Stumbling Through Adulthood

1. I'm devastated at what the media and some leading Dems did to Joe Biden. And disgusted. Some of them were people that I respected. Others were people I sent money to. I will be more than happy to send money to their primary opponents next time they run. I do love that those disgusting people wanted an open primary at the Convention, and Joe Biden, in a Dark Brandon move, denied them that by endorsing her. It was brilliant.

2. I love Kamala Harris. I supported her in 2020 and was looking forward to supporting her in 2028. I've spent this past week, however, in an up-then-down sort of way. There is a lot of excitement about her candidacy, and it's infectious. But then... I honestly don't think she can win. I think that, like Clinton, she'll blow out the popular vote easy but fail in the Electoral College. I hate this. I think in 2028, after four more years of capable and stable leadership and Trump -either dead or completely mush-for-brains- out of the picture, she could win. This year? I don't think so. They're motivated by hate and they have a systemic electoral college advantage. I think we'll also lose the Senate. By not doing any partisan gerrymandering, NY may have cost us the ability to retake the House and after the Supreme Court's decision about racial gerrymandering the few districts we could have grabbed either in 24 or 26 are in jeopardy. So I'm no longer hopeful about our chances this year, and some of the polls are already scaring me (there is evidence that a) Biden significantly outpolls Harris in some swing states, b) that the most reliable voting block doesn't like her -their mistake, imo-, and c) the never-Trump vote might not follow Harris.) I'll donate and maybe even volunteer and be positive etc when out in public but this -with my two or three readers, and three maybe be an overestimate, 🤣- I'm being honest about my feelings. Ugh.

3. Work is sucking these days. I'm bored.

4. Continuing to plug away at the weight loss thing with Zeppy. That drug is a fucking miracle. I've been eating the same way for over a year now and last fall, I'd pretty much stopped losing more than a few ounces here or there. Zepbound restarted that, I suspect with some biochemical tinkering of my set point, leaving my body no longer defending a very high weight. I've lost more than I ever thought I would or could and I'm less than 10lbs from a dream goal, which might or might not happen: being able to ride Icelandic horses here, right down the road from me! If I get there, I'll be thrilled, but even if I don't, it'll be fine, I'll just have to ride them in Iceland where the weight limit they allow is higher, LOL. I feel so much more relaxed about the day-to-day ins and outs of dieting and eating and exercising. I've always hated and mistrusted the addiction framing on people being fat, for various reasons (*), and at first, I was a bit surprised at the data that show that GLP-1 drugs are effective at helping with addiction. They seem to, which is great and I've seen some commentary about how yeah, fatties are just addicts but... GLP-1 are also being shown to be effective in Parkinson's disease and in a phase 3 trial, Alzheimer's. I don't think we're "there" yet on figuring out exactly how they work and how they help people, though they clearly do. (*) Hard to be addicted to something that you need to actually survive. In addition, the arguments seem very much which came first the chicken or the egg to me. Anyhow, as more research into GLP-1 drugs come out, I hope the addiction model gets ditched wholesale, and hopefully we'll get some insight into the brain biochemistry that is very clearly involved. It always was, as many of us fatties have long suspected, just a little bit more complicated that Calories In Calories Out, which, while try, is elides the whole "how the calories are processed".

5. In light of that, I'll share this review: Trapped fat: Obesity pathogenesis as an intrinsic disorder in metabolic fuel partitioning. Normally I'd steer clear of anything with Gary Taubes's name on it (his agenda has led him down some pretty tortuous paths) but this is nevertheless interesting, though I haven't done enough of a deep dive or search on primary sources to trust it all. Still worth a read, if only to be familiar with this reframing.

6. This is in pink! My baby girl turned 21 this week! OMG, how the eff did that happen, she was just a baby two minutes ago! She's an extraordinary young person!

7. We have a few days of camping booked for late September at Crater Lake. The boat tours will have shut down by then. 😢 Why do they stop those a full 10 days before they close the campground? Still, looking forward to that. And we booked two nights (and a previous one so we can get an early start) at a campground near Mt Baker for early September. Had to book Sunday and Monday night, which was the best I could do for minimizing vacation days. We'll get up early Tuesday morning and hopefully I can get into work in time for a solid half day. Tomorrow, we have to drive Linnea to Bellingham so she can start packing hrr place up, since her old and new places don't overlap, sigh, but we'll be taking her furniture down. Anyhow, plan is to leave her the trailer and head out to go on three short hikes in the area.

