Month: April 2024

Considering I get hardly any visitors here, who on earth is so damn interested in my love life and dear God, why?

I love having a visitor tracker. It doesn’t tell me who you are nor your street address, but I get lots of interesting stats.

Anyway. I’m in Jennings right now and I doubt I’ll have much interesting to say for the rest of the day, I’m just needlin’ ya. I did start up my diabetes program with that sleek new little sugar meter. I did not like my numbers, but those things are never 100% accurate anyway. We’ll work on it. No big.

All right. I better get home or Dad will be like “where are you?” He needs to pick up meds. ‘Later.

Okay, I don’t know if I’m allergic to tobacco smoke but I’m pretty sure it irritates me.

That, or whatever was making me cough before is still happening now and again.

If it’s not Dad’s chain-smoking, it’s likely allergies. I’m hoping that’s what it is. There’s still plenty of stuff blooming, plus we live in an area with some bayous and some swampy places and therefore lots of fungus, so it could be that. I already know from my few months in South Bend, Indiana in late summer 2002 that some fungi fuck me up. That may not even be an allergy. Fungi have a high affinity for animal tissue. None of us are particularly resistant to them.

Whatever. I was coughing as I started this entry so this is me thinking out loud. Moving on now.

We had nasty storming this morning and I wasn’t sure what severity we were in for, so I stayed home today. Dad thinks it’s option B versus going to work, but I wasn’t going to go to Lafayette, I was going to go to the library or possibly Carrie’s if she’s home. There is almost no point in driving on Monday or Tuesday. Unless something weird happens, I think Wednesday through Friday or Thursday through Saturday are perfectly reasonable work schedules right now. If I could figure out working towards alternative income sources on other days of the week, I’d have it made. Dad will be happy either way because I’ll be out of the house Doing Something.

Weirdly, he asked me to let him know I’m leaving when I do go “to work” so he can put on his Life Alert pendant. Call me crazy, but he ought to be wearing that thing anyway. I mean, what if he had a heart attack while I was in the fucking shower. I might hear him, I might not. Just hit the fucking button. Besides, it’s faster than calling 911 even if I were in place to know what was going on when it happened. And if it’s important enough for Life Alert OR for 911, I shouldn’t be fucking driving him.

But… as usual… I say nothing, because he’ll have some counterargument.

High drama in the trailer park today. Dad was napping earlier and I was playing phone games and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show, not movie) when this racket started up outside. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a woman or a boy but they were yelling stuff like “I didn’t do anything wrong!!!” and “Let me in!!!” and BANG BANG BANG on a door. There are so many Latino people in this neighborhood that I thought it was probably the tenants in Corey’s trailer behind all the ruckus because they’re white, that was not a Mexican kid screaming, and the sound seemed to be coming from that direction. When I got up to look I found out I was right. And the screamer was definitely a boy. I couldn’t tell at that distance but I suspect I’ve seen him before: probably the tenant’s son, and he’s getting around to middle-school age but his voice has not cracked yet. His tone of voice was such that even if I were the meddling type, given my general life experiences, I would not have walked over to yell at him because mofo would have probably punched me in the face or something, and it would have actually hurt. I did think to myself, Boy, if Jodi’s home, she’s gonna be PISSED. Number one cardinal sin where the trailer-park owner is concerned is tenants lying to her. Number two sin is tenants disturbing the peace. Though I think the sins might have swapped places today. Dad got up not long after the incident and maybe half an hour after said incident had begun, he hollered for me to come look out the window and sure enough, Jodi was at the trailer with an Acadia Parish sheriff’s deputy in tow. Those people had already pissed her off by committing Cardinal Sin One some weeks ago, and now they’ve upped the stakes. If she doesn’t get Corey to evict them, I will be stunned. And Corey will defer to her. He and his mother and sister used to live here and they have a good relationship with Jodi.

I will not deny I’m kind of wishing Dad would take advantage. That is a nice trailer and I think he would be more comfortable there. I know for a fact I would be, with the central air and the probably two bathrooms alone. It’s probably not going to happen, though. Because he’s paying Jodi rent on this trailer and not just rent on the lot, Dad stays here so Jodi can get that extra money. He feels he owes her a lot because she stayed over here overnights after he got out of the hospital last year. I understand, but if someone asked Jodi whether she’d rather get more money from Dad or see Dad more comfortable (and he would be; he does complain about this place from time to time), I suspect she’d pick the latter. But I won’t be the one asking that question. Not my lease, not my place.

The other thing that happened during Dad’s nap was I got my glucose meter via FedEx from that hospital/Humana diabetes-treatment partnership. When they told me it was going to connect to the internet I assumed it would be a CGM, but no such luck. I’m not 100% disappointed; I had been a bit worried that I might start reacting to the CGM covers and their bandage adhesive, and now I don’t have to worry about that. It is Bluetooth, as I suspected, so I can move numbers to my phone even if I can’t upload them, and stuff will be a lot easier to track. The notice card that came with the kit says to set up the app and then take my first reading and that will start me in the program. I’ll do that tomorrow because I intend to be out of the house for part of the day anyway. I get intermittent connection here but not reliable enough to try an app installation, much less sending data.

But the meter is actually cute! It is teensy and it makes me think of what a glucose meter would look like if Apple designed it. (I’m an Android gal through and through, but Apple’s designs are pretty. I can admit it.) And it actually came with control solution! I almost never see that in new-meter kits. I’ll do a control-solution test first tomorrow.

I’ll keep my other meter. I could end up kicked out of the program tomorrow if Humana loses funding for it, and then I wouldn’t have a meter. Or I would, but I’d stop getting free strips for it. Might be worth my while to check Amazon to see if they have the strips because there is a native app for the meter that I can use even if the program ends (I won’t be using the native app for the program), but right now I’m a bit broke for buying strips. So having prescription strips is still a great idea. I’ll probably fill that about once a month just to be on the safe side. Hopefully my situation improves enough soon enough that I can stop worrying about all of this.

The other cute thing that happened today is I was standing out on the front steps doing something on my phone and all of a sudden I hear BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZeep! right above my head. Looked up and it was a male ruby-throated hummingbird flying off like I had startled him. Which I must have done, since he had squeaked. At first I was surprised because we have no feeders in Dad’s yard anymore, and then I remembered I’m wearing a red tshirt today. Birb saw red, got excited for nectar snax, and then OH SHIT RED IZ MOOVING. Oops! Sorry, lil guy! I need to set up a feeder soon. That might be something I use my Walmart gift cards for. Wouldn’t be a bad expenditure. I’m sure the neighborhood miscreants have been wondering why we aren’t feeding them anymore.

(If you have ever observed large numbers of hummingbirds at a feeder, you would know why I call them that. Hours of free entertainment right fucking there. Or cheap, anyway. White sugar still isn’t a huge expense.)

The other neighborhood miscreants, the feral cats, seem to have disappeared. Dad made a big deal yesterday out of not having seen any of them but I’m finding it’s true, there don’t seem to be any around. Part of me is glad for the wild birds’ sake but part of me is a little sad too, because we don’t have a good animal-welfare situation in this state and, like as not, someone carted them off to gas them somewhere. I’m not against euthanasia, but we aren’t particularly humane about it. But we’ll see. Could be it’ll turn out they just felt the front coming and didn’t feel like roaming until it blew over.

Okay, I’ve been sitting here with my mind wandering all over the place for the past ten minutes. If something else happens today, I’ll add it. If not, I won’t. Deal? Deal. Buh-bye.

If I do this one right, I’ll have begun it 45 minutes after midnight, I’ll write a little bit, I’ll go to bed, I’ll get up later, and then I’ll add more to this post. Whee!

I just had to mark the occasion because I was sitting here writing a thing for my Substack when I noticed movement out of the corner of my right eye and there was this fucking green bug on my shoulder. I had a bad moment until I realized it wasn’t a stink bug; then I had a worse moment when I realized it looked something like a tree roach structurally, but it was smaller (not small, just smaller) and also prettier because it was the color of a katydid. Except I don’t think it was a katydid. I need to look up the developmental stages of tree roaches.

Anyway. I am sorry to report I murdered it with the flyswatter, being that it was soft enough to do so. I have reached this weird stage in my life where I don’t automatically want to murder all bugs anymore, but most bugs in my living quarters are fair game. Sort of. I absolutely refuse to open the door to outside at night unless there is a damned good reason, but I wish I could just point a magic wand at them all and zap them outside, where there is more food anyway. I suspect they come in here more because they can avoid most of their predators than because we have any real kind of a smorgasbord for them.

A miscalculation on their part, of course.

I will say that if it’s a spider and I get to it before Dad does (he sprays them! what the fuck? They’re squishable!) and I can actually catch it AND if it is daytime, spooder goes outside. I was chummy with some eight-legged ladies in the Dublin apartment because they were helpful and caught bugs that were buggin’ me. Kitchen Window Spider got relocated outside before it got too cold to catch things, simply because I didn’t want her webs in my face when I washed dishes anymore. Window Tunnel Spider in the living room disappeared before I got up the nerve to help her; she was bigger than KWS. But I’ve caught… two here so far? Those Little Caesar’s dipping cups with lids are so useful for things like that. Easy to wash, too. I have a small collection of them which I guard jealously. (Dad’s already noticed them and is curious. He likes his random containers, does my father.)

