jenbooks

• I think we may be solving the phone problem this weekend. I don't know how it's going to be solved, but something will be done. #
• Thank goodness. Lunch. This should bring crankiness levels down for a little while. #
• Tradition! http://t.co/5JDBqSE6 #
• After lunch, we'll be dealing with the cell phone situation. I have mixed feelings on the matter, mostly trepidation. #
• FYI: Never shop for new phones and plans inside a T-Mobile store. Do it online. You'll get a better deal. The stores will only rip you off. #
• I've decided to try a cheap Bluetooth headset to bypass the broken parts of my phone. Screw T-Mobile. We won't be upgrading right now. #
• Have moved entirely into the realm of not giving a f*ck. #
• Bluetooth headset charging. Resistance is futile. We are Borg. #
• Argh! Headset is charged, but now my phone battery is low. Thirty more minutes until assimilation. #
• Borg earpiece insertion successful. Assimilation complete. Screw you T-Mobile. My old phone lives! #

Mirrored from Just Orb.

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I got the car mostly cleaned, as hoped. The carpet where the chair sits is still nasty.

The ducks finally found their treat but didn't eat much.

I had to chase two deer away from a few specific hostas 3 times in the dark after hearing them tearing leaves off.

FB conversation about the issue:

[NKD] is getting a significant amount of exercise repeatedly chasing the same pair of deer out of the hostas.

[Friend] I've heard that human urine will keep them away.. but that was on the radio.. the idea, not the pee.. LOL

[NKD] I have over 400 hostas. I don't think I'm up to the task.

And I'm not kidding about the number. It might be over 500. I am not sure that I could do an accurate count.

This entry was originally posted at http://nokidsdammit.dreamwidth.org/519514.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Friends had free whale watching tickets, so I went on a 3-4 hour cruise with them. Don't think I'd ever seen live whales before... maybe off the Frosh Camp boat to Catalina? Or on some geology field trip? Obviously didn't stick in my memory if I did. We went over an hour going out on a fast catamaran -- my GPS tracker said we were going 47 km/hour, which is pretty fast for a boat. Friend had tickets as compensation, for an earlier trip that had seen no whales. We saw whales. Ended up in the midst of a bunch of humpbacks and maybe minke. Star of the show was a humpback that kept breaching over and over. It'd be nice to think it was playing or showing off, less nice to think it might have been extra irritated by barnacles. We don't really know why the breach. But it's impressive. Did lots of fluke-showing dives, apparently not very deep dives since it kept coming up! Also saw a mother and calf. Some whale behind us kept waving its pectoral at us, slapping the water.

:usericon:

Bsoton: frigging hot. 30 miles out on the water: nice temperature. Really windy, though. Seasickness: none. But my legs got a workout from 'surfing', balancing on the top deck while not holding onto stuff. Mitchell compared it to an elliptical machine in 2D. Surprisingly tiring.

But that and wearing jeans and hauling a jacket around (I hadn't known how cold it'd be, I came prepared) didn't keep me from exploring Boston more once we got back. It may have been over a month since I was last in the city. Walked down the Greenway a bit, then found myself attracted to some giant shell-like entrance to what turned out to be Rowes Wharf Walkway. Not doing that well, a bunch of available office space. But looked nice, and to the south I found an unexpected bridge, which I took naturally, leading to the courthouse and a modest botanical garden, and signs about Fan Pier and the cleanup of Boston Harbor[1]. Further walking led me to the Westin Waterfront, turning my intrepid exploration into something that felt rather mundane. Unfair; not like I'd been in that particular area before, but I'd imagined I'd found a bigger area of novelty.

I'd meant to try out Vietnamese in Chinatown, but decided to look at the Hei La Moon dinner menu, and my legs said "stay". The dinner menu looks unexciting, though some of the food on tables looked more so. But even more exciting were trays of dim sum, so I asked, and yep there's a dim sum menu and they'll make it fresh for you.

:usericon:

The waiter was honest. "Just you? That's a lot of food." "I know. I'll just take the rest home." 15+ pieces got eaten, 9 made it home. I should have eaten less.


