Category: Whining

le maitre Grumblioni

Paul came by yesterday to walk me in the local school park. Unlike most times, he treated me like a plague victim and refused to come close to me and masked hard. The idea that Paul would social distance for a known cold THAT LIKELY ORIGINATED IN HIS HOUSEHOLD but not an unknown virus which any person might present to you at random makes me once again wonder how any human being actually assesses a threat well enough to survive three whole days, let alone 72 years, which Paul is coming up on this month. He’s certainly had his share of close calls, and I alas was there for some of them.

All this time I was thinking three layers of cloth – that you can’t see any strong light through – was sufficient to protect one, but then I see some research from India basically saying that cloth masks are useless. I think that one layer of woven cotton cloth is cosmetic, two is useful and three is protective. BUT apparently since reuseable home-made masks don’t fit in with the goals of capitalism just go ahead and buy ones…. heavy heavy sigh. PPE quality masks are beyond the reach of most people in India, and three layer woven cloth masks are better than nothing, and definitely easier on the wallet, at least if you have laundry facilities. I just don’t believe this study, other work in Europa and US points a completely different way.

Anti maskers, some of whom harassed health care workers, showed up at City Hall in Vancouver in quite some numbers this week. Go to r/vancouver if you want to see personal accounts of people observing the Demonstration of the Disease Boosters. Oh Darwin we beseech thee! toss these mofos into the sun.
I have a hundred hits and ten kudos and one comment on my new story. Given that it’s very short and doesn’t have a lot of tags I’m happy. This one is also entirely NOT porny, it’s M/M (two AMAB (assigned male at birth)) supernatural (impossible beings and events not currently checked into the Reality Hotel) romance (also impossible but somewhat more likely) with an HEA (happy ever after).

I had no pain and no desire to cough when I rose this morning and the instant I bent over to load the dishwasher that was the end of THAT happy state of affairs. I now snerk and snork like something lurking in a cave.

Adventure of English rewatch – Tyndale was a boss, y’all.

Gawd. I think I’ll have chocolate ice cream for breakfast and then at least one nice thing will happen to me today.

woke up coughing in tandem at 2 am

I was coughing too hard to even greet Jeff as he walked by my door. I’ve had a good, strong, restorative and hydrating cuppa and now I’m 1500 words into a destiel fic that kinda swooped in on me.

This is a chest cold. In time of plague one worries, but this is merely one of life’s annoyances not a two in a hundred chance of dying. (1.8 but who’s counting really)

LATER AROUND 9 AM oh look, something two blocks from my house caught fire and the not for profit food insecurity charity Quest got extensive smoke damage. The innocent suffer and the hookah lounge burns down.

d’ohccasional randomness

This is a review of a book I want…. no probably need to read.

I have had a story added to a Destiel collection on AO3. I am absolutely thrilled and it means more people will read it. It’s 12500 words of fluffy and mildly porny madness that ends with an ILY scene at an airport. I also think it’s got some of the funniest dialogue of any of my stories. Email me if you want the link.

I stopped taking cough medicine at 11:30 last night to try to let it clear my system, but the crackling in my chest has come back. Low grade fever, productive cough, crashed appetite, really an effort to push fluids but I keep hearing mOm’s voice encouraging me to do that thing.

Buster scrapped with another cat THROUGH the cat door last night. I locked it and expected him to whine about it all night and he didn’t let out a peep until I woke at 8:30 this morning.

Left hand is still bruised but all the mobility is back and normal function has resumed. I am now thinking that I did crack a rib, but there would have been nothing that an ER doc could do but hand me a little envelope of T3s anyway after a chest xray in a freezing room so I really dodged 8 hours of ER time during the largest surge of infections in over a year. Knowing that Paul would have come with me is extremely comforting though. What a fine and life affirming thing it is to have friends.

