Hemlock B Bootsalotta

Apparently Shoppers Drug Mart is now selling homeopathic remedies. I picked something new off the shelf and it wasn't until after the receipt was long gone that Axel read the fine print on the packaging. This is fucking annoying. I tend to assume that something I buy at a drug store has an actual active ingredient of some kind. Apparently not.

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I read this article yesterday about scientist who been successfully inclubating lambs in an artifical womb. It's being researched as a therapy for severely premature babies who usually have serious health defects as a result of not cooking long enough.

So that's pretty cool on it's own, but the comments were full of people talking about what will happen once the technology progresses to the point that an artifical womb can be used for the entire process. Some people had some interesting things to say. But the one thing that I totally disagreed with was the number of people who said this would embraced by the pro-life camp as an alternative to abortion. I'm convinced the exact opposite will happen. Because if a woman can put the unwanted pregnancy into an artifical womb and hand it off to somebody else then she's not being punished nearly enough for having had sex, and that's really what the organized pro-life movement is all about.

On the plus side it will probably get rid of the "she shouldn't be allowed it's my baby too" MRA types, because in the vast majority of those cases they don't actually want the kid either.

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I'm on my second week of working overtime and I'm logging into the systems right now and don't waaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

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Fuck summer. Seriously. I am so fucking done with not being able to breath. I've been dealing with constant dizziness and nausea for weeks now because of the shitting smog and I am so tired of it. My chiropractor put my ribs back in on Friday[1] and by Sunday I could feel that one of them is out again.

I managed to get my stupid ass trapped outside when Portugal won some sportsball thing yesterday. (I live in a Portuguese/Brazilian neighbourhood.) So of course the streetcars couldn't get through the mess and I had to walk home. I don't mind that people want to celebrate, but why do they have to do it in their cars? Because of course everybody was idling in the traffic jam, and I could feel the waves of heat coming off the vehicles. I took back alleys for as much of the way as I could, but I was still seeing spots floating in my vision by the time I stumbled in the door.

I can't wait until it gets cold again. I love the days in February when all the crap just crystalizes out of the air and you can see for a million miles. That's what I want.

All my partners want to move some place warm when we retire. Fuck that, they can come visit me in Siberia.



[1] Four this time. Which means I've stretched the cartilage on another one[2]. Yay.
[2] Asthmatics tend towards overdeveloped muscles around our rib cages from struggling to breath. So much so that "barrel-chest" used to be a defining feature of people who grew up with childhood asthma. It's less of a thing now that the drugs are better, but it's still not unheard of for asthmatics to dislocate upper ribs when we cough.

Massive pet peeve #45678

People who jump in to say they'll be in charge of something and then DON'T FUCKING DO IT.

I'm on a committee with somebody who says she'll do All The Things because it's her department. Which is technically true, but for fuck sake, learn to delegate if you're actually too busy. I sent her no fewer than four emails asking for an update because people keep coming to me asking for info and don't have any. Finally I find out that not only has she done none of the stuff on the list, she has to ask me what was on the fucking list. Why the shit didn't she just let me get on with it in the first place? It's been SIX FUCKING WEEKS WOMAN!

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Yesterday Windows decided I am updating to 10 whether I like it or not - it shut off all my programs and started installing without my permission, right when I was in the middle of doing something. I had to reboot to interrupt it.

This morning there is a big install window planted in the middle of my screen that can't be closed, even with task manager. I can sorta slide it off to the side so I can work around it, but for shit sake. I fucking hate Windows.

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Today I got up an hour early to haul ass all the way across town to talk to the specialist who does my endoscopes. So of course there was a fire on the TTC .

HOWEVER. The appointment did result in the one piece of good news I got today. Apparently they can now fix a lazy esophageal valve with laproscopic surgery. There's a bunch of tests they have to do to make sure I'm a good candidate for it - most of which involve tubes down my throat, and some of which sound kind of alarming. But if they can do the surgery then I can give up the stomach meds. And it will mean no more waking up in the middle of the night with digestive acids in my sinuses.

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This weekend is the monthly scheduled "pay all the bills & balance the bank accounts" session. I expect tears.

So the last couple of week ended up going kind of suckward. I managed to get really really really sick and spent about five days lying around like a slug feeling sorry for myself. Complete waste of a long weekend, plus I missed a birthday celebration for a friend.

The other shitty thing that happened is that George got out. Axel had opened a window to take advantage of some nice weather and the damn cat somehow managed to pry the screen right out of the frame and escape. That was over a week ago and we haven't seen a hair of him since. One of the TCR volunteers came by with a trap and we had it set up on the porch in case he came poking around looking for food. So far we've caught just about every pet in the neighbourhood and a couple of seriously pissed-off raccoons, but no George. I suspect he's miles away by now.

