[+] Baseball. All of the baseball teams I hate were kicked out of the playoffs, so I’m chill with whatever happens in the World Series.
[+] Stomach pain. I’ve been fighting stomach pain for the last few weeks, and we’ve managed to rule out things like an ulcer, pancreatitis, and possibly gallstones. I have an ultrasound coming up on Monday, and I’ll be interested in what it shows.
[+] YouTube. I’ve gotten addicted to Apple Texts, and it’s like watching trashy TV. They are basically text conversations based on true stories, and they are read in different voices. I’ve got a ton of crocheting to do in the next couple of months, so it should keep me entertained while my fingers are busy.
[+] Baseball. Unfortunately, Seattle is out of the playoffs, but the 18-inning game that knocked them out was amazing.
On the plus side, the LA Losers and the Cleveland Goof-Ups are out as well. Now if the Yankees could please go ahead and lose their last two games so that all three of Satan’s teams are out of the play-offs…
[+] Work. Work is crazy, but I’m at least getting to tutor some classes I like this quarter instead of just HSERV and Interpersonal Communications. FERPA prevents me from telling you the better stories I have about my students, so I’ll just say that I have a few who are… special.
[+] Media I’m binge-watching a lot of “Court Cam” on the A&E website, and it has been interesting. I’ll move to “Cold Case Files” eventually, but this has been keeping me entertained.
It’s 12:39 a.m. on August 7th, and I have very little to tell you about my life because I’m eating, drinking, working with students, watching too much YouTube, and not sleeping near enough. All the student stuff is kinda sorta protected by FERPA (and I’m not feeling like getting into the Come to Jesus conversations I’m having to have with a few of them), so here is the stuff I’ve been watching for the last week or so on YouTube. There’s A LOT of them, so I’m putting a cut in this post. Click on “Continue reading” to see the whole shebang. (And yes, I have a weird YouTube algorithm.)
[+] This week, I discovered Steel Magnificat, the blog of Mary Pezzulo. I had seen friends link up stories from her blog before, but I wish I had taken the time to read her blog before now. She is an amazing writer and an even more incredible person.
[+] We’re having a church picnic at a member’s farm on the 7th, and I spent this week arranging to *NOT* have to figure out how to put worship online that Sunday. I’ve been out there before and the part of the farm we’ll be at is kinda primitive. I would probably have to record worship and upload it later… and I don’t have the space on my phone to record a 90-minute service. Broadcasting it off of my laptop would require really dedicated Internet access, and I really don’t think they have it in that part of the property. Also… I haven’t had a service off from running things and doing Zoom (we’re talking Sundays, Holy Week, and funerals) since April 25, 2021. I think I (and everyone else on the committee who switches around from Sunday to Sunday) can use a Sunday off.
[+] Daniel had an ADHD appointment scheduled for Wednesday morning at 8. My alarm didn’t go off and Daniel woke me up at 8:22. I called them apologetically and rescheduled it. They were cold to me on the phone, and I don’t blame them one bit because I know how much of a headache it is from working in a clinic when people are no-shows.
[+] One of my new guilty pleasures is Code Blue Cam. It is videos from police body cams, and it’s interesting to see the job from that perspective. I am not an ACAB person by any stretch (as I have relatives in law enforcement), and I am absolutely in favor of police having body cams that are not allowed to be turned off. (A lot of jurisdictions have civil and criminal penalties for officers who do so.) The department that seems to have the majority of videos right now is the La Crosse Police Department, and one fo the things that surprised me is that they have to put their guns in a lockbox when they head into the station.
Last week, I was a little too scattered to post, so I guess we’ll resume tonight.
[+] I’m done with one-on-one tutoring until the summer unless one of my students needs to reschedule with me. I have two drop-in shifts next week, and then I will be done until July. As much as I love my students, I’m pretty burned out. I’ve been sick almost all quarter, and I’ve had some harder students.