I'd grabbed Niven's Limits as a lightweight short story collection to read on the boat if needed. "Lion in the Attic" is pretty good, "A Teardrop Falls" (berserker story) is good, "Spirals" (manly men and women colonize space despite the downers of Earth) is ehhh. I probably liked it when younger, but now the misanthropy gets to me. Also the dubious economics. Not impossible economics; Zimbabwe basically did what he describes the US as doing. But still. I did note part of the problem was a tax revolt, and part of the solution was Americans paying their taxes again...

[1] When Ehrenhalt talked about Chicago's recovery in The Great Inversion, one factor mentioned was old effort to clean up Lake Michigan, or at least stop contributing to it. Chicago has a nice shoreline now, one rich people are willing to pay to see. And beaches are safe to swim off of; they might have been as a kid too, though the lake was surprisingly out-of-mind for being about 4 miles from it. By contrast, other Great Lakes are still industrial dumps, which probably doesn't help e.g. Buffalo or Detroit. So, I've moved to Boston, conveniently after considerable effort to clean *it* up, with proper water treatment plants rather than dumping stuff into the harbor...

See the DW comments at http://mindstalk.dreamwidth.org/323472.html#comments

Mirrored from Just Orb.

• To the people who were expecting information from me yesterday, you will be receiving it today. If anyone else needs anything, I'm BUSY! #
• Taking a coffee break before doing some math. Probably won't make the math any easier, but at least I won't fall asleep! I hate math. #
• Two 25 year old women who live with their parents, have never paid bills, bought groceries, done chores buying a house together? Priceless! #
• "I think the time and maintenance it's going to take, you know, to keep a house up are things that we're not willing to do." Ha ha ha ha ha! #
• Holy moly, math done! Now to take a mental break and eat something before compiling everything into a human readable format. Brain pain! #
• Brain work done! Information disseminated! Now to get ready to FaceTime with my mom. Have I mentioned I hate video chatting? #
• Video chat with my mom wasn't as awful as anticipated, but now she wants to make it a weekly event. I may change my opinion in a few weeks, #
• I have a splitting headache. I think I'll premake some of dinner now, in case this turns into a migraine. #
• Have decided to completely change tonight's dinner plan and make pizza. Pizza is easy. Also … tasty. #
• The two houses next to Mom's have been bought, and there's going to be a restaurant of some sort built there. That'll be interesting. #
• Just noticed I didn't get the granola that was supposed to come with my farmstead box this week. Wah! I'll have to email them about that. :( #
• Oh, apparently the farmstead box said something different in the email than the web site. I got the tea on the email list. Guess I'll live! #
• Pizza devoured! Once that settles, we'll be having a cinnamon bagel with some if that locally made cream cheese for dessert! #
• Tomorrow starts early and is 95% guaranteed to mostly suck. I better get to bed and try to sleep, so I won't be crankier than necessary. #

Mirrored from Just Orb.

I filled out the functionality report this week, which is a many-pages-long form that they send you when you apply for disability. You have to fill it out and send it back, and they use your answers to help them decide how fucked up you are.

What a bastard.

I had not expected it to be as difficult as it was. It's like the world's worst homework. Ever.

First, the Y/N questions. "Do you finish what you start? (For example, conversations, chores, watching movies, reading books.) Y/N" "Are you able to leave the house? Y/N" "Do you prepare your own meals? Y/N"

HOW ABOUT "Y/N/SOMETIMES?" Radical notion.

Most of those questions came with a space for you to explain any "no" answers, so I put down "no," and explained the shit out of that. But some were just Y/N, and left sitting there on the page like an unburied cat poop.

That was just annoying, though. That wasn't really painful.

What was painful were the six lines they give you to answer "Explain how your condition affects you."

I told Bat_Cheva that I could do it in four words: "Fucks my shit up." But they want specifics. "Fucks my shit up on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. . . ." is not the sort of specifics they want.

Maybe for someone who is missing part of a leg or has no arms or is blind it is easy to describe how you are affected. At least the people looking over the application most likely have arms and legs and eyes and so on, and therefore no matter how stupid or non-empathic they are, must have at least a rudimentary idea of what those parts are used for and what it might be like to not have them.

