Catching Up: New Year’s Eve 2024 Edition

Hello to everyone except the IDIOTS to re-elect Donald Trump and the 20 million people who decided not to vote.

Yes… I just said that.

I’m astonished at the stupidity of our country in electing someone who cannot speak in complete sentences, who claimed that people were eating dogs and cats in Springfield even after THE FREAKING MAYOR OF SPRINGFIELD AND GOVERNOR OF OHIO TOLD HIM TO CUT THAT ISH OUT AND THE PROUD BOYS SHOWED UP, who claims that he’ll raise money for things by imposing tariffs on China… despite the fact that THE IMPORTER IS THE THE ONE PAYING THE TARIFF AND PASSING IT ONTO THE CONSUMER INSTEAD OF THE COUNTRY IN QUESTION (was I the only one paying attention in Economics in high school???), who is imposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico despite us getting a lot of our imports of food and other things from them, who doesn’t know the origin of the word “grocery” (Google is free, y’all!), who is claiming that there will be mass deportations even though he doesn’t actually have any clue of how to do that or how much he is going to hamstring agriculture or building in this country by doing that (because migrant workers are the ones who actually *DO* those jobs), who incited an insurrection which killed several people, and who, along with his derpy followers, has no idea how basic things in the economy work. His Cabinet choices are the dumbest people imaginable for each position (like they were in his first administration) to the point that even his followers are objecting to them. (Seriously? Matt Gaetz for Attorney General? Well, he is a pedophile like Trump…)

I’m positively dreading the next four years as a member of a church with members who could possibly deported because our immigration system is effed up in so many ways, I’m a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, someone who is neurodivergent with chronic conditions, and someone who had a pregnancy condition. I’m struggling to keep my head up already, and the Orange Idiot taking offices means that I’m going to have to fight twice as hard to keep things working for me and Daniel when I barely have the mental and emotionally energy to get out of bed.

And yes, you can absolutely unfollow me if you’re offended by anything that I’ve just said. I’ve never forced anyone to read this blog.

I guess I should go look on BestBuy.Com for a new laptop before the Mango Mussolini hostilely takes over the Oval Office again and prices jump 25% because he is incapable of understanding the purpose of tariffs…

Oh yeah, my saint for 2025 is St. Gianna and the word of the year is “hello”.

I’ll be putting my new bullet journal together if you need me…

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: 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: May 13, 2022 Edition

I’m usually triskaidekaphobic, but we’ll try this tonight…

[+] I met with DDA this week by Microsoft Teams. I hate this meeting every year because it’s incredibly draining, but it’s important so that Daniel can get services. All I have left is the home visit.

[+] I had to make the decision to sit out the rest of the spring from choir because of my asthma and my drippy throat. It’s not COVID (I have tested myself and I’m consistently negative), but my breathing is screwy. It’s a pain because I miss choir and singing, but I don’t want to have coughing fits the whole time.

[+] I had to give up on my bullet journal as life got away from me in March. I ordered another one, and I’m going to probably make it a June to December one as I will have enough pages to do it. I ordered a blank journal off of Amazon tonight, and I’ll be starting to put it together when I get it and trying to get all of the month’s pages done early so that I don’t have to worry about drawing/numbering a new page daily.

[+] I had to give up on Learning to Pray by James Martin, S.J. because my heart and brain just weren’t in it. I love Fr. Jim’s books, but I’m needing something lighter these days. I just started Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, and it’s not amazing but is keeping my attention. (I think it was a free Kindle book?)

[+] For those who enjoy Wordle and are map nerds, check out Globle.

[+] So, this happened on Monday morning. Thankfully, campus is still pretty quiet because many classes are still online and enrollment is down overall, but it was not fun having my phone explode with emergency notifications.

Catching Up: March 15, 2022 Edition

What I would like to do eventually is have this kind of thing posted weekly.

[+] A week after I posted my last update, I slipped on ice and ended up with scrapes, bruises, and a sprained wrist. It was absolutely irritating because I was having to do things effectively one-handed for a week and a half.

[+] I was hoping to have the socks done for my parish’s OPOP releasing friend (who is being released in two days), but the cuff ended up being too small on sock #2. I brought stuff with me to work on at the college today, but the hook in my bag broke. Argh.

[+] It’s finals week, so everything is quiet at work today. We are supposed to be transitioning to having close to a full slate of classes on campus, but we’ll see how that goes. We’re also trying to have offices open 5 days a week, so it will be interesting to see how the staff manage that.

[+] My latest music find has been The Longest Johns. There are many that I like, but I’ll share the three that are currently making me happy.

7 Quick Takes: New Year Edition

7 Quick Takes at MyDomesticChurch.Com

— 1 —

Word of the Year. I did Jen Fulwiler’s Word of the Year Generator and got “dazzle”. I’m a pretty plain person, so this should be interesting.

— 2 —

Saint of the Year. I did Jen Fulwiler’s Saint’s Name Generator and got St. Clotilde, who is the patron saint of adopted children, brides, disappointing children, exiles, parenthood, parents of large families, queens and widows.

I first encountered Clotilde in my Medieval Europe class in college, and the history nerd in me is happy that I got her.

— 3 —

Christmas. My brother and his family were up here for Christmas, so that was fun. His son Braden is cute, and they introduced us to the “Into the Spider-Verse” movie.

— 4 —

Mental health. I had a breakdown by myself for 5 hours on Christmas morning. I had somehow missed my meds on Christmas Eve, so that didn’t help, but I somehow hit a grief well of grief for Grandpa. I was trying to finish Mom’s socks, and it was taken a bit longer due to not being able to read the pattern because I was crying so hard. I was trying to get back to sleep when Daniel kicked off around 5, and I had to keep him silent while people slept. I had taken some Ativan, but that was doing nothing for me. It was a brutal night.

Things hit me again a few days later, and it thankfully gave me something to talk about with my therapist. We’re working through it, but there’s a lot to unpack.

— 5 —

New Year’s Eve. I celebrated New Year’s Eve in my jammies putting my new bullet journal together. I went against my own rules at midnight and had an inch of Prosecco, which was underwhelming. (One of the reasons I don’t drink is that I really don’t like wine or beer.) I then went on the Best Buy website and browsed for a new laptop.

— 6 —

Laptop is here!!!! I ordered the laptop yesterday and opted to pay the extra $6 to get it today. Well, I was downstairs last night putting Daniel’s pills in the china cabinet, and the delivery truck was in the driveway. Mom got a picture of me petting it.

My preciousssssss!

I’ll be setting it up today.

— 7 —

New Year’s resolutions. I’ve decided to just redo my 2020 intentions. I’ll let you know how it all goes.

For more Quick Takes, go visit our host Elena of My Domestic Church.