Yes, it's Junuary. Summer will be here eventually. For now, well, I just still wear my down jacket.

1. Yesterday my twitter feed was all Bridgerton breathlessness, today it's all Kate Middleton (about 50/50 hateful vs breathless). I'm not overly invested in either, but I love seeing people happy or excited about things.

2. When BamBam does a cat loaf, he looks like a loafed cat. When Auri does a cat loaf, she looks like a loafed cat. When Twisp does a cat loaf, he looks like a turkey.

3. Bless them. Years ago, when we moved in, we had a view of the lake to the south. Then Jan, two owners ago, put up some shit trees on her fence line with her neighbors. Over the years, they obscured over 1/3 of our view, to our dismay, but hey, not our trees, and we didn't feel like we could say anything. Well, the current neighbors trimmed them big time, restoring a lot our view (and only marginally improving theirs), so we're quite happy and have thanked them profusely.

1. I made an appointment for when I get back to see about weight loss drugs. I don't know how this is going to go... I don't have a regular person, don't do screenings, avoid doctors like the plague.

2. I'm reading an actual paper book. I've read a few recently, but they've been daytime books, this is an in-bed book (I prefer to read non-fiction while sitting up, so I pay attention in a way I don't need to with fantasy, LOL). I noticed two things. One, it's big and bulky and annoying compared to my kindle. This... chilled me to the bone. When I'm reading the paper book, my eyes go straight to the right page, and I have to remind myself that no, eyes need to go read the left side page in a real-life book. Ugh. I never EVER thought that would EVER in ANY WAY be something my brain would have to use extra processing on.

3. Ugh. Linnea is down for the weekend -that's a good thing and Anne-Chloe came over for brunch so we had all three kids for that- but her train back to B'ham was cancelled because of mudslides on the line. Fine, that happens. There will be buses, Amtrak says, but they will be "late". How late? Because the last time, it was two hours late and we sat at the station waiting and waiting and waiting, we could have more easily driven Perry (at the time, iirc) up. So, ugh. Really don't want to just hang out at the station with no info.

... I love my spouse.

1. I have an MSI laptop. It was a POS pretty much from day one and I hate it. The keyboard started crapping out about 3 months after I bought it from Costco but I couldn't replace it because I was in the middle of a graduate program and could not be without the laptop for the time it would take MSI to repair it, Grr. Keyboard was unreliable but still vaguely functional until about 2 years ago when it became unusable.

2. So I've been using a bluetooth keyboard since. It's bulky and annoying but it works.

3. We are going to Yurp in February and ugh, what to do? I mean, I don't want to lug my keyboard internationally, especially since we might not be renting a car so train etc.

Solution 1:
Buy a new computer. I don't strictly need it and I really didn't like that expensive solution. It would have worked, of course.

Solution 2: drop in a new keyboard. That was my preferred solution but... all the available keyboards are drop-shipped from China and one month isn't enough to reliably get one here.

Solution 3: Dh had said we could just take his Surface, which, fine, but I hate the tiny keyboard on that thing. So... he suggested I bring along my bluetooth keyboard to use with the Surface. Lightest most portable solution yet!

This is one of the reasons I keep him around. I never went down the path of how we could share the Surface because I hate the keyboard on that thing.

😃

I do three things when listening to pollical shows on youtube, audiobooks, or music.

1. Slowly teach myself to knit and practice that
2. Microsoft Jigsaw
3. Play CandyCrush Saga.

Today I got an email from King with the following image in it:



Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've played over 8000 levels of CandyCrush. At least they don't tell me what percentage I'm at, because that was cringe. I mean "Only 2% of players have reached this level" translates to "98% of people stopped because they wasted so much freaking time at this game."

But.

I have never given them any money, so eh.

And!

Dh said when I reached 10k levels, we were going to throw a party!

Somehow, I love that idea.

1. I asked our music teacher if she would be willing to come over and hang out here. Hopefully my mom will sleep late and it won't be too much of an issue. Heidi might have to teach a class from here, but if so, we should be back, it would just be a quiet overlap. Part of the issue is that WSDOT is closing roads and exits to the freeway around UW and that makes getting home something that will take longer than expected. Ah well, we'll figure it out, I think.

2. youtube's ads are really pissing me off. I have an adblocker, but when they demanded it, I did ad them to my exceptions list. Of course, they're shitty google scum, and it's not just an ad at the start of the video, it's ads every 2-3 minutes on videos that last maybe 7-10 minutes? I'm probably going to be cutting down on my political viewing as a result. You can skip the ads in the middle of the videos, but most of the time, I'm listening not watching, and either teaching myself to knot, playing Candy Crush or doing a Microsoft Games jigsaw puzzle so pausing to dismiss the ad is a pita. Add to that that the ads are all crappy clickbait take advantage of the gullible type. When I see shit like this I am again reminded that after Trump's stupid comment, I could have sold homeopathic bleach pills and been a mega-zillionaire. Right now the workaround is to bring up the share button and watch the video in the embed. Again, if it was ONE or even TWO ads at the start, I'd grit my teeth and bear it. Interrupting twice in ten minutes is egregious.