—

Phone and hosting are paid. I actually had enough money to do it and I still have twenty bucks in the Uber account. I’m really diggin’ having money immediately after a delivery run without needing to take extra steps. Also, yesterday (the 27th) I got the oil changed finally. No, I have not gotten it done since just before I moved back down here. Yes, I’m a moron so feel free to point and laugh. I get the punchline because I happened to be looking for an oil-change place on a Saturday and in Jennings, most of them are closed by 1pm if they open at all. Not Walmart. I never would have thought. So I went over there and it is WAY CHEAPER to get it done there than at Take 5, which was my usual vendor back in Ohio because I didn’t have to leave my car. And I got the tires rotated at Walmart too, which they charged for and which Take 5 never does. WITH the tire rotation I STILL spent less. It was close to $70 before sales tax, less than $75 with the tax. With high-mileage synthetic, mind you, same as always. Alllll righty then. Nice to know for next time.

However, it looks like ONE OF MY FUCKING BRAKE LIGHTS IS FUCKING OUT AGAIN. Or so they said on the form. I need to get a bulb and then have Dad check for me before I go replacing something I might not need to. It will not bother me to have a replacement bulb in the glove box if it turns out someone hit a wrong button when they filled out the work checklist or something. It’s that passenger side again. But I looked at the bulb and it seemed fine. Normally they get discolored when they burn out, the same way an incandescent household bulb does. Could be it’s still out but the bulb is not the problem. If the socket has finally failed, I’ll be pissed.

I’ll also be able to earn the money fairly quickly — turns out I can bring in $100 in three days if I’m industrious about it — but it’s the principle of the thing.

I think I’ll look on YouTube soon to see if I can suss out how to change it myself. If I can do it myself, fuck it. I would be able to just buy the wiring harness but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s selling that for my year, make, and model anymore. If the complete taillight comes with a harness, I’ll be good to go.

—

I keep meaning to take down the GoFundMe, not because I wouldn’t appreciate more help but because I’m at a point where I can earn pretty regularly now. But I hadn’t gotten around to it yet, and then yesterday I got a notification of a donation. I am not going to say no to it. I’m so broke I can’t pay attention. What I had to cover the oil change was from Dad. If I figure out how to move that $20 to the Uber card, I’ll be starting off with $40 and maybe can actually get my insurance paid on time, probably. Due date’s this coming Thursday. I think they’ll expire of shock.

That will depend on whether I actually want to drive before Thursday. I don’t get charged a late fee, and they don’t cancel my coverage until the absolutely very last deadline on the 21st. I am a bad, bad woman, but I also want to do something besides tear up my car all the time.

—

Last time I went to Lafe. for deliveries, which was Friday, I started out nauseated. I don’t know why but I have an idea. There was this weather front approaching and I had headaches off and on for two fucking days, Nausea Day being Day Two. Nothing hugely major but enough to be miserable. I bet the nausea was related. It used to be I’d get what the migraine people call “visual prodrome” before a nasty one, but that seems to have stopped years ago; I really hope the nausea is not a new thing that sticks around. New-old thing, because once in a while my headaches in my twenties would make me puke. Whatever. Do not want. Go away, nausea.

(It did, this time, but let’s hope it never comes back.)

—

It’s now 7:30pm, haha. Everything else up there ^^^ was from like 1 this morning.

Neighbor guy who replaced my starter a while back has erected (because this is such a Public Display of Penis) a gigantic TRUMP 2024 flag on his front fence. I am not exactly surprised, but if he thinks I’m going to take any bait about politics he’s going to be in for a snoozefest. I am here in Acadia Parish to lick my wounds and maybe have time to recover, at least economically. There are people here I really like, but practically speaking I don’t give a fuck about anyone here except to the extent they are making decisions about whether to help, trade with, or employ me. (Carrie might be the one exception. Might. Jury’s still out.) Hence the not wanting to get into debates. I suppose it’s a kind of lying — oh hell, of course it is — but this is the usual kind of lying I get up to doing, 95% of the time that I ever do it, and I always hate it. But I am also philosophical. If what they want is for everyone to be afraid of them and to lie to their faces, they’ve got it. If they want people to trust them and to want to have conversations with them, they have to stop supporting assholes like The Donald. Don’t feel left out, y’all. I’m just about at the point I don’t want anything to do with Biden voters either. He does have some advantages over Trump, but that’s such a low bar. He’s still trouble since the first thing he did in office was include “gender identity” under the defintion of sex and then stump for perverts in dresses, and I’ve fucking had it, and I’m not supporting any of those clowns anymore.

Anyway, neighbor guy’s girlfriend brought over barbecue yesterday. It was all right. I’ve had better. Dad crowed about it but Dad’s happy if you coat anything in sugar. He’d never admit it, but that’s what it is. It was nice of them, anyway. I don’t know if they know Dad’s political implications and I won’t be asking. Though I have not pointed out to Dad any of the times he’s groused about Trump that back in ’17 when he visited me in Ohio he had said something about being glad Hillary Clinton hadn’t won. Which means he voted for the asshole in the first place, and isn’t that fascinating. I’m pretty sure it was the January 6 attack that put him off. I wonder when Americans, and particularly American men, are going to get it through their thick heads that someone who hates large parts of the country is going to eventually hate them too. The rest of us are the canaries in the coal mine and a whole lot of us are on our backs on our cage floors now. Pay attention, dumbasses. You’re suffocating.

Dad keeps talking about barbecuing, even bought a combo smoker-grill for the purpose, but stone cold facts are that he may never complete a grilling out there again. He’s made one serious attempt, had to quit halfway through from sheer exhaustion, and had me roast it the rest of the way in the oven to get it done. I need to start teaching myself how to use a charcoal grill. That would thrill the shit out of him, and it’s a useful skill. Though people are going to start thinking I’m a weirdo, because I will probably opt for wood chunks instead of charcoal briquets most of the time. Did you know there is actual coal in the charcoal briquets sold for barbecue grills? Between that and all the fucking sugar you see in most “barbecue” meat dishes, it’s not the meat killing us, y’all. And the added sugar is an even worse problem in restaurants. I’ve watched enough Guy Fieri (how many fucking shows does that man have? Good thing I like him) to have figured that out by now. It’s no fucking wonder all that restaurant food fucked me up back in Ohio, not that I’m in much better shape here.

Did you see the way I glossed over the “Dad’s last barbecue” thing? Yeah, me too. I’m trying not to think too hard about it. It is strictly day to day here. One day he seems mostly not in crisis, the next day he’s in the hospital because he needs more baking soda in his drug regimen. (This already happened. It is not a new thing. I’m telling you this because one or two of you might actually be people I know and I don’t want you freaking out.) Tomorrow, who knows. I am making no predictions about anything. He could fail to wake up tomorrow, he could last another five years.

I’m not much better off. I have this theory about middle age. Starting at age forty you run through a kind of biological gauntlet. From about age forty to about age sixty, we start dropping like flies. Those of us who make it to sixty can reasonably expect to get to seventy or seventy-five at least. This is not a hard-and-fast rule. OBVIOUSLY some people die in their sixties. But as far as Sudden Deaths What No One Saw Coming, ages forty to sixty tend to be prime season for those. And you always find out there was a cause, even if the nitwits writing obits claim it was “natural causes.” No, Brentley, we’re not supposed to die at forty-five. This isn’t the Stone Age, and not everybody died at forty-five even then. Lots of us made it to seventy. It’s just that far more of us back then did not make it past age five, which skewed the life expectancy stats.

Anywayyyyy… So I’m still working on my paperwork now and again. I got my file box finished. Yay! I want to make sure this shit is sorted in case someone has to deal with it over my cooling corpse. Hell, the first hanging file in there is labeled IN CASE OF DEATH. My letter to Thea’s in there. If I ever make a will, a copy of that will go in there too. What a joke, right? Like I have any assets. Right now the car could probably pay off my student loans if it really is worth six grand. That’s about it though. But I probably should set down some instructions for how I want all that shit dealt with. And I definitely have to set down instructions for leaving anything whatsoever to Sean. He’s not legally related to me anymore and wouldn’t get squat even if I had squat. Which I don’t. He’ll probably get photos if he wants them. I can’t fathom him wanting anything else personal.

Oh, and I fired a shot against a major vexation in my past: I still have a lot of the back-and-forth with Cheryl, my former mother-in-law, about the divorce and about my son. It is all now in a hanging file labeled something like IN-LAW BULLSHIT/ 1999 TO EARLY 2000s, allllll the way back to the back in my file box. Congratulations, Cheryl and Angel Bob. And before you think I’m complimenting Bob, google “Doctor Who Angel Bob.” Creepy old fuck.

