evile

Well, I turn 55 next week. My aunt L. wants to take us to dinner to celebrate and I have to pick a place. I am just not feelin' it but I guess I need to pick *something*. bleh.

Mom is with sister H. at her house in Bloomington, IN. Mom spends most of her time asleep, eating little, is starting to see people who arent' there ("Granny"? None of her grandmothers were called 'granny' as far as I know. but...?) She may pass soon. Not to be cruel or unfeeling but she's been ready for a while, and tried in 2022 or was it 2023? anyway. I just want her to be at peace.

Mothers day is always a reminder that she didn't have the life she wanted, the love she wanted, or the accomplishments she wanted, largely due to having children. Me, mostly, I guess, the start of her disappointments in life. Abortion was illegal when I was conceived. I don't think I'll ever forget or forgive a system that robbed a woman of her life and autonomy and forced her to parent a child she and her partner didn't want to have and into trying to force a life together, a partnership that was unsuited to both of them. They did their best and maybe at some point decided that it was OK to have me, maybe even that they wanted and liked me...but it wasn't their choice. It was forced on them by the fucking government. So happy belated Mother's day, I guess. Glad and grateful for my fucked up reproductive system and getting sterilized at age 34 so I didn't have to do the same.

Still job hunting.

Our friend S. has settled in to the front room/tent room with her two cats. Her dog has run of the house. The dogs got the door open once and chased one of the cats into the work/computer room where she hid in the corner until my brother A. could get under there and get her out. It was a stressful mess. S. wanted to just leave the cat's bed and some treats in the room until the cat chose to come out but I was thinking "OK, but where is it going to piss/shit???" so for me, it wasn't an option to leave the cat in my work room until it felt like coming out. S is being a good guest, spending a lot of time resting and watching tv/movies in her room. Her dog is getting along well with our dogs and has enjoyed joining our walk routine. S. occasionally comes out and does marathon talking but it's more movies and trivia now than the first days of trauma-dumping about her childhood and stuff. She's been alone in her house for a year since her husband died; I'm trying to give her as much patience and kindness as I can manage. I can't imagine losing everyone and everything that matters to you in one fell swoop like she has.

It's gotten hot this week so we've been walking after supper instead of before.

My knees, back, left heel, and ankles are in pain just about all of the time now. I wear 'incrediwear' knee and ankle supports to bed for healing; I generally do wake up feeling more OK ish than when I dont' wear them to bed.

I've lost about 5 lbs in the last couple months. only 100+ more to go!LOLOLOLOL. not gonna happen.but I know that a great deal of my discomfort is due to carrying too much weight.

Our house is having plumbing issues. got a quote for 10K to fix it. The PVC piping used originally is not to current spec, it is weakening and sort of sagging. It's more of a flattened 0 shape rather than a round circle and will continue to collapse and crack until it's not useable and nothing goes through. Part of the driveway needs to be dug up and repoured as well. Thax wants to get a couple more quotes before we make a decision but I suspect the work will need to be done sooner rather than later.

Anyhoo...

turns out that the position I was offered FT/Permanent in Feb (and turned down due to already accepting the 6 month remote contract that ended early, and had been beating myself up over endlessly bla bla ) was 'sunsetted' just after the 6 week training period was over. The options were to apply for other positions at the company, accept transfer to Accounts Receivable and after a 3 week 'try out' period, either be accepted full time in AR, or get a severance.

So I guess I'm glad I didn't go thru all that. I would have had some bux in the bank after 6 weeks of that fat salary but not enough to really justify or make up for being jerked around and played like that.

The job hunt continues and the data analyst course continues as well. onward.

S. suggests I offer dogsitting for a couple of extra dogs and take cash as my next career....It's tempting but our backyard really isn't secure.

For my birthday/just cuz, I'm going to order a sample set from Maison des Animaux.

Aurate: This is the classic amber. Sandalwood drenched, labdanum rich, vanilla sweetened. The most golden of gold fragrances.
Boheme: Bohème is lightly sweet, deep, warm, and unisex. It starts with labdanum, cinnamon, and toffee, and transforms into leather and a bit of smoldering pipe tobacco hovering above that perfect glass of bourbon. The drydown is a honied musk that is just delicious.
Holiday: The warm, honied musk of sun-kissed skin on a tropical beach. Solar and warm, subtle sweetness balanced with a warm hum of toasted coconut and spiced rum.
Le Cirque: A riot of dark chocolate-covered espresso beans, toasted sugarcane, Mysore sandalwood, Haitian vetiver, and a puff off a Cuban cigar. This is a conversation over a late-night espresso that you never want to end. It is so fun, so rich, and entirely sexy.
Sirius : This is the sweetest Guatemalan cardamom, rare ruh khus vetiver, black keemun tea oil, and vanilla absolute from madagascar. Unisex and versatile, it starts bright and spicy and dries down into a warm, sweet, and rich woody musk. An olfactory cashmere sweater: warm, soft, a constant favorite.

Current Mood: blah

well, they ended my contract. I had made plans to go with Thax to the Steampunk Galveston festival mid-April so needed to take a Friday off, which I let them know,a nd while we were driving, my recruiter assigned her coworker 'Zach' to call and give me the bad news. Turns out Zach was en route to a family funeral so we texted back and forth and I told him not to worry about me, I'm good with that. The supervisor at the company never let me know that I was doing anything wrong, none of my errors (if any) in the training environment nor once we went 'live' were ever brought to my attention by anyone at the company, they just called and told my staffing agency to end my contract. The system itself was giving tons of errors after 'go live' date and one of the full time/permanent ladies I talked to said their whole team was only getting 4 or so orders entered per day due to all the system errors. There was a TEAMS chat setup all day every day for people to pop on when they were getting errors and talk with the IT support guys to fix things. So it's possible they ended all the contract people just because their system wasn't ready to go 'live'. Very passive-aggressive, 'guess' culture, expected to mind read and 'just know' stuff, shitty training materials, it was just not a good place and I'll never work for that company nor that staffing agency again. I am mad at myself for going with them when I had a full time permanent offer in my hands...I had already 'committed' to their 6 month remote position so I felt obligated. fuck me and fuck them and fuck that. uggggh. stupid stupid.

I interviewed for another temp to hire (haha) 6 month hybrid position at the same place I worked from Aug-Feb. I thought it went OK but didn't feel super great about it. I haven't heard back. My recruiter went on vacation so it's likely that the people who were supposed to pick up her work while she was out of town didn't and she had a big pile of work to come back to. (familiar story from my days at the State!)

My friend Sam's husband died a year ago in March. I went up there last year end of april ish with another friend and we kept her company for a while. She had a fall in March of this year and apparently got pretty messed up, concussion and stuff. She texted me out of the blue just after the time of the steampunk galveston event and let me know she was going to end her life.So I hauled ass to CO and helped her pack up for selling her house and now she's in Austin, staying with us for awhile. she has 2 cats and a little dog. the cats are staying in her room (the 'tent room') and the little dog has joined our pack. He's enjoying the routine of morning and evening walks with everyone.

I'm looking for work, keeping Sam company, doing a minimal amount of house cleaning. Sam is mostly staying to her room, sleeping and watching TV. She has headaches and may be dealing with other physical stuff from the fall. Definitely still grieving. Marathon talking at times.

we will see how her life turns out. Once she gets her house in CO sold she will have some money. In a couple of years she'll be eligible to draw her husband's social security. she won't have a ton of cash but she will have enough if she is able to get a plan together. I am hoping that staying with us for a while without any stress will help her get her head on straight. who knows.

Current Mood: blank

Things are hopping along; my 6 month hybrid-work contract ended exactly on schedule. About a week before the end of the contract, i interviewed for a full time permanent job at the same place, figuring I'd made a decent impression and showed some familiarity with their systems, etc. 2-3 days before end of contract, my temp agency recruiter let me know that the management team had 'decided to go in a different direction' and was offering the role as a 6 month 'contract to hire' and that if I wanted it, I'd be expected to interview again for it. I had done some digging in glassdoor and knew they were cheaping out. I know that's how rich people stay rich, but after my 6 month stint as one of the 3 people who actually completed the project and didn't leave anything hanging, I felt kind of insulted.

Meanwhile, my recruiter from the disaster job I had for, like, 2 weeks last summer had kept me in mind because the job was so obviously fubared from the employer's end, not mine. She asked me if I'd be up for a 6 month fully remote contract starting in March. I said 'hell yeah," had that interview yesterday with the onsite manager at the place I'd be temping, and got an offer today. Starting March 3 or 4. Fully remote, $2 less per hour than my hybrid/remote job, BUT I"m not in traffic 3+ hours a week, no business casual, hell no pants if I dont' want. The only downside is that the company is Eastern time so I'd be getting up earlier than I like. BUT, my commute is literally the room next to my bedroom, so it's not too terrible. Might have to change up the dog walking schedule a little, but we'll see.

and I'm plugging away at the Data Analyst Bootcamp class online; I got it 'on sale' for $1500 and then had to get a newish laptop that had audio and video capability since my home desktop machine doesn't have those things... it says it's a 10-12 week course if you are able to devote 7 hours a week to the course. I am a little slower than that, but I am going to try very hard to have it finished up by end of the 6 month remote contract so that I'll be able to transition into a nice $$$$$$ Data Analyst job in the Fall.