Tom is closing the speaker shop (Halloween is the last day) and going on line! I may get work doing data entry loading skus. He was only in hopsital (deliberate typo) a day for the pneumonia and when I was talking to him on the phone today he was on the skytrain which means that Peggy is not actually driving him everywhere any more. Also that the phone call dropped three times before we gave up.

The only social media I’m on now is here, AO3 and Reddit. I’ve added 400 karma points in the last week alone so you can tell I’ve been busy. When Reddit gives me free awards I always use them within five minutes, usually for other women.

I can definitely state (from what I read on reddit, among other things) that feminism has lost big over the last 40 years. What a time to be alive.

ADDED LATER: SOMEBUNNY is running a jackhammer within a block radius and WOW what an annoying sound!

sick but not entirely

so it’s a little after midnight and I woke up rather congested. My sinuses are either clogged or producing simply miraculous quantities of runny goo and sitting up is a better option for now so that’s what I’m doing. All but one of the ribs seems to have gone back into place, so I’m experiencing much less discomfort in my ribs, but I still can’t bend over or torque my spine at all. I’ve figured out how to roll over without too much discomfort. Buster wanted my attention so I gave him some, (hey Buster don’t forget to check for treats on top of the fridge haw haw) but now I’m thinking of taking some more cough medicine (this stuff works great) and trying to catch another three or four hours before the day starts…

non stop cough

I am producing a teaspoon of respiratory tract mucus about every 3 – 5 minutes. My ribs still hurt, but I can cough without injuring myself further so that’s okay. My nose is running like a tap but I feel much better today than yesterday, that’s for sure, and I got some more sleep between 4 am and 8:30 am so I’m better rested. I have the right kind of cough medicine and I’m pushing fluids as fast as I can. Despite it all I don’t feel too bad. If this is a cold I AM SO SORRY I TOOK IT INTO YOUR HOUSE MOMMA.

Is it a cold? COVID? Allergies?

I am so congested! I started coughing last night and I am really glad that whatever this is I didn’t get it until a couple of days after I hurt myself.

Hand continues to improve. If I’m lying down and take a deep breath it no longer pains me but rolling over, standing up, sitting down, and bending over still hurt rather more than I think is fair.

Going walkies (locally) with Paul today after lunch.

practicing

I tried to practice but my left hand needs at minimum another couple of days before I can move it that precisely with any grip strength, but it’s obvious I’ll get it all back so I’m pleased.

Sternum/ribs still hurt like a mofo. I had a coughing fit after I got home and thought I’d pop a lung or otherwise do something stupid. Fortunately all the cough medicine I bought for COVID is still inside the expiry date, so I helped myself to the ‘dry cough’ version and immediately began to feel less like coughing, always a plus.

 

going home today

We went to the Butterfly House and the Country Bee House yesterday. At the Butterfly House Little E the parrot was three deep in Taiwanese uni students, as far as I could tell, so I didn’t get to love on him at all, but I had the great joy of telling a little girl that a tortoise had ‘broken out’ of the tortoise pen, and otherwise it was much as it usually is, and Alex enjoyed it. Alex enjoyed me imitating the goats and sheep at the Country Bee and we talked a bit about the animals and what they were eating.

Slept until about two, woke up not able to breathe, got up and brushed my teeth and drank some water and forced myself to lie down. Fought with sleep for about an hour I guess and then finally found a comfy enough position to go back to sleep.
My hand is much better today, but the ribs are sore and tight and I can neither bend nor twist, and there’s a hot patch, so I’m thinking I need to get a chest xray at the very least, which I’ll arrange when I get back.

kinda beat up

my left wrist and ribs under my left breast still hurt quite a bit but I’ve established that I can at least nap… rolling over takes about 30 seconds and is accompanied by sounds of me hissing like a snake

