is coming back next week, so we get to see what happens about Sheila The Great.
i finally got my power bill, which usually comes around the end of the month, and it was cheaper than last month, while the heating bill was $20 more expensive. I didn't think Feb was cooler than Jan, but I guess it was? I don't know. We've gone straight from 45 degree days to 75 degree days without any pretty 60s in between. So I guess it is summer now, even though March just started. That means summer has now encroached on 8 months of the year, and that just sucks.
Anyway, now there's the late night write in in the coffeehouse so maybe I'll go pay attention to that. It's not like I have anything to say for myself here.
I finally got some sleep from noon to 5 but it's not enough. I woke up at 5 and read the internets for an hour, then ate dinner. Then went back to the same, read a small amount from two different books, but pretty much accomplished nothing today.
I thought I was supposed to go to volunteer, but when I wasn't asleep at noon I wrote them and said I wouldn't come in, and then they wrote me and said that they were off today, anyway, and were sorry they didn't tell me. So, uh. Yeah.
The good news is the reading volunteer thing is coming back next week, so we get to see what happens about Sheila The Great.
i finally got my power bill, which usually comes around the end of the month, and it was cheaper than last month, while the heating bill was $20 more expensive. I didn't think Feb was cooler than Jan, but I guess it was? I don't know. We've gone straight from 45 degree days to 75 degree days without any pretty 60s in between. So I guess it is summer now, even though March just started. That means summer has now encroached on 8 months of the year, and that just sucks.
Anyway, now there's the late night write in in the coffeehouse so maybe I'll go pay attention to that. It's not like I have anything to say for myself here.
Today gets listed under "oops." I went to bed at 2:30, so there was really no excuse for what happened next, but my alarm went off at 10 and I went "nope." And so the cats did not go to the vet. And I slept until 2. Technically I was told that the cats don't need to go to the vet until July by one of the women who works at the vet, and I think that is probably accurate. They're not due for any shots, so it's basically poking them, telling me Aaron is too fat, and deworming them, but I haven't seen any worms in their litter box, so I think they are okay. Anyway, I slept until 2.
When I woke up I went right back to doom scrolling, and also read LJ and DW. Then I read one chapter of Gerta but it was already almost time to go so I didn't read anything else. And I ate some buffalo chicken for dinner, but it was not very buffalo. I don't really know what else I did today. Pretty much just sat here being sad because it's probably the one year anniversary of the last time I had an actual conversation with Kevin.
I put in a complaint with the post office about the missing package, and got a call back from someone in California who was like "tough shit, lady" when I complained that i knew the package had been delivered to the wrong address. So apparently I'm out $50 and have no recourse. Even though the package should have been insured. She finally said she would try to get someone in Norcross to call me, but she was closing out the case because the package didn't make it to California so there's nothing she can do. I really wish that MCU had some truth to it so that I could get some gemstones together and snap everyone who works for the postal service out of existence. APSWAB. That's All postal service workers are bastards. They're worse than cops. At least the cops occasionally try to do their jobs.
At 6:30 I went for walkies with Donna. I was so upset that I forgot to get dressed, so I went out in a t-shirt, sandals, and no bra. Not ideal. It wasn't very cold, but I would have done well to have at least closed toed shoes and long pants on. Anyway, we walked all the way around the park without sitting down. Then we got to our cars, and I came home.
After walkies I have no idea what I did. Doom scrolled, I guess. I talked to Sarah and Kali, and Victor. I had a minor crisis when I realized I had no idea whether I had taken my meds or not. That was never solved.
I did a 15 minute writing sprint with NaNoLanta and wound up even more depressed. I didn't even write anything worth writing, since I did basically what my writing craft book suggested as "morning pages" which is just writing nonsense whatever is on your brain for however long. It was pretty depressing to see what is in my brain. Which is... not much.
I gave flea meds to all of my pets, which apparently pissed Aggie off because she couldn't be found for the next hour or so. Aaron came up and tried to cuddle with me immediately, though. Apparently he loves me more than Aggie does. Or maybe Aggie is mad that I had to grab at her repeatedly since Aaron just sat there like "oh this again..." while Aggie made a valiant attempt to run around the bathroom and escape.
lol someone wasn’t paying attention to where they ordered stuff from online and now our barony’s loaner arrows are in the post office. In Kyiv. What I want to know is can we donate them to the cause? Because as a former soldier I feel that I would be very demoralized by my battle buddy being taken out by a fucking arrow to the knee.
Anyway, I feel awful, and sitting here writing is making me feel worse, so I stop now.
When I woke up I went right back to doom scrolling, and also read LJ and DW. Then I read one chapter of Gerta but it was already almost time to go so I didn't read anything else. And I ate some buffalo chicken for dinner, but it was not very buffalo. I don't really know what else I did today. Pretty much just sat here being sad because it's probably the one year anniversary of the last time I had an actual conversation with Kevin.
I put in a complaint with the post office about the missing package, and got a call back from someone in California who was like "tough shit, lady" when I complained that i knew the package had been delivered to the wrong address. So apparently I'm out $50 and have no recourse. Even though the package should have been insured. She finally said she would try to get someone in Norcross to call me, but she was closing out the case because the package didn't make it to California so there's nothing she can do. I really wish that MCU had some truth to it so that I could get some gemstones together and snap everyone who works for the postal service out of existence. APSWAB. That's All postal service workers are bastards. They're worse than cops. At least the cops occasionally try to do their jobs.
At 6:30 I went for walkies with Donna. I was so upset that I forgot to get dressed, so I went out in a t-shirt, sandals, and no bra. Not ideal. It wasn't very cold, but I would have done well to have at least closed toed shoes and long pants on. Anyway, we walked all the way around the park without sitting down. Then we got to our cars, and I came home.
After walkies I have no idea what I did. Doom scrolled, I guess. I talked to Sarah and Kali, and Victor. I had a minor crisis when I realized I had no idea whether I had taken my meds or not. That was never solved.
I did a 15 minute writing sprint with NaNoLanta and wound up even more depressed. I didn't even write anything worth writing, since I did basically what my writing craft book suggested as "morning pages" which is just writing nonsense whatever is on your brain for however long. It was pretty depressing to see what is in my brain. Which is... not much.
I gave flea meds to all of my pets, which apparently pissed Aggie off because she couldn't be found for the next hour or so. Aaron came up and tried to cuddle with me immediately, though. Apparently he loves me more than Aggie does. Or maybe Aggie is mad that I had to grab at her repeatedly since Aaron just sat there like "oh this again..." while Aggie made a valiant attempt to run around the bathroom and escape.
lol someone wasn’t paying attention to where they ordered stuff from online and now our barony’s loaner arrows are in the post office. In Kyiv. What I want to know is can we donate them to the cause? Because as a former soldier I feel that I would be very demoralized by my battle buddy being taken out by a fucking arrow to the knee.
Anyway, I feel awful, and sitting here writing is making me feel worse, so I stop now.
Well, the fucking post office fucked me again. I got an email from a buyer of something from ebay that the tracking number on his package said it was delivered to Norcross Georgia (which is where I live). He thought that meant it had been sent return to sender, but it is not at my house. It has simply been delivered to some random house in Norcross for absolutely no reason. Since the buyer is in Upland, California, he is reasonably upset. Not as upset as I am as I'm the one who is going to have to refund him his $56 because the post office delivered a package to a random address for no good reason. Then I tried to fill out the "where's my package" form on the internet, and it kept not going through, so I guess I have to go to the post office now and see if they can do anything for me. I doubt it, though. I am about to fucking drop a tactical nuke on the damned post office. They can't do anything right!
At any rate, I fell asleep and this weird thing that has been happening to me occasionally happened again. I was deeply asleep when I was awakened by a knocking. It sounded very close, like someone was knocking on my door loudly. But it was about 4am, so no one should have been knocking on my door, and I certainly didn't answer it. I don't think there was actually anyone there because neither of the dogs barked at it. So I'm not sure if this is a new weird schizophrenia symptom, a recurring nightmare that wakes me up, or if my dogs are just going deaf and my neighbor is a shit head. It's hard to get back to sleep after it happens.
I got a phone call at 10am that my tax forms were correct and I did have $12k in capital gains, so apparently I've lost closer to $30k, not $20k. Just that part of that came back? At any rate, Edward Jones sent me a "don't panic" email saying that after unexpected political events rock the stock market, it usually comes back within 6 months or so. They showed a few select political events going as far back as the Kennedy Assassination, but didn't show a lot of them, as well, so I think they may be cherry picked. At any rate, let's hope they are right because it's not like I can afford to lose any more money!
I fell back asleep, and had rape dreams again, until my alarm went off at 2:20. I got up and went to Rainbow Village, a transitional housing village in Duluth where I will be doing homework help maybe twice a month. It is on Tuesdays, which is the day the kids do STEM, which I know nothing about! The other days were art, life skills, computer skills, and music, which I also know nothing about, so maybe they'll just use me in the elementary school homework help room and not the after school activity room? They're currently making robots, which is super cool, but I really can't help them with that.
When I left, I went across the street to downtown Duluth, where I went to the cemetery, and took some pictures. I really didn't take many because one cemetery is starting to look like the next, and there's nothing new there. I was there about 15 minutes, though, and then decided not to go to the gym because I was hungry.
I came home and cooked dinner, which was buffalo chicken. I tried to make it spicier than I usually do because Kevin isn't around to complain about the slightest bit of spice, but it ended up not being very spicy anyway. Oh well. After dinner I did a bit of exercise and downloaded my pictures off of the camera and realized how few there really were. I talked to Sarah and Kali and a little bit to Victor. I somehow forgot to take my meds until 4 hours later, so we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow.
Somewhere around 9:30 I started doing my taxes. There was never a spot to put in capital gains on the form. The form Edward Jones sent me didn't say anything about what kind of form it was and I couldn't find anywhere on the questions they ask about your income where it said capital gains. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I did the best I could, and then submitted them. I thoroughly expect the IRS to come back and say "hey..." but I don't know what else I'm supposed to try to do. There was a section for having sold stocks, but the tax forms I had didn't have any of the right blocks that it said were absolutely required, so I don't know if I just didn't sell enough for it to be worth reporting to the IRS or what. I wound up not filling out that section, either.
I finished around 10:30 and started writing here. Now it's already 11 and I don't know what else to say, so perhaps it is best if I just shut up.
At any rate, I fell asleep and this weird thing that has been happening to me occasionally happened again. I was deeply asleep when I was awakened by a knocking. It sounded very close, like someone was knocking on my door loudly. But it was about 4am, so no one should have been knocking on my door, and I certainly didn't answer it. I don't think there was actually anyone there because neither of the dogs barked at it. So I'm not sure if this is a new weird schizophrenia symptom, a recurring nightmare that wakes me up, or if my dogs are just going deaf and my neighbor is a shit head. It's hard to get back to sleep after it happens.
I got a phone call at 10am that my tax forms were correct and I did have $12k in capital gains, so apparently I've lost closer to $30k, not $20k. Just that part of that came back? At any rate, Edward Jones sent me a "don't panic" email saying that after unexpected political events rock the stock market, it usually comes back within 6 months or so. They showed a few select political events going as far back as the Kennedy Assassination, but didn't show a lot of them, as well, so I think they may be cherry picked. At any rate, let's hope they are right because it's not like I can afford to lose any more money!
I fell back asleep, and had rape dreams again, until my alarm went off at 2:20. I got up and went to Rainbow Village, a transitional housing village in Duluth where I will be doing homework help maybe twice a month. It is on Tuesdays, which is the day the kids do STEM, which I know nothing about! The other days were art, life skills, computer skills, and music, which I also know nothing about, so maybe they'll just use me in the elementary school homework help room and not the after school activity room? They're currently making robots, which is super cool, but I really can't help them with that.
When I left, I went across the street to downtown Duluth, where I went to the cemetery, and took some pictures. I really didn't take many because one cemetery is starting to look like the next, and there's nothing new there. I was there about 15 minutes, though, and then decided not to go to the gym because I was hungry.
I came home and cooked dinner, which was buffalo chicken. I tried to make it spicier than I usually do because Kevin isn't around to complain about the slightest bit of spice, but it ended up not being very spicy anyway. Oh well. After dinner I did a bit of exercise and downloaded my pictures off of the camera and realized how few there really were. I talked to Sarah and Kali and a little bit to Victor. I somehow forgot to take my meds until 4 hours later, so we'll see how I'm feeling tomorrow.
Somewhere around 9:30 I started doing my taxes. There was never a spot to put in capital gains on the form. The form Edward Jones sent me didn't say anything about what kind of form it was and I couldn't find anywhere on the questions they ask about your income where it said capital gains. I'm not sure what to make of this, but I did the best I could, and then submitted them. I thoroughly expect the IRS to come back and say "hey..." but I don't know what else I'm supposed to try to do. There was a section for having sold stocks, but the tax forms I had didn't have any of the right blocks that it said were absolutely required, so I don't know if I just didn't sell enough for it to be worth reporting to the IRS or what. I wound up not filling out that section, either.
I finished around 10:30 and started writing here. Now it's already 11 and I don't know what else to say, so perhaps it is best if I just shut up.
Today marks the first of a long string of anniversaries I wish didn't have to happen. It is the anniversary of Kevin getting sick. Thursday will be the anniversary of him going into the hospital. I stayed up late and finished my story for my creative writing class. It worked out okay, I guess. Anyway, it was after midnight by the time I finished so I marked "art" off on my todo list, and gave myself a bit of a break today. I was up much of the night talking Soviet history to Kali and Sarah, along, of course, with a bit of current events.
I went to bed at 3am and woke up at 2pm when Jack started whining. I fed him and came out to the living room where I read through the Ukraine War thread at RN for an hour, and then went back to sleep for 2 hours. I woke up again at 5. Jack was whining, I guess because he missed his mommy. I spent quite a bit of time trying to convince myself to go to the gym. I ultimately succeeded by promising myself I would check out the new Indian place that is exactly where the old Indian place was.
I went to the gym for about 20 minutes. It wasn't very crowded even though it was dinnerish time. I did the dummy proof machines, and then went to the Indian restaurant. It's an entirely different menu and the lady I think owned the place was gone, but a lot of the other employees were the same people. The chicken tikka masala was less soupy and more like a curry, but pretty much tasted the same. The garlic naan was a lot better than it used to be. Overall i was quite pleased, especially with the Lassi (a mango yogurt smoothie like drink).
I came home and read LJ and DW. Then I convinced myself to take a shower and take my meds. So I guess it was a successful day - art, leave the house, exercise, shower, food, meds... that's really all it takes to be successful for a bad day. Technically I should have cleaned the cat box, but, well... it's the first of a lot of bad days. Sooner or later (as in tomorrow) I will have to clean the cat box, but ugh. My poor brain just isn't working today. Maybe tomorrow will be better. At any rate, I actually have to get out of bed and function by 2:15 tomorrow. No moping in bed until 5.
I have to get my shit together. I can't be moping in bed for the next 4 months, and there will be a lot of anniversaries between now and June that are hard to deal with.
Anyway, I haven't really done much today, and I'm too depressed to really think about a lot to say. Tomorrow we will see how going to the gym is during rush hour (at least from the place I want to volunteer, but the part of Holcomb Bridge I'm worried about I still have to travel). Then we can make a final decision between this one and LA Fitness, though I'm really leaning heavily towards LA Fitness, just because of the location and the presence of a pool. I actually like the other one I went to for the one day better than this one, because that one at least had a routine you could do if you didn't know what else to do. I guess it would be easy enough to do 1 minute on a treadmill and 1 minute on each weight machine in a loop here though? They also don't have an abs machine so I need to figure out something to do for my abs if I'm going to stay here long term. I'll get the three day free trial from LA Fitness after this, and see if I like them.
I have learned how to say "Go fuck yourself" in Ukrainian now. So now I know two sentences of Ukrainian. The other is "home is where the cat is." The new one seems like it could be more useful? Oh I also know how to say "Glory to Ukraine" so uh, that's three sentences. Unfortunately, I don't remember how to say "glory to heroes" so I only know half of the call/response thing.
