So I guess it’s St. Patrick’s Day. After everything I’ve seen over fifty years, I don’t think leprechaun and luck and kiss me, I’m Irish anymore. I think drink til the snakes come back, because going Catholic was not Ireland’s finest hour. It was a huge step backwards, in fact. Especially for Ireland’s women.
I can say that. Technically, I think I’m Catholic. Infant baptism, y’know.
Anyway, I’d love to see St. Andrew’s Day or even Burns Night become events as major as St. Patrick’s Day here in the States. The Scots contributed at least as much to American culture as the Irish did, if not more. But most Americans hear “Scotland” and go “ew, haggis”. Not very helpful.
P.S. I am not wearing green. And unless you want to draw back a bloody stump, you can just deal.
—
My laptop’s touchpad and clicker buttons are developing a fault. Probably for the same reason I had to superglue my O keycap back on. The computer itself seems to be fine — quite the achievement, considering what we’ve been through together — though apparently Windows 10 has something built in to start nagging me when the install reaches a certain age, because it’s doing that now. “How to tell when it’s time to get a new computer,” and like that. Shut up, Winblows. Anyway, this is not a reason to get a new laptop and fucking good thing too, since I can’t afford one. I may be able to drum up a USB keyboard and mouse, which will do in a pinch and should be relatively inexpensive. I might as well get used to needing peripheral devices for a laptop anyway, considering they aren’t building DVD drives into laptops anymore. This is like selling new cars without wheels built on. Makes no fucking sense.
—
I have long been plagued with visible upper lip hair, for which I blame being brunette and also French. In the past ten to fifteen years I have grown additional hair on my face which at least is relatively-unpigmented, very fine fuzz, but it looks a bit like I’m trying to grow a beard. I shave it when I remember. I would really like to get one of those mini facial epilators. It will hurt but it’ll work, the results will last longer, and I won’t have to replace blades ever again. But I say all that because recently I was shaving my mustache-shadow when I noticed something annoying. I have to use a magnifying mirror because middle-aged eyeballs, and as I was shaving I noticed I had a LONG nearly-unpigmented hair under my nose. Fucker must have been a good half-inch to an inch long. I haven’t seen a hair like that on me in years; for a long time there was one at the top of my left tit almost to my armpit and whenever I’d see it, I’d just yank it. (That one was a bit thicker than Under-Nose Hair and more like two or three inches long.) If I ever get that epilator I figure I will just trot it out about once a week and let it run amok over my face from my cheekbones downward and out to my ears. Fuck it. There is sure to be something in its path I want removed. I can’t even laser most of that shit off. It’s not dark enough. Also, holy SHIT lasering is expensive. And it doesn’t even always work on darker hair.
I know I lecture basically everybody about how it’s okay for women to not look completely different from men and to not remove body hair if we don’t want to. I just don’t want this on my face. I recognize some of that is a response to living in a woman-hating culture. Facial-hair removal don’t pick no one’s pocket nor break their legs, so whatever.
Oh, and for the record, I try to say woman-hating instead of misogynistic or misogyny whenever I can, also woman-hater instead of misogynist, because that’s what it means and if I don’t say it in Greek, people can’t mentally hide behind the smokescreen of not speaking Greek. They have to face what the fuck they’re doing in their own fucking mother tongue. I wish the so-called feminist groups would use language the same way: to confront, not to comfort. They spend too much time ball-palming. I don’t give two shits whether men like being reminded of how hateful they are to us. I want to make them stop. Pointing out what they are doing to us is the first step in that process.
I admit it’s probably a lost cause though. I think we have wasted too much energy telling men to stop hurting us and we have not spent enough energy building institutions and protections that could bar them from hurting us or at least cushion the blow or properly heal the damage. To be fair, though, some of that is just not fucking having the resources, since one of the hateful things men do is deprive us of those. “But you didn’t work hard enough.” Fuck off, Dick-Owner Who “Earns” $130,000 A Year Typing Words On A Fucking Screen And Having Fucking Video Chat Meetings. We’re trying to save lives here.
