Stumbling Through Adulthood

Yipes, people.

Recently I listened to the first two books of Aliette de Bodard's _Dominion of the Fallen_ series and absolutely loved them. I was very grumpy to find out that my library does not have the third book of the trilogy, in either audio or e-book. There is one paper copy available but not close by and at this point, I'm all about audio and e-books, to my surprise. E-books especially since I can read when insomnia hits.

Anyhow, grumping, I set about finding something to listen to. Note that POS Libby has changed how hold suspensions work so I can't time things nearly as well as I used it, sigh. So I had nothing on deck (*).

I decided after two easy fantasy that it was time for some non-fic and searched accordingly. And gump, there was _The Origins of Totalitarianism_ sitting right there. It's been on my to-read list for... a very long time. I've worked around it, reading just about every easy access book on the subject but I really wanted to read a book I consider the foundational tome.

So I borrowed it. Audio book, though I did put the e-book on hold to have both if possible.

And I promptly had my sorry reading ass handed to me. OMG.

I'm a fast reader. I read print quicky, and I listen to audio at 1.25 speed. I do other things while reading, either playing Candy Crush Saga, knitting, cooking, walking, driving.

This? Yeah, no. It's dense. The sentences, while clear, are often involved. I often have to stop to think about high school history lessons and I thank my lucky stars that I got a decent grounding in European history, merci M. Malice and M. de Moncuit especially.

So yeah. It's going to take me a while and a lot of attention and no, I can't do my knitting project at the same time. I actually can walk, but that's about it. 🤣

(*) Of course, a book I wanted to read which said two weeks out earlier this week came in this morning and I had to suspend it.

It's a beautiful, cold, and sunny day here. We went rowing this morning. It was sculling, which I've only done twice before, so that was different and started poorly but got better. I was cold and tore up the back of my right hand, but it was so nice to be out.

Dh is doing better. His neck is still a wee bit sore, but it's improving. Phew.

Making fondue for dinner tonight. It'll just be Perry, dh, and me. Tomorrow I may have MIL and SIL over for brunch. Perry may or may not be there, he might be out rowing.

My aunt JoAnn died this year in March. It was hard. I remember clearly, on April 1st thinking about how that was a month that she hadn't lived in. Same as the seasons passed. Our first holidays without her. And now, as 2026 is about to commence and a whole new year is going to start without her. I'm still not coping well with this.

I've been applying for jobs. I can't tell if I'm going to get unemployment, since they claim that I was not available to work when I filed. Well, I was, because I was on leave, but also, the stupid university changed my end date... to help me, to be fair, allowing me to keep benefits for the rest of the month. However, they didn't tell me until pretty late and by then I was only checking my uni email once a week or so. Instead of Dec 1, they officially terminated me on Dec 3, two days later. I'll be really irked if getting benefits that I never used (stayed on dh's insurance, the state doesn't cover either of the meds I'm on... well, if covers one of them, but only partially and Zeppy not at all) costs me unemployment benefits. Sigh. Anyhow. Very few jobs out there, tbh, and many are temporary. We shall see.

Dh is on call this week. It's the third year in a row he's been on call between Christmas and New Year... and since rotations are 6 months apart, he's usually on call for the 4th of July weekend as well. Which means no hiking no outtings, nothing. It's quite annoying, especially since a) everyone else on his team is out, which makes being on call even more irksome, and b) hello? it's one of two non-Indians on his team.

Christmas in Bend was... fair to good, I guess. The week started poorly with the accident, but we were able to relax, get some walks in. The weather was decent, if windy a few of the days. We were able to pull off getting Linnea's bf down for less than 24 hours, but it was important. I still cannot believe we found a ticket -this was in October- for as cheap as it was, and that everything lined up well. Saw my mom a few times, with her boyfriend or whatever we want to call him, that was nice. Ate too much. We all bought too much chocolate! Hard to believe, but there is something as too much chocolate. A lot of it is home with me now, since my sister doesn't want it. I sent a lot back up to B'ham with Linnea and Perry and dh are doing a good job with the rest.

New Alzheimer's research that is incredibly positive. In mice, of course, and only in vitro for human cells, but this is better news than anything else I've seen: Pharmacologic reversal of advanced Alzheimer’s disease in mice and identification of potential therapeutic nodes in human brain. It's peer reviewed and a reputable journal, since fingers crossed. Free access, btw, if anyone wants to read it. I did, though I want to print it out and go over it more closely.