Anyway, I've done remarkably little doom scrolling today, but I don't really know what I plan to do for the rest of the night.
I went to bed at 3am and woke up at 2pm when Jack started whining. I fed him and came out to the living room where I read through the Ukraine War thread at RN for an hour, and then went back to sleep for 2 hours. I woke up again at 5. Jack was whining, I guess because he missed his mommy. I spent quite a bit of time trying to convince myself to go to the gym. I ultimately succeeded by promising myself I would check out the new Indian place that is exactly where the old Indian place was.
I went to the gym for about 20 minutes. It wasn't very crowded even though it was dinnerish time. I did the dummy proof machines, and then went to the Indian restaurant. It's an entirely different menu and the lady I think owned the place was gone, but a lot of the other employees were the same people. The chicken tikka masala was less soupy and more like a curry, but pretty much tasted the same. The garlic naan was a lot better than it used to be. Overall i was quite pleased, especially with the Lassi (a mango yogurt smoothie like drink).
I came home and read LJ and DW. Then I convinced myself to take a shower and take my meds. So I guess it was a successful day - art, leave the house, exercise, shower, food, meds... that's really all it takes to be successful for a bad day. Technically I should have cleaned the cat box, but, well... it's the first of a lot of bad days. Sooner or later (as in tomorrow) I will have to clean the cat box, but ugh. My poor brain just isn't working today. Maybe tomorrow will be better. At any rate, I actually have to get out of bed and function by 2:15 tomorrow. No moping in bed until 5.
I have to get my shit together. I can't be moping in bed for the next 4 months, and there will be a lot of anniversaries between now and June that are hard to deal with.
Anyway, I haven't really done much today, and I'm too depressed to really think about a lot to say. Tomorrow we will see how going to the gym is during rush hour (at least from the place I want to volunteer, but the part of Holcomb Bridge I'm worried about I still have to travel). Then we can make a final decision between this one and LA Fitness, though I'm really leaning heavily towards LA Fitness, just because of the location and the presence of a pool. I actually like the other one I went to for the one day better than this one, because that one at least had a routine you could do if you didn't know what else to do. I guess it would be easy enough to do 1 minute on a treadmill and 1 minute on each weight machine in a loop here though? They also don't have an abs machine so I need to figure out something to do for my abs if I'm going to stay here long term. I'll get the three day free trial from LA Fitness after this, and see if I like them.
I have learned how to say "Go fuck yourself" in Ukrainian now. So now I know two sentences of Ukrainian. The other is "home is where the cat is." The new one seems like it could be more useful? Oh I also know how to say "Glory to Ukraine" so uh, that's three sentences. Unfortunately, I don't remember how to say "glory to heroes" so I only know half of the call/response thing.
Anyway, I've done remarkably little doom scrolling today, but I don't really know what I plan to do for the rest of the night.
I crashed at 9pm yesterday and woke up at 7am today. I was up for the day. I got up, read LJ and DW, and promptly went back to doom scrolling Ukraine. Like, there's not that much news coming out. And yet I'm afraid to look away.
Anyway, around 9 the lady at the gym I got a free 3 week membership to called me and told me the appointment we had set up was no good because she forgot it was Friday, and although they are a 24 hour gym, all the employees go home by 2 on a Friday, so no one would be there at 5. I decided since I was up, I'd drive over there and let her show me around, and then do a workout. I got there about 15 minutes later, and they are right next door to the old movie theater that closed. So not actually as far as I thought, even though they are technically in Alpharetta. Probably still farther than I want to drive 3 times a week, though, but I do have to admit it's nice to have 24 hour access (although would I feel uncomfortable if I were the only person in the gym? Like, she didn't say that they have security guards, either)
The first thing she showed me was that instead of having large group classes for the last 2-3 years they have recorded classes that you can do at your leisure in a large room. "Some of the ladies" get together at 10am and do one together, but they are available 24 hours a day. I tried to do one today, but the first thing it wanted me to do was pushups and they didn't have yoga matts so it made my knees hurt, and I quit.
Then she showed me around the weight lifting and the other areas of the gym. I admit I have no idea what to do with an entire room in there. It looked like boxes to jump up on and a large rope that looked like it was for some kids to play tug-o-war and something that looked like a treadmill with weights attached to it, I don't even know. She walked me through the weight machines for dummies (the ones that only move in the correct pattern and you can't fuck it up), then left me to work out. I did like 4 weight machines for dummies, then left because I couldn't figure out what to do. On the way out I asked and learned that it is $40 for personal training, for 30-45 minute sessions. This is about as cheap as that gets, so that's a definite maybe.
I came home around 10:30 and started my reading. Reading and doom scrolling took up much of the rest of my day. At some point some of the assholes at RN started arguing about how to pronounce Kyiv. Victor, who was born there, provided video of a language professor at Yale pronouncing it and explaining the pronunciation using American words, although that И is not a pronounceable sound in English. He then said that honestly Americans have approximately a 0% chance of pronouncing it right, so just say literally anything that is not Key-ev that people will understand. Keev is fine.
So then Kirti starts arguing with him that Key-ev is better because at least it has two syllables. It's like, sure, if you want to sound like a damned Russian. But Keev is closer to the Ukrainian. Not perfect, since it is supposed to be two syllables, but a hell of a lot better. Then I asked him why it was spelled Kyiv since in Russian И is transliterated as I but apparently it's different in Ukrainian, and И makes the same sound as Ы in Russian, and is transliterated as Y. Then he spelled Kyiv in Russian for me, and then I could understand how it was pronounced much better than the video he posted earlier. I think Kyiv is pronounced a bit like the SCA kingdom of Caid, which helps exactly one of you, who probably already knew anyway.
Around noon I was hungry, and I couldn't find anything to eat, so I ate the leftover pizza that was going to be dinner, figuring I could figure something else out later. Later came and I had exactly 0 spoons to put towards figuring out or eating food, so I ordered a 40 oz smoothie from Smoothie King, with some fiber, some protein, some fruit, and some veggies in it. I figured that was close enough to a meal. I drank that while talking to Kali and Sarah. It was probably more healthy than my average meal.
When I was done, I went back to doom scrolling, which I eventually realized was not helping me any, so I joined an in progress write in in NaNoLanta chat with Wyatt and Valerie. Unfortunately, I got there for the last sprint, which ended around 9:15. Fortunately, that really only gave me time to check habitica, and maybe a tiny bit of doom scrolling. At any rate, my doom scrolling had become more about arguing whether Keev or Key-ev was a better wrong pronunciation of Kyiv, and a bit of a rant about how Americans pronounce other places such as Qatar and Iraq.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass my recently updated writing goal for the month, which was 35k this month. I need about 1k worth of words to get there and today was a long day. At any rate, if I don't do it today, I will certainly do it tomorrow. Maybe I just won't have a goal for the last two days of the month, then. 38k would get me to 70k for the year, though, and then I'd be almost assured to pull in to the end of March 1/3rd of the way to my yearly goal. I'm already more than 20k words ahead on that goal. I am not good at making goals that are challenging but not impossible.
If I keep going at the rate I've been going for the rest of the year, I'll get 420 words, which means I would only need another 80k to get the 500k goal, which is doable with three 50k months for various NaNo events. Except eventually I have to slow down a little to outline something for the 3 NaNo events, and also, I'm not sure I'm doing the NaNo events since I'm sick to death of online write ins and no one comes to my voice ins.
Maybe I can come up with something creative to do with my write ins, like Julia's Kitchen, where we all cook the same thing and sprint while it is boiling or heating or whatever. I need more creative ideas. Help me, hive mind. Maybe I can write a story to go with some sprints like "you are pretty sure you just saw your ex boyfriend. If you pretend it wasn't him, write 500 words. If you try to talk to him, write for 15 minutes." I'd probably have to copy off of a book though rather than try to write my own tale. I wonder what ever happened to the one we were doing on GYWO. I kind of lost track of it around part 8. Apparently part 8 was the last part they did and the rest is coming in March.
Also I am going to Hilton Head with Tabby for a week of April, so maybe I'm just not doing NaNo. I'll want to be social, not hiding out writing a novel. And anyway, my novels keep falling apart in the endings and middles, whereas my short fiction always comes out remarkably well. So maybe I'm just meant to write short fiction, and leave the novel writing to those who can hold a plot together and come up with relevant subplots, and piece things together. Why take something I'm good at and make it into something I'm not good at?
Anyway, around 9 the lady at the gym I got a free 3 week membership to called me and told me the appointment we had set up was no good because she forgot it was Friday, and although they are a 24 hour gym, all the employees go home by 2 on a Friday, so no one would be there at 5. I decided since I was up, I'd drive over there and let her show me around, and then do a workout. I got there about 15 minutes later, and they are right next door to the old movie theater that closed. So not actually as far as I thought, even though they are technically in Alpharetta. Probably still farther than I want to drive 3 times a week, though, but I do have to admit it's nice to have 24 hour access (although would I feel uncomfortable if I were the only person in the gym? Like, she didn't say that they have security guards, either)
The first thing she showed me was that instead of having large group classes for the last 2-3 years they have recorded classes that you can do at your leisure in a large room. "Some of the ladies" get together at 10am and do one together, but they are available 24 hours a day. I tried to do one today, but the first thing it wanted me to do was pushups and they didn't have yoga matts so it made my knees hurt, and I quit.
Then she showed me around the weight lifting and the other areas of the gym. I admit I have no idea what to do with an entire room in there. It looked like boxes to jump up on and a large rope that looked like it was for some kids to play tug-o-war and something that looked like a treadmill with weights attached to it, I don't even know. She walked me through the weight machines for dummies (the ones that only move in the correct pattern and you can't fuck it up), then left me to work out. I did like 4 weight machines for dummies, then left because I couldn't figure out what to do. On the way out I asked and learned that it is $40 for personal training, for 30-45 minute sessions. This is about as cheap as that gets, so that's a definite maybe.
I came home around 10:30 and started my reading. Reading and doom scrolling took up much of the rest of my day. At some point some of the assholes at RN started arguing about how to pronounce Kyiv. Victor, who was born there, provided video of a language professor at Yale pronouncing it and explaining the pronunciation using American words, although that И is not a pronounceable sound in English. He then said that honestly Americans have approximately a 0% chance of pronouncing it right, so just say literally anything that is not Key-ev that people will understand. Keev is fine.
So then Kirti starts arguing with him that Key-ev is better because at least it has two syllables. It's like, sure, if you want to sound like a damned Russian. But Keev is closer to the Ukrainian. Not perfect, since it is supposed to be two syllables, but a hell of a lot better. Then I asked him why it was spelled Kyiv since in Russian И is transliterated as I but apparently it's different in Ukrainian, and И makes the same sound as Ы in Russian, and is transliterated as Y. Then he spelled Kyiv in Russian for me, and then I could understand how it was pronounced much better than the video he posted earlier. I think Kyiv is pronounced a bit like the SCA kingdom of Caid, which helps exactly one of you, who probably already knew anyway.
Around noon I was hungry, and I couldn't find anything to eat, so I ate the leftover pizza that was going to be dinner, figuring I could figure something else out later. Later came and I had exactly 0 spoons to put towards figuring out or eating food, so I ordered a 40 oz smoothie from Smoothie King, with some fiber, some protein, some fruit, and some veggies in it. I figured that was close enough to a meal. I drank that while talking to Kali and Sarah. It was probably more healthy than my average meal.
When I was done, I went back to doom scrolling, which I eventually realized was not helping me any, so I joined an in progress write in in NaNoLanta chat with Wyatt and Valerie. Unfortunately, I got there for the last sprint, which ended around 9:15. Fortunately, that really only gave me time to check habitica, and maybe a tiny bit of doom scrolling. At any rate, my doom scrolling had become more about arguing whether Keev or Key-ev was a better wrong pronunciation of Kyiv, and a bit of a rant about how Americans pronounce other places such as Qatar and Iraq.
I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass my recently updated writing goal for the month, which was 35k this month. I need about 1k worth of words to get there and today was a long day. At any rate, if I don't do it today, I will certainly do it tomorrow. Maybe I just won't have a goal for the last two days of the month, then. 38k would get me to 70k for the year, though, and then I'd be almost assured to pull in to the end of March 1/3rd of the way to my yearly goal. I'm already more than 20k words ahead on that goal. I am not good at making goals that are challenging but not impossible.
If I keep going at the rate I've been going for the rest of the year, I'll get 420 words, which means I would only need another 80k to get the 500k goal, which is doable with three 50k months for various NaNo events. Except eventually I have to slow down a little to outline something for the 3 NaNo events, and also, I'm not sure I'm doing the NaNo events since I'm sick to death of online write ins and no one comes to my voice ins.
Maybe I can come up with something creative to do with my write ins, like Julia's Kitchen, where we all cook the same thing and sprint while it is boiling or heating or whatever. I need more creative ideas. Help me, hive mind. Maybe I can write a story to go with some sprints like "you are pretty sure you just saw your ex boyfriend. If you pretend it wasn't him, write 500 words. If you try to talk to him, write for 15 minutes." I'd probably have to copy off of a book though rather than try to write my own tale. I wonder what ever happened to the one we were doing on GYWO. I kind of lost track of it around part 8. Apparently part 8 was the last part they did and the rest is coming in March.
Also I am going to Hilton Head with Tabby for a week of April, so maybe I'm just not doing NaNo. I'll want to be social, not hiding out writing a novel. And anyway, my novels keep falling apart in the endings and middles, whereas my short fiction always comes out remarkably well. So maybe I'm just meant to write short fiction, and leave the novel writing to those who can hold a plot together and come up with relevant subplots, and piece things together. Why take something I'm good at and make it into something I'm not good at?
I couldn't sleep last night, and didn't get to bed until about 8:30 am. Which is the latest I've gone to bed in years. Nonetheless, I woke up on my own around 3:30 pm. Before sleeping I talked to all the usual people and watched all the usual youtube videos, and then sat there and doom scrolled CNN while Russia invaded Ukraine. I considered waking Victor up because I thought he'd want to know, but then I had several different phone numbers for him, so I didn't start calling random people in Massachusetts to tell them Russia had invaded.
I woke up and spent some time at RN and then the WWP Talk guy called me, and we talked. Then I took my camera out to a "park" in downtown Norcross, which turned out to actually be a place where you can rent some land and grow flowers or vegetables. Some people had garden gnomes or other decorations there so even though it was pretty dead still, I got some good pictures.
Then I started doing my reading, which took up most of the day alternating between a chapter of a book and looking at RN's thread on the Russia war. I cooked a frozen pizza for dinner, and I have the other half left to eat, so we'll see how reheated frozen pizza is later tonight.
I took a nap at 7 and then fell asleep at 9.
I woke up and spent some time at RN and then the WWP Talk guy called me, and we talked. Then I took my camera out to a "park" in downtown Norcross, which turned out to actually be a place where you can rent some land and grow flowers or vegetables. Some people had garden gnomes or other decorations there so even though it was pretty dead still, I got some good pictures.
Then I started doing my reading, which took up most of the day alternating between a chapter of a book and looking at RN's thread on the Russia war. I cooked a frozen pizza for dinner, and I have the other half left to eat, so we'll see how reheated frozen pizza is later tonight.
I took a nap at 7 and then fell asleep at 9.
I got to sleep shortly after midnight last night, which is what I needed to do since I needed to get up at 12:45. I actually woke up around 12:30, but stayed in bed until 12:50, which turned out to be perfect. I woke up and drove down to the VA. Their parking situation has gone back to nonsensical and I'm pretty sure half the problem is doctors parking in patient parking instead of in the doctors parking in the back. I say this because despite not getting 2 of the 4 things I needed to get done done I didn't leave until after 5 and there were people in scrubs walking towards the parking garage. Which, assholes, that is patient parking. Go back to the other garage where patients aren't allowed to park and park there.
Anyway, I had 3 main goals for today. 1. Get a new pair of glasses. 2. Get an EKG and 3. Finish my bloodwork that the asshole wouldn't do the other day. I accomplished task 1. I got checked in and then sat there for like 2 hours getting cranky about the fact that the VA never runs on time and the eye doctor I was able to see with Kevin's insurance always ran on time and also was only like 3 miles from my house. Nonetheless, the VA is free, so I sat there and scrolled facebook.