I was thinking of making one last stab at climbing Pkols tomorrow or the day after but I know I won’t be able to and I’m just disappointed in myself turning my ankle on the paved part of the pathway…. My foot slipped into the divot right next to the paved part and then I flung myself around so I wouldn’t go down the embankment and crushed my left hand under me. Paul was with me. I had the wind knocked out of me for about a minute and then slowly stood up with Paul’s help – a kindly stranger with a dog rushed to check on me which felt very comforting under the circumstances. And no, I shouldn’t have driven afterwards now that I think of it, but I just couldn’t deal with getting out of the car to mail Tom’s letter so I stuck him in the passenger seat. I think my reasoning is kinda weird sometimes.

do not whack the simulacra they’re running subroutines as fast as they can

Truly, one must have survived two heat domes to enjoy the humane temperature and humidity currently blanketing MST country. I popped the front door open at about 4:30 am to see what I could see, and the soft light and welcome light breeze were balm for my overheated soul.

This morning I’ve run the facecloths through the wash; they’re in the dryer. I have trained Buster and brushed him TWICE (we have two brushing stations in the house and he wanted me to hit him up in both); I have popped some clear plastic face shields and clips into a bag for Mike as spares -he uses them for eye protection, not COVID protection and why not since the delta variant goes through air like cigarette smoke – I wear mine when I’m doing the lawn (which reminds me, I should do some weed whacking once it’s not quite so damp, and now I’ve written it down, so it’s on the task list). Jeff loaded and ran the dishwasher. I cleaned out my purse again, and found something in it which I will not report but made me laugh like a drain. Something-something, a certain morning after at Statpower, my desk, and that’s just to remind me what it really was. I put additional sterile masks in a clean bag and into my purse; I counted my pills to ensure that I had enough until my next GP appt on September 13 and put a weeks’ worth into my purse so at least I’ve got my BP medication if I’m on the wrong side of a bridge if/when that fault lets go; I practiced octave mandolin and dulcimer and kazoo, and you’d know when by the moment Jeff rolled his eyes, put his headphones on and turned up the EBM; I found a shade for the light behind the TV (there’s supposed to be an extremely expensive sun-spectrum light there and after 12 years of faithful and continuous service, except during power failures, it expired, so there’s an ordinary incandescent bulb there now and it was just too fucking bright so I wandered lonely as a person with ADD around the basement until I realized THERE WAS ALREADY A SHADE FOR THE LAMP thank you Granny and swapped it off a lamp we aren’t using for the one we are, so now the light level in the media room is back to semi-Stygian, instead of having an ambience like someone’s training a Klieg light on me for an interrogation); I played a whole bunch of Sherlock (as mentioned in previous posts, my all time favourite puzzle game, available for a very reasonable price from Mr. Everett Kaser please pay the full retail thank you) but never got my 8×8 time below 8:30 (best time under 5 minutes, and I’d like to see YOU get that time) which leads me to believe that my cognition and processing time today will, sadly, not be excellent; and I even got dressed if you can believe it. Now I’m waiting for the various water-using machines to quit cycling so I can make pancakes, and in the meantime I should probably go downstairs and fold laundry until I get bored.

SO LOOKING FORWARD TO BEING IN VICTORIA WITH MY MOTHER (also my dad whom I love just as fiercely as my mother, just not as mushily); SO COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY REFUSING TO EVEN CONTEMPLATE THE CLUSTERF …. THAT WILL BE THE JOURNEY TO VICTORIA. Well, really, it’s Saanich, but most people call it Victoria. Full marks if you get the reference.

I spoke to Tom, who sounded hoarse and thrawn but lively af (he was at work when his phone said he’d missed a call from me, which, strangely, he had not) on the phone yesterday, no housefilk today. The shop will be moved into his garage; (this is his NON side gig, not that anyone but he can keep it straight at this point); his sole employee entered into a state of nullibiety under ‘unforgiveable’ circumstances, and given that grumpy ol’ Tom has a fuse (for important matters, on trifles he is …as people are) of ample dimension and remarkable length, I refuse to even think about what the employee did to earn that particular word from Tom. Also Peg’s got relatives in from out of town, it all seems like too much work and fuss for them.