I don't do New Year's resolutions. I used to give myself projects for each month, and that worked well (especially the eating down the freezer and pantry months...) but I haven't in a while. My goals for this year are to get STUFF out of my house. My FIL's, my MIL's first, then we can work on ours, LOL. I have some hiking goals as well, but the most important of them is to get out as often as possible and to pre-plan most of our hikes. Considering the amount of crowding on trails and the impossibility of getting campgrounds any other time than 6+ months in advance, we need to be planning early ie now.

Talking about planning, we're thinking seriously about going to Japan this spring. I'm not 100% sure I want to, myself, since crowds freak me out and I don't like seafood :) but Linnea wants to go, and she should be graduating this winter (though she'd walk at the end of spring quarter in June) so. This would be with all three kids. They do seem to have embraced the 'any vacation can be all inclusive if you go with your parents' thing, LOL.

I really want to move forward with getting my novel (self) published this year. I just don't know how to get any traction on promoting it if I do. Plus the expense, LOL, since using AI to make a cover is a big no-no. Still. I need to work on that.

Any on knitting. I started a hat, had to rip it all out and never got started again since I was lazy at figuring out how to fix the mistake that caused the previous fail! I need to get on with it!

Ah well.

ETA. Thirty years (OMG) ago. Sob.

1. Rowing. Today was the Pink Ribbon Row, a fundraiser for breast cancer. All three of my kids were in boats, Perry in a single (2nd), in a double (2nd), and Linnea and Anne-Chloe rowed together in a double. As a result of Learn to Row, people now seem to be connecting US to THEM (especially Perry) as a very fast rate. And it's only going to continue: dh and I decided to... join the boathouse and continue rowing. It's going to disrupt our routines quite a bit: 5 am wake up three times a week at least... and that's if we go to the later class. If we decide to go to the earlier one, it'll be 4 am and driving in with Perry. We'll figure it out. All this on the background of dh's employer wanting RTO in February for 3 days a week, and nobody being happy about that.

2. Physically rowing has been a bit of a mixed bag for me: I love it, to my surprise, though I am always cold on the water. They tell me we'll get good workouts eventually and I believe them, but right now? I freeze. And I'm hurting. Perry has told me what I should do to fix the issues, but I haven't been able to reliably fix the issue and the sciatic nerve in my right leg is freaking hurting. It does not hurt while I'm rowing, or on long walks, but randomly during the day, it'll hit and I'll be pretty much hobbling and limping for a few hours. Do. Not. Like. It's been over a week of this, if I don't figure out something within the next week or so I'll head to a PT.

3. Bless her little heart for not saying anything, but Linnea managed to con the LtR coaches into taking her out on the launch on Friday, so she had a fullon view of my rowing, ouch and a little bit of dh's. She made it clear to both of us after we were off the water that she would not offer feedback unless we requested it, and I just didn't have it in me. What got me? She did talk about my boat in general (she was with the coach that had my boat) and her observations made so much sense, what we were doing as a group to eff things up. That said, we may not have been perfect but the 7 of us (instead of 8) won the three short races we did against dh's boat. 🤣🤣🤣

4. Yes, 4 is more than 3. Sigh. Anyhow, with boathouse membership, we get a club tech shirt. Patti, the person in charge, offered me... an extra-small shirt. I'm standing there, shocked that anyone could ever think I could ever fit in an extra-small. Body dysmorphia is read, people. It doesn't matter that intellectually I know that people who see me now see a smaller person, the emotional part of me just screams "they are not seeing the real you" and that's my reality. This doesn't happen with people who know me, but the random interactions with medical folk, the people at the dentist office etc. The Orwell (iirc) quote (paraphrased) of how inside every fat person is a thin person trying to get out? was never something I felt. There was never a thin person inside of me. That thin person never existed. It was me, and I am fat. And I am still the same person, therefor I am fat. And that's fine, but my perceived reality of me no longer fits with the reality of the world about me and I'm often confused. Just like how when I hiked or biked fat, I hated it when people complimented me, or implied I was a good fatty, or expressed surprise that I was where I was on a trail, I get nervous when people completely innocently imply that I am not, in fact, fat. I feel almost suspicious, like they are mocking me. Yeah, I'm pretty fucked up. Oh. And I took the small shirt so I can wear it as a top layer.

1. Dh and Anne-Chloe are going to Reading PA for a weekend in February, to go on a ride on a train being pulled by a steam locomotive on the main line. This is a major deal, LOL. I'm so happy Anne-Chloe was willing and able to go with him: I'd have gone, of course, and probably had a great time, but I don't really-really want to go. They should have a great time!