With mental illness, not so much. Being crazy fucks up parts of your mind you didn't even know you had. Parts of your mind that lots of people don't even believe in. Like, all those "You can choose to be happy!" people who are all "You can look at the negative or the positive, so look at the positive, and everything will be fine!" and don't just apply it to themselves, but to you, too? Those people? They Do Not Get It. I can look at the positive all I want -- I do -- but when the problem is "I am frequently incapable of feeling happy, or even somewhat content," all the half-full glasses in the world won't do a damn thing to change that.

So you are left trying to describe the horrific thing that is devouring your life to someone who a) does not know you and therefore does not in any way care, b) is motivated to find reasons to reject you, and c) might not even understand that depression is a real thing that screws up even the most basic parts of your life.

Then there was the part where you have two lines to explain how your social life has changed since you became disabled, or describe what things you are no longer able to do that you used to be able to do, or the bit where it asks how often you are able to do things that normal people do every day and you have to admit that you are able to do them maybe a couple times a week, if it's a good week.

Or they part where they ask you to describe your typical day, and you do, and then you feel like a pathetic failure because it goes pretty much like this:

Get up. Brush teeth. Get reminded three times to take your fucking pills. Surf the internet. Wait for someone else to cook your goddamn food. Try to write something meaningful. Fail. Watch Youtube videos of explosions and bathtub farts. Try to make something pretty. Fail more often than not. Think about calling a friend. Decide that the phone is evil and should be avoided. Play video games. Think about doing some chores. Decide that you would rather give yourself a lobotomy with a rusty icepick. Watch a movie. Fall asleep halfway through. Answer some email. Pet the cat. Maybe take a shower. Go to bed. Get up, take pills you forgot to take. Go back to bed. Sleep badly. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Which, admittedly, describes a not-very-functional person's day, but you try writing that about yourself without feeling crappy about it.

It's not that I judge other people for being this way, or judge myself. It's that I hate that I -- or anyone -- must live with this. It's that it genuinely does suck, it sucks unbelievably, and having to describe it is so depressing. Especially when odds are good that they will look at this and somehow decide "Yeah, this person could totally go and get themselves a 40-hour job and support themselves without going completely off the deep end."

It doesn't help that my typical day during which I am supposedly disabled looks a whole fucking hell of a lot like most folks' days off. You know, excluding the failing at doing anything constrictive bit, and the part where I am crushingly depressed some days, and the bit where I can't cope with normal things like going three different places in one day or making food for myself or cleaning up the goddamn kitchen.

Frankly, most of my time involves sitting around desperately bored and wanting to do something else, and wishing like hell I felt like doing something else. And we are taught from a very young age that this is wrong. Not just an incorrect way of feeling, like giving the wrong answer to a simple question, but a moral failing. When you say "I wanted to go and paint and I tried and I couldn't," or "I wanted to write, but I couldn't," or "I wanted to get my room cleaned up, but I couldn't," people hear "I didn't want it enough."

Believe me. I want it. I want it so fucking bad. But we are taught that if we want something really badly, we can get it. You just have to want it enough. We aren't taught that sometimes, just wanting will not bridge the gap between desire and ability to execute that desire. We are not taught that we may have drives and desires and hopes and dreams that cannot be fulfilled. We aren't taught how to deal with that, not for ourselves, and not when we encounter it in others. And when people like me complain that we are not made for what we want to do, we are told we are spoiled, that we expect engraved invitations and silver platters, that we should be ashamed, and we should shut up and work harder. Or we are told that we should want something else, as if it is just that easy.

During the evaluation for the low-cost mental health care I'm in the process of getting, the trainee doing my intake survey asked me "What is your purpose in life? What is your goal, what do you want?"

I thought about it, and I told her that at one point I would have said "It's to be the best companion I can be, the best person, the best friend and partner. To be a good person. I am here to make the world a better place."

Then I explained that, fuck that shit, I want to be the best at doing the things that only I can do. I want to write the stories only I can write and make the art only I can make. As far as I am concerned, that is why I am here. That is what I have to offer that no other human being could possibly offer. Yes, I want to make the world a better place. I want to do it by expressing myself fully, not by trying to make other people happy.