The prescription in my right eye was still really good, 20/20 with my old glasses on. The prescription in my left eye was less good, only 20/40, but with the new glasses it will fix to 20/20, as well. My reading vision is still 20/20, even with the glasses on, though it's not as clear as it used to be. The lady said within the next few years it'll probably get worse, but as long as I can read without my glasses on I'm fine and that will last longer than being able to read with my glasses on because I am nearsighted.
They handed me a piece of paper with my prescription on it, which is weird because AFAIK I can only get glasses from the VA and you'd think they would be able to do this on the computer now. But the guy at the optical store seemed to expect it, so what do I know? Maybe only physicians can see your chart, but it seems like a relatively minor fix that would save thousands of trees a month to allow the optical shop to see your prescription. Anyway, I picked a pair of frames quickly, and was seen quickly, and then got out of there. Unfortunately that's the only thing that happened quickly and despite my 1:30 appointment, it was after 5. That meant I couldn't get either the EKG or the bloodwork done, so I went home.
I stopped by chick-fil-a on the way home because I was starving to death (I hadn't eaten because I have to fast for the blood work but then it was long past time to eat!). I ate most of my fries in the car and then ate my sandwich when I got home. I know I wasn't eating in my car, but I was hangry. My dog was absolutely frantic by the time I got home because I hadn't fed him before I left. He ran outside, did his business, then started jumping and barking at me. I gave him an extra scoop of food.
I did my dailies and read LJ and DW. Then somehow, suddenly it was 8pm. I couldn't convince myself to read because I didn't feel the greatest mentally, but I poked RN and various chats for the next 2 hours, winding up in tears watching the olympic figure skating gala, because Kevin didn't get to watch the winter olympics with me.
Facebook has decided to show me just a ton of women's gymnastics videos as ads. I want to encourage this because they are pretty cool even if they are ads. So I've been watching a lot of women's gymnastics lately. Normally I only pay attention to it during the summer olympics, so it's kind of cool to see the up and coming college girls. I have no idea what I clicked on or searched to make facebook think I might enjoy this, but I'd suggest it to everyone.
I think I pretty much wasted the last 3 hours, which doesn't feel great. But my brain is empty, and not in a position to try to read and remember stuff.
My parents are going on another Panama Canal cruise, I think on Sunday. Mom asked if I could pick up their dog from their friend's house on the 8th, but that's the same day as the next writers workshop, so now I have to pick up the dog on the 7th. Mom will not tell me how long they intend to be gone. I asked twice, and she just ignored it both times. I don't mind having the dog (though I think the dog minds me), but I'd like to know when she plans to get the dog back. This seems like common courtesy if you're asking someone to watch your dog - to tell them when you'll be home. Especially someone you have standing plans with who needs to know when those plans aren't going to happen.
Personally, I think my parents are a little crazy going on a cruise right now. All it takes is one person coming down with Covid on your cruise and all your ports of call just tell you to fuck the fuck right off and you're stuck on a ship unable to go to port. I would be furious if I paid all that money to travel and wound up stuck on the cruise ship. I guess she thinks it's not expensive, and it's round trip from Miami, so the plane fare isn't that much either. But Still! I think they've given up on not getting Covid. Now they're just trying to enjoy the time they have left.
My elbow really hurts. I've been doing PT for it, but it seems to be getting worse instead of better. I don't think there's much sense in complaining about it to a doctor as they will merely send me back to PT who will tell me to do what I'm already doing (which I learned for free from youtube).
Anyway, I had 3 main goals for today. 1. Get a new pair of glasses. 2. Get an EKG and 3. Finish my bloodwork that the asshole wouldn't do the other day. I accomplished task 1. I got checked in and then sat there for like 2 hours getting cranky about the fact that the VA never runs on time and the eye doctor I was able to see with Kevin's insurance always ran on time and also was only like 3 miles from my house. Nonetheless, the VA is free, so I sat there and scrolled facebook.
The prescription in my right eye was still really good, 20/20 with my old glasses on. The prescription in my left eye was less good, only 20/40, but with the new glasses it will fix to 20/20, as well. My reading vision is still 20/20, even with the glasses on, though it's not as clear as it used to be. The lady said within the next few years it'll probably get worse, but as long as I can read without my glasses on I'm fine and that will last longer than being able to read with my glasses on because I am nearsighted.
They handed me a piece of paper with my prescription on it, which is weird because AFAIK I can only get glasses from the VA and you'd think they would be able to do this on the computer now. But the guy at the optical store seemed to expect it, so what do I know? Maybe only physicians can see your chart, but it seems like a relatively minor fix that would save thousands of trees a month to allow the optical shop to see your prescription. Anyway, I picked a pair of frames quickly, and was seen quickly, and then got out of there. Unfortunately that's the only thing that happened quickly and despite my 1:30 appointment, it was after 5. That meant I couldn't get either the EKG or the bloodwork done, so I went home.
I stopped by chick-fil-a on the way home because I was starving to death (I hadn't eaten because I have to fast for the blood work but then it was long past time to eat!). I ate most of my fries in the car and then ate my sandwich when I got home. I know I wasn't eating in my car, but I was hangry. My dog was absolutely frantic by the time I got home because I hadn't fed him before I left. He ran outside, did his business, then started jumping and barking at me. I gave him an extra scoop of food.
I did my dailies and read LJ and DW. Then somehow, suddenly it was 8pm. I couldn't convince myself to read because I didn't feel the greatest mentally, but I poked RN and various chats for the next 2 hours, winding up in tears watching the olympic figure skating gala, because Kevin didn't get to watch the winter olympics with me.
Facebook has decided to show me just a ton of women's gymnastics videos as ads. I want to encourage this because they are pretty cool even if they are ads. So I've been watching a lot of women's gymnastics lately. Normally I only pay attention to it during the summer olympics, so it's kind of cool to see the up and coming college girls. I have no idea what I clicked on or searched to make facebook think I might enjoy this, but I'd suggest it to everyone.
I think I pretty much wasted the last 3 hours, which doesn't feel great. But my brain is empty, and not in a position to try to read and remember stuff.
My parents are going on another Panama Canal cruise, I think on Sunday. Mom asked if I could pick up their dog from their friend's house on the 8th, but that's the same day as the next writers workshop, so now I have to pick up the dog on the 7th. Mom will not tell me how long they intend to be gone. I asked twice, and she just ignored it both times. I don't mind having the dog (though I think the dog minds me), but I'd like to know when she plans to get the dog back. This seems like common courtesy if you're asking someone to watch your dog - to tell them when you'll be home. Especially someone you have standing plans with who needs to know when those plans aren't going to happen.
Personally, I think my parents are a little crazy going on a cruise right now. All it takes is one person coming down with Covid on your cruise and all your ports of call just tell you to fuck the fuck right off and you're stuck on a ship unable to go to port. I would be furious if I paid all that money to travel and wound up stuck on the cruise ship. I guess she thinks it's not expensive, and it's round trip from Miami, so the plane fare isn't that much either. But Still! I think they've given up on not getting Covid. Now they're just trying to enjoy the time they have left.
My elbow really hurts. I've been doing PT for it, but it seems to be getting worse instead of better. I don't think there's much sense in complaining about it to a doctor as they will merely send me back to PT who will tell me to do what I'm already doing (which I learned for free from youtube).
Welp. I went to bed around 4. I watched all of my usual videos and talked to Kali and Alex all night. I also read LJ and DW because I wasn't sure if I'd be able to read them today. Theoretically I should do the same tonight, but I'm also hoping to sleep tonight. I have to wake up super early tomorrow. But anyway, I went to bed around 4 and woke up a couple times. Once at 2:30, when I fed the dogs and cats, and started to poke RN with a stick but I went back to sleep around 3:30 even though I had to be up at 4. I set another alarm clock for 3:50, then hit snooze. When I got up two different people were texting me to make sure I planned to come to the WWP thing I had planned today. Like. Guys. I'm not even late.
Anyway, I logged on and it was a writing lesson. We were immediately split up into small groups of 5 plus 2 coordinators. They gave us two prompts and we wrote for 15 minutes on each. One of the prompts was kind of horror-ish, and I was uncomfortable with it, especially as it comes uncomfortably close to one of my schizophrenic things. I wound up writing about a schizophrenic character with that same thing, and it worked out. The second time the prompt was about being told "you're so strong" which turned into an essay on grief and why i'm not "so strong." Or anyway, telling me that is bullshit because I just wish I didn't have to be.
Both times when we read our things aloud people told me I was really good at writing, even writing dialogue, and that I should be pleased with myself. The first one they asked me to read a second time, and the second one they asked me if I was also secretly good at billiards and go around fleecing people with my secret skills. So I guess that is kind of nice to hear even though I only see weaknesses in my own writing, especially without Kevin to bounce ideas off of. Maybe I should try writing more short stories rather than novels. Most of my problems writing come with the extended format. My short writing is actually quite good. At least I keep getting told that.
That was 3 hours long, so it ended at 7, at which point I made some more cows in blankets and then ate. I also did some exercise and read from 3 different books (the kindle books I'm supposed to read on a Tuesday), and talked to Fred for a while. I haven't heard from him in a long time, but was thinking about him the other night. He's in his 60s now, which means he was younger than I thought when we were together in C. Springs. He was about my age now. Which is still too old to be sleeping with a college student, but not quite as bad as I thought. He and his wife are both having some medical problems which may lead them into an early retirement.
I got more done than I expected but it still wasn't a lot. Still it was more than 63 damage to the habitica boss, so I will finish that boss tonight, and start a new one. I get at least one more yellow boss before I go back to the beginning. I have 6 more yellow bosses that I have to do at some point but I suspect that will be finished on my next go through of bosses.
That pretty much took all of the time I had until it was time to start writing here. I also completed my 30k writing goal for the month at the workshop, so now I have to decide how many more words I want to write by the end of the month. I'm averaging 1500 a day, but don't want to commit to that for the rest of the month. 35k for the month leaves me needing fewer than 800 a day, which will also lower tomorrow when I do my Reading Wednesday post. That would give me 67k for the year, which is about 20k over where I need to be for gywo.
Our next book club meeting is going to be the poetry of Leonard Cohen. I'm supposed to find two of his poems that I like and talk about why I like them. I have never really found poetry to be very exciting. Sure, I wrote my fair share of emo poetry in high school, and even won awards for it, but even in high school I never understood poetry. The teachers would always get so much richness out of analyzing a poem and I'm sitting here like "IDK go down the less traveled path cuz it's less boring?" I'm willing to give it a try, though. I'm going to try to google some Leonard Cohen poems, though, rather than buying a book. Because I don't need a whole book of poetry.
I was talking to a guy on OKCupid, and he asked if we could speak. I offered to set up a zoom call or use google hangouts. He replied "I'll call you on the phone." I decided to stop speaking to him because I put a small boundary down - I don't want to give out my phone number to someone I've exchanged fewer than 10 messages with - and he chose to ignore it, and not even ask but rather demand my phone number. If you're not going to listen to small boundaries, I have no reason to think you'll listen to large boundaries. I think I'm done with OKCupid. I signed up because they let you specify that you're asexual, but you can't search by that and no one seems to pay attention to it and 90% of the people who contact me on there are like "I like to play fuck games" or something that tells me they did not read any of the 3 places on my profile where it says I am asexual.
Anyway, I logged on and it was a writing lesson. We were immediately split up into small groups of 5 plus 2 coordinators. They gave us two prompts and we wrote for 15 minutes on each. One of the prompts was kind of horror-ish, and I was uncomfortable with it, especially as it comes uncomfortably close to one of my schizophrenic things. I wound up writing about a schizophrenic character with that same thing, and it worked out. The second time the prompt was about being told "you're so strong" which turned into an essay on grief and why i'm not "so strong." Or anyway, telling me that is bullshit because I just wish I didn't have to be.
Both times when we read our things aloud people told me I was really good at writing, even writing dialogue, and that I should be pleased with myself. The first one they asked me to read a second time, and the second one they asked me if I was also secretly good at billiards and go around fleecing people with my secret skills. So I guess that is kind of nice to hear even though I only see weaknesses in my own writing, especially without Kevin to bounce ideas off of. Maybe I should try writing more short stories rather than novels. Most of my problems writing come with the extended format. My short writing is actually quite good. At least I keep getting told that.
That was 3 hours long, so it ended at 7, at which point I made some more cows in blankets and then ate. I also did some exercise and read from 3 different books (the kindle books I'm supposed to read on a Tuesday), and talked to Fred for a while. I haven't heard from him in a long time, but was thinking about him the other night. He's in his 60s now, which means he was younger than I thought when we were together in C. Springs. He was about my age now. Which is still too old to be sleeping with a college student, but not quite as bad as I thought. He and his wife are both having some medical problems which may lead them into an early retirement.
I got more done than I expected but it still wasn't a lot. Still it was more than 63 damage to the habitica boss, so I will finish that boss tonight, and start a new one. I get at least one more yellow boss before I go back to the beginning. I have 6 more yellow bosses that I have to do at some point but I suspect that will be finished on my next go through of bosses.
That pretty much took all of the time I had until it was time to start writing here. I also completed my 30k writing goal for the month at the workshop, so now I have to decide how many more words I want to write by the end of the month. I'm averaging 1500 a day, but don't want to commit to that for the rest of the month. 35k for the month leaves me needing fewer than 800 a day, which will also lower tomorrow when I do my Reading Wednesday post. That would give me 67k for the year, which is about 20k over where I need to be for gywo.
Our next book club meeting is going to be the poetry of Leonard Cohen. I'm supposed to find two of his poems that I like and talk about why I like them. I have never really found poetry to be very exciting. Sure, I wrote my fair share of emo poetry in high school, and even won awards for it, but even in high school I never understood poetry. The teachers would always get so much richness out of analyzing a poem and I'm sitting here like "IDK go down the less traveled path cuz it's less boring?" I'm willing to give it a try, though. I'm going to try to google some Leonard Cohen poems, though, rather than buying a book. Because I don't need a whole book of poetry.
I was talking to a guy on OKCupid, and he asked if we could speak. I offered to set up a zoom call or use google hangouts. He replied "I'll call you on the phone." I decided to stop speaking to him because I put a small boundary down - I don't want to give out my phone number to someone I've exchanged fewer than 10 messages with - and he chose to ignore it, and not even ask but rather demand my phone number. If you're not going to listen to small boundaries, I have no reason to think you'll listen to large boundaries. I think I'm done with OKCupid. I signed up because they let you specify that you're asexual, but you can't search by that and no one seems to pay attention to it and 90% of the people who contact me on there are like "I like to play fuck games" or something that tells me they did not read any of the 3 places on my profile where it says I am asexual.
I didn't sleep last night. To be fair, I didn't even try. I got caught up in talking to Alex and Kali until they both went to sleep around 5am, and then I was like "well I can either go to bed or I can have bagel holes since Dunkin' just opened, so I ordered some of those and a chai latte, and read LJ and DW while I waited on it to arrive, which happened right around 5:45. Then I tried to go to bed, but it took until about 8:30 before I fell asleep. Then Bad Jack kept waking me up and I kept having to yell at him. But I kind of slept until 4 off and on.
I got up and had half an hour before I was supposed to leave, so I really didn't accomplish much. I read RN and sat around quietly until it was time to get dressed. I went to my mother's house. She was having her garage painted, and I got paint on my hand touching the doorknob. Then she was in the kitchen cooking, and had forgotten about me. I said we could eat whatever she was cooking, but there wasn't enough for me, so we went to Kiko's. My father came, too.
We discussed my debate about the gyms and she said she though LA Fitness was the best. It's about $10 a month more expensive than either of the other two I was looking at, but it has a small pool, and spa and PT trainers available. It's not 24 hour, but it's also in a spot with no traffic at any time of day getting out of there and only occasional traffic getting back to my house, which anything would suffer from. Next week I'm going to try their 3 day free trial, but may as well not now since I am stupidly busy for the next few days. Maybe I'll go Saturday - Monday; it will give me something to do on my weekend days. I'm supposed to walk with donna on one of them, but maybe I can sit in a spa afterwards. I mean nothing says I have to work out at the gym before sitting in the spa. I have to find my bathing suit again.