8. Perry is leaving for a regatta in Canada tomorrow at 5am. I should get some sleep, we have to drive him to the airport. He'll be pretty close to Niagara Falls, and he's hoping to get a group of athletes together to go visit. I hope he does, and I really want to go back there one of these years, I loved going when I was a kid.

9. Still looking for a plan to get my novel moving towards publication. I know I need an agent, but each time I look at agents/agencies, I realize my poor little book doesn't quite fit into any category. Yes, romance, but it's too long to fit their size requirements. One of these days, I'll figure out my next steps. Maybe I should find someone to put it in audiobook format, since that seems to be a good way to get traction. Anyhow.

1. Tail of the Lake this morning. I got up early, drove into Seattle by myself and watched Perry's early AM race. Timewise, he came in second fastest on the water, but these were Masters races, they opted to not have an open category, so he came in 4th once all the handicaps were applied. The nice thing is that he'd had been 2nd had he raced his peers, aka the 20-early thirties group, so he's happy. After his race I went home to pick up dh and my mom and we went back. Second race was Perry in the double, and they were by far fastest on the water, but lost out on first because of the handicaps again. The handicaps don't appear to be linear and can be pretty significant, LOL. Anne-Chloe was up next, in a "mixed Masters 8." She brings down the age of her boat by a lot, LOL. Anyhow, they placed 5th on the water, 7th official. All in all a pretty good day. I do hae one question that nobody, not even my GenZ kids has been able to answer. There were mixed categories, pretty common, but also a "open gender" category. I guess that would allow transwomen/girls to row with men/boys? But nobody is sure. I looked US Rowing's gender policy and it's such a fucked up mess, I don't think it had anything to do this this open gender category. Note that Perry says that I should not be surprised that any and every policy by US Rowing is fucked up.

2. I bought some plants, and we planted them. A bit late in the season, but eh. A few asters, some perennial geraniums, and a lavender.

3. I've been posing a piece of fanfic that I wrote a long time ago over on AO3, revising as I went along. I started posting on 31 July, and with a few gaps because of vacation etc, finished posted all 51 chapters today. People mostly liked it. I'm glad that's done, I've been meaning to revise and post that for a few years now.

Adder chapter 4 of my novel over on my asteralison journal.

Chapter 4.

I just keep tearing up and sobbing for no good reason whatsever.

I mean I started to cry today at:

-- the president of South Korea singing American Pie (WTF, self?)
-- Nebraska NOT passing a 6 week abortion ban (WTG, Nebraska!)
-- Jamie Raskin ringing the bell for having finished his chemo treatments!
-- remembering that Perry and his crew team start their stupid drive down to Sacramento at 3am tomorrow. I hate that they do that drive, and I hate the drive back even more: after three days of regatta, they start to drive home at noon at the earliest. It's a 14-hour drive.
-- Don't You Cry, by Kamelot, playing on Spotify
-- realizing that my beloved Jonathan, from the stupid novel I wrote, will only ever be loved by me and a few others, because I can't figure out how to move on to get this stupid novel published, and I feel like I'm failing a fucking fictional character in a book I wrote. I mean, really, self?
-- see above, only Melissa.
-- Lindsey Graham sleeping while a victim of the TX abortion ban told her story. OK, those were tears of rage.
-- Hugh Grant looking old. I don't even particularly like Hugh Grant.
-- the fucking Republicans blocking -essentially- the Equal Rights Amendment.
-- my kids -all three!- talking about rowing together. Anne-Chloe is going to Masters regionals in June (we may try to go down!) and Perry was commenting on the line-ups they had her in, and is quite impressed, since they've got her in at least one very strong boat.

That's all I can think of right now. Sigh. I feel so fucking stupid.

1. This past week, we've had a new kind of bird at the feeder: a few pairs (at least two, probably three) of brown-headed cowbirds. These are pretty birds, but asshole birds of the worst kind.