I'll be putting away $7k for next year's property taxes
$7K (at least) for Pepita's 2nd opinion and possible hip surgery
and keeping up with day to day expenses and maybe a few fun things too. Some folks are looking at a cruise in early 2026 that might be fun, assuming we have a good dog sitter available.

I really want to revamp the work/computer/craft room and Thax and I keep talking about doing some big work in the kitchen. I've been wanting a gas stove for forever and the flooring in there is the worst cheap crap ever.

In the 2ish weeks between now and start date for new job, I am going to try and get some things done here at home.

Kitchen: (I swept and mopped today and got mostly caught up on dishes)
Organize pantry
Organize/clean out fridge
organize/ clean out cabinets

Bathroom:
clean out/organize cabinets
donate ratty towels to animal shelter

Bedroom:
clean out/organize closet and drawers. I have too many socks and t shirts.

Drop off/donate coloring books (Square Rut Kava?)
Drop off/donate witchy books (The Vortex and/or Yarrow & Sage?)

and if the weather warms up and gets nice again, take the dogs to bull creek park on a weekday to hike around and let them just run around off leash.

As always it seems odd to be doing well when things in the world are going badly. I'm calling my senators and congressman daily to let them know I disapprove of the insanity of Elmo Skum and El Stinko, for all the good it does. And here in TX, letting gov and lt gov know my thoughts. It's stupid and annoying; I know that my opinion does fuckall but it feels better than doing nothing.

Ya know, when you've been in a shitty relationship or have been through a crappy breakup, or whatever...you (Me, I mean) go through a period of analysis; who did what to whom, who did it first, who did it worst, who is the bad guy. You may or may not discover or decide that the person you used to love or care about is personality-disordered in some way. They may or may not actually be personality disordered, that may just be something you need to learn about and go through in order to get to your own peace of mind.

There's a school of thought that declares "if you spot it, you got it," and I think that can be true for a lot of things.

But there is also room for discernment and indeed judgement in life, when you really need to trust that what you have seen and experienced was a true thing. That you did not do anything to invite or ask another person to treat you badly, disregard your needs and feelings, and talk shit about you to other people & try to turn them against you... it's OK to get to the end of that period of introspection and discovery and conclude "I am a good person and I did not deserve to be treated like that,"

You can also go through that period of analysis and see that, yes, you did make mistakes. You were selfish. You were insensitive. You were unkind. You did some smear campaigning and attempted recruitment of flying monkeys yourownself.

I think, in the end, what would be the difference between yourself and the narcissist/abuser is that you are able to recognize what you did wrong, learn from it, and do better next time.

People who are personality disordered just tend to cycle through the same drama over and over and OVER again. The same story with themselves as the blameless victim of other people's mistreatment. I mean, yeah, some of us do have a bad 'picker' and end up with a few user loser scumbags in a row...but after watching the same story play out over the last 30-ish years in one instance, I can pretty much guarantee you that the person yelling about narcississtic abuse and flying monkeys...is the one who tends to be perpetrating narcisssistic abuse and siccing flying monkeys on the latest villain in their 'oh poor me' show.

sad and wierd. Not worth any more of my time or energy.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Back on the triple reuptake inhibitor, feeling good. I found it for a reasonable price, almost $100 less than what I was paying before. Still expensive but it works. slightly concerned about one of the potential side effects--elevated blood pressure. it was already trending to the high end of 'normal'

Got the front room of the house done up - new flooring and a pocket door. At some point, need to repaint/touch up paint, and move things back in from the garage.

The garage needs serious clearing-out.

My work room needs serious clearing-out.

Today I've walked dogs, gone to the grocery store/planned dinners for the week, started a load of laundry, made a chicken tetrazini caserole for tomorrows' supper (just have to put it in the oven tomorrow! easypeasy!), and thinking about unloading & reloading the dishwasher. Feeling pretty good, but also like I haven't done enough with today.

bad weather is coming tonight and next week. I hope they tell us to work remotely all week, I'd like to not even think about driving in ice/snow. I can do my job from home and prefer it (especially the zoom calls) so I hope that works out.

Contract should be ending mid to end of Feb. I am hoping to get some guidance on the exact last day so I can schedule all my remaining calls accordingly.

Some coworkars are way behind on their data gathering/spreadsheet filing out, so I helped with that last week, but as of 1/6 we have the go-ahead to start scheduling calls, so that's going to be my priority. Get my own shit done.

I don't anticipate the contract being extended.

I don't think I'll be getting a permanent offer. Not that I'm doing a bad job, in fact I'm doing really well, BUT....I get a sense that is not how this company works.

Oh well. I have enough to pay property taxes (due by end of Jan) and I'll sock away a few more paychecks that should give me a 2-3 month padding before finding the next job will be *critical*

I have a growing list of things I'd like to do with the house & such. Get the rest of the house floored, new roof--they make metal roofs that look like composite now, they're pretty cool, mini split ac/heat units for renter's room and our bedroom, still need to get a 2nd opinion on Pepita's hips and whether or not to do a surgery.

And of course we are about to get a wacky president who could do who-knows-what to all of us, depending on his enablers, their agenda, and his ego/health/level of crazy. Things could go tits up real quick in this country, or they could continue to limp along with at least a veneer of normalcy. Honestly I looked through some stuff about Project 2025 and most of it is already in place here in TX. As an old white lady past childbearing years, it's gross to be around such ignorant shithead laws and lawmakers but it does not actually harm me personally.

I guess that's how the nazis got away with what they did, for as long as they did. Most people weren't impacted at all. :/ yuck.

Been distracting myself from reality by watching some stupid drama go down on social media; same old patterns of behavior. I am far too compassionate towards one party; I do realize they are traumatized and coming from an abusive childhood and whatever...but every once in a while I do get the fact-in-the-face that their damage is not a good excuse for their pattern of grooming and abusing others...and then smack into that wall of 'gee, it does seem like a lot of pagan/poly/niche hobby/fringe lifestyle people are fucked up and those communities seem to allow fucked up behavior and predators to thrive,"... blecch. I need to quit looking at any of that.

I am also wondering if and how to quit keeping up with news, politics, and current events. There is fuck-all I can do to prevent the shit that is coming for the nation and the world. I've done what i can to shore up my own resources....I don't know what continuing to look at it will actually do as far as warning or helping me survive.

things kinda suck, out there....but for me personally things are peaceful, pleasant,and dare i say...prosperous.

Current Mood: peaceful

so weird. My contract ended at the end of march. I feel like I did fuck-all in April and May while job hunting (well I did go to CO to visit my friend S. whose husband died unexpectedly in March, I guess that's something. I don't regret or begrudge that AT ALL. And I think it did give me a kick in the ass to get my own affairs in order, just in case. Her husband was in good health and in his early or mid 60s. It also made me want to move to Colorado, SOOO BAD.)

then that contract was ended early due to fuckery, and suddenly here I am in june/july just kicking all the azz, getting up early to walk dogs with Thax, doing the death preps and the house cleaning and the fitness schedule and the better eating habits (hasfit has good free videos on youtube and good free diet advice on their website. Nothing crazy just good information and ideas) and the lessened drinking habits and the dentist and the vet and and and....

moneywise I'm doing alright; have some savings, and my brother A has gotten a better job and is catching up on his share of house expenses (basically I was asking him to contribute an amount monthly that would cover annual property tax), got a little windfall from my Uncle B and Aunt L after they sold some property, and Thax gave me some $ to cover the household expenses I normally cover (our cel phones, house and car insurance)..

I still feel like an unemployed bum, BUT I am taking care of house and dogs and making dinner M-F so it's not like I'm laying around watching soap operas or playing video games and eating ice cream all day. LOL.

work/computer/craft room is still cluttered and I have two crafty projects that I'm in progress on. One is decoupaging a vintage suitcase. I don't know what I'll do with it when I'm finished; some people sell them on etsy for a few bux. I dunno. Just something I wanted to do. I see online that someone did it with a train case, too, of which I happen to have one. Maybe I'll do a matching set. LOL. Old luggage is so heavy...but also so durable! anyhoodle, that's one thing.

And the other is a suncatcher that was originally a thought of 'how to display some of my cool beads without making yet another fucking necklace that will just sit in my jewelry box," and is now a 'processing my grief about my stepdad and mom' but also with cool beads. https://www.pinterest.com/eeky/beaded-suncatchers/

I am putting in a few job applications every day; seems like the work from home/remote stuff is drying up and it's now either in-office or hybrid. I feel like I should be asking for more money if they are expecting e to put in an hour or more of unpaid travel time every day. In fact, I did put in an application today and in the space where it asked my desired salary, I said $X / per hour remote, $X+$5 / hour for hybrid or onsite. I feel like that's fair. because fuuuuuuck driving in this goddamned godforsaken town.