I came home for gaming, which I literally took off my shoes, let my dog out to pee, and was perfectly on time for, so I guess it's a good thing it was raining so there was no pressure to go on a walk after dinner. I'm a little uncomfortable with gaming right now because dead characters are writing us letters kind of like Tom Riddle and Ginny Weasley. The DM says they're not undead, but they are kind of undead enough.
After gaming, I did 10 minutes of exercise, and Alex messaged me so I talked to him for a bit and looked at RN for 30 minutes before turning my attention here. Now I'm not sure what to do again. Part of me wants to see if I can sleep, but I'm worried about waking up at midnight and being unable to get back to sleep if I actually get to sleep right now.
I've decided that while I'm still using Zhelana online and in the SCA and writers communities, I'm going back to using the name Katy amongst most people. I changed it to Dani to be more gender neutral, and go with my enby identity, but I hate it. I hardly remember to answer to it, and it still surprises me every time I hear it associated with myself. So Katy it will be.
A certain wiener dog spilled the ice and dregs of my chai latte onto the couch last night and now my couch is wet and sticky. I've cleaned it, but now it is wetter but less sticky. Unfortunately, I keep sticking my hand into the wet as I try to adjust where my feet are and how I'm sitting. Ew.
I got up and had half an hour before I was supposed to leave, so I really didn't accomplish much. I read RN and sat around quietly until it was time to get dressed. I went to my mother's house. She was having her garage painted, and I got paint on my hand touching the doorknob. Then she was in the kitchen cooking, and had forgotten about me. I said we could eat whatever she was cooking, but there wasn't enough for me, so we went to Kiko's. My father came, too.
We discussed my debate about the gyms and she said she though LA Fitness was the best. It's about $10 a month more expensive than either of the other two I was looking at, but it has a small pool, and spa and PT trainers available. It's not 24 hour, but it's also in a spot with no traffic at any time of day getting out of there and only occasional traffic getting back to my house, which anything would suffer from. Next week I'm going to try their 3 day free trial, but may as well not now since I am stupidly busy for the next few days. Maybe I'll go Saturday - Monday; it will give me something to do on my weekend days. I'm supposed to walk with donna on one of them, but maybe I can sit in a spa afterwards. I mean nothing says I have to work out at the gym before sitting in the spa. I have to find my bathing suit again.
I came home for gaming, which I literally took off my shoes, let my dog out to pee, and was perfectly on time for, so I guess it's a good thing it was raining so there was no pressure to go on a walk after dinner. I'm a little uncomfortable with gaming right now because dead characters are writing us letters kind of like Tom Riddle and Ginny Weasley. The DM says they're not undead, but they are kind of undead enough.
After gaming, I did 10 minutes of exercise, and Alex messaged me so I talked to him for a bit and looked at RN for 30 minutes before turning my attention here. Now I'm not sure what to do again. Part of me wants to see if I can sleep, but I'm worried about waking up at midnight and being unable to get back to sleep if I actually get to sleep right now.
I've decided that while I'm still using Zhelana online and in the SCA and writers communities, I'm going back to using the name Katy amongst most people. I changed it to Dani to be more gender neutral, and go with my enby identity, but I hate it. I hardly remember to answer to it, and it still surprises me every time I hear it associated with myself. So Katy it will be.
A certain wiener dog spilled the ice and dregs of my chai latte onto the couch last night and now my couch is wet and sticky. I've cleaned it, but now it is wetter but less sticky. Unfortunately, I keep sticking my hand into the wet as I try to adjust where my feet are and how I'm sitting. Ew.
I went to bed at 3am again, after watching all my youtube programming and I don't really know what else. Well, I spent 10 minutes cleaning my kitchen, loading the dishwasher and sorting through some papers on the table. That sort of woke me up and made me more alert for a while, but it didn't keep me up past my prefered bed time. For a while, I was talking to Khaleesi about languages which is her favorite topic of discussion. I fell asleep pretty easily, which was a little disappointing since I had sort of hoped to stay up and get bagel bites from dunkin', which I was seriously craving around midnight. Still, sleep is better than food, so I slept from 3am to about 2pm.
When I woke up I poked the internet with a sharp spoon. There was some kind of weird discussion in which Eirini insulted oldramm and said that he was doing it because oldramm is often an asshole. I told Eirini that I thought oldramm was suffering from some kind of mental disorder because like 90% of the time he's a nice guy and then every once in a while he just flips and an asshole comes out. I specifically said I thought it was unfair to hold it against him and that I do the same thing sometimes and we should accept that oldramm is doing the best he can. Then Oldramm denied having any kind of mental disorder, but that led to Victor posting several examples of where he has said he has a personality disorder. But then in the same post accuses me of weaponizing oldramm's disorder against him. So I'm like "wait, how am I weaponizing anything against Oldramm? I'm trying to defend him from Eirini." Victor said he misunderstood my tone and thought I was trying to insult Oldramm. Which, honestly, Victor should know that I would never insult someone by calling them mentally ill. So that's a little annoying.
Anyway, I finished reading LJ and DW and moved into my reading, which I also completed. Then I had an hour before I was supposed to walk with Donna, but Aaron was flopped out across my leg, Jack was resting his chin on my knee, and Aggie was resting her chin on my wrist. So I just sat there and didn't move much. I scrolled FB and looked at some of my suggestions for books on goodreads.
I decided it was cool enough to justify putting on jeans on top of leggings for my walk, as well as a fleece. I was correct. I got to the park exactly on time and Donna and Robert were both there, Donna wearing a mask, but Robert not. Defaulting to "whatever the least comfortable person is comfortable with" I grabbed my mask and some guy passing by comes and gets in my face like "what is that design on your mask supposed to be?" I thought it was a pretty famous image from the hubble telescope, but I guess not? Later I was breathing hard and Donna pointed out that the center of the galaxy was expanding and contracting as I breathed and maybe there was a new universe about to be born out of my head.
Otherwise, we didn't talk about much. Her daughter, who is my age, has gone back to college and is living in a dorm. And honestly, you could not pay me enough to live in a dorm as a 40 year old person. It was bad enough at 27 when I was 8 years older than all my roommates. But anyway, that's what she's doing, and she seems to be enjoying it.
We made it around the park without my ankle acting up, so that's the good news for the day. I also got a shower, which I haven't done in 2 days because my ankle was preventing it (and I think a day before that because it was cold in the house). It was starting to be an emergency, so I'm glad I managed to do that. Once I finished my shower I realized I was only a few tasks away from a perfect day on habitica, so I picked up my textbooks and finished reading those. Now all I have to do is finish the current liter of water I'm drinking, and remember to manually crosspost this to LJ, and it will be a perfect day.
I really didn't want the last of the couscous chicken, so I dug around my freezer and found some kind of Indian vegetable balls in there. They said to cook them for 14 minutes, turning them over at 7 minutes. But when I pulled them out at 7 minutes, they were smoking, and the fire alarm went off for the first time in the 10 years I've lived here. Fortunately, they didn't really taste burned, but I didn't put them back in the oven for the next 7 minutes, so they were a little cold. They're vegetarian so I'm not concerned about eating undercooked meat, but still. They were quite good, even slightly cold. At least I know the fire detector works now.
I spent some time talking to Alex and eating some kind of chocolate pineapple candy from New Zealand. He likes them a lot more than I did, but they were alright. Much better than the time I dipped actual pineapple in fondue chocolate. I also wrote for 10 minutes on the prompt "myth" which came from that book I bought a few years ago of prompts. I probably could have gone another 5 minutes, but the book suggests these one word prompts as 5 minute exercises, so I figured 10 was a good compromise between my usual 15 minute sprints and the 5 minute suggestion.
This means that today I have done 5 of the 7 things I need to do weekly, and the only two that are left are photography and drawing. Drawing I can do, no problem, but it is supposed to rain all week, so I'm not sure about the photography. I looked at the weather website and it said the two lowest chances of rain are Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday I have a 3 or 4 hour writing workshop to do all afternoon and evening. So I guess I had better hope that it doesn't rain on Thursday. I guess if it is raining, I can try to go to the aquarium and take pictures. Or I can wait until Saturday, when it is not supposed to rain. But I hate to put things off so long. Even though I said originally I was aiming for one of these goals a day. I have ended up doing them mostly squished towards the front of the week each week.
When I woke up I poked the internet with a sharp spoon. There was some kind of weird discussion in which Eirini insulted oldramm and said that he was doing it because oldramm is often an asshole. I told Eirini that I thought oldramm was suffering from some kind of mental disorder because like 90% of the time he's a nice guy and then every once in a while he just flips and an asshole comes out. I specifically said I thought it was unfair to hold it against him and that I do the same thing sometimes and we should accept that oldramm is doing the best he can. Then Oldramm denied having any kind of mental disorder, but that led to Victor posting several examples of where he has said he has a personality disorder. But then in the same post accuses me of weaponizing oldramm's disorder against him. So I'm like "wait, how am I weaponizing anything against Oldramm? I'm trying to defend him from Eirini." Victor said he misunderstood my tone and thought I was trying to insult Oldramm. Which, honestly, Victor should know that I would never insult someone by calling them mentally ill. So that's a little annoying.
Anyway, I finished reading LJ and DW and moved into my reading, which I also completed. Then I had an hour before I was supposed to walk with Donna, but Aaron was flopped out across my leg, Jack was resting his chin on my knee, and Aggie was resting her chin on my wrist. So I just sat there and didn't move much. I scrolled FB and looked at some of my suggestions for books on goodreads.
I decided it was cool enough to justify putting on jeans on top of leggings for my walk, as well as a fleece. I was correct. I got to the park exactly on time and Donna and Robert were both there, Donna wearing a mask, but Robert not. Defaulting to "whatever the least comfortable person is comfortable with" I grabbed my mask and some guy passing by comes and gets in my face like "what is that design on your mask supposed to be?" I thought it was a pretty famous image from the hubble telescope, but I guess not? Later I was breathing hard and Donna pointed out that the center of the galaxy was expanding and contracting as I breathed and maybe there was a new universe about to be born out of my head.
Otherwise, we didn't talk about much. Her daughter, who is my age, has gone back to college and is living in a dorm. And honestly, you could not pay me enough to live in a dorm as a 40 year old person. It was bad enough at 27 when I was 8 years older than all my roommates. But anyway, that's what she's doing, and she seems to be enjoying it.
We made it around the park without my ankle acting up, so that's the good news for the day. I also got a shower, which I haven't done in 2 days because my ankle was preventing it (and I think a day before that because it was cold in the house). It was starting to be an emergency, so I'm glad I managed to do that. Once I finished my shower I realized I was only a few tasks away from a perfect day on habitica, so I picked up my textbooks and finished reading those. Now all I have to do is finish the current liter of water I'm drinking, and remember to manually crosspost this to LJ, and it will be a perfect day.
I really didn't want the last of the couscous chicken, so I dug around my freezer and found some kind of Indian vegetable balls in there. They said to cook them for 14 minutes, turning them over at 7 minutes. But when I pulled them out at 7 minutes, they were smoking, and the fire alarm went off for the first time in the 10 years I've lived here. Fortunately, they didn't really taste burned, but I didn't put them back in the oven for the next 7 minutes, so they were a little cold. They're vegetarian so I'm not concerned about eating undercooked meat, but still. They were quite good, even slightly cold. At least I know the fire detector works now.
I spent some time talking to Alex and eating some kind of chocolate pineapple candy from New Zealand. He likes them a lot more than I did, but they were alright. Much better than the time I dipped actual pineapple in fondue chocolate. I also wrote for 10 minutes on the prompt "myth" which came from that book I bought a few years ago of prompts. I probably could have gone another 5 minutes, but the book suggests these one word prompts as 5 minute exercises, so I figured 10 was a good compromise between my usual 15 minute sprints and the 5 minute suggestion.
This means that today I have done 5 of the 7 things I need to do weekly, and the only two that are left are photography and drawing. Drawing I can do, no problem, but it is supposed to rain all week, so I'm not sure about the photography. I looked at the weather website and it said the two lowest chances of rain are Tuesday and Thursday. Tuesday I have a 3 or 4 hour writing workshop to do all afternoon and evening. So I guess I had better hope that it doesn't rain on Thursday. I guess if it is raining, I can try to go to the aquarium and take pictures. Or I can wait until Saturday, when it is not supposed to rain. But I hate to put things off so long. Even though I said originally I was aiming for one of these goals a day. I have ended up doing them mostly squished towards the front of the week each week.
Last night I walked to get my meds, and regretted it because my ankle hurt, so instead of coming back to the living room, I went the opposite direction to the bedroom, and fell asleep right around 12:30. Then I woke up around 1:30. I didn't do much with my day. I kept trying to read and finding that I couldn't pay attention to it and didn't care what was happening, so I stopped trying to read and mostly just sat here poking the internet.
I heated up more of my couscous chicken for dinner and added some bbq sauce. It wasn't good, but it was mostly edible. I only fed about 1/4th of it to the dogs. And I mostly did that because Jack had climbed on the table overnight and eaten an entire bag of sweet potato treats, and Rogue kept trying to climb up there, too, but there was nothing left for her, so I felt bad, so I gave her the chicken. I wasn't going to eat it anyway as it was largely the dryer parts that I couldn't tolerate having in my mouth.
After dinner I decided to sign up for Disney+ so that I could watch Encanto. It was cheaper than going to the movie theater even if I only watch Encanto, and I think I'm going to try to watch some of the Marvel and Star Wars content on there, as well. We'll see - I don't typically do a very good job of watching TV series as opposed to movies. I also want to see Frozen 2 and the new Mulan. Even if I just watch Enanto it's some pretty cheap entertainment, so I'm not upset. Anyway, I really liked the movie. It definitely goes into my top 5 Disney movies of all time, and may well go into my top 5 movies of all time. I haven't decided yet. If it goes into my top 5 movies of all time, it will be replacing Forrest Gump, which is a big ask from a cartoon. But then again Moana and Coco have already bumped it out of the Top 3.
Anyway, afterwards I decided to try to exercise since I was able to walk to the bathroom and to get my meds without my foot hurting (much). Well, either it was too much or the action of walking in place is significantly different than just walking. I didn't even get through the first song before deciding to just do some sit ups and call it a day because my foot hurt. Tomorrow I am supposed to walk with Donna, and now I am nervous about that. I don't want to cancel because we haven't walked since November, but I also don't want to get stuck at the lowest end of the park unable to walk up the hill to get back to my car. Considering how much better I felt between yesterday and today, though, I think it should be okay.
Mostly, though, I sat around on RN and chatting with people. I am quite distressed by the news that Biden now thinks Putin has decided to invade Kyiv. I don't know where this goes that can possibly be good. We can't get into a shooting war with Russia because they still have nukes, and I don't even a little bit trust Putin not to use them. I think Russia can take Ukraine - but I don't think they can hold it, and I think they're going to use nukes to try. I also think China is watching how we respond to Ukraine to decide what they are going to do about Taiwan, and I see this blowing up into the next global conflagration pretty easily. The end of Pax Americana.
I suppose I should check outside to see if the mail lady ever picked up my package. Usually I get an email saying she has done it and I haven't gotten one. But then again, sometimes I get the email and she hasn't done it. So I guess if she has done it and not sent the email that tracks, too. Unbelievable - she did not pick up my package! And Monday is fucking President's Day, so I can't get either of my packages out until Tuesday, at which point this one is supposed to fucking BE THERE already. What a dumb cow. I am DONE being polite about this. I have been polite at least once a week every week since last June about the same issue. Maybe if I start swearing at them they'll do something about it.