Still pissed about the mailbox. I feel like every time I take a step forward from being a selfish ass, in this case by writing friendly bracing letters to friends and relatives, for which I need a mailbox, the social environment says FUCK YOU! try harder ADD person, use your executive function for something you shouldn’t have to, because some fucking bureaucrat is trying to save money. Always and continuously, capitalism pushes governments so they are rent collectors instead of service providers. And that, mes soeurs, mes hypocrites lecteurs, is a rant for another other day.

of all the things

I’ve been locked out of my twitter account. I could rant at length about how unfair it is, but it’s like everything that’s free, every once in a while what was free becomes scarce, as when your murderer stands on your windpipe and the air that for so long was free becomes unavoidably rare.

It’ll probably be the best thing that ever happened to me. I know I’m not going back on Fehbook, so I guess this is the end of my foray into social media, except for AO3 and this site. Except of course, that there’s nothing social about this site; I provide content and you peruse it, and you don’t have to read ads or fend off bots while you’re here. I would love it if the people who read this blog would engage with it, but that’s not the audience I draw, and whining about it won’t change it.

Anyway, I said I wanted to slap the girl on reddit who didn’t want a 98 year old woman (this would be the only grandchild wedding reception she likely would ever attend) at her wedding reception because she didn’t want her at ‘her party’.

Since this woman posted anonymously on reddit I can’t have engaged in ‘targeted harassment’, but fine. If Jack don’t want me making free content for him anymore cool cool cool. If the only playing field I have a hope of levelling is the one I have to pay for, ainsi soit-il.

Dylan has been sued civilly for grooming a 12 year old girl about when I was that old.  What men get up to, when they get a chance.

I made fried chicken breast on a bun with onions lettuce tomatoes and cheese. It was nom.

gosh darn it

I’m getting a strong urge to call someone I no longer speak to and it’s driving me batty.

Finished Schmigadoon, it was quite fun and goodhearted. The last number was a bit of a disappointment since it was orchestrated like modern Christian rock (loathe me so many tambourines, I really do) but all in all it was quite enjoyable.

Air quality is holding up reasonably well at ground level but there’s a shitpile of particulates between us and the sun. Jeff, as usual, is feeling it worse than I am.

 

What a world

Gunshots at a MLB game; flooding in Germany so bad it looked like a tsunami came through the mountains; Myanmar in tatters as the junta ignores the populace and there’s no PPE or oxygen; Horgan the Organ ‘partners’ with Shell to make a climate change research institute less than two weeks after Lytton burns down; most of N SK is on fire; noted disability rights organizer kills herself in despair and the mainstream media interview her abuser as if there’s no evil connection between the two; Cheetos factory workers AREN’T ALLOWED TO STOP THE LINE when people die of heart attacks in the heat and are striking, so please don’t eat Frito-Lays or Pepsi products for the foreseeable future!; LAPD has today been firing ‘non-lethal’ rounds point blank into peaceful protesters; VPD is FINALLY investigating those two fucking pigs who arrested the Indigenous grandad and his granddaughter as they were about their legitimate business at a bank downtown; HARSHA WALIA WAS FORCED TO RESIGN FROM THE BCCLA i am SO FUCKING MAD ABOUT THIS the BCCLA will NEVER see another dime from me, they can kiss my ass, I can’t believe I marched in Pride with them witless mofos; and I got 700 karma points and my first Reddit gold and platinum for a comment I made about a women’s issue.

I’m still tired from the blood donation.

BUT THERE’S A FAMILY PICNIC TOMORROW

what happened to the doll?

She ends up finding her former owner, getting all her limbs ripped up/off, and becoming a talking head queen of the rats when her severed head is thrown into a tip.

Yeah, not a happy story. Much body horror and interpersonal rejection.

Unbelievably hot yesterday. Worse today. I have to go to the dentist and I just don’t know how I’m supposed to walk over there when it will be 40 degrees C on the way back. I’m scared, I literally think I’ll collapse if I have to walk in that heat.