3. Some bready thoughts. Perry bought me a bag of 6 cardamom rolls from the Norwegian bakery last weekend and I've been having one in the morning in addition to my usual skyr. I love love love cardamom. These are not sweet, even less sweet than Finnish pulla (I love that too), but just a wonderful plain not enriched roll with cardamom. I need to learn to make them. Which brings me to my other November project, this one for Perry and me. Dinner rolls. I've never found a recipe that balances 'fussy to pull off at the last minute' and 'good'. David's aunt Greta used to have one, I'll have to ask if she still does. Perry and I have tried recipes over the years, but nothing was ever a repeat. I think this year I'm going to start baking a few batches, or maybe half batches now, and pick the best recipe in that way. Perry coaches every day and food that goes to the boathouse does NOT come home, so we have an obvious outlet for extras, LOL. So. Anyone have a good roll recipe to share?

Considering the colors I had available, I think I did an ok job at a Pride phone screen, LOL.

It was a nice weekend, if a busy one!

1. Still looking for some titles for my novel. My two current top choices -which are the only two fucking titles I've been able to come up with that make even vague sense- are You, Me, and Maybe Tomorrow and A Hand at the Edges, or something to that effect.

2. Can't get my Kindle, my beloved Paperwhite purchased in 2013, to read epub files, at a time when amazon has abandoned mobi and gone to epub and more and more of the books at the library are in that format. I'd get a new Kindle, but as usual they put too many features and degraded the experience. The main thing I hate with new Kindles is the fact that the screens are flat. My older one has a bezel around the reading area and it keeps grubby fingers off the screen, and just feel better to me. The reviews on the newer ones are not as good as on the older ones. Ugh. I hope amaszon figures this out.

3. My aunt's birthday was officially 21 March, same as my MIL's. We celebrated MIL's yesterday, with pot roast and a vanilla cake with chocolate filling and chocolate buttercream. This should be it for a while, I'm so done with cooking, cakes, and celebrations, LOL.

💜 Attachment and loss of everyday things. Amazon tells me I bought this set of earbuds cases back in 2017. We each had one, mine was of course purple. I've used it since then to hold my Skullcandy wired earphones. My purple-no-longer-available earphones, sob. I lost case and earphones last week, I'm guessing at IKEA which is the last time I definitely remember having them. I'm surprisingly sad. I mean, I have a set of nice Bose overear headphones, but I've travelled many miles with my wired ones, rebuying the same ones as needed. The case itself went to Europe a few times, Canada several, cross country etc. Ah well. Dh still has his case in a computer bag, since he doesn't really use wired earbuds at all, and I'll probably steal it unless I decide to spend $9 to get 5 small cases when I only need one. I can still find wired earbuds but they are getting harder and harder to locate, can't find them in purple at all, and the new models all have a mic, which I don't like. In part because I hate the different feel on each side of my face, in part because Google Assistant seems to un-disable itself more often when it senses a mic. Ah well. Anyhow. I'll miss my pretty purple case!


💚 So we did my aunt's 80th birthday party in Vancouver this weekend. It was both fun and utterly exhausting. I baked three gigantic lemon cakes (of which we consumed 1.75, so I'm glad I had three). David did a beautiful job with the decorating! My aunt was so happy, and it was so nice to see a few of her friends that I've known for a long time again. Best part of course was hanging out with my siblings! And my kids all made it up, which absolutely thrilled my aunt. We of course had too much food, much of which is now in my fridge and freezer, sigh. I wanted to drop most of it off in Bellingham with the kids, but we had a two hour wait at the border (longest wait I've had in over a decade) so we just wanted to get back. I'll bring them frozen stuff later.