Anyway. I got new underwear yesterday after two and a half fucking years. I used to like Hanes okay but when I took these out of the packaging, I immediately wondered how long they’re going to last. They look cheap and shabby. We’ll see, but I wanted some that I haven’t bled on, because… still, since February, no periods. I had some spotting in probably February and maybe early March but nothing to write home about. Also, I think I might have had six pairs of underwear left and they were all falling apart or close to it. So let’s start over fresh. I’m not so confident about my reproductive status that I wanted white underwear, though. Nope. All black. Old habits are hard to break. I would have gotten more of a color range had any of the mixed-color packs NOT had one or two white pairs in them. No such luck.

I’m still using what you’d call “underwear protection” but it’s Poise pads now. I am pretty sure my pelvic floor is trashed, plus ladyplumbing tends to be slightly leaky now and again no matter who you are. I might make up a set of cloth pads to use instead. Nothing I’m going to worry about right now. Poise is comparable in price to the name-brand menstrual pads, I think. We can talk environmental stuff but me changing how I do things doesn’t matter if 3.9 billion other female people aren’t. Or some portion of them, anyway. Meanwhile, it feels so much nicer with the Poise than it did with those heavy-day fucking diapers. Whew.

(And no one playing gender-identity games with pee pads, either. Ever notice that?)

I AM tempted to take up sewing my own underwear. Out of tshirts. It’s a thing I’ve mulled over now and again for a few years, because there are designers who sell patterns for that. It’s as good a use for tshirts as any because too many of them wind up in the landfill, and the resulting product will likely be better-made than what I just bought once I figure out what the fuck I’m doing with knit jersey fabric. And they can be whatever color I want. Bonus.

Oh god, I just rambled on and on with this entry. Sorry. It’s the not really having anyone to talk with. There’s Dad, yes, but first off he’s really hard-of-hearing and I am not a voice-raiser unless I am really pissed off, and then only sometimes, so raising my voice at any other time stresses me out because I half-consciously associate it with conflict, so I tend to forget to do it. No, not on purpose, but I know that’s what’s going on. Secondly, what also stresses me out in Dad’s particular case is the way everything has the potential to be a fucking lecture. And I never know what will trigger it. Nothing is off the table and it really, I guess, just depends on his mood that day and what’s been on his mind… and it’s that much worse if his take on the particular subject is asinine, which all too often it is. (I mentioned a couple things he said one of the more recent times I visited Carrie and she marveled because, as she put it, “He’s smarter than that.” But I got an idea he’s like that with her too because there was ZERO surprise in her voice.) If I haven’t said before that I don’t think this is dementia because he was like this when he was younger too, there you go. So I do not look to my father for conversations overmuch. I have reason to believe he finds that frustrating, not because he has a burning need to Be In Conversations all the time — he’s where I got my introversion, he most certainly does not — but because, I guess, he sees it as a failure on my part because I’m a fuckup so I’m supposed to be going to him to find out how to stop being a fuckup. I would rather just avoid that whole minefield.

So I do. And I don’t look for conversations with anyone else around here either because, well, the sum fucking total of my life experience tells me to not trust people. So you get to see me babble here.

Anyway. I need to make a new to-do list while I’m still thinking about stuff. I could write it here, but I wouldn’t read it again, probably, and I wouldn’t get like two-thirds of it done and then I’d look like an absolute fanny. Let’s give that a miss.

So far this week I’ve Ubered on Monday and then yesterday. The Monday bit was for Rory’s fan domain, and that’s definitely back up. Yesterday was just because I need to earn some money. I now have more than enough to pay the phone bill. If I go back out tomorrow I will end up with enough to catch both the phone bill and the hosting service on time for once. I am pretty sure I will still be late for the car insurance for May, but I won’t be AS late. We’ll see how that all goes.

Then, on Tuesday, I had a telehealth appointment because I got this card in the mail from the local hospital system (I know their name but I can never spell it — me, the excellent speller) who, in conjunction with my Medicaid provider, have a special type 2 diabetes program going. It seems that after years of wishing, I will finally get a continuous glucose monitor (CGM). Now, I don’t know how much good it will do me with our horrific internet/cellular connectivity here, but I did warn the provider about that. Hopefully it’s now a note in the chart somewhere. Anyway, the CGM isn’t here yet. I am pretty sure I’ll be able to get readings even when it’s not sending to the internet because it’s a Bluetooth connection. We’ll see about that too.

Okay. Red beans and rice are Right Out; they send my sugar well above 200 mg/dL. Chicken Voilà is right the fuck out too, same reason. In either case we’re talking a sugar spike by more than 100 mg/dL. And today, I had two eggs over easy, two sausage patties, and three pancakes and that fucked me up to a similar degree. I think very shortly, not long after I get the CGM, we’re gonna evolve our diet into something more low carb. My body has zero tolerance for this shit anymore. The fun bit is I will be able to see the results directly instead of having to listen to idiots on the internet claiming that Splenda raises blood sugar. What will be harder is convincing Dad that I’m not killing myself or being a princess. He’s one of those people who thinks “natural sugar” is healthy. Dude, that high sugar you were getting on your readings that borked your kidneys was natural too. Ebola is natural. Pick your natural. I don’t know what I will do if the car dies. As long as I can earn my own money then I have some modicum of control over my diet. I can buy extra eggs or I can buy almond flour or whatever. I just don’t want the fucking arguments. I suppose I’ll have to start showing him my damn numbers just to shut him up. Hey look, Dad. I can actually eat an actual meal and not starve. Imagine that.

I seem to have another problem, though, and I’ve been dancing around this for a while and you’ve all seen me, all three of you bots out there. I am not sure just what it is. Some elements of it say “heart issue,” some say “reflux” (but usually no acid burn?), and some say “oh shit, I stopped breathing, WAKE UP.” It’s not every night but, for instance, the past couple nights were not good, and night before last was downright scary. So this is something else I have to ask about, and I already didn’t ask about that EKG from the colonoscopy preadmit. A large part of it is I don’t want to be trouble. I also don’t want to hear Dad’s shit. Matt and Thea had remarked upon my loud snoring for literal years, so this is likely not a new problem, but Dad will find some way to convey “this is what you get for being stupid” anyhow. Oh, I forgot the coughing. That’s new. I think I mentioned the time maybe a couple weeks ago that I actually coughed up phlegm that was a weird color. That hasn’t happened again, but I was coughing a good bit yesterday. Not like I have a cold or something but more than you would expect from someone who isn’t sick. And it could be allergies. It’s spring, shit’s blooming all over the place, and even Dad has had congestion. I have no idea. But coupled with everything else it’s got me worried too.

(And today, every time I cough it hurts my head. I woke with a headache and am currently at the point where if I’m not coughing I feel okay, but every time I have to cough it’s Ouch again.)

Oh, I forgot. Another thing going on is that suddenly I can’t eat a lot because I get really uncomfortable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, considering, but for it to have not bothered me much at all before and now suddenly I feel like shit is really weird. I say “suddenly” like it just happened right now but basically it’s been going on almost since I moved back here. I don’t think I ever had heartburn as often as Dad had it at an equivalent age but I wonder suddenly if there is shit up with my esophagus. Or stomach. Is it too soon for diabetes-related nerve damage there? I hope so. Although some of the potential alternatives are terrifying.

As I think it through, I have one possible avenue of exploration. I mentioned that stuff comes up but often isn’t acidic. It’s possible my acid production is shot. I could see if things improve if I start using betaine HCL at meals. It’s not an expensive supplement and if it helps, that’s all to the good. It isn’t good for my poor stomach to not have enough acid in it. It would explain the discomfort too, or some of it, because that tends to happen with protein-y meals. Fat may or may not be a factor too. It is hard to say because I don’t think eating fat gives me the shits, necessarily, which would be indicative of a gallbladder problem. (The fact I’m on metformin just contaminates the potential evidence there, but I still don’t usually get the runs.) But if the betaine HCL doesn’t help my situation, I can try ox gall or a lipase supplement next. We’ll see. At least most of that stuff ought to be cheap. I hope.

I am equipped to slay this dragon! Or at least tame it. I wish I’d kept things up in 2012 instead of quitting because Stupid Man (not Matt, for once). I’d be in such a better place today. But I do have some good tools in the toolbox. I just need to USE them.

I want my sugar normal.

I want to have a good night’s sleep.

I want food to not be my enemy anymore.

I want to stop looking like a troll.

—

The folder I use to store these when I write at home is not open all the way and so I can see my desktop, and there’s a photo there that I lifted off Facebook. It’s from this play Thea was in last year. Other than some Instagram pics Dawn passed on to me it is the most recent photo of my daughter that I have. (It may be anyway. I would need to check.)

The situation with her is a thing I have kind of sat on a mental back burner and then left there. I miss her, and there is nothing I can do about it, because I can’t trust therapists anymore and anyway, I’m not the one who went off the deep end. Also, I feel like it’s only useful to ask for help when someone actually can help you, or can give you advice to help yourself that is actually helping yourself. This whole situation is happening because Matt lies to me and Thea lies to herself. I can’t stop either of them doing that. There is no school of psychotherapy that cures that. We are at an impasse. It is incredibly cruel.