Current Mood: busy

I went in for a slightly belated dental checkup; I had cancelled my May appointment because it was during training for my new job and I didn't feel like I should miss training. Rescheduled when that all fell apart, they didnt' have anything til August, then they had a cancellation and I went in last week. I have a cavity on a back tooth where two of my molars are very tight and it's hard to floss and clean there.... so I'll be going back in a bit to get a filling. Fillings are so quick, it makes me mad that they didnt' just do it while I was there. now I have to go back in, get another cleaning as prep for the filling, and then the filling will take 2 minutes. Oh well. Luckily I have insurance again through Thax's new job, so it'll 'only' be $450.

Pepita has her annual checkup and rabies booster this month and I will need to refill her monthly heartworm/parasite preventative. cha ching.

They checked my blood pressure at the dentist, it was high. They suggested I recheck at a walgreens or heb and go see a dr if it was still as high as it was at the dentist.

I rechecked this morning at HEB. It wasn't great, but not as high as it was at the dentist. 136/77. The last one I remember getting at a dr. office was like...120/70 or something? So that's concerning.

I am going to try and adopt some healthier habits this month and see where I can get on that. I walk dogs 2x day but it's generally an easy meander. I will add 10 min of something more strenuous/day, cut out alcohol, have oatmeal for breakfast ( am not normally hungry in the mornings and probably tend to overeat later in the day as a result of not eating in the morning) cut down on red meat/meat in general, and see what happens. I have learned as a result of dieting on and off since age 11 or 12 (my first diet I was 100 lbs and a little over 5 feet. my grandma B decided it would be fun for all of us - me and her and my cousin Weez--to diet together one summer. ughhhhh. sick sick) anyway...restricting myself and telling myself I 'can't' have things is a quick path to craving those things, feeling deprived and unhappy, and bingeing. so I am not going to do that to myself. Going to *add* good things and try not to 'give up' too many things that make me happy and feel good. But the alcohol is probably a good thing to cut out. For at least a month.

add oatmeal, veggies, fruit, 10+ min of heart-rate-elevating activities. subtract alcohol.

Been putting in at least one job application/resume per day. This morning I tried for a job at Thax's new place. I haven't been permanent/full time anywhere since I quit the state in 2018. So that'll be interesting, if it happens. And a recruiter reached out to me this morning with a posting that is very much in line with what I was doing for the last 2 and a half years for Indeed, so I went ahead and said yes please to that.

So far today, I've walked dogs, had coffee, gone to the grocery store, had lunch, applied to 2 jobs, and made the bed. Oh, and 10 min on my under-desk elliptical while doing curls with light hand weights.

shit is fucked up in our country, the supreme court just gave sitting presidents blanket permission to act in whatever way they like as long as it can be considered 'official' capacity.....I wish our current president wasn't quite so old school statesman/ gentleman like...he could Gitmo the entire Jan 6 gang - from Leonard Lay to every single congressperson, senator, state governor, etc. who lined up behind the 'stolen election'/ fake electors idea, plus the Supreme court members and their spouses who also backed the big lie. That would be fucking awesome. But Joe Biden is far too decent to abuse his office like that, and when/if Trump gets back in, he won't be....so that sucks.

anyhoo....I can't fix any of that. I just have to live my little life and vote whenever I get a chance. It's sad but I don't think the future is anything but bleak for this nation and the good people in it. Oligarchy/kakistocracy/theocracy. I'm kinda glad to be old, sterile, and hopefully not stuck here for too much longer.

Gettin m y death paperwork in order. I need to grub up two witnesses to drag to a notary. with or without Thax. I printed all his stuff too but I think he doesn't want to think about it or deal with it. I know from my father's dying without anything in place vs. my stepdad having everything squared away, which was easier and less terrible to deal with. It's not pleasant or fun. But it's a burden I can spare my sister or my husband from having to deal with, on top of grief and just the house clutter which is still bad....but maybe having the death paperwork squared away will give me the mental whatever-it-is to deal with physical artifacts of a chaotic memory-free existence, help me make peace with oblivion and impermanence.

last night's dream, my friend Argo was living in this cool mid-mod lake house with big windows and a lot of different levels inside the house. There was a living room that had some kind of foam ducky shaped pillow and for some reason I started biting it and chewing it up.....was I a dog in this dream? anyway, then I kind of realized what I was doing and got embarassed and tried to cover it up with a throw blanket and some other pillows...

the night before that, or maybe friday night? I dreamed that I was with some people who all lived in tree houses, but also they were kind of Amish? and there were these branches/ roots that would occasionally grow up through the floors of the treehouses and if they hit a person, they'd just kind of suck all the life out of you. I think I got that from the show 'Cursed ' that we are watching

I wrote about it privately but I don't know if I've said....the 1 year contract that started at the end of May, they termed my contract after 15 working days because they felt I wasn't a good fit, wasn't picking it up quickly enough. Nevermind all the technical issues and all the training programs that I was supposed to use not working, which basically meant that only 5 or 6 of those days were actually active training days where most everything worked for me and let me use the training environments....not to mention their trainer just kinda sucked. They wasted a lot of money on a background check, drug test, and shipping computer equipment to me and then back again.... you'd think they would have been willing to give me at least 3 weeks to get up to speed. Oh well. the company has some bad reviews on Glassdoor/indeed/etc. so I guess I pretty much dodged a bullet there. And I didn't spend this past weekend feeling agitated due to subconsciously dreading Monday so I take that as a good sign that it was, indeed, a bad fit. oh well. Onward. It was a first and hopefully only time something like that happened to me. Weighing all the positive contracting experiences I've had (and the crap jobs I've had where I did great work in spite of lousy management), I am really gonna have to say it was them, not me. But I do hate job searching and interviewing and all that bullshit. sigh.

This morning: up at 6, walked dogs with Thax, had coffee, Thax went to work, then I started laundry, went to the grocery store for stuff for this week's dinners. I need to get to the credit union before it gets too hot outside to set up my accounts & beneficiaries for 'payable on death' , then I need to unload and reload the dishwasher, sort and put away laundry, and apply for at least one job. I applied for 2 on Friday. Upcoming trip to Indiana and back to get mom moved is a bit of a bump in that road , but so far ever since I quit my state job (abusive lunatics!! fuck 'em!) my job situation has always managed to work out alright. I have enough for expenses for the next 3-5 months if I'm careful, but I would really like to start putting $ away for property taxes in January and the 2nd opinion on Pepita's hip dysplasia & possible surgery.

Life is good. I am feeling healthy. Dogs are good. Thax's new job is going great. Brother A's tenure at the ACC bookstore is running out this week but he'll be starting a new gig almost right after that so things in our house are mostly pretty good.

Well, today is my 54th birthday. So far all I have done is up, wash, dress, walk dogs, have cold coffee (with 'birthday cake' flavor whipped cream) and a breakfast sammich. No plans until family dinner tonight with Aunt L and Uncle B. I will probably go get lotto tix at some point and maybe buy myself something from the HEB deli for lunch. I had been browsing groupon and thinking about getting some kind of anti aging wrinkle filler facial treatment of some sort today but I didn't make any reservations, I just couldn't pull the trigger on it. [on the plus side I also didn't make any appointments with the care facilities H sent me. I thought it would be too depressing to go look at old people warehousing on my damn birthday] My brother A made a comment last night at dinner about how we (him, me, sister H) don't particularly enjoy our birthdays or want to do anything big for ourselves. being raised by a narcissist will do that I guess..but I didn't say that out loud. A. loves mom a lot and as far as I know thinks nothing but wonderful things about her. (even though he remembers more about our childhood than I do)

I feel pretty physically healthy. Selfie photo of myself I took this morning looks pretty OK. I'm fat. I weigh 255 and my clothing size is 20-22. My eyes are rather hooded. I have jowls. There are lines from the side of my nose to my chin. the lines above my mouth aren't too visible today. Been moisturizing pretty regularly. We walked a lot on Saturday, attending the 'wonder and whimsey' festival (or something like that) in Liberty Hill. parking was kinda far and Thax declined the pedicab offer so we walked. My feet, right ankle, and left knee hurt the next day but an aleve fixed it up. The bottom of my left foot felt blistered from all the walking but its fine now.

yesterday afternoon our home AC went out. My brother A went to work looking at youtube tutorials and taking the outdoor part of the thing apart and cleaning it. He found what he thinks is wrong, a fairly inexpensive part that would be hopefully pretty easy to replace. Thax kind of withdrew into computer land... as did I, pretty much, while A. did all that. But I found the part on amazon and Thax ordered it so it will all hopefully work out. Thax used to be more active/ pro active on house stuff especially emergency and repair stuff. There's something about me that encourages and allows the men I'm involved with to become passive and I don't know what it is. But....here we are. I am lazy and I give permission to others to be lazy too, I guess.

