inconsequentialities

Did I post this poem here when I wrote it, a year ago? I am going to update it, because I used 'your' when I was talking to myself, but on re-read I think that sounds possibly like I'm aiming it at other people.

"Facebook Morning."

My ass is getting wider
And my tummy isn't filled
I need to drink some water
And maybe take a pill
I need to take a shower
And put on nicer clothes
I need to see the doctor
And an hour quickly goes.

ETA: I'm trying to forgive myself for being how I am - kind of a slug - and accept myself, but I'm also trying to inspire myself to be better with humor.

The Classic Struggles - Woman vs. Nature

2020-07-20T18:17:51Z

My Dreamwidth entry for today, since crossposting seems to have been disabled by LiveJournal. https://derien.dreamwidth.org/1142936.html?mode=reply

LiveJournal is being a beast

2020-07-02T21:48:50Z

LiveJournal has been rejecting my crossposts from DreamWidth and trying to block my IP address, so I've manually updated the past two entries. However, I may just give up on LJ. So, be sure you bookmark me on this DreamWidth link: https://derien.dreamwidth.org/.

In further impeccable timing

2020-07-02T21:45:25Z

My first discussion with the person at the surgeon's office was inconclusive, and they wanted to check back on me later, so I waited again, until I eventually felt too hot and sweaty to stand it any longer and went to take a shower. Thankfully they called this time only just as I was getting undressed.

This conversation concluded with the assistant telling me I should stop babying my arm and try to do everything with it that I normally would, until it hurts, then pop it in the sling and do painkillers and ice. Okay! :)

Last night my friend ElvinGirl stopped by on her way back from her boyfriend's house. She had been down there for the day to hang with him while his dog was at the vet, because it apparently had been poisoned. I hope this was an accident, something he got into. Anyone who would poison a sweet, happy, golden lab like him... a pox on them. He seems okay at this point, though on meds.

impeccable timing

2020-07-02T17:55:15Z

I slipped last night and caught myself with both arms, exactly as i shouldn't, so this morning called my surgeon's office to ask if i should be worried. Have spent all day waiting for a call back, which i didn't get until just the moment i had soaped up my hands to wash them.

it's been a week

2020-07-01T16:41:59Z

I can type for a short time with both hands.

So, how do you keep track of important medical events? In the run-up to this surgery I was asked when I had previous surgeries, and Eor assured me that just the year would be good enough, but I couldn't even give that off the top of my head. I thought if I tagged entries about them 'medical' or 'health' I would be able to find them again, but that doesn't seem to have worked all that well. I've posted too many things that way and they got lost in the noise. And I don't think my online health record from my doctor's office allows me to edit it myself. Though it may - perhaps I should check. Crossposted from 'derien' on DreamWidth. Comment either place.

Gardening and books, again

2020-06-18T01:23:30Z

Because that's mostly what I have in my life right now.

I was really psyched to bring lettuce to work, and dropped some off to friends. The lettuce lasted all of ...a week? And then woodchucks got into the garden and ate the tops off, and I guess the weather was too hot, because it bolted. I didn't even get to try the Green Deer Tongue lettuce. I was expecting/hoping to have lettuce for longer than that.

Yes, woodchuckS plural. They're usually solitary creatures, but there were at least two, which have been caught in a have-a-heart trap and relocated. Eor's considering getting a special bumper sticker for me - "Woodchuck taxi."

The beans and peas seem like they're doing okay, but we have neglected to water for the past few days, so the back-planting we've done hasn't shown any sprouts as yet.

We didn't water the garden because we were busy cutting, hauling and burning brush for five days straight. This is what we call "vacation." Today was a bit of a break from that. We were both getting pretty tired. Eor worked on his van (see his post for today about the tarp) and I did some laundry, wrote some notes to go in boxes I was sending out, and we went for a drive to the hardware store so he could see handle things before buying them. This was kind of a big deal, because he has only been out of the house one other time, for a dentist appointment, since this whole COVID thing started. He hasn't figured out how he likes to wear his mask, and seemed fascinated by how I tie mine, and how I slop around lots of hand sanitizer as soon as I get back into the car.

And then we had the delightful experience of losing half the gears on my standard shift, and I was so glad he had come along, because I don't think I could have coaxed the car back home. (He also wrote about that.) He did some research on the internet when we got home, took half my engine apart, and now the shift cable linkage (?) is held together by zip ties until I can get down to the dealership. It's a bushing that commonly wears out on Fiats.

I also did a little mowing. Crossposted from 'derien' on DreamWidth. Comment either place.

Health care, gardening and books

2020-06-03T23:35:18Z

I think I'm going to try to cram everything into one big post, since I haven't posted for a while.

Surgery did not happen on May 27th as originally planned. My paperwork needed to be turned in at work on the 26th and the surgeon's office didn't get it done. On the 26th I spent hours on the phone roaming around the cemetary nearly crying, calling people and going back and forth. My manager said she couldn't gaurantee me any time off without "medical documentation", and I ended up canceling the surgery. THEN I talked to my union rep and he was like "If this had been a surgery you needed to have because of a car accident you wouldn't have to worry about it - you have two weeks to turn in medical documentation." Grrrr... well, why could my manager not have SAID that? But whatever. I then spent the next couple of days spinning around trying to get things restarted again, and am now rescheduled for June 24th. Almost everything is in place, because they snapped to it a LOT faster the second time around. One outstanding piece of paper, and that is still the "medical documentation," which is like a doctor's note, basically. Should have been done today, but I heard nothing. The next possible time I could hear something is late Thursday or early Friday, I guess, because I think the surgeon is only in the office on Tu&Th.