(I don’t want him back, and I told him so, but we could have been friends and yet, he did everything he could to prevent that happening without looking like a dick in front of our daughter and his friends. Nice to know I’m respected and valued. That was sarcasm. I already knew I wasn’t.)

So it is easier to come to a place of grudging acceptance than to keep trying to be sad about it. Not that I’m not sad, but at a certain point it starts blunting unless you do things to keep it sharp, and I refuse to do that anymore, because it is not productive. I know what the score is. I do not need anyone else to understand, because no one’s in a position to fix this anyway. I don’t care if they think I am a bad mother. They would have thought I was a bad mother anyway. It is what it is. It can’t be undone.

So if anyone except bots is reading this, because I still care too much what others think, don’t assume I don’t love my daughter just because I hardly ever mention her. There is nothing to mention. I never get news.

But you might start seeing old stuff here about her. I have my old journals and I have other sources. So that’ll be nice.

As for my son, I don’t know what’s up with him. Until he tells me, I won’t know. It does me no good to chase people who don’t want to be found. That is what it is too.

Pleased to note that my hosting service is good about giving me some wiggle room to pay for an expired domain instead of immediately offering it up for blood sacrifice. Rory’s Bane is back online.

In my experience, Mondays are kind of slow anyway so I wasn’t expecting much, but one real boost I got was a $14 run to Abbeville. Cookies. From the mall. Great American Baking Co. That $14 was my share. I dunno, you tell me. Jodi (Dad’s landlady) was incredulous when I told her after I got back. Probably should have told her about the fake hedge animal I once transported from a Big Lots in Reynoldsburg (or was it Blacklick?) to a neighborhood almost (or actually) in New Albany, and that when I left the customer’s neighborhood, I saw another Big Lots nearby. Or no, I could have just told her about the big-ass bag of theater popcorn that other time. I love rich people. Throw away some MORE of that money at me, yo.

Jodi was over because she’s been thinking about setting up generators, a bigger one between her house and Brenda’s and a smaller one at Dad’s. Dad seems to think he’ll be paying for his. We’ll see.

But I reached about $25 even before the cookie tip came in, which was another six, so I think I have about thirteen or fourteen in reserve right now after paying the domain fee. I need to get my ass back out there Wednesday or Thursday and just go through until Saturday, especially as we’re supposed to have rain on the way. I might as well get the bulk of it done before I wind up looking out the window and going “Nope” at the weather. At least at this point it’s $43-ish for one expense and $35 for another. It won’t be as scary as the insurance payment. And the $35 can wait until 2 May for all I care.

I need to change those things over to my Uber debit card. Not the one I use for customers and their Shop & Pay runs. The other one that’s for me. No more 85 cents an instant-pay! (A buck-something after 1 May!) Woohoo! I should take some time, too, and tinker and see if I can do transfers back and forth to my PayPal and whatever. I WAS pleased to note that the Uber payment app lets you set up savings goals. Not enough banks and credit unions do those. It was one of the things I loved about KEMBA.

(A thing I learned not long before I left: KEMBA started out as the employee credit union for Kroger employees! That’s about as Ohio as it gets. If I ever go back, I’ll be in for account number FOUR.)

—

I joked about Rory’s Bane back in the first paragraph. I actually don’t know what he thinks of the site, and it needs cleaning up anyhow. I have been saying that for literal years and it’s still not done. Not that it would ever be DONE done unless he kicked the bucket or I quit running the site, but you know what I mean. I was actively surprised when a woman who knew Rory’s sister Sally-Gay back in high school messaged me a few years back and complimented how much work I’d put into the site. Lady, this is what I do because I can’t go chase his ass. Total compensation. Like men with little dicks driving huge pickup trucks. Don’t tell Rory’s people I said that, though. I am behaving myself, and I’m tired of being seen as a Bad Woman. Not that that’s going to stop anybody. I just thought I would register my opinion.

Again.

You might be wondering, “Would you drop the site if Rory said he hated it?”

Probably. But he’d have to prove he was the one sending the message. Anyone can pretend to be anyone on the internet, and plenty of assholes have been pretending to be him; the problem was so bad there for a while that when he finally got (or his wife started) his own Instagram, a lot of fans didn’t believe it was him at first. Thank fuck for blue checks and friend-list clues. I actually do not know what I think about whether he would ever say a thing like that to me — or about me, publicly, maybe. Based on everything I’ve heard, there is some potential there for him to be an asshole. Probably one of the reasons I’m attracted to him. I seem to have an asshole magnet that I dearly wish I could destroy. But on the other hand, I’ve lost count of how many people who have met him have come back and praised him to the skies. I’ve seen that sweet streak in him myself. He even gets all cute and shy sometimes. Awwww. So who knows. I’m not going to borrow trouble, but I did want to indicate, publicly, that I’m aware of possibilities and have thought about what I would do. People think I’m slow and stupid for some reason. So I usually have to spell it out.

And I wouldn’t even be talking like this about him if we weren’t five years apart in age, if he hadn’t started out normal ordinary working-class, if he hadn’t gone through some major hardships and come out the other side, if we didn’t have some quirks in common. I don’t make it a habit to moon after celebrities, and haven’t since I was a teenager. It isn’t the celebrity I’m all gaga over. It’s the man himself. The only thing his fame did was make him visible to me. He literally could still be a tree surgeon who never managed to make it big as an actor but if I knew of his existence and as much about him as I do now, I’d still be into the big man. I’ve dated worse. That is a horribly flippant thing to say. It’s still true.

But I don’t date married men anymore, and did in the past only because I was young and stupid and insecure. I no longer think married men wanting to fuck me is a compliment or a “sign” of anything, which pretty much dooms any future straying husbands with me from the word “go.”

Plus I’m a troll now. So every other factor I’ve addressed here is irrelevant, really; he is guaranteed to find me repulsive. I get it: I wouldn’t fuck me, and I masturbate only because I don’t have to look at me while I’m doing it. Looking at him from afar is all I’ll ever get. So let me have my little fucking hobby and stop grieving me about it. If you are.

—

Speaking of. Would you believe Matt was jealous of him while I was still living at Matt’s place? Not even kidding. I have no idea why, because men as a rule are almost never attracted to me, Matt knows that, and Matt never loved me in his entire life. I think it was some weird control thing. Me obsessing over Rory was a clear and present sign that Matt didn’t have an emotional hold over me anymore. I wonder if it was a coincidence that Thea announced she was trans less than a year later. I wonder if Matt manipulated her at all. I ask this question because he would tell me he wasn’t on board with it out of one side of his mouth and then “respect her pronouns” out the other side and Have Talks with her behind my back. Even if he wasn’t specifically putting ideas into her head about trans, he was pushing her somehow. I saw a few examples of the latter when I went digging, and they were appalling.

It may just come out — no pun intended — that that whole mess really was 90% his fault, and I hope for his sake he’s dead when or if it does. I will say no more than that. Because that shit wasn’t one bit funny, and he was playing with both our lives, mine and Thea’s. All because he couldn’t be my puppetmaster anymore.

I haven’t reached out to him at all this year, and not since mid-year last year, when I saw Thea’s graduation video and learned that she was moving to Colorado. He ignored me. Message received. I’m curious whether he’s relieved I’ve given up or is disappointed he isn’t yanking my chain anymore. I’m not curious enough to find out, and I probably couldn’t anyway. Just idle curiosity. (Fucker couldn’t spell curiosity either. Thought there was a U in it. Along with many random foods which he often eats anyway because he is stupid, he is allergic to Google and dictionaries.) I’m good, and getting better all the time. I have down moods sometimes, but they don’t last and those evil spells I went through in the first year and a half or so have largely dissipated. At some point I may even stop insulting him. I make no promises.

I swear to fuck he was making me ill. Both physically and mentally. For two fucking decades. It’s like I finally pulled a rotten tooth that had almost killed me.

—

Speaking of health. I have been dutifully using the glucose meter and strips from my prescription for my fasting sugars, and before and after one daily meal when I can manage it, and I have learned two things (among others):

1. Metformin does not seem to make a difference one way or the other

2. However, exercise does seem to make a difference

Not even formal, strenuous exercise. Just the moving-around involved with food delivery. I went three days in a row last week, not for more than six hours at any point (I don’t think), and I got my fasting sugars within goal range one morning and very near it the other two. My nurse practitioner’s goal range is shit because it allows fasting to go as high as 130 mg/dL (it’s not her fault; the medical establishment are generally morons about this, which is why the diabetes epidemic is so overwhelming), but if I were to go keto and then make a real effort at regular movement, I have a sneaking suspicion I may be able to get into actually normal range.

This is both wonderful and terrifying. It’s really hard to eat Actually Right around most people, because most people are carb junkies. It’s even harder around Dad, who thinks it’s all about food quantity, and I am not even going to try to explain that one to him. I would rather we never discuss food at all other than planning what to buy or eat. I am watching him waste away before my eyes but he thinks he’s doing so great because he’s losing weight. You’re losing MUSCLE, you old coot. I can LOOK at you and tell. You NEED that. Oh fuck it, I can’t fix it anyway.