I wonder if it would be too fatalistic or depressing to make plans to visit Switzerland for ending my life on my own terms on my 70th birthday. I never want to be in the situation my mom is in. Having a definite 'the end' on things might kick my ass into some kind of action re: the things I need to get done and have set up for my 'heirs'

new job starts 5/28.

I kinda want a mini split a/c for the bedroom but I will probably talk myself out of it.

If/when I move to Belize that is the only thing I will have if I have a custom or what they call 'mennonite' house. and just have fans in the main part of the house.

Birthday weather: High 95, low 75, 55% humidity.

Current Mood: blah

~~POD =~~ ~~set up Payable on death bank account~~ = DONE 6/24/2024

TOD = Transfer On Death deed if you own a home. Completing this document and filing it with your county saves your heirs THOUSANDS. This document allows you to transfer ownership of your home to your designee. All they need to do is take their ID and your death certificate to the county building and the deed is signed over. Doing this will avoid the home having to go through probate.

https://www.deeds.com/forms/texas/transfer-on-death-deed/

- Living Will: Allows one to put in writing exactly what you want done in the event you cannot speak for yourself when it comes to healthcare decisions

https://livingwillforms.org/tx/

- Durable Power of Attorney: Allows one to designate a person to make legal decisions if one is no longer competent to do so.

https://eforms.com/power-of-attorney/tx/

- Power of Attorney for Healthcare: This document allows one to designate someone to make healthcare decisions for their person.

https://powerofattorney.com/texas/

- Last Will and Testament: Designates to whom personal belongings will go too.

https://eforms.com/wills/texas-last-will-and-testament-template/

- Funeral Planning Declaration: allows one to say exactly one’s wishes as far as disposition of the body and the services.

https://www.fcactx.org/advance-directives-documents.html

- If the above documents are done, you can AVOID probate. If all the above is not done, you have to open an estate account at the bank. All money that doesn’t have direct beneficiaries goes into this account. You have to have an attorney to open the estate account. The attorney also has to publicize your passing in the newspaper or post publication at the county courthouse, to allow anyone to make a claim on your property. - It’s a complete PAIN.

- Make a list of all banks and account numbers, all investment institutions with account numbers, lists of credit cards, utility accounts, etc. Leave clear instructions as to how and when these things are paid. Make sure heirs knows where life insurance policies are located.

- Make 100% sure SOMEONE knows your Apple ID, bank ID account logins and passwords!

- Make sure you have titles for all vehicles, campers, etc!

- MOST IMPORTANTLY!!!! - Talk with those closest to you and make all your wishes KNOWN. Talk to those whom you’ve designated, as well as those close to you whom you did not designate. - Do this to explain why your decisions were made and to avoid any lingering questions or hurt feelings.

Hope this helps! Hope this lights a spark to encourage all your friends and family to take care of these things to make it easier for those we all leave behind!

My hope is that the above list at least helps you start an important conversation with your loved ones and an attorney that can help you complete all the necessary steps.

Tomorrow is not promised

original writer is Douglas Gibson
copied and pasted from a Facebook post
added Texas links

Current Mood: thoughtful

Age: 53. will be 54 in May

Hair color: natural: dark brown going silver, dyed fading Dragon Fuschia. I tried growing it out to the natural mostly gray/silver but I got antsy and colored it again. I could probably deal with it fine *if* I didn't have to deal with the awkward in between color phase. bleh.Or maybe not. I'm being more vain and silly about getting older than I thought I'd be.

Home: 1725 square foot single family single story in the University Hills area of Austin, TX. Owned free and clear, but property taxes are a bitch. My brother A lives in the master bedroom that we converted to a semi private apartment (still has door inside but also has exterior door)

Married: yep. still married, 5 years in August. Thax is a patient and good man

Other relationships: not really...I'm becoming a hermit

Pets: 3 dogs. Boba - Black Basset-Lab mix, 60 lbs (8yrs or so) Sunny - white with cream spots rough terrier mix, 20 lbs (4) Pepita - brown and white short haired chihua/rat terrier mix 11 lbs (also about 4)

Health - good. I tripped and fell Xmas night and hurt my ankle, but it's getting better quickly. Which is good because I'm overly dramatic and freaked out by not being able to walk.

Weight - bleh. 250 ish lbs, size 20. Not pretty to look at but blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. are all in the healthy range

Meds - still taking 1 mg oral estrogen / RX. GP/Primary Dr would like me to quit due to risk of breast cancer but hasn't offered any alternative for preventing night sweats. Endocrinologist who prescribed them hasn't raised any concerns. Various multivitamins and supplements erratically. Amla is the best anti inflammatory I've found.

Other body/health: I discovered red light therapy bed in 2023 and got a membership at tan etc to go on a regular basis but between this and that and the other I haven't gone as often as I'd like, however, red light is also a good thing. I'm walking the dogs twice a day morning and evening, I have an under desk elliptical machine that I use for a couple miles a day, and I have a foot and leg massage machine that gets a lot of use.

Finances - pretty good. I'm working full time from home making more than I made at the state. It's a staffing agency so no benefits but the pay is real nice. Health insurance through Thax' work will be kicking in Feb. No debts. End of year property tax payment was paid by me straight from my bank account, 'cash' but it's left me feeling a little skint' I'll be alright, it's just a little painful to part with that much cash all at once. I'm able to buy groceries, pay vet bills, have a somewhat alarming Amazon.com habit, pay house and car insurance, pay for mine and Thax's cell phones, all in cash, no debt. So that's nice.

daily life - up at 730, wash up, walk dogs, get breakfast and coffee, work in my work/computer room, finish up, walk dogs, make supper at home (Monday - Friday, weekends we do take out or leftovers) , TV/computer/read, bed

reading: currently re reading John Varley's Titan/Wizard/Demon trilogy. It's cheezy and wierd but for some reason I always enjoy immersing myself in that world for a bit. I used to love re-reading the Pern books but the sexist, classist, homophobic undertones eventually just ruined the stories for me. And then it turns out that Anne McCaffrey is problematic. And of course I can't re-read Marion Zimmer Bradley anymore after the revelations about her child abuse, even though Mists of Avalon was such an important part of my childhood/young adulthood. I'm still not sure exactly where I stand or sit on the 'artist vs art' debate and whether a thing can be enjoyed on its own merits or if we have to hate it because the person who created it is garbage. I dunno. I can't listen to Michael Jackson anymore either. There are some old sexist writers and books that I can still take for products of their time and enjoy anyway (Heinlein, Ellison, Updike) . Oh, and i can't read Handmaids Tale anymore, though it used to be a favorite re-read. Too prescient. Apparently. Anyhoo....blather blather bla bla, onward.

I've noticed, reading back over my old journals and such, that what I'm obsessing over in the minute is not what I am interested in reading about years later. Like, what was my daily life, what did I eat and drink, who did I hang out with, what did I do for fun...so I'm trying to give a snapshot that might be more interesting to future-me.

Annnnyhoo, I went thru Google Photos and made a 'year in review' animation. 2023 was a hell of a year.

January we went to the Glass Coffin for an event & saw Paranormal Cirque with Sue, AKA "Calamity Jane" from Unobtanium. She's awesome. Scare for a Cure volunteer for many years, Daschund rescue activist, costumer, just awesome.

February we had an ice storm and we took in a stray dog for a few hours until we could find and return her to her owner. My brother A really wanted to keep her. She was a beautiful dog, very calm for a husky.

March was Bluebonnet pictures --it was a great year for bluebonnets. I always forget how they smell until I'm in a field of them again.

April we went to Galveston and took an 80's cruise with my cousin Weez and her husband and our friend Tink. I had hoped to entice more friends to come, the theme was perfect, but the timing was off and/or I am not the Queen of the Geek Cruise group so no one wanted to 'follow' me and be disloyal to the main cruise planner person and her favored cruise line, Carnival. Princess cruise line so far has the best bedding, and it's really nice to wake up to sunrise outside your balcony, and not actually get up out of bed or do anything, just enjoy the light and the comfortable pillows

May was my birthday and a rather cool, green and pleasant month for TX. Though we had months of miserable 100+ degrees and no rain, it seems the spring stayed cooler for longer so that was nice.

In June our neighbor Michael died unexpectedly. Sadly, this was his husband Charlie's second loss of a spouse. I didn't pry but I gathered that his first husband died during the AIDS crisis. So sad. Charlie's mom also died a few weeks before Michael did. Charlie wasn't close to his mom but it's a lot to deal with. He's still struggling. We try to be helpful and reach out but of the two he was always the workaholic curmudgeon while Michael was out watering his plants and spreading the neighborhood gossip.

We briefly fostered an 8 month old hound (beagle?) puppy we called 'Sploooty' but the people who adopted her named her "Charlie" to go along with their 8 month old pup "Frito". She was sweet and snuggly and full of energy, she even wore Sunny out with all the nonstop playing. Getting up every 2-3 hours for potty training was not my thing, and though I loved her dearly I'm glad we found her a better home.