Meanwhile, we still have mice. One of them managed to die behind our kitchen sink and the smell is... well, it's pretty much what you would expect from having rotting meat behind the wall. Given their size it's pretty impressive just how completely foul the house is. I am seriously considering spending my Saturday ripping out the wall to get at it.

At some point last weekend I got completely done with my hair and shaved it all off. Whenever the people at work asked me about it I just say, "Yeah, I may have gotten a little carried away." Which is polite office-speak for, "I just ran out of fucks."

So. How was your week?

Who has two thumbs and left her phone on the bus yesterday morning?

Carlin successfully dropped off at the lizard-sitter, medication supplies for the trip mostly sorted, bills payed, hold put on mail.

I had planned to do my packing tonight. Then this morning I found mouse poop on the kitchen counter. You know, where I PREPARE MY FUCKING FOOD.

I swear to all the Gods, the next time I'm bitching about my house and somebody says, "lower your standards" or "your friends don't care what your house looks like," I am throwing fucking mouse shit at them.

The intermittent block of LJ from work is kind of cramping my style. I can't comment on a lot of posts, so I've started trying to do that from my phone. Which is kind of clunky to say the least. And forget doing it at home, my house is where organization and motivation go to die. It's led to me being somewhat quieter than normal.

In all honestly I got kind of burnt out on social media in general for the last month. I blame Facebook. I am so fucking done with Facebook. I don't know what it is about that medium that seems to bring out the worst in human interaction. It's not like people haven't been dicks to each other since the dawn of the internet, but for some reason it just seems to be the default there instead of the exception. Fukt if I know why. So between shitty stuff happening because of FB, people being overtly shitty to other people on FB, and FB itself being a pretty shit place for any kind of meaningful interaction, fuck that joint. Now I'm just struggling with whether or not to delete my account there. Unfortunately for a lot of people it's their main way of getting in touch, so I dunno. Gah.

So anyway, still mostly here.

Axe & I went to Convergence last month and we realized that the last time we did a proper trip together was four years ago when we went to Utah. We're trying to figure out if we can do a proper vacation this year. It looks like it's going to depend on what happens with his work schedule since that's a bit up in the air at the moment, so we'll see.

House stuff is never ending. The nephew has his own stuff going on, which means he hasn't touched the boxes and boxes and boxes of comics piled up behind the couch. Axe and I fought about it on a regular basis from the day they arrived so finally we put together a plan to get at the very least an inventory list put together, in the hopes that it will make it easier for him to sell them. Which is now making me tear my hair out for different reasons because the numbering system makes ZERO FUCKING SENSE and every single series Fiona collected got rebooted at least three times. But friends pitched in to help out, and we've figured out how to make some room for some of them in the basement where they are elevated and won't get damaged if we have another flood, and also uncovered some boxes of other stuff that can just leave the fucking house now so that's something close to progress.

The other house thing was having to get our kitchen counter replaced because the old one rotted out and the sink was actually falling through it. I'm not even remotely exaggerating.

Occasionally people at work ask me if our renovations are done yet. I laugh, and I laugh.

Oh, and in other news? Hot flashes. What the ever-shitting fuck.

Me: "Hi, I need this info and it's not on your list. Can you tell me where you get this data so I can obtain the missing info?"

Emailed response: "This is the data we have on our list."

Me: Kills coworker, sets the building on fire, goes and gets drunk.

My to-do list would be a lot shorter if so much of it didn't consist of "chase after X who hasn't got back to me yet..."

Because my work has been running training classes for everybody in my department on some of the new technology they're buying, I've had to come in early for the last two weeks. Plus nobody did a sodding thing while I was down with pork flu so I've been busting my ass on overtime to try and get caught up. Plus a six-day week last week. And now my cow-orker just annoounced today that he's planning on taking Monday off, so I'll have to start at 7 again on that day. I managed not to strangle him to death with his own shoelaces. But only just.

The English language does not have words for how much I hate the early morning shift. I feel like somebody threw sand in my eyes. And then ran me over with a tractor. And rubbed salt all over what was left. And then put it in a burlap bag and left it hanging in the sun for a couple of days. And then cats peed on it.

Fuck it. It's Friday. I am having a couple of beers tonight. And then I am turning my phone off when I go to bed. I don't care what blows up, falls down or sinks into the swamp, tomorrow I am sleeping the hell in.