“Oh, fuck it. I can’t fix it anyway.” That seems to have been my personal mantra quite a lot over the past 2.5+ years, actually.

But I can still fix me. I’m almost 100% sure of it.

I have posts to add here but I need to get out the door and suddenly it just all seems too much. I’m sure you are all heartbroken. 🙄

So I have those lined up and I will upload them, probably tomorrow. Right now I have to go save a website. EEP.

(Love ya, big man.)

Today’s realization that yesterday was International Pothead Day makes my delivery outcome all the more confusing. Where were all the people with the munchies? Goddamn.

I had gaps where I had to sit and wait for calls. In one case, I was in the parking lot of National Grocer at the intersection of Camellia (sp?) and whatever that other road is and, with the app still searching for gigs, had time to get out of my car, turn on my phone camera, and take a photo of the statue of General Lafayette that was right next door. On a Saturday. That was also 4/20.

[sigh]

Now, I did make it. I got enough together to pay the fucking insurance. Happy enough about that. But in the process I ended up going to Abbeville, and then going to Rayne (to a distant subdivision that wasn’t even in Acadia Parish! And then hardly got tipped), and… I dunno. I was all over the place. But it was getting late and even though I probably could have gone another couple hours, Dad wanted to cook sausage and rice for supper and I didn’t know how he was feeling (he will get weak — er — if he goes too long without eating), and I decided to split the difference. Because the other thing I needed to pay for was Rory’s fan domain, and I thought I had until the 23rd on that one.

Guess what.

I was at Aunt Emily’s today because she had a huge shin-dig for her birthday and Uncle Abbie (brother, not husband) cooked his fried chicken which is UH MAZE ING, and there was a bit of a lull in social interaction for me so I was checking my email, and that’s when I got the notice about the domain expiring TODAY.

Y’all, I could have sworn I had until the 23rd. Something is rotten in the land of wherever the fuck the hosting service is located. Probably related to their sneaky rate increases over the past two years. Y’all are not giving me thirty-five a month’s worth of services. You just fucking aren’t.

(They did email me earlier this month and they probably did say it was the 21st but my brain was set a certain way and I didn’t notice. But there has to be a reason I was fixated on the 23rd. Has to be.)

I tried to get it all together today. I just barely squeaked by between my Chime balance, the two bucks I moved over from PayPal (all I had, and a few cents), the four dollars in quarters, and the five dollars in bills. And I drove to Jennings on not enough gas, and Walgreens told me they don’t take less than twenty for a Chime deposit.

[screams]

So it’ll be go back to Jennings tomorrow, get some gas in the tank, get my ass to Lafayette, and pray. I do not have enough gas left to get to Lafayette and THEN earn the rest of the domain name’s twenty and THEN earn enough for gas. But if I start out with whatever I can put of my current money into my tank, it will not matter whether I put twenty into Rory’s fan domain immediately upon earning it or whether I get another ten to twenty in gas first and THEN put twenty into the domain. Shit, I don’t even know if I’ll earn twenty. Or thirty. Or forty. The day could be a complete fucking dud. But if it’s not a dud, I need twenty and twenty from Uber tomorrow. I would settle for twenty and ten. Ten would at least get me home.

I’m so sick of this shit.

Emily’s party was nice, though. I think my dad’s family may be starting to relax about me sticking around. I cannot predict the future and I know what I’d rather do, but that is based on my experiences up til now and what I think I want, and that could change. Meanwhile, Aunt Matilda is actually telling me she’s glad I’m living with Dad. I don’t think I am out of the woods with her, but we’ll see, I guess. And Aunt Emily chatted me up a bit. And my cousin Erin asked me about my art again and spoke of what she does and of maybe asking me for help coming up with designs now and again. That one may actually lead to some work. I do not know at this point what that’s going to mean, but it is definitely a welcome potential opportunity. I do not know where my arty thing came from. I always thought Mom because she draws, but Erin’s on my dad’s side. Now, my paternal grandmother was a bit of a putterer and crafter. That alone could explain it. Who knows. But anyway, Erin does a lot of graphic-design stuff, including laser-engraving on wood and other things. And back when she was a baby I had drawn a portrait of her, and she still has it, thirtysome years on. Up on her living-room wall, apparently. And now she wants me to do a portrait of her (wife’s? girlfriend’s?) granddaughter, and she wants to possibly collaborate on other stuff. This could be a lot of fun.

I did warn her I’m slow. She said she doesn’t care about speed. That’s a plus.

I have to say, anyway, that it’s kind of cool the way Dad’s family always bring up my portraits sooner or later. I mean, I did Erin’s, and I also did my cousin Amanda with her brother Garrett when she was a little’un and he was a baby. I wouldn’t have been remembered for that sort of thing in Columbus. It’s too easy to get lost in a big city that bases a big chunk of its identity on the arts, I guess, and the more pretentious bullshit the better. Especially when they’re using pseudoscience and woman-hating to weed people out of even being in the running for making a living. I doubt I will be facing much of that nonsense around here. I mean, okay… Catholics. They have their own peculiar brand of woman-hating, but I’m very probably not of reproductive age anymore and I probably can dance around that, just out of reach. And I wonder how devout Erin is anyway, given her romantic tendencies. I won’t ask. If it comes up in conversation, we’ll see. I wouldn’t base my collaboration decisions on her faith or lack thereof, anyway. Long as she didn’t make it a problem for me. I’m not terribly picky at this point. When you know hell is made up, you don’t give a shit anymore whether anyone thinks you are headed there. Santa doesn’t give me bags of coal either, y’all. Never has.

We have cool weather just lately after the rain yesterday and now apparently the mosquitoes have decided it’s Party Time. Fuckers. I thought they’d found something else to do. I’m glad I don’t itch from them as badly as I did when I moved in with Dad in ’21. Possibly related to no longer living in a house full of cats. The thought that I might have a cat-dander allergy is LAME, though, and so I will not yet entertain it.

Got mail from the local hospital system who is collaborating with Humana, my Medicaid provider, for a program to help people with high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. I don’t know if I have an official hypertension diagnosis, but I’ve logged high values enough times in that hospital system that obviously they’re concerned. I will get a fat-girl blood-pressure cuff and a CGM(!) that both talk to my phone, though, and my Medicaid will cover them, so I’m happy. I know I already have a prescription for the glucose strips, but that should not be a problem because you’re supposed to use your strip meter to double-check your CGM occasionally anyway. All that, and I’m supposed to voice-chat with someone in the program this coming week. Have an appointment and everything. This after discovering that gee whiz, if I move around more, my fasting sugar actually gets close to target range. I don’t LIKE the upper end of target range, but it’s a start. So this all may get terribly exciting in the near future.

Update on the dental shit: Turns out it was actually pain in the GUM and it seems to have transferred to my molar a little bit. After I posted about the molar in a semi-panic, the next day the culprit was more obviously the gum, and even more so the day after that, et cetera, and today the pain is pretty much gone. Whatever it was, I guess I scared it off. I still want to work out the whole dental-health issue though. One thing at a time.

Okay. I need to fix food and plan tomorrow and do other stuff. I mean to stop in at the library, so I might actually get this shit uploaded. Shocking, I know.

(I’ve been thinking for weeks about installing the WordPress app on my phone. I am curious, once I get it set up with the server configurations for my various sites, whether I could write posts there even if I’m offline. Only one way to find out.)

I do believe we have had a breakthrough.

Dad was up when I got up this morning, despite my best efforts to wait him out. I was expecting some weird kind of shitstorm. He was actually in a good mood, though. Said he had chatted with Aunt Matilda yesterday, apparently about me, and I have no idea what about or why but apparently they were discussing ways I could get assistance, which is a conversation she’s been involved in before. (I have seen what passes for assistance around here and, with the possible exception of housing if I could even get it, all it will do is make my life worse so, unless I’m about to literally starve to death because Dad’s dead and I can’t drive anymore, that’s not bloody likely.)

Dad asked me where I was yesterday and I said I was delivery-driving, so we got into that and long story short, he now thinks I’m employed. I have said all along that this is something like a job, except obviously I’m a contractor and not an employee, but him thinking his daughter Has A Real Job is not a bad thing. It means he now officially gets off my ass.

Best part? He has volunteered to cover my fuel costs.

That is a HUGE load off my mind.

It’s not just about me. Him keeping my tank topped up means we have a means of escape during hurricane season, which is getting to being a bigger and bigger deal thanks to all you yoyos not doing anything about climate change, and I don’t fucking mean electric cars. I won’t get into that here, just wanted to throw in that dig. You now think I’m a moron, so let’s move on. Point is there are multiple reasons for him to do it and in the final tally it will be a huge help to me. I can dig it. Let’s go.