In July we visited family in Oklahoma and Indiana while Thax was between jobs. We saw Eureka Springs and Hot Springs, both beautiful places. My cousin Weez and her husband joined us for the couple of days we spent in Eureka Springs. So fun. Had a good visit with the Indiana family, including my stepdad G who intended to retire end of August. I am so glad and grateful we spent some time with him.

When we came back, we ended up with another dog. Someone threw her out of a vehicle near our house and the person walking by who saw it ran to our house for help. So now we have Pepita. She's a lot of personality in a little package, but she is mostly a love.

August 1, we celebrated 5 years married. End of August, I got a call from my sister H that stepdad G was having some medical issues. Beginning of September, I flew up and held down the fort at Mom and G's house while we did what we could for G & Mom. Thanks to telework, I was able to keep my contractor job which gave me something to do in between the sad stuff. We managed to do some fun stuff too, including a little renfaire out in the middle of nowhere, Indiana. Super cute and fun. Greg declined very quickly and his son Sineater came up to be with him, too. Sineater and I had not been on speaking terms for quite some time, so it was a bittersweet reunion. I am grateful for the time we got. G. passed Sept 27. October, Thax made a new scarecrow prop for Halloween and we passed out candy to Trick-or-Treaters. My brother A treated us to the House of Torment, where we enjoyed strange drinks in the secret drink room of one of the haunted houses. There was a dog halloween party at the dog park in our neighborhood but due to weather it was just us and Flavio's "other couple" friends & their dog Aubrey. We still had fun.

November was a quiet Thanksgiving at Aunt L & Uncle B's . Pepita had dental surgery and lost 9 teeth, 8 of them right up front. Went back to Greencastle for G's memorial 'celebration of life' at his workplace. it was good, sad. His brother B came up, and my stepbro sineater, and my friend J-Law and her husband, and many of my sister H's friends, who remembered our house as a place that was accepting and safe and good and fun for them growing up (small town, religious, homophobic, many of H's friends are gay) I'm so glad that Mom and G were there for H and her friends. Then there was a get together at Moore's bar after the work event where i got to sit and visit with J-Law for a while and then I walked them back to their b&b and went home for yet another get together at Mom and G's house where we [much smaller group of mostly H and her friends, me and my brother A and Sineater] played cards and laughed and shared more memories. One of the people who came to everything was a radio/tv engineer that G had met when he was in high school and mentored over the years. He fit right in with all of G's other 'adopted kids' and we had a great time playing games and giving each other a hard time, just like regular siblings. At one point he accidentally spilled his glass of wine into my lap and it was hilarious. It was so good to fill the house with laughter (and spilled wine) and fun one last time. That's how I want to remember that house and our family.

And in December, we saw the 37th St lights with a couple of friends [they had the street closed off and some fire performers took the opportunity to do a fire show in the middle of the street each night! Awesome!] & did a quick trip over the long Christmas weekend to Port A for dolphins and ocean and sand. New Years Eve, Thax went to a party for a couple hours while I stayed home with the dogs. Boba got some CBD and blessedly slept through most of the fireworks and other pop-pops outside. And here we are, it's a New year.

Happy 2024. Don't forget to vote!

I guess I haven't done one of these in a while. Looking back at my old paper journals, I realized that I never really gave an account of a normal or typical day; I was too busy fussing about this or that or crushing on this or that person or just generally being ridiculous about something.

So, here's my day to day life these days:

Thax gets up at 5am. Sometimes his alarm wakes me up but usually it doesn't. If Boba wakes up, Thax puts him in the bed and then I sleep with all 3 dogs until my alarm goes of at 7:30.

I get up, wash and dress, feed and water dogs, walk dogs. We go through the park and around the neighborhood. It's a nice way to wake up and get moving.

I come home, have breakfast and coffee. Check email, goof off online.

Go into the work/computer/craft room and start work at 9:30 am

lunch break 1:30-2, go into the kitchen and have leftovers usually.

Thax gets off work at 2, he will go by the grocery store, or come home and the dogs have a big crazy welcome home ceremony for him (so much barking and howling!) When he started this job in August , he would nap after work but he's more or less used to the schedule now so he stays awake now, sometimes unloads/reloads dishwasher, and has recently discovered a computer game called 'Kenshi' (sp?) that absorbs a lot of his time and attention. He has a couple of crafty things he's working on, this and that. He just does his thing for a few hours, basically.

I get off work at 6. We walk dogs. I make dinner M-F, I don't usually cook on weekends. We eat leftovers or order pizza or chinese.

After dinner, we read or watch tv or play computer games until bedtime. (around 10:30)

Sunny sleeps with us every night. She jumps up into the bed and licks our faces until we pull up her little pink fleece throw blanket for her to snuggle under. She will curl up against me, or Thax, about waist-level. She sleeps in the middle of the bed, basically. She is an equal opportunity snuggler, she doesn't seem to favor one or the other of us for snuggling.

Boba usuallly sleeps on the floor in a dog bed by Thax's side of the bed. Sometimes he has bad dreams and Thax will put him in the bed with us. Sometimes at bedtime Boba will be agitating to get in the bed and Thax usually lets him. Sometimes this leads to Thax being smooshed out of the bed by the dogs and he ends up spending part of the night on the couch.

Pepita sleeps in the bed next to me, either at my shoulder or under my arm on my left side. She occasionally wants to sleep by herself in the dog bed on the floor on my side of the bed, I've noticed that's usually in warmer weather.

Neither Boba nor Pepita can jump up into the bed by themselves. Our bed is one of those with drawers built in underneath so it's pretty high off the floor.

We go to the dog park on weekends and are friendly with most of the dogs and people who show up regularly.

We don't really socialize much outside of that. I don't find that I particularly miss it.

Thax has continued to host the "texas steampunk connection" podcast he and Flavio started a few years ago, every other Tuesday. He has two co hosts that join him and they interview people and such. Mostly it's just chit chat.

Physically, I am just over 250 lbs and indifferent about it. Wrinkles and bags, jowls and pouches are settling in around my face and neck. I shop for and buy various cosmetics and moisturizers and whatever, but don't use any of them very consistently. I hate looking at myself in the mirror,but then again I always have. I am indifferent to my own self loathing and self disgust. It's just like, "Whatever, scumbag brain. I know you lie and always have. I'm hideous, so what,. I don't have time for your bullshit."

My left knee that I hurt doing Krav Maga when I was 35ish hurts from time to time. My right ankle hurts sometimes. I go to a tanning place and use their red light bed once a week, I take Amla and Turmeric, I use Incrediwear socks and wraps, and I recently bought an under-desk elliptical machine that I use intermittently throughout the work day and sometimes in front of the TV. I don't think it's effective as 'exercise' but it puts my knees and ankles through a range of motion that I think is helpful to keep them from being as stiff and painful as they might be otherwise.

My brother A. worked 3 jobs for the last couple months, then took off to Indiana to help our sister H. clean up and sell Mom & stepdad's house in Greencastle In addition to general clean up, he's going through all of the pictures and memory cards/thumb drives/etc. that stepdad G. saved over the years. What a task.

Normally this time of year I pick 5 or 6 cookie recipes and make them in quantity for neighbors and my aunt & uncle. I haven't a clue what to make this year. I kinda don't wanna. But I know I will eventually. Blerg. This year feels like ti's been endless and endlessly awful but at the same time, wtf, it's already December?!? It went by very quickly and seems like there's not much to show for it.

Anyway....that's life right now.

2022 recap...not much.

Started the year at 236 lbs, ended at 245.

Got Covid in July.

Got my work contract extended in May and again in November.

Liam died in mid October.

Brother A got out of prison and came to live with us in late October.

Thax and I went with Boba and Sunny to Port A at the beginning of December.

Went wine tasting with Russ and the gang in Dec.

Xmas with Thaxs sisters & fam. 37th st Holiday lights with Russ and fam.

My resolutions for 2022 were:

haircut once a month (mostly did this one),
manicure once a month (zero),

massage once a month (zero),
exercise every other day (nope),
training for the dogs (nope),
try cryotherapy (nope),
side yard beautification (I have done nothing, but A has been working on it since he moved in)

2023 isn't starting well. I had made some short grain rice yesterday, added mirin, and put in the fridge to make Musubi today. This morning I was making the musubi and I ended up spilling my coffee all over myself and into the rice I'd made. i only made one musubi, drenched the nori, just a mess. So, put the rest of the sliced spam in the fridge and maybe I'll try again and maybe I'll just rage-eat the salty meat at some point for spite and self hate.

There's a dead dog in the park and then we also found a dead squirrel in a yard in the neighborhood, all on our first dog walk of the new year. We called 311 for the dog. The dingdong who answered suggested we move it out to the curb for Austin Resource Recovery to collect. Thax said 'no'. The dog looked to be about Boba's size, probably 50-60 lb, also looked to have been either buried and then unearthed by scavengers (coyotes?) and/or dismembered/cut in half. I wasn't about to get a closer look. It was near the big oak tree that is on one side of the basketball court near a picnic table, between the tree and the sidewalk that goes between the creek and the basketball/picnic/big tree. I was walking, kind of absentmindedly trying to get my Pokemon Go! up and running, Sunny kind of lunged towards it which made me look up and see the poor thing. I turned around and walked back the way we had come, telling Thax we were going to go a different way. A city of Austin truck was in the parking lot, she was just a regular trash collector, so didn't have the tools (nor, I think, the physical strength it would have taken) to move the dog. I texted our next door neighbors to see if they had any 'caution' tape. There were people walking in the park, dogs and strollers. Thax warned a couple who drove up and got out of their car with a pizza not to go down to that particular table for their picnic.

