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.)