So we ran to Jennings to do a couple errands for him and he filled up my gas tank and then I took him home and then I went to Lafayette. It was not as good a day as yesterday. I got a little over $50 yesterday and then I got a little over $40 today. I have maintained for a while that Fridays are weird; the evenings are usually pretty good but lunchtime is unpredictable. If you’re lucky you get the “holy shit this week has been hell LET’S GET LUNCH” orders, but often you don’t. I may have had some late tips coming in that I won’t know about until tomorrow, but the good news is I did hit today’s goal even if not, so I’m glad. If I get at least $41 tomorrow, I’m in the clear for the auto insurance. I will try really hard to go farther than that without staying in Lafe until nightfall, because that city is crazy and I’m not comfortable enough to drive it in the dark yet. I’m hoping for $60ish so I can have the roughly $20 to go ahead and get Rory’s fan domain out of the way. That’s coming up due on the 23rd. (I had bought it the day before his fiftieth birthday.) But if I don’t get Rory’s bit all the way done tomorrow, I still have Monday.

I still think it’s a good idea to do this every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday but instead of hustling for $40 or $60, aim for $20 every time, at least after I get this month’s bills in the bag. Hang on, this will make sense in a minute. If I get the $20 all three days, that’s $60 a week. That makes $240 in a month. I wanted $200 to cover my have-to-pay bills. Phone is a little over $43 a month so let’s say $45. Hosting is $35 (and I’m thinking more and more that I might want to change hosting services… if I can trust a cheaper one. I moved to this one because the previous one allowed hackers to change my shit). Insurance is $112. That’s $192 total. Close enough. That other $48 can be random other shit that comes up once in a while. I just opened a PayPal savings account where the interest rate is between 4 and 5 percent(!) and no fees, so I’ll just chuck it in there until I need something.

That’s my stopgap to keep things going. I can do other things to try to increase income when I’m not driving in Lafe.

Enough of this feast-or-famine panic bullshit.

I wish we had figured this out last time I was here. Honestly Dad should have backed the fuck off knowing I was still getting $600 a month from Matt, and then I could have conserved my car. I am so tired of people not respecting me where I am and always wanting me somewhere else NOW whether I am ready for it or not. This isn’t their fucking life, it’s MY fucking life, and I AM THE ONE WHO SUFFERS IF SHIT GOES WRONG. I’m still pissed off at Elizabeth telling me my actions “affect other people” as she was kicking me out to live in my car again. I will never deny she had the right to ask me to leave, but that remark was hypocritical as hell. YOU ALL AFFECT OTHER PEOPLE. I am a people too. You also affect ME, so how about recognizing that finally? But I can’t have a say in my own damn life unless it’s a say YOU agree with. Fuck off.

(Speaking of which. I still don’t wholly regret going back to Ohio two years ago. One, I love Ohio. It’s home unless I get to visit Scotland and find I love Scotland too, and that’s never going to happen because Poor, so there you go. Two, if I hadn’t gone back, Matt would have dicked me around instead of keeping the paperwork current on the car and then signing it over properly. I like to think he lived in terror of me coming by the house and screaming at him if he didn’t stop dicking me around, because I hate that motherfucker and I wish he were scared of me. The past 21.5 years would have gone one fuck of a lot differently if he had been. For one, when I got fed up with his and his people’s bullshit and dumped him the first time, he’d have fucking stayed gone and I’d have been better off.)

(I was not in the habit of going to the house and screaming at him. We had a few arguments over twenty years where I did anything close to screaming at him, and I was already in the house with him, and I literally mean I could count those specific arguments on one hand, but somewhere down in between his three brain cells he decided it would work in his favor if he pretended I was this habitually screaming harpy, and clearly it worked because everyone we had as mutual friends has shitcanned me, because clearly me swearing on a blog is exactly the same as me throwing a brick through his front window, and I’ve never done the latter either. I don’t know who the fuck everyone thinks I am, but you’re way off the fucking beam. That’s okay. You get to find out what it’s like to believe him on no evidence when he gets bored with you. Do not come crying to me when, not if, he makes that happen to you. You will not like my reaction.)

I know. I still live too much in the past. It’s hard to let go of it when I’m still mired in the immediate consequences of it. This stage of my life is about building a new Present for which I get to have different consequences in the Future. I just haven’t figured out what the fuck that looks like yet when I’m still living in the blast zone of my past fuckups. Bear with me.

—

Well, anyway. So after I got done driving delivery (and I now sort of know where Carencro is, and it was Breaux Bridge yesterday), I stopped in Crowley to go to Walmart. I still have gift-card balance and, dig this? I had over a hundred bucks in rewards points in my Humana app. What??? I have no idea where it came from. I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. So, not remembering how much I had left on the most recent card (they only let you make cards worth up to $25, in $5 increments), I pulled out another $25. The reason I went to the Crowley Walmart store specifically, okay, there were two reasons. One, I didn’t plan on going to Jennings and then going home from that direction. It would have just added too much distance to the trip and I was tired. Two, I’ve been working on a crocheted twin-size blanket sporadically since I was in the shelter last year. I no longer like to leave projects unfinished, even if it takes me fucking forever to get them done. Problem was I had just about used up the Soft Navy and Black yarn colors (Red Heart Super Saver). Jennings Walmart had both colors, but in the large skeins and I only wanted the regular-size ones because I don’t know how much more yarn I need, and I didn’t want to wind up with a huge amount of leftovers. I knew Crowley had both colors in the regular skeins. So I’ve got those now, and I needed a few other things, and it ended up being just a smidgen over $18 for the whole shebang, and most of that was on the old card and only a literal few cents off the new one, so I was fairly pleased with myself.

I haven’t decided what to actually do with the blanket when it’s done. When I began it I was thinking “give this to the shelter” as a thank-you for taking me in. I might yet do that, but if Dad sees it finished and claims it, he gets first dibs. I picked the colors I did (the other one is some kind of gray… charcoal?) because I thought perhaps the shelter had an excess of so-called “feminine” blanket colors and I wanted to do something nice in blue and gray. So there you go. They’re also the sorts of colors Dad likes, so there’s that.

That reminds me. I am losing two domains this month because Poor. I MAY be able to rescue the second one but I’m pretty sure the first one is a lost cause. That’s the bistitchuality.com domain. And I have thought it over and I want to say, and this completely doesn’t matter to anyone else but I am just sharing, that I have no problem with bisexual people (except when they’re homophobic… sometimes they are) or with the LGB community — I should think fucking not, I spend half my time calling out homophobia from the genderdorks these days — but the idea of having a domain and yarny-stuff online store with a name that sounds anything like that community just doesn’t sit well with me anymore. It’s not a moral thing, it’s political anger about what far too many of them are allowing to happen in their name. But I still wanted to have a site about knitting and crochet, so the name question vexed me. Seems like all the good names were taken years ago.

But! I have now come up with a brilliant idea and I need to whois it to make sure it’s available and I will be THRILLED AS FUCK if it is. I will say no more than that in case an asshole is reading this. Let’s just say it is not likely to be something someone else has thought of, and it has heart connections for me. And that is not a clue to the name. That is very broad and vague and there are no clues in it at all. When I reveal the name — if I get this done; knowing me, I’ll fucking forget for like five years or something — any of you who knew me in my old life would understand what I meant.

Which, none of you did because you’re all fucking bots. You know it. I know it. Moving the fuck on now.

—

SOOOOO… My last real period was in February. The… sixth? I think? And I think I had some spotting later that month and possibly in early March, but nothing to write home about, and it just kept getting lighter and lighter every time it happened.

I have been afraid to get my hopes up because the last time I lived here, I’m gonna say that between January and March I had no period either, and I got my hopes up then, and then it cranked right back the fuck up a couple months into my being back in Ohio and was interfering with my fucking job search, so… thanks? So I’m worried something like that will happen again. But so far, no dice, and this has gone longer than it did last time. Yay? I hope?

However. I noticed something interesting, and here’s where I get into TMI so if you are a family member, I recommend you just stop reading here. If you don’t, that’s on you and I don’t want to hear it later. Ever.

Okay. They gone? Who cares. Moving on now. So, probably about once a month, and probably while I was ovulating, I’d get frisky and then do something about it. Not WITH anyone, but if you thought that at fifty I don’t know how my bits work well enough to benefit from it, boy do you ever not know how the world works.

So normally I’d do that thing about once a month, and then, here’s the interesting bit I noticed… I would spot the next day and then start my period not long after. But there were times I would get Extra Friskies at other times in the month, not real often but now and again, and I’d still get the spotting if not the period. Probably the stupid fibroids. Fuckers. But none of that’s happening now. It’s awesome.

No wait, that was one part of the interesting bit because we haven’t gotten to the other part of the current situation. I hadn’t gotten any fun in a while, if self-serve, so I did it again recently and not only did I not have spotting the next day, I also did not have spotting the day after the next time I did it and, unusually for me, this was twice in one week.

Bonus: The rousing conclusion felt different, too. Better. More… intense. More like it used to feel back before my reproductive system went into a complete fucking tailspin.

Legend has it that fibroids shrink as a sufferer goes into menopause. Hormonal changes. Oh man, I fucking hope that’s what it is. I missed Fun Me. Looks like she’s starting to come (ahem) back.

But that’s another reason I’m hopeful that this is finally it. My poor fun park. If she doesn’t get to party anymore (is a party by yourself really a party?), at least she gets a well-deserved retirement. Respect.