We continued our walk and Sunny found a dead squirrel in someone's yard. Then we came across a bunch of jays screaming in the trees overhead. Didn't see a cat, or a baby on the ground, or any feathers, so I don't know what they were fussing about. Bad omens for sure.

Been reading about tesofensine, a triple reuptake inhibitor (depression med) that has a side effect of weight loss. I am hesitating between just ordering it online for $250 for 30 500 mcg tablets, or trying to fuss and holler my way into maybe getting my actual doctor to write me an actual prescription. Thax says I should talk to my doc first. I have enough baggage with doctors that I'd rather try doing it myself first. But I'm still waffling. It's money and hassle either way that I really don't want to do but I am a) depressed and b) obese and I'd really like to see if there is anything medicine can do for me, because god knows nothing I've ever tried has had any positive effect over the long term.

Anyway. Fuck 2022 and fuck me for being a lazy POS and fuck 2023 for probably being more of the same.

Current Mood: gloomy

I got a pretty big raise at my contract job; it's more money than I have ever made in my life. Pretty nice.

I got a facebook message from Sharjinka; she had decided some years back that Thax and I are The Devil so I have no idea what that was about. Last time I messaged her was when I heard that her rescue greyhound had died, and I liked the dog so I reached out. She was pretty abrupt with me and I guess at that point I realized that it wasn't good or appropriate to try and let her know I shared her grief, or whatever. So....anyway. She messaged me and I replied with a greeting and hope she's doing alright. i won't be responding anymore. No point. Overall she was a bit of a silly drama addict back when we were friends so I can only imagine she is bored and looking for excitement. None of that at my house; life is quiet and a little dull but peaceful and overall fairly content. I miss travel and people and plans but it's also nice not to have any of that.

New moon time means dreams of my dead loved ones. Last night was a doozy. It was one that kept waking me up and when I'd go back to sleep I'd be back in the same dream. Last night's dream was a Thanksgiving celebration with my Oklahoma family in the small town where my cousin Weez grew up and where her mom and brother still live. we were at a church in town with everybody having Thanksgiving together as a community. As we were leaving my father and my uncle John [both dead in RL] were helping to direct traffic out of the parking lot into the main road and then after a while my dad came back into where we were doing cleanup and packing up food for people and stuff and he said we have to get out of here right now (like very calmly but also with a sense of urgency, if that makes any sense) and we peeked out the window and up in the mountains and hills around the church we could see a bunch of guys with guns (it was like oathkeepers or proud boys, and they were going to basically surround and isolate the town & then do whatever horrible thing they planned--and it was like a nation wide coordinated thing that all these militia groups were doing at the same time on the same day) and so we are packing up what we could and getting into our cars to leave, but we had to act like we didn't see all the armed guys watching us and act like we were just leaving to go back to Aunt Cora and Uncle John's house and not like we were going to run away, and then my dad was talking to this one guy that had a whole barn full of weapons and supplies and I guess they were talking about how if they ever expected things to go bad that they had expected to be able to stay in their houses and defend them instead of leaving, but if we stayed we would be killed by the proud boys/oathkeepers/militia people. A kind of funny detail - my cousin Weez had something that she had been selling as a fundraiser for the church (candy bars? t shirts? and so before we could bug out she went and locked up the unsold items and all the money she'd raised for the church in the church office, because she didn't want to take the church's money & stuff and she said something about "I bet I won't be selling any of this where we are going," She's such an honest person , even in the middle of an insurrection/apocalypse dream. 🙂 LOL.
OH! and there was something about how the church had two rescued elephants, a baby and an adult female. They weren't mother and daughter but the adult was trying to take care of the baby. And apparently wherever the baby elephant had been before the church rescued her, she had started to learn sign language, just some basic signals with her trunk (hungry, thirsty, thank you, please, etc.) and I was like 'how are we going to get these elephants out, how are we going to take care of them?'....

Current Mood: awake

1. First Name: E. [if you know, you know]

2. Age: 51

3. Location: Austin, TX

4. Occupation: work from home Contractor

5. Significant Other(s): Husband Thax

6. Kids: None. Turns out I had a bicornuate uterus the whole time so probably never could have, even if I had wanted to.

7. Siblings: 1 sister H. --11 years younger than me, 1 brother A. -- 5 or 6 years younger than me, stepbrother sineater 6 months younger than me, foster brother, 6 months older than me but he fibs about his age on his FB. There's an ex stepbro somewhere out there from my father's second marriage but the divorce happened when he was 5 or 6 and I was 11 or 12 so we didn't stay in touch or even think to.

8. Pets: 3 dogs. Boba- 60 lbs, 7 or 8 yrs old black bassett-lab (we think), Liam - 20 lbs, 9-10 years old brown terrier mix, Sunny - 20 lbs, white terrier mix. Liam is the oldest, Sunny will be 2 in May-ish. They're all rescues, so ages and breeds are approximate. We adopted Boba from the Bastrop animal shelter, we got Liam when someone posted about a stray 'corgi' on a facebook corgi group, and Sunny was hit by a car and hiding in our neighbors' flower bed. The neighbors didn't seem to be doing anything to help, and no one responded to social media posts about her, so Thax had me go and get her the day after he posted her photos around.

9. List the 3 biggest things going on in your life:

planning a birthday/end of contract mini vacation where we'll take the dogs to the beach
brother A may be paroling out of prison in June
mom is having some health stuff

10. Where and for what did you go to school?: High school in San Antonio, first try at college was a year at Tulane (psych major,I think?), then ACC for a while, then DePauw University in Greencastle IN where I finally got my shit together and got a bachelor's degree (Writing, minor in religion).

11. Parents: Divorced when I was 5 or so. Mom has been remarried twice, ex stepdad, father of my sister, has passed away now. Father died of cancer in 2012. Father remarried once, I haven't stayed in touch with his ex wife or her kid. We weren't close. She was kind of a nut. Stepdad has been 'dad' since I was 15. He's a good man and I love and respect him a lot. Out of all the father figures he and my uncle B are the ones who feel most father-like to me. Mom and stepdad live in a big ol Victorian sprawl in Greencastle where I went to college, thanks to stepdad's working at the college so I got to go for free (ish).

12. Who are some of your closest friends? Between pandemic and mental health crisis that started in 2016, peaked in 2018, and has slowly been getting better, I don't feel all that close to anyone. I like seeing people on facebook and what not but that's about all I have 'spoons' for these days. We take the dogs to the dog park most weekends, and we have a friend-couple that bring their dog and meet us there. They are the most consistent people we see anymore. They were our friend Flavio's 'other couple' that he hung out with. He and the husband of that couple would play through video games at their house and they'd all go out for dinner regularly. And we were Flavio's steampunk & beer & traveling friends. We didn't hang out much before Flavio died but we've started doin the dog park thing so I guess those are our 'closest' friends right now. I miss people somewhat, sometimes, but I wouldn't really know how to get anything social started again, at this point.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Wmg9obfKXXKziVbw6

We were without power for just under 60 hours. The house only got down to 46, according to the thermostat in the hall. It may have gotten colder in the kitchen and dining room since there's a lot of windows there. Thax had brought me some flowers for Valentine's Day and the lilies ended up getting that transparent frostbitten look that I remembered from working in the flowershop--the look of flowers that got too cold &/or touched the wall of the walk in flower fridge.  So that tells me the dining room may have gotten to 40 or less.

We have a gas powered fireplace so we moved a futon mattress and lots of blankets into the living room in front of the fire, wore lots of layers & had a bunch of blankets & just snuggled with the dogs. We read books and napped and warmed things up over the fire for hot things to drink and eat--I now see why our ancestors liked soups so much, much easier to keep from burning that. We weren't really all that hungry during the week of snow, but I fed the dogs twice a day as always and warmed things up for us every now and then because it seemed we should eat.  I had made a big pot of beans and a shepherd's pie in the days before the snowstorm, so we warmed those up and ate them for days.

We had stocked up on hot cider mix, cocoa, rum, and whiskey so we stayed pretty toasty. We also warmed up some mead that we'd bought at some point or another. Our Viking ancestors knew what they were doing when they invented mead!

The dogs hated the snow the first few days but by Wednesday or Thursday they were OK with going out and really really wanted a walk so we took a short one through the neighborhood. I had put down puppy pads for them in case they refused to go out, but they were very good about going out for potty, even though they didn't like it. Our terrier mix Liam learned to appreciate snuggling under blankets; normally he is a rather independent sleeper. The bassett-lab Boba, of course, is a big snuggle-bear and was a great help in keeping warm at night.