I am a good companion, a good person. Not perfect, but pretty good. It's not what I'd call easy, and I am working within some limitations, but I can do it. I don't need to make it a goal. I am already there, and part of being there is that you never stop trying to be a better person. So, you know, I actually think I'm doing okay there.

I certainly don't need to make my value to other people as defined by what those people consider valuable part of my goal in life. If I did, I'd go back to starving myself. I'd have gone to college.

I only need to care about the things that make me valuable to me. And that is what is fucking murdering me by inches every day. Those things, the things that I love and which define me to me -- specifically, the writing -- are inaccessible. Gone. The things I care about most are out of my reach. The things that make me me are out of my reach. I am unable to be myself in the ways that mean the most to me.

THAT is the effect that this shit has had on my life.

That is what I cannot put into six lines or less, and what they probably would not care about even if I did, because all that matters to the government is whether I can Keep A Job, no matter how soulless. I'm so goddamn broken-down from not even being able to be myself, there is not a chance in hell I could Keep A Job, even a wonderful one. I can't even cope with scooping the goddamn cat litter, or washing my sheets. I can barely cope with having a set time to get up once a week. Twice a week is out of the question. How in the name of Zeus' butthole could I work 40 hours a week? I am not kidding when I say that even if I was working at the all-day kitten-snuggling and incredibly attractive Brazilian model grooming and obedience training day center, I still could not do it every day. That, my friends, is sad.

So I had to finish that seven-page travesty and turn it in, with all the weight of what cannot be expressed in a few short answers to a few inadequate questions pressing in on me, and all the things I cannot say suffocating me slowly, with the knowledge that it will most likely be denied. That my human pain will be weighed, measured, and found wanting.

But I still fucking did it.

I think I did a pretty good job, and I feel sort of like a rock star.

Mad props to Sargon, who also filled out the version of the quiz for the person who knows you best, which can't have been easy. But I can't write about that, because I didn't have to do it. If I get through this at all, it will be because of him.

X-posted from Dreamwidth. Comment count:

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So today was the lunch day, attending a "take our drug" lunch featuring another of the speakers. I had invited my friend I hadn't heard from in forever before I realized how short of time I was getting, but whatever.

I was running late but ended up getting there early. I'm doing well, and she's doing worse. She needs a walker full time now, braces, muscle stimulator and all, and shortly won't be able to hold a pen much less write. We were early to the venue despite me wandering around on the wrong road for a while (what, like I haven't lived here for two decades?) and the look on her face when she saw that we'd been given the dining room furthest from the door. I was so glad there was a door we could use to exit right there. It required a key card to enter, but exiting was straight onto the driveway so I picked her up there afterward.

The professional speaker was great. She had exactly the right information and tone and was comfortable with the very small crowd. The co-shill giving that portion was not so much. She's ok, but really wasn't hitting the right note, I think. I mean, lecturing the whole time about how we should quit complaining and whining to our care partners? Not exactly the message on topic for the day. She was all over the place.

Anyway, it was very nice that my friend and got the chance to talk. She is very excited by her plants and the fabulous raised planter a friend of hers made, which is magnificent. Her husband had a heart attack last year, which terrified both of them. She had some help and was able to throw him a surprise 60th birthday party in February. They're going to Florida for a week tomorrow so I hope it's fun for them.

I sent her some plant pictures when I got home. That made her day.

I think I finished the wedding hanky project for my sister's wedding, finally. I was more than a little sick of it. I need to send her a photo and call it done. I'll also need to start packing, or at least planning what to pack.

I gave DH his birthday present a week early due to all the nonsense. It's just a new office chair, so nothing too extraordinary. I've given up. Every time I've tried to do anything 'special' it's been ruined, so to hell with it.

We finally got some rain, which is very nice. I won't have to water anything tomorrow and it's iffy whether I'll need to do so until Monday or Tuesday, depending on whether it looks like it might rain at all while we're away.

This entry was originally posted at http://nokidsdammit.dreamwidth.org/519291.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

It's funny how primed we are by our environment. Case in point: today, at random, my music player came around to the 'N', where I have an astonishing number of CDs from "Nature Sounds," which are just what they sound like: hours of high-quality microphonage from rainforests, oceans, desert winds and so forth.