I don't remember whether this was today or yesterday, but I learned that Planet Fitness does not have any PT at their gym. This really means no variety since they have either cardio equipment or one room with weight equipment that you're supposed to use in a circuit - the same circuit every day. They are, on the other hand, the cheapest option, and the only option that comes with massage chairs and something called hydromassage. Anyway, I looked up other gyms in the local area and they are all super expensive, so it's really down to the two 24 hour places, and I'm having trouble deciding between them. I'm leaning towards Planet Fitness, though, because A. they are near the place I volunteer and B. they do not have a year contract requirement and C. they have massage options. The advantages to the other place are A. they are not across the highway/in a huge traffic backup area. B. They have PTs who will work with you affordably and C. They have a much wider variety of equipment. Oh, ugh, now I'm leaning the other way. I really don't know what to do.
I heated up more of my couscous chicken for dinner and added some bbq sauce. It wasn't good, but it was mostly edible. I only fed about 1/4th of it to the dogs. And I mostly did that because Jack had climbed on the table overnight and eaten an entire bag of sweet potato treats, and Rogue kept trying to climb up there, too, but there was nothing left for her, so I felt bad, so I gave her the chicken. I wasn't going to eat it anyway as it was largely the dryer parts that I couldn't tolerate having in my mouth.
After dinner I decided to sign up for Disney+ so that I could watch Encanto. It was cheaper than going to the movie theater even if I only watch Encanto, and I think I'm going to try to watch some of the Marvel and Star Wars content on there, as well. We'll see - I don't typically do a very good job of watching TV series as opposed to movies. I also want to see Frozen 2 and the new Mulan. Even if I just watch Enanto it's some pretty cheap entertainment, so I'm not upset. Anyway, I really liked the movie. It definitely goes into my top 5 Disney movies of all time, and may well go into my top 5 movies of all time. I haven't decided yet. If it goes into my top 5 movies of all time, it will be replacing Forrest Gump, which is a big ask from a cartoon. But then again Moana and Coco have already bumped it out of the Top 3.
Anyway, afterwards I decided to try to exercise since I was able to walk to the bathroom and to get my meds without my foot hurting (much). Well, either it was too much or the action of walking in place is significantly different than just walking. I didn't even get through the first song before deciding to just do some sit ups and call it a day because my foot hurt. Tomorrow I am supposed to walk with Donna, and now I am nervous about that. I don't want to cancel because we haven't walked since November, but I also don't want to get stuck at the lowest end of the park unable to walk up the hill to get back to my car. Considering how much better I felt between yesterday and today, though, I think it should be okay.
Mostly, though, I sat around on RN and chatting with people. I am quite distressed by the news that Biden now thinks Putin has decided to invade Kyiv. I don't know where this goes that can possibly be good. We can't get into a shooting war with Russia because they still have nukes, and I don't even a little bit trust Putin not to use them. I think Russia can take Ukraine - but I don't think they can hold it, and I think they're going to use nukes to try. I also think China is watching how we respond to Ukraine to decide what they are going to do about Taiwan, and I see this blowing up into the next global conflagration pretty easily. The end of Pax Americana.
I suppose I should check outside to see if the mail lady ever picked up my package. Usually I get an email saying she has done it and I haven't gotten one. But then again, sometimes I get the email and she hasn't done it. So I guess if she has done it and not sent the email that tracks, too. Unbelievable - she did not pick up my package! And Monday is fucking President's Day, so I can't get either of my packages out until Tuesday, at which point this one is supposed to fucking BE THERE already. What a dumb cow. I am DONE being polite about this. I have been polite at least once a week every week since last June about the same issue. Maybe if I start swearing at them they'll do something about it.
I don't remember whether this was today or yesterday, but I learned that Planet Fitness does not have any PT at their gym. This really means no variety since they have either cardio equipment or one room with weight equipment that you're supposed to use in a circuit - the same circuit every day. They are, on the other hand, the cheapest option, and the only option that comes with massage chairs and something called hydromassage. Anyway, I looked up other gyms in the local area and they are all super expensive, so it's really down to the two 24 hour places, and I'm having trouble deciding between them. I'm leaning towards Planet Fitness, though, because A. they are near the place I volunteer and B. they do not have a year contract requirement and C. they have massage options. The advantages to the other place are A. they are not across the highway/in a huge traffic backup area. B. They have PTs who will work with you affordably and C. They have a much wider variety of equipment. Oh, ugh, now I'm leaning the other way. I really don't know what to do.
Today was quite the day. I went to bed around 3am but didn't really do anything with my time overnight. I watched two youtube videos, but couldn't really focus on them. Then I poked around on asexualcupid, an ace dating site hafnia pointed me at after having to block yet another straight man because despite my OKCupid profile saying "orientation: asexual" my "looking for" saying "asexual enbie seeks other asexual to share life adventures." and my profile saying "I am asexual. If you contact me I assume you have read this and understand that" I still got some guy who asked me to play "fuck games" on his second message to me. Like. Leave me alone. Why did you contact me? Please kindly go straight to hell. So then I was looking around the asexual dating site, as well as one specifically for queer women and enbies (no men allowed on the app) but no one really got back to me. So whatever. I'll be single forever, or else I'll meet another ace through either the SCA or NaNo.
Anyway, then my phone rang at 9:30 and it was Stephen the money guy. I answered it and he was like "so unfortunately you've lost $15k in the last 6 weeks." Which A. I know. B. I'm pretty sure it's closer to 20k. and C. Why the hell are you calling me at 9:30am? $20k is a huge number, but honestly, it's not a huge percent. If the stock market averages going up 10% a year, I'll make it up in a halfway decent year. Which clearly is not this year, because the fed is worried about inflation this year and that screws up the stock market. But I know how it works, and I knew how it worked when I said I wanted to take moderate risks with my money.
The fact is I only need this money to last 10 years before I qualify for Kevin's social security, and according to the calculator my dad showed me, never in history has this failed over 10 years, and only 4 times has it failed for 30 years. On average after 30 years, I'll have approximately twice what I have now, which means I can start spending more aggressively later in life and maybe go on some adventures to cool places like New Zealand and Antarctica.
I didn't manage to get back to sleep after half an hour, so I got up and got online. Then, for some reason I decided to stand up. But my right foot didn't decide to stand up, and it was like upside down so I was trying to stand on the backs of my toes and I couldn't control my foot. I tried to sit back down, but failed, and fell onto the floor. I sat there for a minute too shocked to do anything but try to flex my foot and see if I could feel my feet moving. Then Jack came over and started licking my face and my foot came back online, so I stood up, but I could no longer remember why I had stood up in the first place. Also my ankle was swollen and I couldn't put weight on it.
I complained in NaNoLanta Chat that I had hurt my ankle and didn't have any ice since my freezer is broken, and Pika came over bringing two ice packs, which they left here for me. They also helped me list a few things on ebay and picked up a few things that had fallen off the coffee table, which I had kicked while falling. They offered to take me to walmart, but I didn't feel like walking, so they left around 2. I took an hour's nap.
When I got up, I could walk again, though not without pain. I ordered groceries from instacart, which were supposed to come by 5:30 so I could then go to dinner with the knitters. Then I kind of putzed around the internet, paying attention to the instacart app so that I could approve replacements. The driver told me she couldn't find my bag of cooked chicken. I told her any bag of cooked chicken would do, she said okay. Then she didn't get here until after 6:45, by which point I had missed the knitters, and there was no fucking chicken in the order! I complained and got the price of the chicken plus $10 credited to my account, but wtf. I also didn't get any of my 3 cheeses, which I just realized, and instacart is refusing to refund them. They say someone will get back to me in 24 hours to resolve my issue, but a refund of $0.00 will be issued to my account. Excuse me? I may have to go back to using amazon fresh, in that case, because that is absolutely not okay.
I had ordered a gyro from ubereats because I certainly wasn't standing long enough to cook food today, so I ate that. It came with a delicious peach drink, and I wish I knew what company made the peach drink so I could get it again from other places. They also impressed me by not putting ice in the peach drink so I got the full amount of the cup.
I also have the ingredients for cows in a blanket for one day, and probably two days left of the couscous chicken which is salvageable with some bbq sauce. I also have a frozen pizza which should feed me for two days. So that's 5 days, plus my mom will feed me one day, so I probably only need to order dinner one night, despite the fuck up with the chicken. I did, unfortunately, spend a lot of money on the other ingredients for buffalo chicken, but I guess that means all I need to buy next week is the chicken so maybe that would be a good week to also buy kitty litter.
After dinner I got in a ridiculous argument with Kirti, who is trying to claim that no place has abstinence only education despite me twice now listing the 13 states which have it by law. The second time I listed them, he conveniently disappeared. It's like if he doesn't agree with the republican position he just tries to pretend it isn't the republican position. God forbid he ever have a thought that wasn't approved by the republicans.
I also read a little more from The Artist's Way and I'm pretty sure i'm not going to be following this person's prescription for becoming more creative. She wants you to handwrite 3 pages of rambles every morning when you wake up. Which, like, first of all, I occasionally let myself ramble on a word document for 15 minutes and that is frustrating enough. I'm certainly not going to do it for 3 pages even once, never mind every day. And second of all she says writing it by hand is important, and my hand would hurt so badly if I tried to hold a pen for that long even once, never mind every day. So I'm starting out failing at this book, but I guess I'll keep reading and see if I can keep anything from it.
But really the argument with Kirti got me to time to write here, or at least 9:30, at which point I realized I have to exercise, but certainly don't want to put the kind of torque on my ankle that dancing would cause and don't want to walk away from my house in case I can't get back. I decided to just do an abs work out although I've been trying to do cardio every day this year in case my heart is bad. Anyway, it's better than nothing, and lets me keep my streak intact. I started writing here about 10 minutes early because I didn't want to get into anything else but didn't want to do nothing for that time frame.
I reached my writing goal for February last night, and extended it to 30k for the month, which requires me to write 600 words per day still, though I'm sure that will go down a good bit after tonight. I'm easily going to reach it but I didn't know what else to try for. At any rate, I also reached 50k for the year so far yesterday, which means I've written a novel in 6 weeks. Sure, I regularly do it in 4.5 weeks, but that's with active trying. This was just... writing when I felt like it. Huzzah.
Anyway, at this point my ankle only hurts when I try to put weight on it, which means I keep forgetting about it, and then getting up to take meds, or go to the bathroom, or rescue the cat, and suddenly having deep regrets.
Anyway, then my phone rang at 9:30 and it was Stephen the money guy. I answered it and he was like "so unfortunately you've lost $15k in the last 6 weeks." Which A. I know. B. I'm pretty sure it's closer to 20k. and C. Why the hell are you calling me at 9:30am? $20k is a huge number, but honestly, it's not a huge percent. If the stock market averages going up 10% a year, I'll make it up in a halfway decent year. Which clearly is not this year, because the fed is worried about inflation this year and that screws up the stock market. But I know how it works, and I knew how it worked when I said I wanted to take moderate risks with my money.
The fact is I only need this money to last 10 years before I qualify for Kevin's social security, and according to the calculator my dad showed me, never in history has this failed over 10 years, and only 4 times has it failed for 30 years. On average after 30 years, I'll have approximately twice what I have now, which means I can start spending more aggressively later in life and maybe go on some adventures to cool places like New Zealand and Antarctica.
I didn't manage to get back to sleep after half an hour, so I got up and got online. Then, for some reason I decided to stand up. But my right foot didn't decide to stand up, and it was like upside down so I was trying to stand on the backs of my toes and I couldn't control my foot. I tried to sit back down, but failed, and fell onto the floor. I sat there for a minute too shocked to do anything but try to flex my foot and see if I could feel my feet moving. Then Jack came over and started licking my face and my foot came back online, so I stood up, but I could no longer remember why I had stood up in the first place. Also my ankle was swollen and I couldn't put weight on it.
I complained in NaNoLanta Chat that I had hurt my ankle and didn't have any ice since my freezer is broken, and Pika came over bringing two ice packs, which they left here for me. They also helped me list a few things on ebay and picked up a few things that had fallen off the coffee table, which I had kicked while falling. They offered to take me to walmart, but I didn't feel like walking, so they left around 2. I took an hour's nap.
When I got up, I could walk again, though not without pain. I ordered groceries from instacart, which were supposed to come by 5:30 so I could then go to dinner with the knitters. Then I kind of putzed around the internet, paying attention to the instacart app so that I could approve replacements. The driver told me she couldn't find my bag of cooked chicken. I told her any bag of cooked chicken would do, she said okay. Then she didn't get here until after 6:45, by which point I had missed the knitters, and there was no fucking chicken in the order! I complained and got the price of the chicken plus $10 credited to my account, but wtf. I also didn't get any of my 3 cheeses, which I just realized, and instacart is refusing to refund them. They say someone will get back to me in 24 hours to resolve my issue, but a refund of $0.00 will be issued to my account. Excuse me? I may have to go back to using amazon fresh, in that case, because that is absolutely not okay.
I had ordered a gyro from ubereats because I certainly wasn't standing long enough to cook food today, so I ate that. It came with a delicious peach drink, and I wish I knew what company made the peach drink so I could get it again from other places. They also impressed me by not putting ice in the peach drink so I got the full amount of the cup.
I also have the ingredients for cows in a blanket for one day, and probably two days left of the couscous chicken which is salvageable with some bbq sauce. I also have a frozen pizza which should feed me for two days. So that's 5 days, plus my mom will feed me one day, so I probably only need to order dinner one night, despite the fuck up with the chicken. I did, unfortunately, spend a lot of money on the other ingredients for buffalo chicken, but I guess that means all I need to buy next week is the chicken so maybe that would be a good week to also buy kitty litter.
After dinner I got in a ridiculous argument with Kirti, who is trying to claim that no place has abstinence only education despite me twice now listing the 13 states which have it by law. The second time I listed them, he conveniently disappeared. It's like if he doesn't agree with the republican position he just tries to pretend it isn't the republican position. God forbid he ever have a thought that wasn't approved by the republicans.
I also read a little more from The Artist's Way and I'm pretty sure i'm not going to be following this person's prescription for becoming more creative. She wants you to handwrite 3 pages of rambles every morning when you wake up. Which, like, first of all, I occasionally let myself ramble on a word document for 15 minutes and that is frustrating enough. I'm certainly not going to do it for 3 pages even once, never mind every day. And second of all she says writing it by hand is important, and my hand would hurt so badly if I tried to hold a pen for that long even once, never mind every day. So I'm starting out failing at this book, but I guess I'll keep reading and see if I can keep anything from it.
But really the argument with Kirti got me to time to write here, or at least 9:30, at which point I realized I have to exercise, but certainly don't want to put the kind of torque on my ankle that dancing would cause and don't want to walk away from my house in case I can't get back. I decided to just do an abs work out although I've been trying to do cardio every day this year in case my heart is bad. Anyway, it's better than nothing, and lets me keep my streak intact. I started writing here about 10 minutes early because I didn't want to get into anything else but didn't want to do nothing for that time frame.
I reached my writing goal for February last night, and extended it to 30k for the month, which requires me to write 600 words per day still, though I'm sure that will go down a good bit after tonight. I'm easily going to reach it but I didn't know what else to try for. At any rate, I also reached 50k for the year so far yesterday, which means I've written a novel in 6 weeks. Sure, I regularly do it in 4.5 weeks, but that's with active trying. This was just... writing when I felt like it. Huzzah.
Anyway, at this point my ankle only hurts when I try to put weight on it, which means I keep forgetting about it, and then getting up to take meds, or go to the bathroom, or rescue the cat, and suddenly having deep regrets.
Ugh, it's already into the 70s and it's not even March. This is going to be an awful summer. Fuck me running. Maybe I'll move to Alaska. Except that I promised my psychiatrist not to make any major life decisions for a year after Kevin died. And besides that I have a plane ticket from Atlanta to Oregon in October. So I guess I'm stuck here. Crap. Ugh I hate living in Georgia. Too bad all my friends and family are here.
I was chatting with a lady on OKCupid until she told me she hadn't read a book since high school and would never even consider reading a book. I noped out of there pretty quickly. Now I'm talking to a guy named Max, who has the advantage of actually being in Atlanta, but the disadvantage of only having a 2 year visa, so he could easily get sent back to Britain in another 18 months. He seems nice enough, though.