2. I need a new bra (or two) but I don't want to go bra shopping, sigh. But I have to. I think I'll take light rail or a bus from work to dt Seattle and then get a bus back to dt Redmond. It's stupid that I can get from the uni to dt Bellevue, but not easily the 4 miles from dt Bellevue to dt Redmond. Can't wait for the light rail to go all the way there, rather than stopping at Microsoft.

3. My shoes, after spending almost a month going back and forth over the Tampa Bay bridge were finally returned to me, 2.5 months after I mailed them out. Since it was for a warranty claim, I'm going to try to see if the gal I've been chatting with on twitter will help me out. Because at this point, it looks like I had the shoes for five months and am complaining that they're trashed, but no, they were dead within three months! I just really have no idea why, at some point, in Redmond, they covered up the "to" address and shipping the package diagonally across the country. Make that make sense, USPS!

I wrote about how my shoes got trashed waaay too soon for shoes that expensive. They were outside the amazon return window, so I decided to return them to the company (the rep on twitter suggested it), even though they might not replace or refund, because eh, otherwise they were hitting the trash and after two months, I at least wanted to try to get some money back, LOL.

The company is in San Diego.

I bought the postage online on 19 October and dropped them in the package bin inside the post office the next afternoon.

A week later when I checked on them, the USPS had no record of them.

Now it's pretty hard to file a claim when a package hasn't been scanned into the system at all. As in, there is no easy way of doing it. I went to the post office, no dice, they pretty much blew me off. I sent an email through the grievance part of the site and got back a message in such broken English I am still not sure what it was supposed to mean. So I did some more research.

On 6 November, I initiated a "missing mail" claim on the package, figuring that would at least force the post office to look for it.

A few weeks go by. Nothing.

Then, miracle! Package has been located, it seems, in the "Unclaimed/Being Returned to Sender" bin in Redmond? Is victory mine? Hint: no.

The next day, it's in Seattle. OK, maybe it's going to leave from there, headed south to San Diego.

Nope. Spokane. On the east side of the state... almost Idaho. WTF?

It only gets worse from there. After Spokane, my shoes spend a few days "In Transit to Next Facility" before resurfacing in... Indianapolis. Now even someone terrible at geography can tell just by looking at a map that San Diego and Indianapolis are... not in the same direction.

A few days later they're in.... Ybor City, Florida. Yeah, Indiana wasn't so bad, I guess. For the past 10 days, they've been bouncing back and forth from Ybor City and Seminole, Florida. I'm pretty sure that's a toll bridge. I'm glad I'm not paying their tolls.

What the ever-loving hell is going on?

Full details of the journey, if you read from the bottom up!





Dear USPS, please admit you've lost my shoes, and send me a check for $97.91, what I paid for the shoes, and $9.20. Total of $107.11, and you can toss them in Tampa Bay (really, though, don't) and stop paying the tolls to transport them back and forth and back and....

Wordle 1,155 1/6*

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

ETA something I posted in a comment. Sob!

It was storm, we played in the midst of a rare PNW one. It was also the precursor to a total TRAGEDY, TRAGEDY I TELL YOU!!! I saw that the site registered the fact that we now had TWO 1s on our stats that evening... but the next day? Wiped out, along with our 391 day streak! We never missed a day (and I have proof of that), never forgot to play etc, the computer didn't reboot, nothing changed, but the NY Times robbed me of my streak!!! I'm gonna be salty about that for A Long Time. Though, tbh, I'll keep track of my real streak in my head, LOL.

1. Tim Walz. He was my second choice for VP, after Secretary Pete, whom I actually adore. I was meh on Beshear, ick on Kelly, and Shapiro was a hard no (no, it wasn't Israel, being Jewish, or his confused story about volunteering -or not- for the IDF) because of the cover up for sexual harassment. Walz, I like, I'm thrilled with the positive energy this ticket is going to generate. I don't know if they can win, but if they don't it will be about our systemic EC weakness, nothing else. What I find funny is that Harris has recreated, in some way, the same energy as the Biden-Harris ticket. Fingers crossed, people.