And yet, listening to them, I get anxious... when is the music gonna start? Over the years, so many musical artists, from new age to metal, have started their albums with "natual sounds" that the sound of "Rain in the Country'"or "The Calm Sea" seems to natually be a precursor to music, and just listening to the sound itself requires some time for acclimation.

My discussion of The Ends of Our Tethers by Alasdair Gray is up on IROB.  You can read it here.

Review snippet: 

Tilda is not a woman given to subterfuge.  She does not manipulate and she does not really fight with him.  But as he tries to force her into a role he thinks more appropriate – like making her shop for clothes she does not want or care about – he comes to understand that her passivity is not a ploy.  He realizes the woman who fucks with ease is really as disengaged from sex as she is from shopping, though he doesn’t have to threaten to throw her out to make her acquiesce to sex.  One gets the feeling that anything she does not have to leave the house to do she is fine enough just enduring in her disembodied sort of way.

He slowly begins to understand her because her constant nearness forces him to.  She hates being apart from him, even when he takes a daily walk.  Their days took on a near-boring sameness for him, but not for her. She sat at the floor and watched him work, ate the meals he cooked and did little else.

I asked if she would like a television set?  A Walkman radio?  Magazines?  She said, “A properly furnished mind cunt is its own feast cunt and does not need such expensive and foolish extravagances.”

God, I loved Tilda completely after reading that sentence.  The narrator tells us she stops using the word “cunt” so much as their time together went on, but he still had a hard time knowing what was going on in her properly furnished mind.

• Situation: annoying. Mood: cranky. Outlook: less than awesome. Bring on the coffee! #
• Having set up the rules for my Decluttering Creativity Challenge, I will now move on to dealing with the rest of my existence. #
• Going to go find a good pot for my new spearmint plant while my next cup of tasty coffee is brewing. Then it'll be time to dig in the dirt! #
• Found a proper sized hanging planter for the spearmint. The only problem is it's totally ugly. Must do something to rectify its hideousness! #
• Can of gloss white spray paint located! Ugly pot soon to be less ugly … or at least differently ugly. LOL! #
• Did a little touchup painting on that pot, and now I'm sitting here panicking about what to make for dinner. It'll probably be pizza. #
• Pot Painted http://t.co/Dk7XQ3md #
• Now that the spearmint has been safely and prettily repotted, time to put on clean clothes and seriously contemplate dinner preparations. #
• I've got some spicy ground turkey thawing which I may use on a pizza or in something else. I'm going to take a little nap and ponder it. #
• Took a much longer nap than intended and woke up cranky and more tired than pre-nap. Having Chuy's takeout for dinner, which is nice. #
• Busy reading a number of biological research papers. Not exactly great pre-dinner reading. #
• First time trying the Chicken Flautas from Chuy's. Plenty of food on the plate and all of it excessively yummy! #
• Hello, vertigo and a nose bleed! I thought the sinus infection was gone, but it would seem not. Boo. Hiss. #

Mirrored from Just Orb.

China: The Ultimate Crony Capitalist State

OMG, they're going to eat our lunch!

If central planning and cronyism are bad in the U.S., they're far worse for China. I have never understood how people who rail against these things as they pertain to America can believe that they will lead China to success.

Look who's finished!

And look who's on eBay!

I'd really appreciate any signal boosting you wanted to do for this one.



I did decide to curl her hair! The uneven and kind of messy look is all right, I think, in the context of a wild rose pony. I am not 100% sure I prefer it to the straight hair, but I'm leaving it as it is. If the person who winds up with her reeeally wants to straighten it, they can do so, and I'll tell them how (not responsible for results, but it shouldn't hurt her).

( You SO need to see all of these pics. )



The silver around her eyes is so pretty.

So, I learned a lot from her, and I look forward to putting all that learning into play on my next pony.

And, again, because clearly I haven't linked it enough, eBay! Yes, bidding is starting high. There's actually fifteen dollars' worth of hair there all by itself. Not to mention the OMG hours of work. So bid freely!

Questions? Ask 'em!

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