2. I was going to rant about Melon Husk and what's happening on twitter, but decided not to. Instead I'll post what I posed to my alternate twitter account in response the the FridayKiss prompt of "words"

“Just say whatever you have to say so I can get to sleep,” she said. He flinched. She knew she was being harsh, but she was expecting his next words to be “I should have told you before, but there is someone else, she didn’t want come with me but—”

3. I saw the Big Kitty in the yard/driveway again a few times recently. I really prefer my predators in the zoo.

💜 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.

Happy Birthday, Jonathan!

I'm too lazy to make separate tiny posts.

1. My T key is on its way out. And my laptop, which was an expensive Costco purchase, is a piece o' crap without a way to replace the keyboard separately, it would be a PITA to do. So I purchased a Bluetooth keyboard from Microsoft, should be here tomorrow. It isn't just that it has a hard time typing ts, it's that sometimes it gives me two. The whole thing disrupts my typing.

2. Dh is teaching TEALS this morning. I love hearing the enthusiasm in his voice.

3. Something positive re writing to share, I'll do that tomorrow with a real keyboard.

I'm 94% through an absolutely fucking dreadful book that was actually published by Tor. I finished about half of it on my flight from Reykjavik and am intent on finishing it.

Why? Why finish an awful book?

So I can write a scathing review.

It's so fucking bad, I am eager to write that review, maybe to spare someone else from going through almost 500 pages of drivel without a plot.

Fanfiction has the concept of pwp which stands for -mostly- porn without plot or plot? what plot! This piece of shite is both porn-or-erotica-less and no plot to boot.

I'll link the review when I'm done.

ETA. There are some excellent negative reviews on goodreads that do a better job than I ever could, so I kept it short and ranty.

My review. I quoted it below as well.

OMG. How did this book get published let alone rate over 4 * on goodreads?

I started it on a long plane ride and finished it when I got back just to see if it could be as dreadful the whole way through. It wasn't. It got worse.

Porn-without-plot fanfiction, I get. This had no porn, no erotica AND no plot.

The goodreads summary that compares it to _The Goblin Emporor_? Please. That was a good book. This is nothing like that.

This is 499 pages of poorly written drivel, characters that are paper thin, no plot, no erotica, just a bunch of tropes, ridiculously over-the-top tortured inner dialog, and bits of spaghetti thrown at the wall to see if anything will stick.

The minor characters are caricatures as well. The uses-alternate-pronouns Ace (don't for a minute hope that any exploration of gender was done. There are just extra pronouns.). The simpering gay man with a good heart that just made you cringe. The stalwart captain who-- Oh NM. Not a single secondary character with even a nanometer of depth.

There are some excellent negative reviews on this. Read them and don't waste your time.

Linnea is still doing fine. She doesn't do well with pills, so has the pink liquid amoxy. It's gross, but I think it's for the best, since generic antibiotics tend to be these enourmous horse pills. My sweet girl gave me a hug to say thank you for helping her yesterday and getting up this am at 4 to get her her meds and a bit of food to take them with, and for the Kirby. She's always so appreciative of everything, you want to do stuff for her.

Perry's plantar wart, which was "treated to" beetle venom on Wednesday hurt like hell last night, but a bit better today. Also in Perry news, he's picking up a friend at midnight tonight from the airport, rowing with him tomorrow morning, then driving him an hour or so north of here. I am not happy about his rowing tomorrow. His center of the wart "fell off", leaving a deep crater for bacteria ridden lake water to party in. He's insisting that it's fine, even though the doctor said very clearly that she didn't want lake water in the crater if they "scooped out" the wart. Perry is insisting that that just means if the wart was scooped out, not if he has a hole in it from this treatment. I call BS. Oh well. He's an adult, though I'll be really pissed if he ends up in the hospital with sepsis.

Dh was at trains today, will be at trains tomorrow.

I'm depressed.

The weather is not as bloody hot, but it's humid as effing hell.

I posted an X-rated excerpt from my novel to my Aster twitter account for a small hashtag fest. I'm afraid it might have popped up on my nwhiker account... which Anne-Chloe follows. I hadn't thought about that before I posted. It's been posted to my Aster journal. It is x-rated/R-rated, whatever, explicit.

I'm reading Barbara F. Walter's _How Civil Wars Start_. I've read enough of her stuff over the past few years that nothing is a complete surprise, but it's an excellent book, well laid out, and a fast read. I highly recommend it.