2. Ugh, the abx are kicking my ass. I've been taking doxycyline for a few months for some skin stuff. It's been fine, no issues. The provider gave me an additional week of it, along with another antibiotic, for the cellulitis. I could not get it at Costco because Sunday, so I went to Bartells. OMFG, all generics are not created alike, holy hell. This one is horse pills -truly gigantic- and when I urped it up this morning -something that never happened in the past three months I've been taking this same med in a different format, the acid burn (pH is apparently between 1.8 and 3.3) left my throat in serious pain. I spent the day gagging on the thick mucous that I suspect is my body trying to coat a very painful and injured throat. OTOH, the infection is resolving a bit, I think. The swelling has gone back down to elbow level -it was a few inches past that on my biceps Sunday- and the whole area is much less painful. But yeah, don't get sick on a Sunday when Costco pharmacy isn't open, folks!

3. Linnea had to empty her apartment into our place. We're packed to the gills already, especially since all the stuff of my aunt's that my sister brought down from Vancouver.... she left here, I thought she was taking it to her place where she has plenty of room. But anyhow, Linnea's bedroom is pristine. All her stuff is everywhere in our living space. Not cool....

1. Went to REI to return the horrid boots yesterday and... checked out the scratch and dent area. And came out with a pair of the Merrells I wear every day "used once" (I had been planning on buying a second pair so one could go to work and not track in dirt from wherever I hike or walk), a pair of those same shoes in boot format (which I had also planned on getting at some point soon), a brand new small purple "wrong lid said the tag" Hydroflask (I wanted one that size to take milk for tea), and a "used-once-too-heavy said the said" large purple Hydroflask. All for less than the returned shoes, LOL. But of course then I came back to the sob inducing text from my MIL so the thrill of finding stuff I had planned on buying anyhow and a deal too good to pass up on the large one was kinda dimmed. But still, it was a nice haul.

2. White fonting a weight loss rant. Two injections of meds. Up one pound for the week. Want to cry. I really really need this to work. I keep on trying to remind myself that I am not at a therapeutic dose yet, but I'm also hungry all the time.

3. Headed to Nisqually Wildlife Refuge today to look at birbs. Not taking the camera. Last year, we had said we'd try to go every season but then we had my mom and missed, so we'll pick up here for this year for early Spring. It's a nice easy walk, there is a boardwalk into the Nisqually delta, and considering the snow in the mountains, sea level is good today. We had wanted to go snowshoeing but dh's back is a bit out of kilter and those two things don't mix, LOL. Anyhow, we are not taking the camera because of the wet and really, while we have a decent telephoto for most stuff, it's not a wildlife lens.

You know those minor things that annoy but are really nothing in the larger scheme? Well, this is about one of those.

Every year, probably because of some long ago cold in December, we run out of tissues at Christmas. We then purchase a gigantic quantity at Costco, in holiday themed boxes, and.... repeat the exact same pattern the following year. This has been going on for.... probably close to a decade.

I'm not overly font of the Christmas patterns to begin with, but having to use then in June was just insult to injury.

My mom has allergies so we finished last year's selection in the summer! Finally, I thought, the cycle was broken!

Then came Covid with her and dh sick (Linnea didn't have many symptoms, just some sneezing). Then came dh's cold that I caught.

I had to buy tissues again this Christmas. And about half the boxes have a Christmas pattern. Feh.

But!

Then I came up with a wonderful idea.

I did a tissues transplant! When I finished the box by my bed, with a flower pattern, I procured a new Christmas patterned one, carefully slit open the old box, tore apart the Christmas box, and transplanted the tissues from one box to the other. Resealed with tape (couldn't find any glue) and this should work fine. And I don't have to look at Christmas trees for the next three months when I wake up.

🤣

My old cell phone was... due for an update. It was already old when I got it in 2019, it's ancient now, hasn't had a security update in years, doesn't have 5G, and has long since run out of space.

I love that phone. I detest changing phones and indeed hold onto them as long as I can.

But then the fingerprint thingie stopped working reliably. And the apps crash constantly. And the phone hangs. And--

Got myself a refurb Samsung.

It was time. I have the new phone, I'll start transitioning to it over the next few weeks (I have to build up CandyCrush boosters and use up the ones on the old phone, LOL) and probably switch over towards the end of the month.

But now I must name it. My previous phone was DaisyBlue. She has a clear case and a pretty sticker! Obviously, can't get a photo of the phone with the phone, but this is the sticker!



I don't want another clear case, so I'll probably not go the sticker route this time.

The other thing I am thinking of doing is getting two cases this time! I know, what a splurge! One of them with a popsocket or other holding device to use while hiking or travelling.

Sorry, random stuff this morning. It's pouring again.