—

This doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be up for fun times with a buddy if I ever got the chance again with someone actually worth it. (In theory. In practice, I look like a fucking nightmare with my clothes off so honey, it’s not you, it really is me.)

It does, however, mean I don’t have to worry about certain potential consequences anymore. WOOHOO

…

Okay. Off to bed, to dream of large men. Mmmmm. Big man. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Got Ubering done today. Did not get to $70. It is not as bad as it sounds because just getting an average of $40 before gas (so, an average of $60 for the day, if $20 to gas) would get me to $120 and I need $112. It’s Thursday and I need to keep in mind that was never a hugely busy day in Columbus — not even in Dublin, where I had some of my best income. We’ll see what tomorrow and Saturday bring. I may wind up working after sunset if shit gets stupid. But today wasn’t horrible. I did have one two-dollar run but for the most part either the whole run was $5 or more or the tip took it to $5 or more. Mostly.

It was a bit over $50 today — enough of a bit that I actually did get $50 — and so there’s $30 sitting in the Credit Builder now waiting for its friends. So I need $82, minimum, over the next couple days. So that’s $61 a day for the next two days. I don’t like my fuel level, and I’m pissed off at the Murphy’s people because I was going to put $30 in the tank because I had a $10 bill. “We don’t split tender.” Well tell that to everyfuckingone else on the fucking planet, sweetheart, because just about all of them do. It wasn’t her fault, unless she was wrong about policy and needs more training. Anyway, that $10 bill went to my supper, so it wasn’t a total waste, and I got to sit and screw around on Facebook for a bit while I ate, ditto. But I’m still freaking out because I don’t know if I CAN get to $81 both days. This wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t glitched and assumed the 21st was on Monday there for a while. It’s on Sunday. I have to get this done by 11:59 that night. If I have to ask Dad for money, I have to get it into my Chime account well before then.

This could get Interesting. Honestly I should just do this every Thursday through Saturday and then stop at $40 total per day. Then I would never fall behind. That’s $60 a week after gas which is $240 a month which is more than I need and then I’ll likely get random bits of change from Dad as well. I usually do. The stopping at $40 a day might reduce my fuel needs, too. It will definitely be easier on my car.

Uber tells me they will be raising the Instant Pay fee to a dollar and something. It was fifty cents when I started two years ago. I am pissed. There is a workaround: I need to activate my little debit-card account they set up for me, at which point my money’s instantly available and no fees. It’s just not a good time to do the activation yet. Let me get my insurance paid first. But I didn’t want to have to take on YET ANOTHER fucking debit card account. I’ve got both the debit and credit cards with Chime, the debit card with PayPal (yes, they have debit cards again; no, you do not need a business account), that BioLife thing (not quite as functional, just holds money), and probably one or two other things. What the fuck. But if I am going to keep doing this I might as well save some money.

Dad called two or three times while I was gone. I probably should have answered, but either he was going to ask me what I was doing and then give me shit, or he was going to ask me where I was and then ask me to do something for him while I was out or, worse, drive allllll the way back for something that could have waited. Neither outcome was desirable, so I just didn’t bother. I have enough trouble earning money in this de facto third-world country without him interrupting the process.

Lo and behold, there were signs he had cooked food when I got home and he was already in bed. At least this time if he got the runs there was no way he was going to blame it on my cooking. Yesterday wasn’t the first time he’d had them after eating, but it was the first time he had an accident that he needed my help with. I suspect it wasn’t the first accident either, just the first one he had no choice but to tell me about. There have been a couple suspicious leavings here and there, like the time he dropped shit in my clean laundry load in the washer. His attempt at playing innocent afterwards when he inquired about the towel was awkward as fuck. I just played dumb.

My luck he’ll make special effort to be awake when I leave. Hope not. Just let me get on with things. I am tired of the drama. You folks see my drama here when I’m mad at other people’s drama but you don’t see the bullshit they put me through over basically nothing. If people would just fucking relax and stop trying so hard to have problems they could have prevented or else just not seen those as problems, because they really aren’t, I’d have almost no conflicts with people. They look at me funny for having hobbies and puttering. That is how you keep yourself from needing to make people miserable. Watching TV does not count. Neither does gossip, unless it is celebrity gossip, and then only if it’s positive. I am at my bitchiest when I spend more time thinking about my hobbies than actually pursuing them. I am not a mutant. Most people with hobbies are like that. People without hobbies are even worse.

Speaking of. I had finally settled on something to do for a sample drawing for my portrait-drawing listing on Etsy. It is not my first choice but I don’t know what I did with that one photo of Thea. I may never have transferred it from the photo CD to my machine. I hope that’s it because otherwise I already see some gaps in photos I should have in my files. (I came to a standstill on photo organization anyway because something fucked up in one transfer session and the filenames changed on the photos!!! I have to fix that now GODDAMMIT. I had already fixed them before!) It’s a film photo so even if I can’t find the digital, I haven’t lost it — it’s just a pain in the ass to deal with if that’s the case. ANYWAY, I had a point: I need to get on the ball with the source photo I did pick. I don’t know why I nag myself about it ever; when I put it up there, everyone will ignore it. But if I don’t try, that’s a source of potential income I’m flushing down the toilet. Plus in the process of obtaining said income, I will get lots of PRACTICE, which I have been beating myself up for YEARS for not getting. Just like not getting practice, I’m not getting younger. I need to quit fucking around with this.

The image I picked is a shot of the big man when he was in The Crew (2009, UK film, in case there’s a U.S. film by the same name). It’s in that first sequence where they’re knocking over a semi truck for its cargo. They did a nice closeup of his face as he sat in the boss’s SUV looking out the window. I wanted something with not a lot of details in it so I could get it done more quickly.

I saw a new pic of the big man today. A few actually, from the same event. I don’t know why I am suddenly seeing news about the Knuckles premiere (I don’t know the exact title and I’m not online right now). I could have sworn it was airing already. Maybe that’s just been the hype leading up to the premiere? No idea. Anyway, I was surprised big man showed up for it. Probably had to as he’s playing a major character (the Buyer, basically I think the main antagonist). He is not an extrovert, is mah big man. More to the point, I almost didn’t recognize him. He was, quite out of character for him, IN A NEW SHIRT AND SUIT COAT. There’s an outside chance his trousers are not new, but I can’t tell. (They might be from his black suit, and he’s had that one since at least 2015. And hot damn does he look fucking… never mind… in that.) That alone wouldn’t have thrown me off, other than this is a whole different look for him and creates a whole different vibe, except he also got a haircut and GROOMED HIS FACIAL HAIR WHAT THE FUCK. I have NEVER seen him do that. Either he’s clean-shaven, has that scruff thing going on that half the guys are doing now, or has gone full wild-man beard — at best, with the beard, he might condition and comb it, MAYBE trim it a bit. But not like this. He’s cut about two-thirds of it off at least and he has shaped it. And, weirdly, he’s groomed around the ‘stache. Including above it.

I said on the fansite I would not express my opinion. I will do it here because no one fucking reads this anyway.

1. This change has “wife has weighed in about wardrobe” written allllll over it.

2. I don’t like the mustache. Groomed at lipline, yes. Shaved above, no. And I can’t decide if it looks like he did it himself. He might have. No biggie: hair grows back. He might nail whatever he was trying to achieve with more practice.

3. The overall effect is “someone tried to change Rory McCann into something he’s not and it looks like he’s not sure he likes it.”

Even if it was all his idea, even if he picked everything out, even if he paid a facial-hair groomer and they just happen to suck at their job, that’s the vibe going off right now. The look is good (even with me not liking the mustache trim, them doing a better job at it would have taken the teeth out of that objection at least) and he should not be embarrassed… it’s just not HIM.

Or I’ve been dead wrong about who he is. Equally likely. I don’t know everything. I know even less about a man I’ve never met who is not my man. I like him scruffy and/or beardy and I’m sulking a little bit, mentally, that someone (or he) has cleaned him up. BUT it’s also possible that he was depressed or had something else negative going on mentally for a lot of years and maybe the scruffy reflected that and now he’s doing better, he just hasn’t gotten “settled in” with his new look yet.

And if that’s what it is then I will get used to it and learn to like it better. I don’t hate it, it just weirds me out. Familiarity will cure that. We’ll see. So show up in more pics, big man! You’ve got a whole-ass Instagram account you’re not even fucking using. (I fucking called it.) PEEKTURES. NAO. FOREEEEEVER.

Hm. I wonder if he still has that marvelous red scarf…

Sad that I know parts of his wardrobe, huh? There’s a blue buttondown shirt that I recognize because he’s worn it a lot, there’s the aforementioned black suit, there’s the blue-and-green plaid trouser suit (haven’t seen that one in years, he may have chucked it), there’s the Blackwatch tartan kilt suit that I suspect is wool (and I very much doubt he’s chucked that one), there are the black leather dress shoes I’ve seen him wear with Black Suit and Kilt Suit and, possibly, as the Scott’s Porage Oats Man — if he takes good care of them and only wears them for dress occasions then yes, they could last that fucking long — and there’s this sort of brickish-clayish-red polo-style short-sleeved collar shirt that he wore for his Hound audition and has been seen in since. I keep seeing those on repeat. I wonder what other new stuff he will pop up with. And the hat. He’s got this hat I like on him. Maybe a fedora but if not, similar style.