💙 My mom is... well, aside from the dementia, she tripped in the kitchen the night before they came and caught herself on the edge of the counter. She didn't complain, brother noted that the wrist was swollen the next morning, and we debated if they should come, but since the swelling went down with icing and that she was using the hand a bit gingerly but normally, it was decided (we all agreed) to come and deal with it here if needed. Which we did the next day, when she woke up with swelling and serious bruising. She's on blood thinners, so some is always expected but this was, to my eye blood settling. Like it did after AC broke her arm. And her foot. And Linnea her foot. Sure enough, displaced fracture of the distal ulna, sigh. My sister went with her to Urgent Care and told them clearly that she would remove anything they put her in. My mother is notorious for taking out IVs, taking out her O2 canula, removing bandages too early, once removing stitches before they dissolved etc, so this isn't a new thing, and my sister was insistent. So instead of a plain "sugar tong" splint, they decided to use a "cast" that hardens. LOL, it was off the next morning, sigh. Basically they put us in the worse of both worlds situation: not a hard plaster cast, not a removable one, but a temporary that is supposed to be "difficult" to remove. We used a wrist brace and the splint to immobilize as best we could. Anyhow, she'll need surgery. A word about my mother and pain: she broke her arm as a little girl, went a week without telling anyone. While pregnant with her first child, who died shortly after birth, she needed a root canal. It was done without anesthesia, because they were afraid of the effects on the baby. When I was 7 or 8, she cut her hand on a broken glass in the sink. I could see the fucking BONE. She put a bandaid on it. We should know by now that her pain cues are not great and the dementia has just made that worse. She's seeing a surgeon today; we'll see what happens. Update: surgeon says it's not displaced, she's getting a molded removable cast. Fingers crossed it heals well.

🤬 I gained 7lbs over the weekend. FML. I don't understand how that can be the case, but there it is. That's about a month worth of <1000 calorie days erased in three days. And while I did eat more than normal, it wasn't outrageous. Sigh. Makes me want to cry. Back on track since yesterday (well, Monday, but I did have cheese and crackers for dinner on Monday.) And everyone always says "Oh, it'll come right off" but that isn't how it's ever worked for me. Those massive gains that people always claim are temporary because they came on fast etc because of an event never are for me.

🤮 I've been taking vitamins for the past month. I ended up getting the gummi ones from Target and while I didn't love them, they were ok. I was told that the Vitafusion from Costco were "great" by a few people. I bought a bottle and ew. I don't expect my vitamins to taste like candy, but ew. I'll go back to artificially colored and flavored asap. Of course I didn't open them until this morning because if I'd tasted them yesterday, I'd have given the bottle to my sister, it's what she takes.

📱 My phone is usually a symphony of light blue and darker blue. I made some changes for spring, LOL.



😥 📘 I'm so sad and angry at myself about my poor little novel. I just cannot find a title and without a title, I'm dead in the water. I can't send out queries or do anything to attempt to get my silly story published without one. I did a full re-read, trying to get some new ideas, but nothing came to mind. I've asked my sister and she has no ideas. And apparently -gulp- my BIL read it too. OMG, it's full of sex, excuse me while I hide. But even he liked it. No title suggestions, though. Sob. I've gone so far as to try title generators on the internet. I really think ChatGPT is going to be my next step.

I don't know how people find titles for their books. This remains a total mystery to me.

I have written three full length novels.

One is self-published on amazon, it has a title because a friend who read it suggested an excellent one.

Two are sitting on my harddrive unpublished because I cannot for the freaking life of me find a title for either of them, and no "Charles and Jaime" or "Melissa and Jonathan" isn't going to cut it.

I have no idea how to synthesize the feeling, the essence of either of these stories into a title, and as a result, I can't seem to move forward with either.

It's driving me nuts.

Contrast to when I was writing fanfiction: often I started with the title, or a phrase and wrote a story around that (phrase "Sirius Black has become a liability" led to _Liability_). I never had a problem, titles came easily, cementing themselves to the story without effort.

Not so much with these two novels. The first one (C&J) I'm not fussed about. It is older and needs some major revisions. The newer one, I want to move forward with. It's been read by three people, all three have been positive and one who doesn't know me beyond a twitter handle suggested I start thinking about 'querying', which I guess it when you try to get an agent... but I can't do that without a freaking title and I seem to be stuck on that. I've asked my sister -one of my three readers- and she's as titleless as I am.

Ugh. I'm frustrated. I need to come up with a plan and I'm not having any luck.

OMG, IDEA! I could upload my whole novel to ChatGPT/Bing and ask it to come up with a title.....

1. Full disclosure, if only to myself: have lost three days in a row. Must stop with the panic at every minor plateau. It's so hard, though, when I'm constantly hungry and not seeing the results of that hunger puts me on edge, LOL.

2. Raw peanuts are gross. I buy people grade peanuts for the birdies (the bird grade stuff is barely cheaper and has a lot of waste). I decided to taste one today. I mean, raw almonds are decent, raw pistachios, and cashews are fine, why shouldn't raw peanuts? But NO, nope. Ew. I mean, I get that peanuts aren't tree nuts, but ew. Glad I only tried half of one.

3. Dh's company has gone from PTO to "D"TO, aka discretionary time off. It'll be interesting to see how that works out, since it relies on communication with one's manager, with all the personality, race, gender, and caste conflicts that can crop us. I hope they monitor carefully to make sure people are taking time. Dh is a bit grumpy, having worked his way up to 5 weeks of vacay a year.