Over the past few days the garden has been shaping up a bit - the beans have sprouted, we planted out the pepper seedlings, and today it was more lettuce seedlings and the tomatoes. The other day we noticed my rhubarb had started to bolt (it's down on the terrace, kind of out of sight out of mind) so I cut the flower and two gallons worth of stalks. I planted it maybe four years ago and this is the first time I've harvested any. I have two plants, both descended from a root that belonged to my great-grandfather, which I got from my cousin, and initially they both were about the same size, but it's like one is somehow getting all the nutrients, or maybe all the sun, because the one on the east is monsterous and the one on the west is wimpy. I made some compote the first day, with one stalk, a nectarine, two dried apricots and some sugared ginger. I should really be cooking down another compote right now.

I started reading "Twelve Years A Slave" a week or so ago, and while mowing the lawn or doing other things was using the Text To Speech function on the e-reader (Moon+ Reader) I have on my phone, mainly because that's just such a cool thing. But halfway through I started thinking it might be nicer to just get a regular audiobook version, so I bought one on Audible. Well, that was better, but I don't think I agree with the choices that the reader made about voice characterization. I can't think of his name at the moment, but he's another Ghanian-British actor, and I somehow thought the might just read in a British accent that that would have worked fine for me. I mean, the author, Solomon Northup, was from New York State and his father had been from Rhode Island, and I don't know what the accent would have sounded like, but it felt to me as though this guy who read it chose to make him sound like what he thinks a black American sounds like. So... kind of sounds like a rapper. Reading dialogue from over a hundred years ago. However, the story is so very well written, and the background so nicely detailed, that it was easy to listen to the whole thing over again from the beginning. If every historical memoir could be this good I would be a huge fan. It was as good as reading a good sci-fi novel with the world-building. :) Also, harrowing, because so much of it is so horrible and you know it's real.

Just before finishing that I picked up "Coot Club," the fifth in Arthur Ransome's "Swallows and Amazons" series, which is also excellent, but calming. The drama is low-key, the action is started by a kid being a bit of an eco-terrorist and setting a boat adrift because it was moored in front of a coot's nest, and the mother coot was seperated from her eggs. It's ugly-ass tourists from away vs. year-round residents, a theme close to any Mainer's heart. :) It really is, as Eor says, "a sure cure for the news."

Okay, well, I should either cook some rhubarb compote or just go to bed. :) Crossposted from 'derien' on DreamWidth. Comment either place.

'random'? you be the judge.

2020-05-31T17:02:12Z

We have two discs of the three-disc set of Soul Music (for some reason the middle disc was missing - got them from the Brunswick Book Sale, and I was PISSED when I realized the middle one was missing), and occasionally a track comes up on our MP3 player. Sometimes our MP3 player gets in moods, though, and today we've had 4 tracks from Soul Music. Two of them came up one right after the other, so we jumped seamlessly from near the beginning of the book to very near the end - it was Susan's first time seeing Imp, and then straight to a point just before Deadman's Curve.

ETA: I spoke too soon. We got yet another track from Soul Music before the selection of random music ran out. Five tracks in what I think was 5 or 6 hours of random music. Crossposted from 'derien' on DreamWidth. Comment either place.

My last two days...

2020-05-21T13:45:27Z

I got to finish cleaning out my Mom's stuff from her cousin's barn! Yay! I feel so good about that, because of course one always wonders if one will find a stack of secret journals. Nope, of course not. Self-help books, books about spiritual growth, psychology and sociology textbooks, and sci-fi and fantasy novels. All had been nested upon by raccoons (and probably cats before that) and most went into the dumpster.

I did secure a fair number of photographs, in varying degrees of condition from fair to terrible. And a few scraps of stuff in her handwriting, though mainly those were quotes she wrote out because they mattered to her.

So many unpaid and unopened bills. Alongside where she had written something like "learning more equals earning more!" and many indications she was in classes (not just the text books). Letters from lawyers and collection agencies, and indications she was trying to budget and save money and run two businesses. She was so far behind the eightball that she couldn't have dug herself out with a backhoe, but she accepted the societal judgement that it was all her own fault, and beat herself up about it. Yes, she didn't always make wise decisions, but then again one doesn't when under stress.

And so many empty envelopes, and untouched paper pads. Paper (in her mind) was too expensive to actually use, and the envelopes might be used as paper or reused as envelopes.

I don't want to leave the same sort of thing for whoever cleans out my stuff.

It took, what, five years? six years? for me to be able to feel at the place to handle this. Crossposted from 'derien' on DreamWidth. Comment either place.

LTA

2020-05-11T22:19:37Z

I need a new email for you. Send a ping to me -- my nick at rulesthe dot net.