Catching Up: Busy Girl Edition

So what have I been up to? Well…

Crocheting. My happy thing these days is to crochet while watching YouTube in the evening. So far this year, I’ve finished prayer shawls, 2 NICU blankets (including one with the frogged yarn from another blanket), and I’m almost done with another prayer shawl.

Health. I’ve been dealing with serious fatigue, which my psych nurse thinks is the depressive phase of bipolar 2. Oh freaking joy… Daniel has also been adding stress to my life, so that isn’t helping.

Politics. I’ve been writing postcards for my local Democrats and Activate America to help get out the vote in Ohio, Arizona, Montana, and here in Washington. It doesn’t feel like a lot, but it’s something that needs to be done and I have a lot of spare time.

Catching Up: My Party’s Convention Was Cooler than Your Party’s Convention Edition

I said what I said. :p

[+] But seriously… The RNC’s roll call was orderly and parliamentary. The DNC had a dance party for theirs complete with a DJ and turntable. 🙂 The whole thing is below, but you can skip around the video if you want to see how they pulled it off.

[+] Best speeches. Not gonna lie… Michelle was better than Barack… and that takes some doing!

[+] Republicans at the DNC. I’m sharing this video not to gloat, but because they have good things to say.

[+] Geeking out over Pete Buttegieg. If you watched Pete Buttegieg’s speech, you know that he joked about how some people might know him from FOX News, and that’s because he goes on there somewhat frequently to bring his message to a group of people who might normally not hear it. People act like he’s stupid, but he very calmly explains why the commentators are incorrect and does so in such a way that said commentators don’t realize that he is calling them “stupid” until the end. Dude is a Harvard grad, a Rhodes scholar, a polyglot, and a veteran. He can talk policy like nobody’s business, and I’m really hoping he has a prominent place in Kamala’s administration.

[+] J.D. Vance. Dude cannot talk to regular people. Like seriously, his donut shop video (which is below) is embarrassing. He was nice to the woman who didn’t want to be on camera, but it’s apparent that he doesn’t talk to working class people regularly. I mean, how about GOOGLING the place where you’re going to be visiting? I’m pretty sure his staff could have done that!

Then, there’s the gaffe at Pat’s Steaks where he tried to mock John Kerry (and just sounded awkward)

He has also attacked the head of the American Federation of Teachers for not having kids and claims she is trying to brainwash kids. Like, seriously? When asked about the remarks, Vance tried to deflect and made a stupid remark alleging that she is trying to put pr0n in school libraries. Dude, my kiddo has been in public school all of his life, and I can tell you that mask mandates are there to protect kids, the “woke stuff” is teachers teaching a history that hasn’t been whitewashed, and there isn’t any pr0n in school libraries.

He, like the person at the top of the ticket, insults people, and doesn’t talk about policy at all. He comes off as an incredibly unpleasant person, and I am biting my thumb at the Ohioans who put this troglodyte in the Senate.

[+] The feel of both campaigns. As I said before, Trump insults people, does not talk policy at all, which is not good because we need to be able to vote based on policy decisions, not personalities. Ditto with Vance. Kamala’s campaign is best described by something Michelle Obama said in her DNC speech: “The contagious power of hope”. She is running a fairly positive campaign, and there is this air of hope and joy. Her choice of Tim Walz as a running mate was excellent because he can actually talk to people and he has actually accomplished things in Minnesota to which he can point when people start asking about his fitness to be vice-president. I actually *LIKE* listening to him talking, and he gives off the air of caring about people’s needs rather than the Trump/Vance power grab.

OK… back to working on my prayer shawl.

Catching Up: August 14, 2024 Edition

Wow. My break from posting lasted longer than expected.

[+] To nobody’s surprise… I’m laughing my butt off at how Joe Biden played the GOP with the timing of his announcement that he was dropping out of the race. He hasn’t said that it was intentional, but he completely managed to foul up Trump’s campaign to the point that Cheeto Guevara has had to redo his attack ads.

Also…

I'm with her.

Why wouldn’t I be??? I’ve been voting her into various statewide and national offices since her first run for California Attorney General in 2010. The last thing I did before moving to Washington in 2016 was to vote for her in the California State Primary for U.S. Senator! I’m even getting involved in her presidential campaign.