[+] I’m really loving the Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett. I’m on Wyrd Sisters (the 6th one), and it is a Macbeth paraphrase. Reading them reminds me of a dear friend from college.
[+] I’m kind of seriously addicted to Snake Discovery videos on YouTube. I think my favorite video of theirs is when they fed rodents named after people’s exes to their reptiles.
[+] For those who want to know about life in Russia these days, Youtuber Eli from Russia has posted a bit. YouTube will give you other suggestions based on her.
[+] I finished Legends & Lattes on Monday and the book ended up growing on me. I started Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, and I finished the first book as well on Monday. It should be interesting to see how the series shapes up.
[+] WIth the USA hitting the milestone of 1 million COVID deaths, the New York Times asked for people to submit last texts from their loved ones who died. The results are here.
[+] The formula shortage is unnerving to those of us who couldn’t breastfeed. I was simply too sick. They were concerned about the toll the PTSD and PPD took on my recovery from the HELLP Syndrome, and the lack of sleep from having to wake up to pump was messing with me pretty badly. My kid survived on Neosure for 9 months and then Similac Advance. He went into failure to thrive when an idiot WIC nutritionist made me take him off of formula. He ended up on medical grade Pediasure when we moved up to northern California.
The other issue? Women that couldn’t breastfeed are catching fire from people who don’t quite get that there are legitimate reasons not to and that our bodies don’t just spontaneously start lactating on demand.
[+] My 42nd birthday was yesterday. My twin brother was up for some hangout time (and also 24 hours free of parenting and potty-training), so that was cool. The coughing spasm that night that caused me to lose my entire dinner on my bed was NOT cool. Thankfully, I do have spare sheets, so I got my bed remade after showering. (It took a few tries to get the smell of the puke out of my sheets today though)
[+] I’m still having coughing spasms and asthma issues. It worsened after I had to clean out the exhaust fan in my bathroom. Great of me to have a dust allergy. My lungs are hopefully done yelling with me over that one…
[+] Bed, Bath and Beyond is also low on items, and I’m hearing whispers of bankruptcy. It’s too bad because I could see myself going there for a lot of stuff if I ever have the opportunity to move out of my parents’ house. (What was supposed to be temporary has now stretched to 6 1/2 years.)
[+] Speaking of such things, the secret to making a multiple generation household work is treating the adults like adults and each one doing their share. My parents own the house, but my mom and I have the same brain, which makes running the household easier. I’m having a lot of G-I issues, so food is not fun for me, and I’m having to cook or deal with my own food. It means that I’m not eating the same thing as my parents (or eating at the same time these days), and I have the right to make that call. If we have company and I can’t eat whatever my parents are making, I’ve earned the right not to eat it at age 41… but my parents are also not making me something else. It’s not a huge deal because I plan for those meals with things I can eat.
[+] I saw something a few months ago on the subject of trans athletes. It was an article in which Lia Thomas and her current times were compared to her pre-transition times. She has gotten slower since transitioning, and it was interesting to see how she (yes, SHE) compared to the top times for each gender. The conclusion was that the reason she was at the top time-wise (good, but not Katie Ledecky good) is that she was a top swimmer pre-transition competing with the guys. It has been interesting to see that trans women athletes are not infinitely better post-transition across other sports (I’ve looked), which kinda defeats the argument that they transition in order to beat all the women when they compete.
[+} Also… PRONOUNS MATTER. There was a fire fight on my Facebook last year on the subject, and it was exhausting. Here’s the thing: using ‘they/them” is not a huge freaking deal if it means that my students or coworkers feel respected. There are a lot of gender-related chromosome things that don’t manifest in visible ways, and it’s none of my business to ask, so I just honor people’s requests regarding their pronouns. Mine are in my work email signature, and I can promise that I haven’t been hit by lightning yet. Calling people by their preferred pronouns sends the message that I see them and I care enough to listen.