Well, we’ll see. Obviously, none of this will get sorted out in my lifetime. Which is now probably more than half over.
What a cheery thought.
—
Humana, which administers my Medicaid plan, has this incentive thing where if you make certain kinds of appointments and do a couple other things, you earn points which you can cash in as gift card balances. The available gift card options are limited. Walmart is pretty much my lifeline now and that was one of the options, so that’s what I got. At last count I had sixty-five points which so far I have cashed in as two $25 Walmart gift cards. I still have a fifteen-point balance and I should have another thirty points on the way.
I used the $50 in gift cards to go get supplies for my colonoscopy prep and also some more hangers (I am very fond of velvet hangers, as they don’t take up a lot of space and the clothes FUCKING STAY ON) and a couple other personal things. The only thing the cards didn’t pay for was the bag of hard butterscotch candy, which I already knew they wouldn’t (it’s one of Humana’s rules, for some reason). I have no idea why hard butterscotch candy was on the allowed-foods list for my prep, but it would have literally been the only thing I could have eaten which would have felt like actually eating solid food and I love butterscotch (I do anyway, but it also reminds me of my maternal grandfather, who I miss a lot), so fuck it. Probably I will end up sharing some of it with Carrie after this is all over if she likes butterscotch. She is forever foisting off candy on me, so fair’s fair. (Gummy cinnamon heart candies. Mmmmm. Gummy candy.) That wasn’t even two dollars I had to cover out of my own pocket, either. The whole prep-shop had been less than a dollar more than the gift-card total and then the bag of candy was very cheap.
If you have never had to have a colonoscopy, at some point you will get to that age. Here’s a suggestion for you: Don’t buy your liquids already liquid. Get the powders and then mix that shit at home. And forget finding premade Jello that ISN’T red or purple or orange. Once in a while you might get lucky but for the most part, for some reason, the powers that be have decreed that what kids really need is lots of red dye in their systems. Don’t ask me why. I just live here. But if you get the powder, you can find lemon and lime and even this weird blue shit in two or three different flavors. Didn’t nobody tell me I couldn’t eat no blue shit. I’ll just eat it earlier in the day, probably for breakfast, and then there won’t be much room to complain on Tuesday, probably.
But anyway, the powders are cheaper, I meant to say. Even if you could find yellow and green premade Jello, powdered everything is cheaper and lighter to carry and not such a pain in the ass to gather together. Made the shopping trip a lot fucking easier.
I mean, I’m gonna have a pain in the ass regardless. But let’s put that off ’til my actual appointment. At least then I’ll probably be asleep and will completely not care.
—
Dad’s been banging himself around a bit. Several days ago I heard a noise quite like a fall when I was still in bed, but he shouted something about the dresser in his bedroom and when I peeked around the corner, he was standing upright and putting his robe on. The bruises appeared… not more than three days ago? Since his fall in early February, his right pinky finger went a bit weird, and I haven’t asked him about it lately but he seems to be getting along okay. I offered him the doctor twice and he said no twice. I can’t make him get medical care if he’s still awake and alert enough to object and there’s no emergency. They’d have to declare him incompetent, and that would open a whole new can of worms.
—
I’m really close to the cancellation date on the car insurance again. Probably I will be able to Uber and fix the problem. We’ll see, I guess. I don’t want to make Dad pay for it again if I don’t have to. I also have at least two and probably three domain names up for renewal this month. Debating whether to let a particular one go. Don’t panic, Rory fangirls. That’s next month. I can tell you’re still visiting the fan site so I’m letting you know so you don’t jump to conclusions. But if you would like to help me keep my nose above water, I still have a GoFundMe. I wouldn’t say no.
Yeah, that’ll happen. It seems to have been buried under all the requests for elective mastectomies.
Okay. Off to bed.