Thax's birthday was 2/16 and I made him pancakes over the fire. Burned the first one a little but the rest were fine. Pretty pitiful birthday celebration. We did have leftover cake from when I'd decided to make a Mardi Gras-themed cake the previous week. It wasn't much of a celebration, but since we're in a pandemic anyway, it wouldn't have been much of one either way. :/

The time without electricity and light was a sort of endless/timeless thing that is already almost fading in memory because there wasn't much to mark the passage of time other than dark and light.

We never lost water or gas, thank goodness. I'm thinking we need a gas stove; there's already a valve but it's a hassle to get gas-powered appliances because you have to get a city employee to come out and check the connection and approve it before you can use the appliance. I just remember it being a hassle when we replaced our gas water heater a few years ago, and I lost some days at work due to having to wait around for the various service people & city employees to come and do their various things. But that water heater is my best friend after last week--I would not have done as well if I had not been able to take a hot shower and thaw out a couple of times during the week. I tried to be sparing, knowing that others were in need of water, but I did get (and greatly appreciate) my hot showers.

My work was closed last week so I didn't get paid for a week but it's OK. They're offering extra hours to make up for it. One of the contractors in the group that got trained and started a week ahead of my group got on permanent/full time, so it's nice to see that is actually possible. I really like a 20 hour work week, though. And the money is fine so I don't really *need* to work any longer than that, and I suspect I would not enjoy it as much if it was full-time work. I enjoy my free time at home very much. I will enjoy it even more once this pandemic is under control and we can spend time out in the world with friends and family again.

I was frustrated during the times we had internet access that I saw friends and family having problems and due to the combination of extremely dangerous icy roads and pandemic, being helpless to offer anything in the way of help or shelter to anyone. Of everything in this situation, that was the worst.

There's a lot of outrage at elected officials and ERCOT right now. I wonder if the people's anger will last and be able to overcome the gerrymandering in Texas next time these folks are up for re-election. I have hope but no expectations in that regard; if it were entirely up to me, of course, I'd be living in Belize right now. Second choice: Colorado. Yes, they have snow every winter, BUT the correct infrastructure is there and houses are built to withstand such events. Texas is/was not. Additionally, Colorado has legalized some things that Texas doesn't seem to want to legalize, and ended qualified immunity and taken steps against civil forfeiture, both of which seem like egregious government overreach to me. It seems to me that Colorado is heading in a better direction than Texas is. And Belize, though it is a third world nation in many aspects, does have affordable healthcare, organic foods, and what appears to me to be robust communities that look out for one another, which we don't have here. And, again, unlike Texas, Belize seems to be improving its infrastructure while continuing to protect its ecosystem, and getting better and better rather than trending towards ruin.

We are living in strange times, that's for sure. So that's the storm and my general state of mind these days.

The thing about social media (facebook is where I spend most of my time these days)....it doesn't really give a coherent picture of any particular point in ones life the way looking through old journal entries might. And, to be honest, I've spent most of this year 'checked out' mentally/emotionally. I honestly dont' know if that's pandemic or social media induced. I just don't feel very present, connected, or coherent. I muddle through most days but in a lot of ways I'm really 'gone'...no longer here...whatever or however you might say that.

Here's what I remember about this year. in January, I spent some time with a woman Thax has known since high school, the usual sort of keep in touch sporadically sort of friendship that one has. I met her for the first time probably 5-10 years ago, she has family in Houston, she's lived there, she's also gotten married twice since I met her, and now lives in Austin with her current husband and stepkids. She has a counseling degree or credentials from another country where she lived for many years, and she has travelled all over the world providing support services to NGOs like Doctors Without Borders--basically doing 'emotional triage' for people dealing with really terrible humanitarian crises. Anyway, she's a cool person but apparently this year was her year to finally break down and I got in over my head with that; she kind of fixated on me and I got sucked in despite knowing damn good and well that when someone thinks so highly of you and behaves so inensely toward you, it's narcissist love-bombing or some other defective mental state. Anyway...bla bla bla, she got me way too high and I behaved stupidly. She finally got help and meds and things have become more distant and that's good, but the aftermath is that she was doing an art installation/project/thing in the renters apartment portion of our house and now I have to get off my ass and fix all that. The good news is that we found a really good handyman who does good work and charges a reasonable rate. He did the flooring in there and painted all the walls with KILZ to prime the canvas for the crazy, so to speak.

Anyway....I havent' written much about any of that in facebook because she's a FB friend and because I do still like her. I felt pretty used and taken advantage of at the end of the apartment debacle but Thax's kindness and acceptance of his friend and her mental state, her shortcomings, etc. kind of gave me a guide to not holding an infinite grudge for once in my damn life. I don't really know how to be that angry with people and still keep them in my life, to be honest.

In March, the Pandemic hit, and I also started working for a company called A Cloud Guru. They had just merged with Linux Academy and had to create a uniform standard for service contracts going forward, so they needed to go back through older contracts to 'grade' them and provide a standard for the sales team going forward. They sent me a macbook and we did zoom meetings daily and I worked with the CFO, the head attorney, and a team of contractors to go over all their contracts in Salesforce. That project lasted almost 4 months at $20 an hour, 30 hours a week. I really enjoyed it, the ACG folks are all super nice, very enthusiastic about their company and what they do, and it was really wonderful to work with people who were so awesome. And to have an environment where you were allowed to say you don't know something, to ask questions, and have that be accepted and encouraged. After 20+ years with the state of texas and being told things like "You've been here long enough, you should know that!" ...it was really refreshing and nice. I did another short 2 week-ish project with another department, moving information from a program called Notion to a program called Confluence--kind of an internal webpage looking thing that team members can use to store notes, charts, meeting recordings, photos, training slide shows, etc. And finally, in July and August, I worked with one of my original contract team members from the contract grading project on a new project, once again in Sales Force, to go through and clean up duplicate entries and develop a timeline for each client, as far as "they bought X number of classes in 2016, renewed in 2017 and added X number of seats, renewed gain in 2018 and went back down to X number of seats" just to make the relatonships more coherent and, again, give the sales team guidance on how to approach the next renewal of contract, what upsells and cross sells had worked in the past, etc. It was fun. I had an exit interview with the lead attorney earlier this week, they are closing out the old payroll system and all the contract positions for the end of the year, but he said I was one of their 'superstars' on the contract grading project and he hoped to be able to get in touch and have me work on stuff for them next year. Even if he was blowing smoke, it sounded sincere and it was nice to hear.

I spent a little time unemployed and picked up another temp gig at the end of October, working for the Department of Motor Vehicles through a temp agency called Peak Performers. It's basically call center work but I get to do it at home. It meets my needs as far as hours and money (20 hrs a week, 10-2 M-F, $16/hr), the work itself doesn't seem too hard and I feel like I do well talking to people who call in but there are a couple of people who monitor my calls and apparently want to nitpick me to death. They send IMs during the calls when they are listening in, and I get so flustered and distracted with their IMs that I lose my groove with the callers and end up looking like a complete fuck up. I feel like if they didn't interrupt me I would have been able to get enough info from the caller to realize I was in over my head, call Support, and resolve the call appropriately but once they start interrupting me I just lose it completely and end up looking and feeling like a complete idiotic failure.

So that's work. In 2020, I've been walking the dogs twice a day every day. I started the year at 244 lbs and end weighing the same, however I think I started the year close to a size 20-22 and am now more comfortably in 18-20. Our walks have gotten longer and I am no longer experiencing as much pain in knees and ankles as I was at the beginning of the year. So I feel good about that. I'm still on HRT but trying to ramp down the dosage on my own. I've gone from 2 mg a day (one pill) to 1 mg (half a pill) and some days I do forget and skip it and dont' have the horrendous night sweats as a result so it's good. I'm remembering (mostly) to take a multivitamin, calcium,magnesium, zinc. I think the best supplements I've got going are turmeric and hyaluronic acid. I also just started eating tremella mushroom. I had been reading about it and thenI found some at the asian grocery, so I bought a bag of them. I also ground it up into a powder and made a face mask with it. It's good stuff. Very hydrating. I found that Lion's mane powder gives me a lot of bloating and discomfort but tremella doesn't seem to be doing that. So I'll stick with it.

Dogs: Boba is a rescue from the Bastrop animal shelter. We got him late july 2019, and then Liam was posted in the Austin Corgi facebook page, someone found them at the end of their country road where, historically, he said people bring their dogs to dump them. He had dug himself a little spot in the dirt on the side of the road, and there was a big green bowl nearby, maybe it had food in it. The guy who found him had two big dogs and a baby on the way so he really wasn't in a position to keep another dog. Boba was posted on the Bastrop animal shelter page as a possible corgi mix, but he seems more like a basset-lab, and Liam is some kind of rough coated terrier. Boba is velvety black with a few white markings, Liam is brown and his muzzle is going white. The vet thinks Boba is around 4 years old and Liam is 6-8. They are friendly to other dogs and tolerate each other. Boba loves children; I'm pretty sure his first family had little ones. He likes small dogs OK but seems a bit standoffish with larger dogs. Liam loves older people, is a little skittish around kids, and loves all dogs. Liam is also blind in one eye, he has a cataract so big his eye just looks silver. My theory is that it is from an injury rather than age. Anyway, they are both good dogs and Liam is my special boy and Boba is Thax's best bud. Boba will jump around whining and carrying on every day when Thax's car pulls into the driveway. It is adorable.