[+] Vance. I did my due diligence and looked into J.D. Vance… and it just turned me more and more off from him. It’s not just his bitchy remarks about cat ladies. He solicited money to create a charity to fight opioid abuse and used the money on a political consultant to decide about running for office instead. (Appalachians are big mad about this.) He had a lot of advantages and he could have used them to actually *HELP* people… but he didn’t. He and Trump are very focused on what will benefit themselves, and that is not an appropriate attitude to have for the offices they are seeking. Also? He’s allegedly a techbro, and none of my Silicon Valley friends in the industry have anything good to say about him. He has almost no political experience, and his foot-in-mouth comments show that.

Not to mention, a lot of Appalachia thinks he’s a loser. There’s a whole Twitter hashtag about this.

I do enjoy a good troll.

[+] Books. I finally got a Mount Vernon City Library card (which only took me 8 years), and I’ve been curled up in Joanne Fluke’s books since. A new one is coming out at the end of this month, and I’m reading through all of her previous ones to get ready!

[+] Skagit County Fair. Daniel and I finally made it to the county fair for the first time in 7 years. We had been thwarted by surgeries (2018), family funerals (2019), and the pandemic (2020-2023). It was hot, but it was still worth it. My monster indulged me traipsing through all the animal barns, the quilting and craft displays, and standing in line to cross a few “fair food” items off of my bucket list. (The deep-fried Snickers was a 9/10, and the deep-fried Twinkie was completely forgettable.)

[+] Camp NaNoWriMo. I attempted Camp NaNoWriMo in July, and only made it to 20,000 words because of severe writer’s block. Given that it was completely a last minute decision, I’m going to do some planning and re-attempt it in November.

Catching Up: April 11, 2024 Edition

So…

[+] I’ve been struggling with severe depression and COVID-related fatigue for the last 2 1/2 months. I didn’t know what was going on with the depression until I was supposed to have coffee with my former workwife Kim, and I was lying in bed trying to drag myself out. I didn’t know how seriously I needed that coffee date until she hugged me and I realized how much I missed seeing her and working with her. She and I get each other, and we bonded over our kids six years ago. I’m grateful that she had the time off from work and grad school for coffee.

[+] I just finished a prayer shawl on March 30th of which I’m really proud.

The whole shawl.

Segment 1.

Segment 2.

Segment 3.

I made it for Jay Bowen, a local artist and elder with the Upper Skagit Tribe, with whom my church has a relationship. He happened to be there the next morning on Easter when we blessed it, and I had the privilege of draping it across his shoulders. The idea was that each panel was an individual piece of stained glass.

[+] Daniel just turned 15 this past Sunday. Here’s a picture taken on Easter Sunday.

Daniel and me on Easter Sunday.

Why yes, he is quite a bit taller than I am. He passed me height-wise more than two years ago.

[+] I watch a lot of court cases on YouTube while I crochet, and a particularly maddening one was that of Rita Pangalangan who was convicted of murder along with her boyfriend of murder in the death of her daughter Cristina. Her boyfriend put Cristina in a hot car, where she sat for more than hours while he and Rita got high on meth. As the mom of a disabled child, I kinda want to slap her face repeatedly. I mean, how could she do something so selfish and stupid?!?!?!? I have a severely disabled kid, and my rear passenger doors have the child locks engaged so that Daniel can’t open them in traffic (which he hasn’t tried to do for years, but I have no trust). You better darn well believe that I know where Daniel is at all times, and I don’t leave him in the car, especially in the summer. Getting high on meth just adds a layer of horror to the situation. I can’t fathom putting myself knowingly in a position like that where I would lose the ability to care for myself, let alone my child, without another competent adult taking care of Daniel. As a single mom with sole custody, everything relating to Daniel falls on me.

Catching Up: January 23, 2024 Edition

It has been a month, y’all.

[+] About 30 minutes after I posted my last entry, I received news that one of the people I was close to in Montana had died. Julie was one of my “Montana moms”, and she was one of the people who dropped everything to be with me when I was in the hospital after having Daniel. She was one of the hosts of my baby shower, and she was just an amazing person. I had planned to spend my New Year’s Eve putting my January bullet journal spread together, but I ended up playing phone games and crying instead. There will be a funeral in Washington for her in March (because she is from here originally), and I’m going to try to go to that since I can’t go to the one being held in Montana this week.