So anyway, I finally went back to bed around 4am and woke up at 2pm, which is a full sleep, despite the hour nap I took at 10. I was planning on going to look at a gym when I woke up but when I did get up, I remembered that they were on lunch break from 2-3, so I sat down and checked my email and putzed around for 45 minutes. I'm not even sure what I did because I only remember checking email and OKCupid and then suddenly it was too close to time to go to get into reading LJ.
I went to the gym, which is significantly more expensive than the first gym and you have to sign a year contract, which you don't at the first gym. This gym had significantly more weight equipment than the first gym, though. And TVs on the treadmills instead of having to watch whatever happens to be on on the large screens at the front of the room. I'm not sure that matters, because I don't plan to be on a treadmill long enough to watch an entire TV program, so whatever news shows they have on shouldn't be a problem.
This gym talked about their personal trainers, which is something I want, and the other gym didn't even talk to me, so I don't know whether they have PT and how much it costs. I tried to email them about it, but replying to the email they sent me with the trial pass bounced and I was unable to find another email for them on their website. I guess I'll have to actually call them on the phone and see.
I guess the 3rd option is the place that is in my mom's neighborhood. My dad is a member there, so I may be able to see if he's willing to split a family membership or allow me to pay just the difference for a family membership. This place definitely has personal training, but the PT I had last time I went there pissed me off by treating me like I was broken. We didn't really work out at all. She was like "well I just want you to be able to get up if you fall and wind up on the floor." Which is not at all my goal. And, do you have any idea how often I fall and wind up on the floor? I can definitely get up off the floor. I do it on a regular basis. Like at least one morning a week. Maybe if I just go in there and tell them I expect to get a good workout, they'll listen, though.
It also has the advantage of having a pool (outdoors, so summer only). Welp. They are $120 a month. Considering the other option is $20 a month? I don't think that's justifiable. I can join the cheaper gym and then go to the county pool 3 times in a week and still pay (a lot) less than $120 a month.
Maybe instead of joining a gym I should join the county pool and just buy myself some water weights and a noodle to work out in the water. I'm just not sure how comfortable I am with how crowded they can sometimes be right now. Both of the gyms I looked at were pretty much empty, but in the summer the county pool can be pretty crowded. Also being in the water that I didn't personally check the chlorination levels of with covid around, I'm not sure about.
Wow did this get to be a long and rambly thing.
Anyway, I went from there to back home where the WWP Talk guy called me about 15 minutes after I got home. We talked for half an hour and then I was again stuck with not enough time to do anything productive between thing 2 and thing 3. So I sat there and stared at fb for 10 minutes, then got up and left. Thing 3 was a trip to the chiropractor which took me longer to drive to and from than to actually be there. He said if I don't feel better, come back next wee. Otherwise come back next month. Okay.
I came home and I had grabbed Zaxby's on the way home. I ordered buffalo chicken but they just gave me regular chicken, which is, of course, making me sick, since they use fish sauce in their specialty sauce. I also finished Moloka'i, and wrote the review about it, which leaves me 1 book ahead in my goodreads challenge, which is good because I'm not fixin' to finish anything else any time soon, I don't think.
Anyway, I finished dinner and then once again didn't have enough time between dinner and my next activity to really get into anything. I sat there for a bit until it was time to log on for my creative writing class. We talked about editing and read our collaboration pieces aloud. I still hate editing because I still like my work and I don't want to hate it. But the homework is to edit our pieces and we'll talk about them again in 2 weeks.
Rac got called into work, so we didn't wind up gaming, so instead I actually got my dailies done, or at least read LJ and DW, exercised, and then finished cleaning off the broken dresser I want to get rid of.
At some point I need to get a new bed and get rid of my old bed. I wake up every morning with my back hurting, and I can't lie on my stomach without arching my back awkwardly on this one. Plus, the king sized bed takes up the whole bedroom. And it keeps moving around and away from the wall so my pillows fall behind it, and I'm not strong enough to move it by myself. And I can't get the sheets on it by myself. I think buying a double bed with a regular mattress would make all of these better plus allow me space to put in a dresser, which would let me reclaim the desperately needed space taken by the hanging shelves in my closet. Cleaning out Kevin's closet and moving my sweatshirts into there would also help free up some desperately needed space in the closet. This is a problem for a different month.
That brought me to 10, which was time to start writing here, and now it is 11, which is approximately time to stop writing here.
I was chatting with a lady on OKCupid until she told me she hadn't read a book since high school and would never even consider reading a book. I noped out of there pretty quickly. Now I'm talking to a guy named Max, who has the advantage of actually being in Atlanta, but the disadvantage of only having a 2 year visa, so he could easily get sent back to Britain in another 18 months. He seems nice enough, though.
So anyway, I finally went back to bed around 4am and woke up at 2pm, which is a full sleep, despite the hour nap I took at 10. I was planning on going to look at a gym when I woke up but when I did get up, I remembered that they were on lunch break from 2-3, so I sat down and checked my email and putzed around for 45 minutes. I'm not even sure what I did because I only remember checking email and OKCupid and then suddenly it was too close to time to go to get into reading LJ.
I went to the gym, which is significantly more expensive than the first gym and you have to sign a year contract, which you don't at the first gym. This gym had significantly more weight equipment than the first gym, though. And TVs on the treadmills instead of having to watch whatever happens to be on on the large screens at the front of the room. I'm not sure that matters, because I don't plan to be on a treadmill long enough to watch an entire TV program, so whatever news shows they have on shouldn't be a problem.
This gym talked about their personal trainers, which is something I want, and the other gym didn't even talk to me, so I don't know whether they have PT and how much it costs. I tried to email them about it, but replying to the email they sent me with the trial pass bounced and I was unable to find another email for them on their website. I guess I'll have to actually call them on the phone and see.
I guess the 3rd option is the place that is in my mom's neighborhood. My dad is a member there, so I may be able to see if he's willing to split a family membership or allow me to pay just the difference for a family membership. This place definitely has personal training, but the PT I had last time I went there pissed me off by treating me like I was broken. We didn't really work out at all. She was like "well I just want you to be able to get up if you fall and wind up on the floor." Which is not at all my goal. And, do you have any idea how often I fall and wind up on the floor? I can definitely get up off the floor. I do it on a regular basis. Like at least one morning a week. Maybe if I just go in there and tell them I expect to get a good workout, they'll listen, though.
It also has the advantage of having a pool (outdoors, so summer only). Welp. They are $120 a month. Considering the other option is $20 a month? I don't think that's justifiable. I can join the cheaper gym and then go to the county pool 3 times in a week and still pay (a lot) less than $120 a month.
Maybe instead of joining a gym I should join the county pool and just buy myself some water weights and a noodle to work out in the water. I'm just not sure how comfortable I am with how crowded they can sometimes be right now. Both of the gyms I looked at were pretty much empty, but in the summer the county pool can be pretty crowded. Also being in the water that I didn't personally check the chlorination levels of with covid around, I'm not sure about.
Wow did this get to be a long and rambly thing.
Anyway, I went from there to back home where the WWP Talk guy called me about 15 minutes after I got home. We talked for half an hour and then I was again stuck with not enough time to do anything productive between thing 2 and thing 3. So I sat there and stared at fb for 10 minutes, then got up and left. Thing 3 was a trip to the chiropractor which took me longer to drive to and from than to actually be there. He said if I don't feel better, come back next wee. Otherwise come back next month. Okay.
I came home and I had grabbed Zaxby's on the way home. I ordered buffalo chicken but they just gave me regular chicken, which is, of course, making me sick, since they use fish sauce in their specialty sauce. I also finished Moloka'i, and wrote the review about it, which leaves me 1 book ahead in my goodreads challenge, which is good because I'm not fixin' to finish anything else any time soon, I don't think.
Anyway, I finished dinner and then once again didn't have enough time between dinner and my next activity to really get into anything. I sat there for a bit until it was time to log on for my creative writing class. We talked about editing and read our collaboration pieces aloud. I still hate editing because I still like my work and I don't want to hate it. But the homework is to edit our pieces and we'll talk about them again in 2 weeks.
Rac got called into work, so we didn't wind up gaming, so instead I actually got my dailies done, or at least read LJ and DW, exercised, and then finished cleaning off the broken dresser I want to get rid of.
At some point I need to get a new bed and get rid of my old bed. I wake up every morning with my back hurting, and I can't lie on my stomach without arching my back awkwardly on this one. Plus, the king sized bed takes up the whole bedroom. And it keeps moving around and away from the wall so my pillows fall behind it, and I'm not strong enough to move it by myself. And I can't get the sheets on it by myself. I think buying a double bed with a regular mattress would make all of these better plus allow me space to put in a dresser, which would let me reclaim the desperately needed space taken by the hanging shelves in my closet. Cleaning out Kevin's closet and moving my sweatshirts into there would also help free up some desperately needed space in the closet. This is a problem for a different month.
That brought me to 10, which was time to start writing here, and now it is 11, which is approximately time to stop writing here.
I fell asleep at 10pm yesterday, and then woke up at 2am. Got back to sleep at 4pm but woke up again at 10am. I was up for the day. I hadn't been expecting to have much of a day since I thought I was going to spend all of it at the hospital, so there was an unexpected 4 hours to fill. I filled it by unpacking my suitcase and folding my laundry, and poking around the internet. I had a headache, which is rare, because usually I get headaches at night, not in the morning. But I took some advil, and it went away - only to come back at bed time! Then I took more advil, took a nap and it went away only to come back as soon as I got back up! Ugh! My headaches never come back after they go away and twice is really weird. So I'm not sure what's gone wrong here, but something's not right.
Anyway, I didn't do much with my surprise 4 hours. I did get an email to volunteers from Corners Outreach. Apparently they finished my background check but then nobody bothered to tell me? So the email I got was to all of their volunteers. I wrote back like "uhm me?" and they were like "yes you!" but now they're on winter break or something for the rest of this week and the beginning of next week. I'm not sure why the break that's not timed with the school's but okay.
Then, eventually, I went to the VA. I left half an hour earlier than I thought I needed to because I was hoping to get my blood work done ahead of time. It turned out to be a good thing because it took longer to get there than I remembered. I got into the blood work clinic and the guy was like "no I can't do blood work for the main hospital. You have to go to the main hospital for that." Like, my dude. I have been doing my blood work here for a decade now. But he insisted, eventually doing the blood work my psych ordered but ignoring the blood work ordered by my PCP. I have to go to the hospital next Wednesday to get new glasses, so hopefully I can do it then. But what a dickhead.
From there I wandered over to the dentist and made an appointment to see the dentist in April. Which is a lot sooner than I thought I'd be able to get in.
I was 20 minutes early for my dermatology appointment, but Alex messaged me so I tried to ignore the awful court show with a judge screaming at a lady and talk to him instead. Eventually I was led to an exam room. A doctor came in and said both of the concerning spots that have shown up on my skin in the past year or so are a sign of aging, and totally benign. So, great, I'm old. But at least I don't have cancer. He said now that I have two, I'll almost certainly get more. Uf.
I came home and, trying to make the best of a bad situation, squeezed some bbq sauce onto the dry, plain chicken from last night. It was passable, at least the parts that actually got the sauce on it. The bottoms of the pieces of chicken were still dog food bad. Jack and Rogue were happy about that, though.
I got spooked by something and spent the rest of the day upset with anything that crossed my path, except my animals. Mostly I was upset by bacchys being a dick about whether people should list their pronouns on twitter because "people are going to refer to them as 'you,' not a 3rd person pronoun." So, like, apparently we shouldn't care how people refer to us when we're not there as long as the 2nd person doesn't have a gender??
I wrote the GYWO Word Crawl words, most of which were "I do not want to write right now." and only got 300 words in 14 minutes. Sometimes it just doesn't happen.
I tried to go to sleep at 10 and slept for about an hour. Woke up with a headache, but started writing here anyway.
Anyway, I didn't do much with my surprise 4 hours. I did get an email to volunteers from Corners Outreach. Apparently they finished my background check but then nobody bothered to tell me? So the email I got was to all of their volunteers. I wrote back like "uhm me?" and they were like "yes you!" but now they're on winter break or something for the rest of this week and the beginning of next week. I'm not sure why the break that's not timed with the school's but okay.
Then, eventually, I went to the VA. I left half an hour earlier than I thought I needed to because I was hoping to get my blood work done ahead of time. It turned out to be a good thing because it took longer to get there than I remembered. I got into the blood work clinic and the guy was like "no I can't do blood work for the main hospital. You have to go to the main hospital for that." Like, my dude. I have been doing my blood work here for a decade now. But he insisted, eventually doing the blood work my psych ordered but ignoring the blood work ordered by my PCP. I have to go to the hospital next Wednesday to get new glasses, so hopefully I can do it then. But what a dickhead.
From there I wandered over to the dentist and made an appointment to see the dentist in April. Which is a lot sooner than I thought I'd be able to get in.
I was 20 minutes early for my dermatology appointment, but Alex messaged me so I tried to ignore the awful court show with a judge screaming at a lady and talk to him instead. Eventually I was led to an exam room. A doctor came in and said both of the concerning spots that have shown up on my skin in the past year or so are a sign of aging, and totally benign. So, great, I'm old. But at least I don't have cancer. He said now that I have two, I'll almost certainly get more. Uf.
I came home and, trying to make the best of a bad situation, squeezed some bbq sauce onto the dry, plain chicken from last night. It was passable, at least the parts that actually got the sauce on it. The bottoms of the pieces of chicken were still dog food bad. Jack and Rogue were happy about that, though.
I got spooked by something and spent the rest of the day upset with anything that crossed my path, except my animals. Mostly I was upset by bacchys being a dick about whether people should list their pronouns on twitter because "people are going to refer to them as 'you,' not a 3rd person pronoun." So, like, apparently we shouldn't care how people refer to us when we're not there as long as the 2nd person doesn't have a gender??
I wrote the GYWO Word Crawl words, most of which were "I do not want to write right now." and only got 300 words in 14 minutes. Sometimes it just doesn't happen.
I tried to go to sleep at 10 and slept for about an hour. Woke up with a headache, but started writing here anyway.
It started with no sleep. I talked to Alex, Kali, and Sarah and Gerda until 7am. I ordered breakfast at 5am, but uber was apparently struggling to find a driver, so it didn't get here until 7. It was still warm though, so I guess it works out in the end. I went to bed immediately after, but still took a while to actually fall asleep. Then I woke up around 2.
I went to downtown Norcross to take some pictures, but it wasn't as good a spot as I thought it might be. I took a couple pictures of a fountain and some of a pub with a phonebooth at it, but no really much else. Oh well, they can't all be winners.
I decided last night to investigate joining a gym and looked up some 24 hour places. One of them gave a free day pass, so I went there today. They had a loop that is meant to take 30 minutes the way Curves used to, which is nice occasionally, but I'd get sick of it if I tried to do it 3x a week. Otherwise, they had a large number of treadmills and a small amount of weight equipment. No one talked to me about the gym so I have no idea if they have PT or how much it costs. They did have a massage room with hydromassage and massage chairs, which is a nice perk if you buy their more expensive package.
I came home and mom came to get her dog. She said she had been stuck in traffic because someone stole a big rig and used it to try to run over people, so the police shot him, and the whole highway was a crime scene. She still got here a lot faster than I expected she would as I was expecting her around 5 or 6. In fairness she did say evening and 4 is more afternoon.
I pretty much wasted the rest of the day, though I did cook some chicken couscous. The chicken did not absorb the flavor of the couscous and just tasted like unflavored chicken, which isn't great. I fed about half of the chicken I took to my dogs, and I still have a ton of this crap leftover. I have to eat it, so I guess that's that.
When I looked at my bank account balance it said $0.00. Shocked, I checked it, and the money for Alex had come out of the wrong account. I have no idea why paypal would suddenly decide to use a different default account, but it did it twice, with both the test amount I sent and the full amount. I'm really mad about it (not of course at Alex but at paypal). Then it took me a while to figure out how to get the money back where it belonged. I am hopeful that I ultimately figured it out.