Walking the dogs is nice; I've gotten to see the changes of the seasons, watch the plants and trees go through their cycle of growth, we've seen squirrels and birds doing their little things. So that's a nice feeling of connection to nature that I don't remember feeling so much before this year.

So, yeah, Thax is still having to go in to work. He works in a repair lab so he can't really work from home because of all the equipment he has to use for his job. They have the lab staff working 4 10 hour days with staggered start/end times and each person getting a different day of the week off. Thax has really enjoyed having a day off during the week to sleep in, do projects, etc. They're starting to talk about getting back to normal soon, making everyone work 7:30-4 M-F and he's not liking that idea at all. Traffic, etc. are still a pain in the ass in Austin.

I've done some decluttering, but a lot of this year I was fairly immobilized by.....whatever. grief. depression. dread. whatever this 2020 shit is. But I did get rid of some stuff. I have been cooking dinner every night M-F and then weekends are either take out or leftovers. Thax has made a habit of getting up earlier than me and going to the store on weekends to get fresh fruit, pastries from the mexican grocery, donuts, or whatever, to make us a nice weekend breakfast.

I was doing banana bread or banana pancakes or banana waffles on Sundays for a while but that attempt at tradition sort of fell by the wayside.

I also started making Jun and did that for a few months; my artistic female friend mentioned above is a recovering alcoholic and was talking about wanting something that tasted like mead but wasnt' alcoholic, so I did some internet reading and found Jun. It's like Kombucha but made with honey and green tea rather than sugar and black tea and the resulting beverage is sweeter and sort of mead-ish, so I made some for my friend and she loved it ....but as things tapered off with her and as the scobys kept multiplying, it started seeming like more work than fun so I quit the Jun biz.

I did use the Jun scoby to make a bread starter and made some bread, as everyone seemed to be doing this pandemic year. I think I made 3 loaves of bread. It was OK but more work than fun, so I gave that up too.

I did learn to make good biscuits this year; like, they may be almost as good as Bakery Cafe's biscuits. almost. I think the secret is to use both lard and butter as the fat component, and grate the cold fat into the flour mixture so that the biscuits stay flakey.

Hm...what else? I spent most of my time doom scroling on facebook or playing this dumb matchy-game called Clockmaker. I haven't read much of anything this year, book-wise, that I can recall. We've watched some TV but it goes in one eye and out the other, or whatever the equivalent is. Mostly sit on the couch with my tablet whle the TV makes noise.

My Oklahoma family (father's side) does a family Zoom on Friday nights most weeks; I try to remember to go to those but often I forget or just get busy and the time passes.

My Texas/indiana/oregon family (mom's side) has done Zooms for a couple of birthdays, Thanksgiving, and we are doing one on Xmas eve. I've taken my aunt L to Costco a few times where we do socially distanced grocery shopping, and we've been to their house for a visit in the front yard, they came to my house for a visit in our back yard....so nothing too much. Aunt L has asthma and she and B are both over 70 so they are being very careful to stay healthy this year. We are all looking forward to the vaccine.

I feel disconnected from friends, family, my husband and myself. It's been wierd and sad not to have any plans for the future, no travel booked, nothing.

Oh, and I turned 50 this year.

Current Mood: blah

Apr. 23, 2004

Sweetie is turning in his resignation to Wayport to go work for AMD. I
guess he'll be starting training at AMD May 10 or something.

J (my boss) had surgery the 21 and will be gone until May 26-27
or so. Her calendar does not show my vacation in May. Luckily I have
the email & will photocopy & give to Meleah (nominally in charge,
though Jo Lynn is actually our supervisor while J is gone) to
show I got it approved a few months ago.

Been playing Tennis with Sweetie in the evenings. It's been fun. Owie but
fun. Hopefully good for me.

Yesterday was 2 weeks after the Ablation. Depo is still in system
until June or so. We'll see how much menstrual bleeding/pain I get
after that.

I'm tired and bored and sad and having sinus pain. I unsubbed from
the childfree community LJ. Maybe going thru some sort of withdrawal,
but I think it's best for me not to be involved in hateful, negative
stuff. Plus it was getting repetitive.

Feeling antisocial & unlovable & unloved lately. what else is new?
bla bla.

I think I may give up on austin poly, gwnn, voyagers & just be alone.
No point in any of that, really.

Jan. 26, 2004

Things hanging over my head
1) Car lease expires 4/1. There are items not considered 'normal wear
& tear' wrong with the vehicle:

a) piece of trim has fallen off. I still have the piece. I hear good
things about Gorilla glue.

b) large crack in windshield due, I suspect, to improper setting of
windshield at the IN factory followed by intense TX heat.

c) dent & chip down to the metal on passenger side rear door,
doubtless from the door of someone in a truck or SUV who parked next
to me in the 'compact parking only' area of the lot.

d) similar scratch, not as bad, on drivers side rear passenger door

e) scratches on bumper

Which all lead to

f) do I have the repairs done by the lease manager at the dealership,
or go elsewhere and bring the car back in pristine condition? I'd
really like to just dump it and get one big bill at the end, but when
dealing with a dealership as opposed to a body shop whose service has
been used in the past, the emphasis words here are "BIG BILL". Is my
time in scampering around getting repair estimates & paying several
smaller bills worth the possibility of having less of a BIG BILL in
the end?

2) 21 days until my fun experience with radioactive liquid in
unmentionable places to determine if the Essure procedure 11/5 was
effective. (I suspect it was not.)

3) Taxes. 'nuff said.

4) 44 days until my follow-up appointment with my Dr. to discuss
results of Xray of you-know-where.

a) followed by depo shot if Essure didn't take

b) that followed by old-fashioned tubal & (hopefully) endometrial
ablation at the same time. OR a big fuss & fight to get them done, at
some point this year.

5) upon completion of all medical garbage, which could be end of
March or drag out indefinitely, depending on how hassley the Dr. is,
I need to find a new job.

None of the above items are life-threatening or in any way ruinous in
& of themselves, but in combination they are stressing me out. I wake
up sweating every damn night. My innards are in knots. I have 6 *SIX*
blemishes on my face from the stress.

And, of course, these items are all things that fit into the que sera
sera pocket--worrying about them will not change, solve, or improve
any of them.

I have to turn in my car. It might be painless, it may end up costing
me thousand$.

I have to get this womany stuff taken care of. I might or might not
have to escalate from asking nicely to throwing a hissy fit. It may
be accomplished in 3 visits, or I may have to go back a bunch of
times.

I have to get a new job. I can't do that while I am still getting
procedures that are mostly covered by insurance.

feh.

one more thing, not mentioned in LJ: I did a consolidation from many
pc of plastic to just 1. magpies & personal, all to one card, since I
wasn't taking the magpies deduction anyway.

And from the latest cap 1 and ppl bank card statements, it
didn't 'take' :(

Jan. 2, 2004

I think I'm giving up my online public journals. They're not fun, and
I don't have anything to say, and...blah. just blah.

I am not going to do any kind of attention-getting 'pail & shovel'
type thing, but just quit posting.

I am just really & truly bored and tired of life.

I hate my job.

I mostly dislike my home.

I usually don't really care one way or the other about anything else.

I don't have anything I'm looking forward to this year--and any
possible thing to look forward to is riddled with debt & guilt at the
same time.

Mom wants me to come visit her in MT. I will go. but it will cost $
and I won't have cash so I'll be charging it.

Cousin B wants to go on a cruise. Bleh. I'd rather just go to Cancun or
Cozumel directly and skip the boaty crap. For the first time in a
long while I haven't totally enjoyed every second I've spent with
him.

I need to get my HSG and then my endometrial ablation and get off
depo.

I am turning in my car on April 1, so won't be able to go anywhere on
my own for the rest of the year. Will save $ but not be fun.

possible cool things that might not be too expensive:

Hot springs national park in AR

Big Bend n.p. in west TX (hot springs & wine tasting)

But mostly I am poor and in debt and will never get out unless I just
work and pay and don't do anything else.

exercise? diet? not too motivated on either one. Nothing to live for
nothing to be attractive for, and the weight is not posing a health
problem, so why bother.

yay. I love new years.

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Entries tagged with state_of_the_e

Life

life and stuff

life updatey stuffs

Projection, telling on yourself, or just meeting every asshole in the world over and over?

hm

just stuff.

jobs, health, stuff

life, strange dreams, bla bla.

54

things to do - 2024

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life and dreams

This seems like a good thing to do, taking stock of life in the present

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