[+] A week later, I received news that Emily De Ardo had passed away. According to the tribute on her page from her Aunt Mary, she was hospitalized with pneumonia over Christmas. She was a double lung transplant recipient, and I think the pneumonia just overwhelmed her body and her lungs. Her book, Living Memento Mori, is one that I have gifted to people. She played the heck out of the hand of cards she was dealt in life, and I will miss her blog posts.

[+] My church’s parish administrator quit very abruptly on New Year’s Day, so I have been filling in to do the bulletin and the email newsletter with help. (For those who don’t know, I am the “geek-in-charge” at my parish.) It has meant learning Adobe InDesign, and my first week with that was frustrating because it isn’t like anything except maybe Microsoft Publisher. I’m used to being amazing at everything I touch, so I had to confront my perfectionism on that front. After that hard week, I’ve had an easier time.

[+] We ended up having two snow days last week because we got 4 inches of snow over a two-day period, and western Washington doesn’t know how to handle snow well. It was pretty, and it is thankfully gone now due to some rain.

Catching Up: New Year’s Eve 2023

I’m tired, y’all.

[+] I’ve been super flattened since getting over COVID. All the respiratory crud is gone, and I was able to chop off 6 inches of hair at the beginning of November. I finally got my flu and COVID vaccines in mid-November, so I’m currently double-protected for COVID thanks to having both the vaccine AND leftover antibodies from having the virus three months ago. Said antibodies will probably be gone in the next few weeks, so getting vaxxed was important.

[+] I’ve been doing lots of crocheting on prayer shawls as several people in my life have been diagnosed with breast cancer. Two of them had surgery this fall, and the cancer was caught early. Please get your mammograms, ladies. Two of them were in their late 30’s/early 40’s.

[+] My nephew was entranced by the snowflakes my mom was giving to put on our Christmas tree, so I made him his own set. This stretched into making them for Daniel’s staff and for my A/V people at church. Good thing they crochet up fast!

[+] Daniel got a weird virus at the beginning of December. It was rhinovirus, but he was puking. We had to go to the ER for fluids, and there was nobody in the waiting room when we got there! We had a room within 20 minutes, a doctor 5 minutes later (who did what I told him to do… after examining Daniel and realizing that I knew what I was talking about), and a nurse placing an IV within another 10 minutes! What could have been a 6-hour ER visit was probably around 3. We had lots of trips to Stanwood for meds (which included albuterol for a nebulizer… which is massively backordered elsewhere), and that meant me eating a lot of Mediterranean food from the restaurant across from the pharmacy. 🙂

So, onto all the New Year’s stuff:

[+] Saint of the Year: St. Anthony the Abbot, who is the patron of amputees, animals, butchers, domestic animals, epileptics, graveyards, hermits, monks, and against skin diseases. (Given by the Saint Name Generator created by Jen Fulwiler.)

[+] Word of the Year: I got the word create from the Word of the Year generator created by Jen Fulwiler. My word last year was steadfast.

I’ll probably post resolutions in the next few days…

Catching Up: November 2, 2023 Edition

So…

[+] COVID was hateful. I had two weeks of sinus infection/bronchitis symptoms and the fatigue has been insane. Last week, the asthma exacerbation kicked in. I got a chest x-ray at Urgent Care to rule out anything scary, and my lungs were clear. Cue a steroid inhaler. I’m not up to singing with the choir yet, but I’m reading the names of the deceased during Communion on Sunday.

[+] Daniel continues to adjust to high school. We found out at conferences that he prefers the male staff members to the females. He is getting really cranky toward the end of the school day, and we’re not sure why. Non-verbal kids are hard because of this. The hitting is also increasing, which is not making me happy.

[+] The job hunting has resumed. I had to suspend it during COVID, and I’m honestly kind of happy for the break. My tutoring job burned me out for the last two years, and it was nice to have the space to actually be sick and not have to be made to feel guilty for not being able to work through a migraine or have to turn off my phone to avoid students with no sense of boundaries.