(Yes, I know the “wisdom” about men in fedoras. Bite me.)

(Wait, no, you don’t bite me. Big man can bite me. Gently. Nip. Mmm. There ya go)

(Wait, did I say that out loud)

Anyway.

I probably noticed it before and then forgot, but there seems to be a BioLife plasma donation center on Ambassador Caffery in Lafayette! One of their locations in Colubmus was where I donated plasma in ’22. Gave it up because almost every time I went in, they said my heart rate was too high. I even got turned down once for being one beat-per-minute over. I think that has actually gotten better, though. I need to call them and see whether they will allow a diabetic to donate because if yes, I’m down. I would still have to drive to get there, but I would not have to drive MORE once there, dig? I wonder if they will let me use the same pay card… if I even have it. I might have chucked it out. Eep. I would make at least as much going there twice a week as I would have done earning the bare minimum with Uber. It’s worth a shot, anyway. No pun intended — it isn’t really a shot anyhow.

I am pretty sure I have dental shit going on with my back teeth. Upper way back in the back (my) left-side molar, anyway. I have something LIKE a dental plan? But I see something in the paperwork about a $500 annual allowance. If they had to do anything more than clean, x-ray, and drill-and-fill one tooth, I think I’d be in trouble. I have to figure this out. I am not in pain, but it’s gotten sensitive. That is not a place I want an abscess to form. That’s right up under my sinuses. I’d be one sick muhfugger. Not even in the fun way. Fortunately for me, I know some tricks. It will depend on what actual damage is there. Nothing has broken off, so that’s promising. The question is will I be able to afford said tricks. One day at a time, I suppose.

Oh, okay. What tricks. The official story with cavities is that bacteria eat holes in your teeth for no fucking reason and then the dentist has to drill the holes and then fill them with mercury so you can lose IQ points to not have holes in your teeth. What’s a lot more likely to be true is that your teeth, being living organs, can be malnourished just like the rest of you and when that happens, they develop weak spots. Kind of like getting osteoporosis, except in your teeth. The bacteria batten down on the weak spots and then you wind up in trouble. But there is a period of time in between the formation of the weak spots and the development of holes when you can still solidify things back up. This actually happened with one of Thea’s permanent teeth. There was a soft spot forming and the dentist put it on watch right around the time I switched Thea and me to animal fats and from the next time we got her a dental x-ray, the dentist never mentioned the cavity again. It had mineralized back up.

So what I need to do is my old trick of AD3K2 + multimineral + cleaning up my fat intake. It works a treat. It will work even better if I can go keto because there’s some kind of relationship between your insulin levels and the health of your teeth. This is not from a mommy blog. This is from research abstracts I dug up off Google someplace. The solid bit in between your enamel and your pulp chamber in each tooth is called dentin, but it’s not as solid as it looks; there is fluid circulating in there. If your insulin is elevated, that fluid-circulation rate slows down. People with hyperinsulinism and insulin resistance tend to have shitty diets anyway, most particularly in the mineral-intake department. Wreaks all sorts of havoc. Your teeth being one of the metabolically least important parts of your body and yet excellent little mineral reservoirs, if your body needs minerals you are not giving it, they will be first to go.

Poor people don’t get cavities from LaCk Of DeNtiStS. They get cavities from starvation. Even if they’re fat, they’re not getting enough of something.

Wait, what do I mean “they.”

I wish I could say I’ve completely come to terms with my situation, but nah.

Dad got up and watched the news for a bit while I was farting around with this. I had my door closed, so he didn’t bother me. He’s now gone back to bed. I think I will do likewise (to, obviously, not back to). I need wiggle room to find the ideal time to go out the door in the morning. I was so tired when I came back, and this second wind’s only going to last so long. Ni-night.

You too, Rory. Damn it. Wanna cuddle.

Dad had a doctor’s appointment today and I didn’t feel like cooking only to run into drama again — and he hadn’t ordered breakfast last night, either — so I snitched three of his breakfast pancake-dogs and had the leftover coffee. I’m not proud. If it’s sat in the coffeemaker carafe overnight I’ll still fucking drink it. I like cold coffee better than hot anyway.

He had a hard time getting around today. Well, this is what happens when you forget what a microwave is and get all proud and pissed off because someone didn’t make everything fucking perfect for you and you throw perfectly good food away. Then you’ve got no energy and you can barely walk. I didn’t say anything, just helped him get around. He at least seemed to have gotten over the evil grump thing, for now, which helps the overall situation.

He wanted a chili cheeseburger for supper. It is pretty simple: half a bun, cook the patty, put the cheese slice on, heat up some microwave chili (see? except I heated it up), spoon that on top. I cooked some fries too, and for once they were a kind he sort of liked. And he actually finished his supper.

Except the universe has a hate-on for me recently, because he got diarrhea later. The problem with being old and slow is that if your guts go faster than you do, you will be in trouble. I guess it isn’t a severe hate-on, because what mess he couldn’t hold in hit the bare floor (no carpet! no rug! yay!) in his bedroom and apparently did not splash anything else. Another thing about old people, or at least this one, is their gut flora must change or something because things are not as rank as they used to be. I got things cleaned up okay. He’s got an extra Depend in the bathroom in case he needs it — and the thing is, he usually doesn’t. But lately he’s gotten the runs a few times. He advised me to spray Lysol in my room in case it’s something catching. Boy, by the time I have cleaned up your hypothetically infected shit, spraying my room does no fucking good. I swear he has this magical-thinking outlook about damn near everything, but if you asked him, he’d tell you he’s practical. No, Dad. Really no.

You see me talking about this all casual-like. I was definitely grumbling about it to myself between my ears, but I did not give him any shit (he made quite enough of his own, thank you) and there’s no reason to. We can’t help when our bodies don’t work right, and he was embarrassed enough. The only reason I am even talking about it here, which a lot of people would view as public humiliation, is because we need to know this sort of thing happens to the elderly and that someone’s got to fucking clean it up. Because right now you are fobbing off the care of the elderly on unpaid female relatives and underpaid care employees and that’s bullshit. Maybe if we all understood we are all headed for this ourselves if we live long enough, we might rethink that whole strategy.

And for the record, though I would not like to deal with this every day, I would rather deal with this than with him giving me attitude about food, or anything else really. There is no intent involved with malfunctioning intestines. There is all sorts of intent involved in being mean to someone.

If I end up having to wipe his ass, though, we’re going to talk because if I’m not gonna get paid for this other than room and board, someone needs to get paid for it. He needs to quit drinking anyway. I don’t know if that is contributing to his general situation. When he was last in the hospital his nephrologist suggested he might have neuropathy in his stomach, because Doc sees that sometimes in diabetics who, for probably obvious reasons, are a large part of his patient population. I don’t see why that couldn’t happen lower down the GI tract as well. Or something else could be going on. My money’s on Dad does not tell his doctors everything, even though if he did then it’s possible they would have something that could help him. I don’t know exactly what he is expecting to happen here.

He does seem to expect to die soon. Both his parents passed away in their early 70s, and he’s 72. He’s in a bad way now himself. But fuck, if I knew I was about to croak, I still wouldn’t want to put myself into situations where I’m shitting on the floor. That just compounds the misery. It isn’t worth it.

I need to get out and Uber (Eats) tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday or I am not going to make my insurance payment by the absolute last due date on the 21st. If it’s not looking good to get it done but I have some of it, I can ask Dad for the rest and he’ll probably be all right with that, but I’d rather not go there. If I aim for $70 a day to account for gas (say, $20 a day for that — so $50 above that) and make sure I get all of lunch hour, it might be possible. Youngsville seems to be pretty good for tips and that sort of thing, and now that I know they’re kind of close to Lafayette, I’m more willing to give them a shot once I’m there. And then I have to keep going after that because I have to re-up the fan site domain. Letting that go is not even an option.

I don’t know why I bother. I enjoy the hell out of the big man but I know why I do and it’s kind of sad and pathetic. It also keeps me out of trouble, and God knows men never seem to add anything but money (when they’re not taking it) and misery to my life, and I can make my own of both and it won’t even give me an STI. So if I’m gonna be into a guy, let it be a completely unavailable thing. But it still feels like “putting too much energy into a man who will never appreciate me,” which is exactly what it is, and I wouldn’t do this for any other guy anymore. Closest I’d get is going to see that Scottish comedian in Houston when he heads out thataway, and I probably won’t even do that, because I wouldn’t just have to pay for the ticket. It’s a five-hour trip one way and I’d need one night in a motel to be safe, minimum. I see lots of his funny stuff online. That probably will have to be enough.

I need to find out how to order a physical SIM from Visible by Verizon. If I can do that then I can finally switch to something cheaper and get a local number. I will wait until after I get the insurance and big man’s domain paid. Hosting isn’t due until 2 May.

Okay. Need sleep fall down go boom.