I went to downtown Norcross to take some pictures, but it wasn't as good a spot as I thought it might be. I took a couple pictures of a fountain and some of a pub with a phonebooth at it, but no really much else. Oh well, they can't all be winners.
I decided last night to investigate joining a gym and looked up some 24 hour places. One of them gave a free day pass, so I went there today. They had a loop that is meant to take 30 minutes the way Curves used to, which is nice occasionally, but I'd get sick of it if I tried to do it 3x a week. Otherwise, they had a large number of treadmills and a small amount of weight equipment. No one talked to me about the gym so I have no idea if they have PT or how much it costs. They did have a massage room with hydromassage and massage chairs, which is a nice perk if you buy their more expensive package.
I came home and mom came to get her dog. She said she had been stuck in traffic because someone stole a big rig and used it to try to run over people, so the police shot him, and the whole highway was a crime scene. She still got here a lot faster than I expected she would as I was expecting her around 5 or 6. In fairness she did say evening and 4 is more afternoon.
I pretty much wasted the rest of the day, though I did cook some chicken couscous. The chicken did not absorb the flavor of the couscous and just tasted like unflavored chicken, which isn't great. I fed about half of the chicken I took to my dogs, and I still have a ton of this crap leftover. I have to eat it, so I guess that's that.
When I looked at my bank account balance it said $0.00. Shocked, I checked it, and the money for Alex had come out of the wrong account. I have no idea why paypal would suddenly decide to use a different default account, but it did it twice, with both the test amount I sent and the full amount. I'm really mad about it (not of course at Alex but at paypal). Then it took me a while to figure out how to get the money back where it belonged. I am hopeful that I ultimately figured it out.
So last night I decided to sign up for OKCupid because someone told me there was an asexual option on it and I could maybe find someone who was ace but not aro. Well, there is an option for saying you are ace, but there's no way to search for people with that option selected, so I'm not sure it is worth it. I did search for anyone with ace listed in their profile, and sent messages to several of those women (and they are all women for whatever reason!) None of them got back to me today. But anyway, I spent most of last night answering questions about people I'd like to date, most of which I do not care about in the slightest (is a hot dog a sandwich?) (is cereal soup?).
I found a place online willing to buy used warhammer models, but only if you know what you have. I sent them the descriptions of the pieces that were described to me on holiday_wishes. I still have a ton of warhammer stuff left but if they buy this set, maybe I can get this person to look at more stuff for me, or something.
I also talked to Alex a bit, and I don't even know what else, but I didn't get to bed until 3am I don't think. Then I woke up around 1:45, but decided to stay in bed until my alarm went off at 2:15. I got up and fed the dogs, and then replied to a couple guys who messaged me on OKCupid. Suddenly I realized it was 5 minutes past my appointment time for the stupid psychiatrist appointment I set my alarm to get up for in the first place. I'm such a dummy.
I logged on, but it was another 5 minutes before the psychiatrist logged on. It was a new psychiatrist, which meant going through everything all over again. Like she can't read my notes and see what previous psychiatrists have said about me. Then she started in about "it's been a long time since your meds were changed" and "how do you think that is working for you?" in a way that made it evident she wanted an actual description of the benefits rather than a "well." I'm sitting here like "do not touch my meds, you dumb bitch. Your job is not to experiment with my head, but rather to fucking write the same prescription I've been on for the past decade. Do not fuck with my head." Fortunately, she ultimately decided she didn't have to fuck with my meds. How have the meds helped? They have stabilized me somewhere north of suicidal and made me a functioning adult (kinda). I don't ask for anything more than that. Do not fuck with my meds.
We talked for almost an hour, then I read LJ and DW and read the facebook memories for today, which were all Kevin posting how much he loved me or me posting how much I loved him. So that was painful.
Last night I emailed the new CEO of Kevin's company and asked about his 401k, which I still don't have. He had Jeff Korn call me and get me some paperwork to do, and while I had Jeff on the phone I asked about the missing W-2. He was able to give me a phone number to call to try to sort that out, but they were just like "we mailed it on the 28th. We don't know why it's not there. We can mail another one. Call back if you don't get it by the 28th." Which, fine, but like I really need this thing. Also, it's not the only piece of mail I'm missing, since I'm also missing the tax paperwork from the short term disability insurance. That I was able to get online, but this they apparently will not reset access to his online account for me.
This is the 3rd time they've mailed me a W-2, so I'm really not counting on getting it. Maybe I need a lawyer to demand they give me access to his online accounts? Would that work? Can I start billing them for all the hours I've spent chasing the W-2 and sue them in small claims court for the total, but offer to drop the case if they just fucking email me the W-2? Seriously, what do you do if a company refuses to give you tax paperwork?
Anyway, I decided to order Indian for dinner, which was delicious, but they forgot my dessert, which was super disappointing. Then I gave the dogs a Valentine's Day treat since I now have a bag full of sweet potato wrapped in chicken jerky that I have to get rid of. The cats, alas, got nothing, because I managed to forget V-Day until it snuck up on me last night, and they don't seem to like any of the kitty treats I have bought for them until finally I stopped buying kitty treats except for the occasional can of tuna, but they got that on Saturday for Rogue's birthday.
After dinner I did some of my reading, art, and exercised. I think that now I have read from every book for my reading Wednesday post, which is good. That used to happen every week, but now it is rare. I finished my book club book with 2 weeks to spare. It had... a really weird ending. I guess it's one of those books that you don't get to see everything wrapped up nicely in the end. Maybe a short piece of fanfic is needed - something about Yosef's adventures, or Shira's. Maybe I'll write it some time. I wrote a short book review on goodreads,
Before I knew what was happening, it was 9:50 and time to write here. It's also time to throw some chicken in the crock pot so I can cook with it tomorrow, which I almost forgot. I guess I have to find the time and energy to cook tomorrow since I'm cooking the chicken for the couscous chicken tonight. It'll be fine, I'm sure. I have to get up some energy for the whole rest of the week. There are things that need to be done. Then once I get through this week I can go back to not doing much, at least until a stack of chores piles up on me again. Or until I get that W-2, since I need to see how bad this tax season is going to be.
I found a place online willing to buy used warhammer models, but only if you know what you have. I sent them the descriptions of the pieces that were described to me on holiday_wishes. I still have a ton of warhammer stuff left but if they buy this set, maybe I can get this person to look at more stuff for me, or something.
I also talked to Alex a bit, and I don't even know what else, but I didn't get to bed until 3am I don't think. Then I woke up around 1:45, but decided to stay in bed until my alarm went off at 2:15. I got up and fed the dogs, and then replied to a couple guys who messaged me on OKCupid. Suddenly I realized it was 5 minutes past my appointment time for the stupid psychiatrist appointment I set my alarm to get up for in the first place. I'm such a dummy.
I logged on, but it was another 5 minutes before the psychiatrist logged on. It was a new psychiatrist, which meant going through everything all over again. Like she can't read my notes and see what previous psychiatrists have said about me. Then she started in about "it's been a long time since your meds were changed" and "how do you think that is working for you?" in a way that made it evident she wanted an actual description of the benefits rather than a "well." I'm sitting here like "do not touch my meds, you dumb bitch. Your job is not to experiment with my head, but rather to fucking write the same prescription I've been on for the past decade. Do not fuck with my head." Fortunately, she ultimately decided she didn't have to fuck with my meds. How have the meds helped? They have stabilized me somewhere north of suicidal and made me a functioning adult (kinda). I don't ask for anything more than that. Do not fuck with my meds.
We talked for almost an hour, then I read LJ and DW and read the facebook memories for today, which were all Kevin posting how much he loved me or me posting how much I loved him. So that was painful.
Last night I emailed the new CEO of Kevin's company and asked about his 401k, which I still don't have. He had Jeff Korn call me and get me some paperwork to do, and while I had Jeff on the phone I asked about the missing W-2. He was able to give me a phone number to call to try to sort that out, but they were just like "we mailed it on the 28th. We don't know why it's not there. We can mail another one. Call back if you don't get it by the 28th." Which, fine, but like I really need this thing. Also, it's not the only piece of mail I'm missing, since I'm also missing the tax paperwork from the short term disability insurance. That I was able to get online, but this they apparently will not reset access to his online account for me.
This is the 3rd time they've mailed me a W-2, so I'm really not counting on getting it. Maybe I need a lawyer to demand they give me access to his online accounts? Would that work? Can I start billing them for all the hours I've spent chasing the W-2 and sue them in small claims court for the total, but offer to drop the case if they just fucking email me the W-2? Seriously, what do you do if a company refuses to give you tax paperwork?
Anyway, I decided to order Indian for dinner, which was delicious, but they forgot my dessert, which was super disappointing. Then I gave the dogs a Valentine's Day treat since I now have a bag full of sweet potato wrapped in chicken jerky that I have to get rid of. The cats, alas, got nothing, because I managed to forget V-Day until it snuck up on me last night, and they don't seem to like any of the kitty treats I have bought for them until finally I stopped buying kitty treats except for the occasional can of tuna, but they got that on Saturday for Rogue's birthday.
After dinner I did some of my reading, art, and exercised. I think that now I have read from every book for my reading Wednesday post, which is good. That used to happen every week, but now it is rare. I finished my book club book with 2 weeks to spare. It had... a really weird ending. I guess it's one of those books that you don't get to see everything wrapped up nicely in the end. Maybe a short piece of fanfic is needed - something about Yosef's adventures, or Shira's. Maybe I'll write it some time. I wrote a short book review on goodreads,
Before I knew what was happening, it was 9:50 and time to write here. It's also time to throw some chicken in the crock pot so I can cook with it tomorrow, which I almost forgot. I guess I have to find the time and energy to cook tomorrow since I'm cooking the chicken for the couscous chicken tonight. It'll be fine, I'm sure. I have to get up some energy for the whole rest of the week. There are things that need to be done. Then once I get through this week I can go back to not doing much, at least until a stack of chores piles up on me again. Or until I get that W-2, since I need to see how bad this tax season is going to be.
Today was a day. I went to bed last night after talking to Alex for a bit on my watch in bed. I think I fell asleep around 3am and then woke up again around 1pm. Jack was being a bad dog again, but he calmed down when I got up. Today was pretty productive. I got all of my todo list for the day done, and did several other things from tomorrow and the rest of the week's todo list. I also had a perfect day on habitica, Unfortunately, that means my day was chores and reading, and neither is very interesting to write an entry about.
I went into my husband's office for the first time in months and found that other than warhammer stuff, I am pretty much out of stuff to put on ebay. There's a few D&D books; I listed 3 of those today since I decided to list 3 things this week as a goal. Other than that, I really don't know. I'm going to have to figure out what some of this warhammer stuff is, and see if I can sell it. I did find a used warhammer crap store online, but unfortunately you still need to know what you have before they'll buy it. I have descriptions of some stuff from the nice person from holiday_wishes, but there are still just models everywhere and I don't know what any of them are. I should probably just throw out the individual models that aren't a part of anything. I can't imagine they are worth much just unpainted and unconnected with whatever they came from.
I cooked pigs in a blanket today, which was just the comfort food I wanted. And it takes longer to heat up the oven than to cook them, so it's a great little meal without much effort. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with leftovers, so I'll have to cook again this week, but it was tasty. I think on Tuesday I'm going to make chicken couscous. I just have to remember to thaw the chicken tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll eat out.
I can't imagine I'll be in a good enough mood to cook for myself on V-Day without Kevin. Hopefully I can still get a few things done for myself, but actually I've done most of Monday's todo list already, so if I don't... *shrugs* Maybe I'll try to wake up early enough to heat a cup of happyness tea to sip on through my psych appointment. I'm not sure it makes me happy, but it does seem to make me productive. Which is fine, since I'm making a push this week to get done all the crap I've been putting off for months. So far, so good. So far it isn't V-Day. I am managing to get depressed as we get closer to the day, though. A bit under two hours and I'm rather distressed.
I went into my husband's office for the first time in months and found that other than warhammer stuff, I am pretty much out of stuff to put on ebay. There's a few D&D books; I listed 3 of those today since I decided to list 3 things this week as a goal. Other than that, I really don't know. I'm going to have to figure out what some of this warhammer stuff is, and see if I can sell it. I did find a used warhammer crap store online, but unfortunately you still need to know what you have before they'll buy it. I have descriptions of some stuff from the nice person from holiday_wishes, but there are still just models everywhere and I don't know what any of them are. I should probably just throw out the individual models that aren't a part of anything. I can't imagine they are worth much just unpainted and unconnected with whatever they came from.
I cooked pigs in a blanket today, which was just the comfort food I wanted. And it takes longer to heat up the oven than to cook them, so it's a great little meal without much effort. Unfortunately, it doesn't come with leftovers, so I'll have to cook again this week, but it was tasty. I think on Tuesday I'm going to make chicken couscous. I just have to remember to thaw the chicken tomorrow. Tomorrow I'll eat out.
I can't imagine I'll be in a good enough mood to cook for myself on V-Day without Kevin. Hopefully I can still get a few things done for myself, but actually I've done most of Monday's todo list already, so if I don't... *shrugs* Maybe I'll try to wake up early enough to heat a cup of happyness tea to sip on through my psych appointment. I'm not sure it makes me happy, but it does seem to make me productive. Which is fine, since I'm making a push this week to get done all the crap I've been putting off for months. So far, so good. So far it isn't V-Day. I am managing to get depressed as we get closer to the day, though. A bit under two hours and I'm rather distressed.
I had another one of those "hi" "hi, goodnight" conversations with Alex last night. I'm afraid he's going to start thinking I'm avoiding him. But anyway, I went to bed around 1am after accomplishing very little last night. Then I woke up around 9am, and was up for the day. I got up and read lj and dw, then went back to bed but not back to sleep, until noon. Jack was acting a fool and expecting to be fed at noon, which is really frustrating for both of us because I don't want to feed him until 2. He acts like I forgot him, and I have to use a considerable amount of my time and energy picking him up, petting him, then yelling at him as he jumps down and starts barking again. This happens after he goes to my mother's house because she feeds him early in the morning.
I walked all of the dogs this afternoon since it was warm and I didn't really have anything else planned for my day. I listened to some music, and was gone 20 minutes, according to my watch. My headphones aren't working anymore (they won't pair with the new phone) so I just used the phone speaker, which isn't that great for listening to stuff outside.
When I got back, we had a birthday party! Rogue turned 15 today, and Bennett had a birthday, too, though I don't know how old he is. All of the dogs got two pieces of sweet potato wrapped in chicken jerky, and those who would eat them got huge milkbones. The cats got some tuna, and I got a piece of cheesecake. All told it was a good birthday party and everyone enjoyed it, even if the animals have no clue what we're celebrating.
I spent most of the rest of the day reading, and read from all of my 2021 and 2022 books that I'm currently reading (not true since I'm reading at least one 2021 book in a different category other than the new books categories but still).
Donna got back to me about walkies. She's getting together with an old friend this weekend, and then she'll get back together with me for walkies, though she's still not so hot on swimmies. I think that's approximately where I am with things, too, so hopefully soon I'll be able to walk with Donna again.
I made another todo list to start tomorrow and end on Friday to hopefully get through some things I've been seriously slacking on. Some of it is trivial and some of it will take some doing. Some of it I'm not even sure how much effort it will take (hence the slacking, really. If I knew I had to put effort in or didn't have to put effort in I'd much more likely have it done). Anyway, I'm hopeful that I can get it done in 6 days and then take shabbat off. But I also have 3 doctor appointments this week - one in person - so who knows how much I actually get done on Wednesday.
Zach said the person he talked to about buying my warhammer stuff in bulk wasn't interested, but he had another email address of someone who might be able to help me. I emailed this second guy, but I'm not overly hopeful. I think I'm going to be stuck selling the warhammer shit item by item on fucking ebay. Words still cannot express how much I hate ebay.
I walked all of the dogs this afternoon since it was warm and I didn't really have anything else planned for my day. I listened to some music, and was gone 20 minutes, according to my watch. My headphones aren't working anymore (they won't pair with the new phone) so I just used the phone speaker, which isn't that great for listening to stuff outside.
When I got back, we had a birthday party! Rogue turned 15 today, and Bennett had a birthday, too, though I don't know how old he is. All of the dogs got two pieces of sweet potato wrapped in chicken jerky, and those who would eat them got huge milkbones. The cats got some tuna, and I got a piece of cheesecake. All told it was a good birthday party and everyone enjoyed it, even if the animals have no clue what we're celebrating.
I spent most of the rest of the day reading, and read from all of my 2021 and 2022 books that I'm currently reading (not true since I'm reading at least one 2021 book in a different category other than the new books categories but still).
Donna got back to me about walkies. She's getting together with an old friend this weekend, and then she'll get back together with me for walkies, though she's still not so hot on swimmies. I think that's approximately where I am with things, too, so hopefully soon I'll be able to walk with Donna again.
I made another todo list to start tomorrow and end on Friday to hopefully get through some things I've been seriously slacking on. Some of it is trivial and some of it will take some doing. Some of it I'm not even sure how much effort it will take (hence the slacking, really. If I knew I had to put effort in or didn't have to put effort in I'd much more likely have it done). Anyway, I'm hopeful that I can get it done in 6 days and then take shabbat off. But I also have 3 doctor appointments this week - one in person - so who knows how much I actually get done on Wednesday.
Zach said the person he talked to about buying my warhammer stuff in bulk wasn't interested, but he had another email address of someone who might be able to help me. I emailed this second guy, but I'm not overly hopeful. I think I'm going to be stuck selling the warhammer shit item by item on fucking ebay. Words still cannot express how much I hate ebay.
Today was a short day, but it started off a little concerningly. Last night I went to bed around 1 or 2am, shortly after Alex contacted me which I felt a little bad about because the conversation basically went "hi" "hi good night." But I was tired and in pain, so I went to sleep. But then I woke up again at 5am and I was so thirsty. SO thirsty. I drank an entire liter of water in half an hour, and was still thirsty and could not get over this thirst. I didn't have any other symptoms, other than just being super thirsty. An hour later I gave up on drinking enough water to not feel thirsty anymore, and went back to sleep. I woke up feeling mildly thirsty, but not insane about it around 4pm.
I got up and had dinner and then went back to bed until about 6 when I got tagged in "in between rp" in my gaming discord, so I went to deal with that, and then it was time for Temple on youtube. It was some kind of kiddy shabbat with all the 1st through 3rd graders leading a couple songs and coming forward for the sermon. Then the rabbi asked them what they are thankful for and one of them said "my mom is thankful for wine." Which made me lol, that poor woman. Hopefully she's not an alcoholic and just enjoys a glass of wine occasionally.
When I was done with that, I did a little more writing on our thing we're writing together with Scott, and then did some dancing and weights and PT, and finally read a chapter of my book club book. Somehow I've gotten down to only having 3 chapters left, and 2 weeks to do it. I should be able to do that pretty easily, and maybe I'll even have time to read from some other books. I'm not close to finishing much else, though. I will soon be behind in my reading challenge for the year, which is pathetic because it's the same reading challenge I had last year, and if I managed it last year I should surely manage it this year.
I sold something on ebay - one of Kevin's dragon models. Now to hope and pray the bitch mail lady decides to do her job tomorrow and come pick it up. I'm sure she won't and there will be some excuse from the mail station, and I am fed the fuck up with the whole situation. I'm hoping I can sell the warhammer stuff to a store through Zach, which would cut by about 2/3rds or 3/4ths what I actually have to sell myself, since that's most of Kevin's junk.
I can also take a bunch of his books to McKay's when I go to Gatlinburg in June, and get rid of them quickly. I need to actually get up the oomph to get into his room and see what's left. It may not be much that I plan to get rid of - I plan to keep his little gnomes and such so I don't know if there's a lot left other than warhammer stuff and ancient computer stuff that has no market and I should just take to an electronics recycling place or get rid of when I call 1-800-Got-Junk to take out some of the broken furniture and such.
Anyway, I'm annoyed because I can't find the zillions of rolls of packaging tape I bought. I found an old roll in my junk drawer, but the literally dozen rolls of it that I bought recently? All missing. And I don't even know where to start looking - I've examined my kitchen table and the pile of stuff in the living room, which are the only two places I can imagine it going. I'm baffled. The only good thing about Katrina taking a month off is that things should stop disappearing on me for a while, if I can find them to begin with.
I got up and had dinner and then went back to bed until about 6 when I got tagged in "in between rp" in my gaming discord, so I went to deal with that, and then it was time for Temple on youtube. It was some kind of kiddy shabbat with all the 1st through 3rd graders leading a couple songs and coming forward for the sermon. Then the rabbi asked them what they are thankful for and one of them said "my mom is thankful for wine." Which made me lol, that poor woman. Hopefully she's not an alcoholic and just enjoys a glass of wine occasionally.
When I was done with that, I did a little more writing on our thing we're writing together with Scott, and then did some dancing and weights and PT, and finally read a chapter of my book club book. Somehow I've gotten down to only having 3 chapters left, and 2 weeks to do it. I should be able to do that pretty easily, and maybe I'll even have time to read from some other books. I'm not close to finishing much else, though. I will soon be behind in my reading challenge for the year, which is pathetic because it's the same reading challenge I had last year, and if I managed it last year I should surely manage it this year.
I sold something on ebay - one of Kevin's dragon models. Now to hope and pray the bitch mail lady decides to do her job tomorrow and come pick it up. I'm sure she won't and there will be some excuse from the mail station, and I am fed the fuck up with the whole situation. I'm hoping I can sell the warhammer stuff to a store through Zach, which would cut by about 2/3rds or 3/4ths what I actually have to sell myself, since that's most of Kevin's junk.
I can also take a bunch of his books to McKay's when I go to Gatlinburg in June, and get rid of them quickly. I need to actually get up the oomph to get into his room and see what's left. It may not be much that I plan to get rid of - I plan to keep his little gnomes and such so I don't know if there's a lot left other than warhammer stuff and ancient computer stuff that has no market and I should just take to an electronics recycling place or get rid of when I call 1-800-Got-Junk to take out some of the broken furniture and such.
Anyway, I'm annoyed because I can't find the zillions of rolls of packaging tape I bought. I found an old roll in my junk drawer, but the literally dozen rolls of it that I bought recently? All missing. And I don't even know where to start looking - I've examined my kitchen table and the pile of stuff in the living room, which are the only two places I can imagine it going. I'm baffled. The only good thing about Katrina taking a month off is that things should stop disappearing on me for a while, if I can find them to begin with.
I did, in fact, fall asleep promptly after writing here yesterday. Then I didn't wake up again until 10am. I got up and spent the time putzing around on the internet, and in general not doing anything productive. It seems the productive time I had was two weeks ago, and although I've written a todo list, I did nothing on it today. Maybe it should be next week's todo list? A lot of my missing clothing, though not all of it, reappeared in a pile on my bed. All I can assume is that Katrina put it somewhere to clean, then, two weeks later, finding it still there, decided to move it back where it belonged? I put it in my laundry basket so I can do laundry tomorrow and hopefully get around to folding it. This is the weirdest thing.
I forgot to buy breakfasts this week, and had run out of anything meal like that I had been eating for the past couple of days, so I just didn't eat until I ate a piece of candy around 4. Well, I immediately felt better, so I guess a lot of my lack of motivation was just lack of sugar, and I should be more careful. Not that I have anything else to eat for breakfast tomorrow, either, though. But I guess there is always uber.
I wrote about 600 words for the word crawl that GYWO is doing. The actual task was to write for half an hour, but my brain does not work in half hour chunks for almost anything and if I try, I'll generally wind up googling something or trying to write a todo list or anything other than writing. So I cut it in half and still got a good number of words. For a day when I wasn't going to write, it's a lot.
At 4:30 I went to get my brain swabbed. I got there about 15 minutes early, but they called me early and asked if I was there, and I was able to get in and out early. The test was negative, which email I got by the time I got home. It was a little bit of a trick getting my results because they required a special character in their passwords, and I never use one unless I'm required to, and then I forget the password immediately if I do have to use one. So I managed to forget both the user name (which was not zhelana, but rather my old email address) and password (which had a damned special character in it). They sent the reminder of my username to my new email address but the two factor authentication to change my password to my old email address. I looked for each in the wrong spot for a good 10 minutes before eventually finding them.
I figured if at the very beginning of the pandemic they told us we could go for walks outside, I could go for a walk outside while I waited for my test. I took my camera to a cemetery which I hadn't been to since I was a small child in girl scouts and had used the attached church for our meetings. I walked around for 15-20 minutes before realizing that the van I had parked next to had a person in it, and this person was watching me. I grew deeply uncomfortable, because why is this person just sitting in a parking lot watching me in a van with no windows? So I decided to skedaddle, and came home.
Along the way I stopped at Zaxby's and then was emotionally stabbed in the back by my book when the main character's husband was murdered. Now she's mourning, and it is very difficult to continue listening to this book, though I feel like I need to because Shayna still wants to know what happens in the end of it. I have less than 4 hours left, and should finish most of it by Friday. I'll probably finish the whole book by next Wednesday, and then I can get back to the happier subject of aliens invading the world. Boy, when that's the happy option... O_O
I came home and changed back into my pajamas, and then my father showed up with my parents' dog, who will be spending the weekend with me. I gave Rogue her medicine and then Bennett gave me such a sad look, like, "why don't I get a treat? Aren't I a good boy?" I tried to give him one of the milk bones but he turned up his nose at it, so I gave him a pill pocket without a pill in it, which he appreciated. Jack got one of the milk bones since I wasn't about to just leave him out.
I did my exercise, and downloaded my photography, wrote a letter to Nat, and then went back to the debate at RN, getting myself scolded by the admin for trolling because when a republican said "I'm not cis, I'm just a man" I said "if you're not cis, you're trans. What do you say, should we complain about the pain of having a period? Perhaps you can recommend a top surgeon for me?" Brian had perhaps a smarter response by telling him he was a lot of things he didn't regularly use to describe himself, such as hominid, eukaryot, and chordate, but all those things applied to him. He's still trying to assert that he is not Cis but also not trans. My next stop is assuming he's a particularly clever dog. This is the guy, by the way, who was the model for the villain in my current novel. I changed his gender for that story, though.
Around 9:30, I decided I should at least read one chapter of my book club book, even if I wasn't going to read anything else for the day. It's a good thing I had decided that was it, because it was a huge long chapter and took me until 10:25 to read! I'm already so far behind in reading this book that I couldn't stop mid chapter. I have to read two full chapters a week to get through it on time. Anyway, it was a little traumatic.
That brought us to 10:30 and I started writing here immediately. Now it is about 11pm, and although I usually spend an hour writing here, I think I've gotten through my day well enough. I've actually managed to type most of this without getting distracted, so I guess it went a little quicker than usual.
I tried to order Rogue's meds from Chewy, but the vet called back and said she couldn't have the 50mg tablets because they aren't extended release. No one has the 100mg tablets anywhere. I have looked. I have joined mailing lists to be contacted the next time several various places have them in stock. They are not to be had. The vet told me the name of the pharmacy they use and arranged for them to mail them to me, so thank God I don't have to drive out to the vet's office this month. I should have them within 3 days (2 day shipping but it was after the mail came when they got my order). Lucky me, I still have 4 days worth left.
The vet also tried to get me to get the meds from CVS arguing that the same pills could be used for humans. The smallest size CVS had was 350mg and it was a tablet meant for swallowing not a flat chip for the dog to chew on that tastes good to a dog. It was also $235. But I had no idea that vets had prescription writing abilities to CVS and other human pharmacies.
I forgot to buy breakfasts this week, and had run out of anything meal like that I had been eating for the past couple of days, so I just didn't eat until I ate a piece of candy around 4. Well, I immediately felt better, so I guess a lot of my lack of motivation was just lack of sugar, and I should be more careful. Not that I have anything else to eat for breakfast tomorrow, either, though. But I guess there is always uber.
I wrote about 600 words for the word crawl that GYWO is doing. The actual task was to write for half an hour, but my brain does not work in half hour chunks for almost anything and if I try, I'll generally wind up googling something or trying to write a todo list or anything other than writing. So I cut it in half and still got a good number of words. For a day when I wasn't going to write, it's a lot.
At 4:30 I went to get my brain swabbed. I got there about 15 minutes early, but they called me early and asked if I was there, and I was able to get in and out early. The test was negative, which email I got by the time I got home. It was a little bit of a trick getting my results because they required a special character in their passwords, and I never use one unless I'm required to, and then I forget the password immediately if I do have to use one. So I managed to forget both the user name (which was not zhelana, but rather my old email address) and password (which had a damned special character in it). They sent the reminder of my username to my new email address but the two factor authentication to change my password to my old email address. I looked for each in the wrong spot for a good 10 minutes before eventually finding them.
I figured if at the very beginning of the pandemic they told us we could go for walks outside, I could go for a walk outside while I waited for my test. I took my camera to a cemetery which I hadn't been to since I was a small child in girl scouts and had used the attached church for our meetings. I walked around for 15-20 minutes before realizing that the van I had parked next to had a person in it, and this person was watching me. I grew deeply uncomfortable, because why is this person just sitting in a parking lot watching me in a van with no windows? So I decided to skedaddle, and came home.
Along the way I stopped at Zaxby's and then was emotionally stabbed in the back by my book when the main character's husband was murdered. Now she's mourning, and it is very difficult to continue listening to this book, though I feel like I need to because Shayna still wants to know what happens in the end of it. I have less than 4 hours left, and should finish most of it by Friday. I'll probably finish the whole book by next Wednesday, and then I can get back to the happier subject of aliens invading the world. Boy, when that's the happy option... O_O
I came home and changed back into my pajamas, and then my father showed up with my parents' dog, who will be spending the weekend with me. I gave Rogue her medicine and then Bennett gave me such a sad look, like, "why don't I get a treat? Aren't I a good boy?" I tried to give him one of the milk bones but he turned up his nose at it, so I gave him a pill pocket without a pill in it, which he appreciated. Jack got one of the milk bones since I wasn't about to just leave him out.
I did my exercise, and downloaded my photography, wrote a letter to Nat, and then went back to the debate at RN, getting myself scolded by the admin for trolling because when a republican said "I'm not cis, I'm just a man" I said "if you're not cis, you're trans. What do you say, should we complain about the pain of having a period? Perhaps you can recommend a top surgeon for me?" Brian had perhaps a smarter response by telling him he was a lot of things he didn't regularly use to describe himself, such as hominid, eukaryot, and chordate, but all those things applied to him. He's still trying to assert that he is not Cis but also not trans. My next stop is assuming he's a particularly clever dog. This is the guy, by the way, who was the model for the villain in my current novel. I changed his gender for that story, though.
Around 9:30, I decided I should at least read one chapter of my book club book, even if I wasn't going to read anything else for the day. It's a good thing I had decided that was it, because it was a huge long chapter and took me until 10:25 to read! I'm already so far behind in reading this book that I couldn't stop mid chapter. I have to read two full chapters a week to get through it on time. Anyway, it was a little traumatic.
That brought us to 10:30 and I started writing here immediately. Now it is about 11pm, and although I usually spend an hour writing here, I think I've gotten through my day well enough. I've actually managed to type most of this without getting distracted, so I guess it went a little quicker than usual.
I tried to order Rogue's meds from Chewy, but the vet called back and said she couldn't have the 50mg tablets because they aren't extended release. No one has the 100mg tablets anywhere. I have looked. I have joined mailing lists to be contacted the next time several various places have them in stock. They are not to be had. The vet told me the name of the pharmacy they use and arranged for them to mail them to me, so thank God I don't have to drive out to the vet's office this month. I should have them within 3 days (2 day shipping but it was after the mail came when they got my order). Lucky me, I still have 4 days worth left.
The vet also tried to get me to get the meds from CVS arguing that the same pills could be used for humans. The smallest size CVS had was 350mg and it was a tablet meant for swallowing not a flat chip for the dog to chew on that tastes good to a dog. It was also $235. But I had no idea that vets had prescription writing abilities to CVS and other human pharmacies.
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